Dr. K: Feeling Lost in Your 20s or 30s? (THIS Mindset Shift Will Help You Find Direction & Purpose)

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Fifty percent of people under the age of thirties still
live with their parents. Seventy percent of people in their
twenties are going through something called a quarter life crisis.
He's a Harvard trained psychiatrist.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Which specializes in modern mental health.

Speaker 1 (00:12):
Meet doctor k It's the man behind Healthy Gamer and
the voice helping millions navigate the digital world.

Speaker 3 (00:17):
What does someone do with the feeling of feeling being
left behind people.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
Who feel like they're not enough. That feeling comes from
trying to make other people happy and failing.

Speaker 3 (00:29):
Humans need to grow, We need to pursue something, We
need to move in a certain direction to stay a
lot of true or fulks.

Speaker 1 (00:34):
Chasing growth is not the same as growing. A lot
of people get focused on doing, but they don't pay
attention to what's happening.

Speaker 3 (00:44):
What does it even mean to be a man right now?

Speaker 1 (00:46):
A lot of masculinity right now is men trying to
become as manly as possible in the alpha sense, and
that doesn't translate over in happiness, and that doesn't work.

Speaker 3 (00:55):
When you look at people who are growing up right now,
people in their twenties and thirties, why is it that
they're confused, lonely hurt when externally everything seems to look okay.
The number one health and wellness.

Speaker 2 (01:09):
Podcast Jay Sheeddy Jay Sheddy Sey Only Set.

Speaker 3 (01:16):
Hey, everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the place you
come to become the happier, healthier and more healed. I'm
so grateful because today's guest is someone that I've been
really really looking forward to talking to. I've watched a
ton of his interviews, what's a ton of his videos.
He's got millions and millions of subscribers, millions and millions
of views online. He's the author of How to Raise
a Healthy Gamer. If you haven't got a copy of

(01:39):
the book, make sure you grab one. After today's conversation,
I'm talking about the one the Only doctor K, Doctor K.
It is great to have you on on Purpose. I've
genuinely looked forward to this. I find your reflections to
be poignant, powerful, direct, there's no bs, and you're so
well informed and well studied and set that it's pretty

(02:01):
hard to debate and argue with you in a good way.
So thank you so much well the work you've done.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
I mean, thank you so much for having me. I
think you know I similarly really appreciate the work that
you do. You know, I'm so curious about you, actually
because I see a lot of the work that you do,
and I know about you know, your I think it
was your first book, and so I think we may
have a little bit of a shared history, which I'm
super curious about. But I really appreciate the opportunity to

(02:27):
be here and would love to support the mission of
your podcast.

Speaker 3 (02:30):
Oh, thank you so much, and we should definitely dive
into that. I'd love to learn. Tell me, tell me,
tell me about some of the shed history that you know.

Speaker 1 (02:37):
So I understand that you grew up. I don't know
if you grew up or you have some sort of
spiritual training or you grew up with spiritual training. I'm
really curious about how you made the decision to walk
away from that and sort of where what kind of
spiritual tradition you come from. Yeah, I see the way
that you embody some of these concepts and and it's

(02:59):
sort of it's baked into the assumptions that you have
when you approach the world. Even just meeting you and
some of the stuff that we just did. You know,
I think you live some of this stuff. But I'm
super curious about you know how you got to be
where you are.

Speaker 3 (03:13):
Well, we'll get into it. Yeah, yeah, we'll get into it. Yeah.
But yeah, I think the place I wanted to start
with you is I find it so fascinating that you
focus so much on young people and young men in general.
And I feel that when you look at people who
are growing up right now, when you look at people
in their twenties and thirties, why is it that they're
secretly confused, lonely hr when externally everything seems to look okay.

Speaker 1 (03:39):
So a lot of the people that I work with,
I think, externally things don't look okay. I think that
was more true a few years ago. I think now
we're starting to become more and more aware that things
are even externally not okay. But I'm totally with you.
I think you know. I was just reading a paper
about this guy named Eric Erickson, who sort of talks
about the state that we go through in life. He

(04:01):
was a psychologist or psychiatrist, and so he said that
a lot of people are going through something called a
noiseless crisis.

Speaker 3 (04:08):
Soortant to me.

Speaker 1 (04:09):
A lot of people that you look at are going
through a crisis that you will never see. So we're
sort of familiar with this idea of a mid life crisis.
This is when men like me and you, you know,
we maybe hit our forties, maybe hit our fifties, we're
maybe paying a mortgage, we don't get to do what
we want, will maybe dye our hair, buy a convertible

(04:32):
and start driving really fast. But what I think is
happening way more. And there was an interesting study on
LinkedIn that found that seventy percent of people in their
twenties or going through something called a quarter life crisis.
So this is a time when you're sort of like,
you sort of took all the right steps, you did
what you should do, but you wake up one day

(04:52):
and you realize this is not the life that I want.
So I think we're seeing a ton of that, and
I think that one of the main reasons for that
is that the answers that the generation before before gave
us used to work. So like when I was growing up,
you know, my parents were like super like, oh, look,
you have to be a doctor. And then this sort
of idea of going to college, getting educated, you'll get

(05:14):
a good job, and then you'll be able to buy
a house and happily. Ever after kind of stuff. But
I think that formula doesn't work anymore. I think our
institutions have started to fail us. Not in a negative way,
but I think if you look at the way that
psychiatry develops, you know, we'll do research for twenty or
thirty years before we figure something out. And there's still
studies being published on Facebook today. And I don't mean Meta,

(05:38):
I mean Facebook. So this was a trial that started
like eight years ago that they're like publishing the results now.
So the rate of change in the world is rapidly
increasing and we don't really know how to deal with it,
and young people are getting absolutely crushed.

Speaker 3 (05:52):
And it's that affecting are you saying it's affecting our identity?
Like you said before, there was almost a path that
was laid out yep, And so you had these milestones effectively,
I go to college, I graduate, or get married at
a certain age, or buy a house at a certain age,
or retire a cern age. There were these milestones that
were laid out for you. And now, whether you go

(06:13):
to college or not, there's basically no milestones because the
goals have changed, the targets have changed.

Speaker 1 (06:18):
Yeah, So I don't even know if I think the
targets have changed, but I think the bigger problem is
the targets aren't meetable anymore. So, just as a simple example,
when I went to college, it costs about five thousand
dollars a semester. Yeah, six thousand dollars, I think. So,
you know, college costs me. It took me five and
a half years to graduate, so it cost me somewhere
around thirty thousand dollars to get an undergraduate degree. I

(06:40):
mean that's the cost of one year now, right, So
costs are increasing a lot if you look at this
idea of like, you know, getting married by a certain age.
And I have so many patients who really struggle with
this because they feel like they're late. They're like fifty
percent of people under the age of thirty still live
with their parents. So if you sort of think about
how does that cast say that again, fifty percent of

(07:01):
people under the age of thirty who are adults still
live with their parents.

Speaker 3 (07:05):
Wow, I didn't know that, right. So people in the US,
like India.

Speaker 1 (07:10):
And it's an economic thing because it used to be
that you can like, I mean think about you know,
we're here in New York, like rents are crazy, like
you can pay like three thousand dollars for like a closet,
you know. So now it's just not people are finishing college.
They have a ton of debt, there's inflation, people are
not able to get jobs. And then if you think
about the cascading effect, if I want to date, right

(07:31):
and I'm like a twenty seven year old dude, and
then like if the date goes well, it's like do
you want to come back to my place? And then
we go back to my place that like my BA
is there, you know, and then it's kind of like
you can't really, you know, do that. So we're seeing
sort of this epidemic of loneliness. We're seeing this like
dating and mating crisis amongst like men and women, and

(07:54):
a lot of young men are struggling a lot of
young women are struggling to and so like, I think
the world that we lived in is changed, and we
need new answers, we need new paths to navigate this world.

