The Iced Coffee Hour - Harvard Psychiatrist: The #1 Shortcut To Getting Rich, Winning At Life, & Finding Your Soulmate

Episode Date: April 21, 2025

Bizee: Start your business with confidence at https://Bizee.com/ich NetSuite: Take advantage of NetSuite’s Flexible Financing Program: https://www.netsuite.com/ICED Trade Coffee: Get a free cold brew maker with your Trade cold brew subscription, at https://drinktrade.com/ich Upway: $150 off any purchase over $1,500 with code ICEDCOFFEE through the end of May at https://upway.co ZocDoc: Go to https://www.zocdoc.com/ICED and download the Zocdoc App for FREE Follow Dr. K : Website - https://healthygamer.gg/ On Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/@UClHVl2N3jPEbkNJVx-ItQIQ On Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/healthygamer_gg/?hl=en On X - https://x.com/HealthyGamerGG NEW: Apply for Graham’s networking community: https://www.entertheindex.com/ Add us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jlsselby https://www.instagram.com/gpstephan Official Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeBQ24VfikOriqSdKtomh0w For sponsorships or business inquiries reach out to: [e-mail] For Podcast Inquiries, please DM @icedcoffeehour on Instagram! Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Introduction 00:01:22 - Who is Dr. K? 00:01:57 - Are we in a mental health crisis? 00:03:34 - % of people with mental disorders 00:07:52 - How to know if you have a disorder 00:10:04 - Is your happiness real? 00:14:27 - Mental illness as an excuse 00:14:34 - Sponsor - Bizee 00:19:06 - How to spot a narcissist 00:23:49 - Are billionaires narcissists? 00:28:39 - Disorders to avoid in relationships 00:31:39 - Can you self-diagnose psychopathy? 00:32:04 - Sponsor - NetSuite 00:34:33 - Why meds are the default treatment 00:38:10 - What would you change in healthcare? 00:40:58 - Why people hate the healthcare system 00:44:31 - Why is healthcare tied to employment? 00:52:17 - How people self-sabotage 00:54:20 - Can personality change? 00:59:10 - Can you remove negative emotion? 01:02:56 - Sponsor - Trade Coffee 01:04:10 - Sponsor - Upway 01:05:10 - When are emotions helpful? 01:11:07 - Is Myers-Briggs accurate? 01:13:26 - Can AI diagnose disorders? 01:16:29 - Most destructive habit we ignore 01:18:42 - Long-term mental health damage 01:20:34 - Fast ways to find peace 01:24:16 - Why some people have more willpower 01:28:43 - How to grow happiness 01:30:15 - Long-term goals vs. instant joy 01:34:40 - Sponsor - ZocDoc 01:35:46 - Is anyone destined to be single? 01:37:14 - Signs of a toxic relationship 01:40:24 - Why women like “bad boys” 01:44:56 - Questions couples don’t ask 01:46:19 - Will the relationship last? 01:52:52 - Hurdles to finding a soulmate 01:54:22 - Soulmates vs relationships 01:58:51 - Designing the perfect first date 02:01:12 - How long to fall in love? 02:06:47 - Why entrepreneurs hire him 02:10:21 - Are successful people spiritually stuck? 02:12:09 - Common problems among the wealthy 02:14:21 - Can life be gamified? 02:17:21 - Hardest problems for successful people 02:19:40 - Surprising part of being a business owner 02:22:53 - Signs of a midlife crisis 02:27:02 - His biggest current problem 02:29:44 - What he’s changed his mind about 02:32:44 - Book recs for personal growth 02:37:15 - How big is his team? 02:38:27 - How he tracks financial goals *Some of the links and other products that appear on this video are from companies which Graham Stephan will earn an affiliate commission or referral bonus. Graham Stephan is part of an affiliate network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites. The content in this video is accurate as of the posting date. Some of the offers mentioned may no longer be available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Are you depressed because your brain is messed up and you have a cognitive bias and you're not looking at the world in the right way? Or are you depressed because your life genuinely sucks? Growing number of Americans say they suffer with depression. What's been the most surprising thing for you in terms of problems that you see for successful people or people that make a lot of money? So what happens with a lot of entrepreneurs is that they assume that happiness is coming later and then it doesn't. It's lonely at the top. Then they seek me out because I can help them with them. A lot of people wonder whether money buys happiness.

Spirituality starts with satisfying everything else. I'm a huge fan of becoming materially successful as the first stepping stone to becoming spiritually successful. What do you think we're going to look back at today as being really destructive? What is society trying to do? They're trying to evoke unhappiness. And if they evoke unhappiness, what can they do? Control you.

How? By telling you what will make you happy. There we go. Dr. Kay, thank you so much for coming on the ice coffee hour. Thank you for having me. I love talking to you guys. Absolutely. Yeah, you're someone we could talk to, no joke for like five hours nonstop.

And just it keeps me so focused on the conversation, unlike anything else we've done. That is my experience, too, that we can talk for long stretches. If you were to explain yourself in one minute, how would you do it? I'm someone who spent seven years studying to become a monk and then became a psychiatrist instead. And now I take... Those two bits of training and try to help other humans with it. Because most humans don't know how they work. And if you teach a human how it works, it turns out that life becomes easier and you become

better at it. So how many humans are you helping learn? Depends on how you calculate it. 15 million, if you look at people who watch my stuff online, we have about 3,000 people in our coaching program at any given time. Do you think we're having a mental health crisis? Sure. Is it only getting worse?

Is it getting better? What are you? It's getting worse. We absolutely have a mental health crisis. It is absolutely getting worse. Why? I think we are substituting dopamine for many of the things that make us happy.

I think that's a huge part of the root of it. I think there are a couple of other basic things that are going on. So one is we're altering our dopaminergic circuitry. One is that the world we live in drastically alters our sense of identity. So, like, human beings evolved to live in, like, tribes of, like, 300. So when you think about, like, the number of romantic rejections you could receive over

the course of your life, it's, like, maybe 20 or 30, like, over the course of your life, like, that's what we evolved for. But in today's world, you can, like, get onto a dating app and, like, get rejected by hundreds of people within, like, 24 hours. So there's certain things that technology is doing, which our brains were not designed to exist at this scale. So like dating apps is a good example of that. Other examples are just if you think about,

are you proud of what you've accomplished in life? So if we think about a total, like a total group of 300 people, you know, being proud of what you accomplished is pretty easy. But now you're comparing yourself to like people from like 8 billion people across the planet. Whatever you do,

there's going to be someone who's doing it better than you are. Right? So I think there's some fundamental things about the way that our society has changed, which predispose us to worsening mental health. What percentage of the population do you think suffers from a mental disorder? 50 to 70%. So you're saying our biology has not caught up with our environment, and so we can't really tolerate it, and then there come a lot of issues, mental disorders that come with that.

Yes. So I think what's going on is like, so if you think about like cigarette smoking and lung cancer, right? So if everyone starts smoking, a lot of people are going to get lung cancer. Right now, what we have is something like technology that is pervasive, affects everyone, and it comes with certain mental health consequences. The good news is that if you understand what tech is doing to our brains, you can reverse those effects. And we're seeing this happen organically, too, with like the rise of mindfulness, for example. But it's weird because I think a lot of people, myself included, think that if you have depression, if you have anxiety, BPD, or bipolar, any of these. ailments, that that's something that's kind of in your genes and you have it for your entire life and you're constantly fighting it. But it doesn't really make sense that it's, if it's our environment,

then wouldn't it be onset then? And so if it's onset, so we become depressed or we become anxious as we get older, then wouldn't you then be able to solve it? Okay, so let's talk about genes and environment and whether depression, anxiety, et cetera, can be solved. So I believe that the majority of mental illnesses can be put into sustained remission. There are, so that's not cure because we don't say that. But in my life and in my patients, I think I've had patients who are in like sustained remission for a decade, haven't had an episode of depression, are within the regular range of like normal anxiety, so they don't have like pathologic anxiety who have diagnoses and came in with a diagnosis. So I think for the most part mental illness can be cured. Even things like personal

disorder. So if you look at borderline personality disorder or BPD, I think 96 to 99% of people with BPD will not test positive for it 16 years later. So 50% of people with BPD no longer fit the criteria in two years. Once you, what happens? How does it just go away? Is it just, do brain gets more developed? No, no, no. So let's talk about genetics and environment. Okay. So what we have to know is your genetics are, a predisposition, they're a vulnerability. And then your genetics get intersect with your environment to create an illness. So just to give you a simple example, we can test your genes for allergies, right? But if you live in a country where that allergen doesn't exist, you don't have allergies, even though you have the genetic predisposition. Does that make sense? Yes. So what we know about mental illness, and this is what's really confusing for people, is you absolutely have a genetic predisposition, but then it requires a certain environment

to bring that out. So a really good example of this is if we look at something like, you know, bipolar disorder. So one of the most common causes of first episode mania when someone has their first manic episode is pregnancy or childbirth. So that person had the bipolar genes all along.

They were born with them. but the stress of pregnancy or childbirth triggers a manic episode. The part of our brain that governs sleep is different with people with bipolar disorder. So what happens is you need the right kind of stressor or right kind of stress to trigger the bipolar disorder to become active. And pregnancy is like at the top of the list. Childbirth is at the top of the list. Which conversely, if I have patients with bipolar disorder, so I once worked with someone who is a very successful PhD, just awesome researcher. And his main thing was sleep. So we know that one of the risk factors for triggering mania is like impaired sleep.

So as long as he was sleeping really well, we came up with a regimen where basically he's only taking medication when he travels for international conferences. And as long as he regulates his sleep well and does a couple of other things, takes the medication when he's traveling and anytime he's jet lagged, basically hasn't had a depressive or manic episode in like three or four years. So you can absolutely correct for what is going on. I think most of the time. So if, arguably, a majority of people will experience some sort of mental disorder throughout their life, 50 to 70%, you said,

how do you know if you have one, if it's not, like, you know, painfully obvious? Or should it be painfully obvious? And how do you differentiate between just, like, a few off days versus, like, I'm having a breakdown? Yeah, so I, these are fantastic questions, and I think there's just so much misunderstanding

around mental health, mental illness. So let's start with, how do you know if you have a problem? So generally speaking in psychiatry, the way that we differentiate between sadness and depression is impairment of function. Basically, like, you can be sad, but if you're able to function, like, if you're able to fulfill your daily duties, you know, take care of your family, go to work, you, like, shower every day or if that's normal for you. Like, you know, you're able to, like, maintain hygiene and things like that. We don't call that an illness. So we, we in psychiatry, we have to find some kind of defining

line, right? Where do we draw the line? And what we've decided to do is a field is impairment and function. So whatever is going on with you, is it causing problems in your life? If the answer is yes, it tips us far closer to mental illness. Now, the really tragic thing is that there are a ton of people out there who have diagnoses that are impairing their function and they have no idea because it is normal for them. They always grew up this way. They don't even realize that a different level of functioning is possible.

So the best example of this is like a child with ADHD. This child is viewed as troubled. This child gets poor grades. The child thinks they're stupid. They're just like that. They think that, oh, I'm like a C student. I'm not a smart kid. I'm not good at math.

So they develop a sense of normal that is based off of like some kind of mental illness which is like untreated. You know, the number of people who end up with diagnoses is like my, like it's mind-boggling. Like they're like, I had no idea that this is not normal.

I had no idea that this is like treatable. Like OCD is another good example. There are a lot of people out there with OCD who have like no idea. They just think that that's normal. See, that's always been my greatest fear is that maybe my 10 out of 10 happiness is you're like six out of 10.

And my subjective experience is telling me things are normal, but they actually are not. How do you know and wake up from that to actually be able to compare yourself to some sort of true metric or get a real assessment? So here's the first thing we can do.

So in psychiatry, we have something called validated instruments. Right? So we'll do research on things like questionnaires. So if someone is depressed, if we take like 100 people who say they're depressed and then we clinically assess each of them,

can you get out of bed, are you able to, work. First thing we'll discover is there is a difference between people who feel depressed and people whose function is impaired. Out of the 100 people that are depressed, 50 of them are still able to go to work and things like that. They're not depressed. They're sad. And then the other 50 percent, they do feel sad. They feel depressed and their function is impaired. So now what we know is we have a formal assessment by a psychiatrist who says, okay, I think you're depressed. Then what we did is we took those formal assessments and we tried to study, okay, what is different between these two

populations. That's when we discovered that there are three highly specific signs of major depressive disorder, one of which is early morning awakening. At all the people who are sad, people who have a clinical diagnosis of major depressive disorder and have an episode of depression, they wake up between four and five in the morning. And their mind is usually like super anxious. So this is something that doesn't happen to someone who's had a breakup, doesn't happen to someone who is recovering from the flu and feels kind of sad and down, doesn't happen to people who, generally speaking, let's say you get fired from your job or something like that. There are some features of clinical depression, clinical pathology, which are highly specific,

and generally speaking, found there. So early morning awakening is one of them. A second huge one that separates sadness from clinical depression is something called anhedonia. So the inability to enjoy things that you normally find enjoyable. So food just stops tasting good. You normally love to play video games or you normally love this TV show. It's just not fun for you anymore. Your brain's ability to experience pleasure feels numbed.

So those kinds of things are like, will separate out someone who has a depressive episode from someone who is like sad. Do you think that more awareness to this is good? Or can it lead to people over identifying with this? And maybe overprescribing like, oh, yeah, I've got ADHD. because now more people are talking about it, that fits me. It's such a complicated question. The short answer is I think we need more awareness

and arguably we need even more awareness and I'll explain what I mean. So I recently saw a study found that 95% of TikToks related to ADHD are false. So what's happening right now is people are having impairments to their concentration, right? My ability to focus is going down. So then what happens is,

I have all kinds of normal experiences with, like, difficulty concentrating. I forget where my keys are. I forget to pick something up from the grocery store. I have difficulty working eight hours a day at a stretch, which is not normal anyway, by the way. So then what happens is these are features of ADHD. And I think, oh, like, because ADHD people forget their keys, if I forget my keys, that means I have ADHD. You guys see how that logical chain is like... Reverse engineering.

Yeah. This is where we use something in. medicine called differential diagnosis. If we take all the people who forget their keys, not all of them have ADHD, right? So maybe 90% of people with ADHD will forget their keys, but not 90% of people who forget their keys have ADHD. This is the biggest mistake that social media is making. No one thinks about probabilities when they make a TikTok about ADHD. So what we're seeing is that there is more awareness of something called ADHD, and we're seeing like this concept get hijacked to disdive.

describe or I hate to say excuse all kinds of relatively normal behavior. So the other really scary thing that I'm seeing is people are starting to use mental illness as an excuse. And there's like a bunch of research on this too if you guys want to get into it. It's kind of fascinating. I'm curious. So what's the most common excuse for mental illness that you see? One of the questions we get asked all the time is how do you actually start a business? Like do I need an S-Corp? Do I need an LLC? And where do I even go to create one of those? Well, I can honestly say I've personally used the sponsor of today's video Busy, and the process of creating a business couldn't have been any easier.

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this episode. So what's the most common excuse for mental illness that you see? And what does they get them out of? How do you know if it's true versus if it's just an excuse? So this is what's beautiful is chances are it's kind of both. So I'll give you guys a simple statistic. There's something called psychogenic non-epileptiform seizures. Okay. So psychogenic means this is not a neurological seizure. You don't have a seizure in your brain. It's someone who just goes like this. And they just go like this and they're choosing to? Subconsciously, usually. Okay. So, but it's not a real seizure. So if you measure the electrical activity, they look like they're having a seizure, but they don't actually have a seizure. And we have a brilliant test for this.

If you want to know how someone, if someone's faking a seizure. So they'll be like flopping around. You pick up their arm and you hold it above their head. If they smack themselves in the face, they're having a real seizure. If the arm falls like this, then they're not having a real seizure. Okay. I don't think I'd ever like go and like think someone's faking a seizure though. Yeah.

I mean, that's because you're imagine being that guy. Yeah. Like some guy's actually having a seizure on like a bus or something. Well, hold on everybody. Let me just test this. Yeah. I mean, that's because why did you just raking? Why did you just drop his hand like that?

