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

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People will say to me, Dr. K, I, I have no motivation. That's incorrect. You have a ton of motivation. You have a ton of motivation to stay home. You have a ton of motivation to play video games. There is such a powerful drive to return to the couch. So identity shapes motivation.

He is a psychiatrist, a Harvard-trained physician, and founder of Healthy Gamer, one of the fastest growing mental health communities in the world. Dr. K, thank you so much for being here.

A loser is an adaptation that our mind forms protect ourselves. If I think of myself as a loser, other people will pick up on that empathic energy and they will think of me as a loser as well. So a loser never has imposter syndrome. We need to be defiant in the face of the world. We need to be doing stupid action. Not giving up means being an idiot. Let go of the possibility of it ever happening. 99% of karma happens in here. When you have a thought, how do you respond to that thought? That is technically an action.

How do we improve our self-identity if our identity is holding us back?

One of the hardest challenges I have as a psychiatrist who works with high performers is—

We were just talking maybe for the last hour about our lives and challenges we've overcome and what we're up to in our lives. And one of the things that I really care about here on the School of Greatness is helping people unlock their potential, helping people live more meaningful, harmonious lives, helping people be on mission in their lives, having healthier relationships in their lives, and really living from a place of peace rather than pain. And everyone's gone through pain. Everyone's gone through some type of trauma or suffering or sadness or loss or grief. And some of these things shape their identities. And I truly feel that our identity shapes our view of the world, and it can either support us in creating the life we want, or it can keep us stuck in feeling more traumatized, victim, and things like that. And I'm curious, how do we improve our self-identity if our identity is holding us back?

I mean, my goal, and what I try to help a lot of people do, is to get rid of identity entirely. So if we look at like the function of identity, you're spot on that your identity is the lens through which you view the world. So, you know, I've worked with many people who will adopt a negative identity. So the first thing to understand is even a negative identity, like I'm a loser, is not actually a negative identity. A loser is an adaptation that our mind forms to protect ourselves. So I was struggling with gaming addiction when I was like 18 years old. And, you know, I had hopes, I had dreams, and not being able to achieve those dreams is so painful. So one of the ways that we adapt is we become something that is not capable of success, right? So there are winners in life and there are losers in life, and I am a loser. And that thought comes with a lot of a negative emotion. The mistake that a lot of people end up making is they try to get rid of that negative emotion. They try to think like, okay, I'm a loser. Instead, I should be a winner. And there's a lot of value to a positive mindset, which we can get to, but let's understand the fundamentals. First thing to understand is if you have a negative identity, it is serving you in some way. The human brain, our mind has evolved with all of these structures. And one of the simplest ways, I know you, I'm sure you've had injuries, right? When you have an injury, the first thing that happens is we'll form scar tissue. So scar tissue is tough, it's fibrous, and it protects us. So the negative identities that we form help us from facing other things. So if I'm a loser, I never have to try anymore, right? If I am lazy, it's not my fault because there's the people out there who are disciplined and the people out there who are lazy, and I'm one of the lazy ones. I'm unlucky. Then the problem becomes that our identity literally shapes the way that we move through the world. So if I think of myself as ugly and I go on a date, my expectations of the date, the way that I show up, is going to heavily affect the date because human beings are empathic. So if I walk into a room and I believe of myself, if I think of myself as a loser, other people will pick up on that empathic energy and they will think of me as a loser as well. So, you know, if you go into a job interview and you're, you don't think you belong, I see this all the time. It's really interesting. I see a ton of imposter syndrome. When I was at Harvard, I would see a ton of imposter syndrome. And you'd think that imposter syndrome is fixed by success. But actually success, we'll get to this, I'm getting a little bit all over the place, but imposter syndrome is actually created by success. What do you mean? I know it's weird. So a loser never has imposter syndrome. You get that?

Yeah.

You only have, people only think they're imposters when they achieve things. It's really bizarre.

That they don't believe they're meant to achieve.

Exactly. Yeah. Right. So when I end up at a place at, at like Harvard, there's a ton of imposter syndrome.

And these are with the most successful, smartest people in the world.

Absolutely. And that imposter syndrome is created when the world views us in one way, but our identity is something else. So the reason we have so much imposter syndrome at a place like Harvard is because you have a bunch of kids who thought of themselves as the smartest kid in the class. And then the moment they get into Harvard, I used to be valedictorian. Now I'm average.

I'm a nobody.

Yeah, right. And then you're with all these, you're with your peers and suddenly used to be number one, now you're average. And so you feel like you don't belong because you've never been average.

And everyone's jockeying to like one-up and smarter than, and I know this better than you.

And absolutely right. So this is, identity's a tricky thing. So first thing is negative identity is protective. So the, if you have some part of your identity that you think is bad, that you want to get rid of, wrong approach. Ask yourself, what is this identity doing for me?

Yeah.

When I think of myself as a loser, how does that protect me?

You mentioned that it's serving you in certain ways, but it may not be empowering you to live your fullest potential.

Absolutely. And even a positive identity is not going to empower you to live to your fullest potential. So we're good to that, right? So there are identities that we have that protect us from some negative things, and then we have positive identities too. So going back to the negative identity, this will shape the way that we perceive the world. So it creates some kind of filter. Agree?

Yes. So I'm a loser, or I'm not beautiful, or I'm ugly, or I'm stupid.

Right.

This identity that we speak and believe to ourselves shapes the way we view the world.

Yeah. And it also shapes things like our motivation. Uh-huh. So if you were, so this is gonna get a bit technical for a second. That's okay. But we get motivated based on an action success calculation. So what our brain does is it looks at what the possibilities are. And if the possibility of success is high, it will be motivated towards it. Right? This is why—

We'll be more motivated.

More motivated, right?

If we believe there's a high possibility to succeed.

There will be more motivated, right? This is why, like, if we sort of think about, you know, if I tell you, oh, hey, can you get me a glass of water? That's easy for you to do because you can do that.

Yeah.

You believe you can do that. You believe you can succeed. It's such a simple task. And we don't even think about motivation for getting someone a glass of water because our perception that we can do it is like 100%. So we automatically do it. We don't even perceive that we're motivated, but it's easy to do. Now, if I don't believe I can do something, and I can guarantee you that just about every human being who's watching this has something that they're capable of doing, but they don't believe that they can do it. And think about all the things in your life that you can have done that you did not think that you were capable of. And when you don't think you're capable, it becomes so hard because naturally the part of your brain that is telling you whether you can do it or not, you know, if it doesn't believe you can do it, you have to overcome yourself.

Belief. Your limiting beliefs. Yeah.

You have to force yourself. You have to use things like willpower.

Mm-hmm.

You're not really motivated. You have to like, you're motivated to not try.

Yeah, yeah.

And you have to force yourself, but that comes from your identity. And then the moment that you believe that you can do it, it becomes easier to do. The big problem here, and you were asking a question about identity, is in our, you know, if we have some negative identity, that will prevent us from doing certain things. It also motivates us to do other things. So this is what a lot of people don't realize. People will say to me, Dr. K, I have no motivation. That's incorrect. You have a ton of motivation. You have a ton of motivation to stay home. You have a ton of motivation to play video games, sit on the couch, sit on the couch, right? And just think about how motivated you are. If anyone pulls you out of that, there is such a powerful drive to return to the couch.

Yes.

So identity shapes motivation.

Mm-hmm.

Then we get to positive identity. Where positive identity says, I can do something, I'm capable of doing things. Sometimes, you know, this positive identity can turn into things like ambition. It can even turn into narcissistic tendencies, right? So narcissism is a particular kind of positive identity. I think I'm great. I think I'm awesome. I'm the best. Other people are not as good as I am. So in Sanskrit, you know, we have this word ahamkara, which means ego. And there are three kinds of ego. There is a Tamsik ego, which is like a negative identity. That is an identity which keeps you inert. It makes it hard for you to move. Then there is the Rajasic identity. This is the identity that motivates you to act. But this is also the identity that I have to do it. And it's not even that I'm great. I need to do it. I need to accomplish something. I need to help the world. I've worked with so many people who are 52 years old, multimillionaires, and are working themselves towards a heart attack because they have this identity. I need to do it. I need to make people proud. I need to have an impact in the world. I want to do good. And so even in service of that, they will have a lot of motivation. But the really interesting thing is that their motivation keeps them from slowing down. I'm motivated to always move. I can't rest.

Yeah.

I can't sit still.

A lot of high achievers or high performers have that.

Absolutely.

That struggle to slow down, to rest, to take a break.

And we all covet them. I want to be, I wish when I woke up in the morning, I would flagellate myself. I wish I was so consumed by passion that I could work 90 hours a week, 100 hours a week. I wish I was like that. But those people suffer too. They wind up in my office. So this is where there is, you know, we start with a negative identity that protects us from certain emotions. Then there is a positive identity which activates us, but we are always chasing something. And this is the problem with the positive identity. You'll always move the goalposts.

Yeah.

So you get a million subscribers on YouTube.

What's enough? When's enough enough?

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

Yeah, there's no harmony there.

Absolutely not. So then we have the third kind of identity, sattvic ahamkara. This is the balanced identity where you have some amount of inertia. It's a balance between activity and inertia. See, we think that inertia is bad, but it's not. There's a balance between stillness and activity. And ideally, what you want to do, in my opinion, is get rid of all identity. is remember that the negative identity shapes our perception. The positive identity will shape our perception as well. I've worked with some people who are problematic gamblers and really believe in themselves, I can win. I can win. I'm special.

They've lost a lot, but maybe they've won some. So they believe.

Oh, no, they've won a lot. They've lost some.

Oh, they've won more than they lost.

Oh, yeah.

So how's that a problem?

If they were always winning and they're not losing because they keep playing, but because they can't stop.

Yeah.

Right. So yeah, they do keep winning and sometimes they lose. Sometimes they have catastrophic mistakes. Yeah. So this is what's really interesting. One of the hardest challenges I have as a psychiatrist who works with high performers is helping people understand that if you're right 99% of the time, your mistakes are more catastrophic.

Yeah, 'cause you're focused on the losses, right?

Not just that you don't realize you're making a mistake. So if you're right 99% of the time, the 1% of the time that you're wrong, what is your mind going to be telling you?

You're like, "Oh, I made this.

Oh, maybe I'm not always right, or maybe—" And that's why so many people, I don't think we cover this enough. We talk about rags to riches. We don't talk about riches to rags. But there are way more human beings on the planet that go from riches to rags than go from rags to riches. And sometimes people make catastrophic mistakes because of this positive ego, because I can handle it. But you can't. There are so many signals telling you to slow down. There are so many signals telling you this is, this is a problem. This is not working out. So many people are telling you not to do it. And even your mind is telling you not to do it. But you can't afford to think that way. It is so scary. No, I can do it because I believe in myself. I can do it. You know, I got to believe. Don't give up. Keep going. And it can be absolutely catastrophic.

So how do you know when you should reinforce the belief that you can accomplish, achieve, overcome something that you feel pulled or drawn to do? And instead of, oh, I'm not even going to try at all. Yes. You know, how do you— what's the balance there?

It's a problem of perception. So if we look at how identity literally neuroscientifically shapes us, it shapes our perceptions. If I think I'm a loser and someone— I say hi to someone and they just say hi and they look away, maybe this person lost their parent this morning. But if I'm a loser, I will take normal data from the world and I will shape it. If I have a positive identity, I will also do that. It's evidence reinforcing the belief that I have. It, it's actually not evidence. It, I shape my, my belief shapes the evidence. The evidence doesn't shape the belief.

My belief shapes the evidence, right? So I see something, it could be a neutral event, but then it's shaping the belief.

