Your Problems Aren't A Personality

Hey chat, welcome to the Healthy Gamer GG Podcast. I'm Dr. Allo Kanojo, but you can call me Dr. K. I'm a psychiatrist gamer and co-founder of Healthy Gamer. On this podcast, we explore mental health and life in the digital age, breaking down big ideas to help you better understand yourself and the world around you. So let's dive right in. Alrighty chat.

Let's get started. Welcome to another Healthy Gamer GG stream. My name is Dr. Olive Kanojo. Just a reminder that although I'm a medical doctor, nothing we discuss on stream today is intended to be taken as medical advice. Everything is for educational or entertainment purposes only. So if y'all have a medical concern or question, please go see a licensed professional. I highly recommend them.

I think licensed professionals for mental health things are awesome. Generally speaking, as a group, we do a decent job. Not everyone's perfect. Your mileage may vary. Therapy doesn't work for everybody. But it's a great place to start, and it's a great place to give it a couple of solid attempts. I will say. Okay. Um happy Friday, everybody. So I'm thrilled to be here. I'm actually like

You know, I sometimes get tired. Sometimes I'm not thrilled about streaming, but uh I think today's gonna be fun. We're gonna talk about a couple of cool things. Um so let's actually dive in. So Today, we are going to talk about Um

Okay. So we're gonna talk about I know the the title of today's stream is like Your Suffering Is Is Not a Personality. What what is the title exactly? Hold on a second, let me just make sure I I've got chat pulled up. Okay. I need to I need to pop out chat. What's what's your problems aren't a personality, yeah. This is kinda funny. So

Um, we were gonna talk about this, okay? So how your problems like aren't a personality, right? So everyone So in the world today Oh wait what? Okay. In the world today. There are a lot of people who make their suffering their problems. a part of their personality. And the title of today's stream or th this lecture is Your Problems Aren't Your Personality. I think this is a really great example of um

How like there's a disconnect between, you know, some of our content team and what I'm about to say. Because what we're gonna talk about today is how some people's problems become their personality. So I know the title is like your problems aren't a personality, but actually the really crazy thing is if you look at like the science of

Um let me show you guys this paper, okay? So if you look at the science of The tendency for interpersonal victimhood, what you discover is there is like a personality construct. That is the tendency for interpersonal victimhood. So actually, the really crazy thing is that. It is a normal human mechanism to turn your problems into your personality.

And I I think this tweet is really great because it says, you know, we've become too articulate about our suffering and too inarticulate about our strength. The more elegantly we describe our wounds, the harder it becomes to leave them behind. When a struggle becomes part of your identity, overcoming it feels like a betrayal of who you are.

Okay. And I would wholeheartedly agree with this tweet. And not only do I wholeheartedly agree with it, we're gonna show you all some fascinating research about how and why this happens. Okay.

So the first bit of research that I'm gonna talk to you all about is not something I'm gonna show you all a paper about because sometimes in med school you just like learn these things and they get banked away. So I remember learning about a a really interesting study where they measured pain scores like in the ICU. So basically, a nurse comes in every hour and asks you, How's your pain? And the more times that someone asks you how your pain is, the more pain you actually feel.

Right. So I remember walking away from this study, sort of thinking or learning this in med school and sort of thinking, like realizing, okay, when you continually ask someone like how's your nausea? How's your nausea? How's your nausea? How's your nausea? The more that you actually The more time that a patient's mind spends on an issue, the worse that issue gets. So there are multiple studies that show that ruminating about your the negative things in your life actually exacerbates.

Whatever you're ruminating about, right? So the more time that I spend thinking about something, the worse that thing becomes. And the most counterintuitive example of this is.

Why people who go through traumatic experiences are not traumatized. One of the hardest things that I learned as a psychiatrist is that many people who go through a traumatic experience, like just kind of leave it behind them and like don't need to process it much.

I know it sounds really insane, but the most confusing thing for many people, for example, who are sexual assault survivors, is how little it bothers them. I'm not saying that it's okay to do or things like that. I'm saying that there's actually a bunch of research that shows that You know, 50% or more people, I'm a bit rusty on the numbers, when they go through a negative experience, will sort of like have some period of like negativity around it, and then they'll actually be okay.

And good examples of this are you can take something like a genocidal event. But not everyone who survives a genocidal event develops PTSD. In fact, I think generally speaking, like the min minority of people will develop post traumatic stress disorder after a traumatic event. I think the prevalence of PTSD across the population is somewhere like three point six percent. Okay.

And um that number could be wrong, just popping out of my head. But if we sort of look at it right, like bad stuff happens to people all the time. But as we become more focused on it, as we become ruminating on it, as it becomes a part of, as we spend more time on it, it does actually become a part of our identity.

And once it becomes a part of identity, then something really scary happens because now that this suffering becomes a part of my identity, this is who I am. So I can't let go of that suffering. And this is actually exactly what happens. The really weird thing is that suffering turning into my identity is actually like a completely normal And arguably even healthy thing. Okay. So this is an article on the journey of sense making and identity construction in the aftermath of trauma.

So peer support as a vehicle of co construction. So this this paper is specifically look looking at a study of like, you know, uh peer support and people sort of getting together and talking about the experience of their trauma. And when they talk about it together, they develop a sense of identity.

And this is a key thing, you know, we talk about this a lot in in uh Dr. K's guide to trauma about how like if you look at trauma, what trauma does is it shakes your sense of identity, right? I used to be this kind of person. And then I get traumatized and now I don't know who I am. So there is a systematic process of reconstructing your identity in a healthy way that we lay out in Dr. K's Guide to Trauma, okay? So this is can be a healthy part of trauma recovery.

The problem is that sometimes when we experience a traumatic event, if we don't steer that narrative identity construction in the right way.

The identity that we are left with is as someone who has been traumatized. I've been screwed in life. I haven't dated anyone in high school or college. Therefore, I am destined to be alone. Right. I'm someone who is lazy. I'm fundamentally lazy and undisciplined. I had this failure, I had this failure, I had this failure, and now I am a loser. These negative experiences solidify. into a negative sense of identity. Now here's what this kind of practically looks like, okay?

Or why this becomes a real problem. Okay. So and I I I like this because when we kind of go back to this, when a struggle becomes a part of who your identity, overcoming it feels like a betrayal of who you are. Right. So I wouldn't necessarily use the word betrayal, but I think that when I work with patients who have developed an identity of victimhood, which if we sort of look at this. Um I'm gonna show you all this paper in more detail. Okay. So let's take a look at Victimhood is an identity.

In the present research, we introduce a conceptualization of the tendency for interpersonal victimhood, which we define as an enduring feeling that the self is a victim across different kinds of interpersonal relationships. Okay. And then in a oh So the findings highlight the importance of understanding, conceptualizing, and empirically testing TIV and suggest that victimhood is a stable and meaningful personality tendency.

Okay, so here's what this practically looks like. Some people develop an identity based around their suffering. Now here's the big problem with that. Once you develop an identity. As a victim, what this study shows and other studies that sort of explore it will show is that once I am a victim, no matter where I go, that is who I am. Right. So like you may have encountered some of these people in life. You could be one of these people in life where like

They're a victim like at Thanksgiving. They're a victim at their job. And it's really fascinating because once you tunnel down into the research of this, there are particular things that happen to these people. So they are particularly like raw in terms of interpersonal interactions. They see themselves as the victim in interpersonal interactions.

And then the bigger problem is that once this becomes part of your identity, once you have a traumatic formation of a maladaptive identity, then it becomes really hard to let go of. Okay? So I'll give y'all an example. I was working with uh someone who was in their mid-thirties who had something called double depression. So when we look at Just nu med inspiration från Brooklyn världens godaste börjare, med keddar, piclad rödlök och en legendarisk skorsan.

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Depression. This is multiple clinical entities. Okay. So one is something called major depressive disorder. Okay. This is where there are episodic periods. So there are episodes of persistently low mood and hedonia, which is the inability to experience pleasure, low energy, low motivation, um Sometimes suicidal thinking, impaired sleep, all this kind of stuff. The key thing about major depressive disorder.

is that it's episodic. It comes and goes. So the longest it tends to last is about 12 months. The other interesting thing about MDD is that it tends to resolve. So MDD is when you have like a period of time, maybe like up to a year where you had like a really crappy year that was hard for you. It can be triggered by life circumstances like losing your job or losing a loved one or a breakup or something like that.

But then what the way we know someone has M D D and this all we explained in Dr. K's guide to depression, um the way that you know if you have M D D or the way that a clinical t uh clinician tells is that it knows is that let's say you have a breakup and we would expect after a breakup you're sad for a certain amount of time. Okay? But if the sadness is persistent

beyond the breakup, what we would expect for the breakup period, right? So after you lose uh after you uh get fired from a job, you're really sad, you're bummed out, you apply for other jobs, right? You pull yourself out of it, you apply for other jobs, you find another job. But even when you go into work, you're incredibly like unmotivated, very low energy. Even though you have fixed the problem, the symptoms persist.

This is how we separate out an appropriate negative reaction. So in in in the guide to depression, I talk these talk about these as congruent depression. um from a persistent clinical or uh sorry, a c a clinical episode which lasts beyond the the stressor. Okay. But then there's another kind of depression called dysthymia. So this is um Uh a ver like the clinical construct behind this is like

kind of variable. It's an older concept from psychiatry that we've sort of mod like turned into something else. But I I like this concept of dysthymia. So dystymia is a persistent depressive state. That is usually not as severe as major depressive disorder. So you're kind of sad for like 15 years at a stretch. And some really unlucky people have both. So I'm persistently sad for a very long time, and I have episodes of depression layered on top.