It's hilarious, but yeah. So we know that there are two kinds of seizures. There are epileptiform seizures, epilepsy. These are unregulated electrical activity in the brain. And then we have psychogenic seizures, which is like someone who just starts seizing. Now, here's a really fascinating thing. 50% of people who have non-epileptiform seizures have real seizures too. So the largest population of people who fake their seizures, it's not really faking, but who fake their seizures have real epilepsy. If we think about being sick, right? If I'm sick, what does that mean for the people around me? What does that mean for my life? They're likely going to get sick as well. Sure. I mean, if it's infectious. My not risking it. Yeah. So let's say that, let's say I get like diagnosed with cancer. What does that mean for my life? Anything that's going negative is a product of your cancer? Could be, right? So what happens at work if I have cancer? You'll use that as a reason for not doing certain things? A hundred percent, right? I won't use it as a reason to I get excused from things.

Sure. So we as human beings, like we're doing a podcast today. If I called y'all and I said, hey, guys, I'm sorry y'all flew down. I'm sick. I have the flu. What would happen? Let's film anyway. It would be a whole lot better than if you're like, I'm just not feeling like it.

Right. Exactly. Right. So what happens is people who have epileptiform seizures over time, right? So you have a six-year-old who has a seizure and they don't go to school the next day. And so some part of their brain, learns, oh, when I adopt the sick role, I get excused from certain responsibilities. When I adopt the sick role, people are compassionate to me.

When I'm an asshole and I get diagnosed with cancer, people treat me nice anyway. So what we tend to see, and this is happening a lot in mental illness now, is that people are not, they're not faking it. They may have some real mood disorder, but then they also learn how to either consciously or subconsciously. like produce those symptoms to get excused from certain things. And then it's a real problem. And you people may, like, y'all may know people like this in your life, right, who are like depressed. And so like sometimes like, sometimes the depression is real. We're not saying it's real. But also sometimes it's like convenient, right? Like, and it is something that you really struggle with as a psychiatrist when I have someone who's depressed and they, they miss their appointment. Like, how do you handle that? Is this really the depression

that's keeping you from the appointment? Or is it, you know, someone who's like hung over and they just don't want to show up today? One of the things that you hear a lot is that people will say, oh, that person's like a textbook narcissist. How do you tell if someone's actually a narcissist? Like, what are the signs to look out for when it comes to that? I have a different perspective on narcissism. So I think that, I mean, I don't know what a textbook narcissist is, but I think there are a lot of people who are narcissistic, who don't seem narcissistic even. So I think narcissism is a really good example of something that, like, exists in a lot of people and really is a cult, which means we don't detect it.

If you want to understand, I wouldn't focus on signs, actually. I think like when I, if you really want to understand, you know, mental illness, you have to understand what's going on underneath the hood because then that will point you to all the signs. Does that kind of make sense? Yes. So the first thing is that people with narcissism are insecure on the inside. What's the difference between ego and confidence? Or would you say there's a difference? Confidence, I would say, is the, is a repetitive behavior that leads you to,

feel certain about an outcome. And I would say ego doesn't have anything backing it other than just a blind belief. Okay. I would say ego is kind of how you view yourself and then confidence is like more of an innate comfortability. Okay. So if I were to ask you all to think about someone you know who's egotistical. So just take a second to think about someone you know.

You got someone? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Right? Yeah. So now think about someone who's confident. Sure.

Okay. Are those people the same? No. Not at all, right? So this is what's really important to understand. Our sense of esteem, our sense of ourselves, am I a good person, is a combination of how I feel about myself and how other people treat me? How do I know I'm a great human being? Because everyone around me says, hey, Dr. Kay, you're great.

You're so great, man. Oh, my God, you're so great. So then I start to think, oh, I'm great. So what narcissism is, is there are people who lack the conflict. in themselves, which means they become dependent on the esteem of others. Right? So if I'm a narcissist, I can't tolerate you telling me I'm stupid. Like I, someone who's egotistical or narcissistic, if you criticize them, they will punish

you for it. They cannot tolerate criticism. Does that kind of make sense? Yeah, but where do you draw the line in between that insecurity? Because I know also some people who are really insecure where you say like, oh, that's bad. No, no, that's a... We'll get to that in a second. So it's a great distinction, and that's where we have to be precise if you want to really answer that question.

We absolutely do. So step number one is recognizing that people who are narcissists are dependent upon the esteem of the people around them, which means that I can't... If you do anything that makes me look bad, I'm going to feel bad because I don't have a sense that I'm a good person on the inside. therefore I require positive assessments from outside of me all the time. That I think is the core of narcissism. If we take someone who's confident, you can criticize a confident person and they can handle that. I don't need you to think I'm a genius because I feel pretty good about my intelligence. Does that make sense?

So confidence kind of comes from within and ego is all about what you project to the outside world. So narcissists in that way have a very fragile ego structure. Interesting. Now, how do you tell the difference between someone who's insecure sometimes and someone who is a narcissist? So now we have to tunnel down a little bit further and we have to recognize that narcissism is not a personality structure technically. Technically, it's a defense mechanism. So anytime I have an insecurity, right, so we can take a normal person, I'm insecure about my, let's say, my appearance in a bathing suit. if someone criticizes my intelligence, I'm fine with it. But if someone calls me ugly in a bathing suit, this is my insecurity. So my narcissistic defense mechanism rises. Right? So then I'll say, well, you're ugly in a bathing suit too, or which is much more common. So narcissists won't do things that make them look bad, right? So if I'm concerned about the way that I look in a bathing suit, I'll just never go to the beach. So narcissism is actually a defense mechanism that rises to protect you against an internal insecurity.

And what we call people who are, who have an NPD, narcissistic personality disorder, are people who use that defense mechanism a lot. But more importantly, their utilization of that defense mechanism is so severe that they have difficulty like maintaining relationships in life. They get divorced. They get fired. They become CEOs. They become billionaires. All kinds of problems can arise from narcissism. Would you say that most billionaires are narcissistic? No. Do you think they have a higher? likelihood of being a narcissist or no? Do you see any correlation? I think they they use the narcissistic defense mechanism and they have some of that personality structure. They have a greater amount of that personality structure. And I've worked with a couple, like in my practice. What about for sociopaths? What about? I heard that there's a higher percentage of billionaires, like people with extreme wealth that fit that criteria because they need to be so cut throat when it comes to like people, business, money. Yes and no. So this is also

where we have to be precise with our language. So when you label someone a sociopath, I think what that means in technical terms is that they have antisocial personality disorder. But sociopathy is a spectrum. It's not just billionaires. Surgeons test highly on the sociopathy spectrum. Psychiatrists test super high on the sociopathy spectrum. Can y'all guess why? They would exert a lot of power on other people, right? They would have a lot of people. It's because you have to remove your emotions for your job? It's more that than that. Okay.

Right? So if we think about a sociopath, the definition of a sociopath, or not the definition, one of the key things that's different is they lack the capacity for empathy. So we have like a fundamental internal check, right? So like if you look at people with antisocial personality disorder, a common trait is that they will torture animals as children. So I don't know if you're like, I mean, I can't remember torturing an animal. but like if a kid is taking a knife to like a pet, that's not common, right? And so if you think about that for a second, why isn't it common?

It's not because you have to teach children. It's not like kids start out doing that and then we tell them culturally that's wrong. It's not cultural conditioning. Human beings have an empathic circuitry that like makes us reluctant to hurt people or animals unless we need to. So that kind of circuitry, that capacity for empathy, the capacity to feel someone else's pain is diminished in people who are sociopaths. So there's a really interesting test for that too.

If I yawn, it's not a real yawn. You guys can tell the difference. But if I yawn, I don't know if you guys know this, yawning is contagious, right? So sociopaths do not contagiously yawn. So if one person yawns and everyone else around the table yawns and one person doesn't yawn, there's studies that show that,

because you're not tired, right? You're not, it's just I'm yawning and suddenly you feel like yawning and like what the hell is going on. So that contagious yawn is governed through our empathic circuitry. So that's what's impaired in sociopaths. So when I'm a psychiatrist and I have patients, so my mom, you know, is becoming a psychiatrist. She's like, oh, that's not good. You're going to go crazy, right? Like you're dealing with crazy people.

It'll become crazy. So one of the things I have to do is have people who are coming into my office day after day after day, suicidal, depressed, not feeling good about their life. And I need to be able to empathically distance myself. So we get trained in some form of sociopathy, right? It's not technically sociopathy. It's like emotional dissociation, which we have to be able to sit with. We go through a lot of training. Now, if we kind of go back to your original question, are more CEOs sociopathic? I would say that a lot of CEOs that I've worked with would test highly on the sociopathy scale. That does not make them sociopaths. There's another problem we have with sociopathy, which is that

most of our research on sociopathy comes from prisons. And so then we think, oh, sociopaths are bad people because we're like they wind up in prison, right? The reason we find more sociopaths in prison is because there are some stupid sociopaths. And those are the ones who get caught and go to prison. So there are a lot of people who don't have a lot of empathy. If you think about a CEO, you know, the ability to close a division and fire 2,000 people overnight is not. something that is empathically easy to do. I don't think it makes them evil. So I've worked with a ton of sociopaths. I really enjoy working with them. I think a lot of them are like really good people,

but the source of their goodness, they have to work harder to become good. Like, so I'll spend a lot of time. We'll talk about, okay, so you don't feel empathy, but how do you want to live your life? Do you care, like, you know, because they don't care about other people in the same way. I don't think they're bad people. I think that there's a lot of problems with sociopathy because, Okay. When I sell my business, I want the best tax and investment advice. I want to help my kids, and I want to give back to the community. Ooh, then it's the vacation of a lifetime. I wonder if my out of office has a forever setting.

An IG Private Wealth Advisor creates the clarity you need with plans that harmonize your business, your family, and your dreams. Get financial advice that puts you at the center. Find your advisor at IGPrivatewealth.com. A lot of the information that we have comes from a particular slice of the population, which is like a poor representation, if that kind of makes sense, right? It's kind of like if we looked at prisons and we saw a bunch of black people, we can't inferred that all black people are criminals. That's a stupid inference. In the same way, we sort of look at all these sociopaths and we think they're evil, but we're largely looking at criminal populations. And there's a lot of sociopathy in the rest of the world, which is also like evolutionarily selected for. If you were to remove your empathy and give the sociopath answer to this question, I want to hear what you have to say, which is a lot of, Which mental disorders should you stay away from in a relationship? If you're going around and you're dating, which ones as soon as you see some indicators should you just get out?

I say this as from the sociopathic, not from the empathic perspective. Yes. I think none. Why would you say none? Because I think they're far more solvable than people think. Narcissism. Oh, yeah. Bipolar.

Yeah. So I don't, and I'm not saying that because I'm a good person. It's like, it's kind of like how many flat tires should your boyfriend or girlfriend have before you break up with them? right like if they have a flat tire like you can fix it does that make sense like it's not a reason to break up with someone they have to also want to fix it well we'll get to that in a second well you're asking a right yeah but it's i feel like that's a you can't correlate it to it's like how many issues do you have to have with your engine on your car before you say you know what i just want to go with a different car fine right so but but i think the biggest reason if we think about the

premise of that question it presumes that the state is not solvable right that's why you would walk away it's like it's just it's just a lot A lot of effort. It can be a lot of effort. Absolutely. So, I mean, I say this, and I say this because, like, more based on data, right? So I'm a psychiatrist. I deal with mentally ill people every day or people who have been diagnosed with mental

illnesses, which is a conversation where maybe we can get into. But I think that this is a big problem right now is that people will define someone's future based on a diagnosis, right? So you're saying, like, okay, if I end up with a sociopath, like, that's a deal breaker, which I totally understand that perspective. But if you're asking my opinion, like if one of my daughters was dating a sociopath and I knew they were dating a sociopath, I would assess the sociopathy. Because I think one of the best things you can ever do depends on what kind of sociopath you end up with it. If a sociopath is invested in your relationship, you have probably one of the most powerful allies you can have on the planet.

I want you to think about if you were married to someone who's invested in your relationship and they don't care about killing people, like that. can be really good for you. They don't care about hurting people. Like, they're on your team, but they're, like, very vicious when it comes to the rest of the world. And I've seen relationships like this. And it's like the lengths that, you know, like, once you fuck with my people, like, they don't hold back. So I think that there's some presumptions there where, and I'm not suggesting that, you know, you go and harm other people if you're a sociopath. What I mean is that I think there's a lot of assumptions about these conditions. Like, if you are Mary a sociopath, that means that they are going to manipulate you.

You understand that connection, but that's not necessarily true. So there's some assumptions we make about these people. And sociopathy can be improved to. Not quite in the way that narcissism. Like, I think narcissism can be cured. BPD can be cured. Sociopathy probably not cured

in terms of the fundamental. But these people can live completely fulfilling lives and can live like normal lives. Is this something that a lot of people accurately self-diagnose? No, not at all. How do you avoid going on WebMD and be like, well, I feel a little anxious today. I'm having trouble focusing and it's like, it spits out like this is what you probably have.

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Again, that's netseweet.com slash iced. Thank you again to NetSuite for sponsoring this episode. There is one key variable of information which all of the internet misses with mental illness, and that is probability. So if you look at WebMD and I look at something like testicular cancer and then I look at something like depression, it's possible that these two things overlap. Does that make sense? So in medicine, we do something where if you come in and you say, hey, I'm feeling depressed. I don't just say, okay, since you fit criteria for depression, I'm going to diagnose you, since we go down the check boxes of depression, you check a lot of these boxes. they're four-year depressed.

That's not how medicine works. It's a big thing that people miss. We do something called a differential diagnosis, which means that it's my job as a doctor. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, I don't assume it's a duck. That's a bad doctor. Just because you check the boxes

doesn't mean you have the illness. And so a good example of this is if someone is anemic, their blood count is low. If a woman has heavy periods and they're feeling depressed, they have low energy, they don't feel like getting out of bed. Maybe they have iron deficiency anemia.

Hypothyroidism presents like depression. allergies can present like depression. There are all kinds of things that can present like depression. This is what the internet misses. Just because I lose my keys, what is the probability that someone who loses their keys

has ADHD? 5%. Whereas 95% of people just lose their keys and it's a normal variant. So why does it seem then that the default is always just medication? It seems as though

the medical system is just designed around like, oh, you have these symptoms. So take this pill. Instead of figuring out like, oh, well, maybe you're not getting enough exercise. Maybe you have a crap diet. Great question. So I think we have a problem in the medical system where we love pills. But there's a big issue there, which is that we blame the system, but patients are a huge part of the system. There aren't great incentives for long lasting,

significant change. That's like literally why I started Healthy Gamer, because what I saw as a psychiatrist was like, everyone's just taking pills, but there's so much more to, and this is what my clinical experience was, when I work deeply with a patient, like, you can get people in the sustained remission with, like, sociopathy, narcissism, mood disorders. I saw a lot of great success stories, and I was like, why aren't people doing this? And the big thing that is missing is that, you know, I don't prescribe a whole lot. So I'll prescribe medications, but 30% of my practice is on medications. 50% to 60% will come in on medications, then over the course of like one year, we'll pull half of them off. And so we don't emphasize the things that lead to mental health, we just focus on mental illness. Does that kind of make sense? So when I have someone who's like a narcissist, it's about understanding this fundamental, okay, you lack security in yourself. And the moment that you have security in yourself, the narcissistic behaviors have no foundation and they start to melt away. Like it's magical to see like what treatment really looks like. And so meditation is a huge part of that, at least in my practice. So I do think long lasting cures are

absolutely possible. That's the information that we try to equip people with. But there are two other things. One is that it's lucrative to prescribe medication. So, you know, if I get, so an insurance company will pay me like $200 for a 15-minute psychopharm visit. So I can see four patients an hour. I can bill $800 an hour. If I do psychotherapy and if I, like, work with my patients, I'll get paid like $250 or $300 an hour. So there's clearly a financial incentive to prescribe medications. But before we start demonizing all these greedy doctors and pill pushers. There are a couple of other things we need to keep in mind. One is that if I tell my patients, hey, you need to exercise, you need to stop eating processed food, there are studies that show that you can do stool transplants on people and you can give poop from a non-depressed person

to a depressed person and their depression gets better, stool transplant. You can also eat certain foods like broccoli and high fiber diets that will reduce bifidobacterium and one of the other bacteria that lead to depression. So you can do all these things. But what do you think the likelihood is that my patients do it? Very low. So human beings don't like behavioral change. Behavioral change is hard for the patient. So what's way easier is giving them a pill. So I think part of the reason that medications have grown so much is because there's a financial incentive, sure. It's also really interesting if you look at the financial incentives because so schizophrenia is 1% of the population. But if you look at the ratio of

dollars spent on drug development is the numerator divided by number of people who have the condition, right? So how much money are we spending to help how many people? At the top of that list is schizophrenia. So huge amounts of drug development in schizophrenia. And the reason for that is because schizophrenia is not curable, as far as we know, generally speaking, that's what's accepted. So if you get a patient who likes a medication, you have a patient for 40 years. So if you were in charge of the health care system, what would you change? So first of all, our health care system isn't health care. It's sick care. You guys understand that? Right?