Speaker 3 (08:05):
Yeah. I love what you said about how the targets
are just unmetable. Yeah, because that's why people feel behind,
It's why they feel late, it's why they feel they'll
never get there. I now we're all using chat GPT.
But a couple of years ago, when I was writing
my second book, I started it off by talking about
how if you type in on Google, the first thing

(08:26):
when you type in will I ever which is obviously
a question about your future and possibility, The first thing
that comes up is will I ever find love?

Speaker 1 (08:36):
Wow?

Speaker 3 (08:36):
And the second thing that comes up is will I
ever be enough? Wow? Those are the top two questions wow.
And when you look at that and you think wow,
like love and self worth like they are right up
there as the top two most Google things at that time.
Now on chat GPT, I'm sure we'll get so much
more data. But I love what you said about unmet needs.
What does someone do with the feeling of feeling late,

(09:00):
of feeling behind, or feeling being left behind?

Speaker 1 (09:04):
So this is why I was excited to come here
today because you didn't ask me why, you asked what
does someone do?

Speaker 3 (09:12):
Right?

Speaker 1 (09:13):
And I think that's what sort of exemplifies what I
appreciate about you, is that you're always focused on what
to do, not necessarily why things happen. So I think
you know, if you have that feeling, there are a
couple of important things to do The first is that
that feeling has to do with your sense of identity.
So where do you get these expectations? Who do you

(09:34):
think you are? And I don't mean that sounds so bad,
but like, really, who do you think you are? How
do you understand who you are? And this is what
we see in people who have a quarter life crisis
is that they are too busy with identification that they
don't understand identity. Now, I know that's kind of confusing,
but if we think about identification, what does that mean?
That means that I'm going to look outside of me

(09:54):
and I'm going to find a group of people and
I'm going to say my identity is, like I'm one
of these people out right, Like I'm a goth kid,
or I'm super into football, or I'm a gamer right,
or I'm an inceel like there are all kinds of
ways that we can identify. We can identify with a
political party, but identification and identity are two different things.

(10:15):
And I think that when people feel like they are behind,
they have this expectation. They're looking outside and they're saying
this is what I should be, But their information about
who they are comes from what they see outside of them,
And the most important thing that you can do, I
know it sounds kind of generic, is to look within

(10:36):
and I mean really think about, you know, how do
I feel about myself? What do I want in life?
I oftentimes find that people who feel like they're not
enough that feeling comes from trying to make other people
happy and failing. Right, So, if my parents want me
to be a doctor and I don't go to medical school,
which is what happened in my case, you know, then

(10:56):
you've let them down. And we get so much our
our core sense of identity, the way we're socialized usually
comes from people outside of us. So there's a lot
of research on things like attachment theory, where a child
knows what they feel based on reflection from people around them.
And my favorite example of this is, like, you know,

(11:17):
when I remember when I had a two year old
daughter and she was like running around and then she
would fall, and then in a moment, what she would
do is look around, and if everyone else is like,
oh my god, are you okay, she'd start crying. But
if everyone is laughing, she'd get up and start laughing too.
So we learn so much about ourselves from the people
around us. I think the problem is that the expectations

(11:40):
that everyone places on us are no longer meetable in
the same way. So what you really need to do
is ask yourself, you know, who am I living for?
What do I want? What are the expectations that I've
internalized that form my value? And then I also tend
to use a lot of meditation practices, So I really
like for people who have identity problems, people have narcissism

(12:02):
or low self esteem, I'll do a certain kind of
meditation practice called shunya, which is Shunya means void or nothingness,
and so they sort of you cultivate this experience of
like complete emptiness. And when you cultivate that experience of emptiness,
there's a part of your brain called the default mode network,
and this is the part of your brain that thinks

(12:24):
about you. So like, you know, your brain thinks about
all kinds of things. I'm paying attention to you, but
they're sometimes when we reflect on ourselves, what do I
think of myself? The really interesting thing is that the
default mode network, this self reflective capability, is hyperactive when
you're very depressed. So when people are super depressed, what
are they thinking about? A lot of people think that

(12:44):
they're thinking about how the world is falling apart. They're
really thinking about themselves. I'm a loser, I'm pathetic. I've
had patience who will come in and say, you know,
my family would be better off without me, Like I'm
hurting my kids by existing, so I'm going to kill myself.
Like you know, they think so negatively and you can't
get them to stop. And so the interesting thing is
is we treat depression. The default mode network deactivates as

(13:08):
you do meditations, and I think Shunya is a specific
meditation that I suspect activates this pretty quickly. You stop
thinking about yourself, and when you stop sort of hyper focusing,
then this is I know it's kind of paradoxical, but
when we think about ourselves, what we're really doing is
we're internalizing expectations. Then you start getting data from within

(13:29):
that's not the same as thinking about yourself. It is
actually paying attention to yourself. And then you start to
get these internal signals and you get some amount of quietness,
some amount of stillness, some amount of groundedness, and then
people start to move in the right direction. You start
to feel better.

Speaker 3 (13:43):
Talk to me about that difference between paying attention to
yourself and thinking about yourself. What are the different thoughts
and emotions and feelings that are connected to each?

Speaker 1 (13:53):
Oh beautiful. So thoughts, emotions, and feelings are all thinking
about yourself. When I think about myself, I'm literally having thoughts.
All oak is good, all oak is bad, all oak
is beautiful, all oak is ugly. That's all thinking about yourself.
Getting information from within is not thinking about right. So
if I think about something, I am over here and

(14:15):
the thing is over there. So the object of what
I'm thinking about happens to be me, but the thinking
is happening over here. I am using my mind to
think about myself. So it's kind of like if you
look at your reflection in a mirror, you don't see yourself.
You are seeing a reflection of yourself. What you're really
seeing is a mirror. Right. So what I think people

(14:38):
and people get stuck in this right because they're thinking
about themselves a lot. Instead, what they need to do
is pay attention to themselves. Now, paying attention means observing,
not thinking. Just watch and something really interesting happens. So
I work with some patients who have schizophrenia and they
become psychotic, and it's really interesting. So when I was

(14:58):
back at Harvard, I was trying to to develop meditation
protocols for particular mental illnesses. So if you suffer from depression,
you know what kind of meditation do you do? And
anxiety and stuff? And I turned that all into a guide.
But when I have patients with psychosis, what I would
try to so these are people who are having hallucinations
and delusions, and what I would really focus on with

(15:19):
them is they would get so caught up in it, right,
And in psychiatry we try to make the hallucinations go away.
That's a good treatment, you know, that can be very
good treatment. But the other thing that I would add
to medications and things like that is let's learn how
to just watch it without getting pulled into it if
they're there, like, so what right? Can you just continue

(15:41):
to focus on this? Can you shift your attention away
from it? So simply observing gives us distance. So there
are other patients that I have that will get so
caught up in something. And maybe you know your listeners
have situations where like someone gets dumped and then your
friend comes to you, they're like, oh my god, like
my life is over. My life is ever take a
step back, like, get some perspective. So as we observe things,

(16:05):
the bite comes out of it. We start to gain
a little bit of distance from it, and so you
can just witness Okay, I'm feeling anxious today, right, So
this is very different if I say my life is
falling apart versus saying there's a part of me that
feels like my life is falling apart. That doesn't make
it true. Thoughts aren't facts, so that observation is a

(16:28):
little bit different. It's actually a skill uses a different
part of the brain, and as people start doing that,
they get some distance, they get some perspective. And the
really interesting thing is when that part of the brain activates,
it's like your anterior singular cortex, the part of your
brain that experiences emotion like you're amygdala. This is like
your threat center, your survival center that actually starts to
calm down. So people will literally as you turn this

(16:50):
part of the brain on, this other part of the
brain will naturally turn off.