When I work with people who are persistently sad, there's a really, really tricky element of treatment. Which is that the dysthymia becomes the explanation for so many things in their life, right? If I am persistently depressed, that explains why I haven't had a successful career. That explains why I don't have successful relationships. That explains my obesity. Right. And and this is the really tricky thing.

I don't want to use the word excuse because excuse implies that it's not the real cause, right? So when I say like, oh, this is an excuse, that's not really the reason. So the really tough thing about this is that this is real. Your persistent depression is a very real contributor to your lack of professional success.

your lack of relationship success, your lack of, you know, physical health and wellness, whatever. It is a very real cause. There are tons of studies that show that depression leads to bad outcomes. But the problem is once it becomes your identity. Once you have a reason why you are a failure in life, that reason becomes really hard to let go of.

Because if you get rid of that reason, then why are you a failure in your life? You can no longer blame the depression. You have to accept responsibility yourself. Okay. And I I see this like it in this patient, other examples of Um, this one I seen it in its most most toxic forms is actually with parents. So parents who are like narcissistic and things like that, like, you know, once they have this idea of being a victim.

And like they have all of these challenges and like I went through a lot of trauma. So I've seen like, you know, parents with borderline personality disorder who were abused growing up and they were a victim. And once they become a victim, right? So that then like if you have something like borderline personality disorder or bipolar disorder, then what happens is like you have a reason, right? Why you like you have a good reason to screw up.

You have a good reason to yell at your kids. You have a good reason if you've got BPD and you're ill and you've gone through so much trauma and you have difficulty regulating your affect. You've kind of got like a very reasonable, like real reason why you are not a great parent. And the problem is as we start to treat this. The problem, the real problem, is that the BPD does not explain all of you being mad at your kids. They don't expla they they don't explain every part of the explosiveness.

They don't explain the persistent depressive disorder, does not explain every one of your failures, right? It makes everything 50% harder, but there is some degree of personal responsibility somewhere in there. And that becomes really hard to let go of. Right. And and this is what's really scary is our brain, our mind, you know, when we have a good reason for failure, it sort of shields us from our own

Responsibility. And so the hard work that I oftentimes have to do, and this is not easy to do, right? It's not as simple as like, because then it's like the the hard work that I have to do is like, okay, how much are you responsible? Right? What percentage of this is your fault, and what percentage of it isn't your fault? That's a really hard thing to tunnel down into.

The other reason that this becomes really hard to let go of, fascinating study. I want to show you all this super cool paper. Um is constructing of uh a hero victim identity through reminiscing, a phenomenological study on rural Chinese elders. Okay, so this is a super cool study that's looking at uh older people from China who went through some bad stuff. And the really interesting thing about this is these people were many times victims.

But what they sort of talk about is like how the idea of being a victim. actually connects with the idea of being a hero. Okay. And I I want to show you guys like what this means. So like I don't know if this makes sense. You guys kind of know what I'm talking about. Um hold on. Okay, I'm gonna just explain this first and then we'll I'll see if I can find this one. So here's the really weird thing about being a victim.

If we look at psychology, basic psychology, being a victim actually makes you a hero. It's kind of weird, right? So think about it. Right? So there's like Breast cancer. I get diagnosed with breast breast cancer. Now I'm a victim, right? This is not my fault. So when we think when we define victim and the the paper does a good job of this, but uh a victim is someone who something bad happens to you and it isn't your fault.

Now, once I become once I get diagnosed with breast cancer, that also opens the door to being a hero. That opens the door to being a breast cancer survivor. Right. So being traumatized is bad. I'm a trauma victim. I'm a victim of trauma. But then I'm also a trauma survivor. And this is like healthy and adaptive, right? So this is like this is like how we get to papers like this.

So part of that process, part of that healthy process is like reconstructing your identity in a healthy way. To view yourself not as a victim, but as someone who is triumphant. This is where things get really tricky psychologically, right? Because unless you do this in the right way, your heroism. is rooted in your victimness. So I don't know if y'all have seen people like this, right? So we call this colloquially a martyr complex.

What is a martyr complex? It is the tying of heroism to being a victim. I am persecuted, but what is a martyr? A martyr is someone who suffers and is a hero. It is the tying of a heroic identity to being a victim. And now, if you do this, now you're in huge trouble. Because the triumphant part of you, the heroic part of you, imagine you have persistent depressive disorder and every day is sad, but you know what? You are someone who's still here.

And your value is not from your career, not from your relationship. Not from what you've accomplished in your life, but your heroism comes from your resilience in this in the face of depression. That becomes the most positive part of your identity is that you're a hero because you're a survivor. And if that becomes the core part of your identity, if your claim to self-esteem is that you are a survivor, as you go into the workplace, we end up with this. Right? We end up with everywhere I go.

I become a victim. Because every time I'm a victim, I'm a hero. And when I go to work, I want to be a hero. When I go to work, I need to be a hero because instead of actually doing the job and excelling in work performance, what I'm gonna do is adopt this victim hero complex. And this is the key thing that a lot of us miss, right? Because we see the victim, they cry the victim, they say they're the victim, and sometimes they are the victim. I'm not saying like don't believe victim.

But there is an insidious part of this where like our positive identity comes out of that, which is why we can do a study that demonstrates that there is a personality construct of victimhood.

So how do we get over this? It's hard. Right. I I I think the a big part of this is encouraging personal responsibility. A big part of this is when I work with these kinds of people, you you know, what I try to do is, I don't know if this makes sense. An idea of positive identity as a hero victim construct.

Is one of the worst ways to feel good about yourself. Right? It becomes a really easy way to feel good about yourself, but you don't feel aga uh good about yourself because of your actual accomplishments. That's so much, that feels so much better. And so a big part of this is in asking yourself, okay, where is my personal responsibility? Now that question becomes really painful because that means it's not somebody else's fault.

That means that it's your fault. But then that also opens the door. If it is my fault, then I can do something about it. And then I can improve in that dimension. I actually have some degree of control in that dimension. And then once I exercise that control, once I start making the right decisions, once I start doing things that I can actually be proud of, aside from being a victim hero.

Then my self esteem is solved. Right. And that's what we want to do. When we talk about positive narrative identity construction. So in in the trauma guide, We rewire your physiology, change your brain, change your mind, and then construct an identity. Construct a healthy identity. And that healthy identity is some of this isn't my fault. Some of this stuff is. And the moment we do that, we become empowered to change our lives instead of being a victim. Questions?

Oh, how does this relate to Ahamgar? This is Ahamgar. Fundamentally. This topic is not in the guide, not explicitly. So let me be clear about what the guide is and what the guide isn't. The trauma guide is specifically the mechanisms through which trauma alters a person. Right. So how does it change your autonomic nervous system? How does it change your brain? How does it affect your psychology? How does it affect your identity? How does it affect your spirituality?

And once we understand what the mechanisms are, what the corrective mechanisms are for each of those things, right? It's not evidence-based treatment, it's not treatment, it's sort of the elements of trauma that are non-therapeutic. Like they're they're not therapy protocols. So it it still teaches, like we know, for example, so Bessel van der Kolk did a lot of studies on how yoga is very, very beneficial for trauma. But yoga is not a medical treatment, so it covers all those kinds of things.

It's more about what you can kind of do on your own.

How do I feel good about improving myself without the martyr thing? So this is something the great question. So The martyr doesn't feel good about improving themselves. Right? The martyr feels good about not improving themselves. So this is what's really kind of weird, is if this happens to you, what you will notice is you have a very strange, paradoxical, negative response to improvement.

Like, I know it's it's a completely insane thing, but I swear to God, so many people struggle with this and they're so fucking confused. We call it self-sabotage. I I did an interview a couple of years ago where this person described the feeling of being tied to a tree with a rubber band. I think you guys can still find the interview. And he says, like, I'm stuck in this place. And as I move away from the tree, the tension in the rubber band tightens.

And the farther I go, the more progress I make, the harder the feeling is to snap back. And you'll see these posts, right? People will come up to me and and like sometimes when I meet people on the street, I'll ask them, you know, is there something you want me to make a video about? Do you have any questions for me if I've got time? Sometimes I'm running through an airport with suitcases.

And and one of them will say, like, you know, I remember one person said to me, I always like the better my job goes, the easier it is for me to quit. Like I'll just AFK out. Like I I I find a job, I go for a month. I get bored. I mentally check out sometimes and then I sort of eventually get fired or I leave. And then I find another job and I actually do great for the first month. And then people give me a lot of positive feedback. And then I like, I just ghost. I just disappear.

There's a lot of people out there. This is one of the most underappreciated things. We think that making progress makes us feel good. We think that failure makes us feel bad. But there is a subset of the population for whom making progress feels bad and failing feels comfortable. And it and I I use that word carefully because it's not that they want to continue failing. They want to have progress and they want to feel good having progress, but something weird is messed up.

Where when they make progress, they have this really paradoxical reaction of feeling bad, heavily related to trauma. Right. So when I work with people who have a history of abuse as children, oftentimes they select for partners who are abusive as adults. Tons of research about this. And when I ask this person, why do you do this?