Yes. And this is a, a huge problem where, you know, there are so many people I work with who are way too nice and they're compassionate and they're kind and they're forgiving. And they get screwed time and time and time again. You know, they think, oh, every human being on the planet deserves to be loved, so I'm going to let someone walk all over me. Yeah, walk all over me or not even walk all over me. It's I will let someone take advantage of me once and I will forgive them and I will let them take advantage of me again and I will forgive them.

I feel like I did that for most of my life. I feel like people do. I feel like my— we were talking beforehand off camera about you know, how you went through a midlife crisis in the last few years. I don't know if you publicly shared that, but I feel like my midlife crisis was a couple of years ago as well, and it was shedding 95% of relationships in my life that I had had that I felt like were— that I needed to create boundaries in those relationships. But Lewis, when you shed those relationships, don't you become a mean person? That's what I believed.

Shouldn't you be a caring person who maintains your— you want to be someone who maintains relationships. Relationships, right? That's a good thing to be.

That's what I believed. And then it drained the life out of me. Absolutely. Constantly giving and constantly giving.

And because you are— this is the positive identity. Oh, I want to be compassionate. I want to be great, right? We feel so guilty when we step away from our positive identity. Yeah. And then that guilt— because I don't like the feeling of guilt. So you know what? I'm going to let this person take advantage of me again. So the goal— how do you tell? Positive identity will shape your perceptions as well. All identity will shape your perceptions. So what we want to do is to see the world as it is, free of all perception. And the only way you can do that is to get rid of identity.

Delicious spring gatherings start at Whole Foods Market. Shop the Spring in Bloom sales event with yellow sales signs throughout the store and serve your loved ones Whole Foods Market seafood. Always Responsibly Farmed or Sustainable Wild Caught. Explore vibrant seasonal flavors like their trending Mango Yuzu Chantilly Cake, great for brunch or an after-dinner treat. Speaking of brunch, check out their deviled eggs, cold-pressed juices, and more. Spring is in bloom now at Whole Foods Market.

With the all-new Audi Q3, the answer is always yes. Yes to adventure. Yes to No to escape. Yes to right now. The all-new Audi Q3. Made for the yes life.

You're juggling a lot, but you can still squeeze in a financial plan. With a Northwestern Mutual financial advisor as your partner, it's not only possible, it's personalized. So if you're tying the knot, closing on a house, or welcoming a little one, you'll be ready for whatever life tosses your way. It's the right time to feel feel less stressed and more certain. That's a better way to money. Let's get started at nm.com. The Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Your identity, you're a humkar. This gets a bit tricky, but if I ask you, Lewis, who are you? What would you say?

Well, my first thought is I'm a loving, passionate, wise man. Okay. Yeah, that's what I would say.

Okay, great. Right? So I'm a loving, passionate, wise man. So we identify with all kinds of qualities. So I could say I'm a man, I'm a doctor, I'm a husband, I'm a father, and that's all part of my ego. So I don't know if this makes sense.

I can make the identity. I'm a New York Times bestselling author. I'm a podcast. I can identify with accolades.

You could identify with accolades. You could identify with vices. Yes. But here's the crazy thing. You were you before any of those things were true. Yes. You will be you after all of those things are gone. Yes. Right. So one of the most interesting questions that's, you know, I struggled with is when did I become a doctor? Is it the second I get my MD degree? So for me, it was being on call. And there was one particular instance where there was a— my pager went off and it was something called a rapid response. So a nurse was like, it's like a not quite an emergency. So I go into this room, semi-emergency, semi about to be. If we don't do something right away, it's going to be an emergency. So I go into a room and there's a patient who's having a seizure. And so the nurse is there and I walk in and literally like 15 seconds later, my senior resident walks in. His name is Ken. He's an awesome guy. So Ken walks to the other side of the patient and he's like sitting there with his arms crossed. And so I start reporting to him because I'm an intern. I've been an intern for 2 weeks, finished medical school. Like a couple weeks ago. And so I said, Ken, you know, there's a 38-year-old woman who's started having a seizure, seems like about 90 seconds ago. And then he looks at me, he's like, mm-hmm. And I said, Ken, the patient's having a seizure. And he said, mm-hmm. Ken, what should we do? It's like, what do you want to do? I don't know. IV lorazepam, like 1 milligram or 2 milligrams? And he's like, which one do you want to do, 1 milligram or 2 milligrams? I'm like, 2 milligrams. It looks like it's a big seizure. And he's like, sounds good. And so what's really scary is the seizure isn't dangerous for like 60 seconds. And Ken is— Ken knows that everything is fine. But that's where, like, you know, when some— when you're panicking, you want him to take over. It's like, I've been doing this for 2 weeks, but I actually have the information. I know the thing.

You have the— but you didn't have the autonomy yet. You didn't take over.

I didn't take the autonomy. Right. But I had the ability. Yes. And so that's why Ken was awesome. He's awesome, I'm sure.

Sure. He's being a good leader.

Being a good leader by not taking the responsibility from me. And so, you know, that was the moment I became a doctor. But I knew everything before then. If after I retire, will I still be a doctor? It's a piece of my identity. But I've always been me even before that. So accolades are not bad. Parts of our identity are not bad per se. They're a necessary part of living in the world, but we should step away from them as much as possible. At the end of the day, in this moment, I'm not a doctor. I'm just me. And what we really under— what I really try to help people do is move from negative identity to positive identity. That's a step in the right direction. But then we want to shed all of that and recognize that we're just humans. And you are a wise, passionate man. You weren't that before in a weird way, but that's okay, right? Because you had to go through the negative versions of yourself to be the current version of yourself. And if you try to hold on to being a wise, passionate man, you will be in trouble. That too is a stage. So let that go too. Let that go when you're ready. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let it go.

Well, that was more for the giving an answer. You know, you're like, who are you? I was like, okay, I'm a passionate wise man.

And this is where, you know, I spent 7 years studying to become a monk and the answer of who I am is nothing. I'm nothing. I'm empty. I'm just— I'm just an organism. I'm just a random set of neurons, tissue, thoughts, emotions moving through the world. And a soul. And a soul. So that's our purest form. Yes. Right. So identity is of the mind. It's a part of psychology. But and as we practice these, you know, states of— as we achieve states of meditation, you will feel emptiness. Yes. And emptiness is a beautiful thing because all of your problems disappear. And then when you don't have an identity, see, if you believe that you are a wise man and then you get some bit of information that is contrary to that, you're like, oh, maybe I'm not. And so then you're struggling, right? Because am I a wise man or am I not a wise man? Here's the crazy thing. You are a wise man and you are also not a wise man.

And I'll make mistakes and I'll— You will make mistakes, right?

And you will make mistakes that will lead to your wisdom and you will make mistakes that'll make you an idiot. Yes. I'm brilliant and I'm an idiot. Mm-hmm. To hold multiple identities. I know a lot and I know nothing. Absolutely. Right. So that's how we transcend. There's this word that gets thrown around a lot. So I think the ultimate goal is to transcend identity, to move away from all of those things, that all of those things are a part of you. But they're not you, right? It's a part of you, but it's not ultimately who you are. And when you step away from that, that's when you start— when you stop thinking of yourself as wise, then you will be able to recognize your mistakes and you will be able to recognize your wisdom. Yes. Wisdom is a piece of you. It is not you. And so ultimately, we're going to step away from all of that stuff.

Yes.

In my opinion, if you want to be happy.

How do you think about identity for yourself living in a material physical world where you have to organize things and strategize the future and bring people together and plan and pay bills and bring in money and present yourself and have credentials and study? How do you think about identity personally for yourself?

Great. So, this is such a weird thing, but what I want you to understand is that identity is a vritti. Vritti is a fluctuation within the mind. Identity is not an object, it is an activity. Yeah. Okay. So I know this is ongoing and goes away.

Yeah.

Okay. So I want you to literally think about this precisely. Okay. When you're taking a dump, are you a wise, passionate man?

I still am. I still am, but I'm in that moment taking a dump.

How would I know? That you were a wise, passionate man? If I were to just—

it would be more of a self-reflection of a knowing, but someone else want to know.

So in that moment, you're not a wise— you're just a dude taking a dump, right? So this is what I mean. So your identity literally activates and deactivates. That's what people need to understand. It is an energetic pattern. So we know this because we have this thing in psychiatry, we talk about the narcissistic defense. What is that? That is when we pump ourselves up when we feel threatened. So if I say you're stupid, you say, no, I'm not. Here are all the reasons how I can prove to you that I'm not stupid. So that's narcissism. If you criticize a narcissist, they will put you down. They'll attack you back. They'll pump themselves up. So identity, literally, if you look at like as you go through the day, Right. And maybe I'll use another example. So, you know, I don't know if this is public or not, but I think you've just had a couple of kids. Yeah. Yeah, it's public. Right. So, you know, when you're holding one or both of your daughters, you were just a dad. I'm just present. You're just present, right? You're not even a dad. It's weird. We think a dad is everything that you do for your kids. When you're holding them in that moment and they're asleep in your arms or you're watching them sleep, you're not even a dad. You are. Just an organism that is in bliss. Observing. Observing, right? You're just in that moment. And when you're doing that, like, someone else will see a dad in you. But in your mind, there's no identity of dad, right? There's identity of dad when they take their first steps. There's identity of dad when you watch them graduate. There's maybe identity of dad if they get married one day. That's when there's identity of dad. But in the moments that you're with them, there's no identity. So identity is something that turns on and turns off. So for me, and this is what becomes important because we require identities to function in the world, right? I have to have an identity as a doctor in order to be a doctor. I can't let that go.

So it is important for you to step into identity. Perfect.

At different times and then step out of it, right? When— so when someone comes at you, you need your ego. I'm not— I'm not a POS. I deserve respect. What you are doing is not okay. I deserve better. But this is the key thing. And this, I think, gets misunderstood a lot because in, you know, in these contemplative traditions, we talk about being egoless. The goal isn't to be egoless. The goal is for you to be in control of your ego, not have your ego be in control of you. Yeah. So I think about my ego and my identity is a guard dog. And if I tell it to attack, it attacks. There are times where it gets antsy on its own. A stranger comes in and my ego activates, but I need to take a step back. I need to tell the dog to calm down. You know, this is not when a patient says, hey, Dr. K, I've been coming here for 6 months and I don't even know if I'm getting better.

Right.

And then I say, I am a Harvard-trained psychiatrist. If you are not, I have thousands of patients that are getting better. You are not getting better. You're the problem.

Yeah. You're the problem.

Yeah. You are not doing the treatments properly. That's why, you know, it's not my fault. And then that, that naturally arises. The narcissistic defense naturally arises. And there may be times where I have to defend myself. And there may be times where I need to receive that criticism with, perceive that in the right way.

Uh-huh. What, is there a part of your identity or ego that still gets the best of you?

Every day. All the time. Um, I think for me it's being a loser.

That's what you believe or think?

Yeah, I am a loser. Like, I'm— I like, literally, I lose every day. I make so many mistakes, you know? Like, I failed so many classes. I had to apply to medical school 120 times to get in. You know, it took me 3 years to get into med school. Wow. even today, you know, I'll make a YouTube video that sometimes has a million views in 10 days, sometimes has 100,000 views in 10 days. I, I am a loser. So here's the other thing. There are parts of the negative parts of our identity are only a problem if we make them a problem. And I can accept, like, of course I'm a loser. That doesn't mean I'm not also a winner. I have both of these things within me. Yeah. I'm a good husband, really important, and I'm a bad husband. The moment that I start believing that I am exclusively a good husband is the moment that my wife gets screwed. Really? Absolutely. I need to accept that at times I'm a bad husband. At times I'm a good husband. No one on this planet is perfect. So there's a lot of data that shows that the more cognitively flexible you are around your identity, the better off you will be. And, and I don't know if this kind of makes sense. I know it sounds weird, and I know it runs kind of contrary to some of the stuff that you may say, but I, I think you do this right. I, I think you, you must, in order to achieve what you've achieved, you must consider your weak parts. You must acknowledge 100%, you know, right, that if I do not act in the right way, my baser nature will take control. Yeah, of course. There is an addict, a degenerate gamer who lives inside of me. And if I'm not careful, that will come out again. Right, right.