So you don't go see your doctor unless you're sick. So one thing that's really interesting is if you look at ancient China, the way that that are one part of ancient China. So I had a mentor whose mentor was a traditional Chinese medicine doctor who was a professor at Harvard. And he was kind of explaining to me one day that in ancient China, the way that you pay doctors is you pay a doctor a monthly fee to take care of your family. It's a subscription model, right? subscription models before they were cool. Any month in which someone in your family gets sick, the doctor does not get paid. So I want you all to think about how that changes the incentive structure, right?

So now we're focused on maintaining health. So what I've seen in kind of my practice and also the reason that I started a healthy gamer, there's even research on this. There are certain things called transdiagnostic entities. I'll explain what they are. So we have a bunch of these mental health conditions. We've got depression. We've got anxiety. We've got ADHD.

Everything's getting worse. And so some really brilliant researchers sat down and tried to figure out, why is all mental illness getting worse? Like, it's weird, right? If we think about, like, a particular pathology, like when COVID got bad, it's not like everything got bad. There's one bad illness which is ripping through the world, right? So how can all mental illness be getting worse at the same time? Like, that just doesn't make sense. You guys following me?

Yes. So what they discovered is that there are certain things called transdiagnostic criteria for mental illness. And what that means is that if you're perfectionistic, perfectionism is a risk factor for anxiety disorders, it's a risk factor for depression, it's a risk factor for OCD. So there are some basic traits which increase your risk for like all kinds of mental illnesses. And which mental illness you get depends a little bit on your genetics or your environment or the kind of injury you have or whatever. So what I sort of saw is that there's something, so a good example of this is like purposelessness. One of the two variables that correlates with pornography addiction the most is meaninglessness in life. So if you look at people who are addicted to porn and you assess their sense of purpose or direction in life, you find that they have very low sense of meaning.

Perfectionism is another one of these transdiagnostic criteria. So if you target these transdiagnostic criteria, then everything down the road will get better. So what I would do is start to target those, and that's actually what we built in HG. So I saw that and I realized, okay, if I can give someone a sense of purpose in life, it's going to make their depression better. It's going to make their addictions better. It's going to make, like, everything in their life better. So why do you think so many people are frustrated with the health care system today? Because it seems like, for the most part, a lot of health care is villainized.

Yeah, so I think the reason that people are frustrated with the health care system is because the system fails to have a lot of fundamental things that we get elsewhere in the world. So I'll give you just a simple example. So let's say you want to eat an apple. How do you go about eating an apple, Graham? Go to the grocery store, buy the apple, take it home. I'm weird. I cut my apple with a knife in a little pieces so I could eat it because I don't like biting the apple. So you pay a dollar.

Yes. And then you give me a dollar and I give you an apple. Correct. Right. So now we have a system where you don't pay me, you pay Jack a dollar. Okay. Now Jack has this pile of money and then you say, hey, I want an apple jack. And Jack says, you know what?

Oranges are just as good. So according to me, oranges are just as good as apples. And by the way, they only cost 50 cents. So instead of you pay him a dollar and you want an apple, he, comes over to me and he says, give me an orange, and I say, okay, he gives me 50 cents, he keeps 50 cents, and he gives you an orange.

This is one of the problems. Now, if you're unhappy with this, you can't get rid of Jack, because Jack is determined by your employer. You don't get to choose who makes your health care decisions. Why is that system even in existence? It seems to me like it would make sense

to cut out the middleman and just say, hey, I'm going to pay out of pocket for this, and my cost is going to be one-tent. There was a great example of a TikTok that went viral. I'm sure you've seen it about the guy who was calling for an ambulance and says, we got a bill for $1,600. And they said, well, if you don't have insurance, the bill's only going to be $300. Yeah.

And he says, well, I have insurance, but I don't want to pay the $1,600. Okay, well, you have to pay that because you have insurance. But if you don't have insurance, it's $300. He says, well, why do I need insurance? I'd rather just pay the $3. Can I cancel my insurance right now and then delay the bill? And they're like, no, you can't do that. like I was kind of saying, the reason it's messed up is because normally when you have a customer who's unsatisfied, you can shop around for prices before you buy something. You can change the store that you go to. You can't do any of that stuff in healthcare, right? Because what is the cost of an ambulance, right? No one knows. And you don't get cost estimates before you do anything, right? Because no one knows what the cost is. And all of these layers of like obfuscation are 100% on purpose. Like they do that on purpose, right? So that no one knows. So you can, you

can't make informed decisions. You can't make your own choices. Like, it's, it's messed up. So that's why people are unhappy. The other thing to keep in mind is that, by the way, the person that Jack needs to convince is not you, right? It's your employer. So what happens is Jack goes to your boss, who has an HR department with 5,000 employees. And Jack puts on a pitch and says, hey, we're going to deliver great health care. And it's going to save you guys 20 cents on the dollar. You guys are paying $1,000 per employee for health insurance right now. If you take our plan, you're going to pay $800. That means $200 savings per employee. And then your employer is like fantastic. Because someone at your employer is thinking to themselves like, hey, we need to make more money. We're trying to increase

profit. They have an HR department that has KPIs, right? They're operating on that. So then Jack makes an agreement with your employer. You get very little say in it. You have to sign up for this insurance. The basic problem here is that there is nothing like a free market system. There's no system of feedback if something goes wrong. Why does this even exist? Great question. So this goes back to the in the United States. Yeah. In Great Depression is the reason. So in the Great Depression, they had some kind of, I don't remember the 100% details, but they had some kind of thing where wages were controlled in some ways. This is when employers found a loophole, which is that if I can't pay my employees more, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to give them benefits. I'm going to

give them retirement. I'm going to give him health insurance. I'm going to give him life insurance. This is literally where our current insurance system was born because prior to this it wasn't like this. There was a fixture on wages and then employers started offering benefits. Once one employer started doing it, then everyone has to compete. Now, this guy is offering health insurance. Now, I have to offer health insurance do. Once all the employers started offering health insurance, it no longer became an individual person purchasing their insurance. Normally, insurance is not something you utilize on a daily basis, right?

The idea of insurance is it's a rare event. But somehow insurance has become baseline for health care. This is kind of how it happened. So then what happened is you have a bunch of people who have health insurance, and then there were other evolutions like a health insurance company now has like a contract with a particular clinic where they will take your patients and then they get paid a certain amount. And so then all kinds of weird negotiations start happening between providers like doctors offices and insurance companies and then insurance companies and employers and then employers to a person. but the connection between the patient and the doctor has like two financial middle steps in the way.

And each of those people has their own financial incentives. Your employer, if they can save $100 on your health insurance, they make $100. So they're not incentivized to provide the best insurance for you. The insurance provider is incentivized to deliver the least amount of care possible and charge the highest premiums, right, if they're behaving in a fiduciary way.

And I even saw this firsthand. I was in a meeting once, which I had taken with a major, major investment bank. And what they were looking to invest in is something called a PPM model, which is like, I think it means like payer per month or something like that. So what they're looking for is companies that will go to these large companies like Google. And they'll say, we'll provide you health care for your employees. You have 1,000 employees will charge you $100 a month to take care of your employees. And then the interesting thing about that company is that company is invested in providing the littlest care possible. Right. So if I'm on the hook, if I have to take care of 1,000 people, and you're paying me a flat monthly fee, regardless of whether I do anything or not, y'all following me.

What that means is if no one needs health care, then I, it's straight profit. So this bank was like, yeah, if you're interested in doing that model, we'd love to talk to you. And I was like, wait, let me understand this. So you guys are looking to invest. in companies that provide as little health care as possible. And they were like, yes. That's because then it's 100% margin. If no one gets helped, then it's 100% margin. How do you think that Luigi's situation has changed the view of health care?

Do you think that's going to make a longstanding impact? I don't think it changed the situation. I think all it did was raise awareness about how bad the situation. is, but I'm not even sure what kind of policy changes we'll see from that, right? Like, it's not clear to me that that's going to change anything. They're probably just not announcing where they're going to be holding their meetings anymore. It's realistically the big change.

Sure. So there may be, like, kind of safety issues there. But, but, I mean, I think the system has been messed up for a really long time. And this is, I think, where people really like to demonize, like, what? one piece of the equation, right? So I don't think pharma companies are evil. I don't even think insurance companies are evil. I think like the insurance company exists to do a certain thing, right? So if you look at it from the perspective, the insurance company, it makes perfect sense. So I think this is a situation where you've got four different players that are all involved. You have

the patient. The patient wants to get as much care as possible, paying as little as possible. Arguably, I think insurance companies could be the best player here because they're really the only ones that are incentivized to keep patients healthy. This is what's really cool about. on insurance companies, a lot of them are very pro-preventive care. So if they can give you a gym membership that prevents a heart attack, they make money. So I don't think insurance companies are necessarily evil, which I know a lot of people think they are. I think some of them are quite bad. But so you've got the patient who wants one thing, the insurance company wants another thing, the employer who wants another thing, and the doctor who wants another thing. So I think you just have

four. And that's the problem is in a normal transaction, you just have two people. So achieving an equilibrium there is like way easier. How would you change that? What would you do? I mean, so I am doing something. So I don't know how to change the system because I think at this point there are so many things that are entrenched. But I think that the understanding the system, that's part of the reason why we built HG outside of the healthcare system.

So we want to be beholden to the people. who give us money. That's the only person. That's why we haven't taken a dollar of investment and we get offers all the time. But like, because the reason is the moment

that I take someone's money, right, people say, oh, you can grow five times as fast if you take $5 million today. But the moment that I do that, now my loyalty is divided. Now someone's in it for the money, which means that their influence

on our company is also going to be like money based, right? They don't care necessarily about the people that we're serving. So what I really like about our model is we operate outside of the health care model because we don't provide health care. And a big part of that is also like when you say, what would I change? I don't know how to change that entrenched system. But what I think we can do to improve people's health, which is absolutely what I'm focused on, is by teaching them all of the things that will help them like improve their mental health. So if you are narcissistic, if you have NPD, you can do a Shunya meditation, which will help you with that.

if you're someone who's struggling with burnout, that's not even a diagnosis. The average therapist gets zero hours of training and burnout, even though 83% of software developers in the UK are burnt out. The interesting thing is that there's a lot of progress that can be made if you just help people the way that they need to be helped. I don't know how else to put it, right? So that's why we build the things that we build.

All these questions that y'all are asking me about, how do you know if you're depressed or not? Literally, like, I made a guide to depression where the second or the third video after the intro is there are two types of depression. There is something called pathologic depression, which is an illness, and there's something called congruent depression. Are you depressed because your brain is messed up and you have a cognitive bias and you're not looking at the world in the right way? Or are you depressed because your life genuinely sucks? And there are two pathways to fixing those problems.

And the biggest problem that we have right now is that since I'm depressed, I go to a psychiatrist, I get prescribed a pill. That doesn't help with unhappiness. It only helps with mood disorders. So I think that there's a lot of stuff like what I would do to, I mean, that's what I do. Like, I don't, I mean, how to fix the insurance system. Like, I don't know, man. I think, like, there are problems with socialized medicine. You know, there's problems with single payer systems. Like, there are problems with all of the existing structures. It's not clear to me that any of those are like the right answer. I think it's just way easier to like teach people how their mind works. Give them a high level of expertise to understand what depression is, what trauma is, how to shape you and equip them with the tools to like make. their changes in their own life. In terms of making changes in their own life, how do people self-sabotage? What are the most common traits that you've seen with that? You know, one of the biggest sources of self-sabotage is giving into yourself. So I'll give you a simple example. So I had a patient who had a very traumatic engagement. So they were engaged to someone. A person, they discovered,

thankfully, before they got married, the person was cheating, living a double life. So they were engaged to someone who faked a career. So this person would leave their house every morning, travel to their parents' place, spend the day scrolling their phone at their parents' place, and then would come home. And money entered their bank account every month from their parents. And the family's complicity in it, this person was pretending to be a doctor. So they went to a different country for medical school and they didn't really pass and the family just kept it up. This is crazy. Wow. So this person is now traumatized. has a lot of trust issues.

Then what happens is they get engaged again, thankfully, or not. And then they start to get paranoid about their partners. So they start checking their phone. But something interesting happens. When they don't trust their partner and you check their phone, you give into the anxiety, that relieves things temporarily. But how did your anxiety get relieved in that situation? What was the behavior that led to an improvement in your symptoms?

Fed into it? 100%. Right? So now the way I manage my anxiety is by looking through your texts. So what happens over time is when we give into problems like anxiety, we only feed them and they grow bigger over time. Right. And you guys kind of like, I'm sure you all have had these experiences of someone who like pushes your boundaries. And if you give them an inch, they're going to take an inch more.

So your anxiety is going to function the same way. I think the biggest mistake that people make with mental illness is that the things that we do to fix our problems are often the exact same things that perpetuate our. problems. So this is a behavior that was adaptive and then becomes maladaptive. How much can you realistically change about a person's personality? I think 90% can be changed. In order to say that, you have to understand what personality is. So what is personality? I think a lot of it is just temperament that can often be something you're born with. It just can I would say it's like a define it. Define personality. I would say it's a demonstration of your character. What's your character?

I would say like the biology that you're born with. Similar to, you know, if you're born with allergies, then they're really only on set with a stressor. And character is something where it's kind of like you're born predisposed towards a certain way. And then it's. So let's start by understanding, right? So like, I think people, we don't do this. And this is why I love podcasts like this and making content. So personality is three things.

Like literally and technically and scientifically, it is three things. It is the way that you perceive information, the way that you perceive information, the way that you react and like your internal reaction and then your behavior. That's all personality is, like literally. So I'll give you all an example. Let's say that someone walks in the door right now and says, I'm going to give you a million dollars to cluck like a chicken. So this is a uniform stimulus, right?

All three of us are seeing the same stimulus. Simulus is the same. The way we perceive that stimulus will be different. I will think to myself, oh my God, I've been praying to God for so long that he gave me a million dollars and this is the opportunity. This is everything that I've been praying for. Thank God. You will look at this and think, who the hell is this? And you will look at this and think, what's the scam?

What's the catch? Do you all see how one thing exists? It's the same thing. But the three of us perceive it in different ways. Does that make sense? Yeah. So narcissistic personality. Oh, hey, are you feeling okay?

you don't look the best. How dare you comment on my appearance? The intervention is the same. When a non-narcissist, when someone says, hey, are you doing okay? A non-narcicist is like, wow, this person cares about me. A narcissist is like, what's wrong? What's wrong with my face? Why are you saying that? You guys see what I mean? Yeah. So literally the way you perceive information is the first part of personality. Then once you have a perception, there's an internal change. So how do you react to it? This person is trying to scam me. Do I want to give in the scam? Do I want to report it to the police? release, do I feel good about it? Do I not feel good about it? That's the second stage. And then the third stage is how we react. So at some point, a human being will, based on their perception, and based on their internal reactions, will take an action. So I'll say, yes, give me the million dollars. You'll say, why didn't I think of this first? And you'll say, screw you, right? So does that kind of make sense? So if we look at someone and we say, okay, oh, look at this person's personality, is they have such stalwart character. And why do we say that? You're right. It's character. But character is the way you respond to situations, is the way you perceive situations.

Right. So when someone has strong character, when life gives them setbacks, their setbacks, not failures. Does that make sense? So they're going to keep going forward. So personality is literally these three things. You all with me? So then the question is, can we change those things? And the answer is 100% yes.

So we have techniques of removing cognitive bias, right? So you can train your mind to see things as. as they are. So this is a really interesting aside. If you look at researchers who win the Nobel prize in medicine, there is one trait that they have in common, which is that they see the world as it is. That's the most important thing to win a Nobel Prize. So what happens, how do you win a Nobel Prize? You run an experiment and common sense says the interpretation is one thing. But you're able to shed common sense and see, holy crap, this experiment is showing that life, Light is both a particle and a wave.