Speaker 3 (16:53):
Well yeah, it's almost like thinking has an element of you,
attaching your story and prediction and projection unto yourself and
observing is just watching the story. It's almost like there's
not even a story. Actually, you're just watching it, just seeing.

Speaker 1 (17:11):
It's a beautiful way to put it.

Speaker 3 (17:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (17:13):
Right, So you're right that your mind attaches a lot
of stuff, right, And this is why I'm curious about
your background. But you know, in Sanskrit than in the
Eastern spiritual traditions, we have this concept of detachment or
vit agya. And what we sort of notice is if
you really think about what the source of your suffering is,

(17:34):
it's there can be pain, but usually what really messes
people up are the implications of what happens.

Speaker 2 (17:41):
Right.

Speaker 1 (17:42):
Oh, if like if this person says they're if this
person doesn't return my text within the hour, what does
that mean? That means they don't like me. That means
they think they're better than me, That means they're more
important people. We attach all kinds of things, and it
happens really rapidly, it happens subconsciously. That's really where our
suffering comes from.

Speaker 3 (18:01):
Yeah, well said, Yeah. The Buddha called it the second arrow.
Like the first arrow, it hurts it's things, and then
the second arrow is the meaning the story, the implication
that you have not even checked, you've not fact checked,
you've not observed, and there it is.

Speaker 1 (18:16):
Yeah, So I'm glad you brought up that example because
I was reading that text recently. I didn't realize, I think.
So we talk about the second arrow a lot in psychiatry,
which is this concept that you life sends you the
first arrow. You can't control whether you get dumped or not,
but it is the implication that you attach. Right, So
if I get dumped, that's a fact that there's some

(18:36):
amount of pain, some amount of grief. But then you
start to tell yourself, I'm a loser, I'm not good enough,
I'm not good enough, I'll always be alone. Those kinds
of thoughts are what you add to the equation, the
really fascinating thing about how to stop doing that. So
this is why it was blown away. I recently read.
I realized i'd never like, actually looked at the teachings
of the Buddha. What I had done is everyone talks

(18:57):
about the teachings of the Buddha, right, but it's like
other people talking about the boos. So what I didn't
realize is the bod that actually says the second arrow.
So we in psychiatry we talk about this is how
you avoid pain and negative emotions. The bod that says
the problem with the second arrow is also your positive emotions.
He says, you should stop attaching that to your positive
emotions as well. So when something good happens to your life,

(19:20):
we get excited about it, he says, don't do that.
So if you get a promotion that means I'm going
to do this, and that means I'm going to do this,
and that means I'm going to do this, stop doing
all that promotion is That's all it is. It has
no implications. And the really fascinating thing is this is
why it's so hard for people. Everyone wants the associations
of the good stuff, but nobody wants to give up

(19:41):
the associations of the bad stuff. That's not how the
brain works. If you want to decouple those two things,
take something in your life that is good and look
at why you're excited about it, and then let go
of that excitement. It happened, that's it. Observe it. It's
in the past. It doesn't mean anything about your future.
And if you yourself on both sides of those coins

(20:02):
at that coin, then your mastery will increase. Way more quickly.

Speaker 3 (20:05):
Yeah. Absolutely, it's as you know as well. It's the
definition of equanimity in the Gita of the idea that
one's not disturbed by happiness or distress. And that's really
interesting use of words. It's like, how could you ever
be disturbed by happiness? But that's how you are because
you created so much additional meaning, which now when it

(20:26):
didn't happen, the promotion didn't even make you happy anymore.
You believe the promotion was your right towards some bigger,
greater thing, and now you can't even experience the joy
of that moment.

Speaker 1 (20:38):
Absolutely, And that's what I see, you know, I have
kind of like a couple different buckets of patients. And
the interesting thing is I have people who are like
twenty nine years old living at home, you know, in
their mom's basement, playing video games and watching pornography all day.
And then I also have like executives and CEOs and
startup founders, and they do exactly that. They attach a
lot of things to their happiness, so they end up

(21:00):
moving the goalposts. One promotion isn't enough. Now I need
another one. Now I need another one, Now I need
another one. And it's beautiful, you know the quote from
the Githa that you said, because I think what does
it mean to be disturbed by happiness? Literally the way
that I try to work with these people is a
disturbance is anything that creates a change in your mind.

(21:21):
So your natural state is to be still. Think about
when you watch a sunset, you know, or you're just
like completely peaceful, like you're just there with yourself. And
even when you get a promotion that creates a disturbance,
and the moment that you create a disturbance, you're no
longer still, You're no longer at peace, and you may
be signing yourself up for future disappointment.

Speaker 3 (21:42):
What I'm really intrigued by is how do you kind
of factor that thought in with growth? Because it's almost
like humans need to grow, we need to pursue something,
We need to move in a certain direction to stay alive.

Speaker 1 (21:56):
True of for us, I think that's the most common way.

Speaker 3 (21:59):
Right, So what's a healthier way or what would be
the better way?

Speaker 1 (22:04):
Healthier? Better is a tricky language, Yeah, so what's so
I think that so this is really confused. I'm glad
you asked this because I think chasing growth is not
the same as growing. A lot of people get focused
on doing, but they don't pay attention to what's happening.

(22:27):
So I see this all the time in patients with addiction,
where like you know, you're they're doing something like a
substance or pornography or something like that, but they're not
really paying attention to how does pornography or the substance
rewire my brain? If I crush up opiates and snort
them right now? What am I signing myself up for tomorrow?

(22:48):
What is the human I am creating? What is the
life I will inherit if I take this action today?
And the interesting thing there is, once you start paying
attention to that, it's not really about growing, it's not
about getting anywhere. It's just what do I want to
inherit tomorrow? That's a great way I think to think
about it, right, I think like actually super short term,

(23:10):
so I think wanting growth, ambition, goals. These are wonderful motivators,
but they won't bring you happiness. Right, So you can
get satisfaction of the ego through achievement, But then you've
done something really sneaky, which is that you've made the
lever of satisfaction in your life, gratification of the ego.

(23:32):
So I want to chase this. I want to get promoted,
but that's really tricky. Like, sure, you can get promoted
and you can feel really good, but now you are
training your brain to feel good when you get something.
And so this is something that no amount of promotions
will ever be enough.

Speaker 3 (23:51):
It's less about what's happening and who you're becoming and
what you're inheriting, and more about what you're doing. And
that's why we get addicted to doing.

Speaker 1 (24:00):
Yeah, absolutely, so we get addicted to doing because we
want our internal state to change. Right, So if I'm like,
if I'm not happy, if I do something about it,
then my circumstances will change. If I get her flowers
one more time, she'll say yes when I ask her
out on a date. But what we're really doing is
we're putting the control of our life. We're putting our

(24:20):
internal happiness or contentment based on how the world responds
to me. So I'm not saying that you shouldn't act,
which a lot of people will say, like should you
not act? Which, actually, if you do this right will
be where you end up. And that's what happened to
the Buda, right, So he said, like, I'm going to
walk this spiritual path, walked away from his wife, walked

(24:42):
away from his son. And so I think that there
is a certain part of this path that is not
conducive to life that you will start to change so much,
you will start to stop caring so much about the
things that everyone around you cares that it can become
really difficult.