There's an importance of stepping into an identity that is more empowering than disempowering, I believe, as opposed to I'm a loser. There's no chance I'm going to win this game. I'm going to mess up. You know, if I'm having a disempowering identity or belief, it's probably not going to serve me.

Absolutely. So here's, here's if you think you're a winner, it starts to become other people's fault. Mm-hmm. Then you're right that it— there's a tension because now if you think of yourself as a winner and you get data that you're not winning. Yes. Now your identity is threatened.

This is what happened to me also. Because here, first I was a loser and then I was like, I was picked last, you know, on teams. I was made fun of. I was in special needs classes. So all these things, I didn't have the psychological or emotional tools as an 8-year-old on how to navigate the emotions of the world and fit into groups and societies and teams. So I just associated, oh, I'm picked last, I'm in special needs. I'm in the bottom of my class. I am a loser. Those I am statements I believed. Then I said, let me work so hard to improve this so that I'm never picked last and so that I'm a winner. And I did that for years and it worked. I started getting picked first. I started being, you know, the best on the team, whatever it is through middle school and high school. But then everything became about winning. It was like, if I don't win, then my identity is going to crumble, right? It was like, then now I'm a loser. And so my whole life became threatened with the idea of if I'm not a winner, then I'm a loser. That way I have to win at everything. And winning, I associated winning with being right. So if I was wrong, I'm a loser. If I lose, I'm a loser. And so I tried to defend this identity, like you said, by being right and winning. In everything— sports, business, relationships— until I hit about 29 or 30 years old. And I realized life was not about winning and losing. It was about win-win. How do I create a win-win scenario even if I'm losing in a situation? And that became a part of my process, was seeing everything from a lens of how do I create win-win? What does that look like, this experience?

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

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

Numb. So people think it feels bad, but my experience was numbness. I remember, I mean, this is a bit graphic, and so I remember I was doing chest compressions on a guy who was having his third code in the hospital. What's code mean? So he was having an arrhythmia, so his heart was not beating. Heart attack or something? Yeah, so his heart was not beating. the way it's supposed to. His heart was fluttering, fluttering, and so it wasn't able to beat. So he was a rather large dude. And, and I remember like doing chest compressions. And what they don't show you in the shows is that like sometimes when you start doing chest compressions, people will vomit. Yeah. And so I remember I had gloves on and, and all I could really remember was like the feeling of the vomit hitting my elbows and then going down the arm and into the gloves.

And it's like in your gloves. In your gloves, right?

And it's like nasty because we don't like things in gloves to begin with.

If you've ever done the dishes, the whole reason there's gloves is to dump stuff on your hands.

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

Trying to save the life.

We're trying to save a life. And so my experience from that was just after— afterward, I was just numb. Like, I was just like, what the hell was that?

Like, did he— did he— did he— he didn't make it.

Didn't make it. I mean, he was—

there was no way he was gonna— yeah, yeah.

I mean, he was gone days before. Yeah. Um, and so you just learn real quick, you know. And, and for me, it happened pretty quickly because I'd had this training, right, like on yoga and meditation and understanding some of these things. But that, that— and there was another patient that came in with a couple of gunshot wounds when I was working a shift in the emergency room. Um, and you learn very quickly that you don't have the power of life over death. You know, you just don't have that. It's not something that you're entitled to.

You can't save a life. You could do your best to— exactly— support life and staying.

All you can do is act. Wow. So there's a, there's a great principle from sort of like Eastern meditative traditions. As a human being, all you're entitled to is your actions, not the fruits of your actions. And this is a beautiful way to get rid of ego. Yeah, I mean, it's the whole—

what's the quote around, like, planting seeds under trees of shade that you will not sit in the future? It's like, I don't know what that— do you know what I'm talking about?

Yeah, so, so it's, you know, the world is a good place when you Plant a seed under whose shade you'll never sit in. Yeah, something like that.

Right. Like putting in this work that you won't get the benefit from. Yeah, but others will. And the beautiful thing is you have been benefiting from everyone else in history for your life now. Yeah.

So I think it's more drastic than that even. Right. So this is not doing work for shade that will come. You're entitled to plant a seed. But even then, you don't know that the shade will be there. That's true. So as a human being, as a doctor, you don't— like, you can do everything, right? So I work now with people who are like suicidal and like, you can do everything that you can do, but you can never stop a human being from taking their own life.

You can try. That's hard as you can go.

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

Should we have goals? Sure. Why do you hesitate?

So Let's think about how the, a goal affects the motivational system. So I think we should have goals with care.

Should we have goals without focusing on the outcome of the goal as part of our happiness? Yes.

So we should be detached. We should have goals, but we should be detached from our goals.

From the results.

Yeah. So a, a way to, I'll put it like, I'll, I'll kind of give a simple analogy to start because then we're gonna get technical. See, it's okay to want, let's say I want a fried chicken sandwich. It's okay to want a fried chicken sandwich, but are you unhappy if you don't get it? Let's say you go to a restaurant, you're like, hey, can I get a fried chicken sandwich? You're like, oh, we're out. How do you respond to that? Yeah. So one of the biggest challenges for me, so I was planning on becoming a monk and then met my wife, and then that was like, you're not allowed to be a monk. Yeah. And so I was, I was really like struggling internally because I had this idea of like, okay, I'm going to be like free from attachment and celibacy and I'm not going to be like these other humans who are, you know, falling in love.

You have all these lustful thoughts.

Yeah, no, I need to be better than that, right? Lust is for animals. I will be greater. So one of my teachers—

So was it 7 years you studied to be a monk? Is that what it is? But when you were studying to be a monk—

I met my wife.

You weren't being a monk. You weren't living as a monk.

No, but I told her, I was like, girl, look, I'm sorry, babe. This is a temporary thing. You know, this connection that we have, like, it's temporary. Yeah. Like I'm, I'm planning on taking my vows, so it's fine for us to hang out and have a good time. It's fine.

Yeah. This will be my last hurrah.

I just want you to know out of respect. Really? I want you to know out of respect that I'm going to take my vows a couple years from now.

Why hadn't you taken it yet within 7 years? Oh, I tried.

So at the age of 21, I went to my teachers and I said, hey, I want to become a monk. And they said? And they said, being a monk is about giving up your life. You have nothing worth giving up.

Literally. Oh, so you have to have something.

Exactly. Not just be like, you're just running away. You're running away. You haven't achieved anything. So first thing you should do is go back, get a doctoral degree.

Wow.

And then give it all up. And then give it all— come back when you're 30. And so they let me come back and they're like, we'll continue teaching you and training you, but you don't get to take your vows until you're 30 years old and you have a doctoral degree. Those are their two requirements.

Then you could give it up. And come live like that. But okay, not everyone has done that to become a monk though. Some people are younger when they become a monk, right? Yeah, yeah.

So I mean, these were my teachers, right? So my teachers were amazing. They also knew me very well.

They're like, yeah, you really don't want this.

You know, you don't realize. And they explained something interesting to me. They said that becoming a monk is going to be harder than anything you do in the real world. So if you can't succeed in the real world, You're not going to succeed as a monk.

You'll fail as a monk. Yeah.

Right. Wow. So, so, so that's how I ended up getting a target of, of, you know, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to become a doctor and do something big that I have to then sacrifice and give up. Absolutely. So, so that was also where then I'll be worthy.

Then my ego would be worthy to be a monk.

Um, not quite, but, but yeah, great joke. You know, there's the, so this is what I had at that time. I had the ego of having no ego. Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. I have no ego.

Other people having a— I'm so above everything.

I'm beyond this. And speaking of identity, so I was— That's an identity in itself. It's an identity where I devalued the things that I had failed at. Sure. So in college, this is pretty classic. I don't know what your college experience was like, but you're into a girl and you ask her out and then she says no. And then you tell your bros, you're like, yeah, I wasn't that into her anyway. She's not— Beneath me anyways. Yeah. Everybody— it's like, ah, whatever. So we devalue things to protect ourselves. We develop this identity.

Yeah. So when you were meeting her, you said, I'm going to be a monk. This is for fun for the next year or whatever.

But then don't be too attached to me. Yeah. I fall in love. Right. Because I didn't want to hurt her. Oh, I didn't want to hurt her. Yeah. Because being in a relationship with me, when it ends, it's so painful for anybody that I'm with. Oh, my God. It's my compassion. I don't want to hurt you from the parting of me. Oh, shoot.

And so, yeah.

And then what happened? So, so the first thing is she's like amazing and she knows me well, so she was not worried at all. She's like, you're not gonna become a monk.

There's no way this is gonna— Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, like what? You're too attached to this medical stuff over here. Yeah.

So, so then I, I, I, you know, went and decided to go to medical school and, and stuff like that. And it's really crazy cuz I, I never looked at my grades when I was in med school. And so I got a call from one of my mentors, and after graduation, he's like, where are you at the award ceremony? And I was like, I don't know. I'm like, at home. And he's like, well, I'm presenting you with an award. Like, why aren't you here? I was like, I didn't even know. I had gotten so divorced from the outcomes of my actions. I just showed up. And even when I, you know, sometimes when I was in residency, you get all these kids from Harvard who were like really great. And then they get a B and they're devastated. And, and I have to do this thing where I try to explain to them, you're not here for grades. Like, you got to understand it. At some point you're going to be like in an elevator and, you know, someone is going to start giving birth when you're trapped in an elevator.

And grades don't matter at that point. And grades don't matter.

You, you don't get to say, you know, and I'm a psychiatrist, but like, I don't get to say Oh, you're in labor? Like, sorry, I'm a psychiatrist. I can't help you. No, you have to do your duty. You have to.

So, so you're on a plane, if you're on a residency—

residency in medical school is about like learning how to be a doctor because one day someone will depend on you. So it's not about being a great doctor, being at the top of your class. It's about focusing on learning the material for its own sake. And I think when you talk about making things win-win, I think if we really were to do like an X-ray of your mental structure, we would see that you would be very focused on action. You'd be altering your perception, right? You're not gonna give yourself some pat on the back and, oh, I'm a winner and I'm a wise, compassionate man. You know, like, like that, that's not, that's not the copium that you're going to be huffing, which is what the kids say nowadays. Huffing? Yeah, huffing copium. Okay. Yeah, that's what the kids say. Sure. Um, you know, so you're going to be really focused on, okay, like, how do I integrate this data? This is negative feedback. How do I incorporate this feedback? How do I plan on this feedback? So there's no you involved. It's almost like you're like, you know, it's just information coming in. Yes. Calculation, change in, in the outside world. Mm-hmm. And people may think that that feels really sterile, but the other side of it is when you're holding your child, there's no ego there. There's just you being present. And if we look at action, what's really cool about action is action is what When you're one with action, that's when you're the most present. So just focus on doing the thing. It is not in your power to have something happen. Yeah, the results. The results are out of your hands.

Yeah, but focusing on the action today or this moment, the action, the next best action.

Yes, and this is the problem we were talking about goals. The problem with goals is that goals actually get us away from actions. Hmm, really? Yeah. How so? When is a goal? It's a weird question, I know.