This is something that is not possible, right? Something is a particle or it's a wave. You can't be both. But the experiment says it's both, and then you say yes. You are able to simply see reality as it is. There's more to life than finding the perfect car. But finding the perfect car can help you get the most out of life. Like the SUV that handles everything from drop off to off road

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No one can prevent all cybercrime or identity theft. Conditions apply. That's how you win a Nobel Prize. Interestingly enough, Dalai Lama also has a great segment about, the hardest thing to do in the world is to see the world as it is. So it happens in life, the way our personality develops is we accrue this emotional baggage that then colors our perception. So there's a process to remove that perceptual coloring.

Then we have our internal reactions, which can also be modified, strengthened. Even though I feel angry in this moment, I can change the way that I see that anger. I can have a mindset shift. I can cognitively reframe. I can do a deep breathing exercise so that my amygdala calms down. There are all kinds of things that you can do to change that internal reaction. And then there's the action. And that's also modifiable, right?

We can change the way that we behave. That is like a technical thing that we can do. Is it ever possible to remove negative emotion entirely? Like not be angry or physically just don't feel afraid or anxious of something? Or is it all just about managing it? Are you angry right now? No. How did you do that?

I'm just not. But how? You were angry at some point in the past. At some point. And now you're not. Correct. How did that happen? Just by the stimulus is coming in.

Is that the only way? I think so. Is it not? So remember, does a stimulus determine, does a stimulus control you? Subconsciously it does. Don't use that word. Okay. Because no one knows what that means.

I don't know what that means. You don't know what that means. Does a stimulus control you? Yes. How? It'll influence, I don't like to say subconsciously. It could, what? Come forward.

Come forward. Yeah. No, no, I'm not doing it. No, come forward. This is the stimulus. He's going to put his finger in your mouth. No, we're not here. So what was that experience like for you?

Uncomfortable. Right? Yeah, sure. I created a stimulus. Sure. But your initial reaction was no and you're like, yeah, because it felt like a test. I'm doing something to you.

Yeah. And you have some ability to modify what's going on inside. I was reactive. You were reactive and then you modified. At the beginning you said no. Yeah. Later you said yes. maybe you're regretting it. My point is that the stimulus doesn't 100% determine what happens.

Now, you can make arguments against that we can get on, because some people believe in biological determinism. I don't. But like, I don't think that the universe is biologically deterministic. You can make that argument, right? So the stimulus is just stimulus. Like, just to give you a simple example, and we know this. This is so common sense. When I was working in the emergency room, I one time went in to see a patient, the patient's high on his mind on K2. You all okay to this. It's synthetic marijuana. So like, gas stations. You know, so like people tell me that I'm a terrible piece of human being and all this kind

of stuff. You hear this stuff all the time when you're a psychiatrist. But the first time it happened to me, it hurt to hear that. And then over time as you learn more, that same stimulus does not have to have the same emotional reaction. Does that make sense? Yeah. So the emotional reaction is somewhat influenced by the stimulus, but is modifiable by you, right? So what was your original question? Can you remove negative emotion? entirely. I don't know what you mean by remove and I don't know what you need by entirely. Can you get rid of feeling negative feelings? Yes. I wouldn't recommend it, but you can do it. Right. So one way that we do it is ketamine. So like, that's why we give it to people who are

anesthetic. Another way that we do it is through something called dissociation, which is not generally speaking healthy long term. So when people who are undergoing trauma dissociate and there's a really fascinating neuroscience behind this, normally our emotions are on the right side of our brain our analytical brain is our left side of the brain. And these two parts talk through this thing in the middle called the corpus callosum. So when someone who's experiencing trauma dissociates, their left part of the brain

and the right part of the brain stop talking to each other. So the emotions are all hyperactive on the right side. It's like there's a fire on one side of your house and the other side of your house is completely unaware of it. But the part of you that is running the show in that moment is the left side. So can you dissociate from emotions?

100%. Does that remove them entirely? Not really. In fact, they can be really intense. But I do believe you can get to states of mind where you're basically impervious to negative emotion. In which situations are emotions productive or good? Summer's here and with the heat picking up,

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dot co. Ditch the gas, skip the traffic, ride smarter, and you can thank me later. In which situations are emotions productive or good? Okay. Take a step back. Yeah. Okay. I know it's confusing. So we all have emotions, right? Why? I don't know why. I don't know why either. Maybe so like maybe so we don't, so it's a quicker response to certain things. There we go. Right. So in most of the most of the most of the most of the, I don't know. I don't. I don't know. I don't. I don't know why. I don't. I don't. I don't know why. Maybe. Maybe so. Maybe so. Maybe so. Maybe so. Maybe so. Maybe. Maybe. I'm Are emotions are not and do does a crocodile have emotions? Do you all know? The crocodile probably feels some level of panic or fear when it's being attacked Perfect. Yeah. Right. So first thing to understand Emotions aren't a problem. They're like a core feature which evolution has invested in for millions of years

Including crocodiles. There are two kinds of emotions. There are social emotions and primitive emotions Primitive emotions are things that crocodiles can feel like fear, anxiety, panic. They can be worried. They can feel afraid. I can feel afraid Right. Social emotions are things like shame or pride that require other people to fear. So if I put you on a desert island, there's no reason to be ashamed and there's no reason to be proud. You require other humans for that. Does that make sense? So once we have primates and we have social hierarchies and things like that, we buy ourselves pride, shame, et cetera. So emotions are really, really, really useful. They do two things. They give us information and they give us motivation. So if you sort of think about it, right? If I'm depressed, people think I'm not. motivated that's not true depression is very strong motivation towards inaction do you all understand the difference you know anything why on earth would i would my brain ever be motivated towards an action what do you all think what is a situation in which you would want to be motivated to do absolutely nothing if the decision is between two bad things okay good that's one option other thoughts it's not feeling like it i mean that's what depression feels like right so generally speaking when

there is futile action, we feel depressed. Does that make sense? Yeah. So depression is an energy conservation strategy. If we never felt discouraged from our failures, we would keep doing the same damn thing over and over and over again and constantly fail. Y'all with me? Depression is crucial. It keeps us from wasting our time. Oh, this relationship is a waste of my time. I'm no longer. I'm not going to buy this person flowers. I'm not going to get married to them. We want inaction. The efficient allocation of resources is governed through sadness.

So here's the really cool thing. Since hopelessness or futile action induces depression in inaction, a really cool motivational technique that you can do is reevaluate your calculation for hopelessness. Does that make sense? So if I think something is hopeless, but I'm wrong in that calculation and I change that calculation, depression will go away, motivation will increase. It's like that simple. Emotions do two things. They give us information.

So there are times where our analytical mind doesn't know what's going on, but our primitive mind does. You walk into a room, everyone is laughing. One person looks at you and nods. Everyone turns to look at you and everyone stops laughing. What happened? Something is wrong. You know it. You walk into a room.

tension is thick in the air. You show up somewhere, someone's like, hey, Jack, great to see you. I'm so happy to see you, man. You're so great. I like you so much. Thank you. What are y'all feeling when I say that?

Jack, I feel great. I'd be a little on edge. So you're calling me a sociopath. Is that what it is? No, I would say that you seemed like you were faking it. 100%, right? So how do you know that? This is emotional processing happens so fast in less than a second. If people are watching this, they knew, you knew in the first second. You didn't need me to keep going, right? You can tell right away that something is weird. So our emotional mind processes a ton of information, warns us about things. Right now, each and every one of us is subconsciously processing everything in our peripheral vision. If a snake appeared over there, all three of us would see it. Does that make sense? So our brain is literally looking at all the time and processing what's going on there.

So emotions are a huge source of information, number one. Second thing, huge source of motivation. So if we look at what motivates us, if I, if you're spending night at my house and I take a dump on your forehead, would you ever spend the night of my book? Oh, yeah. Definitely. As soon as possible. We never leave. Right.

So if we think about like these, these vulgar stuff, I walked into that. Of all the examples you gave, that obviously. specific. Yeah. Especially because you invited us. Subconscious. I maybe it is. Yeah. Oh, so if you look at things like anger, right? Like, oh, my boss, like, disrespected me. Like, I'm never going to tolerate that again. So, like, anger is a very powerful motivator to protect our territory. So if I slap you across the phrase, that's a violation of your territory. Anger will cause you to suppress your risk assessment circuitry and act anyway, which is a feature. Another really interesting thing. There's another emotion that is

wired to shut off our risk assessment. Can you all guess what it is? To shut off our risk assessment? Yeah. There are two emotions that we experience with. Yes. Literally suppresses the part of our brain that risk assessments. Oh, I love you so much. Baby, do you have a condom? No, I don't have a condom, but it'll be okay. Yeah, it'll be okay. It's not okay. That's what happens, right? So like, like, like, this, and that's evolutionary, because when we fall in love, unless we, like, think about if we, if we don't stop thinking about how stupid this is, we won't procreate. Sorry, going back to emotions for a second, just to sum up. So I think feeling emotions is good.

But being able to regulate emotions and being in control of emotions is the goal, not to dissociate or get rid of. On the topic of personalities, is the Myers-Briggs accurate? How can someone get a grasp of their personality? So let's understand a couple things about Myers-Briggs. Myers-Briggs is based off of the work of Carl Jung. Carl Jung drew ideas heavily from India. So he studied Kundalini, he studied Ayurveda, he studied yoga. So like collective unconscious and stuff like that, that's all like based on yogic study, I think.

So definitely he studied that stuff, whether he came up with it first and then learned more or what. The second thing about Myers-Briggs is that I have not been able to find an external source of validation for the Myers-Briggs types. So all of the research done on Myers-Briggs is usually done by Myers-Briggs. So it's not something that like external people have studied extensively that I've been able to find. If it's happening somewhere, I've looked pretty hard. I haven't found it. So I think that the current scientific consensus is that Myers-Briggs is not scientifically valid. But that doesn't mean that it isn't functionally useful.

So this is what's really interesting is that if you look at something like astrology, there are a lot of studies that show that astrology can be useful. They can be helpful to people. It can be functionally useful, even if it isn't technically true. And this is where things get a bit philosophical, but even if we look at like a family, a family is like a human construction. It's not a real thing, right? So we can define a family, but it's like an idea in our head. Is this person part of my family? We don't share genetic material, but we say they're part of it because we define it a certain way. But we could define family in a different way and it would change. Does that make sense? Does that make sense? Is that make sense? Is that make sense? Is there all kinds of things that human beings do that are helpful to us psychologically or even in the world because they help us understand the world. They help us understand the world. They help us understand. ourselves. So that can be useful, but it doesn't necessarily, it's not true. So I went through a Myers-Briggs training when I was in residency. This is like Harvard Medical School, psychiatry residency. They put us through a Myers-Briggs thing. So helpful. I learned so much

about communication and things like that. And I was like, oh, that's why that happens. It was very tailored to medicine. So I think that Myers-Briggs can be helpful. I don't think it's very scientifically valid. And I think that the majority of people who discuss Myers-Briggs have no idea what they're talking about. What about when it comes to AI? Can AI start to self-diagnose things? Is it a reliable source? Can it be a replacement for-A-I self-diagnose? Well, you type in and AI will diagnose whatever it is. Or can that be a replacement to therapy? The way that I view AI is like a really advanced journal, right? So what you get out of chat GPT is to a certain degree what you put in. So there are a lot of AIs that are really good at paying attention. So this is where they're really

helpful for like, I don't think that they can be therapists, but they do one thing that generally speaking, only therapists do, which is that they listen and remember things that you think are insignificant. So there are absolutely AIs that will draw connections between things that you say and will put them back to you. Does that make sense? So when I work with people who work with AIs, it's been interesting to see, can I be replaced by an AI? And so far, the answer is no, but it could happen at some point. Totally fine. So I think that they can be like very advanced forms of journals, right?

Because it's a journal that pays attention and applies significance to things. Now, there are a couple of big problems with AIs, which is that when you get legal advice from chat GPT, how do you know if it's right? Yeah, but how do you know if it's right if it's a person? Well, a lawyer could be wrong. So I'll give you guys a simple example. I tried to use chat GPT to figure out the modern, I was trying to get updated statistics on meditation. So I did research for a couple of years on Tai Chi at Harvard Medical School, trained there as a psychiatrist, built a stress management program that has been used by all kinds of companies and stuff like that. So I know the literature on meditation. I asked Chat Chapti-T, hey, tell me about outcomes from meditation. And I said, give me citations and sources. So Chet, Chupit gave me a lot of stuff. It looked kind of right, but I was like looking at some of this stuff. I'm like, this is really weird. This seems off to me. So I know the literature on meditation some. It's not like I've read every paper. Then what I did is I went and looked at the papers that it cited.

Here's the really fascinating thing. The papers it cited did not say what it said they said. Does that make sense? So it said this paper found, a study by these people found that meditation leads to a 28% reduction in depression. I looked at the paper. That's not what the paper says at all. It doesn't say that at all. So it falsely cites things.

And that's where you have to really understand how these AI models work, which I'm not an expert in. But an AI model is an amalgamation of information. And do you all know how chat GPT decides what to say? It's like the highest percentage next word. Something like that, right? So it does some iterative algorithm based on like what comes next. But that has no connection with reality. So if you ask chat GPT to summarize one of my YouTube videos, it won't summarize my YouTube video.

What it'll do is look at the topic of the video and then average. what people on the internet are saying about that topic, and then it will put that out. The less practice it has to answer a question, the weird are the answers get? What do you think we're going to look back at today as being really destructive that is just accepted right now?

I think the most destructive thing that we are doing today is making other people responsible for our feelings. So like you triggered me? Yes. There is a difference between being offended and being hurt. Well, that was a microaggress.

It was, right? So this is really dangerous. But like hurt and offended are two different things. So I was, I had a patient, I was one time talking to the head of MIT campus security because they had a patient in an emergency room. And then I was like, we were talking about safety. And he's like, my job is to keep people safe, not make people feel safe. Those are like two very different things. And the really dangerous thing about confusing hurt with offended is that who with microaggressions or triggers, who control, my emotional state when I get triggered. They do. 100%. And then what we're starting to do is we're trying to say, since you triggered me,

you need to stop talking. So even if I can get you to agree to stop talking and I no longer feel triggered, what I am doing is losing the capacity to emotionally regulate. We are literally like atrophying our ability

to receive like negativity from the outside world. So the more that I shape my own, environment to not give me bad signals, the more atrophied my emotional regulation circuitry becomes. Does that kind of make sense? Now that we all use GPSs, no one has direction sense anymore. You all notice that? So what we're basically doing is making ourselves more powerless in the world, because the world determines how we feel, it determines how we act, it determines what we want,

it determines what we do. It determines our understanding of our own value, right? This is what's happening. And so we're wholesale and somehow we're celebrating this. We're saying, hey, this is good. If I get triggered, everyone around me should stop talking. And so what that means is that I'm increasingly creating a world where, like, I'm fragile and the world can really mess me up very easily. So we're becoming more fragile and less resilient because of this one thing. Is there anything out there that could severely damage someone's mental? health long term. Or a habit. Let's say you become like addicted to for like 20 years. Like are you or are you maybe lose some development when you're younger because you spend it on your phone? Okay. Or a phone addiction would be a great one. Just like scrolling, scrolling. Like I need subway surfers below you to like stay attention. Growing up without friends. Yeah. So I think the answer is close to no, but practically maybe yes. So I'll give you all a couple. Let's just look at some data.

So if you look at people who use marijuana as teenagers, this absolutely affects the way that your brain develops. So this is why, like, I do not think marijuana is a good idea. While you have a developing brain, even past that, there's some questionable things. But so some studies show that you'll, like, lose four to six IQ points if you use a lot of pot when you're a teenager. But other studies show there's no impact on IQ. So that's like one thing where we know that like damage can be done, but a lot of it can be reversed. So I think that it makes it way harder to fix, but I think that most stuff can be like pretty fixed, right?

So I think this is where the answer kind of depends on what specific thing that you're talking about. I've seen very severe trauma get a lot better. But it's hard to say, like so if someone grows up with a bunch of trauma, how do you know what fully healed looks like? Does that kind of make sense? Yeah. So then we get into some weird philosophical questions. You know, someone gets high from the ages of 15 to 12 to 25. If they hadn't ever done that, what would they be capable of?

How would you even know? Right. So it's a question that I think is impossible to answer in some sense. Yeah. At the same time, I think practically, I think most people can undo most of the damage that they've done to themselves. Are there any quick tricks to find immediate inner peace or happiness? Yes. There's one really cool trick.

go as meta as you can. So the more distance you create from whatever you're experiencing, the more peaceful you will be. So I'll give you an example. It's hard to do, but if you want to quick, it works really well. If I say, I am a loser. And then I say, my mind is thinking, I am a loser. Does that make sense?

