The School of Greatness - The Real Reason You Can't Stop Self-Sabotage | Dr. K

Episode Date: April 1, 2026

Dr. K, the Harvard-trained psychiatrist known for his work with gamers and high performers, drops a truth that reframes everything: your negative identity isn't a flaw — it's your mind's attempt to protect you from failure. Most people go through life trying to upgrade from a loser identity to a winner identity, never realizing that both are traps that warp how you see reality. If you've ever wondered why motivation disappears the moment a goal feels out of reach, or why doing everything right still leaves you feeling empty, this conversation answers it in a way that actually makes sense. Dr. K breaks down the neuroscience of why you can't control your thoughts, why goals can secretly fuel procrastination, and why the most powerful thing you can do happens entirely inside your head. By the end, you'll see that the path to real change isn't about believing harder or wanting it more, it's about understanding how your mind actually works and learning to respond differently to what it generates. Dr. K’s book How to Raise a Healthy Gamer: End Power Struggles, Break Bad Screen Habits, and Transform Your Relationship with Your Kids Healthy Gamer Website Healthy GamerGG Podcast Healthy Gamer Youtube In this episode you will: Discover why your negative identity is protecting you and why trying to eliminate it is the wrong move Understand the critical difference between being capable of something and believing you can do it, and why confusing the two keeps people stuck Learn why goals can actually kill your motivation and what to focus on instead Recognize that you can't control your thoughts, only how you respond to them, and why that distinction changes everything Apply Dr. K's framework for processing setbacks without letting them collapse your sense of self For more information go to https://lewishowes.com/1909 For more Greatness text PODCAST to [phone] Follow The Daily Motivation for essential highlights from The School of Greatness More SOG episodes we think you’ll love: Lewis Howes Solo [Create Lasting Motivation] Dr. Caroline Leaf MrBeast Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy!Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

People will say to me, Dr. Kay, I have no motivation. That's incorrect. You have a ton of motivation. You have a ton of motivation to stay home. You have a ton of motivation to play video games. There is such a powerful drive to return to the couch. So identity shapes motivation. He is a psychiatrist, a Harvard trained physician, and founder of Healthy Gamer, one of the fastest growing mental health communities in the world. Dr. Kay, thank you so much for being here. A loser is an adaptation that our mind forms to protect ourselves. If I think of myself is a loser. Other people will pick up on that empathic energy, and they will think of me as a loser as well. So a loser never has imposter syndrome. We need to be defiant in the face of the world. We need to be doing stupid action. Not giving up means being an idiot.

Let go over the possibility of it ever happening. 99% of karma happens in here. When you have a thought, how do you respond to that thought? That is technically in action. How do we improve our self-identity if our identity is holding us back? You know, one of the hardest challenges I have is a psychiatrist who works with, like, high performers is... We were just talking maybe for the last hour about our lives and challenges we've overcome and what we're up to in our lives. And one of the things that I really care about here on the School of Greatness is helping people unlock their potential.

Okay. Helping people live more meaningful, harmonious lives, helping people be on mission in their lives, having healthier relationships in their lives. and really living from a place of peace rather than pain. And everyone's gone through pain. Everyone's gone through some type of trauma or suffering or sadness or loss or grief. And some of these things shape their identities. And I truly feel that our identity shapes our view of the world. And it can either support us in creating the life we want or it can keep us stuck in feeling more traumatized.

victim and things like that. And I'm curious, how do we improve our self-identity if our identity is holding us back? I mean, my goal and what I try to help a lot of people do is to get rid of identity entirely. So if we look at like the function of identity, you're spot on that your identity is the lens through which you view the world. So, you know, I've worked with many people who will adopt a negative identity. So the first thing to understand is even a negative identity, like I'm a loser, is not actually a negative identity. A loser is an adaptation that our mind forms to protect ourselves.

So I was struggling with gaming addiction when I was like 18 years old. And, you know, I had hopes. I had dreams. And not being able to achieve those dreams is so painful. So one of the ways that we adapt is we become something that is not. that is not capable of success. Right? So they're winners in life

and they're losers in life. And I am a loser. And that thought comes with a lot of a negative emotion. The mistake that a lot of people end up making is they try to get rid of that negative emotion. They try to think like, okay, I'm a loser. Instead, I should be a winner. And there's a lot of value to a positive mindset,

which we can get to. But like, let's understand the fundamentals. First thing to understand is if you have a negative identity, it is serving you in some way. The human brain, our mind has evolved with all of these structures. And one of the simplest ways, I know you, I'm sure you've had injuries, right? When you have an injury, the first thing that happens is we'll form scar tissue. So scar tissue is tough.

It's fibrous. And it protects us. So the negative identities that we form help us from facing other things. So if I'm a loser, I never have to try anymore, right? If I am lazy, it's not my fault because there's the people out there who are disciplined and there people out there who are lazy. And I'm one of the lazy ones. I'm unlucky. Then the problem becomes that our identity literally shapes the way that we move through the world.

So if I think of myself as ugly and I go on a date, my expectation. of the date, the way that I show up is going to heavily affect the date because human beings are empathic. So if I walk into a room and I believe of myself, if I think of myself as a loser, other people will pick up on that empathic energy. And they will think of me as a loser as well. So, you know, if you go into a job interview and you're, you don't think you belong. I see this all the time. It's really interesting. I see a ton of imposter syndrome. When I was at Harvard, I would see a ton of imposter syndrome. And you'd think that imposter syndrome is fixed by success.

But actually success, we'll get to this. I'm getting a little bit all over the place. But imposter syndrome is actually created by success. What do you mean? I know it's weird. So a loser never has imposter syndrome. You get that? Yeah.

You only have, people only think they're impostors when they achieve things. It's really bizarre. That they don't believe they're meant to achieve. Exactly. Yeah. Right? So when I end up at a place like Harvard, there's a ton of imposter syndrome. And these are with the most successful, smartest people in the world.

Absolutely. And that imposter syndrome is created when the world views us in one way, but our identity is something else. So the reason we have so much imposter syndrome at a place like Harvard is because you have a bunch of kids who thought of themselves as the smartest kid in the class. and then the moment they get into Harvard, I used to be valedictorian. Now I'm average. I'm a nobody, yeah. Right?

And then you're with all these, you're with your peers and suddenly used to be number one. Now you're average. And so you feel like you don't belong. And everyone's jockeying to like one up and smarter than and I know this better than you. Absolutely. Right. So this is,

identity is a tricky thing. So first thing is negative identity is protective. So if you have some, some part of your identity that you think is bad, that you want to get rid of, wrong approach. Ask yourself, what is this identity doing for me? When I think of myself as a loser, how does that protect me? You mentioned that it's serving you in certain ways, but it may not be empowering you to live your full's potential.

Absolutely. And even a positive identity is not going to empower you to live into your fullest potential. So we're into that, right? So there are identities that we have that protect us from some negative things. And then we have positive identities too. So going back to the negative identity, this will shape the way that we perceive the world. So it creates some kind of filter. Agree? Yes. So I'm a loser or I'm not beautiful or I'm ugly or I'm stupid. Right. This identity that we speak and believe to ourselves shapes the way we view the world. Yeah. And it also shapes things like our motivation. So if you are, so this is going to get a bit. technical for a second, that's okay. But we get motivated based on an action success calculation. So what our brain does is it looks at what the possibilities are. And if the possibility of success is high, it will be motivated towards it. Right. This is why-

We'll be more motivated. If we believe there's a high possibility to succeed. There will be more motivated, right? This is why like if we sort of think about, you know, if I tell you, oh, hey, can you get me a glass of water? That's easy for you to do because you can do that. You believe you can do that. You believe you can succeed. It's such a simple task. And we don't even think about motivation for getting someone a glass of water because our perception that we can do it is like 100%. So we automatically do it. We don't even perceive that we're motivated, but it's easy to do. Now, if I don't believe I can do something, and I can guarantee you that just about every human being who's watching this has something that they're capable of doing,

but they don't believe that they can do it. And think about all the things in your life that you can have done that you did not think that you were capable of. And when you don't think you're capable, it becomes so hard. Because naturally the part of your brain that is telling you whether you can do it or not, you know, if it doesn't believe you can do it,

you have to overcome yourself. The limiting beliefs. Yeah. To force yourself. You have to use things like willpower. Right? It's not really, you're not really motivated. You have to like, you're motivated to not try.

Yeah, yeah. And you have to force yourself. But that comes from your identity. And then the moment that you believe that you can do it, it becomes easier to do. The big problem here, and you were asking a question about identity, is in our, you know, if we have some negative identity, that will prevent us from doing certain things. It also motivates us to do other things. So this is what a lot of people don't realize. People will say to me, Dr. Kay, I have no motivation. That's incorrect. You have a ton of motivation. You have a ton of motivation to stay home. You have a ton of motivation to play video games.

Sit on the couch. Sit on the couch, right? And just think about how motivated you are. If anyone pulls you out of that, there is such a powerful drive to return to the couch. Yes. So identity shapes motivation. Then we get to positive identity. where positive identity says, I can do something, I'm capable of doing things. Sometimes, you know, this positive identity can turn into things like ambition. It can even turn into narcissistic tendencies, right? So narcissism is a particular kind of positive identity. I think I'm great.

I think I'm awesome. I'm the best. Other people are not as good as I am. So in Sanskrit, you know, we have this word, Ahamgar, which means ego. and there are three kinds of ego. There is a thamsic ego, which is like a negative identity. That is an identity which keeps you inert. It makes it hard for you to move.

Then there is the Rajsik identity. This is the identity that motivates you to act. But this is also the identity that I have to do it. And it's not even that I'm great. I need to do it. I need to accomplish something. I need to help the world. I've worked with so many people who are 52 years.

old, multi-millionaires and are working themselves towards a heart attack because they have this identity. I need to do it. I need to make people proud. I need to have an impact in the world. I want to do good. And so even in service of that, they will have a lot of motivation. But the really interesting thing is that their motivation keeps them from slowing down. I'm motivated to always move. I can't rest. Yeah. I can't sit still. A lot of high achievers or high performers have that struggle to slow down, to rest, to take a break. And we all, we all covet them. I want to be, I wish when I woke up in the morning, I would flagellate myself.

I wish I was so consumed by passion that I could work 90 hours a week, 100 hours a week. I wish I was like that. But those people suffer too. They wind up in my office. So this is where there is, you know, we start with a negative identity that protects us from certain emotions. Then there's a positive identity which activates us, but we are always chasing something. And this is the problem with the positive identity. You'll always move the goalposts. Yeah. So you get a million subscribers on YouTube. When's enough enough enough? Yeah, when's enough,

right? And you always want more, you always want more, you always want more, you always want more, because that's what the identity. The identity feels activated when it is achieving. It is raising the bar that makes you feel really good. And so then the bar, now you actually become addicted to the bar going higher and higher and higher. And we think to ourselves, wonderful. That means I'll get more and more and more and more. But you won't tame peace. You will become a slave to success.

Yeah, there's no harmony there. Absolutely not. So then we have the third kind of identity, Satvik Ahamkar. This is the balanced identity. Where you have some amount of inertia. It's a balance between activity and inertia. See, we think that inertia is bad, but it's not. There's a balance between stillness and activity.

And ideally what you want to do, in my opinion, is get rid of all identity. Because remember that the negative identity shapes our perception. The positive identity will shape our perception as well. I've worked with some people who are problematic gamblers and really believe in themselves. I can win. I can win. I'm special. They've lost a lot.

But maybe they've won some so they believe, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. They've won a lot. They've lost some. Oh, they've won more than they lost. Oh, yeah. So how's that a problem? If they were always winning and they're not losing. Because they keep playing.