When is a goal? Yep. Well, if you create a goal with a timeline, you can have—

Is there ever a goal without a timeline?

Some people have a goal and say, "I want to write a book," or, "I want to launch a podcast," or, "I want to be in a relationship." When is that?

They don't say when. But when is it? Is it now?

They don't say when sometimes, but I think if they say when—

Even if I say, "I want to write a book," it's not today. Right. It's in the future. All goals are things that will happen ideally. All goals are in the future. When does action happen?

Now, or when you take the action.

And when you take the action, when is it? In that moment. Exactly. Action happens now, goal is in the future. Fundamental. I know it's so weird. We don't ask ourselves these questions. But so this is the problem with goal. Right? So this is what's really scary is the most ambitious goal is the easiest to procrastinate on. I want to write a book. How long does that take? Oh, it takes 2 years. Okay. So you're saying it takes like 720 days. Why don't we just do a little bit more work in 719? So goals are really sneaky things. It's not that they're bad. So our frontal lobes require some way to organize time, organize time, strategy, right? So you need that for the sake of a goal. But if you're not careful, a goal will induce procrastination because you seem—

it's too much work, I can't do it right now, or it's daunting, or—

yeah, it— if you're, if you're lucky, that's what you feel, because then you know, oh my God, this is overwhelming, I need to fix this. What's way more dangerous is, oh, I can take care of it tomorrow. Uh-huh. It's not even daunting.

You never take the action. You never take the action, right?

So action is completely independent of goal, and accomplishing big goals involves taking lots of action. So focus on action, not on the goal.

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The other really interesting, scary neuroscience thing is that—

What if someone says, Okay, I don't have a goal, but I'm just taking the action. Like I'm learning Spanish every day. I'm taking the action to practice Spanish every day. But if I just said, well, I don't have the goal to learn Spanish and be able to speak it, then why am I doing it? Why am I doing the action if there's no thing that I'm actually looking to step into just for the action's sake? Great question.

So goals serve a function. Once again, the goal here is a goal. Is not to get rid of this stuff. So in order to be a functional human being, if we're pursuing enlightenment, the enlightened person has no goals. They just exist.

They're just, they're just better than all the goals of the world.

Their ego is— I'm better. Yeah, they've abandoned all that stuff. Yes, yes, they're chilling. They're just chilling. They're not above it all. They're not. Yeah, I know. So, so goals serve a neuroscientific purpose. They organize our frontal lobes. They allow us to sequence out things. So that's good. But a goal being used to sequence things— I'll give you an example. I'm going to the airport later today, so I had to pack. Yeah, but packing has— it's not like it's, it's a goal that I have to do, but I'm not like attached to it anyway. It just helps me organize the sequence of events, and then I have to take the actions. There's no identity caught up in it. I'm not like, eh, Lewis, look at me, trained at Harvard. Yeah, yeah, packed my own undies. Yeah, you know, I'm great, bro. You know, so this is where goals are important, but we should never have them serve a greater function than what they really should be serving. What should they be serving? Helping us organize action. That's it.

But when you had a, you know, when your monk teacher said, go become a doctor or do something and then come back to us when you're ready to give that thing up. And you said, all right, I'm going to go to medical school and I'm going to become a doctor. You had a goal in mind. Yes. You needed to— you wanted to accomplish something, some type of learning experience, credibility. And there was a deadline to when you wanted to accomplish it by. Right. Great. So how did you navigate the goal and the actions with that?

Yeah. So, so, so beautiful example because it's an example of I didn't care that I accomplished the goal. This is the really weird thing.

You didn't care if you were to accomplish it or not?

No. So I needed to accomplish it, right? So goals are necessary. But we don't need to get attached to them. We don't need to get hung up. They're necessary steps, just like packing. I have to pack.

But you weren't attached to the result.

I wasn't attached to the result.

If you became a doctor or not, you weren't attached.

Yeah, well, I mean, I was attached, but I tried really hard not to be. Gotcha. Right. And that's why, like, I never looked at my grades. I was like, okay, I'm going to like— someone will tell me if I fail. Yeah. Like, I'll get an email if I fail. And I didn't fail, so whatever. I'm focusing on learning the material. That's good. Right. So I know it's— I love that you're asking these questions because it's so counterintuitive from the way that we think. Here's the reason that detachment from our goals is really— we want goals, we want to be detached. Here's why. If you have a stumble towards your goal and you are attached to it, you are more likely to give up. So your brain says, okay, why are we doing this? We're doing this in order to get this. And now we get a bit of information that that becomes less likely. So then our brain says, okay, we're not going to achieve the goal. So I see this all the time in the patients that I work with who have early-stage sobriety. And so it's really interesting because when they start to relapse— I've been sober for 160 days. I have— I had one bad night of alcohol and now it's ruined. I lost all of my sobriety. What do you think they do the next day?

Go drink more.

Absolutely. Now that it's busted, it might as well, right? So the self-loathing, like all this kind of stuff. So if you, if you want an outcome and something gets in the way, if you have a setback, your attachment to the outcome is going to cause you to give up.

So when someone has a setback, how do we, how should they process that setback and continue moving forward towards a goal, whether they're attached or detached to the outcome? Great question.

Can I give another example before this? So this is also why people don't get started. So like, you know, I struggle with this a lot. Maybe this is something people can empathize with. If you're not sure you can achieve something, it's really hard to get started. So I would, I would do this thing where if I got like, I had like less than a 2.0 GPA, I'd failed a lot of classes. So I was like, okay, I need to get straight A's for both.

You know, but you became a medical doctor and I didn't.

Potato, potato. Yeah, exactly. Um, so I did this thing where like, you know, since I needed A's, now I, I, I have like a 1.0 GPA, so I need a 4.0 to balance it out, right? I, I need to have an A. I can't afford to get a B in order to save my GPA. A lot of stress. So, so then what would happen is if I got a B on my first test, I would drop the class. Because I can't hit my goal anymore. I'm going to give up. So it's so easy to not get started when we are attached to our goal. Because think about when I'm attached to the goal, I need— I can't ask her out yet, bro, because I need her. I'm so in love. I can't handle— like, I wouldn't be able to live with myself. So what am I going to do? I'm going to take her to the airport. I'm going to be there for her. But I'm never going to shoot my shot. I'm never going to take that chance. Friend zone. Because I can't afford to lose. I have to win. I want to win. I have ambition. I have goals. I have dreams. And so unless it's going to work, I can't try. As we detach from the goal, as we let go, which is challenging, it requires a lot of— there's a lot of emotion towards it. I think a lot of people run away from the negative emotion. How do you act? I think your question was, how do you act if you are attached to a goal? You accept that on this planet, you cannot achieve it. It is not within your power to achieve. You know, there's something that I think is really scary about the society we live in. We've started taking things lying down. So like, nowadays in society, this is going to sound kind of weird, but like, when, when we're on the brink of failure, we don't fight with defiance, right? We're like, okay, if I'm gonna lose, then I'm just gonna give up. We've stopped fighting futile battles, and that's so devastating.

What do you mean by this?

Like, if you're gonna get screwed, go down fighting. Go all the way. Go all the way. Even if you— even if, like, you know, I, I got my first 40 rejections to medical school, my next 40 rejections to medical school. And my uncle pulled me aside and he's like, bro, this is not working out. Like, go get a PhD. Like, go to plan B, right? Like, come on, man. Like, your GPA is not changing. What are you expecting? You're an idiot. You're being stubborn. My uncle's a great guy, loves me very much, and it's good advice. Yeah, right.

You're just repeating insanity over and over and over.

Absolutely. And so, like, this is where, like, we need to be defiant in the face of the world. Like, we need to keep We need to be doing stupid action. Yes. You know, like, don't— that's what it is to— when you say don't give up, what does that mean? That don't giving up, not giving up, means being an idiot. Let go of the possibility of it ever happening. You know, I was, I was reading about like Stranger Things and how many times Stranger Things got rejected. Yeah, yeah. You know, another good example of this is Harry Potter, like, got rejected over and over and over again.

Squid Games also is like 10 years of it took for it to sell.

Absolutely right. Yeah. So, so we have to be really careful about goals because if we, if we attach ourselves to the goal and we get negative feedback, we are going to give up. So focus on the action, right? And this is what's really important. But how do you know when to give up?

Like, sure, those things, they had a belief that these things should be in the world. These movies, these books, these things should be in the world. My medical school, I should— that should be happening. But if it goes 20 years and it doesn't happen, do you keep fighting until you burn everything down?

Here's— it's so tricky, but beautiful question. Give up with tranquility. So when you are at peace and you want to let something go, that's when you give up.

When you feel like I've given everything I can, or I'm okay with it not coming to the world. Right. Like, I still feel like there's something inside of me.

Right. So this is a lesson I learned when someone has— so I had a patient who was 8 years old, had stage 4 cancer, was in the pediatric ICU. I was a medical student. I wasn't even a doctor then. And then, you know, how do you know when to pull the plug? Like, that's where I learned that lesson. Like, you can, you can do everything, but you should be at peace. So if you feel, if you feel like giving up is a failure, if you feel like giving up is, is giving in to your fear, Your internal emotional state will tell you what is right and what is wrong. So if you're giving into fear, don't do it, right? You know, even if you're overly ambitious, you want to attain a state of tranquility. That's, that's where you should operate from. This is really important. I want to— goal is out there. It's in the future. Action is now. Emotion, you have to be careful because we're oftentimes running away. The emotion tries to get you away from the here and now. Right? I want to avoid the anxiety. I'm anxious. How do I not be anxious? So instead, what you should do is be as tranquil as possible. Go for a walk, have a nice cup of tea, you know, sit with your thoughts, stay off of all devices for 24 hours, and take a good long hard look at your goals and ask yourself, is it time to give up or not? The answer will come from in here. Don't make a pro-con list. Don't do anything. Like, just ask yourself. So I, I went to a Swami, which is like a monk, and after I failed for 2 years to get into med school, and I was like, hey, I don't know if I should give up or not. What do you think I should do? And the Swami turns to me, he's like, you know, 2 years is not such a long time in life. Give it another year. He just kind of shrugged, right? So casual, just so simple. Yeah. And I was like, okay, fine, I'm, I'm not gonna I'm going to give it one more year. That's what I decided. Luckily, I got into one medical school. So tranquil mind. Tranquil. And then decide. Then you'll know whether it's enough. It's not give up. Even that phrasing is wrong. It implies failure. It's transition. It's— no, no, but I think it's the right word in the sense that that's the way everyone thinks. Instead, ask yourself, has this been enough? I work with patients who are trying to make it work in couples therapy. And what we get to, what I get to, like, emotionally is, is this enough? Have we tried enough? Have we tried treatment enough? Is this enough? And if the answer to that question is yes, then let it go.

There's a question I wanted to ask you about capable versus believing, you know, and maybe this ties to goal setting. At one point you said, I think you said there's a difference between being capable of achieving something or living into something versus believing you can achieve it. What is that difference of capable versus believe? And are there times when you believe you can do something but you're not capable? What does that do to someone?

I think belief and capability are two entirely different things. Belief is your estimation of your ability. Capability is your ability. So the gap between capability and— there's a gap between what your estimation of what you can do and what you're capable of.

But when someone has the capabilities but not the belief, then what happens? They doubt themselves constantly. They're insecure, they're afraid, but they have the skills, the talent, or the ability to do the thing if they worked at it.

Yeah. So I, I think, I mean, this is something we see all the time. Most human beings on the planet are far more capable than they believe. Yes. Right? So our belief— let's understand where this comes from. Belief comes from your own estimation. It comes from your data. It comes from your cognitive biases, your perception, your emotions. You know, your fear will try to protect you by telling you that you can't do it. They'll try to trick you into believing that you are incapable.