So when I say, I am a loser, I am the one who is experiencing the suffering. The suffering is happening to me. But the moment that I say, my mind is having thoughts that I'm a loser, which, by the way, is also technically correct. So when you say, I am a loser, where is that happening? That is a thought or an emotion in your mind. And this is what's really weird. I don't know if you'll know this.

Thoughts aren't real. And emotions are temporary. So I am a loser is a statement of permanency. But the moment that you realize that is a thought, you can have a thought every day. It still doesn't make it true. So the moment that you go meta and you sort of notice, okay, my mind is thinking I'm a loser today. My mind is experiencing a lot of anger.

There's a lot of anger in my body right now. The moment that you start doing that, you become more peaceful. There are studies about this too. So if you have someone who you want to talk about something who's triggering, if I talk to my patient about a trauma of theirs and they say,

I don't want to talk about it's triggering, that's totally fine. If I ask them, what makes it hard to talk about? We don't have to talk about the trauma, but what makes it hard for you to discuss? Now they're not talking about the trauma. They're talking about why they can't talk about the trauma.

This is easier to talk about. Does that kind of make sense? If I were to ask you, Jack, you know, do you want to buy this car? And you say, no, I don't want to buy this car. And I ask you, why don't you want to buy the car? It's easier for you to talk about why you don't want to buy the car than it is for you to buy the car. Does that make sense? So you can do that for anything in your life where you just go one level meta, one level meta, and the more meta, and the more meta you go, the more peaceful you'll become.

So what does that stream of consciousness look like taking it to the nth degree? Let's just go through a practice right now. Sure. So you're saying, I am a loser. What could then that be stretched to? My mind is having thoughts that I'm a loser. And then how do you stretch that? If I achieved peace with my mind as having thoughts.

Let's say no. Okay. So then we have to hypothesize what the next thought is, right? So it's like, oh, man, my mind, why do I have a mind that is so messed up? Yeah. That is always having these thoughts of being a loser. Oh, interesting. Now my mind is blaming my mind for having all these.

problems. Why can't I ever come to a conclusion? My mind is really struggling with uncertainty and not being able to come to a conclusion. That still doesn't feel resolute. Good. That's because there is a fundamental mistake you're making. You are assuming that resolution leads to peace. It doesn't necessarily. You don't need resolution. You don't need peace from resolution. That is the biggest mistake that many people make. They think their problems need to be solved and things need to be completed or resolved. in order to feel peace. You don't need problems to be solved, right? The uncertainty in the world is the same for everybody, basically.

Maybe not the same, but like, you know, there's big things. Like, climate change is like the same. But some people are comfortable with that uncertainty. Some people are okay with that lack of resolution and other people are not. Does that make sense? That does. So your problem is you need to be able to tolerate lack of resolution. The moment that you do that, you're going to be so much more peaceful, right?

I don't need this to be fixed right now. This is the way it is. What'll happen tomorrow? I don't know. In terms of coming to peace like that, what about willpower? Why do some people seem to have way more willpower than others? Because some people have way more willpower than others. And that is a genetic predisposition?

Could be a genetic predisposition, but let's understand that willpower is a resource. So there are some things that drain your willpower really rapidly. One of the three biggest drains for willpower is emotional sense. suppression. So I'd say, especially amongst young men or men in general, if there's a man that I meet that feels like they have low motivation, has low willpower, lacks motivation, 99% of the time, basically their RAM is being occupied, suppressing their emotions. So I want you all to, I don't know if you'll use the internet back in the day of the terrible pop-up ads, where you close a pop-up and another pop-up pops up. So these are people, there are people who,

are basically constantly having pop-ups and constantly closing them down. And then they have no, they literally can't use your computer for anything productive because they're constantly pop-ups happening. And you're shutting it down, shutting it down, shutting it down, shutting it down. So these people are, they're living with constant willpower drains. That's one piece. You can have a genetic predisposition. Willpower comes from the interior cingulate cortex. Some people have stronger frontal lobes than others. That's the second piece. Third piece is that you can strengthen your interior cingulate and your frontal lobes so that you can increase your capacity for willpower.

For the reason that people seem like they have a ton of willpower is because they don't exert it frequently throughout the day. So they rely on things like habits or they have like other kinds of like positive forces of motivation where they don't need to expend their willpower. Someone that tends to to think, think about happiness, think about seeking fulfillment, think about questioning their decisions all of the time, never coming to a good right. resolution, I guess, is that indicative of them being less happy? So we have to pay attention to the question. People who think about happiness. People who think about better decisions. People who think, think, think, think, think.

So the first question is, what is happiness? I mean, from a technical sense, have you experienced happiness? Mm-hmm. Okay. So first thing to understand is if you've experienced happiness, that means that there is a constellation of things going on within you that we call happiness, correct? Now all we have to figure out is what is the constellation of things. So let's say that I take a six-year-old kid, it's like, Daddy, I want some ice cream.

I'm like, let's go get some ice cream. I'm like, and then they get the ice cream. And then they get the ice cream. Oh, man, it's so good. They're just eating the ice cream. What's going on in their head? It's the singularity of the mind. It's the single point consciousness.

There we go, right? That's all happiness is. It is one-pointed consciousness when you are fully absorbed. So there are even times where if you really think about it, oh, why do you? do you love surgery? It's so hard. You're standing there for hours a day. But there's this laser pointed consciousness that feels amazing. So let's now think about unhappiness. What is unhappiness? Doubts. Regrets. The more stuff that is going on in our head, and this is also when we know, like if we look at the nature of mental illness, what do we see in most mental illnesses?

An increase in mental activity. Anxiety, overabundance of mental activity. Even depression. very, very potent mental activity. I suck. I'm hopeless. I should kill myself, right? Very intense mental activity. Does that make sense? Happiness is simply one pointedness of the mind or complete absence of mental activity.

Those are the two. Do you all agree or disagree, have concerns about that? I'm talking about the state of happiness. Yes, that makes sense. Right? So like the actual experience of happiness is like, I got this, I'm waiting for this Christmas present. I got the Christmas present. I opened the book and like, let's go.

right so like you're one pointed in the mind flow state so that's why people in the flow state don't mind work isn't good or bad it is our state of mind what you'll think about this when you have a shitty job what are you thinking about you're not thinking about the work you're thinking i can't wait to leave when is the time going to be over an hour's gone by two hours have gone by that's all you're doing you're not thinking about anything except for the work i wish i was here i wish i was there that's unhappy unhappiness in a relationship my partner does this instead of being with your partner partner does this this annoys me my ex didn't do this maybe i should move on You're thinking about a thousand things except for where you are.

Make sense? So that's all happiness is. You can cultivate happiness 100% if you cultivate one-pointedness of the mind. How do you find things that give you one-pointedness of the mind? Or is that something that you have to choose to feel during a certain activity? That's the right question. So the problem in the world is that we rely on things to evoke one-pointedness of the mind, right? So this is how we become materialistic.

It's just like the trigger-warning thing. Now in order to be happy, I need that video game because I don't know how to cultivate my one-pointedness of the mind. Therefore, I become reliant on an outside thing to do it for me. Does that make sense? The more that I become addicted to video games and I rely on them for one-pointedness of the mind. That's why they're so addictive, by the way, because when we play a video game, we forget everything else. Same is true. But then the moment that things stop, now all the thoughts come flooding back.

The problem is that we rely on external things for our happiness. and the moment that we stop cultivating the capacity to be happy, then we become victims of our circumstances. So if I get the thing that I'm happy, if I don't get the thing, then I'm not happy. This gets even worse because what is society trying to do? They're trying to evoke unhappiness. And if they evoke unhappiness, what can they do, Jack?

Control you. How? By telling you what will make you happy. There we go, right? So you said, how do you find the things that make you happy? Perfect. So society loves that. Like advertising loves that. We're going to make you feel unhappy. We're going to create a desire within you. And then when you gratify the desire, you think you'll be happy. Love that cycle. So why is it then that some people are drawn to the really low-hanging fruit? Like, let's just say it's porn or junk food or video games. Well, other people don't have a problem sacrificing some of that for like a long-term gain. And they get more enjoyment from like, hey, five years from now, if I do all these things, then my life is going to be epic. And that to me is happiness. So I think it's a great question, but I think we have to define our terms a little bit,

and we need to get a little bit more precise. So let's look at the experience of one day of the person who chooses work instead of video games. What goes on in their mind over the course of that day, right? So when I choose not to play video games and I go to work to work, like, let's say my boss needs me to come in over the weekend and I volunteer for it, what's going on in my head? Just trying to do an escape mentally. Just trying to check out. I don't think people who try to escape mentally will volunteer for work on the weekend. Okay.

I think people who escape mentally will play video games. So I think this is where we have to be a bit precise, right? So I think generally speaking, I've seen a couple things. One is that sometimes five years later, those people aren't happy. Right? They make a sacrifice now. And then five years later, they just move the goalposts. Have you all seen that?

Oh, what's my number? I need to make this much. Then I'll be happy. And then the number keeps moving, keeps moving, keeps moving. But if we get precisely down to it, I think the reason that they become happy in the moment, and they're not necessarily happy, is because they use that decision to get rid of an anxiety or a discomfort. So if you really think about it, who is it that sacrifices, and y'all may understand this. Medical students are great at this.

So if you have someone who's highly neurotic and worried about their future, one of the solutions to make their anxiety, go away is to work really hard. Does that make sense? So in that moment, they're not necessarily happy, but if I'm afraid I'm going to fail a test and I spend all night studying at the library, then I'm going to assuage my fear. Does that make sense? Yes. So then if we look at, if we assume that happiness is excessive activity in the mind and I can shut down the fear in my mind by working extra hard, I see this pattern all the time. We see this pattern so much in in our coaching program because people think that you have to work really hard in order to be really successful, which is one of the biggest scams that we've been sold, is that sacrifice

is necessary for success, right? And if sacrifice is necessary for success, and I am your boss, what is it okay for me to do to you? It's overwork. 100% because sacrifice is a part of it. So everyone has this sort of idea that, okay, if I'm afraid of being broke, or if I'm afraid of whatever in the future. I want a certain future. I'm afraid of not having it. Does that kind of make sense? Because if you want something, that means that there is a negative side to that you're trying to avoid. So even building towards a future means avoiding something else a lot of the times. And then what happens is when I work really hard, that calms down my fear. This is how people become workaholics. This is how people burn out. Because now what is my method of getting rid of anxiety? It is working really

hard. And this is where my successful CEOs really come in because they do this all the time. There's a group of people who uses toxic fuel, really, really potent like nuclear energy, but fucking radioactive. And what you buy with it is productivity, you buy success, you buy ambition, you buy money, but you don't buy happiness. But what about for the people who use that as an excuse to say, well, I'm just not going to work hard now because I know that's not going to get me to being happy. Those people are looking for an excuse. to not work hard. Does that make sense? They, if, if I say that and then they say, oh, yeah, like, it's all a scam. Yeah, it's all a scamming. I didn't change their mind. They had that

belief before. They don't want to work hard. And then their mind is going, that's how cognitive bias works. And I mean, I know this is like, it's kind of like can be touchy, but just think about the people in your life who've decided that they don't want to do something. You can give them as many reasons as you want to. They will come up with a thousand reasons to say no if they've decided to say no. Some people have decided they don't want to work hard, or it's not even technically that they don't want to work hard. Many of the reasons, the most common reason that I've seen that people say that is because they believe that their hard work will lead to failure. They don't believe their hard work will pay off like someone else's stuff. I got a question for you. When's the last time

you needed to see a doctor? But you pushed it off. You made the excuse. I'm too busy. It'll heal on its own. I don't even know where to go to. I think we've all been there. Booking a doctor's appointment can sometimes just feel so daunting, but it doesn't have to with our sponsor Zock Doc. With Zoc Doc, there is no reason to delay because they make it seriously easy to find and book a doctor who's right for you. For those unaware, Zoc Doc is a free app and website where you could search and compare high quality in-network doctors and then click to instantly book an appointment. You could filter for doctors who take your insurance, are located nearby, or a good fit for any medical needs you might have, and are highly rated by other verified patients. And then once you find the right doctor, you could see their actual appointment openings, choose a time that works for you, and then click to instantly book a visit. And appointments made through ZocDoc also happen really fast, typically within 24 to 72 hours of booking, and you can even score same-day appointments.

So stop putting off those doctors appointments and go to ZocDoc.com slash Iced to Zoc-D-O-C-com slash iced with the link down below in the description. Thank you so much to Zoc-Doc for sponsoring this episode. So in terms of relationships, is there anyone out there that's condemned to be single their entire life? probably what type of person like there are some people who are born with like you know one tenth their brain i think those people are not capable or like incredibly severe autism or like chromosomal abnormalities that are very severe i think those people are condemned but that is such a small percentage of the population there's not there's not one more common trait or feature or characteristic that condemns people to be single i don't think so so i mean i think there are

things so condemn is such a final thing so i think about it in terms of probabilities so if you have someone who has schizoid personality disorder the likelihood that they will be single is really high but that's because they don't value relationships right so someone who's schizoid is like the way that they relate to other people is different like they just it's not a priority for them like they don't derive a whole lot of pleasure or have any desire for a relationship which by the way is a little bit debatable and in some personality disorder experts there's a guy named kirk honda who's got an awesome channel. He actually disagrees, but, and I would trust him, but I think that there are some people who are not interested in relationships. But I'm also kind of, like, confused by the question,

because, you know, if someone becomes a monk, I wouldn't say that that person is condemned to be single. Like, I don't think that's like, that's a choice more so than a condemnation. Does that make sense? Yes. So I think most people are capable of having relationships if they get the right help and have the right mindset. And how do you know if a relationship becomes toxic? What are the signs to look out for? Or how do you know if a relationship makes you a better or worse person? And if it's making you worse, how do you know that? I think you have to define what is better or worse person.

How do you define that? Are you progressing or are you regressing? Are you becoming more of your true self or less of it? Are they holding you back or are they pushing you forward? So there's a really interesting model of passion. So passion is scientifically how we define like, romantic relationships. So there's this model called the self-expansion model, which basically says that as a human being, I have an identity of myself, right? And that's defined by certain things.

Like, I want to grow as a person. I'm not content to be like a five-year-old. I have ambitions. I want to maybe become a doctor. I want to become a millionaire. I want to have a nice house. I want to get a dog. There are ways for me to level up as a human. Now, the really interesting thing about this model of self-expansion is that at some point, me includes another person with a romantic partner. So the way that I grow involves this other person, but that's still me. Does that kind of make sense? So if I think about becoming a father, a father requires other people for me to, like, level up and grow. So I think a healthy relationship is one where your sense of self is expanding. You are still leveling up. You are still growing. You know, now I have a family. Now we go on family

vacations, this has become a part of my life that I enjoy, that I value, it didn't exist before. So it's like progress that way. Does that make sense? So I think generally speaking, if you're in a relationship where you are growing, if your sense of self is expanding, then that's good. So on the flip side, if that's not happening, if there's a contracture of yourself, then I think those relationships are unhealthy, not necessarily toxic. So I see a lot of relationships that aren't toxic, but where both partners become complacent. So they become codependent. They're not growing. It's like, I see this a lot with substance use where it's like, this is why people say, you know, when you're in rehab, don't date someone else who's in early

recovery. Because if you relapse, then the other person sees you and they're like, okay, like, let's do it together. So there are many relationships that become stagnant where people are like operating based on momentum or inertia. And there's not, the relationship isn't like growing. You're not like you're just kind of there. You become kind of roommates who have sex occasionally and you have maybe shared finances, but there's no passion, there's no sense of growth. It's not necessarily a toxic relationship, but I don't think it's a healthy one. Then when it comes to toxicity, I think the hard thing about toxicity is that people who are

frequently in toxic relationships have a scorecard where toxicity is normal. If you look at people who wind up in abusive romantic relationships, the likelihood that they were abused in childhood is super high. So the challenge about discovering whether you have a toxic relationship or not is that oftentimes what you think is normal is toxic because normal for you has been defined as toxic. But what about, let's just say the women who love bad boys, like they love the ones that are like really mistreat them despite knowing better. How does that play into that? When a human being is in a relationship with someone who abuses them, this is the key thing to understand.

The person who is abusive is not abusive every day, right? Or maybe they're abusive every day. They're not abusive every moment. So there are good days and there are bad days with abuse. Do you all kind of get that? So since there are good days and there are bad days, that means that my behavior can influence the good days or the bad days. So, oh, my partner hit me because I was too loud. my partner hit me because I didn't make the food the way that they wanted.