But they keep waiting. Yeah. Right? So, yeah, they do keep winning. And sometimes they lose. Sometimes they have catastrophic mistakes. So this is what's really interesting. You know, one of the hardest challenges I have is a psychiatrist who works with, like, high

performers. is helping people understand that if you're right 99% of the time, your mistakes are more catastrophic. Yeah, because you're like focused on the losses, right? Not just that you don't realize you're making a mistake. So if you're right, 99% of the time, the 1% of the time that you're wrong, what is your mind going to be telling? Oh, I made this. Oh, maybe I'm not always right. Or maybe. And that's why so many people, you know, like it's, I don't think we cover this enough. We talk about rags to riches. We don't talk about rich.

we don't talk about riches to rags. But there are way more human beings on the planet that go from riches to rags than go from rags to riches. And sometimes people make catastrophic mistakes because of this positive ego, because I can handle it. But you can't. There are so many signals telling you to slow down. There are so many signals telling you this is a problem. This is not working out. So many people are telling you not to do it.

And even your mind is telling you not to do it. But you can't afford. to think that way. It is so scary. No, I can do it. I believe in myself. I can do it. You know, I got to believe. Don't give up. Keep going. And it can be absolutely catastrophic. So how do you know when you should reinforce the belief that you can accomplish, achieve, overcome something that you feel pulled or drawn to do? And instead of, oh, I'm not even going to try at all. Yes. You know, how do you, what's the balance there? It's a problem of perception. So if we look at how identity literally neuroscientifically shapes us, it shapes our perceptions.

If I think I'm a loser and someone, I say hi to someone and they just say hi and they look away. Maybe this person lost to their parent this morning. But if I'm a loser, I will take normal data from the world and I will shape it. If I have a positive identity, I will also do that. It's evidence reinforcing the belief that I have. It's actually not evidence. I shape my, my belief shapes the evidence. The evidence doesn't shape the belief. My belief shapes the evidence.

Right. So I see something. It could be a neutral event, but then it's shaping the belief. Yes. And this is a huge problem where, you know, there are so many people I work with who are way too nice. And they're compassionate and they're kind of. and they're forgiving and they get screwed time and time and time again. You know, they think to, oh, every human being on the planet deserves to be loved.

So I'm going to let someone walk all over me, yeah, walk all over me. Or not even walk all over me. It's I will let someone take advantage of me once and I will forgive them and I will let them take advantage of me again and I will forgive them. I feel like I did that for most of my life. A lot of people do. I feel like my, we were talking beforehand off camera about. you know, how you went through a midlife crisis in the last few years.

I don't know if you publicly shared that, but I feel like my midlife crisis was a couple of years ago as well. And it was shedding 95% of relationships in my life that I had had that I felt like were, that I needed to create boundaries in those relationships. But Lewis, when you shed those relationships, don't you become a mean person? That's what I believed. Shouldn't you be a caring person who maintains your, you want to be. someone who maintains relationships, right? That's a good thing to be. That's what I believed. And

then it drained the life out of me. Absolutely. Constantly giving and constantly giving and constantly. Because you are, this is the positive identity. Oh, I want to be compassionate. I want to be great. Right. We feel so guilty when we step away from our positive identity. Yeah. And then that guilt, because I don't like the feeling of guilt. So you know what? I'm going to let this person take advantage of me again. So the goal, how do you tell? Positive identity will shape your perceptions as well. All identity will shape your perceptions. So what we want to do is to see the world as it is, free of all perception. And the only way you can do that is to get rid of identity. Your identity, you're a humkar. This gets a bit tricky. But if I ask you, Lewis, who are you? What would you say?

Well, my first thought is I'm a loving, passionate, wise man. Okay. Yeah. that's what I would say. Okay, great. Right. So I'm a loving, passionate, wise man. So we identify with all kinds of qualities. So I could say I'm a man, I'm a doctor, I'm a husband, I'm a father. And that's all part of my ego. So I don't know if this makes sense. I can make the identity. I'm a New York time bestselling author. I'm a podcast. I can identify with accolades. You could identify with accolades. You could identify with vices. But here's the crazy thing. You were you before any of those things were true. Yes. You will be you after all of those things are gone. Yes. Right. So one of the most interesting questions that's, you know, I struggled with is, when did I become a doctor?

Is it the second I get my MD degree? So for me, it was being on call. And there was one particular instance where there was a, my pager went off. And it was something called a rapid response. So a nurse was like, it's like a not quite an emergency. So I go into this room. Semi emergency. Semi emergency. A, about to be, if we don't do something right away, it's going to be an emergency. So I go into a room and there's a patient who's having a seizure. And so the nurse is there and I walk in and literally like 15 seconds later, my senior resident walks in.

His name is Ken. He's an awesome guy. So Ken walks to the other side of the patient and he's like sitting there with his arms crossed. And so I start reporting to him because I'm an intern. I've been an intern for two weeks, finished medical school like a couple weeks ago. and so I said, Ken, you know, is a 38-year-old woman who's started having a seizure. It seems like about 90 seconds ago. And then he looks at me.

He's like, mm-hmm. And I said, Ken, the patient's having a seizure. And he said, mm-hmm. Ken, what should we do? It's like, what do you want to do? I don't know. Ivy Larazepam, like, one milligram or two milligram? And he's like, which one do you want to do?

One milligram or two milligrams? I'm like, two milligrams? It looks like it's a big seizure. And he's like, sounds good. And so what's really scary is a seizure isn't dangerous for like 60 seconds. And Ken knows that everything is fine. But that's where like, you know, when you're panicking, you want him to take over. It's like, I've been doing this for two weeks.

But I actually have the information. I know the thing. But you didn't have the autonomy yet. You didn't take over. I didn't take the autonomy. Right? But I had the ability. Yes.

And so that's why Ken was awesome. It's awesome, I'm sure. Sure. He's being a good leader. Being a good leader by not taking. the responsibility from me. And so, you know, that was the moment I became a doctor. But I knew everything before then. If after I retire, will I still be a doctor? It's a piece of my identity. But I've always been me even before that. So accolades are not bad. Parts of our

identity are not bad per se. They're a necessary part of living in the world. But we should step away from them as much as possible. At the end of the day, in this moment, I'm not a doctor. I'm just me. And what we really, what I really try to help people do is move from negative identity to positive identity. That's a step in the right direction. But then we want to shed all of that and recognize that we're just humans and you are a wise, passionate man. You weren't that before in a weird way, But that's okay, right? Because you had to go through the negative versions of yourself to be the current version of yourself. And if you try to hold on to being a wise, passionate man, you will be in trouble.

That too is a stage. So let that go too. Let that go when you're ready. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let it go. That was more for the giving an answer, you know, so you're like, who are you? I was like, okay. Yeah.

And this is where, you know, I spent seven years studying to become a monk. And the answer of who I am is nothing. I'm nothing. I'm empty. I'm just, I'm just an organism. I'm just a random set of neurons, tissue, thoughts, emotions moving through the world. And a soul. And a soul. So that's our purest form. Yes. Right. So identity is of the mind. It's a part of psychology. But, and as we practice these states of, as we achieve states of meditation, you will feel emptiness. Yes. and emptiness is a beautiful thing because all of your problems disappear.

And then when you don't have an identity, see, if you believe that you are a wise man, and then you get some bit of information that is contrary to that. And so then you're struggling, right? Because am I a wise man or am I not a wise man? Here's the crazy thing. You are a wise man and you are also not a wise man.

And I'll make mistakes. And you will make mistakes, right? and you will make mistakes that will lead to your wisdom, and you will make mistakes that will make you an idiot. Yes. I'm brilliant and I'm an idiot to hold multiple identities. I know a lot and I know nothing. Absolutely, right?

So that's how we transcend. There's this word that gets thrown around a lot. So I think the ultimate goal is to transcend identity, to move away from all of those things, that all of those things are a part of you, but they're not you, right? It's a part of you. you, but it's not ultimately who you are.

And when you step away from that, that's when you start, when you stop thinking of yourself as wise, then you will be able to recognize your mistakes and you will be able to recognize your wisdom. Yes. Wisdom is a piece of you. It is not you. And so ultimately, we're going to step away from all of that stuff. Yes.

In my opinion, if you want to be happy. How do you think about identity for yourself? Living in a material, physical world where you have to, you know, organize things. and strategize the future and bring people together and plan and pay bills and bring in money and present yourself and have credentials and study like how do you think about identity personally for yourself? So this is such a weird thing. But what I want you to understand is that identity is a vriti.

Riti is a fluctuation within the mind. Identity is not an object. It is an activity. Yes. Okay. So I know this. Ongoing. And goes away.

Yeah. Okay. So I want you to literally think about this precisely, okay? When you're taking a dump, are you a wise, passionate man? I still am. I still am, but I'm in that moment taking a dump. How would I know that you were a wise, passionate man, if I were to just... It would be more of a self-reflection of a knowing, but someone else want to know.

So in that moment, you're not a wife. You're just a dude taking a dump, right? So this is what I mean. So your identity literally absolutely. activates and deactivates. That's what people need to understand. It is, it is a, it is an energetic pattern. So we know this because like, we have this thing in, you know, in psychiatry, we talk about the narcissistic defense. What is that? That is when we pump ourselves up when we feel threatened. So if I say, you're stupid, you say, no, I'm not. Here all the reasons how I can prove to you that I'm not stupid. So that's narcissism. If you criticize a narcissist, they will put you down.

They'll attack you back. They'll pump themselves up. So identity, literally, if you look at like as you go through the day, right? And maybe I'll use another example. So, you know, I don't know if this is public or not, but I think you've just had a couple kids. Yeah, yeah, it's public. Right.

So, you know, when you're holding one or both of your daughters, you were just a dad. Just present. You're just present, right? You're not even a dad. It's weird. A dad is everything that you do for your kids. When you're holding them in that moment and they're asleep. in your arms or you're watching them sleep.

You're not even a dad. You are just an organism that is in bliss. Observing. Observing, right? You're just in that moment. And when you're doing that, like, someone else will see a dad in you. But in your mind, there's no identity of dad. Right?

There's identity of dad when they take their first steps. There's identity of dad when you watch them graduate. There's maybe identity of dad if they get married one day. That's when there's identity of dad. But in the moments that you're with them, there's no identity. So identity is something that turns on and turns off. So for me, and this is what becomes important because we require identities to function in the world, right? I have to have an identity as a doctor in order to be a doctor.

I can't let that go. So it is important for you to step into identity at different times. And then step out of it, right? When, so when someone comes at you, you need your ego. I'm not, I'm not a POS. I deserve respect. What you are doing is not. okay. I deserve better. But this is the key thing. And this I think gets misunderstood a lot because in, you know, in these contemplative traditions, we talk about being egoless. The goal isn't to be egoless. The goal is for you to be in control of your ego, not have your ego be in control of you. Yeah. So I think about my ego and my identity is a guard dog. And if I tell it to attack, it attacks. There are times where it gets antsy on its own. A stranger comes in and my ego

activates, but I need to take a step back. I need to tell the dog to calm down. You know, this is not when a patient says, hey, Dr. Kay, I've been coming here for six months and I don't even know if I'm getting better. Right. And then I say, I am a Harvard trained psychiatrist. If you are not, I have thousands of patients that are getting better. You are not getting better. You're the problem. You're the problem. Yeah. You are not doing the treatments property. That's why. You know, it's not my And then that naturally arises. The narcissistic defense naturally arises. And there may be times where I have to defend myself. And there may be times where I need to receive that criticism with perceive that in the right way. Is there a part of your identity or ego that still gets the best of you? Every day, all the time. I think for me, it's being a loser.

That's what you believe or think? Yeah, I am a loser. Like, I'm, like, literally, I lose every day. I make so many mistakes. You know? Like, I failed so many classes. I had to apply to medical school to 120 times to get in. You know, it took me three years to get into med school.

Even today, you know, I'll make a YouTube video that sometimes has a million views in 10 days, sometimes has 100,000 views in 10 days. I am a loser. So here's the other thing. There are parts of, the negative parts of our identity are only a problem if we make them a problem.

And I can accept, like, of course I'm a loser. That doesn't mean I'm not also a winner. I have both of these things within me. Yeah. Right? I'm a good, I'm a good husband. It's really important.