I don't put much stock in belief.

Personally, you know, personally, for yourself, just in general, for my patients, I try to help them not put much stock in belief because let's understand what belief is. Belief is the absence of knowledge by definition. I believe my keys are in my pocket. I don't know that. So belief is literally a mental hypothetical construct. I believe it's possible. I believe in God. That's very different from, I know God, I've seen God, I've felt God, right? So we'll use this, and I'm not trying to be like anti-faith or anything like that, but it's kind of interesting, right? So, and because when I sit with people who do have intense faith, sometimes there's belief, and there can be— there's value to believe too. But in general, I think step away from your own beliefs. In general, what you should be doing is collecting data, not hypothesizing. Belief is in your head.

So should we not have belief in ourselves that we are capable of accomplishing goals or dreams?

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

Try. Act either way.

Act. Exactly. Yeah. Be independent of all of this stuff. Yeah. Because what is it that correlates with accomplishment? What is it that correlates with success? It's action. So we use belief, right? So this is why it's important to take action. Exactly right. So belief helps us take action sometimes. But this is where it's like we can do whatever kind of mental gymnastics you want, right? Right.

To end up with action. Take action either way, whether you believe it or not, whether you believe it, whether you have goal, whatever.

Right. Let's get to the root of action and all of psychiatry and psychology and stuff is all these ways of helping people act. Karma. Karma. The actions that you take. Here's something really interesting. What a lot of people don't realize about karma. Karma— 99% of karma is not visible. 99% of karma happens in here. When you have a thought, how do you respond to that thought? That is technically an action. Oh my God. So this morning I was tired. I've been working here for 9 days and I didn't want to go to the gym, so I didn't go to the gym. And then it's a little bit cold outside, but I was like, you know what, I normally swim about 20 laps, and so it's like, I don't feel like swimming 20 laps, but I'm going to swim 5. I felt like swimming 0. Yeah, it's like, I'm just going to get in the water. I'm going to swim 5 laps and then I'm done. I got into the water.

It was awful. You're like, I want to get out.

I want to get out. I felt really tired. I'm kind of out of shape and like, haven't had a great schedule. But like, the way that we respond to ourselves, that's what forms our destiny. Everyone thinks karma is our actions out here. It's not the most. Think about how many actions do you take in your head every single day? Thousands. How do you respond? Oh, I want to eat this. Okay, I'm going to eat it. Oh, I want to pull out my phone. I'm going to pull out my phone. That mental action. Okay, let me pull out my phone. Costs you 60 minutes of your day. Mm. A 30-second distraction costs you an hour. The way that we respond to the impulses in our mind. This is the most important action. I believe I can't do it. Are you going to listen to that belief? This is why, like, oh, believe in yourself, not believe— that's not the question. Question is, when you believe something, how do you respond to your beliefs? Do I have a goal? Do I not have a goal? Not the important question. When you have a setback in your goal, how do you respond to that? The problem is that most human beings on the planet react. They don't respond. Automatic. There isn't awareness of what's going on. There isn't intention. And pay attention to your mind. You'll be stunned. There's a beautiful exercise that I offer people. Pay attention to how many thoughts you have that you've had before. Hmm. So the crazy thing that a lot of people don't realize is most of their thinking is habits. It's not even logical. It's not real.

It's automatic.

It's just automatic.

It's on repeat.

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

It's not good or bad, right or wrong. It's what's— is it serving you in an empowering way? Is it helping you to feel more harmony or not?

I mean, I think if people want to be rich and successful, they should ask those questions. You were better at that, Lewis, than I am. Mm.

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What I'm about is not even the goal of all of that stuff. Is it empowering or not empowering? I'm going to step away from that. Just understand. So in Sanskrit, you know, they have the saying that avidya is the source of dukkha. Ignorance is the source of suffering. And this is something, as a psychiatrist, I think is very true. Most of our suffering comes from not knowing what is going on. Why is this happening? Or not being aware. Not being aware. Yeah. So much of our suffering in life comes from our reactions and our automatic patterns. I see this all the time. So can I use profanity? Sure. Okay. So one of my clients came to me and asked me, Dr. K, I don't know why I only attract fuckboys. And we talked about it for a little bit and we realized you attract everybody. You choose.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lots of great people come up to you, but you're not attracted to them. And this is what's so cool.

Like, people don't realize when they're suffering in life and life feels hard. I mean, I've worked with people who have had polysubstance addictions from the age of 9. And then you, you, you live this way for 19 years and you think there's no way you can get better. You're at the age of 28. You've been struggling with substances for 19 years, relatively young, but your whole experience has been struggling with this and you think it's impossible, but you just don't understand yourself. You don't understand how you are responding to your impulses. You don't understand why you're using these substances, that you're trying to run away from something that is inside you. And you can try to control your behaviors as much as you want. But as long as that black flame, that like tar is inside you, no way that you're gonna control your behavior. So understand yourself first. I, I, it's not for me to say you should do this or don't do this, or I can teach you how. I can't tell you what direction, that's for you to figure out. You decide for yourself. Why are you so lazy? You want all the answers from me? Go and explore yourself. Mm-hmm. Pay attention to your mental actions. Pay attention to the way that you respond to the things around you. I think it was Carl Jung who said— I forget exactly what the quote is, but something about until we make our unconscious conscious, we will look at our lives and we'll think it's destiny, even when it's in our control. I'm butchering the quote. But it's crazy how much of our life we actually control, but we just have no awareness of it.

How much of our life do we control?

All of the important parts.

How much of our thoughts do we control? None. We don't control our thoughts? No, the mind generates thoughts. How much do we control our mind? None. So do we have any control over our thinking or our mind?

We have control over the way that we respond to the thought.

That's all we control. The only— do we generate a thought, or is a thought generated automatically? What are you thinking? I'm thinking you're touching my leg. Yeah. Did you have control over that, the generation of that thought, of you touching me?

The generation of the thought, thinking about— can you control that happened?

I can think a different thought when it happens. I can shift the thinking. I can know that's happening and also think about something else. Right. So, but it's all you can control.

So the mind, I mean, this is the problem is we can't, everyone thinks we can control the mind and they try. Yeah. It's like trying to swim up a waterfall. So when I do psychotherapy with a patient, let's say I've got a patient who's got suicidal ideation. So they want to kill themselves every single day. So they come in and I can't control their thoughts. They can't control their thoughts. They don't want to be suicidal, but the thought comes, thought comes, thought comes. Okay? So then they don't control their thoughts, but as we do work, we change the thoughts that are automatically generated in their mind.

You do? Yes. Right. By responding to the thought differently when it comes in. Yes.

I talk to them in certain ways. I say certain things to them. And then as I say something, this is why a good psychiatrist is really important, right? So the whole point of a good psychiatrist is that they can change your mind. You come in, you're suicidal. I engage in an evidence-based practice, and, and I, I took this principle and turned it into a coaching program because I thought, hey, we're doing all this stuff for people who are suicidal. Why aren't we doing all this stuff for people who procrastinate, who are stuck? Who want to write fiction. We can take these evidence-based techniques because someone comes into my office and there are thousands of studies. That's why psychiatry is an evidence-based practice. They're coming into my thought. There's certain things that I can say, certain things that I can do that will alter their thinking. Really? Absolutely. Wow. Right. So you'll learn this soon enough. But I mean, you're married, but yeah. So, you know, your, your, your wife has certain thoughts in her head. She's upset. And you can do things to alter the pattern of her thinking, right? Yes. You can say, oh, tell me what's wrong, right? I love you. Yeah. Or yeah, hug her. Or you can tell her how she can fix all of her problems. Yeah, right. And so here's the really wild thing. We as human beings can affect the human beings around us. We can affect their thinking. Yes. Which means by definition, her thinking is being shaped by who? Me. Which means that from her mind, her thoughts are being generated by the people around her. And her— you actually don't control— she doesn't control her thoughts. You control her thoughts, which is wild.

And she controls my thoughts. Exactly. Yeah. So your influences them.

Influences them. Yeah. There are other influences. Yes. Right. So let's be clear. First thing is that thoughts are generated for you. That's why advertising is a thing. Because they figured out if I can generate this thought in your head, you'll take over, then you'll take action. So everyone is doing thought control and this idea that, oh, I can control my thoughts, bro, you cannot.

So as a Harvard-trained psychiatrist, then knowing that, what do you do to have better— I don't want to say control, but better awareness or a handle around the thoughts in your own mind that either support you or don't support you in your life?

Yeah, so what we do control is the way we respond to our thoughts, the way we're aware of our thoughts. So I, for example, my ego—

and Viktor Frankl said, you know, it's about stimulus and the space between the stimulus and response.

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

They can't separate observing themselves. Yeah, they're thinking or doing. Exactly right.

So the thought is real. It's delusional. It's delusional. And the nature of delusion is when you believe your thoughts are real. Yes, literally. And I'm going to show you this beautiful scale. So there's psychosis, which is the worst. Then there is things like, let's say you have a mood disorder where I think I'm a loser, I'm pathetic, I'm all this, my family would be better off without me, or a level of depression or level of depression. Right. So, so, so as people become really depressed, they believe their thoughts. There's no space between thoughts and anything else. Then as they start to get a little bit better, okay, like, yeah, I feel this way and there are times that I think my family would be better without me, but You know, I'm beginning to see, okay, maybe that's not the case. Yeah. Then you're conflicted. Now there's a little bit of space between those two things. Another good example of this is when you have a panic attack, you don't think you're di— you are dying. Then, you know, less severe than panic disorder is like a generalized anxiety disorder, right? It's not one-to-one. You can have that generalized anxiety disorder, but when, when your anxiety is less bad than your, okay, like I'm anxious about this, but It may not, I think this is gonna happen. Or if I have OCD, my anxiety is something I believe. Unless I flick off the light switch 7 times, my house is gonna burn down. I believe that. There's no space between thought and belief. It's one and the same. And then I get anxious, right? Oh, I think this could happen, but I acknowledge maybe it won't happen. And then we get to the normal state of mind, which is like, okay, I have thoughts, I believe most of them, I don't believe them. And then we get to you, which is you are very good at training yourself to disbelieve particular thoughts. That's what all these questions— how do you empower yourself? Because you have disempowering thoughts and you choose not to believe them.

Yeah, yeah. Or not let them stop me from taking actions in my life that I think are better actions than worse actions.

Exactly. So, but that's the key thing there is that the thought comes up, oh hey, Lewis, can I tell you something, bro? You're 42, right? You're going to be 44, 45 when you compete in the Olympics. Yeah. Good luck. How many— I mean, what do you think about that? Do you think that's going to work out? Does your mind ever tell you, hey, bro, this is like, you know, you're competing against 20-year-olds? Yeah.

If you're asking me personally, I think of, man, what about this story that I will get to share? So see the way— when this works out or if this works out. So either way, if it doesn't work out, the story of pursuing something that you care about.

So that's beautiful. So you're doing some cool mental jiu-jitsu. You're like a matador. You didn't even address my question. So here's the scary thing. If you go back and you watch this and you look at your face, that fear is in you. I saw it in your face. Sure, sure.

There's a level of like, I think it's not worth going for unless there's something that's—

that's all of the way that you respond. Easy. Why would I go for it? The way you respond to your thoughts, the way you disbelieve your thoughts. You know it's hard. I know it's hard. I can say it to you. It hurts to hear it. And you say, yeah, exactly right. The way you respond to your thoughts, disbelieving your thoughts, moving away from your thoughts. So this is the spectrum of thinking. Yeah, it's almost like being a coach.