Why when when you are dating someone? So let let's talk about your the history of your relationships. Have you found someone who doesn't treat you poorly? And what we discover is that when they find someone who treats them with respect, Their reaction to that is intense discomfort.

Right. And if that seems absolutely crazy to you, here's a minor version of this that everyone experiences, which is the discomfort with compliments. We all want to be complimented. We all want to be recognized. And yet when someone does it, no, no, stop. I can't handle it. I can't handle praise.

Right. We think, oh my God, these people are so like messed up. They have this paradoxical negativity with progress. And then here we are all feeling embarrassed when someone recognizes the value that we do. It's really hard, right? To say, yeah, thank you. It's nice to be appreciated. Which, by the way, is what you should say. If you were someone

Who struggles with compliments? Here's what you say. So oftentimes, so step number one is you compliment the back and harder. You're great. No, no, no. You're great. And I I I like um uh Ali Matu, you know, co like shared this term with me. He's like the mutual appreciation club.

Right? I'm great. No, no, no. That fate makes me feel uncomfortable. You're great. You're awesome. That's what we do, number one. And then what do we do? Then that other person is like trying to appreciate us. And then we compliment them even harder. And then they become uncomfortable. So they're like, no, no, no. You're great.

And then it's kind of like we're we're playing like, you know, tennis with like a grenade. And it's like tick-tock tick-tock and like we're squatting it back and forth. So here's what you say if somebody compliments you and you feel uncomfortable, you fucking just say it. It's nice to be appreciated. That will make the other person feel good because you are receiving their gift and you're saying thank you.

Right? So why don't you say thank you? Because thank you has become so reflexive that it doesn't mean much anymore. It's nice to be appreciated if you guys want to do the next level thing. If you want to be a gracious receiver of compliments, which everyone around you will love. Best way to improve your relations, become a gracious receiver of compliments. It's nice to be appreciated. And then you do the S tier move. Okay. This is Dr. K's S tier move.

It's nice to be appreciated. Then you s you add these three little letters. Can you guys guess what they are? Four. It's nice to be appreciated for. And then you just fucking say the thing that they say. It's nice to be appreciated for spending so much time on making this meal. Right. I see your appreciation. I receive it and I am grateful to you.

So instead of like swatting back a grenade back and forth, now they want you to make f you feel feel good, you feel good, you accept the feeling good, and then you say it back to them and they feel good and then everybody feels good and then everybody likes each other. We should teal teach this shit in schools, man. I think the compliment is fake. That's why I didn't say fucking believe it. I said you say it. You say those words, whether you believe it or not.

And then here's the really cool thing, even if you think the compliment is fake, when they so think about it, right? When someone compliments me and I swat the compliment back. I want them to feel good. That's why you swat it back. Right? That's your goal. So something cool happens, this weird m mental jujitsu.

You want them to feel good when they compliment you. Right? Because you don't want to feel better than them. You want them to feel good. So you compliment them back. Here's the way that you make them feel good. You appreciate their appreciation. And then they feel good. Then they receive it. Right? Cause then no one no one is gonna like this is the S tier move because no one can one up you. I appreciate you for appreciating me. Like no one's gonna say that.

Right. And if they say that, it's so absurd that we've departed the realm of comp compliments anyway. Like I appreciate you for appreciating. Me for appreciating the meal that you made. Like you can't do that. It doesn't go in. It's like the top. You're done. Finished. Game over. It's like the ace serve. Okay? Make sense? Anyway.

All right. Oh, so people were asking about the guide. So just a quick heads up. We are doing a promotion right now. Uh this is the doing stuff bundle. So about three years ago, three and a half years ago came out with like an ADHD bundle because everyone on the fucking planet has ADHD now. Or sorry, AD ADHD guide. And the guide is also about doing stuff. So it's like, I know it sounds we it's a weird name, but it's like, how do you do things? How do you get yourself to do things?

Um, so we also added a couple of things. So there's a meditation journal, a doing stuff planner, right? So some of the stuff that we teach in there is about executive function and like how to organize yourself. how to get things done. And there's also access to meditation tracks.

Um, so there's a a track for focus and impulse control and emotional awareness. These are the two biggest domains that I think meditation can help with. So if you guys are interested, we've got a promotion right now. Y'all can check it out.

Let's move on. Okay, I'm gonna ask y'all a question. I give y'all choice, chat. I saw something that I can rant in response to, or we can talk about stagnation. Pondering yourself into stagnation and analysis paralysis. What do y'all want? Lootbox Doctor K rant or analysis paralysis and stagnation? We're gonna do both. Which one do you want first?

Hey y'all. If you're interested in applying some of the principles that we share to actually create change in your life, check out Dr. K's Guide to Mental Health. And so we start by understanding what literally is meditation. How does experience Shape us as human beings. How do we strengthen the mind itself as an organ? And so by understanding our mind, we understand a very, very simple tool, a crucial tool that we have to learn how to use if we want to build the life that we want.

So check out the link in the bio and start your journey today. See, uh this is so hard. Do you guys understand how hard my life is now? My life is so hot, I'm the victim. Ha ha ha! Who is the victim now? Ha ha My life is so difficult. I have two things to talk about and they all want everyone wants everything. I cannot handle it, chat. You guys want all of me so much all the time, it's so hard.

Okay, dude, I don't want to upgrade my layout. I don't want to do any of this stuff. I don't want to raid. I want to manage a pole. Create new pole. Which stagnation rant. Oh, hold on. Do you guys want the other topic? Let me just do the other topics, holy based. Okay, here's the other ones. They're all paints, okay? Just because I explained why I made a decision doesn't mean I'm getting defensive. I mean, I am getting defensive, but that's not why I'm explaining myself.

Um, we're gonna talk about that. And then the other one is high empathy people running different simulations to understand why someone acted that way. People running on instincts, judging everyone's entire bloodline by one mistake. Okay, so these are the options, chat. So I will put it in a poll. Hold on. I'm trying to poll. Okay. Rant, stagnation, um Uh high empathy simulations. Defensiveness. And what was the other one? I think that's it, right? Oh, poll is already active. Oh my goodness.

Okay, it's just two options. Fine. Okay, looks like stagnation's winning. Thanks, mods. I'm slow. Okay. Dude, you guys are y'all are gotta be kidding me, man. Are y'all trolling me and trying to- Y'all are keeping it at 50% 50%? Bro, come on. Chat. Come on, dude. You guys understand so now I'm I'm the victim Okay, loot box is winning out. Thank you. No, fuck you guys. Come on, guys. Come on. Okay. You got defense. Okay. Get right, shitty. Sometimes I forget. Okay, flip penny. Um

Okay, I know what I'm gonna do. We're gonna do this. I'm gonna start a stopwatch. Okay, I'm starting a stopwatch. This is how we're doing it because You guys think you're all that. Now what I'm gonna do is when I when the screen pans over to the stopwatch. If the number is odd, if the seconds are odd oh it's not even running. Okay, I gotta start it. If the number of seconds are odd, we're gonna do Empathy. No, sorry. Uh stagnation. And if the number of seconds is even, we're gonna do rant.

Okay, it's odd. Okay, so we're gonna do which one was odd? Odd was stagnation. Right? Even as random. Okay, we'll do stagnation. Done. Stagnation chat. Thank you for trying to. Wait, can you do just a roll? Hold on. Nope. No, but w is I don't see the YouTube poll. Is there a poll on YouTube? And I...

Okay, stagnation wins. So we're doing notice uh dude, I noticed y'all on YouTube. I just don't know how to do the poll. Is it on the stream or something? Well, can we talk about your midlife crisis one day? But we have other things to talk about. Okay, so stagnation one, right? Okay, stagnation one. Okay, moderation tool is poop. Fair enough. All right, let's talk about stagnation.

Okay. Okay, well don't ponder yourself into stagnation, Diva. You got this. So there's something really cool. Yeah. I love this paper. Stuck in Limbo: Motivational Antecedents and Consequences of Experiencing Action Crises in Personal Goal Pursuit. I love it. So a lot of people Get stuck. And we sometimes call this analysis paralysis, right? Because you don't know what to do.

And then we feel stagnant, right? So inaction feels like stagnation, but it's not really stagnation. It's oftentimes conflict. And then we make one huge what I love about this paper is it shares something really, really, really scary, which is that if you don't know what to do, which is oftentimes a conflict between what you want and what you should. What a lot of people assume is that I need to use willpower. I need to use discipline. And it turns out that using willpower or discipline

fosters something called action crises. Okay, and I'll explain how this works. We're gonna go over this in a fair amount of detail. So let's say that I want to do one thing and I should do something else. When I'm in that situation, I use willpower to overcome my want and move towards my should.

And a lot of people will be of the mind that like this is the right thing to do, right? Then you blame yourself for being lazy, you blame yourself for being undisciplined, you look at other people who are consistently moving in a particular direction. But it turns out that if you actually look at, let me try to find this. Um Okay. I'm gonna explain one or two things, okay?

So controlled motivation has been positively associated with a participant's intended effort at the decisional phase of goal striving, but it was not shown to translate into actual goal effort at two or four weeks later. Suggests that people have trouble translating their controlled intentions to tangible activity at the actional phase of goal pursuit. Okay, what does that mean?

So what is a controlled intention? First thing, controlled motivation. Controlled motivation is things where you have to control your motivation, basically, when you have to force yourself to do something, i.e. willpower or discipline. So, controlled intention is not our natural intention. Our natural intention is, I want to hang out today. My controlled intention is I need to work today.