And I'm a bad husband. The moment that I start believing that I am exclusively a good husband is the moment that my wife gets screwed. Really? Absolutely. I need to accept that at times I'm a bad husband. At times I'm a good husband.

No one on this planet is perfect. So there's a lot of data that shows that the more cognitively flexible you are around your identity, the better off you will be. And I don't know if this kind of makes sense. I know it sounds weird, and I know it runs kind of contrary to some of the stuff that, you may say, but I think you do this, right? I think you must in order to achieve what you've achieved. You must consider your weak parts. You must acknowledge, you know, right?

That if I do not act in the right way, my baser nature will take control. Yeah, of course. There is an addict, a degenerate gamer who lives inside of me. And if I'm not careful, that will come out again. Right, right. There's an importance of stepping into an identity that is more empowering than disempowering, I believe. As opposed to, I'm a loser, there's no chance I'm going to win this game.

I'm going to mess up. You know, if I'm having a disempowering identity or belief, it's probably not going to serve me. Absolutely. So here's if you think you're a winner, it starts to become other people's fault. Then you're right that there's a tension because now if you think of yourself as a winner and you get data that you're not winning. Yes. Now your identity is threatened.

This is what happened to me also. Because first I was a loser and then I was like, I was picked last, you know, on teams. I was made fun of. I was in special needs classes. So all these things, I didn't have the psychological or emotional tools as an eight-year-old on how to navigate the emotions of the world and fit into groups and societies and teams. So I just associated, oh, I. I'm picked last. I'm in special needs. I'm in the bottom of my class. I am a loser. Those I am

statements I believed. Then I said, let me work so hard to improve this so that I'm never picked last and so that I'm a winner. And I did that for years. And it worked. I started getting picked first. I started being, you know, the best on the team, whatever it is through middle school and high school. But then everything became about winning. It was like, if I don't win, then my identity is going to crumble, right? It was like, now I'm a loser. And so my whole life became threatened with the idea of, if I'm not a winner, then I'm a loser. That way I have to win at everything. And winning, associated winning with being right. So if I was wrong, I'm a loser. If I lose, I'm a loser. And so I tried to defend this identity, like you said, by being right and winning in everything,

sports, business relationships, until I hit about 29 or 30 years old. And I realized life was not about winning and losing. It was about win-win. How do I create a win-win scenario, even if I'm losing in a situation? And that became a part of my process was seeing everything from a lens of how do I create win-win? What does that look like? this experience instead of I need to be right. I need to win at all costs.

So, so I think there's, it's beautiful because people are probably asking how do I, how do I get from loser to win or to beyond? And, and I would even argue that you are doing what I'm saying. Yeah. So I, and people can even rewind this and pay attention to the subject of your sentences. Yes. How do I create win-win? The object is outside of you. I, I am a winner. I am a loser. So when we transcend identity, we don't focus on the ego. We focus on the action. We actually divorce our identity. We become independent of the action. This is a lesson that I learned the hard way in residency because you get trained to like you think as a doctor like I save wives. Right. Like that's a pre-do. Save lives. And then you like, learn the hard way, like you can't save a life. Yeah, and people die on your table. Absolutely.

How does that feel, not to get off? How does that feel when you're told your whole life, I'm going to go and save lives and then you see someone, whether it be in residency or your watch someone die after an operation? And you're like, oh, we actually didn't save a life. And these are really good doctors around me. How did that feel the first time? Numb. Yeah.

So people think it feels bad, but my experience was numbness. I remember. I mean, this is a bit graphic. And so I remember I was doing chest compressions on a guy who was having his third code in the hospital. And like, you know, what's the code mean? Like, so he's having an arrhythmia. So his heart was not beating. Yeah.

So his heart was not beating the way it's supposed to. His heart was fluttering or fluttering. And so it wasn't able to beat. So he was a rather large dude. And I remember like doing chest compressions. And what they don't show you in the shows is that like sometimes. times when you start doing chest compressions, people will vomit. Yeah.

And so I remember I had gloves on and all I could really remember was like the feeling of the vomit hitting my elbows and then going down the arm and into the gloves. And it's like in your gloves. In your gloves, right? Like, and it's like nasty because like we don't like things in gloves to begin with. Like if you've ever done the dishes. The whole reason that we're gloves is those dumps on your hands. And then that it's vomit and there's someone dying underneath you.

And, you know, so then it's like I remember. The pressure, the stress. The pressure, because, like, I was pushing and he's, like, vomiting on me and I'm getting this stuff in my gloves. And, like, there's a part of my mind that's, like, maybe I should push less. That way he'll stop vomiting on me. But, like, no, we're not going to push. He's trying to save the life. We're trying to save a life.

And so my experience from that was just after afterward, I was just numb. Like, I was just like, what the hell was that? Did he come? Did he, did he secitate? He didn't make it. Didn't make it. I mean, he was, there was no way he was going to make. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, he was gone days. before. Yeah. And so you just learn real quick, you know, and for me, it happened pretty quickly because I'd had this training, right, like on yoga and meditation and understanding some of these things. But that, that, and there was another patient that came in with a couple of gunshot wounds when I was working a shift in the emergency room.

And you learn very quickly that you don't have the power of life over death. You know, you just don't have that. It's not something that you're entitled to. You can't save a lot. You could do your best to. support life and staying. All you can do is act. Wow.

So there's a great principle from sort of like Eastern meditative traditions. As a human being, all you're entitled to is your actions, not the fruits of your actions. And this is a beautiful way to get more of ego. Yeah. I mean, it's the whole, what's the quote around like planting seeds under trees of shade that you will not sit in the future. I don't know what that. Do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah. So it's, you know, the world is a good place when you plant a seed under whose shade. Shade you'll never sit in. Yeah. Yeah. Something like that. It's like putting in this work that you won't get to benefit from. Yeah. But others will. And the beautiful thing is you have been benefiting from everyone else in history for your life now. Yeah. So I think it's more drastic than that even. Right. So this is not doing work for shade that will come. You, you're, you're entitled.

to plant a seed, but even then, you don't know that the shade will be there. That's true. So as a human being, as a doctor, you don't, like, you can do everything, right? So I work now with people who are, like, suicidal. And, like, you can do everything that you can do, but you can never stop a human being from taking their own life. You can try. That's hard as you can go. And that's the huge part, right?

So the moment that you start focusing on your actions, what can I do? Not what happens. Too many people are held back by their ambitions. They're held back by the target because we think to ourselves, okay, like, if I don't have a goal, how am I going to motivate myself? But you have to be really careful about a goal as a source of motivation. Should we have goals? Sure. Why do you hesitate?

So let's think about how a goal affects the motivational system. So I think we should have goals with care. So we have goals without focusing on the outcome of the goal as part of our happiness? Yes. So we should be detached. We should have goals, but we should be detached from our goals. From the results. Yeah.

So a way to put it, like I'll kind of give a simple analogy to start because then we're going to get technical. See, it's okay to want, let's say I want a fried chicken sandwich. It's okay to want a fried chicken sandwich. But are you unhappy if you don't get it? But so you go to a restaurant, you're like, hey, can I get a fried chicken sandwich? You're like, oh, we're out. How do you respond to that? So one of the biggest challenges for me, so I was planning on becoming a monk and then met my wife.

And then that was like, you're not allowed to be a monk. Yeah. And so I was really like struggling internally because I had this idea of like, okay, I'm going to be like free from attachment and celibacy. And I'm not going to be like these other human who are, you know, falling in love. All these lustful thoughts and feelings. Yeah, no, I need to be better than that, right? Lust is for animals. I will be greater.

So one of my teachers... So was it seven years you studied to be a monk? Is that what it is? But when you were studying to be a monk... I met my wife. You weren't being a monk. You weren't living as a monk. No, but I told her, I was like, girl, look, I'm sorry, babe.

This is a temporary thing, you know, this connection that we have. Really? It's temporary, yeah. Like, I'm planning on taking my vows. So it's like, it's fine for us to, you know, hang out and... Fun, yeah. This would be my last hurrah. I just want you to know out of respect.

Really? I want you to know. out of respect that I'm going to take my vows when you know a couple years from now why hadn't you taken it yet within seven years oh I tried so at the age of 21 I went to my teachers and I said hey I want to become a monk they said and they said being a monk is about giving up your life you have nothing worth giving up literally oh so you have to have something exactly not just be like you're just running away you're running away you haven't achieved anything so first thing you should do is go back get a doctoral degree wow

and then give it all up. And then give it all. Come back when you're 30. So they let me come back and they're like, we'll continue teaching you and training you. But you don't get to take your vows until you're 30 years old and you have a doctoral degree. Those were their two requirements. Then you could give it up and come live like that.

But, okay. Not everyone has done that to become a monk, though. Some people are younger when they become a monk, right? Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, these were my teachers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. So my teachers were amazing.

They also knew me very well. They're like, yeah, you really don't want this. You know, you don't realize. And they explain something interesting to me. They said that becoming a monk is going to be harder than anything you do in the real world. So if you can't succeed in the real world, you're not going to succeed as a monk. You don't fail as a monk, yeah. Right?

Wow. So that's how I ended up getting a target of, you know, okay, I'm going to become a doctor. And do something big that I have to then sacrifice and give up. Absolutely. So that was also where. Then I'll be worthy. Then my ego would be worthy to be a monk. Not quite, but yeah, a great joke.

You know, there's the, so this is what I had at that time. I had the ego of having no ego. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have no ego. Other people have ego. I'm so above everything. Beyond this. And speaking of identity, you know, so I was.

That's an identity in itself. That wasn't, it's an identity where I devalued the things that I had failed at. Sure. So like in college, this is pretty classic. I don't know what you're called. experience was like, but you know, like, you're into a girl and you ask her out, and then she says no. And then you tell your bros, you're like, yeah, I wasn't that answer her anyway. She's not.

It's beneath me anyways. Yeah. Right. Like, it's like, eh, like, eh. Whatever. So we devalue things to protect ourselves. We develop this identity. Yeah. So when you're meeting her, you said, I'm going to be a month. This is for fun for the next year or whatever. But then don't be too attached to me. Yeah, right. Right. Right. Right. Because I, like, I didn't want to hurt her. You know, like, oh, I didn't want to hurt. Yeah, yeah. Because, like, being in a relationship with me, like, when it ends, it's so painful for anybody that I'm with.

Oh, my God. It's my compassion. I don't want to hurt you from the parting of me. Oh, shoot. And so, yeah, and then what happened? So the first thing is she's, like, amazing and she knows me well. So she was not worried at all. She's like, you're not going to become lucky.

There's no way this is going to be. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, like. You're too attached. this medical stuff over here, yeah. So then I, you know, went and decided to go to medical school and stuff like that. And it's really crazy because I never looked at my grades when I was in med school. And so I got a call from one of my mentors.

And after graduation, he's like, where are you at the award ceremony? And I was like, I'm, I don't know. I'm like, I'm like, I don't know. And he's like, well, I'm presenting you with an award. Like, why aren't you here? I was like, I didn't even know. I had gotten so divorced from the outcomes of my actions. I just showed up.

And even when I, you know, sometimes when I was in residency, you get all these kids from Harvard who were like really great. And then they get a B and then they're devastated. And I have to do this thing where I try to explain to them, you're not here for grades. Like, you got to understand it. At some point, you're going to be like in an elevator and, you know, someone is going to start giving birth when you're trapped in an elevator. And grades don't matter at that point. And grades don't matter. You don't get to say, you know, and I'm a psychiatrist, but like, I don't get to say, oh, you're in labor.

Like, sorry, I'm a psychiatrist. I can't help you. No, you have to do your duty. You have to. If you're on a plane, if you're on a. Residency in medical school is about, like, learning how to be a doctor because one day someone will depend on you. So it's not about being a great doctor, being at the top of your class. It's about focusing on learning the material for its own sake.

And I think when you talk about making things win-win, I think. think if we really were to do like an x-ray of your mental structure, we would see that you would be very focused on action. You'd be altering your perception, right? You're not going to give yourself some pat on the back and, oh, I'm a winner, and I'm a wise, compassionate man, you know, like, like, that's not, that's not the copium that you're going to be huffing, which is what the kids say nowadays. Huffing? Yeah, huffing copium.