It's like seeing yourself as a coach rather than being the critic. Very good. The thought, right? It's like, it's rather like I am this thought. There's no separation of the thought. It's like, no, this is me. If I'm thinking it, it's my identity. That's why I wanted to start with identity of like, if that's who you're identifying as and holding onto it rather than saying, all right, it's a thought coming in. Let me distance myself and kind of observe it. And do I want to be the critic that continues to reinforce that thought? Or I can hold it there and still take actions and coach myself through it. And that's kind of the process. Beautiful, right?

So what if you tunnel down into the precision of what you're doing? You are changing the way that you respond to your thoughts. And now here's the really cool and tricky thing. As you change the way that you respond to your thoughts, your thoughts will change. Yes. But you did not create them.

No. Oh, really? So we don't create our thoughts?

No. All we do is— so think about your, your mind like a garden. We weed. Right? So we remove— we don't react to that thought. We don't give in to that thought. And over time, it will wither. And then as certain thoughts— because I don't know if this makes sense— the first moment you started believing in yourself was not something you had to choose. What matters is when you had that thought of self-belief, how did you respond to it? You protected it. You got around it. You're like, grow, baby, grow. Yeah. right? You cultivate, when you talk about an empowering mindset, what is the mechanism of an empowering mindset? It is responding to certain thoughts in a particular way, but you still don't control them. Mm-hmm.

So over time, because there could be a negative thought comes in, there could be something else, but it's what you nurture will grow. Exactly. Yeah.

So, so this is what's really interesting. You know, I had a patient who was afraid that her fiancé was cheating on him, I mean, sorry, on, on her. And so she was like, I want to check your text messages. And so she thought to herself, if I check his text messages, then I'll know that I can trust him. But as she feels the anxiety, she checks his text and she feels reassured. But the next day, when she feels anxious— let me check again. Let me check again. Because she is— her brain is learning that the antidote to anxiety is to check it. This is really important to understand. Whatever we feed in the mind grows. We don't control it, but we choose what we feed and we choose what we don't feed. We choose— we get to control action. We get to control the way we respond, but we don't even get to control what thought comes next. Gosh. Fingers crossed.

Now, you, you hope that when you're nurturing and watering a thought, that thought will continue to expand and develop and grow more frequently and will pop up in your mind.

That's what we get to control, right? So that— there's tons of neuroscience evidence for or that the neurons that fire together wire together. We have habitual patterns of thinking, right? So when we have— and then we can wire our brain to generate thoughts. And literally, the goal of my job is to help someone wire their brain so that their brain generates the right thoughts. But I want to be precise here. That doesn't mean you get to control what you think. You can simply plant your garden in a certain way.

That's interesting. So it's almost like Tell me if I'm wrong here, but what I'm hearing you say is your mind is a blank canvas or it's a desert, and you can start to respond to the thoughts that come to you and hopefully build a rainforest around you or a garden or some type of scenic thing that supports your mind in a more beautiful way.

Spot on with the general. Here's the key difference, I would say. Your mind is an untended garden. It's not a desert. It's not blank. Because if you think about it, your whole life you've been giving in to certain impulses. You've allowed weeds to grow out of control.

Sure. Let's say you're a blank canvas when you were born. Then maybe, I don't know.

Yeah, you don't know. Yeah.

But at the point of watching this, if you're in your 20s, 30s, or 40s or 50s, your mind is an untended garden. Absolutely right. And there might be some beautiful things and there might be a bunch of rocks that you don't want. It's figuring out how to tend to the beautiful things to create more harmony and peace inside of you. Yeah. And things that will support your life rather than hold you down.

And the beautiful thing is that when you start doing this, you cultivate your mind. Life becomes easy. Yes. Because now, even when it's hard, it's easy. Absolutely. So we struggle with motivation, but think about it. That's because your mind has this impulse over here and you're trying to wrench it over here. Right? Whereas once you start to do the right kind of reinforcing stuff, once you start reinforcing the right behaviors, once you start— once you stop giving in to certain thoughts, it doesn't mean you won't have them, huh?

It doesn't mean you won't have these.

It doesn't mean— and so you don't respond to them.

Absolutely.

Give in to them. Yeah. So, so for example, my ego is like really like— it's really messed up because for years I got bullied, for years I was You know, I struggled and then I, I got into Harvard and then I had an ego about that for a while and it's still there. So what I do is I, I laugh at my ego. Mm-hmm. I'm like, there's that ego again. Sometimes I'll have fantasies.

Great Harvard psychiatrist. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. So, so, you know, on, on the car ride over here, I was thinking about how to make this podcast great. That was one of the questions you asked me. How do we make this great? And I was like, there's my ego again. There's me trying to be great. Who am I to be great? Right? I'm— dude, I'm a noob. I'm a failure. I'm a loser. And I'm great. So I'm going to show up and I'm going to do the best that I can. Yeah. But it is not for me to be great. It is not for me to decide what is great and what is not great. So my ego is still there after all of these years. It's still there. My wife is hilarious about it because she mocks me so much. Right? So sometimes I'll say something really profound in conversation because sometimes I say things that are really proud.

She's like, oh wow.

Yeah, it's a quote that, and I think it's a beautiful way to keep your ego in check. Sure. Of course. Right. So the way that I respond, so now my ego is not something to be conquered. It's like I'm cursed with it. And I've accepted that after so many years of, I've been meditating for 21 years and my ego is still there. It's still there in the background. It still sneaks up. It still makes comparisons. There's no, I'm cursed. Ah, so what? Yeah. Am I gonna let it, am I gonna try really hard to get rid of it? No. Yeah, yeah. It's there forever, so be it. I don't need to change. Yeah. I don't need to be egoless. I'm a new, like, who am I to be egoless? Am I some great person who should be egoless? No, like I'm some pathetic POS who struggles sometimes and does a good job and I do right by people. I hold both of those things.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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

yeah, so like panic disorders, you know, severe depression, then like generalized like anxiety, then there's like the normal level of anxiety. Then there's like the positive dimensions, right, of understanding. And the highest dimension is understanding that you are not your mind, that the mind is just an object. It is your mind. We even say it, my mind, my hand. It is an object of its own that does whatever it wants to do. Just like your body. It's like you don't get to control whether you have diarrhea today. Like your stomach is messed up today. Your mind is messed up today. But just like your stomach, you can take care of your mind. Mm-hmm.

And so what would you call this? The scale of— you're just making it up.

Yeah. So severity around— well, actually, it's, it's what, what technically is, is the scale of attachment to your thoughts.

Okay. I love this because if— because anyone could relate to somewhere on this scale. Hopefully not many people relate to the psychosis, but anyone watching or listening can relate to, yeah, I've had depressed thoughts or anxiety or stress or overwhelm or whatever it might be, or a feeling of laziness or lack of motivation, or I've ADHD or whatever it is. How does someone go from having a tended mind, a beautiful garden or a tended garden in their mind, to psychosis or to suicidal thinking over and over again? And is there a way for someone to go back from psychosis or suicidal thinking to a beautiful garden in their mind? Absolutely. What is that process of how they got from mood swings to suicide? And how can someone go back?

What is that process? Okay, we're going to teach it to you right now. It's going to take about 30 seconds. Okay, so I want you to close your eyes, Lewis, and I want you to observe your breath. I didn't say breathe. I didn't say change your breath. I didn't say take a deep breath. I said just observe it. You're doing that deep breathing thing again. You're breathing slow. Just observe it. Don't change it. Can you breathe the way that you were when we were talking? Now you're artificially increasing the pace, right?

A little bit. Yeah. Yeah.

So here's the wild thing. The moment you are aware of something, you gain control. Literally, the part of your brain that monitors conflict within you is the part of your brain that is willpower.

And I was going against what you were trying to have me to do. I was like, no, I'm going to do what feels good to me.

But even then, you're controlling it. Yeah. So, so if you pay attention, it is impossible for you to observe your breath and continue to breathe naturally. Impossible. Try it. You'll notice that the moment that you pay attention to it, it starts to alter. Right? So in physics, this is like—

because now I'm paying attention to it as opposed to just being.

Right. And when you pay attention, you'll start to control it.

You can try. Yeah.

I mean, maybe you can do it. I haven't been able to do it.

Yeah. Because I was focusing on breathing rather than just talking. Right now, I'm not thinking about breathing, how I'm just Right. In and out, you know.

So it's really cool. Awareness is the first step to control.

Why is this thing so hard for so many people who are stuck in their, their minds that creates so much stress, anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts? Why is it so hard then if it's so easy? Why is it so hard where people get stuck for years or decades in this way of thinking? They need addictions, alcohol, drugs, medication to try to have some type of control over their thoughts or their body, their functions? Why is it so hard?

Okay, beautiful question.

If what we just did right now in 30 seconds, awareness, I have it.

Okay, let's be precise with our language. I never said it was easy. I just said it was simple. Okay.

Biggest thing to understand. Why is it simpler or something? Why is it so hard then?

The simpler it is, the harder it is. The more complex it is, the easier it is. Okay. The simplest thing should be your wife giving you a little, huh?

Oh, sounds so good. Right.

Yeah, exactly. Sounds so— yeah. Right. So this is, this is a really confusing thing, but if you look at like, you know, a master chef, uh-huh, it's simple for them. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So it becomes easy at some point, but generally speaking, this is what's kind of really interesting. The things that are really hard are actually the easier things because there's like 15 different components and then I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna do this. There's a very interesting relationship between simplicity and hard. Mm-hmm. You know, if we talk about, you know, to be a good dad is a simple thing, but you got to do a lot of things. Very hard. Yeah. Yeah. So this is a big thing that we have to understand. The simplest things in life are actually the hardest. How do I love myself? It's simple. It's not complicated. It doesn't have 18 different steps and you do this and you do this and you do this. But it's hard. It's very hard.

So I think it takes awareness consistently. Exactly. So that gets to why it's so hard when you're distracted and overwhelmed and responsibilities.

And let's look at why it's hard. The first reason why it's really hard is because we haven't been trying.

I would have thought about it.

We've never thought— literally, literally, bro. I was 18 years old. I woke up on the morning of— I had to set my alarm for 7 a.m. I had a Spanish final at 8 a.m. I set my alarm at 7 a.m. And I thought about how when I went to the Spanish final, I was going to be done in 15 minutes because I had skipped all the Spanish classes. I didn't know Spanish. So what was I going to do? Stare at a piece of paper for 3 hours when I didn't know Spanish? I decided not to go. I just skipped my final. Oh yeah. F. If I just showed up, the professor had told me, if you show up, I'll give you a D. Yeah. Just show up.

She's like, I don't know anything. I don't know.

I was so unaware. I was not a robot. I felt like I was swept up by my mind. I couldn't control my mind. I would plead with— I would beg and hope, tomorrow go to class, bro, go to class, please God, just go to class. And it wouldn't listen. Hmm, why not? Because I wasn't aware. I was trying to get it to do. I was not observing, right? So I— my daughter— here's a great example of just how powerful awareness is. My daughter was trying to close the box of a board game. I don't know if you've ever had this problem where if it's a little bit off, you can push down and it'll never close no matter how hard you push it. And then all it takes is just a little shift and then it'll slide right down. Easiest thing in the world. So when we don't understand ourselves, when we aren't aware of what the problem is, then we can exert this. When you say, why is it so hard? Because everyone is trying to push the door open when you've got to pull. That's life. Understand yourself. Understand how you work. Understand that a goal can actually inhibit your motivation. If you get a little bit of feedback and the goal now feels harder, your, your mind will tell you, hey, it's not worth investing in. Now you have to overcome that. Understand that you actually don't control your thoughts. You can never control your thoughts. Imagine for a moment if you agree with me, if I've made a logical argument and you now understand that you can't control your thoughts, you ask why is it so hard? Because everyone's trying to control their thoughts. They're trying to swim up a waterfall and you ask why it's hard. It's not complicated. You can't swim up a waterfall. Waterfall, water go down. Water don't go up.