Speaker 3 (25:01):
Yeah, and that's what I was going to say, that
even if we go back to the simple idea at
the beginning, where you said, if you know who you are,
you can start to choose your own values, almost your
own metrics, your own milestones that aren't based on your parents' society,
the things around you. But the challenge with that is
you're fighting against decades and decades of wiring that is

(25:27):
encouraging you to move at these milestones, to move at
this pace, to be married by this age, to have
kids by this age. And so it's such a struggle.
Sometimes it can feel because you're like, wait a minute,
I'm trying to follow my whatever it is, but over
here there's this chart that feels like it's ranking me constantly.
That doesn't just disappear. How do we hold on to

(25:49):
our values and a new vision in a world that
has a very clear script you should follow.

Speaker 1 (25:57):
So it's a great question. I guess this is where
like I'd like to just share my experience, which is
really weird. So I think that I got to where
I am by making a series of terrible decisions, and
I strongly encourage everybody else to consider doing the same.
So I spent seven years starting to become a monk

(26:18):
and then decided to walk away from that. Right, So
this is like abandoning this path that I spent so
much time putting into. Decided that I fell in love
and the whole met my wife and was not super
interested in bromachadia celibacy, and so you know, did that
and then ended up going to medical school. Towards the
end of medical school, I was going to do holistic

(26:39):
oncology and do like evidence based complementary alternative medicine for
cancer treatment. My dad was a cancer doctor, so I
was like, I learned all this stuff in India, and
I was like, let's secure cancer with like herbs and
yoga and meditation and chemotherapy. And then towards the end
of it, I fell in love with psychiatry, and even
my family was like actually super against it. They're like
this is crazy. Like my mom the doctor was like,

(27:01):
you're going to go crazy if you spend time with
crazy people all the time, right, why don't you like
be a real doctor, like new cardiology. Look, it's the
second point. Wife was watching Gray's Anatomy. She wanted to
me to be a neurosurgeon. I was like, same organ,
but maybe in a different way. And so I sort
of walked away. I'd done a bunch of research and
things like that, and so I sort of walked away

(27:22):
from that path and like at the eleventh hour sort
of tried to apply for psychiatry, ended up getting lucky,
and then I wound up at Harvard and I was
like faculty at Harvard Medical School and was like, you know,
working on these meditation protocols and stuff like that. And
then I kind of started streaming one day talking to
like broke gamers on the internet because I realized, like
no one's really helping them, and so like walked away

(27:44):
from like that academic career. And then the weird thing
is like that sort of picked up in a weird way.
So I think that what a lot of people don't
realize is that so here I am. You're kind of saying, okay,
so how do I the world wants me to be this?
This is what I want to be, and there's a
fundamental mismatch. Even if I'm going to do this, I'm
going to piss off the world and what I've seen

(28:07):
not only in myself but also my patients who I
encourage this path for. I was really worried because I
realized that about forty percent of my patients within eighteen
months of coming to see me will make a career change.

Speaker 3 (28:20):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (28:21):
And I was like worried that I'm biasing them in
some way, Like am I like shaping them? But I
think once you start to realize, okay, this is the
direction that I want to move. Once you cast some
of those things off and you start moving in your direction,
you get so much positive internal feedback, like, yeah, people
around you were upset, but you are grounded. And if

(28:42):
you really think about when you feel the most out
of control in life, it's because you let the opinions
of other people disturb this. But as long as you
were secure in what you're doing, if you really lean
into that, and there's so much positive feedback, like it
the first time I started streaming on Twitch and you know,
like there were five people there. It felt so good

(29:02):
to talk to them. It just felt right, felt right
in here. And the biggest thing getting in the way
of that in today's society is we use technology to
dull what's going on in here. I'm feeling anxious, like
I'm on the subway, I'm bored. I don't like feeling bored.
Let me pull out my phone. I'm feeling anxious. Let
me pull out my phone. Oh my god, my boss

(29:22):
just told me, like, ah, let me pull out my phone.
So we do so many things with technology that dull
our sense of self. We don't like to be with
ourselves anymore. I saw a super scary study. People are
spending so much time on the toilet with their phone.
It's increasing the risk of hemorrhoids by about sixty five percent.
Oh and they're not even pushing, They're just sitting there.

(29:42):
And if you stay in that position in your body,
it puts pressure on the blood vessels. And like, sitting
on the toilet with your phone is giving people hemorrhoids.
Oh my god, it's super scary, and it does something
similar to your mind too. I don't know why, but.

Speaker 3 (30:14):
As I'm listening to you, I'm just thinking, like, that's
really the core of all of it. And you talked
about the ego self at the beginning. It's almost like
the reason why we're so obsessed with what everyone thinks
about us is because of the egos right there. So
if I was to ask you, what if someone do
to truly stop caring what people think? Because there's usefulness

(30:34):
in caring what people think. It's what helps the world
stay sane to some degree. But at the same time,
there's a part of you with what you're saying, which
I love. Is this idea of love. I love the
explanation you gave between Hey, when I was live on
Twitch for five people, it felt right here, and then
the opposite to that, which is, I don't feel good
right here, so I'm going to numb myself with technology

(30:57):
or you said, dull yourself. How do we even get
to that clarity that I like doing this right now
because I think we've all become so clouded. And I'm
sure you see this with the people you help and
serve and the millions of people online all the time
that even when you encourage someone to move in a
direction of noticing what's true to them, it becomes a

(31:18):
really difficult concept for people because I don't know what's
true for me. I'm kind of I like these all
these things, and I like this then, but now I'm
distracted by video games. I'm now distracted by porn. I'm
now like those polls are so strong that even if
you're close to knowing goll I really like this five
people on Twitch, the distraction of oh I wish I
had a million subscribers is so strong that you get

(31:38):
pulled away from that sense. How does someone truly know
something that feels right for them to pursue in a
world where they're either clouded so they don't know themselves
well enough or they get distracted.

Speaker 1 (31:54):
I think the answer is sort of in the question.
And I think this is why it's fun to talk
to you, because you ask questions with certain concepts in mind.
So I think you know, I don't know what I feel,
So let's understand that first, right, So if you want
to understand what you really want because you are getting distracted,
like and it happens to me too, I'll see you
know now that I'm in like whatever room I'm in,
I make comparisons. Right, Oh, this doctor is doing this,

(32:16):
this influencer is doing this. So the first thing to
understand is that where you spend your attention is going
to be where you get information. So literally, like if
I numb your tongue, like if I'm doing dental surgery,
like you know, you can't talk, you can't chew. So
one of the key concepts is awareness precedes control. And

(32:37):
you kind of pointed this out that if we look
at what's happening in our world, where is our perception going,
where is our attention going, It's always going outside of us.
You know when I was in med school, I started
med school at the age of twenty eight, which was behind,
and so I was like, oh my god, Like I
have to be efficient. I have to be efficient. Everyone
is so concerned with productivity in efficiency. I think it's

(32:58):
one of the most damaging things in the world. Because
now I'm listening to a podcast on the way to
the train, I'm reading on the train, listening to a
lecture on the way to lecture Hall, paying attention into
lecture Hall, Like every moment I can be productive I
can be efficient, but my attention is outside of me,
so I get bad. I Basically the other thing to

(33:21):
understand about the mind is the mind never wears out.
It rusts the faculties that you do not use, you
will lose. This is why we forget languages that we
don't practice right. So our attention is going outside of us,
getting pulled away by things like technology. And then once
we start to if I spend all of my time

(33:41):
thinking about what everybody else is doing, I will not
have a good sense of myself. So the first thing
we need to do is internalize our awareness. The second
thing to understand is that internalizing our awareness why don't
we do that because it's usually painful. So I don't
know why the world is designed this way. But when