Okay. Yeah, that's what the kids say. Sure. You know, so you're going to be really focused on, okay, like, how do I integrate this data? This is negative feedback. How do I incorporate this feedback? How do I plan on this feedback? So there's no you involved.

It's almost like you're like, you know, it's just information coming in, calculation, change in the outside world. And people may think that that feels really sterile, but the other side of it is when you're holding your child. There's no ego there. There's just you being present. And if we look at action, what's really cool about action is action is when you're one with action, that's when you're the most present. So just focus on doing the thing. It is not in your power to have something happen. Yeah, the results.

The results are out of your hands. Yeah, but focusing on the action today or this moment, the next best action. Yes. And this is the problem we were talking about goals. The problem with goals is that goals actually get us away from actions. Really? Yeah. How so? When is a goal? It's a weird question, I know. When is a goal? Yep. Well, if you create a goal with a timeline, you can have. Is there ever a goal without a

timeline? Some people have a goal and say, I want to write a book or I want to launch a podcast or I want to be in a relationship. When is that? But when is it? Is it now? They don't say when sometimes. But I think if they say when, even if I say I want to write a book, it's not today. Right. It's in the future. It's in the Yes. All goals are things that will happen ideally. Yes. All goals are in the future. Yes.

When does action happen now? Or when you take the action? And when you take the action, when is it? In that moment. Exactly. Action happens now. Goal is in the future. Fundamental.

I know it's so weird. We don't ask ourselves these questions. Yeah. But so this is the problem with goal. Right. So this is what's really scary is the most ambitious. goal is the easiest to procrastinate on. I want to write a book.

How long does that take? Oh, it takes two years. Okay, so you're saying it takes like 720 days? Why don't we just do a little bit more work in 719? So goals are really sneaky things. It's not that they're bad. So our frontal lobes require some way to organize time. Organize time, strategy, right?

So you need that for the sake of a goal. But if you're not careful, a goal will induce procrastination. Because you seem it's too much work. I can't do it right now or it's daunting. Yeah. If you're lucky, that's what you feel. Because then you know, oh, my God, this is overwhelmed. I need to fix this.

What's way more dangerous is, oh, I can take care of it tomorrow. It's not even daunting. You never take the action. You never take the action. Right. So action is completely independent of goal. And accomplishing big goals involves taking lots of action. So focus on action, not on the goal.

The other really interesting, scary neuroscience thing is that... What if someone says, okay, I don't have a goal, but I'm just taking the action like I'm learning Spanish every day. I'm taking the action to practice Spanish every day. But if I just said, well, I don't have the goal to learn Spanish and be able to speak it, then why am I doing it? Why am I doing the action? if there's no thing that I'm actually looking to step into, just for the action's sake? Great question. So goals serve a function. Once again, the goal here is, is not to get rid of this stuff. So in order to be a functional human being, if we're pursuing

enlightenment, the enlightened person has no goals. They just exist. They're just better than all the goals of the world. Their ego is a better. Yeah. They've abandoned all that stuff. They're I love it all. They're just chilling. They're not above it all. They're not below. Yeah, I know. So goals serve a neuroscientific purpose.

They organize our frontal lobes. They allow us to sequence out things. So that's good. But a goal being used to sequence things, I'll give you an example. I'm going to the airport later today. So I had to pack. But packing has, it's not like, it's a goal that I have to do, but I'm not like attached to it anyway.

It just helps me organize the sequence of events and then I have to take the actions. There's no identity caught up in it. I'm not like, eh, Luis. Look at me. Crained at Harvard. Yeah, yeah. Back to my own undies. Yeah, yeah.

I'm great, bro. You know, so this is where goals are important, but we should never have them serve a greater function than what they really should be serving. What should they be serving? Helping us organize action. That's it. But when you had a, you know, when you're a monk teacher, said go become a doctor or do something and then come back to us when you're ready to give that thing up. And you said, all right, I'm going to go to medical school and I'm going to become a doctor.

You had a goal in mind. You wanted to accomplish something, some type of learning, experience, credibility. And there was a deadline to when you have to accomplish it by, right? Great. So how did you navigate the goal and the actions with that? Yeah. So beautiful example, because it's an example of I didn't care that I accomplished the goal. This is a really weird thing. You didn't care if you were to accomplish it or not. No, no. So I needed to accomplish it, right? So goals are necessary, but we don't need to get attached to them. We don't need to get hung up. They're necessary steps, just like packing. I have to pack. But you weren't attached to the result. If you became a doctor or not, you weren't attached. Yeah. Well, I mean, I was attached, but I tried really hard not to be. Gotcha. Right.

And that's why, like, I never looked at my grades. I was like, okay, I'm going to like, someone will tell me if I fail. Yeah. Like, I'll get an email if I fail. And I didn't also whatever. I'm focusing on learning the material. That's good. Right? So I know it's, I love that you're asking these questions because it's so counterintuitive from the way that we think.

Here's the reason that detachment from our goals is really, we want goals, we want to be detached. Here's why. If you have a stumble towards your goal and you are attached to it, you are more likely to give up. So your brain says, okay, why are we doing this? We're doing this in order to get this. And now we get a bit of information that that becomes less likely.

So then our brain says, okay, we're not going to achieve the goal. So I see this all the time in the patients that I work with who have early stage sobriety. And so it's really interesting because when they start to relapse, I've been sober for 160 days. I had one bad night of alcohol. And now it's ruined. I lost all of my sobriety. What do you think they do the next day? Go drink more.

Absolutely. Now that it's busted, might as well. Right? So the self-loathing, like all this kind of stuff. So if you want an outcome and something gets in the way, if you have a setback, your attachment to the outcome is going to cause you to give up. So when someone has a setback, how should they process that setback and continue moving forward towards a goal, whether they're attached or detached to the outcome?

Great question. give another example before this. So this is also why people don't get started. So like, you know, I struggle with this a lot. Maybe this is something people can empathize with. If you're not sure you can achieve something, it's really hard to get started. So I would, I would do this thing where if I got, like, I had like, I had like less than a 2.0. O GPA. I had failed a lot of classes. So I was like, okay, I need to get straight A's for both. Yeah. But you became a medical. doctor and I didn't potato potato yeah exactly um so I did this thing where like you know since i needed A's now I have like a 1.0 GPA so I need a 4.0 to balance it out right I need to have an A

I can't afford to get a B in order to save my GPA. So so then what would happen is if I got a B on my first test I would drop the class because I can't hit my goal anymore I'm going to give up so it's so easy to not get started when we are attached to our goal. Because think about when I'm attached to the goal, I can't ask her out yet, bro, because I need her. I'm so in love. I can't handle.

Like, I wouldn't be able to live with myself. So what I'm going to do? I'm going to take her to the airport. I'm going to be there for her. But I'm never going to shoot my shot. I'm never going to take that chance. Friend zone. Because I can't afford to lose.

I have to win. I want to win. I have ambition. I have goals. I have dreams. And so unless it's going to work, I can't, I can't try. As we detach from the goal, right, as we let go, which is challenging, it requires a lot of, there's a lot of emotion towards it. I think a lot of people run away from the negative emotion.

How do you act? I think your question was, how do you act if you are attached to a goal? You accept that on this planet, you cannot achieve it. It is not within your power to achieve. You know, there's something that I think is really scary about the society we live in. We started taking things lying down. So like nowadays in society, this is going to sound kind of weird, but like when we're on the brink of failure, we don't fight with defiance. Right.

We're like, okay, if I'm going to lose, then I'm just going to give up. We've stopped fighting feudal battles. and that's so devastating. What do you mean by this? Like, if you're going to get screwed, go down fighting. Go all the way. Go all the way. Even if you, even if like, you know, I got my first 40 rejections to medical school, my next 40 rejections to medical school.

And my uncle pulled me aside and he's like, bro, this is not working out. Like go get a PhD. Like, go to plan B, right? Like, come on, man. Like your GPA is not changing. What are you expecting? You're an idiot. You're being stubborn.

My uncle's a great guy. Loves me very much. And it's good advice. Yeah. Right? You're just repeating insanity over and over and over. Absolutely. And so, like, this is where, like, we need to be defiant in the face of the world.

Like, we need to keep, we need to be doing stupid action. Yes. You know, like, don't, that's what it is. When you say, don't give up, what does that mean? Don't giving up. Not giving up means being an idiot. Let go over the possibility of it ever happening. You know, I was reading about, like, stranger things and how many times stranger things got rejected.

Yeah, yeah. You know, another good example of this is Harry Potter, like got rejected over and over and over again. Squid Games also was like 10 years it took for it to sell. Absolutely, right? So we have to be really careful about goals because if we attach ourselves to the goal and we get negative feedback, we are going to give up. So focus on the action, right? And this is what's really important. But how do you know when to give up?

Like, sure, those things, they had a belief that these things should be in the world, these movies, these books, these things should be in the world. In my medical school, that should be happening. But if it goes 20 years and it doesn't happen, do you keep fighting until you burn everything down? Here's, it's so tricky, but beautiful question. Give up with tranquility. So when you are at peace and you want to let something go, that's when you give up.

When you feel like I've given everything I can or I'm okay with it not coming to the world. Right, right. I still feel like there's something inside of you. So like this is a lesson I learned when. And someone has, so I had a patient who was eight years old, had stage four cancer, was in the pediatric ICU. I was a medical student. I wasn't even a doctor then.

And then, you know, how do you know when to pull the plug? Like, that's where I learned that lesson. Like, you can, you can do everything, but you should be at peace. So if you feel, if you feel like giving up is a failure, if you feel like giving up is giving into your fear, your internal emotional state will tell you. what is right and what is wrong. So if you're giving into fear, don't do it. Right.

You know, even if you're overly ambitious, you want to attain a state of tranquility. That's where you should operate from. This is really important. I want to goal is out there. It's in the future. Action is now. Emotion, you have to be careful because we're oftentimes running away. The emotion tries to get you away from the here and now.

Right. I want to avoid the anxiety. I'm anxious. How do I not be anxious? So instead, what you should do is be as tranquil as possible. Go for a walk, have a nice cup of tea, you know, sit with your thoughts, stay off of all devices for 24 hours and take a good, long, hard look at your goals and ask yourself, is it time to give up or not? The answer will come from in here. Don't make a pro-con list.

Don't do anything. Just ask yourself. So I went to a Swami, which is like a monk. And after I failed for two years to get into med school, and I was like, hey, I don't know if I should give up or not. What do you think I should do? And then Swami turns to me, it's like, you know, two years is not such a long time in life.

Give it another year. He's kind of shrugged, right? So casual. It's just so simple. And I was like, okay, fine. I'm not going to, I'm going to give it one more year. That's what I decided. Luckily, I got into one mental school.

So tranquil mind, tranquil. and then decide. Then you'll know whether it's enough. It's not give up. Even that phrasing is wrong. It implies failure. It's transition. No, no, but I think it's the right word in the sense that that's the way everyone thinks.

Instead, ask yourself, has this been enough? I work with patients who are trying to make it work in couples therapy. And what we get to, what I get to, like, emotionally is, is this enough? Have we tried enough? Have we tried treatment enough? Is this enough? And if the answer to that question is yes, then let it go. There's a question I wanted to ask you about capable versus believing.

You know, and maybe this ties to goal setting. At one point you said, I think you said, there's a difference between we're being capable of achieving something or living into something versus believing you can achieve it. What is that difference of capable versus believe? And are there times when you believe you can do something, but you're not capable? what does that do to someone? I think belief and capability are two entirely different things. Belief is your estimation of your ability. Capability is your ability.

Yeah. So the gap between capability and there's a gap between what your estimation of what you can do and what you're capable of. But when someone has the capabilities, but not the belief, then what happens? They doubt themselves constantly. They're insecure. They're afraid. But they have the skills, the talent, or the ability to do the thing. if they worked at it.