So when you, when you go to, you know, Harvard, day one, psychiatry training, and, and they're like, 101 of psychiatry training, you can't control your thoughts. Is that something they teach you? No.

So the crazy thing at going to Harvard is they were teaching me all this stuff and they were like, this is how the mind works. And I was like, no, isn't, because I had learned about the mind in India. So they're teaching me what the subconscious is, they're teaching me all this stuff that is just one view of the mind. There's a different view of the mind, which I think is— it's not that their view of the mind is wrong, we use both, right? But they're— the way that the West studies the mind is problematic for one really simple reason, which is we have no way to actually measure the mind. If we look at how medicine works, how do we learn? How does science learn things? Science learns things through observation. What's going on on your chest? We're going to X-ray you. What kind of bacteria is in your blood? We're going to do a blood culture. What's the X-ray for the mind? There's none. There's no way to detect the mind.

And you can't put a scan on the brain or on the head and get data from the mind. You can't.

It's impossible. So how do we know which part of the brain anxiety comes from. Because we do a brain scan, we see some part of the brain is lighting up, and then we ask you, what are you feeling? And we did that 1,000 times, and we figured, okay, this part of the brain is where anxiety comes from. Yeah. So in India, the yogis did it a different way. They observed their own thoughts. This is the cool thing, because you're the only one— I know this is going to sound like a weird question, Lewis, Am I thinking? Am I a thinking being? Or am I a robot? Am I conscious? Or am I just a hallucination in your perception?

Are you conscious? In my opinion, are you conscious?

Yeah. Yeah. How do you know?

It's based on my perception of the—

What do you perceive?

I perceive you in front of me, the 5 senses, the—

Yeah, so do you have a sense of my thoughts and my consciousness? Do you have a sense that tells you that?

Yeah.

How? Tell me. Belief. Okay, belief is different.

Perception.

Perception. What are you perceiving? Pay attention. What are you perceiving? Can you see my thoughts?

You're seeing your reactions and your behavior around. Yeah, but I could be empty up there.

Right, right, right.

It's true. You could be. Right? I don't know for certainty.

So this is insane. I had a patient once in the neuro ICU. We got consulted. And so they're like, yeah, we think something's wrong, like he's depressed. So I go to the neuro ICU. Guy got hit by a car and was in a coma for a while, now was doing better. And then I'm like, hey, you know, so tell me a little bit about, you know, what's going on. How's your relationship? He's like, oh, you know, my wife is great, she's here every day. How's your relationship with your kids? Seems like kids are fine. What's your recovery look like? He's like, I'm gonna have to do physical therapy. It's hard, you know, it hurts, but like I'm expected to make a full recovery. What's going on at work? You know, my partners are fantastic. They're like, they're going to cover things for 3 months and I'll go back into the office maybe a month or 2. So I'm kind of like confused, like everything's going to be fine.

But he had a level of depression or some depression.

So I go back day after day after day because once you get consulted, you're responsible. And so, you know, the last day he's going to be discharged, like, bro, I got to be honest with you. I ask, I come in, I ask you all these questions. You say nothing's wrong, but when I sit here, when I sit in the room with you, you seem depressed. Can you tell? Like, am I just, like, crazy? Like, what's going on here? And then he kind of starts, like, breaking down into tears. And I'm— and he says, like, you know, it's crazy, but when I was in a coma, I lived a whole life. I had a family. I was married to a different person. Come on. I had two sons, not two daughters. And I realized that that was all fake. But, like, it hurts. Like, they're gone. I'm never going to see them again. Different people, just a completely different life. Wow. Right? And it's really weird, but like, you know, when I ask you, do I have thoughts? Like, the only person that you know really exists— you could be in a coma right now. That's true. This could all be a hallucination. This could be a dream. Could be, right? Could be. So these fundamental things— is it a dream? We'll find out at some point. Yeah. I mean, I think it's real, but maybe I'm hallucinating you. Who knows? You know, so Descartes sort of was like, cogito ergo sum, right? I think, therefore I am. At the end of the day, you can't tell the difference between a hallucination and a dream, but at least there is something there that is dreaming. Even if it's a dream, even if you're in a coma, there is still someone in the coma. And, and as we understand some of these basic things, like, this is why it's hard, because we don't understand that we're not our mind. You are that which experiences your mind, and no one else experiences your mind.

You are that which experiences your mind. You are the awareness of the experience of your mind.

Of course, because you can observe your thoughts.

Can you see your eyes? Not unless I have a mirror.

You're not seeing your eyes in a mirror. What are you seeing? A reflection. There we go. So what you really are— I'm observing it. You're observing. You're observing. I can observe my hand. I can observe my mind. This hand is not me. It is a— it— I own it. It's my hand. Yeah, yeah. But it's not me. Even if, heaven forbid, something happened, I lost the hand, I'd still be me.

What is you?

That which observes. It's empty, egoless, nothing. It's just the capacity for observation. And so this is what's really cool.

You know, it's the being of you that observes everything around you.

Absolutely. So here's the crazy thing. You want to know what you are? You're not a wise, passionate man. You're the thing that thinks you're a wise, passionate man. You're the thing that believes you're a wise, passionate man. You're the thing that has watched the construction. You have experienced every moment of your life. That's the only thing that makes you you. Ego is outside of that. We can construct the ego. Well done, you constructed a very healthy ego. We need a healthy— yeah, it's nice and Rajasic. Seems like you're not having problems with heart attacks and stuff, so you may not need to slow down, right? I'm sure you've learned— you're a professional athlete, you've learned the value of rest, 100%, right? So that's okay. So as we understand these fundamentals, life becomes easier. As we start recognizing that— don't just chase goals, don't just get willpower. If you're feeling tired, rest. Rest. Or recognize— imagine this: if your brain thinks something is a bad idea, how does it let you know? It makes you feel tired. If you really don't feel like doing something, you should really ask yourself, what is my body and brain trying to tell me? I— it's so sad. People are in a relationship that's been dead for years and the thought of seeing their partner makes them exhausted. Oh, that's your brain telling you something.

Something's off.

Something's off. Yeah. And it's not that it— this relationship has to end. You don't have to break up with the person, but you better damn well make a different relationship with them. Yes. So you don't have to jump to the conclusions that your mind says, but like, if you're feeling tired, instead of just taking a supplement and powering through. Ask yourself, why am I feeling tired? Spend more time with awareness. Then you'll know how to move the box a little bit, and then life becomes easy. You don't have to work so hard.

For someone who's going through a mental challenge, do you call it a mental diagnosis, a mental disorder, or mental disease? Depends on what they're going through.

You have to tell me what they're—

then I'll tell you what I mean. I guess anything from anxiety to psychosis. Okay. is that—

is that right?

I don't want to categorize things the wrong way, I guess.

So if something is going on in your mind and possibly in your body that impairs your function, then we call it a mental illness. Okay. So if it interferes with your ability to work, if it interferes with your ability to do school, if it interferes with your relationships, if it interferes with your physical health, if it interferes with your mental health, if your anxiety is so bad that you can't go see your friends.

You can't leave the house.

Well, it's not that it's impairment to function if it's really hard to leave the house. Yes. Because so many people with depression are functional and empty. Right. So that's a mental illness. That's an illness. So if it impairs function, that's the line.

When do you know you've healed a mental illness? And can you heal a mental illness without medicine? When do you know you, you've healed a mental illness?

So what we shoot for in psychiatry is no longer impairment of function. So even if you're depressed, if you're able to enjoy life, if you're able to form relationships, go to work, if the depression comes and goes a little bit, that's actually okay. That's not a mental illness anymore, or it's in remission. Gotcha. Okay. So I personally believe that many mental illnesses can be healed or cured. But that is not something I can say scientifically. Yes. So we'll talk about remission because it can always come back. Sure, sure, sure. But in my experience, you know, people will be in sustained remission and that's very common. The majority of people who have a depressive episode only have one in their life. So then that begs kind of a philosophical question. Is it cured or is it just so dormant that and not being triggered because your life isn't as healthy? And are you Does that kind of make sense?

Yeah, yeah, I hear what you're saying. And can you heal a mental illness without medication?

I think so. Without saying it. Very clear. Medication never heals mental illness. And I think most psychiatrists would agree with me with that.

I don't think most people understand that. They think medication will heal them. No, medication manages your symptoms.

That's why, so if you have ADHD and you take a stimulant medication for a month, it's not like your ADHD is gone at the end of the month.

So meditation or medication cannot heal your mental illness? I do not believe so. And you're a Harvard—

there's maybe some exceptions to that, but generally speaking, 99% of medications that we prescribe will manage symptoms. They will not heal anything.

What heals the symptoms so that the illness goes away?

Awareness? No, healing the symptoms. What alleviates the symptoms? Symptoms are the fruit of the tree. The illness is the tree. So if you want to remove the symptom or remove the illness, well, it— well, that depends on you. So the reason people take medication is because they usually don't have the time, energy, or money to do the healing, which it takes time to sit there and observe yourself and meditate or do— yeah, and do psychotherapy. So I think psychotherapy is the best evidence-based practice for healing something.

What's the difference between psychotherapy and talk therapy?

Psychotherapy is the broader umbrella of things that we call talk therapy.

And it's under— talk therapy is in psychotherapy.

Yes. So much of psychotherapy is talking. But as an example, if you have something like OCD, we'll do something called exposure and response prevention. Yeah. So if you have a phobia of like if you're claustrophobic, Talking about higher cost, you'd be in that experience.

Yeah. And start to feel calm and peace.

Well, start to feel terrified and then survive terror and then realize that terror is not to be feared. Yeah. You're not going to die. You're not going to die, right? And you don't die. And then we're going to put you in that situation again and again and again.

Teach you how to relax.

Not even. Yeah, we're going to teach you how to relax. But actually, we don't have to teach you. All you need to do is just survive. Wow. And then you will acclimatize to it. Sure. Right. So we're going to encourage some good neuroplasticity there.

And that's one of the best ways to overcome fear is by, you know, I guess exposing yourself to the fear.

Absolutely. Right. So for fear-based things, whether it's social anxiety, got to go to that party.

Yeah. Yeah. Right. Go get rejected by the girl. Go get rejected. But yeah, absolutely.

No, you're going to survive and know that you're going to survive. So confidence doesn't come from success. It comes from surviving failure. Fear, right? When you believe in yourself. And this is— it's so easy to do, isn't it?

Oh, right.

No, but, but really, like, it's, it's like, so we, you know, we can talk about, talk about your Olympic aspirations and stuff, right? And it's like, I know, I know you're gonna, you're gonna charge into that because you have failed and you've picked yourself up off the mat. 100%, right? And when I work with patients who have addictions, like, their big thing is you really conquer an addiction when you learn to pick yourself up, not when you avoid falling down.

So when you fail, you know, I've, I've never been drunk in my life, and I've never done drugs or any of these things, or been high. And, but I can assume how hard it could be to overcome the addiction of alcohol for people that have been alcoholics or drinking consistently. I can assume it's extremely challenging without the right tools. Even with the right tools, it's still very difficult, I can assume. Again, I've never experienced it, but it's not the person who has been an alcoholic or having alcoholic tendencies that never does it. It's when they relapse and drink and then they pick themselves up and go another 100 days without it or whatever it is.