Does that make sense? These are the thoughts that they have in their head. So what that means is that the abuse is not controlled by the abusive person. The abuse is determined by me. If I behave in the right way, I'm safe. And if I don't behave in the right way, I'm not safe. So this is why people kind of stay in those relationships, is that there's this weird dynamic that happens where they strike.

to be perfect. And if I strive to be perfect, then the abuse will stop. Therefore, it is within my power to control the abuse. I know it's kind of messed up, but that's like what's going on in their head. Does that kind of make sense?

And if we look at gambling, right, gambling is a random reinforcement schedule, and gambling reinforces behavior. If there's a fixed reinforcement schedule, if I work for four hours and I make $40 versus I gamble and I win 40 or I lose, 40, people will still gamble instead of work if they want $40. Because there's a fundamental part of our brain, there's a neurological bias there where we get drawn to random reinforcement

schedules. And oftentimes what happens in toxic relationships is the goods are good enough to outweigh the bads, at least in some part of your mind. And then you start to get acclimatized to it because human beings are also incredibly adaptable. So since I've survived the abuse, like I can handle this whereas if I date someone else or if I leave this person I don't know what else I'm going to find does that kind of make sense

so there's a lot of different dynamics at play I've always felt it was a bit not necessarily in terms of abusive but like I heard there's like that saying that I don't want to be a part of any club that would take me as a member because then they must not be that good

is it more of like a self-esteem sort of thing if like this person is really into me then they probably have something wrong with them So that is a huge problem, but not quite for abusive relationships. So there are a lot of people who get into bad relationships over and over and over again, not necessarily abusive. And that's because they don't rate themselves well enough, right? So if I have, let's say like, I'm a decent person, but I have low self-esteem. So then what happens is there are people who are actually at my level that I self-select out.

I feel flawed. everyone's flawed, but I feel really flawed. So when I look at someone who's not really flawed, I'm like this person would never date me. Therefore, I go looking for flawed people because those are the only people that date me. But then I'm setting myself up for failure because I'm flawed and I'm looking for people who are flawed.

And then what's going to happen? The relationship falls apart. That happens three times in a row. Now I'm looking at my friends. Oh my God, my friends are getting married. I've been single for so long. I've had three failed relationships. I am so flawed. Now that I feel even more flawed, I look for more broken people. Does that make

sense? It does. So the really sad thing is if you look at the best treatment, I don't know if you all are familiar with like attachment styles, like avoid an attachment, insecure attachment. But the best treatment for avoid an attachment or insecure attachment is to date a securely attached person. There are some studies that show that someone with BPD dating someone without a personality disorder, being in a stable relationship for two years, can lead to resolution of the BPD. So the best thing to do if you are a screwed up person is to date someone who is not screwed up. And that may seem really hard. It may seem really scary. Or a lot of the reasons that people don't do that is because they're afraid of rejection. So the more broken person I pick,

the less likely I am to get rejected. And therefore, it feels safer. So even though it feels safer, it's worse. There's a difference between safety and worse. What do you think? think is something really important that not enough people are asking their partner? I think the most important question that is not asked is like how things work. So I don't know if this is going to make sense. But what are the rules of our relationship? So I'll give you all a simple example. So, you know, oftentimes people will disagree about finances. You know, how we split the bills. Do you make more money? If one partner makes more money than the other partner, how do you all decide to split things. Do we each pay pay half? Do you pay 50% of your income and I pay 50% of my income?

There's all kinds of like rules that people will come up with, right? But oftentimes the rules are in favor of like one person. Like so each person is kind of looking at it from their perspective. So I think a meta level conversation of like when we disagree, what is the system? So we can argue back and forth over finances. Does that make sense? And I share my point. You share your point. Neither of us is right, neither of us is wrong, but we're each sharing a perspective. But when we have a disagreement, what is our method to resolve that problem? What is our method of conflict resolution? What is our method of resolution?

Is it just we argue until one person succeeds? Do you get this one and I get the next one? So I don't know if that kind of makes sense. But I think people don't talk about the systems of their relationship nearly enough. And that's because it's such an abstract concept. And how could you tell if a relationship is going to make it? or fail. Is there something you look for

or notice in a person? Yeah, so this is so weird. Amazon presents Jeff versus Taco Truck Salsa, whether it's Verde, Roja, or the orange one. For Jeff, trying any salsa is like playing Russian roulette with a flamethrower. Luckily, Jeff saved with Amazon and stocked up on antacids, ginger tea, and milk.

Habaniero, more like Habinier, yes. Save the everyday with Amazon. But I've observed this in my practice. So, you know, I see a lot of people. And the interesting thing is I see a lot of unhealthy relationships and I see a lot of healthy relationships. Because a lot of people like addictions or depression or anxiety, like they actually have a really great relationship. So I think one of the biggest things is a red flag early in the relationship leads to success, which is something that is not what most people think. So a lot of times what people do is they avoid red flags. This person has a red flag, therefore I'm done with them.

So then you look for someone who has no red flags, right? So then no red flags. So you're dating them for a year, two years, three years. And then a problem arises. Now, how do you deal with this challenge? Let's say a red flag arises. Now, oh, your partner is employed, right? So they've got a stable career.

Like, I can date this person. They're independent. They've got a stable career. They're financially stable. Let's say that they're a software developer. And now software, like, there's a contraction in the software development industry, they lose their job. Now this absence of a red flag has now become a problem in your relationship. Do they fall into depression and they never work again? You don't know.

Does that kind of make sense? Yeah. So the problem is that when you avoid red flags in a relationship, you do not assess conflict resolution. You do not assess adversity. You do not assess how this person will respond to adversity. So one of the biggest things that I've seen in like basically I've looked at my patients who have successful relationships, true of my relationship, too. Like, when my wife started dating me, like, I was unemployed, graduated with a 2.5 GPA, like, you know, I didn't have any money, didn't have any prospects, failed to get into medical school for two years in a row. Like, you know, there's, there was so many red flags. But the interesting thing is that when you date someone who has a red flag and you address the red flag, that can be one of the best prognostic factors for a relationship. Because if someone has a problem, and you talk with them about it and they're able to overcome it.

That's one of the best signs. Does that kind of make sense? It does. Because it explains to you, okay, like, my partner's smoking. I'm going to tell them, hey, I don't, like, I really think this is bad, right?

Like, I want you to change this. And it's not, like, I'm not trying to be a controlling asshole. It's like, it's bad for our kids. If we have kids one day, it's bad for so many reasons. It's bad for your health. Like, this should change.

And then if the person is like, yes, you're right. But you can't, if you knock all the smokers off, the list, you never get a chance to have that conversation and you never get a chance to select for a partner who will respond to adversity in the right way, who will take your consideration seriously in the right way. You never get to assess those things. But are there any red flags that are like red flags, avoid this? I mean, there are lots of people that I wouldn't date.

You know, like, I think that's true. So like if someone is, you know, a project, like in terms of like, if they're just a complete asshole to everyone around them, super narcissistic. Maybe think about it from the perspective of a guy's. It's like 85% of our audience is male. I think there's a huge difference between red flags that are like wrong objectively and like chicks to avoid if we're being like a little bit heteronorbative. Right. So like are there things that make me worried? Are there qualities in girls that make me personally worried when my. friends are dating them 100% man and if that's true i mean i'm happy to share that but that's kind of like a personal opinion i want to draw a distinction between like red flags as a psychiatrist and like things that i personally would steer clear from what would you recommend to

personally steer clear from like what sort of traits maybe because applying corrective behavior is like just so much effort yeah so so so like i i think at the top of the list is entitlement So I think it's getting really hard to date people who have perceptions. So entitlement is a big one. Another big one is self-excusing of bad behavior. So this attitude of if you can't handle me at my worst, you don't deserve me at my best. So like people who are like, I'm allowed to be an asshole some of the time. And that's okay.

Right. So people who accept that they don't need to grow and they're like, take it or leave it as it is. Like, I'm perfect to the way that I am. So I sort of believe that as a psychiatrist. Like, everyone can't be any different than the way that they are, but they shouldn't be, like, happy with being an asshole. Does that kind of make sense? Yeah.

So I think that there's a lot of, like, entitlement, a lot of, like, I don't need to grow as a person. I would steer clear of that. Like, if I, you know, when I have friends who date women like that or dudes like that, who are super, you know, like, I'm, I don't need to change. Like, I'm perfect the way that I am. Like, that

is a big steer clear. What about body count shaming? So I think is, is there a part where that becomes detrimental? Detrimental to who? To either both sides. So when it comes to like things like body count shaming, I think the main thing is to understand what is your association with body count shaming. So we kind of think about, okay, like body count shaming, why is a bad body count bad?

It's indicative of, you know, their character. Exactly, right? So this is where there's an association. You are using this piece of information. and drawing inferences based on that piece of information to other things. If this person has a high body count, that means X, Y, Z. So I think this is where when I work with people, it's about digging into that association. Where do you get the idea that people who have sex with a lot of people are whatever, right?

So whether you value that or don't value that, like, whatever, like, you know, it's whatever comes after that. What does it say about their character? Like, they'll say, oh, it says this about their character, right? they're not selective. Well, where do you get that idea? So oftentimes what I find is that when people have these kinds of impressions of like, okay, this person has a high body count, like that's a no-no. I think it's fine. I mean, you do you. But also, I think the most important thing there is for you to examine why you believe that. And I think the cool thing there is that if you examine that belief, what you could be doing is opening up a pool of people who may be perfect for you, except you have this

association that prevents you from even considering them. Does that kind of make sense? So what is one of the things that most people put a wall up to, but if they just got rid of it, they could find their soulmate? I think the biggest thing that prevents people from finding their soulmate is the impression of what they're looking for in their head. A soulmate is something that is felt. It is not like, my soulmate is like, has a million dollars and is six feet tall or has this

size boobs or whatever. That's not what, that's not the criteria of a soulmate. Like, even if you get, precise with the definition. What does it mean? What does a soulmate mean? That means that your connection is on the level of the soul. It's not a particular job or a particular car or a particular hair color. Does that kind of make sense? But the problem is that when people are so focused on the criteria, they don't open themselves up to experience the soulmate. So they're so in their head that they're not in the present with this particular person. And, you know, I've had patients who will have very satisfying sexual and romantic relationships with people that are that they would not consider or that are not considered conventionally attractive. So I've seen like cases of like, you know, tens dating fives and being happily married and having great sex lives. And everyone looks at that couple and they're like, what is going on there? Because there's such an imbalance.

But the two of them are completely happy. Very happy. But in order to do that, you have to get out of the ego of I'm a 10 and you're a 5. Even both of them know you're a 10 and I'm a 5. Like, you can both know that, but then you just both accept each other. And you don't get bogged down in the fact that this person is a five. So what do soulmates have that standard relationships don't? A connection on the level of the soul. How would you quantify that? Quantification is hard because quantification requires measurement. And I don't know if things, this is where things get weird. They've already gotten weird, man. So things on the dimension of the soul are very difficult to quantify because the dimension of the soul is not physical. Does that make sense?

So how do you measure a thought? We can't. Like, what are the units of anger? You can be able to look at a brain wave or like see which part of your brain lights up for a thought. Good, good. But this is not, you're stepping right into it. But yeah. So let's understand for a second.

Do we know that thoughts exist? How? Yes, because what does exist? What do you mean by exist? I would just say yes, because you experience them. Okay. So this is the first thing. Existence has two components.

an experiential component, a physical component. So I can measure the electrical activity in your brain. I can look at the emission of positrons from different parts of your brain. I can measure blood flow to different parts of your brain. I can look at brain waves, but I can't ever measure a thought, right? There's no way to measure a thought.

I can measure certain physical substrates that correlate with thoughts, but I can't measure a thought. Do dogs feel shame? Yes. How do we know? I mean, look at their faces is when they tear up them.

So you observe a behavior. You don't know what the dog is feeling. And we correlate that with shame. Correct. Right? Yeah. But we don't know that no human being has ever had proof that a dog feels shame. We just see a behavior that we interpret as shame.

Make sense? Do humans feel shame? I would assume so. I mean, forget. Just what's the first answer that comes to your mind? Yeah, sure. Yes, of course. Of course we feel shame.

Like, that's an accepted when we move around in the world that human beings feel shame. How do we know? talk to one another and talk about our feelings. There we go, right? So we have some way to transmit our subjective experience. But that doesn't make it objective. Okay?

So we have a shared delusion of which we have no proof, which is thought and emotion. So what that means is that there's two layers of reality. I know we're getting out there. One is the physical dimension, which is like measurable, right? We can quantify things. We can measure things. But we don't have like a way to really measure or quantify thoughts, emotions. things like that. There is a potency to them. There's more angry and less angry, but we don't have

instruments to measure precisely. Does that make sense? So what is a soulmate? So there is the physical realm where we can get connected to someone. I can look at someone. I can be attracted to their physical appearance. There's an emotional level, right? Which is like, I feel this emotion. This person feels this emotion. There's a great experiment that showed that people who share emotions during dates are the ones who feel attracted to each other. So you have to have a shared emotional experience. This is actually why people go to movies and why they date with movies

because they're not interacting. The interesting thing is it causes bonding because of both of you all enjoyed the movie in the same way. When you walk out of the movie, you feel connected to the person, even though you haven't done anything. Because both y'all are laughing.

Oh my God, that was hilarious. Right? And then they're like, you want to grab food? Yeah, absolutely. That movie was great. It's actually shared emotional experience, which is also why people fall in love

and rehab because we're all like going through it. So there's a connection at the level of physical, connection at the level of emotional, there's intellectual connection. And then the question becomes, can connection that you feel with a human being be sufficiently quantified with those three dimensions? If the answer is yes, then there's no space for a soul. But if the answer is no, it means that there's some kind of constant, right, or like some kind of variable that we can't. My connection to this person cannot be explained. through physical, emotional, and intellectual sufficiently.

There is something else. It's not love. It's not intellectual. It's not just physical. There's something about them that I feel connected to. I feel drawn to. That is the subjective experience of people. If that is the subjective experience of people,

then the question becomes, okay, like, so is this just biology and there's really nothing there? And we just can't calculate it, but really it's just hormones, and stuff that we can't see, or is the presence of some fourth dimension existing, which is the dimension of the soul? I'm curious. Based on those things you're talking about, like, shared emotion, can you design the perfect first date? I don't know if you can define the perfect first date because that

presumes that you know what stimulus creates what reaction. True, but you could design things that are emotionally stimulating and unique so that you have a shared experience together. So you could that, so you can find something for yourself that would be a selection bias that. Well, so I mean, I don't know if you can decide the, predict the perfect first date, but you can absolutely design. And this is where a lot of people make mistakes. You can design a date structure that is based on science that will increase your likelihood of falling in love with them and will increase their likelihood of falling in love with you. That I believe 100%. So shared emotional experience forms connection between. human beings. When you talk to your friend who is like absolutely love, oh my God, she gets me, bro. She gets me. He gets me. He understands me in a way that no one else has. There's connection. Does that make sense? Shared emotional experience is one of the things for connection. There's other factors like impressing the other partner and stuff like that, but we're talking about

forming a romantic connection, not mate selection. Does that make sense? And then what happens is when you form this romantic connection is why people date the wrong person because they form the connection and they're not right on paper, but I feel the connection. So sharing emotional experience is great. Haunted houses, fantastic. If you're scared and if she's scared. I think one of the biggest problems that people will do things like coffee dates

and get to know each other, getting to know each other is terrible for falling in love. Because what are you doing? You're using your left brain. This is a job interview. That's what coffee dates are. I want to feel you out. I want to see if I like you or not like you.

You've got to do something. That's also why sometimes even if you fight, so you'll notice that like people will say, like, there's a thin line between love and hate, and people can fall in love and they can fight all the time. And if you think about it, when we're fighting, what is your emotional experience? Let's say you and I get into fight. What are you feeling emotionally?

Negative. Okay. What am I feeling emotionally? Probably negative as well. That's why it works. Right? So even though we're both feeling angry with each other, we feel emotionally connected. Now, that doesn't mean that you should fight, but it explains why a lot of people who fall in love, like, don't get along.

Because even their negativity will evoke negativity. they drive each other crazy, but then the next day they're like back at it. How long should it take then to fall in love? Or is there like steps to it? So this is where we get to soulmates. So in my case, I fell in love over the course of a second.