Yeah. So I think, I mean, this is something we see all the time. Most human beings on the planet are far more capable than they believe. Yes. Right. So our belief, let's understand where this comes from. Belief comes from your own estimation. It comes from your data.

It comes from your cognitive biases, your perception, your emotions. You know, your fear will try to protect you by telling you that you can't do it. They'll try to trick you into believing that you are incapable. I don't put much stock in belief. Personally, you don't. For yourself? Just in general. For my patients, I try to help them not put much stock in belief.

Because let's understand what belief is. Belief is the absence of knowledge. By definition. I believe my keys are in my pocket. I don't know that. So belief is literally a mental hypothetical construct. I believe it's possible. I believe in God.

That's very different from my note. God. I've seen God. I've felt God. Right. So we'll use this. And I'm not trying to be like anti-faith or anything like that. But it's kind of interesting, right? Because when I sit with people who do have intense faith, sometimes there's belief and there can be, there's value to believe too. But in general, I think step away from your own beliefs. In general, what you should be doing is collecting data, not hypothesizing. Belief is in your head. So should we not have belief in ourselves that we are capable of accomplishing goals or dreams. I mean, so, so I think you should learn, right?

And I know this is like running contrary to some of the language that you use. I don't think we're, I think we end up in the same place. Yeah, yeah. But I think just, just learn. Try. Okay. You don't believe in yourself. So what?

You do believe in yourself. So what? Try. Act either way. Act. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Be independent of all of this stuff.

Yeah, yeah. Because what is it that correlates with accomplishment? What is it correlates that correlates with success? It's action. So we use belief, right? So this is why it's important to kind of- To take action. Exactly.

Right? So belief helps us take action sometimes. But this is where it's like we can do whatever kind of mental gymnastics you want to end up with action. Take action either way. Whether you believe it or whether you believe it, whether you have goal, whatever, right? Let's get to the root of action. And all of psychiatry and psychology and stuff is all these ways of helping people act. Karma.

Karma. The actions that you take. Here's something really interesting what a lot of people don't realize about karma. Karma, 99% of karma is not visible. 99% of karma happens in here. When you have a thought, how do you respond to that thought that is technically an action? Oh my God. So this morning, I was tired.

I've been working here for nine days. And I didn't want to go to the gym. So I didn't go to the gym. And then it's a little bit cold outside, but I was like, you know what? I normally swim about 20 laps. And so it's like, I don't feel like swimming 20 laps, but I'm going to swim five. I felt like swimming zero. Yeah.

It's like, I'm just going to get in the water. I'm going to swim five laps and then I'm done. I got into the water. It was awful. You're like, I want to get out. I want to get out. I felt really tired. I'm kind of out of shape and like haven't had a good.

great schedule. But like the way that we respond to ourselves, that's what forms our destiny. Everyone thinks karma is our actions out here. It's not the most. Think about how many actions do you take in your head every single day? Thousands. How do you respond? Oh, I want to eat this. Okay, I'm going to eat it. Oh, I want to pull out my phone. I'm going to pull out my phone. That mental action, okay, let me pull out my phone. Costs you 60 minutes of your day. A 30 second distraction costs you an hour. The way that we respond to the impulses in our mind, this is the most important action. I believe I can't do it.

Are you going to listen to that belief? This is why like, oh, believe in yourself not believe. That's not the question. Question is, when you believe something, how do you respond to your beliefs? Do I have a goal? Do I not have a goal? Not the important question. when you have a setback in your goal, how do you respond to that?

The problem is that most human beings on the planet react. They don't respond. Automatic. There isn't awareness of what's going on. There isn't intention. And pay attention to your mind. You'll be stunned. There's a beautiful exercise that I offer people.

Pay attention to how many thoughts you have that you've had before. So the crazy thing that a lot of people don't. realizes most of the thinking is habits. It's not even logical. It's not real. It's automatic. It's just automatic. It's on repeat.

It's on repeat. I'm a loser. This won't work. I can do it. And it's not that these thoughts are good or bad. Yeah. Right? And I appreciate the perspective.

It's not good or bad right or wrong. It's what's, is it serving you an empowering way? Is it helping you to feel more harmony or not? I mean, I think if people want to be rich and successful, they should ask of those questions. You were better at that, Lewis, than I am. What I'm about is not even the goal of all of that stuff. Is it empowering or not empowering? I'm going to step away from that. Just understand. So in Sanskrit, you know, they have the saying that avidia is the source of luca. Ignorance is the source of suffering. And this is something as a psychiatrist, I think, is very true. Most of our

suffering comes from not knowing what what is going on why is this happening or not being aware not being aware yeah so much of our suffering in life comes from our reactions and our automatic patterns i see this all the time so can i use profanity sure okay so one of my clients came to me and asked me dr kay i don't know why i only attract boys and we talked about it for a little bit and we realized you attract it and you attract everybody. You choose. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lots of great people come up to you, but you're not attracted to them. And this is what's so cool. Like, people don't realize when they're suffering in life and life feels hard. I mean, I've worked with people who have had polysubstance addictions from the age of nine. And then you live this way for 19 years and you think there's

no way you can get better. You're at the age of 28. You've been struggling with substances for 19 years. relatively young, but your whole experience has been struggling with this. And you think it's impossible. But you just don't understand yourself. You don't understand how you are responding to your impulses. You don't understand why you're using these substances, that you're trying to run away from something that is inside you. And you can try to control your behaviors as much as you want. But as long as that black flame, that like tar is inside you, no way that you're going to control your behavior. So understand yourself first. It's not for me. It's not for me to say you should do this or don't do this or I can teach you how I can't tell you what direction

that's for you to figure out you decide for yourself why are you so lazy you don't want all the answers from me go and explore yourself pay attention to your mental actions pay attention to the way that you respond to the things around you I think it was Carl Jung who said I forget exactly what the quote is, but something about until we make our unconscious conscious, we will look at our lives and we'll think it's destiny, even when it's in our control. I'm butchering the quote, but you know, it's crazy how much of our life we actually control, but we just have no awareness up. How much of our life do we control? All of the important parts. How much of our thoughts do we control? None. We don't control our thoughts? No, the thought,

The mind generates thoughts. How much do we control our mind? None. So do we have any control over our thinking or our mind? We have control over the way that we respond to our mind. That's all we control. Do we generate a thought or is a thought generated automatically? What are you thinking?

I'm thinking you're touching my leg. Did you have control over that, the generation of that thought? Of you touching me? The generation of the thought. I was thinking that that happened. Can you control that that happened? I can think a different thought when it happens. I can shift the thinking.

I can know that's happening and also think about something else. Right. But it's all you can control. So the mind, I mean, this is the problem is we can't, everyone thinks we can control the mind. And they try. Yeah. It's like trying to swim up a waterfall.

So when I do psychotherapy with a patient, let's say I've got a patient who's got suicidal ideation. So they want to kill themselves every single. So they come in and I can't control their thoughts. They can't control their thoughts. They don't want to be suicidal, but the thought comes. Thought comes. Thought comes.

So then they don't control their thoughts. But as we do work, we change the thoughts that are automatically generated in their mind. You do? Yes. By responding to the thought. I talk to them in certain ways. I say certain things to them. And then as I say something, this is why a good psychiatrist

is really important, right? So the whole point of a good psychiatrist is that they can change your mind. You come in your suicidal. I engage in an evidence-based practice. And I took this principle and turned it into a coaching program because I thought, hey, we're doing all this stuff

for people who are suicidal. Why aren't we doing all this stuff for people who procrastinate, who are stuck, who want to write fiction? We can take these evidence-based techniques because someone comes into my office and there are thousands of studies. That's why psychiatry is an evidence-based.

practice. They're coming into my thought. There's certain things that I can say, certain things that I can do that will alter their thinking. Really? Absolutely. Wow. Right? So you'll learn this soon enough, but I mean, you're married. So, you know, your, your wife has certain thoughts in her head. She's upset. And you can do things to alter the pattern of her thinking. Sure. Right. Yes. You can say, oh, tell me what's wrong. Right. I love you. Or, yeah. Hug her. Or you can tell her how she can fix it. all of her problems. Yeah. Right? And so here's the really wild thing. We as human beings can affect the human beings around us. We can affect their thinking.

Yes. Which means by definition, her thinking is being shaped by who? Me. Which means that from her mind, her thoughts are being generated by the people around her. And her environment. You actually don't control her. She doesn't control her thoughts. You control her thoughts.

Which is wild. And she controls my thoughts. Exactly. Yeah. Or influences them. Influences them. Yeah. There are other.

influences. Right? So let's be clear. First thing is that thoughts are generated for you. That's why advertising is a thing. Because they figured out if I can generate this thought in your head then you'll take action. Then you'll take action. So everyone is doing thought control. And this idea that, oh, I can control my thoughts. Bro, you cannot. So as a Harvard trained psychiatrist then, knowing that, what do you do to have better, I don't want to say control, but better awareness or a handle around the thoughts in your own mind. Okay. That either support you or don't support you in your life.

Yeah. So what we do control is the way we respond to our thoughts, the way we're aware of our thoughts. So I, for example, my ego. And Victor Frankel said, you know, it's about stimulus and the space between the stimulus and response. Absolutely. Right. So this is what a lot of people, so I'll give you a really interesting example of this.

It's a bit tang, 10 judge. But so here's the key thing with thoughts. The key thing that we want to do is have distance from them, which is beautiful what you said. So I'll give you a good example of this. If we look at mental illness and we rank the severity of mental illness, what we find is the worst mental illness has no space between stimulus and response. So when someone has psychosis or is delusional, I've had patients who will say there is an electronic device, in my brain that is shaping my thoughts. This sentence that they say is a thought in their head,

but there is no space between this is a thought and this is reality. They can't separate them observing themselves. Yeah, they can. Thinking or doing. Exactly, right? So the thought is real. It's delusional. It's delusional.

And the nature of delusion is when you believe your thoughts are real. Yes. Literally. And I'm going to show you this beautiful scale. So there's psychosis, which is the worst. then there is things like, let's say you have a mood disorder where I think I'm a loser, I'm pathetic, I'm all this, my family would be better off without more. a level of depression or level of depression, right? So, so, so as people become really depressed, they believe their thoughts. There's no space between thoughts and anything else. Then as they start

to get a little bit better, okay, like, yeah, I feel this way. And there are times that I think my family would be better without me. But, you know, I'm beginning to see, okay, maybe that's not the case. Then you're conflicted. Now, there's a little bit of space between those two things. Another good example of this is when you have a panic attack. You don't think you're, you're, You are dying. Then, you know, less severe than panic disorder is like a generalized anxiety disorder, right? It's not one-to-one. You can have that generalized anxiety disorder.

But when your anxiety is less bad than you're, okay, like I'm anxious about this, but it may not. I think this is going to happen. Or if I have OCD, my anxiety is something I believe. Unless I flick off the lights, which seven times my house is going to burn down. I believe that. There's no space between thought and belief. It's one and the same. And then I get anxious, right?

oh, I think this could happen, but I don't, I acknowledge, maybe it won't happen. And then we get to the normal state of mind, which is like, okay, I have thoughts. I believe most of them. I don't believe them. And then we get to you, which is you are very good at training yourself to disbelieve particular thoughts. That's what all these questions are how do you empower yourself? Because you have disempowering thoughts and you choose not to believe them. Yeah, yeah.

Or not to stop me from taking actions in my life that I think are better actions than worse actions. Exactly. But that's the key thing there is that the thought comes up, oh, hey, Lewis, can I tell you something, bro? You're 42, right? You're going to be 44, 45 when you compete in the Olympics. Yeah. Good luck. How many, I mean, what do you think about that? Do you think that's going to work out? Does your mind ever tell you? Hey, bro, this is like, you know, you're competing against 20-year-olds? Yeah, if you're asking me personally, I think of, man, what about this story that I will get to share? So see the way that... When this works out. Or if this works out. Either way, if it doesn't work out, the story of pursuing something that you care about. So that's beautiful. So you're doing some cool mental jujitsu.