So oftentimes we have a struggle between something called a controlled intention and what's the other thing that what's the term that they use? Controlled motivation. Hold on. Autonomous motivation is the other word that they use. Right. So what does autonomous motivation mean? Autonomous motivation means it's what you naturally want to do.

And controlled motivation means it's what you don't want to do, but when you try to control your motivation. And here's the crazy thing, right? So if you measure in this study, if you measure at the moment of crisis when you're stuck. If you measure controlled motivation, it can be high, but two weeks later and four weeks later, it's low. And this is our experience, right? So if you use willpower.

To force yourself into something, what happens two weeks later? What happens four weeks later? Oftentimes what you end up doing is finding yourself in another situation where you have to use willpower because you don't feel like it. So one study on LinkedIn, for what it's worth, found that 70% of people, I think, no, had an early life crisis or were burnt out. I forget.

Right, but the levels of burnout are really high. Why do people wind up in a state of burnout? It's because when they don't feel like doing something, they force themselves into it. And when you force yourself into it, it's not like you wake up tomorrow and then you want to do it. In fact, it's the opposite, right? You are Squashing your wants. So then your automatic motivation, that intrinsic motivation, that internal motivation is not being selected for. It's not being supported.

So what we tend to see, and this is what this paper shows, is that when you use control motivation, when you use willpower, you are setting yourself up. Let me find this. So a couple of things happen. First is when we force ourselves to something, frustrations or setbacks set in. Controlled goals may have a hard time competing against other action tendencies, resulting in an action crisis. i.e. when set you can force yourself to do something, but when that thing gets hard.

Then you want to do what you feel like is basically what it's saying. The volitional strength behind them, uh the volitional strength behind them is likely to fade once uh obstacles are encountered. So if you use willpower, I don't know if this makes sense, there's a good chance that you will need to use more down the road, right? Um Here's a really interesting thing.

Controlled motivation represented an independent risk factor for developing mid-semester action crises after controlling for the personality traits of action orientation, which we can get to later. Controlled goals, by their definition, represent a conflict between external demands or internal pressures and inherent psychological needs and growth tendencies. So what does this mean? This means, this is insane.

Using willpower, forcing yourself to do something is an independent risk factor for stagnation, for analysis paralysis. When you force yourself to do something, you are not overcoming analysis paralysis. This is the fucked part. You're not overcoming analysis paralysis. You are creating analysis paralysis.

And even though that sounds insane, right? Because that's insane. If you look at your life, this is exactly what you see. You see that when you force yourself to do things, you end up having to force yourself to do things. Now, there is an element of conscientiousness, and that's what's pretty cool about the study. This study looked at conscientiousness and neuroticism.

So conscientiousness is the tendency to work towards a goal with delayed gratification, without reward, things like that. Okay, so there are a lot of people out there. who will use willpower The uh but this is the tricky thing. It's not that they actually use a ton of willpower, it's that they are more okay not giving into themselves in the first place.

And there is absolutely, I'm not saying never use willpower. Willpower is great, right? So there are many situations in which if we use willpower sufficiently. We will eventually train our neurons to be okay with something. That can absolutely happen too.

But I want y'all to look at the bigger picture here for a moment and look at what many people experience. What many people experience is the opposite of that. Many people experience, I use willpower and then I don't feel like doing it. I use willpower, I don't feel like doing it.

I use willpower. I've been using willpower every single day. I'm burnt out in my career. I've been in this job for three years three years. I force myself to go every day. And things don't get better. They get worse. Every day you have to fight more. Willpower becomes a drug that your motivational system becomes addicted to. And it needs more willpower and more willpower and more willpower to keep going.

How do we fix this? How do we stop being stagnated? So these are the kinds of behavioral things that we really lean into with coaching. So I'll give you all a simple example. When I was putting together the pro program, okay. So a lot of people get confused because they come into coaching and they're like, Oh my God, we're gonna explain what we do in coaching. I'm gonna give you all a cheat sheet right here and now of the psychology of how this works. Okay.

A lot of people think, I want my coach to help me accomplish this thing. That's not actually what coaches do. Coaches, it's really confusing for many people because they come in, the coach starts asking you about your feelings. So the key thing, if we want to fix things, is not to force ourselves to do it. It is too Um let me find this. Self-concordant goals are thought to arise from a person's lifelonging, evolving interests, and his or her core values. Um

Okay. Since autonomous goal oh Since autonomous goals reflect people's authentic values and interests, they allow individuals to draw upon volitional resources, such as sustained gold effort to ensure consistent goal energization. Okay. So if you don't want to use willpower, if you don't want to become dependent on willpower, there are what's my handwritten notes. I'm missing something. There are two things that you need to do.

You need to ask yourself, what do you want? Why do you want it? You need to actually explore what you want. And then the second thing that you need to do is focus on what you're going to do. So I know this sounds weird, but most people think that the problem is behavioral. How do I get myself? to do something. And this is why everyone loves habit building, because habit building is about getting yourself to do something automatically without effort.

There's a lot of merit to habit building, but be clear. Habit building has nothing to do with motivation. Habit building bypasses the motivational circuit. The biggest problem with building habits is that you never do extra. You guys understand that? Once something is a bit habitual, you never go the extra mile with a habit because the whole point is that it's programmed. It's automatic.

Habit building raises the floor of behavior from zero to 50. It never gets you to 100. It never gets you to 150. The people who accomplish at the height of their potential. are not relying on habits from that for that extra bump. They're utilizing their motivation, their intrinsic motivation for sustained effort and goal pursuit. The other really interesting thing.

is that when we use internal effort, let me see if I can find this segment to the paper. I'm sure you guys can piece this together, but you also manage obstacles better. Um consistent goal energization. Uh okay, so g in the goal striving literature, autonomous motivation, i.e. wanting to do things, has been robustly linked to sustained goal effort, increased goal progress.

Decreased goal ambivalence, i.e., you stick with things, you're not internally conflicted. Reduced temptation makes you want to put down your phone. Increased goal attainment. Okay. Also, autonomous goal motivation has been shown to moderate the effect of implementation planning on goal progress. Okay, so that implementation plans are associated with relatively greater goal progress. Okay, what so what does this basically mean? This means that when you this is kind of common sense.

when you want to do something and you make a plan Making the plan is associated with goal progress. How many of us have been in a situation where we want to do something or we should do something? I want to go to the gym more. And then we develop a plan and then we just don't stick with the plan. Right? We think, oh, I need to make a better plan. I need to make a better plan. We are missing the forest for the trees.

So when I was sitting down and I was thinking to myself, when I was getting 10,000 requests in my private practice a month. And I was thinking to myself, how the fuck do I help these people? I took a group of noobs from the internet, 12 of them, and I was like, okay, I'm gonna teach y'all some stuff. I'm gonna teach y'all how to get people to do things.

And this was the key thing. It's not about and you guys may remember this from many years ago. I did a stream where I drew these quadrant. Okay, this is a quadrant. I don't know if you guys remember. I don't even remember what the quadrant was, but it's kind of like this. There's like desires, values, shoulds, and something else. I don't even remember the model.

You guys remember this? This is one of the key things that I teach in in the lecture. I I forget the thing. It doesn't matter right now. But the key thing is if you want To have sustained progress. Implement things successfully. It's about cultivating autonomous motivation. Right. And this is where there's a bunch of people like the productivity like gurus on the internet that are like, forget about motivation, forget about emotion. We need discipline.

We need willpower. We need consistency. We need habits. They're not entirely wrong, but this study actually shows that they're wrong. Right, there's truth to all of those statements. There are plenty of studies that show that the habits are good, willpower is good. You know, Effort is good. But if you want it, and this is the key thing, the excellence, achieving excellence does not happen through willpower.

Does not happen through habit. Achieving excellence happens through cultivating your internal drive. So what do we do? We ask people questions. What do you really want? Why do you want it? What makes this important to you? You have to cultivate that internal motivation from the bottom. The second thing that we do. Is this Where's dispositional? Dispositional prediction predictors of action crises. This is a bit complicated, but let me see if I can figure this out. Okay.

The dispositional uh disposition towards action versus state orientation is considered in two circumstances. Okay. So I'm going to explain this. There's one other element to understand.

Human beings think in two ways. They think in terms of action or they think in terms of state. This is something that is like so mind-blowing, but so few people think about. So here's an example of someone who thinks in terms of state. They always think about how something is going to make them feel. Right? They don't think about what they're gonna do. They think about what they have to do in order to feel a certain way.

How much do I have to work in order to relax? They're thinking about the state of relaxation. Right? How long do I have to be at my job before I can go home? And then I can relax. Why how much do I have to listen to my husband or my wife complain again about the dishes how long until they shut the fuck up and I can finally be at peace? If you look at the world today, many people chase states.

Chasing a state when it becomes when that chase becomes pathologic, we call it an addiction. I'm chasing oblivion with ketamine, with fentanyl. I am chasing euphoria with THC, with video games. We are chasing states. There are two kinds of people. This is what this research shows. Some people focus on actions. The end goal is an action. What am I going to do? Some people focus on states. How am I going to feel? And the action gets tied to the feeling.

The action is in service to the feeling. For some people, the action is the end. So that's why we do two things. We first of all cultivate your wants, and then we ask you about behavioral change. Part of the reason that I don't know if you guys know this, but um, you know, at HGI we now have NBHWC certification.