Like I remember the first time I saw my wife, I literally felt like I had been punched in the chest. And I did not understand what the fuck was going on. So I don't know how to explain that. So this is the reason I believe in soulmates because I've tried to figure out what happened to me that day. Like what happened the first time I saw her? And it was like years before we dated. I just saw this girl and I wasn't like sexually attracted to or anything.

I just saw this girl and it was like I remember I was walking by a picnic bench, like a picnic table, sorry. I was walking by a picnic table and she was walking the other way. I was walking this way past a picnic table. She's walking this way. And like I saw this girl and it was like. I saw this girl and it was like someone's punched me in the chest. I was like, what the hell was that? Didn't really think anything of it.

Years later we met. So that, I don't know how to explain that. That was love. That was not soulmate though. I think that was soulmate. That was soulmate? Yeah. I think so.

Right? So I can't explain. So I have read papers upon papers upon papers, looked at hundreds of papers about romance, how you fall in love, neuroscience, relationship formation. There's a great book called the Cambridge Handbook of Personal Relationships, a lot of great research in there. I've never found anything in all of those studies to explain that experience, right? So for me, personally, I think there's a fourth variable. So that's different from falling in love.

That experience is separate in my mind. So it can start in a few minutes, progress over the course of a couple of hours, and can happen within one day. Like there are absolutely stories of people who will meet, right? then that gets fuzzy because are we talking about soulmates then or and the number of patients I've had who are like, you know, I saw this person and I knew they were the one from the first moment. And I don't know how to explain that because there's no shared emotional experience. All of the studies that we have about falling in love don't explain those moments. Now, there are other things that you could say, maybe it's cognitive bias, maybe it's misremembering, things like that. I don't think so, man. So then falling in love you can do within a day. sure, sometimes longer. See, there's been one time in my life where I felt like I saw someone and I immediately felt something very deep. We tried talking for a little bit and, like, maybe even dated a little bit, but that's it.

And then... What was that like? I would say kind of, it was a lot of emotions, probably, because I was always kind of chasing, I felt like. But then years have passed since then, and I feel nothing towards this person. So it's weird, right? So this is like kind of where I'm coming. Like I know what I'm saying sounds insane.

Like I get that. But I hear stories like this. And even someone like you had this like, well, how the hell do you explain that? Right. So if we really want to be good scientists, we can't let our preconceived notions about the existence of soul or even what science tells us get in the way of the observations and experiences that we had. You had an experience where you saw someone and you had a deep connection. Like what the fuck, right? Is it when you saw the person or when you started talking to them?

Immediately when I saw them. It's weird. Just by sight. And I was like, like, you ask any of my high school friends obsessed and I'd never spoken to them. And like, and then finally I spoke to them and they only became more and more impressive the more I got to know them. But then it ended up going nowhere and I chased this person for years. And then, since then, several years have passed. See, sometimes I wonder if it's like a slot machine where it's like their actions are specifically designed.

to get you to chase and to like be enamored by that by like being hard to get or by not by giving you a little validation but then pulling it back i was probably too interested that it put them off so yeah i think there's a differential diagnosis there too so like i i don't know if you all have heard of the term limerence no so limerance is like a weird like longing for another person which is probably something that's more on the oCD spectrum so ocd spectrum meaning there's a genetic predisposition towards OCD, obsessional thinking, which a certain kind of environmental trigger

will trigger that thought process in you. But since the level of OCD is so low, there are only certain circumstances that will really trigger it. Right? So that's another explanation. And like, believe me, like I've looked at a lot of science

trying to explain these phenomena. And I don't think that that's definition of a soulmate, by the way. I don't think that's proof. All I'm saying is that there is a conserved experience that human beings have where we,

just see someone, we're like, this is the one. And it's like, what, what's going on there? Right? What's happening in your brain? Like, I don't understand it because all of the things that we know about falling in love don't indicate random moments of deep connection. Like, there's not, I've never seen that in literature. And yet, it happens to people a lot. So that means that one of two things, either that our sophistication of neuroscience is not good enough to be able to study that, which I think is absolutely true, by the way. Or, or, you know, or that there's this fourth dimension, right? So the variable could be just really advanced

in neuroscience that we don't know. There are a lot of people who will believe that. I think that is the most plausible explanation. I also happen to think it's false for other reasons, but does that make sense? So why do you think that so many high-level entrepreneurs hire you? So there are two reasons. One practical one and one crazy one.

So one is I believe there's a karmic connection. So this is just the way that I view my life. I am on this earth to pay back debts to all kinds of people. I'm deeply, deeply, deeply in debt to all kinds of people. So I believe it's my Dharma or duty in this life to specifically help some people in a very particular way. And I'm pretty sure I feel really confident in that. We can get into that if you all really want to. The much more plausible reason is, look, man, I trained for seven years to become a monk.

I'm a Harvard trained psychiatrist. I'm an entrepreneur in my own right. I have a really strong understanding of things that are very, very confusing to a lot of people, right? So the first is that I have a lot to offer. The second thing is that a lot of entrepreneurs don't – so you were talking – we were talking earlier about delayed gratification, right? And I'm going to work really hard and then I'm going to be happy later. So what happens with a lot of entrepreneurs is that they assume that happiness is coming later and then it doesn't. And the goalposts keep moving.

because as we discovered, happiness is not from gaining an object. Even if we talk about that for a second, if I desire a cookie, my mind has a lot of mental activity, right? When I eat the cookie, the mental activity goes down. So even though the cookie brings me happiness, I don't know if this makes sense. Technically what the cookie is doing is stopping my mental activity. It's the stopping of the mental activity that brings you happiness. Does that make sense? And even if I forget about the cookie, if I have a child who really wants a cookie and is crying,

and then they forget about the cookie, they'll be happy. So it is mental activity that leads to happiness. So a lot of people will be really successful, but they won't be happy. They did everything in life that they were supposed to do that was supposed to make them happy. And they wake up one day and they're not happy. Then they seek me out because I can help them with that. So I once had a patient who was depressed and I worked with them for about two or three years and they came in one day and they said, I haven't gotten better at all. And I was like, what do you mean you haven't gotten better?

And I did an assessment. I used one of these validated instruments to measure their depression. Or you have trouble working, or you having trouble getting out of bed? And he's like, no, no, no, no, no. So the depression was in remission. And I was like, bro, you're not depressed. You're unhappy. Completely different thing, man.

So we don't, we select for success. We teach people how to succeed. We teach people how to make money. You all do a great job of that. We teach people how to turn $1. You all teach people how to turn $1 in a $2 or $10. But we don't teach people how to be happy. And it's really interesting because really the cert,

The spirituality starts with satisfying everything else. So what happened with the Buddha was he was a prince, he was powerful, he had a kid, he had a beautiful wife, he was respected, he had money, he had his health. And he woke up one day and he's like, I'm still unhappy. See, when we don't have everything that we want in life, we can operate under the illusion that getting that next thing will make me happy. What happens to the person who has everything wakes up one day is in his own. unhappy. Where do they go? Because they have everything. And for whatever reason, I don't know if it's because I like working with people who are touch narcissistic or touch sociopathic. I really love working with them. Like I feel a really strong connection. I don't think that that's negative at all.

It's just part of who they are. Something about the way that I work with them seems to work. And then, you know, they'll let their friends know. And then word kind of gets out. And then I end up like this. Have you noticed a lot of high-level entrepreneurs or just overall very successful or wealthy people are philosophically or spiritually stunted? There's two classes.

One are spiritually, not stunted. Behind? Not behind. They're just not, that's not a part of their makeup is the way I would describe it. The spirituality is like absent,

if that kind of makes sense. The others are spiritually dormant. Huge difference. but yes, I think that they are deeply spiritually unhappy, many of them. And it is part of their path to become financially successful first and then become spiritually potent, which is the tradition that I learned under and the tradition that I hold to. My gurus told me that unless I could become the best in the world, like, unless I could succeed very highly, become the top 1% in the world, I would fail at the spiritual path.

When I graduated from medical school, I didn't go to the award ceremony because I never looked at my grades and I won two awards. It's such a stupid thing to do. It was that I didn't care about grades at all. So I'm a huge fan of becoming materially successful as the first stepping stone to becoming spiritually successful. What does it mean to be spiritually absent? In this life, spirituality is not one of their major goals. So they exist on a more physical. mental and emotional level. I know it sounds that sounds stupid when I say it. I mean, it sounds crazy when I say it, but that's just how it is. So, right, so people have different aptitudes, let's say. Like, you have an aptitude for art,

you have an aptitude, you have a head for numbers. Some people have a spiritual aptitude that's dormant and some people don't have the aptitude. So what are the most common high-level problems that you see for successful people or people that make a lot of money? So those are two different things, I think, arguably. So, I mean, there are all kinds of common problems.

So one of the biggest problems that I have with, like, especially more common for men is that when you're, when you become really wealthy, one of the simplest problems is you don't know why someone is dating you, right? So like this happens with content creators and stuff too. People want to be your friend. Do they want to be your friend or do they want to be who you are's friend? Does that kind of make sense? So there's like iced coffee hour hosts. And then there's Graham and Jack who are just humans. Whose friendship are people really looking for? So people oftentimes have angles and things like that. That can be really hard to deal with. Really messes up even your sense of self because you start to reasonably start to think people are looking to you for something. They don't see the real you. They see some version of you. So that's really common. Also happens to people who are very physically attractive where they like, you know, they get picked for their physical attractiveness, not who they are.

So some people who are very physically attractive are incredibly lonely, despite the fact that there are people around them all. the time people pursuing them. They can have immense loneliness. Similarly true for people who are very successful, they're oftentimes, probably the biggest thing is intense loneliness. It's heavy as the wear, heavy is the head that wears the crown. It's lonely at the top. So it's hard. I think that people don't, and I'm not trying to say like, oh, like, it's so hard for them. But it's just a, it's an experience that not many people can relate to. And oftentimes, these people also are so focused on their work that they don't water the garden of their relationships. They don't really maintain their social relationships in the same way. So oftentimes they're

like really lonely. Sometimes they're really unhappy. Sometimes they feel eventually we get to a point where they realize they're actually quite out of control in their life. So they're driven by their ambition. They don't control their ambition. They can't give it up one day. They are not aware of any other way of existing except for like striving for the top. Could you successfully gamify life in the same way that a lot of these entrepreneurs and elite businessmen gamify their business to try to maximize profits, decrease inputs and increase outputs, can you do the same with like your relationships, your rest, this, that in terms of like time blocking everything and treating life as though it's math,

could that be conducive to success or have you seen people try that? and it doesn't work out. What do you mean by success? I would just say overall, like, well-being, peace, seemingly like a fruitful existence. See, I think the answer is kind of yes and no. So when you do that, can things get better? Yes.

Will they plateau? Also, yes. So this is important to understand. A medication can be really effective, right? But the effectiveness of the medication depends on the degree of illness. So people who heavily gamify their lives are starting from a place oftentimes that is like not great in some way. Does that kind of make sense?

And gamifying, if you optimize every dimension of your life, you will improve all the dimensions that you optimize. Does that kind of make sense? And even that can make, give you some degree of peace. But then if you really think about it, there isn't a whole lot of freedom there. Right? Because if you choose one day to not optimize, how would you feel about that? What would happen to your mental state? And then are you really in control if the only way you can feel happy is to have all of your life be perfectly optimized?

What I would say is that you're actually a slave to optimization. You're even to a certain degree a slave to greed. Because why do you want to optimize? I want to give one thing and I want to get 10 more. Right. What is that fundamental thing? It's greed. We like I'm not saying that even in a bad way.

I think it's like, okay. But I want more for less. What do we call that? We call it efficiency. It's also called greed. Or maybe there's something else. The other thing is that I find that oftentimes these people are indulging desires. They're in a sense victims to desires.

But they're victims to a subtler desire. Right. So we say like, oh, like I'm not going to eat this cookie because it's bad for me. Instead, I'm going to eat the salad. But why am I eating the salad? Because I desire a healthy body. Because I desire to be sexy. Because I desire to walk into a room and have people like me.

Right. And that's still a desire. So it just becomes subtler in nature. So I don't think it's a bad thing. I think you should do what you feel like. And the number of people who come into my office who are incredibly successful and the hardest work that I try to do is to get them to do less. And when they start doing less, they feel happier.

here's the cool thing, they also become more productive, which is really confusing. What are the problems then that are the hardest to beat for those people? I think the hardest problem for them to beat is to run against their programming when their whole life they've actually been solidifying their programming. Right. So if you think about someone who's ambitious, this is a good thing. We say it's a good thing. So people who, so I think the hardest thing is that there are things that what they have to get rid of is things that, that are successful, not things that are failures. I don't know if that kind of makes sense.

But even in psychiatry, we say that child development is about abandoning strategies that work. So when I throw a temper tantrum, it kind of does the job when I'm two. And over time, that stops working, but it used to work. So it's really hard for, like, people to do something that has worked for them and then to be able to let that go, which is exactly what they need to do. because they've always been focusing on success, success, they don't actually have freedom or peace, usually. How could you tell if someone's going to make a change or not?

Are there some signs to look for? Yeah, absolutely. So this is actually well studied. So there's a great system called motivational interviewing where you can pay attention to the language that people use. So there's something called sustained talk, and there's something called change talk. So sustained talk is talk that indicates lack of desire to change.

And the funny thing is that sustained talk can sound positive. So a good example of sustained talk is, I want to change. Like that's not indicating that you're actually, maybe that's not sustained talk, I don't know. But it's not indicating that you're planning on changing. It's like, I want this, right? I wish I could change. That's sustained talk. So people, depending on the language that they use, there's certain language that they can use that will indicate a greater desire to behaviorally change.

And then there's also a particular technique to shift someone from one to the other. So there are like literally techniques you can use to increase someone's motivation. So that's what we built our coaching program off of that. So what I saw in addiction psychiatry was that worked really well. So to get someone to stop doing that, you need a really potent intervention to get them to stop. That's the intervention that we took. And then I was like, this needs to be applied to going to the jam, you know, whatever other problems you have in life. And that's why we see good outcomes.

So there's great technique there. What's been the most surprising thing for you in terms of running a thing? business. So a couple of things that I found surprising. One is how hard I actually work. So people will say that residency is like the hardest, most work that you do. You're working like 80 hour weeks. But I mean, I work so much harder now. Like, I actually had my first vacation in five years, like a week ago. So I haven't had a day off in five years. And you guys may know this as content creators. But like, even when I travel for work, so for example, I'm going to go to this conference and I'm going to do something there.

When I travel for a conference, I still have to film YouTube videos the weekend before, right? So I have to make, I never stop working. And even if I have a vacation, I have to do the work that should be done on vacation before I leave or after I come back. So that was one thing that I was really not prepared for. Thankfully, I have a skill set to where I can work for five years without a day off. So like meditation and yoga and all that crap and like understanding happiness and the nature of happiness and stuff like that so you don't really get burned out.

I feel really tired, but I'm not burnt out. I can keep going, but I'm very tired. The second thing that's been really interesting is like money. We were really confused for a long time about like how to approach money. So we haven't taken investment. We price products so that people in 121 countries with poor currencies compared to the dollar can afford them. That's something that I feel really good about. And at the same time, there's so much conditioning around being a successful entrepreneur that means that you have a lot of money.

So, and I always think it's so interesting how, like, in the back of my mind, an opportunity comes across our table and it's like, just to give you all, I mean, you all know this stuff. So we've had certain sponsorship opportunities, which, you know, we operate fine right now. We're not like in debt or anything like that. We have a small amount of profit. We price our products not to maximize profit. But, you know, we're doing okay. and we have stuff saved away for a rainy day and things like that.

So in a situation like that, you know, a sponsor comes in, seven figure sponsorship, and they're like, you can just say yes. And I have to film three 30 second bits a month. And you just get seven figures of money. And in those moments,

it can be hard because that's just straight profit, right? That's just like, that's just extra money. You could argue that you could use that money for to grow the business, to expand, to help more people. So I think that's what's also really tricky is that a lot of times people will sort of take money for the greater good, but I think subconsciously it's not really for the greater good. You know, you can justify it that way. That's the way that investors will try to convince you, by the way. Like, I want to give you a million dollars. I'm going to take X percentage. We're going to get these dividends and think about all

the people you can help, right? They're not interested in helping people. Sometimes they are, but not usually. So I think it's been really challenging to navigate that and like try to really think about, okay, how much money am I trying to make? Like, is money important to me? Like, there's so much conditioning around it. And I think I finally, I went through something like a midlife crisis and it was awesome. Maybe still going through it, but I think I'm good. And how did you know you're going through midlife crisis? So about six, eight, 10 months in, I was like unhappy for a while and unsatisfied with the direction things were going and also really conflicted. So I, When we started HG, basically I was working with all these like entrepreneurs and stuff, right?