You're like a matador. You didn't even address my question. So here's the scary thing. If you go back and you watch this and you look at your face, that fear is in you. I saw it in your face. Sure. There's a level of like, I think it's not worth going for unless there's something that's... That's all of the...

The way that you respond- If it's easy, why would I go for it? The way you respond to your thoughts. The way you disbelieve your thoughts, you know it's hard. I know it's hard. I can say it to you. It hurts to hear it. And you say-

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Right? The way you respond to your thoughts, disbelieving your thoughts, moving away from your thoughts. So this is the spectrum of thinking. Yeah, it's almost like being a coach. It's like seeing yourself as a coach rather than being the critic with the thought, right? It's like, it's rather like, I am. this thought, there's no separation of the thought. It's like, no, this is me. If I'm thinking it,

it's my identity. That's why I wanted to start with identity of like, if that's who you're identifying as and holding onto it, rather than saying, all right, it's a thought coming in, let me distance myself and kind of observe it. And do I want to be the critic that continues to reinforce that thought? Or I can hold it there and still take actions and coach myself through it. And that's kind of the process. Beautiful, right? So if you tunnel down into the precision of what you're doing, you are changing the way that you respond to your thoughts. And now here's the really cool and tricky thing. As you change the way that you respond to your thoughts, your thoughts will change. Yes. But you did not create them. No. Oh, really? So we don't create our thoughts. No. All we do is, so think about your mind like a garden. We weed. Right. So we remove, we don't react to that thought. We don't give into that thought. And over time. time it will wither. And then as certain thoughts, because I don't know if this makes sense, the first moment you started believing in yourself was not something you had to choose. What matters

is when you had that thought of self-belief, how did you respond to it? You protected it. You got around it. You're like, grow, baby, grow. Yeah. Right? You cultivate. When you talk about an empowering mindset, what is the mechanism of an empowering mindset? It is responding to certain thoughts in a particular way, but you still don't control them. So over time... Because there could be a negative thought comes in. There could be something else, but it's what you nurture. Exactly. Yeah. So this is what's really interesting. You know, I had a patient who was afraid that her fiancee was cheating on him. I mean, sorry, on her. And so she was like, I want to check your text messages. And so she thought to herself, if I check his text messages, then I'll know that I can

trust him. But as she feels the anxiety, she checks his text and she feels reassured. But the next day, when she feels anxious, let me check again. Let me check again. Because she is, her brain is learning that the antidote to anxiety is to check it. This is really important to understand. Whatever we feed in the mind grows, we don't control it, but we choose what we feed and we choose what we don't feet. We choose, we get to control action. We get to control the way we respond. But we don't even get to control what thought comes next. Gosh. Fingers crossed. Now, you hope that when you're nurturing and watering a thought, that thought will continue to expand and develop and grow more frequently and will pop up in your mind. That's what we get to control, right? So that there's tons of neuroscience

evidence for that the neurons that fire together, wire together. We have habitual patterns of thinking, right? So when we have, and then we can wire our brain to generate thoughts. And literally, the goal of my job is to help someone wire their brain so that their brain generates the right thoughts. But I want to be precise here. That doesn't mean you get to control what you think. You can simply plant your garden in a certain way. That's interesting. So it's almost like, you know, tell me if I'm wrong here, but what I'm hearing you say is your mind is a blank canvas or it's a desert and you can start to respond to the thoughts that come to you and hopefully build a rainforest around you or a garden or some type of scenic thing that supports your your mind in a

more beautiful way. Spot on with the general. Here's the key difference I would say. Your mind is an untended garden. It's not a desert. It's not blank. Because if you think about it, your whole life, you've been giving into certain impulses, you've allowed weeds to grow out of control. Sure. Let's say you're a blank canvas when you were born then, maybe. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. But at the point of watching this, if you're in your 20s, 30s, 30s or 40s or 50s, your mind is an untended garden. Absolutely, right? And there might be some beautiful things and there might be a bunch of rocks that you don't want. It's figuring out how to tend to the beautiful things to create more harmony and peace inside of you. Yeah. And things that will support your life rather than hold you down. And the beautiful thing is that when you start doing this, you cultivate your mind, life, becomes easy. Yes. Because now when it's hard, it's easy. Absolutely. So we struggle with motivation, but think about it. That's because your mind has this impulse over here and you're trying to wrench it over here, right? Whereas

once you start to do the right kind of reinforcing stuff, once you start reinforcing the right behaviors, once you stop giving into certain thoughts. It doesn't mean you won't have them. Huh? It doesn't mean you won't have these thoughts. It doesn't means. You don't respond to them. Absolutely. Give into them. So, so for example, my ego is like really like, it's really messed up because for years, I got bullied. For years, I was, you know, I struggled and then I got into Harvard and then I had an ego about that for a while. And it's still there. So what I do is I laugh at my ego. Mm-hmm. I'm like, there's that ego again. Sometimes I'll have fantasies. A great Harvard psychiatrist. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, so, you know, on the car ride over here, I was thinking about how to make this podcast great. That was one of the questions you asked. me how do we make this great i was like there's my ego again there's me trying to be great

who am i to be great right i'm i'm dude i'm i'm a noob i'm a failure i'm a loser and i'm great so i'm going to show up and i'm going to do the best that i can yeah but it is not for me to be great it is not for me to decide what is great and what is not great so my ego is still there after all of these years it's still there my wife is hilarious about it because she mocks me so much Right. Right. So sometimes I'll say something really profound in conversation because sometimes I say things that are really proud. She's like, oh.

Wow. Yeah. I should quote that. And I think it's a beautiful way to keep your ego in check. Sure. Of course. Right. So the way that I respond.

So now my ego is not something to be conquered. It's like I'm cursed with it. And I've accepted that after so many years of, I've been meditating for 21 years. And my ego is still there. It's still there in the background. It still sneaks up. It still makes comparisons. there's no, I'm cursed.

Ah, so what? Yeah. Am I going to let it? Am I going to try really hard to get rid of it? No. Yeah, yeah. It's there forever. So be it.

I don't need to change. Yeah. I don't need to be eagoless. I'm a new, like, who am I to be eagoless? Am I some great person who should be eagolist? No, like I'm some pathetic POS who struggles sometimes and does a good job and I do right by people. I hold both of those things. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

If we went back to the, you said there was like a scale of mental disorder. I think you called it. They're mental diseases or disorders or, I don't know, diagnoses. Yeah. And psychosis is against like the highest on the scale of severity. Severity. Yeah. And then maybe moot swings or some type of anxiety, you know, would be.

Yeah. So like panic disorders, you know, severe depression, then like generalized like anxiety. Then there's like the normal level of anxiety. Then there's like the positive dimensions. Ah. Right. Of understanding. And the highest dimension is understanding that you are not your mind, that the

mind is just an object. It is your mind. We even say it. My mind, my hand. It is an object of its own that does whatever it wants to do. Just like your body, it's like you don't get to control whether you have diarrhea today. Like your stomach is messed up today. Your mind is messed up today. But just like your stomach, you can take care of your mind. And so what would you call us the scale of, you're just making it up. A scale of severity around mental. Well, actually, it's, it's, what technically is, is the scale of a. attachment to your thoughts. Okay. I love this because if, because anyone could relate to somewhere on this scale. Hopefully not many people relate to the psychosis, but anyone watching or listening can

relate to, yeah, I've had depressed thoughts or anxiety or stress or overwhelm or whatever it might be or a feeling of laziness or lack of motivation or I've ADHD or whatever it is. How does someone go from having attended mind, a beautiful garden or attended garden in their mind to psychosis or to suicidal thinking over and over again. And is there away from someone to go back from psychosis or suicidal thinking to a beautiful garden in their mind? Absolutely. What is that process of how they got from mood swings to suicide and how can someone go back? What is that process? Okay. We're going to teach it to you right now it's going to take about 30 seconds. Okay.

So I want you to close your eyes, Lewis, and I want you to observe your breath. I didn't say breathe. I didn't say change your breath. I didn't say take a deep breath. I said, just observe it. You're doing that deep breathing thing again. You're breathing slow.

Just observe it. Don't change it. Can you breathe the way that you were when we were talking? Now you're artificially increasing the pace. Right? A little bit. Yeah, yeah. So here's the wild thing.

The moment you are aware of something, you gain control. Literally the part of your brain that monitors conflict within you is the part of your brain that is willpower. And I was going against what you were trying to have me to do. I was like, no, I'm going to do what feels good to me. But even then you're controlling it. Yeah, yeah. So if you pay attention, it is impossible for you to observe your breath and continue to breathe naturally. impossible. Try it.

You'll notice that the moment that you pay attention to it, it starts to alter. Right? So in physics, this is like... Because now I'm paying attention to it as opposed to just being. Right. And when you pay attention, you'll start to control it. You can try. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, maybe you can do it. I haven't been able to do it. No, it's... Yeah, because I was focusing on breathing rather than just talking right now. I'm not thinking about breathing how I'm just in and out, you know. So it's really cool. Awareness. is the first step to control.

Why is this thing so hard for so many people who are stuck in their minds that creates so much stress, anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts? Why is it so hard then? If it's so easy, why is it so hard where people get stuck for years or decades in this way of thinking they need addictions, alcohol, drugs, medication to try to have some type of control over their thoughts or their body, their functions. Why is it so hard? Okay. Beautiful question. If what we just did right now in 30 seconds, awareness, I have it.

Okay. Let's be precise with our language. I never said it was easy. Okay. I just said it was simple. Okay. Biggest thing to understand. Why is it? Okay. It's simpler. Why is it so hard then? The simpler it is, the harder it is. The more complex it is, the easier. it is. Okay. The simplest things... I should be your wife giving you a little, huh, oh, sounds so good. Right. Exactly. Sounds so... Right. So this is a really confusing thing. But if you look at like, you know, a master chef, it's simple. For them. Yeah. Right. So it becomes easy at some point. But generally speaking, this is what's kind of really interesting. The things that are really hard are actually

the easier things because there's like 15 different components and then I'm going to do this and I'm going to do this and I'm going to do this. There's a very interesting relationship between simplicity and heart. You know, if we talk about, you know, to be a good dad is a simple thing. But you got to do a lot of big. It's very hard. Yeah. Yeah. So this is a big thing that we have to understand. The simplest things in life are actually the hardest. How do I love myself? It's simple. It's not complicated. It doesn't have 18 different steps and you do this and you do this and you do this. But it's hard. It's very hard. Well, it takes awareness consistently.

Exactly. So that gets to why it's so hard. When you're distracted and overwhelmed and responsibilities and let's look at why it's hard. The first reason why it's really hard is because we haven't been trying. Right. We've never thought about it. We've never thought. Literally.

Literally. Bro, I was 18 years old. I woke up on the morning of I had to set my alarm for 7 a.m. I had a Spanish final at 8 a.m. I set my alarm at 7 a.m. And I thought about how when I went to the Spanish final, I was going to be done in 15 minutes because I had skipped all the Spanish classes. I didn't know Spanish.

What was I going to do? Cared a piece of paper for three hours when I didn't know Spanish. And I decided not to go. I just skipped my final. F. If I just showed up, the professor had told me, if you show up, I'll give you a D. Yeah. Just show up.

I don't know anything. I was so unaware. I was like, I was not a robot. I felt like I was swept up by my mom. mind. I couldn't control my mind. I would plead with, I would beg and hope tomorrow, go to class, bro. Go to class. Please, God, just go to class. And it wouldn't listen. Why not? Because I wasn't aware. I was trying to get it to do. I was not observing. Right. So my daughter, here's a great example of just how powerful awareness is. My daughter was trying to close the box of a board game. I don't know if you've ever had this problem where you know, you know, know if it's a little bit off, you can push down and it'll never close, no matter how hard do you push it? And then all it takes is just a little shift. And then it'll slide right down. Easiest thing in the world. So when we don't understand ourselves when we aren't aware of what the problem is, then we can exert this.