Yes. So if you think about it, damage control is a skill that you can learn. Yeah, just like anything else. So I think a lot of these can be— it's not clear how much it can be healed. So I wouldn't— if you were managed and so I think for every person it's somewhere in the middle. Yeah. But I think that we have good evidence of healing. Yes. So for example, you know, some people who have things like PTSD, like we can sort of like rewire their brain and kind of fix that and it kind of goes away. Other examples of this are things like personality disorders. So there are people with like borderline personality disorder or narcissistic personality disorder where we can like do psychotherapy with them for some amount of time.

They also have to want it, right? They have to want— Oh, yeah, absolutely. If you're resistant to it, you're not going to improve.

Yeah. So I think they absolutely have to want it. But even wanting it is a tricky thing. Sure. Because it's totally— You really miss, right? It's totally fine for a part of you to not want it.

Yeah, but they don't want to face these parts of you.

Yeah. And there— but there has to be some part of you that is willing to do the work. Absolutely. I've never seen a case— I'm trying to think if I've ever seen— I've never seen a case of it working without the patient. Yeah, just forcing the patient. But, but a big part of what I do is people come into my office and are reluctant. So a big part of it is even if you don't want it, even if— because people are afraid, they don't come in wanting it, right? They come in sometimes kicking and screaming. No one wants to be wrong.

No one wants to be like, something is wrong and bad with me. We don't want that. Yeah, right. Want to feel like, man, I'm a failure. I've messed up. I've got this thing that I can't figure out on my own. And that's why I have this addictive personality, or I smoke or I drink or cheat or porn, whatever it is. Like, I do these things that don't feel good and I don't want to admit that. No one wants to admit that something's wrong with them.

Yeah. What we all want to do is solve our problems in secret and then come out triumphant.

Yeah, right. And or no one even knows we have the problem. I guess it's like, absolutely, we don't want to reveal that to the world because that's shame. Absolutely. That doesn't feel good.

But I do think we can heal for the most part. Yeah. And I think even if we don't, it is in some people's karma to always have a brain that is going to produce depressive thoughts. We know, for example, that there are some genetic polymorphisms and the serotonin transporters in your brain can be a little bit different. And so if they're a little bit shorter, we're more prone to things like depression. So there are some things about mental illness that are not fixable. Yeah, but in my overwhelming— in my career, I've seen over 1,000 patients. There are 3 that I can think of that I've been basically unable to help in a significant way.

So 99.9% of patients you've seen improve their mental illnesses or mental disorders or mental stresses into having a more empowering mind that makes them feel better.

And I, I would even go as far as to say that cure is the wrong target.

It's improvement, right? It's mana. It's—

yeah, I, I, I, I think it's your life doesn't have to be so hard. Yes. You don't have to cure it. That's what everybody wants. Everyone wants to be completely free, whereas I think that's once again the goal, right? Like, I want to be free of this forever. I, I think the challenge— and this can be really depressing to hear— is like, yeah, this is going to be a part of you But just because it's a part of you, it's so exhausting right now, but you can learn to live with it. It can be a part of you. Yeah. I was addicted to video games. It's a huge part of who I am. I had a gigantic ego. It's a huge part of who I am, you know? And I think this is what's really weird. I've had patients who'll be like, yeah, cancer is the best thing that happened to me. I'm like, what are you— what are you smoking? But this is what's really crazy, is life is about all of these things. It's about the good and the bad. To be detached from just wanting good And wanting to avoid bad at all costs. That's when we get into trouble. Yeah. If all you want in life is the good stuff, you will not be in control of your own actions. Be able to embrace that negativity. Don't run away from it. Then you're— then you have control. Control is about being independent of the responses that life sends your way. This thing sucks. I didn't want to go swimming today. It felt bad. It was torturous.

And I did 50 laps or 5? 5. Yeah. You see, you did 5 and then you were like, I'm done.

I did 5. Yeah. I forced my ass to get into the pool.

And I thought you were going to say in the beginning, because we never finished what that story was, that you're like, okay, I got there, I did 5, and then I kept going a few more. But you're like, I'm just doing what I said I was going to do.

Yeah. So oftentimes I will do a little bit more, but today was a day where I was like, I did 5 and that's enough. It's enough. And I thought about, do I want to do more? Do I want to squeeze out 1 or 2 more? And I was like, not today. I'm good.

Yeah. Because you've been on the road for 9 days, you've been working, you've been eating a little extra food here probably.

And I actually haven't been eating extra food. That's the problem.

Yeah. You needed more calories. Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah. I love it. I've got a couple final questions for you, Doc. Sure. Okay. But I want people to follow you, Healthy Gamer GG, on YouTube, Spotify, social media, all the places. And I think it's healthygamer.gg as well. Yeah.

What's the website for you? Yeah, healthygamer.gg.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So a lot of your content, I think you've got millions of subscribers over on YouTube, a lot of great stuff over on Instagram that I've been consuming, books, all the different stuff. I want people to go check it out, healthygamer.gg. And you have guides to mental health. Yeah. And a lot of these things are coming out here in the next month or two. So if people want to get more of this information, they can get some of your guides to mental health topics on love, relationships, et cetera. If they go to healthygamer.gg, you'll get the information on how you can get some of these guides. And I think your guides are like, you know, $20 or $30 or something. I think that they're very affordable. So I recommend people going and getting more information on you there. This question is something I ask everyone at the end. It's called the three truths. So hypothetical scenario, even though you are egoless and formless and have no identity, but in the future, you have transcended the world. But in the future, let's say hypothetical scenario, you get to live your life in this world exactly how you want to for the rest of your life. Okay. You get to create, experience, accomplish, you know, or not accomplish goals, uh, how you want, but it's the last day on this earth for you. Yeah. And for whatever reason, all the content you've created is no longer with us in this world. So it either has to go with you or it's eliminated from the world, but you get to leave behind 3 lessons from all the work you've done or not done or accomplished or not accomplished. 3 lessons that you would get to leave behind. I call it the 3 truths. Beautiful. What would those be for you?

Number one is understanding is more important than effort. Okay. That one's— and I think about this because I wonder, you know, if I teach all this stuff on the internet and whatnot, but I think about what would I teach my kids? So definitely understanding is more important than effort. I think mistakes are a part of your journey. Is another huge one. And, uh, I, I'd say the third thing is, is the results of your life are determined by your actions, right? I know we said that we don't control our— but like, like, action is all you've got. So that's the one resource. And kind of related to that This is a huge thing. I think people don't realize that 99% of the actions that you take are in your head. Literally. So an action, the way you respond to your thoughts is an action.

Yeah. So how you think about a thought is an action.

How you respond to a thought is an action. With another thought. Sometimes that's what people do.

Right. They think, I'm a loser. And then they respond to it by confirming.

Yeah, they spiral. Yeah, yeah, right. So when we talk about a thought spiral, that is not controlling our response to thoughts. And literally, literally, the most important thing that you can do is change the way and control the way that you respond to what your mind generates. Win-lose into win-win. You did it right there.

Yeah. And it sounds like if you can train or develop the skill of learning how to respond to your thoughts, you will live a much better life. Undoubtedly. If that is the number one skill that you develop is how to respond to your thinking. Undoubtedly. You, it will influence the quality or lack of quality of your life.

Yeah. So it'll change your actions. It'll change practically what your life looks like. Mm-hmm. And it'll change your peace. 100%.

It'll impact your emotions too.

Absolutely.

How you feel.

Absolutely. So we, you know, the first—

Do thoughts influence feelings or feelings influence thoughts?

Both. Yeah. So thoughts— emotions shape our thoughts and thoughts shape our emotions. So usually the first— this is the key thing— is the first emotion we don't have much control over. But what we do with that emotion, that's the key thing.

Correct me if I'm wrong. I have a belief that most doctors, professors, extremely intelligent, successful academics think more than they feel.

Absolutely.

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

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

Yeah. If you stay stuck in them.

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

Alok Baba, come, I will do everything.

I will give you peace and joy. So, well, what a lot of people, this is really fascinating. There's a lot of information about intelligence. So one interesting question I had is why isn't everyone a genius? So if you think about evolution and the way that our bodies evolve and things like that, well, why wouldn't just everyone be smarter? Yeah, why not? So it turns out that intelligence is a double-edged sword, especially really high. So a couple of really fascinating statistics. If you look at the top 10% of intelligence, those people make way more money than the top 1%.

Why? Because they're more naive also? The top 1%? The top 9%, I guess, or more naive?

No. So if you take the 10 smartest people in a room of 100, they will make more money than the smartest person in the room. So at some point, intelligence becomes harmful.

Ah, because it's a lack of action, probably, right?

Well, it's a couple of things. One is that, um, people who are very smart are actually more prone to depression. Why? Because they realize how screwed they are. They can calculate their problems way easier. Second thing is, the more intelligent you are, the more emotionally underdeveloped you become, because your brain you solve all your problems with intellect instead of emotion. So oftentimes people who have high IQ have lower EQ. And the reason for this is because if I have, you know, a dominant hand, I'm going to use it all the time and my left hand will become weaker. Yeah. So as intelligence becomes your tool of choice, other parts of your brain will actually be underdeveloped.

They become more dormant. Absolutely. Oh, and you need both the body, the emotions, the minds, the bodies. Yeah.

The healthiest way to be is to use the full capacity of what's at your disposal. People with super high IQ are basically one-trick ponies. And so there's some stuff that they're good at and some stuff that they're not good at.

And you want to have a range of skill sets.

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look at you, right? Curious, intellectual, thoughtful. Yeah. Physically on point and nothing emotionally connected. Nothing at all. And nothing at all. Nothing at all. Yeah. Egoless, formless. Yeah, not yet, but you'll get there.

One day I'll ascend to your level. Descend. Descend. Yeah. Become nothing. Yeah. Final question for you. What is your definition of greatness?

I think it's to lean into being fully you. If you look at most people, this is going to sound kind of weird, but you pay attention to their head, they're running away from themselves. I don't want to be this. I want to be like this. I want to be like this person. I want to be like— you're not being you. And so then you look at what other people are doing and you're like, oh, this person wakes up at this time and this person wakes up at this time. I, I, if I have time for a story, so I, you know, I was in my first, the second, third week of medical school and I, I saw like all of my colleagues would like study a lot, right? So we go to class and they'd be like chugging coffee and it's like 7 PM, 8 PM, 9 PM, 10 PM, 11 PM. They're at the library. And I was trying to do that because I was like, I have all this stuff to learn. It just didn't work. So then I was— I didn't do great on my first set of tests, and I was like, I got to figure this out. And I was like, I just can't work like these people. So instead, I, I leaned into my yoga training, woke up at 4:30 every day, would study for 2 hours a day between 5 and 7 in the morning, and then I would go to class, finish class, go home, you know, just do whatever. And then I'd go to sleep. So I only studied 2 hours a day in medical school. In the right 2 hours of the day, everything goes into my head, it's fresh. My absorption just drops so much when I'm fatigued, I'm not sleeping well because I've had so much caffeine. So lean into who you are. You have a unique set— you're a unique set of genetics, unique set of experiences. You have talents that other people can't even imagine. But as long as you are trying to be someone else, The strategy that worked for somebody else worked for that set of genetics, worked at that time. You know, we were talking earlier about Mask of Masculinity. It's a book that I think every dude should check out. This is the book that should have been— that people should be writing today. You were too early.

I know I was, right? Yeah.

Everyone's talking about masculinity now. You did it before it was cool. Yeah. And so like, you have to lean into who you are. Are. That's how you're going to be great. Yeah. Can't live anybody else's life. Stop trying.

Okay, thanks, man. Powerful.

Great, dude.

I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want remind you if no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.

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