National Board of Health and Wellness Coaches. And the reason that that we went through that s that that rigorous process, took the original version of the coaching program, buffed it up for focus on behavioral change. Health and wellness coaches are all about getting you to take your blood pressure medicine, getting you to actually alter your diet. They're all about actions and behavioral change.

Now, in my experience, and this is what I think is super cool about this paper, this paper shows the crux of what I try to do with the people that I work with. First of all, what do you want? You really have to dig into that. Because when you figure out what you want. That's how you get to sustained effort. That's how you get to resistance to obstacles.

If you don't focus on what you want, if you focus on your controlled motivation, which by the way, I don't think we actually defined. So let me take a quick look and show you guys this. I know I'm kind of. Got up. This is important. Control motivation subsumes the Two least. Internalized forms of motivation on the continuing, pursuing goals in response to external contingencies, such as rewards or punishment.

How do I get this reward? How do I avoid this punishment? Right. That's that state feeling that we're talking about. It's not about the action itself. It is about chasing a particular outcome. And persuas, such as rewards of pronunciation, and pursuing goals out of internal feelings of obligation or pressure. This is another really interesting kind of mindfuck. So there's something called introjected motivation.

This is when you think it's your motivation, but it's not really your motivation. It is motivation that you absorb from the outside world and comes from within you, but is really coming from the outside world. internalizing the standards of the people around you. So what do I do when I work with a client? What do coaches do when they work with clients? We try to help you get rid of your introjected motivation.

The way you've been conditioned by society for what you should want. Are alok, you're going to be a wonderful doctor one day. As long as I can remember, literally as long as I can remember, my grandmother has been telling me I'm gonna make a great doctor one day. She also said that to my daughter when she was four. Reflexively, you're gonna be great doctor, great doctor. And we think these are our motivations. They're not our motivations.

And when we lean into this stuff, right, when we have these introjected motivations and we start moving towards them, we get into a a stagnation, we get into an action paralysis. We don't feel like doing it. I don't want to. And then we use willpower. And then that just advances the whole thing. Willpower is an independent risk factor for an action crisis. Fucking insane. You are signing yourself up. And for the love of God, tell me I'm wrong. Tell me that that is not your experience.

That forcing yourself to get out of bed one day sometimes means you have to force yourself to get out of bed the next day. And forces yourself to get out of bed the next day. Instead, what we really want to do is something that seems really counter to intuitive. We don't think to ourselves, when I want this and I should do this, I think about how to overcome the want. That's the wrong direction.

Why do you want that? What direction is that leading you? Because following your wants is easy, bruh. I'ma play Dota all weekend. I'm going to play some BG3 in some Unicorn Overlord and some split fiction with my kids. That's easy. The really cool thing is that if you cultivate that connection with what you want, because the cool thing is y'all wanna do more than just play video games. Y'all wanna paint.

And y'all want to learn more about AI. And you guys want to d develop jailbreaking methodologies for AI. Y'all wanna write books and start companies. And meditate for four hours a day. Y'all want these things. So stop using willpower to get them. Questions. Then we go rant. Twenty minutes counts. What to do instead. Yeah, so so this is the thing, right? So you spend some time.

cultivating what you want. Ask yourself what do you want? Spend some time focused on implementation. What are you gonna do? And be super careful about avoiding Doing things for the state, the the the doing things to evoke a state. So if in your mind you're trying to get a state and then you are reverse engineering actions, it's the wrong way to think. Right? Cause then you're chasing a state. That's not a good thing to do.

What but what if you when you meditate you find out you don't want anything, just sit? Absolutely, you can just sit, but also I would say you can change your technique. Don't you need willpower for consistency? No. Here's the crazy thing, right? So I don't know if you guys remember this. Sustained, so autonomous goals are associated with sustained goal effort. The most consistency on the planet, let's be clear, okay? Consistency comes from wanting something.

Who here is struggling with consistency to play video games? Man, I wish I could play more video games on a daily basis, man. I know some of us are anhedonic, so you guys have struggling with consistency, right? But like, who here has consistency with like spending time on social media? Consistency, this is my whole point. Consistency does not come from willpower. A controlled motivation is a risk factor for an action crisis. Using willpower today buys you using willpower tomorrow.

So some people will adopt the strategy of like going hard in that direction, right? So like It's kind of like one of these like, you know, um I'm thinking about like these games like Sifu or like, you know, I don't know, like Risk of Rain, like these games that get constantly harder. The further you go, the harder it gets. That's what happens with willpower.

Action crisis number one, you use willpower. You are buying yourself, you are staying in a job that you don't love. What do you think is going to happen a month from now? You are forcing yourself to stay in a job that you don't love for a year. What do you think is gonna happen a month from now? You are forcing yourself to stay in a marriage that you don't want to. What do you think is gonna happen a year from now? Consistency comes without willpower. That's the crazy thing.

Right. Willpower can be still useful. I'm not like anti-willpower. But I think our model isn't supported by the science or isn't A model that involves habit and willpower, and this is where a lot of the research on habit and the the desire for habit comes from, right? We want habits because we know that willpower is inconsistent. That's why everyone loves habits.

But the problem with habits is once again, they simply raise the floor of behavior. They make sure you take your medicine every day. They don't cause you to excel. In and of themselves. Now there's an argument to be made that if we look at what excellence is, excellence is raising the floor, which I think is a good argument. But when we're talking about like really knocking it out of the park.

Right. So when I think about if you look at not to say that we're great, but objectively, I think you can make an argument that this channel is in the top 1% of like channels on whatever, like on YouTube, mental health channels. Right. There's a lot of great people who are probably better than us, but we do pretty well. And what's our inspiration? Our inspiration is not forcing, I don't like the I have to use willpower here and there, but I fucking love this stuff.

This is so cool. I love you guys talking to y'all, right? Getting trolled by chat. It's like, hey, which one do y'all want to do? I'm asking a fucking simple question. And you guys are like 50-50. And then once you realize that it see, here's the thing, it organically became 50-50. And then the trolls in chat were like, okay, we're gonna keep it this way.

F you doctor like here I am trying to teach you guys how to put together your life, how to stop being victim blade like victim identity complex, how to have sustained effort. And y'all are like, we're gonna make your life harder, bruh. And that's great, right? That's an obstacle. It's an obstacle. You guys are an obstacle. And how do I respond to that obstacle?

And there are times where I am an obstacle. I talk about this and I talk about this, I talk about this, I talk about this, you guys like, what the fuck is this guy talking about? He's talking about this, he's talking about this, so I don't understand what he's saying. And you all stick around. Right. So y'all, why are you here? No one's forcing who here is using willpower to stay here. No one, probably. I'm sure statistically somebody.

I'm not using willpower, you're not using willpower. And look at what we create. It's great. Even though there's obstacles, even though it's scuffed, even though I'm all over the place, even though you guys are sandbagging me at every turn. Okay, rant time.

I just want to talk about this. Okay? So Uh on professors, I asked one cheating subreddit why they do what they do. Thought y'all may be interested in in the replies. So I I gotta give you all a little bit of context on this. So I like um some of these academic subreddits, right? So I used to be in academia. I have a lot of friends who are still in academia, who are professors, things like that.

Uh, there are a lot of awesome people in our community who are teachers, right? So they'll talk about one of the the saddest requests that I have not been able to honor. is uh, you know, middle school teacher was like, hey, can you stop using F-bombs in your your videos? Because I'd like to show them to my my students. But since you use F bombs, then I can't show them and I think it would really help.

I've given a lot of talks at schools. You guys may have seen that. So I'm I'm I'm sort of like plugged into teachers, okay? Or trying to be. And so one of the things that's going on right now, I don't know if y'all know this, but like cheating with AI is rampant. In universities, in high schools, people are just using AI. They're all these AI detectors. Sometimes an AI detector falsely detects something. So like and like like teachers and professors are just getting demolished.

Because it's something like 40% of their class uses AI. And then they go to the administration and they're like, What are we supposed to do? And the administration is like, I don't know, they're an international student that's paying us$45,000 a year to be here, so don't expel them. Because we need their money. So administrations are not doing a great job at managing AI-related things. Professors are on the front line of like people are cheating.

Right. And they're like, we're not sure what to do. And so I thought this was super cool because this professor is like, I'm going to go to a cheating subreddit and I'm going to ask y'all, instructor here, why? Why you guys I'm just wondering why you guys do this? It seems like y'all are bright, bright, and have clearly spent a lot of time thinking through the cheating process. Why not just do your fucking assignments?

Okay? I'm not here to say F you. My message is this. We went through grad school and were professionalized to write and do our own work. We take our jobs seriously. We many of us see cheating not only as an academic dishonesty, but a personal affront. Why are y'all doing this? I I love this response because this is sort of what I said. I've been an orthopedic surgeon for almost 20 years and someone was talking about this. I thought I would chime in.

It's pretty wild that people think they are beating the system when they're just scamming themselves out of the one thing they're actually paying for, which is the ability to handle pressure and master a subject.

Okay. One student mentioned that they are too afraid to fail, but the reality is that by cheating, you have already failed the most important test, which is building the discipline to show up and do the work. When things get hard, if you get a degree without actually learning the material, you're basically walking into the workforce. Slash world with a fake map and no company.