(34:03):
a patient comes to me and sits in therapy, they
don't have a breakthrough first and then cry a lot
at the end. They cry a lot, they face their trauma,
they face their negative emotions, and then the good stuff
is at the end. So the reason people don't like
to look within themselves, we actually try really hard to
never look within ourselves because there's usually a lot of

(34:26):
pain in there. Like I remember when I was at
the height of my video game addiction. I was like
eighteen years old, and I know for an eighteen for
a whole year, I never went to sleep. I always
passed out if I got into bed, And what would
happen if I was idle? Thoughts would start to flow, like,
you're screwing up your life. You know a month has

(34:48):
gone by, you haven't gone to a single class in
a month. You're screwing everything up. I could see that
I was destroying my life and I was powerless to
stop it, so shame and guilt would flood my mind,
and I hated that. So I would play until five
point thirty in the morning, six in the morning, so
I was so exhausted that I would just pass out
immediately because if I was awake for even five minutes,

(35:10):
my mind would turn on and I would be awake
for hours in absolute torture. So we don't like to
look within ourselves because looking within ourselves is painful. This
is where there has to be this ugly part. And
from a neuroscience perspective, what's going on is we're doing
so much emotional suppression through technological devices. That's what they do, right,

(35:33):
So if you're feeling anxious and you pull out your
phone and you like laugh at cats, then like suddenly
you feel better. So it shuts that stuff off. So
as we shut off these circuits of the brain, we
have to rewaken them. And this is probably from an
evolutionary perspective. I don't know if this kind of makes sense,
but negative emotions keep us alive more than positive emotions.

(35:53):
So our brain has a bias to experience the negative
over the positive. So the first thing we have to
do is move our attention away from the outside world.
Spend some time with yourself. No music, no headphones, no
podcast nothing like that. I mean, I love podcasts, love
this podcast, but spend some time. You know, after you
listen to this episode, sit in silence, let yourself absorb.

(36:16):
Second thing is, if you sit with yourself, what's going
to come up is a lot and negativity. But that
negativity has to come out before it disappears. So when
I'm sitting with a patient who has a history of trauma,
the trauma is like stuck inside them and they use
so many defense mechanisms to bury it. We want to
bring that stuff up. We want to have you crying

(36:38):
and stuff like that and then let it go. And
then underneath all the negativity you will find that voice,
that internal sense of really what you want right when
you have a good cry at the end of that,
like you'll have a sense of peace and you'll be like, Okay,
like this sucks. Now that I've sat with it, what
am I going to do about it? And it's amazing

(37:00):
how it happens. You don't have to do it. All
you have to do is create the right circumstances. And
in the same way that your body the moment that
you swallow a piece of food, your body takes care
of the rest. If you give your mind the right environment,
it is designed to heal, just like a cut on
my arm. It will get rid of those negative emotions.
You just need to stop getting in the way.

Speaker 3 (37:22):
That's such a That is a really brilliant explanation. Never
heard it put that way so well. It's I love
the idea that your mind is already designed to repair
and heal itself, and if it's given the right parameters
and the right set up and the right environment, it
will naturally find its way.

Speaker 1 (37:41):
Absolutely.

Speaker 3 (37:41):
But the key part that you put there is the
pain and the discomfort is the prerequisite for a breakthrough
and our ability to sit in that is the part
that makes a contingent as to whether we'll actually rise
above from it.

Speaker 1 (37:59):
Yes, So I think just one other example, So I
want you all to think about when you get food poisoning,
what does your body do It feels nauseous, I'm going
to vomit the nausea and vomiting is doesn't feel good,
but it is healthy. And so sometimes what I'll also do,
like when my kids get food poisoning is oh wait,

(38:20):
I won't give them anti nausea meds unless they're in
risk of dehydration. So there are times where you have
to stop what the mind naturally does. But generally speaking,
we want the mind like, think about it for a second.
Every time you stop, if anxiety arises, your mind is
trying to get rid of it. It's trying to vomit
it out. Why does your mind keep doing that? Why

(38:40):
does it keep going there? Because that's the problem it's
trying to solve.

Speaker 3 (38:45):
Yeah, let's go back to the ego now, sure, because
you don't want to. I didn't want you to miss
out on that pot the ego I raised because I
was saying that we were saying that a part of
us has to stop caring what people think in order
to even pursue this path. I'm assuming when you were
studying to become a monk for seven years, where was

(39:05):
that intentional desire coming for you?

Speaker 1 (39:08):
Where was the intention of to be a monk coming?

Speaker 3 (39:10):
Yeah? It was coming from the ego, right, Talk to
me about that. YEA, that doesn't make sense to the outside.

Speaker 1 (39:15):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, So yeah, I mean, here's what happened
in my life. So I went to college. So growing
up I was like kind of gifted, so never really
like learned how to study. And then my parents, you know,
were like, oh, you have to be doctor Raluk. And
then I remember when I was fifteen years old. I
was at a party one day and some adult asked me, like,

(39:36):
what do you want to be when you grow up?
And I said I want to be a doctor. And
they were like what A, Like wow, Like you're going
to be a doctor, Like that's so amazing, right, And
so my ego loved that. I was like, oh my god,
I just say I'm going to be a doctor and
people are going to be like, wow, you have so
much potential. I loved hearing that and then but my
heart really wasn't in it. It was like ego. So
then when like I got to college, I was like, ah,

(39:56):
like whatever, And so then what started to have and
something weird happened. As I started to fail fell in
the video game addiction. I started to feel a lot
of shame, and then all of my friends like left
me behind. I remember I went to a Christmas party
where there was a friend of mine fro high school,
and I hadn't seen her in a few years, and
I was like, what are you doing? And she's like, oh,
you know, I just finished med school, Like I'm going

(40:17):
to start ophthalmology residency in like a month. She's like,
what are you up to? And I'm like, I'm applying
to medical school for the third year in a row.
I've been rejected an eighty times. What ended up happening
is my ego was so low or like it was
so bruised that I pulled a really interesting trick that
happens in spirituality, where I said, I'm going.

Speaker 2 (40:38):
To be not material anymore. All of these materialistic people
are chasing these materials. You want to be a doctor
for money and fame and pride and all of this.
I'm going to be better. I'm going to let go
of materialism. I'm going to rise above you.

Speaker 1 (40:49):
I'm going to be swami, I'm going to be Yogi,
I'm going to be great. But it was really ego,
So that's the original. So I fell in love with
it in a genuine way. But also so what kept
me there was like, this is the way that I win,
This is the way that I catch up. This is
the way that I impress people. So it took a lot.

Speaker 3 (41:09):
Of both of them that way, because even exactly right.

Speaker 1 (41:12):
So that's what's sneaking out the ego. It'll twist and turn.
That sort of happened for a while. Thankfully I had
some really excellent teachers. I did a lot of meditation practice,
and I kind of discovered that years later that oh,
this is actually like my ego. So that was my journey.
And then then I actually like let go of the
ego quite a bit. I stopped caring about my grades.