When you say, why is it so hard? Because everyone is trying to push the door open when you've got to pull. That's life. Understand yourself. Understand how you work. Understand. Understand. that a goal can actually inhibit your motivation. If you get a little bit of feedback and the goal now feels harder, your mind will tell you, hey, it's not worth investing in. Now you have to overcome that. Understand that you actually don't control your thoughts. You can never control your thoughts.

Imagine for a moment, if you agree with me, if I've made a logical argument and you now understand that you can't control your thoughts, you ask why is it so hard? Because everyone's trying to control their thoughts. They're trying to swim up a waterfall and you ask why it's hard. It's not complicated. You can't swim up a waterfall. Water go down. Water don't go up.

So when you go to Harvard, day one, psychiatry training, and they're like one-on-one of psychiatry training, you can't control your thoughts. Is that something they teach you? No, so the crazy thing going to Harvard is they were teaching me all this stuff and they were like, this is how the mind works. And I was like, no, it isn't. Because I had learned about the mind in India. So they're teaching me what the subconscious is.

they're teaching me all this stuff that is just one view of the mind. There's a different view of the mind, which I think is, it's not that their view of the mind is wrong. We use both, right? But the way that the West studies the mind is problematic for one really simple reason, which is we have no way to actually measure the mind. If we look at how medicine works, how do we learn, how do science learn things? Science learns things through observation. What's going on on your chest? We're going to x-ray you.

what kind of bacteria is in your blood, we're going to do a blood culture. What's the x-ray for the mind? There's none. There's no way to detect the mind. And you can't put a scan on the brain or on the head and get data from the mind? You can't. It's impossible. Right?

So how do we know which part of the brain anxiety comes from? Because we do a brain scan. We see some part of the brain is lighting up. And then we ask you, what are you feeling? And we did that a thousand times. And we figured out, okay, this part of the brain is where anxiety comes from. So in India, the yogis did it a different way. They observed their own thoughts.

This is the cool thing. Because you're the only one, I know this can sound like weird question, Lewis. Am I thinking, am I thinking being or am I a robot? Do I, am I conscious or am I just a hallucination in your perception? Are you conscious? In my opinion, are you conscious? Yeah. Yeah.

How do you know? It's based on my perception. perception of the... What do you perceive? I perceive you in front of me, the five senses, the, you know... Yeah, so do you have a sense of my thoughts and my consciousness? Do you have a sense that tells you that? Yeah.

How? Tell me. Belief? Okay, belief is different. Perception. A perception. What are you perceiving? Pay attention.

What are you perceiving? Can you see my thoughts? You're seeing words? I can see your reactions and your behavior around... Yeah, but I could be empty up here. Right, right. It's true. You could be.

Right? I don't know for certainty. So this is. This is insane. Yeah. I had a patient once in the neuro ICU. We got consulted. And so they're like, yeah, we think something's wrong.

Like, he's depressed. So I go to the neuro ICU. Guy got hit by a car and was in a coma for a while. Now was doing better. And then I'm like, hey, you know, so tell me a little bit about, you know, what's going on. How's your relationship? He's like, oh, you know, my wife is great.

She's here every day. How's your relationship with your kids? Seems like kids are fine. What's your recovery look like? He's like, I'm going to have to do physical therapy. It's hard. You know, it hurts. But, like, I'm expected to make a full recovery.

What's going on at work? You know, my partners are fantastic. They're like, they're going to cover things for three months and I'll go back into the office maybe a month or two. So I'm kind of like confused. Like, everything's going to be fine. But he had a level of depression. Yeah, some depression. So I go back day after day after day because once you get consulted, you're responsible.

And so, you know, the last day he's going to be discharged. Like, bro, I got to be honest with you. I ask, I come in, I ask you all these questions. You say nothing's wrong. But when I sit here, when I sit in the room with you, you seem depressed. Can you tell? Am I just like crazy? Like what's going on here?

And then he kind of starts like breaking down into tears. And he says like, you know, it's crazy. But when I was in a coma, I lived a whole life. I had a family. I was married to a different person. Come on. I had two sons, not two daughters. And I realized that that was all fake.

But like it hurts. Like they're gone. I'm never going to see them again. Different people. Just a completely different life. Wow. Right. And it's really weird.

But like, you know, when I ask you, do I have thoughts? Like, the only person that you know really exists. You could be in a coma right now. That's true. This could all be a hallucination. This could be a dream. Could be. Right?

Could be. So these fundamental things. Is it a dream? We'll find out. At some point. Yeah. I mean, I think it's real, but maybe I'm hallucinating you. Who knows?

You know, so Descartes, or was like, Cogito, ergo, some, right? I think, therefore, I am. At the end of the day, you can't tell the difference between a hallucination and a dream, but at least there is something there that is dreaming. Even if it's a dream, even if you're in a coma, there's still someone in the coma. And as we understand some of these basic things, like this is why it's hard because we don't understand that we're not our mind. You are that which experiences your mind.

And no one else experiences your mind. You are that which experiences your mind. You are the awareness of the experience of your mind? Of course, because you can observe your thoughts. Can you see your eyes? Not unless I have a mirror. You are not seeing your eyes in a mirror. What are you seeing?

A reflection. There we go. So what you really are. I'm observing it. You are observing. I can observe my hand. I can observe my mind. This hand is not me.

It is a, I own it. It's my hand. Yeah, yeah. But it's not me. Even if heaven forbid something happened, I lost the hand, I'd still be me. What is you? That which observes. It's empty.

Egoless. Nothing. It's just the capacity for observation. And so this is what's really cool. You know, what's the being of you that observes everything around you. Absolutely. So here's the crazy thing. You want to know what you are?

You're not a wise, passionate man. You're the thing that thinks you're a wise passionate man. You're the thing that believes you're a wise passionate man. You're the thing that has watched the construction. You have experienced every moment of your life. That's the only thing that makes you you. Ego is outside of that. We can construct the ego.

Well done. You constructed a very healthy ego. We need healthy ego. It's nice and Rajsick. Seems like you're not having problems with heart attacks and stuff. So you may not need to slow down. I'm sure you've learned you're a professional athlete. You've learned the value of rest.

100%. Right? So that's okay. So as we understand these fundamentals, life becomes easier. As we start recognizing that don't just chase goals. Don't just get willpower. If you're feeling tired. Rest.

Rest or recognize, imagine this. If your brain thinks something is a bad idea. how does it let you know? It makes you feel tired. If you really don't feel like doing something, you should really ask yourself, what is my body and brain trying to tell me? I just am so sad.

People are in a relationship that's been dead for years. And the thought of seeing their partner makes them exhausted. That's your brain telling you something. Something's off. Something's off. And it's not that this relationship has to end. You don't have to break up with the person,

but you better damn well make a different relationship with them. Yes. So you don't have to jump to the conclusions that your mind says, but like if you're feeling tired, instead of just taking a supplement and powering through, ask yourself, why am I feeling tired? Spend more time with awareness. Then you'll know how to move the box a little bit and then life becomes easy. You don't have to work so hard. For someone who's going through a mental challenge, do you call it a mental diagnosis, a mental disorder, a mental disease?

Depends on what they're going through. You have to tell me what they're, then I'll tell you what. I mean, I guess anything from anxiety to psychosis. Okay. Is that, it's a, so here's what I don't want to, I don't want to categorize things the wrong way, I guess. So if, if something is going on in your mind and possibly in your body, that impairs your function, then we call it a mental illness. Okay. So if it interferes with your ability to work, if it interferes with your ability to do school, if it interferes with your relationships, if it interferes with your physical health, if it interferes with your mental health, if you're anxiety.

if your anxiety is so bad that you can't go see your friends. You can't leave the house. Well, it's not that it can't, it's impairment to function. Okay. If it's really hard to leave the house. Yes. Because so many people with depression are functional and empty. Right, right, right, right.

So that's a mental illness. That's an illness. So if it impairs function, that's the line. How do you, when do you know you've healed a mental illness? And can you heal a mental illness without medicine? When do you know you've healed a mental illness? mental illness. So what we shoot for in psychiatry is no longer impairment to function. So even if you're depressed, if you're able to enjoy life, if you're able to form relationships go to work,

if the depression comes and goes a little bit, that's actually okay. That's not a mental illness anymore. Or it's in remission. Gotcha. Okay. So I personally believe that many mental illnesses can be healed or cured, but that is not something I can say scientifically. Yes. So we'll talk about remission because it can always come back. Sure, sure, sure. But in my experience, you know, people will be in sustained remission. And that's very common.

The majority of people who have a depressive episode only have one in their life. So then that begs kind of a philosophical question. Is it cured or is it just so dormant and not being triggered because your life is healthy? Are you, you know, does that kind of make sense? Yeah, yeah. You're just saying. And can you heal a mental illness without medication? I think so.

Without saying it. Very clear. Medication never heals mental illness. Oh. And I think most psychiatrists would agree with me with that. I don't think most people understand that. They think medication will heal them. No, medication manages your symptoms, right?

That's why, so if you have ADHD and you take a stimulant medication for a month, it's not like your ADHD is gone at the end of the month. So medication cannot heal your mental illness. I do not believe so. And you're a Harvard. There's maybe some exceptions to that. But generally speaking, 99% of medications that we prescribe will manage symptoms. They will not heal anything.

What heals the symptoms so that the illness goes away? Awareness? No, healing the symptoms. What alleviates the symptoms? Symptoms are the fruit of the tree. Uh-huh. The illness is the tree. So if we want to remove the symptom or remove the illness?

Well, that depends on you. So the reason people take medication is because they usually don't have the time, energy, or money to do the healing. Which it takes time to sit there and observe yourself and meditate or do what's necessary. Yeah, and do psychotherapy. So I think psychotherapy is the best evidence-based practice for healing something. What's the difference between psychotherapy and talk therapy? Psychotherapy is the broader umbrella of things that we call talk therapy. And it's under, talk therapy is in psychotherapy.

Yes. So much of psychotherapy is talking. But as an example, if you have something like OCD, we'll do something called exposure and response prevention. Yeah, yeah. So if you have a phobia of like if you're claustrophobic, talking about higher claustrophobic. Yeah. And start to feel calm and peace and relax. Well, start to feel terrified and then survive terror and then realize that terror is not to be feared.

Yeah. You're not going to die. You're not going to die, right? And you don't die. And then we're going to put you in that situation again and again and again. Teach you how to relax. Not even, yeah, we're going to teach you how to relax, but actually we don't have to teach you. All you need to do is just survive.

Wow. And then you will acclimatize to it. Sure. Right? So we're going to encourage some good neuroplasticity there. And that's one of the best ways to overcome fears by, you know, I guess exposing yourself to the fear. Yeah. Absolutely.

Right. So for fear-based things, whether it's social anxiety, got to go to that party. Yeah. Yeah, right. Go get rejected by the girl. Go get rejected. Yeah, absolutely. And know you're going to survive.

And know that you're going to survive. So confidence doesn't come from success. It comes from surviving failure. Mm-hmm. Right? When you believe in yourself. And this is... You're right.

It's so easy to do, isn't it? Oh, you're so... Wonderful. Oh. Oh. Right. No, but really. Like, it's like, so, you know, we can talk about your Olympic aspirations and stuff, right?

And it's like, I know, I know you're going to, you're going to, you're going to, you're you're going to charge into that because you have failed and you've picked yourself off the mat. 100%. Right? And when I work with patients who have addictions, like their big thing is you really conquer an addiction when you learn to pick yourself up. Not when you avoid falling down. So when you fail, you know, I've never been drunk in my life and I've never done drugs or any of these things are a bit high. But I can assume how hard it could be to overcome the addiction of alcohol for people that have been alcoholics or

drinking consistently. I can assume it's extremely challenging without the right tools. Even with the right tools, it's still very difficult. I can assume. Again, I've never experienced it. But it's, it's not the person who has been an alcoholic or having alcoholic tendencies that never does it. It's when they relapse and drink and then they pick themselves up and go another hundred days without it or whatever it is. Yes. So if you think about it, damage control is a skill that you can learn. Yeah. Just like anything else. So I think a lot of these can be, it's not clear how much it can be healed. So I wouldn't, if you are managed.