And I was like, damn, that guy's right. You guys may have heard me tell the story, right? And I'm not surprised that this person is an orthopedic surgeon, is a physician, because most physicians Reach a point in their career where they realize it's not about getting the grade. It's actually about saving lives. Right. So I was on when I was a medical student, I was on a boat in Belize. And there was a guy there who started vomiting.

And I was just a medical student, but I was like, oh crap, like this guy is vomiting. Like, is he dying? Like, does he have appendicitis? Does he have a ruptured appendix? Did he drink too much? Does he have heat stroke? Like, what's going on? Is this like a medical emergency or not a medical emergency? Right. So at some point, like you have to learn the material. And I'm a huge advocate of like learning things. So in a day and age where AI is like, you know.

AI, like AI can give you this sort of like shallow to medium level expertise in anything. But AI does not give you deep knowledge in anything. It can't do that. I've tried, I've tested. Right. If you can I I've asked uh different kinds of AIs

a hundred different question, not a literally a hundred, but like sixteen, fifteen different questions about different kinds of meditation, it gives the same answer over and over and over again. So AI is kind of like Google version 2.0 where Google made a a lot of information accessible. AI gives a lot of makes more information accessible. So the question is, why do people do this?

And this is where I'm a psychiatrist. I'm not an orthopedic surgeon. So I'm a big fan of deep learning, right? I showed you guys a paper today about an action crisis. Most people aren't even familiar with the concept. I showed y'all a paper today about Chinese, elderly Chinese people who have a victim hero complex. Chat GPT, I don't know if it's gonna know that. So why do people do this? And this is where

I don't know if this makes sense. Okay. So I'm gonna Mention, I'm just gonna mention, just mention Donald Trump for a moment. I'm not gonna make a value-based judgment. I'm not gonna so don't fucking project onto me whether I'm this or that or whatever. I want y'all to put yourselves, just take a step back, take a step back from all the emotions. Pretend you're an alien who's observing the earth. Pretend you were a historian who's looking back 500 years ago.

Donald Trump finishes his work in the Oval Office. I'm not saying he does a good job. I'm not saying he does a terrible job. He goes into his bedroom, he changes into his pajamas. And then as he's getting ready for bed, he puts on his Nobel Prize. The Nobel Prize he has in his vetroom. The Nobel Prize he received, even though it was not awarded to him, and he has it.

Okay. We live in a world where if you steal ten dollars, you get charged with petty theft. If you steal like five hundred dollars, you get it's like theft. Over a thousand, it's like larceny. Over ten thousand, it's like grand larceny. I'm not an attorney. I don't know what the difference is. You steal twenty million dollars.

You steal a car that's worth thirty thousand dollars, you go to jail. You steal a hundred thousand dollars, you embezzle two hundred thousand dollars, you also go to jail. You steal a hundred million dollars, you get a fine. You steal a billion dollars, you get a bailout. This is the world we live in.

Right? Like I I'm not even like I want y'all I know this is gonna be really hard for people to do because they're gonna clip it out of context. They're like, but but I I want y'all to think about this historically. Think about it like an alien from outer space. If you observe the world that we live in today. And there is a good argument to be made for actually learning shit. I love it. I just made it. But let's not delude ourselves into under like forgetting that cheating.

Is probably one of the best ways to rise to financial prominence and success in the world. I know a ton of people, and if you guys are in academia, you know what I'm talking about. In academia, there's a bunch of people who have engines with postdocs. with PhD students who are grinding with the credit flowing to the top.

Right. There's great labs. I've been at, you know, trained at Harvard, amazing labs there where PIs, I had an amazing PI. One day I'll tell you guys the story. It's a it's something I've scripted out about how I became who I am. And I had an amazing PI.

at at Harvard who is just awesome. So there's like great people in academia, but there's also a lot of frauds in academia. There's a lot of people who take credit for other people's work. There's a lot of people in group projects who don't actually do anything and get a grade anyway. There's a lot of people who fail upward at companies. There's a lot of people who show up, are charismatic, answer questions, but don't do a whole lot of work.

There's a lot of people who, when you send them a draft of the deck that y'all are putting, they're the ones who email it to the partner and make it seem as if it is their own work. These people get paid. I literally had a patient of mine once tell me that their boss was like, You're gonna make me a lot of money one. Like, you're gonna make me a lot of money over the next five. Literally what the boss told him. To his face. And you wonder why do students cheat? They cheat because it works.

They cheat because it's efficient. But what if you get caught? So let's talk about sociopathy for a second. This is something that people do not understand. When we look at sociopathy, our research on sociopathy comes from prisons. Now, why does our research on sociopathy come from prisons? Because prisons are the only place that you have a population of sociopaths, right? If I'm recruiting for a study.

to study something about sociopathy, where can I go and find 2,000 sociopaths? Because in scientific research, we want large sample sizes, right? We look at populations. We're not doing anecdote. Anecdote isn't science. I need a large number. So what we do is we research sociopathy and we come up with a lot of findings on sociopathy. But there is a selection bias. Very good. Our research on sociopathy is on stupid sociopaths. Not regular sociopaths, not intelligent sociopaths.

The people who get punished for cheating, right? So when we study cheating, how do we study cheating? How do we know someone is cheating? Because they got caught. We're not looking at everybody else. So, my favorite example of this, this is going to be so such a random ass example that if you're in the medical community, you're going to, you may have heard about this, but if you're not, you're going to have no idea. So there's this exam called the USMLE step one and step two.

The exam is rigorous, okay? So when you graduate from medical school. You you take these two exams over the course of graduation. Your scores on these exams largely determine whether you do what kind of doctor you become and where you do residency. Okay, so this is like basically like I wanna go to Harvard. I wanna do dermatology, I wanna do psychiatry, I wanna become an orthopedic surgeon.

Or are you gonna become a family medicine doc? There's competitive specialties, non-competitive specialties. Some doctors make a million dollars a year, some doctors make a hundred fifty thousand dollars a year, some doctors work eighty hours a week, some doctors work 32 hours a week, 28 hours a week. The other crazy thing is that some w doctors work 34 hours a week and make 800,000. Some doctors work 65 and make 600,000. Some doctors work 60 and make 150,000.

So, this exam determines how you spend your days, how much bullshit you put up with, and how much money you make. And there was a group of people, I think in Nepal, a test center started conspiring with people to let them cheat on the exam. And so these people were getting like a a a good score is like maybe 230, 235, something like that. Okay. Just to give you all a sense. And so like some, you know, guy out of Nepal comes out of this with like a two seventy. And there are a lot of people

Who go to medical school in other parts of the world who want to come to the United States because in the United States you make money. Doctors make a lot of money here. We don't have to socialize medicine like the UK or Canada, where doctors also make a decent living there, but they don't make bank the way that they do here in the U. So the brightest doctors, like one of my roommates when when I was in Boston, you know, was a guy from I think Austria, and his his step scores were ridiculous.

And he was at Harvard. And he's like one of the like so most of most of the prestigious residencies we take mostly people who are from the US, but we take the best and the brightest from the rest of the world. And so these guys basically conspire to cheat on a test. He gets like a 270, 280. Damn near a perfect score. So some Nepalese kid gets a perfect score on this test. It's a one-way ticket to Harvard.

And then what happens is the test center is like, great, we we created this structure. And then many people, then suddenly what happened is like many people started getting two seventies, two eighties, getting perfect scores on this test out of Nepal. And so finally at some point someone figured out, right? The US M L E, which is the US medical licensing exam group.

Figured out that someone is cheating because suddenly in Nepal like 50% of people or 20% of people are getting perfect scores. That can't be right. So then what they did is they voided all their scores. Everybody gets a zero. You get an automatic fail. And there was a flood of posts.

On the medical school subreddits about, oh my God, I've been failed. I've been failed. I've been failed. I didn't do anything wrong. I didn't do anything wrong. Everyone's like, fuck you, you got caught, bitch. Right? Cheaters deserve to get caught. But what I want you all to think about is the first person. The first person who figured something out gets a ticket to wherever they want to go.

So why do students cheat? Because it works. Because it's the way to get ahead. Because tax evasion means more money. Because it's insider trading unless you're a member of Congress. Why do students cheat? Look at the world we live in. Stupid cheaters don't get ahead. Smart cheaters are like There's so much corruption.

At the highest, I'm not talking about the US and I'm not blaming anyone in particular. I mean just in general, right? Like, so don't get triggered by a particular political party. Just like look at the world. Pretend you're an alien and tell me there isn't political corruption in like fifty plus percent of countries across the globe.

I I read this book called Shantaram, which is a book about India. And there's a great quote in Shantaram. It's a fiction book. India is the only country with the honest bribe. Bribes are simply the way that business used to be done there is arguably still done there. I don't really know. I don't live there. This is why people cheat.

And make no mistake that I've even seen this, right? So in my office I've had people who are in banking, who are entrepreneurs. It's like all these like it's funny as I I saw a great quote that the Forbes thirty under thirty has a remarkable pipeline to prison.

So we have these companies like uh what is it, Thoranos and FTX and like all these like billionaire kind of companies, right? All these like gigantic companies where like, oh, it's actually like a Ponzi scheme. Who's that Ponzi scheme guy? Um, Madoff. Right? And you wonder why do people cheat? Because it's the way to get ahead.

Now, I want to be clear about something. Oftentimes, when you explain a phenomenon, people think you are advocating for it. And here's what I've sort of seen. I'm not. So I am of the mind that you should do things honestly. I'm of the mind that hard work does pay off. So let's be clear about how successful cheating is. So, if you want a reliable way to get into the top 25th percentile of success. then cheating is not the way to do it.