So people who can pay a lot of money for my services. And I thought like I'm leaving my people behind. My people are degenerate gamers. So I started streaming on Twitch to help all of the people that could not afford my services. At one point, 70% of my patients were free care because it was like my people, 24 year old college dropouts who like didn't couldn't get help. So it started off mission driven. And then it became a thing. We started getting press and we started making some money and then we had to like develop services and things like that.

And so then like we became more of a thing and more of a thing and more of a thing. And then so then it's like, I don't know if this kind of makes sense to y'all, but then you get the trappings of the thing. So we have like an HR department now and we file taxes and then like, you know, there's stuff going on with the IRS or whatever. Like you become like a company. And then I started getting confused about my decision making. I was like, I didn't know. I lost the sense of North Star. Am I trying to grow the company?

Am I trying to make money? am I trying to help people? How do I decide what to do? Do I take the sponsorship money or not? So I just didn't feel good. And then I was like, oh, shit, this is a midlife crisis. This is what they're talking about. What does it have to do with midlife?

That just seems like a business direction. It doesn't seem to do with age. Midlife crisis is when you take all the right steps and you end up in the wrong place. So oftentimes what will happen is like dudes like, like, you know, I'm happily married and stuff like that. So it's not like anything's wrong in my life. But I just woke up one day and I was kind of unhappy. And I was looking at my life and this. monstrosity that we've created. I was looking at my like calendar. It's like I have all these

meetings with like attorneys and with like people in our company. And it's not bad, but I was like, is this what I wanted? I wanted to get away from meetings. Like I wanted to like work with humans. You know, and I like I like our team. Our team is amazing and I enjoy our meetings. Like they're really productive and they're not like a waste of time or anything. But it's like, is this what I wanted? So you take all, you make all the right decisions and then you end up kind of where you wanted to end up. And then you look at your life one day and you're like, am I actually happy doing this. And there's really interesting research that shows that, you know, we construct these ideas of what will make us happy and we invest all those things. And then we wake up one day and you're making these decisions based on your preconception of what the future holds. You think if I wake up in this house and in this way, I will be happy. But then you wake up and it's different from what you expected. So I think there's some degree of like unhappiness despite the fact that everything is maybe going okay or for a lot of people, a lot of my page, It's doing the best that you can and ending up in a situation that you're not really happy with where you invested a lot and it didn't work out.

Like you're 42. You got divorced two years ago. Half your net worth is gone. You're getting bled dry through alimony and child support. You get to see your kids every other weekend. And it's like, what the fuck did I do this for? So I think it's that kind of sentiment of like waking up one day and then not knowing how you got here. How did you get out of that? Or what was the conclusion that you came to between those two decisions? First of all, it's developmentally appropriate. So I think one thing that we don't talk about enough is quarter life crises and midlife crises are like part of regular development. So I think it's not a problem. We frame it as a problem. So once I realized, okay, like this is just, it's what's supposed to happen to me. Then what I did was I re-engage with spiritual practice in a super hardcore way. So for seven years, I was studying with the goal of becoming a monk and really pursuing like enlightenment.

And then I got sidetracked by my wife, by medical school. Harvard success, all that kind of stuff. And I would practice spiritually, but I wasn't like focused on it. It wasn't like my dimension of growth. Then I started doing a couple of like esoteric spiritual practices that were like kind of more hardcore, like kind of picked up where I left off. And then that really fixed it. And so you know, you know, these were some of the stuff where, you know how I was talking

earlier about physical dimension, emotional dimension, thoughts and that fourth thing. So the unhappiness was coming from the fourth thing. And so you have to explore that and then see where that leads you. What's the biggest problem that you're dealing with today? I think the biggest challenge is that when I sit to meditate, there are certain practices that are really hard to do that I want to get better at, but they're just really, really hard. So there are some states of consciousness that feel like surfing. So if you all have had like the flow state, you'll kind of know. Like, you know how the flow state like cracks?

Yes. So the flow state is like zero on the scale of one to 100. And I mean that technically. It's not even state number one. It is the preparatory state before you start going up the numbers. So there are some states in some meditation practices that are what I really want to focus on, but they're hard to do. So it's hard because, like, I'll notice that if I have caffeine within 24 hours, I cannot attain a certain state of mind. So the mind is just a little bit too disrupted.

It requires, like, I'll give you all kind of an example. so the chanting a perfect ome. But a perfect ome is very hard to chant. So what I mean by perfect is when you chant, first of all, your awareness should feel it in the navel. And then it rises to maybe around your forehead. And so if you just chant, um, you'll notice the vibration move up.

But the breath has to be perfect. As you chant quieter and quieter, you'll feel the oam move posteriorly. So you'll feel the vibration up the back of your spine instead of in the front. Most people will feel it in the front. So when you start to meditate in some of these ways,

but it's not like I can do anything else to move it to the back. I don't know if that makes sense. You know, it's a practice of concentration. So I try with my mind to focus, or not mine, but I try to focus as intensely as possible. And if I don't focus intensely enough,

it doesn't happen. But I can't focus intensely anymore. I don't know if this sort of makes sense, but you can't force yourself to focus more beyond a certain point, right? None of us can sit down and say, I'm going to read these 300 books from cover to cover. That's very difficult to do. So at some point, my focus gets disrupted.

And then the deeper it is, the deeper you go. And it's kind of like surfing, but like going uphill. And then if you fall, you have to like start over from the bottom, which is annoying. So that's, I know it's weird, but that's kind of what it's, that's hands down my biggest challenge so hard. Is there a problem that you're going through that other people could? relate to. I'm sure. I mean, I have kids. I'm trying to do right by them. I could be a better dad. I want to be working more, even though I work a lot. I need to be working a little bit more. I have a couple projects that I'm working on that I really wanted to vote myself to. What would you say are the main things that

you've changed your mind over regarding mental health over the years of your professional career? So I think the first thing is that things are way more solvable than people think. So I think we have a system of mental health that is about local news is in decline across Canada and this is bad news for all of us with less local news noise rumors and misinformation fill the void and it gets harder to separate truth

from fiction that's why cbc news is putting more journalists in more places across Canada reporting on the ground from where you live telling the stories that matter to all of us because local news is big news choose news not noise CBC News

phasing the floor not reaching the ceiling so if you look at like SSRIs or antidepressant medication these are not curative it's like we've given up on winning the battle and we're trying to just

approach things from harm reduction so even like if I were to say mental illness can be cured I could get in trouble for just saying that like even if it's my opinion but I do believe that and I think it's hard

because what we see in psychiatry are situations that systems that are designed to mitigate damage, not help people like thrive and flourish and really fix their problems. And that's not our fault. We're not equipped to deal with that. And that's what's missing. So, so like what we tried to build is like as a therapist, it's not part of my job to help someone find a girlfriend. So I literally had this question put to me by a therapist in my therapy training. And they were like, if a patient walks into your office and says, can you help me find a girlfriend, what should you say? And the right answer is, help me understand why you think you can't find a girlfriend. That's what that are, you know, like therapists answer questions with questions. Like what's important about a girlfriend? Why do you want a girlfriend? What makes it hard for you? And that's like reasonable. But the answer is not yes. And there are good reasons for that. But I think I've changed my mind a little bit over that. I think problems are way more solvable. I think we can use the technology.

and our understanding of psychology, psychiatry, neuroscience, psychotherapy, we can use all of these techniques not to fix a pathology and move someone from negative 100 to zero. We can take all these techniques and move them from zero to 100. But we don't do that. Like it's crazy, motivational interviewing can take someone who's addicted to being, right? Gives like, it messes people's lives up, lose their teeth, lose their jobs, lose all kinds of stuff. We can get them to stop. For someone who's like struggling to finish their thesis, why don't we use those same techniques to help that person? So I think the two biggest things I've taken away are, first of all, things are way more solvable than we think. The only reason they're not solvable is because we're only approaching them from a very narrow lens.

I did one thing that was so small, started walking with my patients. We would walk outside of my office, just walk to Boston Common and walk back. Saw such a big effect size change. And we have a ton of research on green space and things like that. So I think there's a lot of things that we don't take advantage of. How would they do if we just all went out and played like Frisbee Golf? We took like 10 people with social anxiety. We're going to play Frisbee Golf once a week, right?

And there's some programs that do things like this. But that's where mental health is really born. So I think things are a lot more improvable than people think. What are your best book recommendations for people who hear all of this but want to do research on their own? Or improve on their own? Where do they start? I have been unsatisfied with books generally. So people ask me for book recommendations all the time.

The closest thing is, like, honestly, Dr. K's guide. And the reason it's not a book, but it's like a set of videos in practices and meditations and things like that. The reason that we built it is because I don't think a book is the best way to convey this information or I don't think a book has been written that provides the information that I wish people knew. So when I wrote those guides, and each one is, by the way, the length of a book in terms of script. But the reason I built them is because I had all these patients and I was like, if I could spend 10 hours with each of my patients, what would I teach them?

That's what's in the guide. If you have depression, here's the 10 hours that I would like, here's the information that I want all my patients to know. If they have trauma, here's how you rewire physiology, develop your identity. If you have ADHD, here's how you parent. Here's how you organize your life. Here's how you set goals. And I'm not trying to cop out there, but I genuinely, the reason I built those is because I didn't see a resource. The reason I started this is because my patients would ask me, what should I read?

And I was like, what should I read about spirituality? I mean, sure, you can say the Gita, but you don't, you know, if you're struggling with depression, here's what you need to. I would teach. That's what I would do. And that's in there. If people want a book recommendation in general, Count of Monte Cristo is fantastic. I swear I'm not trying to just like sell my stuff. But like, there's a reason why I built it that way.

I could have written a book, but instead I built those guides. Well, he didn't ask us, but it's linked down below. So if you guys want to check it out, it'll be right there. Cool. Well, thank you. It's basically a lot of what we talked about, just organized based on diagnosis. So even the stuff about there's a difference between unhappiness and depression, all the questions that you guys asked, like half of them are in the guides.

Like literally, like, the second video is like, how do you tell the difference between if you're unhappy and if you're ill? And what is, what do you do for each of those branches? Because the solutions are different. That's why depression is so big, actually, is because we try to throw medication at all the sources of depression. But even we have research that existential depression is different, has different solutions. I'm confused. One more thing I want to get straight. You said you were making more previously than you are today running the business and all of this stuff?

Yeah. Previously doing what? Just practicing as a clinician, doing some corporate work. I thought you two would be way more prof. How is it not? It doesn't make any sense. book, the course, the YouTube ad sense. Two or three things to keep in mind.

One is, I think you have to understand that there are some circles where if you provide services, you can charge a lot of money. Does that kind of make sense? Yeah, so you were doing a really high ticket. Yeah, so when you're like doing some work at Harvard Business School, potentially like co-teaching a class there, faculty at Harvard Medical School, specialized in spirituality. working out of like the Harvard and MIT incubators, you're just part of a world where people have a lot of money. And so if you work for those people,

you can charge a lot of money. What was the average net worth of your clients? Of your patients. Well, remember, 70% of my patients were free, right? But the other 30% of the paid client. I don't even know. I don't know how to estimate that. If you were to guess, like 100 million plus.

No, I think that average may have not been that high. But I certainly worked with and still work with some super high net worth individuals, like billion plus. And so I don't know how to factor in averages of like, you know, there's like a managing director at like Goldman Sachs or something like hypothetically, right? So they make maybe like, I don't know, like somewhere, I don't know how much a managing director of Goldman Sachs makes. Do they make three million year, five million a year, 20 million a year? Depends on the year. Depends on which part of business are they in or they in software. Are they in, you know, healthcare?

like it depends. I don't know how much they make. So I wouldn't ask my patients how much they make. I just know that if you're a managing director at like one of the top investment banks, if you're, you know, a CEO of like a major healthcare company, like the comps have to be up there. And I know a couple people because I, you know, like their companies are worth a lot and everyone kind of knows that. But now I think a big part of it is that we really don't optimize for profit. Right. We really try to keep things. accessible. How many people are on your team? So we have about 35, 30 to 40 W-2 contractor people who are like back of the house kind of staff sort of thing like content people, research people, things like that, partnerships managers, HR, and then 150 coaches. How many people does it take to run your YouTube channel? In the past, it's been like three or four, now we're up to seven or eight. Wow. So one other thing is that 90 cents of every dollar we make goes to people

connected to the company. Yeah, I don't know if that kind of makes sense, but like for every dollar we earn, like 90 cents goes to someone. You have a 10% profit margin. Not profit margin. Channel.

No, our expenses are personnel. Like 90 cents on every dollar. Okay. Goes to the people that do work for Healthy Gamer in some way. And I'm happy with that. You know, I'm not interested in making a profit off of someone else's work.

I just don't think that that's like appropriate. So we try to pay our people incredibly well, which we don't even necessarily do because we're not a super profitable company. But yeah, so I think that's like a statistic that we're... How do you balance that with you saving for your family, investing long term, making sure you hit your financial goals as well?

So two or three things. One is that, you know, I do collect salary, which is like nothing to complain about. It's way less than what I would be making in private practice, but it's plenty to be happy with, right? It solves my problems. I'm contributing to my retirement, all that kind of stuff. I do okay.

Like, I'm not, and I wouldn't, I wouldn't jeopardize my children's future for the sake of, like, saving the world. I think that's not, like, appropriate even. Second thing is, I have side hustles. So I still have, like, you know, a lot of, like, the way that I pay for stuff, I still have a private practice. I still see patients. I still work with clients. And so that brings in like a separate kind of income. So I sort of have like a side hustle and then I have like Healthy Gamer main job.

And I actually really like that. You know, a lot of people will say like as an entrepreneur, you should put 100% into your business. I totally understand that. There's one really interesting downside to that, which is that means I've noticed that when I work with entrepreneurs who do that, their need to make a lot of money out of their company skyrockets. Does that kind of make sense? Yeah. So if I'm putting 100% of my time into this thing, I'm putting blood, sweat, and tears.

I haven't taken a day off in five years. When you invest a lot of your time into something, you want a lot out of it. Totally normal. One thing that I found helped me was even though you could make a very strong argument that if I shut down my private practice, if I shut down my coaching practice and spent more time on Healthy Gamer, healthy Gamer would be worth more. I think all those arguments are there. I still don't care.

I don't ever want to be in a situation where I want to be financially dependent on Healthy Gamer because then that changes my incentives. It interferes with the work that I'm really trying to do. So almost it's like stupid from like an entrepreneur standpoint to like divide your time. But for me personally, it helps a lot to have some income. So I don't look at Healthy Gamer and think, oh, I should be like getting more money from this. It reminds you like the Jay Leno method where he was saving all of his money from the tonight. night show, but then doing stand-up, and the stand-up was paying for his living expenses.

And so he'd always just do enough stand-up to pay for his bills and then save 100% of the late night. Yeah, so I think it's something similar in the sense that, and I think also there's the advantage of, like, staying sharp, right? So I want to, like, not lose my clinical skills and sit with people and I enjoy that kind of work. So I think it kind of just works out. And I have no, I mean, we don't need to be the biggest or the best or the most profitable

or the most helpful. like I'm okay doing a decent job. Like we're here to help as many people as we're here to help. We're not trying to maximize that number. I don't think that that's necessarily the best. Everyone's like, why help one million when you can help two million? It's like, I want to help these people a decent amount. Like, that's okay.

Like we reach 15 million of people a year. It doesn't need to be 30. That's plenty. That's a lot. Yeah. So like what? I mean, why does it need to be higher? Well, you know what?

Can be higher? Our subscriber count? The subscriber count. And the number of likes on the video. So if you're watching this, you're not already subscribed and you haven't already hit the like button, that's free. It costs absolutely nothing. It helps us out tremendously. I second that message.

Y'all should like, comment, and subscribe. That's the fellow that people say. Really, this is a fantastic podcast, and I love it. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for coming on the show. It's always a pleasure. I feel like I need to, like, sleep for, like, a long time to digest all this information. We're going to feed you first, my friend.

Oh, I'm starving. Let's go. Let's eat. Okay. Thank you guys so much for watching. Until next time. When a country's productivity cycle is broken, people feel it in their paychecks, their communities, their futures.

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