So I think for every person, it's somewhere in the middle. Yeah. But I think that we have good evidence of healing. Yes. So for example, you know, some people who have things like PTSD, like we can sort of like rewire their brain and it's kind of fixed that and it kind of goes away. Other examples of this are things like personality disorders. So there are people with like borderline personality disorder or an arm.

narcissistic personality disorder where we can like do psychotherapy with them for some amount of time. They also have to want it, right? They have to want to. Oh, yeah, absolutely. If you're resistant to it, you're not going to improve. Yeah. So I think I think they absolutely have to want it.

But even wanting it is a tricky thing. Sure. Because it's totally. Really miss, right? It's totally fine for a part of you to not want it. Yeah, you don't want to face these parts of you. Yeah. And there, but there has to be some part of you that is willing to do the work.

Absolutely. I've never seen a case. I'm trying to think if I've ever seen. I've never seen a case of it working without the patient. Yeah, just forcing the patient. But a big part of what I do is people come into my office and are reluctant. So a big part of it is even if you don't want it, even if because people are afraid. They don't come in wanting it, right?

They come in sometimes kicking and screaming. No one wants to be wrong. No one wants to be like something is wrong and bad with me. We don't want that. We don't want to feel like, man, I'm a favorite. I've messed up. I've got this thing that I can't figure out on my own. And that's why I have this addictive personality or I smoke or I drink or cheat or

whatever it is. Like I do these things that don't feel good. And I don't want to admit that. No one wants to admit that something is wrong with them. Yeah. What we all want to do is solve our problems in secret and then come out triumphant. Yeah. Right.

Or no one even knows we have the problem, I guess. It's like absolutely. We don't want to reveal that to the world because that's shame. Absolutely. That doesn't feel good. But I do think we can heal. for the most part. Yeah.

And I think even if we don't, it is in some people's karma to always have a brain that is going to produce depressive thoughts. We know, for example, that there are some genetic polymorphisms and the serotonin transporters in your brain can be a little bit different. And so if they're a little bit shorter, we're more prone to things like depression. So there are some things about mental illness that are not fixable. Yeah. But in my overwhelming, in my career, I've seen over a thousand patients. There are three that I can think of. of that I've been basically unable to help in a significant way.

So 99.9% of patients you've seen improve their mental illnesses or mental disorders or mental stresses into having a more empowering mind that it makes them feel better. And I would even go as far as to say that cure is the wrong target. It's improvement, right? Yeah, I think it's your life doesn't have to be so hard. Yes. You don't have to cure it. That's what everybody wants.

Everyone wants to be completely free, whereas I think that's once again the goal, right? Like I want to be free of this forever. I think the challenge, and this can be really depressing to hear is like, yeah, this is going to be a part of you. But just because it's a part of you, it's so exhausting right now, but you can learn to live with it. It can be a part of you. Yeah. I was addicted to video games. It's a huge part of who I am.

I had a gigantic ego. It's a huge part of who I am. You know, and I think this is what's really weird. I've had patients who'll be like, yeah, cancer is the best thing that happened to me. I'm like, what are you smoking? But this is what's really crazy is life is about all of these things. It's about the good and the bad to be detached from just wanting to avoid bad at all costs. That's when we get into trouble.

If all you want in life is the good stuff, you will not be in control of your own actions, be able to embrace that negativity. Don't run away from it. Then you have control. Control is about being independent of the responses that life sends your way. This thing sucks. I didn't want to go swimming today. It felt bad. It was torturous.

Did you do 50 laps or five? Five. Yeah. You see you did five or then you were like, I'm done. I did five. I forced my ass to get into the pool. I thought you were going to say in the beginning, because we never finished what that story was, that you're like, okay, I got there, I did five, and then I kept going a few more.

But you're like, I'm just doing what I said I was going to do. Yeah. So oftentimes I will do a little bit more. Yeah. But today was a day where I was like, I did five. And that's, that's enough. Yes. It's enough.

Yeah. And I thought about do I want to do more, do I want to squeeze out one or two more. And I was like, not today. I'm good. Yeah. Because you've been on the road for nine days. You've been working. You've been, you know, eating a little extra food here probably.

I actually haven't been eating extra food. That's the problem. Yeah. You needed more calories. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I love it.

I've got a couple final questions for you. Sure. But I want people to follow you. Healthy Gamer Gigi on YouTube, Spotify, social media, all the places. And I think it's HealthyGamer.gagmer. G.G. What's the website for you? Yeah.

Healthy Gamer. Gigi. Yeah. So a lot of your content, I think you've got millions of subscribers over on YouTube, a lot of great stuff over on Instagram that I've been consuming, books, all the different stuff. I want people to go check. it out HealthyGamer.ggy. And you have guides to mental health. Yeah. And a lot of these things are coming out here in the next month or two. So if people want to get more of this information, they can

get some of your guides to mental health, topics on love, relationships, et cetera. If they go to HealthyGamer.gagmer.g., you'll get the information on how you can get some of these guides. And I think your guides are like, you know, 20 or 30 bucks or something. I think they're very affordable. So I recommend people going and getting more information on you there. This question is something I ask everyone at the end. It's called the three truths. So hypothetical scenario, even though you are egosist and formless and have no identity. But in the future, you have transcended the world. But in the future, that's a hypothetical scenario. You get to live your life in this world exactly how you want to. Okay. For the rest of your life.

Okay. You get to create, experience, accomplish, you know, or not accomplish goals, how you want, but it's the last day on this earth for you. Yeah. And for whatever reason, all the content you've created is no longer with us in this world. So it either has to go with you or it's eliminated from the world. But you get to leave behind three lessons from all the work you've done or not done or accomplished or accomplished, three lessons that you would get to leave behind. I call it the three truths.

Beautiful. What would those be for you? Number one is understanding is more important than effort. So that one. And I think about this because I wonder, you know, if I teach all this stuff on the Internet and whatnot. But I think about what would I teach my kids. So definitely understanding is more important than effort. I think mistakes are a part of your journey is another huge one.

And I'd say the third thing is the results of your life or deterrentia. determined by your actions. Right. I know we said that we don't control or, but like action is all you've got. So that's the one resource. And kind of related to that, this is a huge thing. I think people don't realize that 99% of the actions that you take are in your head. Literally.

So an action, the way you respond to your thoughts is an action. Yeah. So how you think about a thought is an action. How you respond to a thought is an actual. With another thought. Sometimes that's what people do. Right. They think I'm a loser and then they respond to it by confirming.

Yeah, they spiral. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? So when we talk about a thought spiral, that is not controlling our response to thoughts. And literally, literally, the most important thing that you can do is change the way and control the way that you respond to what your mind generates. win, lose, and to win, win, win, you did it right there. Yeah. And it sounds like if you can train or develop the skill of learning how to respond to your thoughts,

you will live a much better life. Undoubtedly. If that is the number one skill that you develop, it's about to respond to your thinking. Undoubtedly. You, it will influence the quality or lack of quality of your life. Yeah. So it'll change your actions. it'll change practically what your life looks like.

And it'll change your peace. 100%. It'll impact your emotions too. Absolutely. How you feel. Absolutely. So we, you know, the first. Do thoughts influence feelings or feelings influence thoughts?

Both. So thoughts, emotions shape our thoughts. And thoughts shape our emotions. So usually the first, this is the key thing is the first emotion we don't have much control over. But what we do with that. emotion. That's the key thing. Correct me if I'm wrong. I have a belief that most doctors, professors, extremely intelligent, successful academics think more than they feel. Absolutely.

They're more analytical than they feel. Yes. Yes. But it sounds like you have this unique experience of practicing yoga, meditation, you know, being with monks for many years, and deepening a spiritual more of emotional practice, I would say, in your body as well, not only analytical in your mind. Have you been able to navigate the mind, emotion connection well? Or do you feel like you still have had blockages in your body or in your emotions because you're in your head? Both. Yeah. Right.

So I think it never, never, the work is never done. Yeah, yeah. And you're always going to have problems. And that's okay. Yeah. Right. So we have this idea of like problems are only a problem if you don't know how to deal with them. Yeah.

If you stay stuck in them. If you stay stuck in them. Right? So, you know, falling down is only an issue if you can't get back up. Ha ha. That's what I have to do. So that's the way I respond. If I even hear it in my own head to avoid myself from becoming a guru.

Yeah. Alok, Baba. Come, I would do everything. I would give you feast and joy. So, well, a lot of people, this is really fascinating. there's a lot of information about intelligence. So one interesting question I had is why isn't everyone a genius? So if you think about like evolution, right,

and the way that our bodies evolve and things like that, why wouldn't just everyone be smarter? Yeah. Why not? So it turns out that intelligence is a double-edged sword, especially really high. So a couple of really fascinating statistics. If you look at the top 10% of intelligence,

those people make way more money. than the top 1%. Why? Because they're more naive also? The top 1%. The top 9%, I guess, are more naive? So if you take the 10 smartest people in a room of 100, they will make more money than the smartest person in the room.

So at some point, intelligence becomes harmful. Because it's a lack of action probably, right? Well, it's a couple of things. One is that people who are very smart are actually more prone to depression. Why? Because they realize how screwed they are. They can calculate their problems way easier. Second thing is the more intelligent you are, the more emotionally underdeveloped you become.

Because your brain, you solve all your problems with intellect instead of emotion. So oftentimes people who have high IQ have lower EQ. And the reason for this is because if I have, you know, a dominant hand, I'm going to use it all the time and my left hand will become weaker. Yeah. So as intelligence becomes your. tool of choice, other parts of your brain will actually be underdeveloped. They become more dormant. Absolutely.

Wow. And you need both the body, the emotions, the minds, the body, the heart. Yeah, the healthiest way to be is to use the full capacity of what's at your disposal. People with super high IQ are basically one-trick ponies. And so there's some stuff that they're good at and some stuff that they're not good at. And you want to have a range of skill sets. Absolutely. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, look at you. Mm-hmm. Right. Curious, intellectual, thoughtful, physically, on point, emotionally connected. And nothing at all. And nothing at all. You know, an egoless, formless. Yeah. Not yet, but you'll get there. One day I'll ascend to your level. Descend. Descend.

Yeah. Become nothing. Yeah. Final question for you. What is your definition of greatness? I think it's to lean into being fully you. If you look at most people, if this is going to sound kind of weird, but you pay attention to their head, they're running away from themselves. I don't want to be this. I want to be like this person. I want to be like, you're not being you. And so then you look at what other people are doing and you're like, oh, this person wakes up at this time and this person wakes up at this time.

If I have time for a story. Go ahead. So, you know, I was in my first, the second, third week of medical school. And I saw like all my colleagues would like study a lot, right? So we'd go to class and they'd be like chugging coffee. And it's like 7 p.m. 8 p.m. 9 p.m.

10 p.m. 11 p.m. They're at the library. And I was trying to do that because I was like, I have all the stuff to learn. It just didn't work. So then I was, I didn't do great on my first set of tests. And I was like, I got to figure this out. And I was like, I just can't work like these people. So instead I leaned into my yoga training, woke up at 4.30 every day, would study for two hours a day between five and seven in the morning. And then I would go to class, finish class, go home, you know, just do whatever. And then I'd go to sleep. So I only studied two hours a day, medical school. In the right two hours of the day, everything goes into my head. It's fresh. My absorption just drops so much when I'm fatigued. I'm not sleeping well because I've had so much

caffeine. So lean into who you are. You have a unique set. You're a unique set of genetics, unique set of experiences. You have talents that other people can't even imagine. But as long as you are trying to be someone else, the strategy that worked for somebody else worked for that set of genetics worked at that time you know we were talking earlier about mask of masculinity it's a book that I think every dude should check out this is the book that should have been that people should be writing today you were too early I know it was right yeah everyone's talking about masculinity now you did it before it was cool yeah and so like you have to lean into who you are mm-hmm that's how you're going to be great yeah can't live anybody else's life

Stop trying. Okay. Thanks, man. Powerful. Great, dude. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening,

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