If you want to do a good job, you want to become a doctor, I don't think you should cheat. I think the majority of doctors do not cheat. The majority of people who are in the top 25%, I don't think cheat. I don't think you should cheat. I don't think it's good to cheat. But just because I don't think it's good doesn't mean it isn't fucking effective.

There's a big difference between what is right and is wrong and what works and what doesn't work. These are completely independent axes that many people have trouble separating. So please, God, do not think I'm advocating cheating. The other really scary thing

that I've done because I sort of can't help help myself is like when I work with someone who's a sociopath, I think about why didn't this person get caught? So I've worked in jails and I've worked with people who are like in investment banking. Right. And they have many features of sociopathy, like they have substance use and and things like that. And I there are a couple things that I found that are really interesting. So the cheaters who don't get caught are the ones who aren't greedy.

This is huge. Right? So I want you to imagine you're that testing center in Nepal. People flew under the radar. You can have a couple of blips. It's when the signal becomes so large. That people notice. And like there's a ton of corruption out there, there's a ton of cheating out there, but these people are flying under the radar because they are below the people who are at the top.

There's the most egregious corruption in the world, and then there's like the corruption that is underneath that doesn't get headlines because it's smaller and more boring than the other stuff. And I I I've had some people in my office, man, who are just so good at this, flying under the radar. Right? Doing things like placing a bribe for a toll contract.

Like it's such a little thing that no one thinks about. But now every time someone uses this road, this money goes in my pocket instead of somebody else's. Little bits of corruption, but worth so much money. And so oddly enough, I think the the most successful sociopaths are the ones who are not overly greedy, also keep their narcissism in check.

Because sociopathy is correlated with narcissism. These are both like c c cluster B things. And the most effective sociopath on the planet is one who knows when to stop. Right? Doesn't keep going, doesn't want more, gets their money, and then is able to hold it. High conscientiousness, low neuroticism. And leaves their ego at the door. And those people you will never see research on.

You'll see research on the people who grew so fast, the Forbes 30 under 30, that everyone was looking them and they got scrutiny. And so I think if you're a professor and you want to know why students cheat, it's because it's one of the most effective tactics. Think about what cheating is. It's getting the fruits of labor without the labor.

You know what we call that when we work in corporate? Efficiency. Optimization. Minimizing the denominator, maximizing the numerator. And the only time it's a problem is when you're stupid enough to get caught. What do y'all think? Yeah, so like I'm I I I really think like the the most reliable way to end up at a place like Harvard, I think, is hard work.

Uh honestly, like I I I don't think y'all should cheat. I I mean that. I I think that you can get most of what you want in life without cheating. I I personally don't think it's a good decision, even from a statistical standpoint, because the likelihood of you getting caught and everything getting wiped away is like, you know, it's you don't want to risk that. Just do it honestly. Great insight. I'm gonna go cheat now. What I love about that that statement is

We, you know, that statement has the implication that you weren't planning on doing it anyway, or that you haven't done enough. But I mean, come on, guys. We know that there are people at group projects, we know there are people at your job who like don't do a whole lot of work.

Right. Cheating stains character. Like I I'm not even making a character-based argument. Sure, there's like a karmic argument and all that stuff. We can go off the left field, but like I I mean character, sure, you can make an argument about that. But I I don't I I think it's just just do the effort. I I'm I'm with the orthopedic surgeon. that you're paying for something, you should get that thing.

And the most important skill that you get in school is learning how to deliver a high quality of a high quality deliverable for work that you do not want to do. The single best characteristic for success in life, in my opinion, is being able to do high-quality work when you don't want to. If you can solve this, life becomes easy. So I think school is amazing training ground for that specifically.

The only thing cheating doesn't give you is peace of mind. You'll feel guilty and anxious. I tend to agree with you, but I don't know if that's actually true. Right. So there are some people, I'll just be honest with y'all. There's some people, see, there's two kinds of anxiety when you cheat. There's the anxiety that is controlled and there is the anxiety that is uncontrolled. So what do I mean by controlled anxiety? Controlled anxiety is thinking about negative consequences.

And then making plans to protect yourself from them and then sleeping at night because you've thought through all the possibilities, you've planned for contingencies. You can't plan for contingencies without anxiety. You have your alibi in check. You have your plausible deniability. You saved the emails when your boss told you to do the thing. Right? That's anxiety. It is anticipating future consequences.

Then there is the high neuroticism anxiety, the uncontrolled anxiety, where even when you do all of the stuff, You are still worried that something is going to happen. Does this make sense? This has nothing to do with cheating. It has to do with temperament, cognitive disposition. There are many people who have no reason to be worried and will be worried anyway. When you have a cold blooded sociopath who has planned for most of the contingencies, they sleep fine.

It's those of us who are neurotic. Those of us who were not practiced did not have mentorship in how to game the system. We're the ones who have trouble sleeping at night. Yeah, we know painfully little about smart sociopaths, and that's what's really s scary, right? Like when you sit with some of these people, you're just amazed at how how they're not Like how confident they are. Does that make sense? When you were a confident sociopath, you don't have anxiety. You plan for contingencies.

How do we guide society out of this, Dr. K? We don't guide society out of it. I don't know. Don't ask me. That's where my job is helping you. I don't know about intervening in society. So we do public health work, but it's not clear to me that we can make the world a different place. Right, what we're gonna do right now. They're winning the war, sort of. They're winning the war by some metrics, and they're losing the war by other metrics, in my opinion. Don't don't lose hope.

Right. Because I think generally speaking, if you look at the reaction of this group of people, we all acknowledge it's true and we still think it's bad. I don't think we're all I think still sociopaths are the minority of the population. Right? Like I I'm not in I mean like saving the world, like I don't know, bruh. Like we're trying it because we're live streaming. So I'm I'm doing my part. You know. I had a great session at the House of Commons in Canada about

helping prevent violence against women and explaining incel psychology and stuff like that. So like you should do work for the betterment of society. But there's a big difference between Taking my spoon and trying to empty the ocean. I'm gonna do that, but m I don't think that the ocean is going to be emptied, even though I'm gonna do it.

Are all streamers and content creators narcissistic by definition? Absolutely not. But The psychological impact of being a content creator and a streamer is to activate your narcissistic defense mechanism. They're not narcissistic by definition, but being in the public eye active hyperactivates the narcissistic defense mechanism. Narcissistic defense mechanism gets activated when you get judged. The more judgment you face, the more narcissistic you become. I might be biased there. Sure.

Other other streamers are narcissistic. I'm not. Okay. All right.

Okay, let's talk about this. So sometimes when I work with people who have Audi HD, right, or on the spectrum, or have ADHD, I see this problem where You know, they explain why they did something, right? So, oh, I forgot this thing or it slipped my mind, or I know I was supposed to pick this up. Like they make some kind of mistake and then they offer an explanation. And sometimes the explanation is I've got ADHD.

And then the problem is like when they try to explain themselves, people interpret it as defensiveness. They do get emotionally activated. They get defensive, right? That does happen. Like you feel defensive. You're like, look, you're not listening to me. Here's what's going on. And then the problem is that when you get defensive, Oftentimes people in a weird way are less likely to listen to you. That the more you try to explain your side, The more you get punished for having a good explanation.

Okay. Uh, you know, this is not work I've done a whole lot, but like sometimes I'll have someone who is on the autism spectrum or is neurodiverse, let's say, and they find themselves in these like weird traps of social interaction. So how do you handle criticism without getting defensive? How do you, when you make a mistake, Offer mitigating circumstances and have them received. That's what we're gonna talk about today. Okay? So a couple of things to understand. If you're neurodiverse.

Your empathic circuits are going to be different, right? This is why. I think Richard Barclay cites this research. I could be wrong about it, but I think I've seen a paper very similar about how, you know, if you've got ADHD by the time you're in the second grade, one study found that

Uh 0% of kids get invited to birthday parties if they have ADHD in the second grade. I mean, that's not true globally, but like it shows that people with ADHD have a lot of social impairment. Okay. Autism also has social impairment. So when we engage in these social interactions, we're kind of at a disadvantage. And then on top of that, there's another element of this, which is emotional dysregulation and hyperactivation of our limbic system.

So, one of the key things, there's one uh hypothesized subtype of ADHD, which is emotional dysregulation subtype. So, what this means is when you get attacked. The stress response, the fear, the paranoia, all those kinds of things actually escalate. So you get you you feel very attacked and you have to defend yourself. So you kind of lose control of that emotion as well.

And then as they attack you, you get defensive. As you get defensive, it doesn't work, right? Because when someone attacks you and you get defensive, like sometimes it can work, but oftentimes it doesn't work. It's not the best strategy. So, what do we do about this, right? Because oftentimes getting defensive just gets people more pissed at you. It sounds like you're making an excuse.

So there are two or three things that we need to do. The first is understand what triggers the highest amount of defensiveness. When someone makes a claim about you that is tied to your identity, the defensiveness will skyrocket. Okay, so when someone calls you stupid, if you have a Psychological vulnerability. Oh my God, maybe I'm stupid. And it can be buried real deep. You will protest very prodigiously.

Right. So that when someone makes fun of us or calls us out on something, it is our own psychological vulnerabilities, right? So that's a psychological vulnerability. So I have to get defensive around it. If you look at the difference between people who can't take criticism and people who can take criticism, it has to do with whether the criticism ties to their identity. Can I be a smart person who makes a mistake, or does a mistake make me stupid?