(41:34):
And we'll get to that in a second. So I
ended up getting into medical school and I tried to
take my vows. So when I was twenty one years old,
I went to my guru and I said, you know,
I want to become a monk, like can I take
my vows? And his response was really interesting. He said,
becoming a monk is about giving up your life. But
you don't have a life worth giving up. Your life
is empty, Like you haven't done anything. What are you
giving up nothing? It's an escape. So he said, go

(41:57):
back to the US, get a doctoral degree, and if
you still want to do it when you're thirty, we'll
take you. You can come back every summer. We'll continue
teaching you practices, you can continue learning, you can walk
that path, but we're not going to let you take vows.
So I said, okay, fine deal. So I went back
focused on getting a doctoral degree. So I decided to
go to medical school. That's a little bit silly because

(42:19):
my wife wanted to be married to a doctor. I
was like dating her, so I was like, all right,
might as well, which is like so funny because you
know everyone thinks like, oh, like you have some deep No.
I was just like I got to get a doctoral degree,
and like this chick that I like wants me to
be a doctor, so like let me do that because
she's going to think that's hot. So I mean, it
was so like simple, right, So as I start really

(42:39):
focusing on the work, and then I think I sort
of let go of my ego. And so you kind
of talked about, you know, how do you stop caring? So,
like you said, you should care. So I care a
lot about what people think, but I don't let it
determine my identity. So people say negative things to me
all the time. I got reprimanded by the Medical Board

(43:01):
of Massachusetts. I think that's a good thing. I think
that's a healthy thing. I think that sometimes in life
I make mistakes, and I think sometimes in life I
behave in a non perfect way, and so I value
what people think. But I also accept that I'm not perfect, right,
So of course I'm going to make mistakes. I try
not to let it affect my sense of me. And

(43:24):
that's the key differentiator, because what a lot of people do.
This is the biggest mistake I think you can make,
is if you're this is what happens right, people are
like I care so much what people think, So how
do I fix that? I stop caring what people think,
and then you turn yourself into an asshole, and then
that causes lots of problems. And so the problem is
either end of the pendulum is a bad idea. So

(43:47):
receive what people think, also add some context to it.
Don't just take it at face value. Where is this
person's criticism coming from. Ninety percent of the criticism I
get is projection. Right, they see in me something that
they don't like, but that's not really who I am.
So accept the criticism and then also recognize that just
because someone says something about you, even if it's true,

(44:11):
that's not who you are. Right. It's an attribute of you,
But at your core, you're just a regular human being
trying to navigate this world doing the best that you can.
And the moment that you accept yourself is that nothing great,
but also nothing terrible. Things become way easier.

Speaker 3 (44:29):
Yeah, it seems like for most people following, whether they
call it ego or whether they call it something that
gets them the result they want. I get to marry
the girl I want to the guy I want, or
it gets me a promotion, it gets me some more money,
helps me move to the city. It almost feels like
that's a base level motivator that pretty much all of

(44:50):
us function on. Yeah, it's almost like the general operating
system of the world, which is I need to get
this to get this, and it ether serves you because
you get there and you get the girl, or it
doesn't serve you because you don't get it. And then
that's where people turn towards depression and other things as well.
Like that's it's almost like when your ego is not
fulfilled for what it may think, it may end up

(45:13):
moving towards being disheart and depressed and lonely.

Speaker 1 (45:16):
Absolutely so, I think ego opens the door to those things,
and there is a ton of evidence for that. And
I love your observation that this is the default way.
I think that's what That's how far physical evolution got us.
So if you look at like how human beings evolved, like,
you know, we evolved to care what people around us think, right,

(45:38):
So exodus from the tribe, ostracization from the tribe meant
death when we were like growing up and couldn't take
care of ourselves and things like that, so we lived
in these very tribal communities. I think society has changed
so much because in those tribal communities we cared a
lot about the judgment of other people, but we also
had a lot of baseline connection, you know. I remember

(46:00):
I had a friend who was like one of the
earliest streamers, and I asked him why he quit, and
he said, well, because people on the internet are assholes.
And he's like, you know, when I used to play
games in arcades, like if you're mean to everybody, no
one's ever going to play with you. But on the
internet you can be mean to anyone. There's no consequence.
So we used to have this Our brain evolved for

(46:22):
some amount of like caring what people think, but some
amount of default connection. People just don't give up on you.
In today's world, people are so replaceable. So those things
worked when they were both there. Now we have an
imbalance where people are so replaceable. Everybody ghosts everybody online
dating is like I can keep on. I don't have

(46:42):
to choose between ten people, one hundred people, a thousand people.
The number of options jay is infinite. I can keep scrolling,
keep scrolling, keep scrolling until I find what I want.
So that sort of thing has really changed. And so
now what we have to do is learn a new
way to relate to people to form our identity. And

(47:05):
then arguably you can talk about like this is the
limit of physical evolution, and there's a whole weird spiritual
perspective on spiritual evolution. But I do think that, like,
this is a skill, and this is why we're seeing
an explosion of mindfulness, right, I mean it is transformative
for you, transformative for me that these concepts are what
you need to survive and thrive in today's world.

Speaker 3 (47:27):
Yeah, it's almost scary when you put it like that though,
where you're like, and I love that example of Yeah,
if you were playing a video game at an arcade, generally,
if you were decent, people would crowd around you and
watch and cheer you on. If you're about it's something,
maybe one person would walk past and laugh or make
fun of you. And now, of course that's escalated, and

(47:48):
that's what leads to learneliness because people are well, I
don't want to put myself out there. I don't want
to go on that dating app. I don't want to
make a video. I don't want to chase my passion
because actually, if I do that, there's going to be
hundreds of thousands of peace people, or forget that, there's
going to be just the ten people around me, my
own family that disagrees with what I'm doing. And so
if someone's in that state right now where they're like,

(48:10):
I'm scared about putting myself out there from a let's
choose dating because you brought up dating. I'm scared of
putting myself out there from a dating perspective because I
think I'm replaceable. I'm actually scared of even believing that
real connection exists. I don't even know if there's someone
out there for me. How do I even begin to

(48:31):
work against the math and the algorithm, which feels like
it's set up against me.

Speaker 1 (48:37):
This is the first time I'm going to say I
don't know. So I think dating is the one thing
I've been focused a lot on for the last year.
But in terms of what I understand and what I know,
I got lucky, so like I found my hopefully life
partner before things got really really hard, and I think,
if you're not someone, so this is the one area

(49:00):
where I kind of feel like I don't know. So
some of the things that I'll do, and this is why,
like I kind of make the content that I do
is you know, I made this guide to meditation, and
what the best answer I have is start to use
some of these concepts, start to internalize some of these skills.
If we look at the way in which dating in
today's world scars you, that involves hits to your ego,

(49:25):
that involves these things like some Scots and there's we
have a trauma guide to where we kind of go
into that. But if we kind of think about, like
why is dating so hard? This is the a sunskrit
concept of something called a some scot. So this is
kind of like a trauma. So if you kind of
think about every person that you date, you're not just
dating that person. You're carrying the emotional baggage of all

(49:45):
of your experiences. And this is why online dating is
such a mess, because if you go to date someone online,
they're not judging you based on you. They're judging you
based on all of their past experiences and yours and yours. Right,
So when someone doesn't text you back, your mind attaches
associations to that, right, like, oh, this means they're ghosting me. Well,

(50:10):
why do you interpret that as ghosting? Because I've been
ghosted before and it hurts so much. So as we
go through life, we start accumulating baggage, and then what
happens is we're not dealing with a person, we're interpreting
that person. And I'm sure there are people in the
audience who have felt this, where people don't judge you
for you, they look at some tiny fraction of you

(50:32):
and they inject all of their negative experiences with people
like that, all men are dangerous, all women you can't
trust women. Right, So where do these generalizations come from?
And we see this so much, get this kind of
indoctrination using social media, But the root, the psychological injury
is there. And so the best thing that I know

(50:55):
how to do is teach people. Let's give you a
course in yourself. This is how you work. And that's
really what I learned in India when I was here
in the United States, They'll teach me about physics, They'll
teach me about chemistry. No one could explain to me.
I want to wake up at eight am, but I
never do. I want to stop playing video games, but