So we see this in a really good way in in narcissism, right? The great example of this, where people's opinions of them, an event becomes an identity. Since you oversalted this food, I am a terrible cook. So, if you are trying to not get defensive with people, the first thing that you should ask yourself is: what does this criticism say about me?

And if your mind does the work of tying a criticism to an identity, the defensiveness will activate at a very high level. So that's where there is some amount of work that we can do to tease these things apart. Let me separate this out, right? So I can be a smart person who made a mistake. It doesn't mean I'm a stupid person.

So in the ADHD guide, I uh there's a couple of videos about how ADHD leads to depression. Because when we grow up with something like ADHD or autism, it shapes our perception of ourselves. And undoing that identity-based conclusion is very important.

Now, the second thing that when I'm working with, so that's one thing that I try to do with them, help them understand, okay, like why are you defensive about this? What about this make makes you think about is as a vulnerability about yourself? What does this say about you as a person? And the moment that it defines you as a person, that's when you're gonna get a lot of defensiveness. And then when we get defensive, now we get to the second part, which is how to actually handle the interaction.

So when someone criticizes me and I get defensive, hey, this food is too salty. No, it's not. Now this person has a complaint, which I'm not receiving. So when a human being sends a signal and that signal is not received, what does the human being do?

They increase the volume or they stop communicating. And usually it happens in that order. No, it is too salty. It is too salty. It is too salty. Whatever. I'm never coming over again. I'm never talking to you again. I'm going to ghost you. I'm going to block you. I'm done. Right? So if we want to See, when we are trying to be defensive, we are trying to shut down their attack. We're trying to shut down their attack because their attack hurts us in our soul.

Right. So how do we shut down the attack? Because defensiveness actually causes them to double down. And when they double down, right, their first Invasion was repelled, and so they're gonna invade again. And then we double down with our defensiveness. So how do we disarm their attack? We actually accept their criticism. We try to use empathy, right? What does it feel like or what is it like for this food to be too salty? Help me understand that. We try to understand their situation.

Can you tell me a little bit more? Great sentence to use. Great question to ask. What do you mean by that? It's too salty. What do you mean what the fuck do you mean by that? It's too salty. Right? But invite them to speak more. So if you look at human relationships. You know, if we get into it takes two to argue. So when I say something and you contradict me and then I double down and then you double down and then I triple down and you triple down.

Tension requires like pulling on both ends. Conflict requires pushing on both ends. Like, does that kind of make sense? So the right way to manage this is to actually validate their experience. Oh, is it too salty? Let me try it. Right.

Become a little bit loose if you sort of accept what they have to say, which by the way, you can only do if you don't tie it to your identity, right? That's why it's so hard to do because we make this uh a tie to our identity. Oh my God, I did screw this up. So what what was the mistake that I made? Oh, I didn't send out the PowerPoint on time. My bad.

Now, here's the other cool thing that you can do. Once you sort of say, tell me a little bit more about that, explain that to me, like let me understand what went wrong here. Try to really hear them out. We want to encourage them to talk. Without pushing back.

Okay. Then there's another interesting thing that we can do. We can turn an a defensive excuse. We can pick up mileage. We can turn it into an advantage by outlining our corrective behavior. This is where your side of the story comes in. It feels pretty unsatisfying to not share our side and just take the criticism of other people.

Okay. So this is where okay, like so I this was a situation. I I didn't send the PowerPoint out on time. Turns out that I had a really rough weekend, you know, my kid was sick all week. Um, I need to do a better job of being more careful on Monday morning when I've had a rough weekend. So you can mention the excuse, but the right way to calm someone down is to highlight the corrective action that you're planning on taking. Acknowledge the circumstances. Acknowledge your situation.

But use that that defensiveness, use that excuse, use that circumstance as a way forward. Right? What are you gonna do to fix it next time? That's what most people want to hear. That's what calms most people down. And for from your perspective, I mean, you can do this in two ways. You can do that this as an actual learning. Which will help you not make the mistake again. Or you can use it as appeasement.

So I would actually try to learn from your mistakes. And this is the really cool thing. Instead of being defensive about your mistakes, if you learn from your mistakes, you stop making them. See, defensiveness invalidates the mistake to begin with. It's an excuse, not my problem, not my fault. And y'all tell me, when there's someone in your life who does not take responsibility for their mistakes, what is the likelihood that they make the mistake again?

Now there's one version of I've seen this specifically with people with ADHD in autism neurodiversity, where there's one unhealthy version of this. Which is when someone sort of defaults. So when when you have when you grow up neurodiverse, oftentimes you have a lot of self-esteem problems. And when you have self-esteem problems, it can be very easy or almost like reflexive.

To accept the criticism that anyone sends your way. Some people actually do this and they swing the pendulum so far that, oh yeah, of course it's my fault. I'm an idiot. My identity is that I make mistakes. So anytime you tell me I'm making a mistake, I just I take it in. And they learn this adaptation because they learn that if they argue, they lose. So instead what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna just take your criticism wholesale.

Now, this creates another problem because once you basically never push back on someone's criticism, they're more likely to criticize you again. They will start assigning blame for their mistakes onto you. I've seen this as well. And this is why a lot of times when I work with people, they feel like they can't win. If they defend themselves, people get mad at them. If they accept all of the responsibility, they always get blamed for everything. So it's kind of like a lose-lose situation.

Right, so I think the right way to handle this is actually within yourself. So it is shoring up that internal vulnerability, disconnecting the action from the identity, developing that sense of confidence and self-esteem. Because if you just accept the blame that everyone sends your way, you're never gonna develop confidence.

Second thing is to incorporate constructive criticism. Alter what you're going to do. Try to stop making a mistake. And when these two things come together, that is when you will know when to accept criticism and when to push back. When I have very low self esteem, I push back a hundred percent. out of an a defensive posture and out of an accepting posture. Does that kind of make sense?

So once I develop confidence, once I can look at what my mistakes are and own my mistakes, I can say, oh yeah, I did do this. I I did send I didn't submit the PowerPoint on time. But you were supposed to get me the PowerPoint on Thursday morning. I didn't get it until Saturday morning. So this was a situation where the PowerPoint was delayed and it so happened that this weekend things were kind of crazy. If things were not crazy, I may have been able to get it in on time.

But you also didn't get the PowerPoint in on Thursday when you were supposed to. Right. And then they will get defensive. And then you can be validating for that. Right. So and then a really good thing, a very useful thing to do. is to sort of ask people like, okay, like where are we now? Right. And like, here's what I'm planning on changing. What are what are you planning on changing? Just ask that question. It's a way to signal to someone, I'm not taking all the responsibility for this.

Now, this too, I know this is gonna get kind of weird. This we also have to be careful about. And this is why, like, I I don't know if this makes sense, but you can provide people with dialogue on the internet of what they should say. There's always a case in which it doesn't work. And here's the example of that.

If you are very narcissistic and you make a mistake, you are always going to ask the other person what they can do differently. Have you guys ever been on the receiving end of this? Where someone screws up and they're like, yeah, I did this, but what are you gonna do? This is your fault too. Even when the blame is predominantly on their end, they shift some of the blame to you because they can't take all of the blame. And so this is why social interactions are hard.

There's absolutely a way to work through them. Right. So we want to validate what their concern is. We really do want to hear them out. And that is our advantage. Because then we won't make that mistake again. It improves our performance, it improves our relations. That becomes hard because of our sense of identity. Our identity is caught up in a mistake.

And if we're not careful, we'll swing the pendulum too far on the other side. We'll accept responsibility for everything. So we don't want to do that. So how do you find that balance? You develop that confidence. You own your mistakes and there may be an a another element of pointing out theirs too. But that only works if you do it as the third step. Right? I gotta hear them out first.

Own mine and then I can point out yours. A lot of defensiveness is you criticize me, but you didn't send it to me on Thursday. So there's a it's so simple. There's a sequence. Criticize somebody else after you've owned up to what you did wrong. Be way better received. Okay. All right, y'all.

Um one last thing. So speaking of ADHD, um we do have uh a bundle going on right now, just a quick heads up. Um The ADHD guide and doing stuff bundle. So we teach a lot of the executive function skills and stuff like that. If you guys are curious about um You know, some of this stuff around ADHD, depression, self-esteem, some of this stuff is in there. And we also have a planner and a meditation journal, and you guys will get access to meditation tracks.

So if y'all are interested in this stuff and and want more concrete things to do, um definitely check this out. So it's kind of like all organized into like, you know, what you do. Um and generally speaking, so about twenty thousand people have used the guide so far. And I I think people tend to like it. I think it's pretty helpful. There's a lot of content in there. So I I think it's um

Yeah, it's 40 plus videos, right? So there's a lot of content, a lot of exercises, things like that. So if you guys are looking to work through something in a more consistent way, definitely check it out. And then uh I think I think I'm I'm wiped, y'all. I don't know if it was the rant or what. I know we there were two others that we wanted to, uh, one more that we wanted to get to. This is one that I

I've been wanting to do for a couple of weeks, but we'll we'll get around to it. So happy Friday, everybody. Thanks for coming. Thanks for joining us today. We're here to help you understand your mind and live a better life. If you enjoyed the conversation, be sure to subscribe. Until next time, take care of yourselves and each other.