(51:16):
I can't control myself. And so as we teach people,
like it's interesting because we have a lot of in
cells that have been coming into our community for the
last few years, and like they're starting to get better
as you teach people. This is how I work, This
is where my ego comes from. I want a relationship
so bad that I'm going to tolerate abuse because I'm

(51:37):
scared of loneliness. I would rather be abused than alone.
So once you start to understand these things about yourself,
once you start to dissolve your ego a little bit,
once you start to realize what your s scars are,
what is the emotional baggage that you carry around that
sabotages all of your interactions. And the way that you
know this happens is because the same crap keeps happening

(52:01):
to you over and over again. This person takes advantage
of you. This person takes advantage of you. This person
takes advantage of you. That's because you were sending out
a signal that they are picking up on, because they
test boundaries. They'll treat you a little bit inappropriately and
you'll take it, or they detect that you're a people

(52:22):
pleaser and that you don't. You can't tolerate someone being upset.
This is one of the huge, one of the biggest
things that I think people we've trained people to do
is tolerate. People have now become intolerant of the dissatisfaction
of others. If somebody doesn't like me, I can't handle
that anymore. And so as you start to realize some

(52:45):
of these patterns, then I think you form yourself into
a better human being. And then fingers crossed, it's up
to karma or God or the universe or whatever or
the algorithm. But I think the best thing that I
know how to tell people is turn yourself into the
healthiest human you can and then the rest of it
is kind of out of your control.

Speaker 3 (53:03):
Yeah, I actually find that approach quite refreshing, and I
think it's true. You just get a better radar, you
get a better ability to spot frequency. And I don't
mean on a spiritual level, I just mean on a
general human level. Like you just said, you set up
your boundaries better. You have better barriers, you have better
filters early on. You don't allow someone with bad behavior

(53:25):
to last longer than they should. Absolutely, and all of
those things save you from wasting time and energy. And
I think one of the biggest things is you don't
allow your old kind of a Hollywood Romance Disney version
that was programmed into you to rerun the program every

(53:45):
time it feels that way. So I think so much
of this goes back to that same thing. It's like,
how do you not let that old circuitry take over again,
even if you've learned all these new principles and you're
meditating and your mindful and all this stuff, but it
can just flip back yep, because it's so hardwired and
that ultimately sometimes you see people who are doing all
the right work, but they meet someone that they found

(54:06):
attractive traditionally and then everything's gone out of the window. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (54:10):
So I think it's really uncomfortable. It's a beautiful example
because you kind of do everything that you're supposed to do,
but you never do the one thing you need to do.

Speaker 3 (54:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (54:19):
I see this all the time in my patients, and
you offered I think the best example, which is you
find someone that you're attracted to, and what a lot
of people need to do is start looking at people
that are not attracted to. Don't just accept that attraction,
because when you follow that kind of attraction, it gets
you back into the cycle. I'm going to meditate and

(54:40):
I'm going to do this, and I'm going to do this,
but then this kind of person shows up and I'm
going to make the same damn mistake again. Right, So
it feels so counterintuitive. I think another thing, Like, so
sometimes my patients will come in we'll talk about, you know,
dating and relationships, and they'll be like, you know, but
but it sounds like, doctor k You're saying I shouldn't
be myself, and I'm like, yeah, you should. I think

(55:01):
being yourself. I know this sounds kind of weird, but
let me explain, being yourself is one of the worst
things that you can do. Like what created this version
of you? A lot of unconscious programming, a lot of
social conditioning, a lot of trauma. Right, all of these
things have turned you into the current version of you.
So I think the real you is way more formless

(55:23):
and ego lists and all that kind of stuff we
actually need to dismantle. Don't just be this set of patterns.
That's what they oftentimes mean. They say, like, you know,
if you can't handle me at my worst, you don't
deserve me at my best. So I'm going to continue
acting at my worst. This is what we tell people nowadays.
I think that's a terrible idea, and we wonder why
there's such a dating and mating crisis when everyone's like,

(55:43):
I'm just going to be me. If you don't like me,
you can move on. I'm going to move on too.
Everyone is replaceable. I don't need to change, right, So
I think we need to take a step back from
that and try to really turn yourself into the best
human being that you know how to be, and then
I think things will turn around, which is what I
see pretty consistently.

Speaker 3 (56:01):
Yeah. Yeah, at least you have the tools. Yeah, like
you said, they may not, they may not solve all
your problems, but at least you have the tools to
know what to do with it. What do you what
do you think it means? You talk so much about masculinity,
which I really appreciate because I think it's an area
that the country as a whole that we both live
in is dealing with right now. Yeah, the world's dealing
with it, for sure. What does it even mean to

(56:23):
be a man right now? I don't know? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (56:27):
Yeah, so, I mean, I I don't.

Speaker 3 (56:28):
Yeah, what's confusing people, I guess is the question.

Speaker 1 (56:30):
Yeah, so, I I mean I don't prescribe so masculinity.
My understanding of, like the scientific or literature definition is
like it's like the set of you know, behaviors and
expectations that we put on men that's not that's not
the lens that I work. So if you ask me
about masculinity, I'd say, like, go ask someone else. I mean,
I'm going to talk about it, but like just to

(56:50):
be clear, you know, I'm a clinician. Yeah, so my my,
I'm zoomed into one person at a time. So what
I think is going on right now? You know, I
had a really interesting video come out recently that got
a lot of controversy about why women prefer beta males.
So this is like a big thing where everyone's like,
I'm going to be alpha, and there's so much weird

(57:12):
science that people don't understand. So as one simple example
of like a lot of what masculinity like, everyone wants
to be ripped. So there's a great study that looked
at something called drive for muscularity. So this is not
how muscular you are, but how much you want to
be muscular. So the higher your drive for muscularity is,

(57:34):
the lower you're a likelihood of entering a long term relationship.
You can enter short term relationships, higher likelihood of divorce.
And I think there's there's a lot of like cross
talk where like a lot of women are saying what
we want is like safety, not some dude who's like
super cut, and so there's a lot of confusion about
what it means to be a man. I think one

(57:55):
of the reasons why there's confusion is because of sort
of the way that men and women operate. So there's
a part of men that focuses on intra male competition.
So I'm going to talk a little bit about animals,
and I don't think that translates over one hundred percent,
so big caveat there. But if you look at sort
of like you know, a lion pride, right, the males

(58:18):
will fight amongst themselves, and then one male will rise
to the top and then he becomes the male of
the pride. So there's this idea that, like men will
fight amongst each other, they'll create a hierarchy and then
that'll make them attractive to women. And I certainly know
that it was really weird. Once I got married and
started wearing a wedding ring, I got way more female attention.

(58:40):
So I think there's some element of that's true. But
I think that having spent a lot of time working
with female patients, everyone's an individual. We're not just like
products of our biology and I think this is what
really confuses men, is that we can fight amongst ourselves.
But that's not actually what women want, that's not what
they actually make their selections based off of. So I

(59:01):
think a lot of masculinity right now is men trying
to become as manly as possible in the alpha sense.
And I think that people get super confused because like,
that doesn't translate over into happiness. And if it doesn't
translate over into happiness, you know these dudes, like I've
worked with so many men who like are super into
transactional relationships because they really think that human females, that

(59:24):
these general principles of how lions select mates will translate
over to an individual person who has unique genetics, unique history,
and that doesn't work. So they approach this relationship transaction
of the will thing like, oh, all women want is
like money. So if I approach a relationship from a
transactional perspective, if I see a woman as just a

(59:45):
biological uterus, the women who want a partnership will run away.
The women who have enough confidence will be like, this
guy's an asshole, they'll leave, and so all you'll be
left with is women who also view relation ships in
a transactional way, and then that will sort of feed
into giving you this idea of like, Okay, this is

(01:00:05):
all women want, because all the women who don't want
that will never date you in the first place. So
I think we're seeing a lot of these like mechanisms
at play. I think a lot of this masculinity is
because we expect a lot from men, but as men
are failing those expectations because I think they're unreasonable, we're

(01:00:26):
not really giving them an alternative. So I think, you know,
research shows that most women still want to date a
man who makes more money than they do, but sixty
plus percent of people who go to college are now women.
So what's happened is men are in this really tough
spot where the expectations from men have not changed, but

(01:00:48):
society has changed, so we can't meet those expectations anymore,
and so that there's this really interesting gap. And when
people feel crushed, when they feel rejected, the ego activates.
We fall into all of these like unhealthy behaviors like
pornography and drugs and video games and stuff like that
to soothe our internal environment. We don't teach boys or

(01:01:08):
men emotional regulation skills. And so I think there's like
just a confluence of a thousand things going on and
men are getting like crushed and squeezed.

Speaker 3 (01:01:17):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, and I appreciate. I know you're
a clinician. I just find your perspective on some of
these more societal challenges to be you know, great observations.
And I feel similarly, it's almost like it's what we
talked about. We talked about there were targets. Somehow some

(01:01:37):
of those targets have remained, but they feel unmeutable yep.
And then there are moving targets which you keep trying
to place. I need to get more buff, I need
to get more ripped, I need to get more money,
whatever it may be, and they become arbitrary, abstract targets.
What's happening for women on the other side, because society
has also changed and their desires.

Speaker 1 (01:01:56):
Yeah, I think they're getting equally screwed. As society is changing,

(01:02:17):
women are facing particular challenges, men are facing particular challenges.
And one of the beautiful things we've seen in our
community is the more that we understand that, I think,
the better off things get.

Speaker 3 (01:02:26):
That's the conversation that needs to be.

Speaker 1 (01:02:28):
Had yeah, so it's beautiful. I remember a post that
someone once made, so there was a woman who's very
attractive who said, you know, I'm an incredibly attractive, physical,
physically attractive woman. I feel so incredibly alone. Every time
I meet someone. They don't see me, they don't care
about me. They just care about the way that I
look and things like that. So people always around me,

(01:02:49):
but they're like using me constantly. And then the really
funny thing is like there was an incel in our
subreddit who was like, wow, like the way you're describing loneliness,
that's exactly how I feel. I never image that like
a ten out of ten attractive women could feel the
way that I feel. And it was like a really
beautiful moment, like of weird connection over the internet. I

(01:03:09):
think one of the key things that women are struggling
with right now is first of all, safety. So I
think that men are getting very aggressive, men are getting
very angry, and there's some reasons for that. I think
that's not something that's a problem, but I think it's
the only card men have to play in today's society.
So I think their safety is kind of the number

(01:03:30):
one priority or like the number one danger that a
lot of like women face, and I think it's something
that a lot of men like can't understand. So I
remember getting frustrated because I was like walking behind a
woman and we were walking, so I was walking down
in New York City actually, and she like turned ahead
of me, and it was nighttime, but I'm like walking

(01:03:51):
behind her. We're walking at the same pace. And then
you know, later on, someone kind of tells me like, oh,
you shouldn't do that because it seems like you're following her,
and so then they're like, what you should do is
past her. So then I started walking really fast and
someone else tells me, like, you should never do that
because now you're like it seems like you're walking fast,
you're getting you know, you're getting closer to her. So
then it's like, what am I supposed to And they're like,
you should cross the street. And then I crossed the street,

(01:04:12):
but then like.

Speaker 3 (01:04:13):
Then you go run over.

Speaker 1 (01:04:14):
I didn't get run over, but then there's another woman
on the other side of the street. It's like because
it turns out, but I'm just like like zig zag
zagging back and forth. So but I think the reason
that they feel this way is because they things are unsafe,
and a lot of men feel like they women don't
give them a chance. And it's kind of like, imagine
that a third of the people that walk into your

(01:04:36):
store are going to steal from you. How would you
relate to that. I think a lot of men just
don't understand the statistics around how easy it is to
become a victim. If you're a woman in this world,
you can become a victim as a man too. I
don't think we take you know, cases of male sexual
assault victims, even by women and teachers and things like that.

(01:04:59):
We don't take that seriously, which is a real problem.
But I think that's one thing that they're really struggling with.
I think another thing that they're really struggling with is
that there is a lack of good men that women
are looking for partnership. They're looking for companionship, and a
lot of men have become angry. And this is where, like,
you know, people will say, like, we blame them. I
think that's the big mistake that we make. I think

(01:05:19):
the reason that so many men are struggling right now
is because they're the one demographic that we as a
society don't help so the one thing that hasn't changed
this is maybe the most damaging thing, is we expect
men to solve their own problems. So sixty percent of
people who go to college or women where the male

(01:05:40):
only scholarships. We don't want, we don't need those because
men have privilege. And I think this is what's really
scary is you know, I see this a lot because
I'll have CEOs come into my office and then like
I'll go and work in jail, and right, most of
the people in jail are men. And so when we
talk about male privilege, which is real, the key thing
is like it affects men, some men a lot, but

(01:06:01):
it doesn't affect others. So the majority of workplace injuries,
you know, things like that, like that, those are all men.
And so I think that we need to sort of
stop thinking about, yes, male privilege exists, but it may
be insufficient to compensate. And this is how people think.
They think that if there's privilege, that means that there
isn't hurt, right, but like it, those things don't even out.

(01:06:25):
One thing I appreciate about medicine is things are very multifactorial.
There's a lot of variables here and just because you're
rich doesn't mean that like that has great advantages. But
if you get cancer, you still have cancer. It's not
like being rich cancels out cancer. It may help in
a very significant way, which unfortunately I've seen. There's some
degree of like connection there, but one doesn't replace the other.

Speaker 3 (01:06:49):
Yeah, no, And I think you took it to the
high ground there, which I really appreciate, which is that's
the compensation. And that's why I asked about both. The
conversation that needs to be had is how do we
just understand each other better because generally what we find,
and it's easier because it's clickbait, gets more views, gets
more attentions, is the small echo chambers of one or

(01:07:09):
the other. That we could be sitting here as a
conversation as men having a conversation about how women have
let us down, or we could be having a conversation
about how men are terrible, because then that makes us
look like better men, and both are not helpful for
society because we're just going to sit on the opposite
sides of the bridge and just point fingers.

Speaker 1 (01:07:28):
Yeah, I'm with you, So I think that you know
that's what happens, is like that's literally what we see
is like then, you know, male only spaces will highlight
how women are saying that men are all trash and them.

Speaker 3 (01:07:40):
And men need to make seven figures or whatever. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:07:42):
Right, so everyone's just pointing the finger at each other,
and I think I think you're spot on that. What
we really try to do is just understand, yeah, sort
of recognize that every human being doesn't matter if you're
a man, it doesn't matter if you're a woman. You
have a unique set of advantages, you have a unique
set of challenges. Let's understand who you are. Let's give
you the basic set of skills of self understanding, dissolving

(01:08:04):
your ego, emotional regulation, and if you like work on
this stuff. I think that's the best way is to
become a healthy human, an independent human. I think that
sets you up for the best kind of relationship.

Speaker 3 (01:08:17):
I think that speaks to a big issue right now.
I'd love to know how you work with people on this,
because it's a big part of self understanding. Is there's
such a challenge we have with raising the mind from
judgment to understanding. It's so much easier to judge, blame,
point fingers, shift responsibility to make sense of someone through

(01:08:44):
very little amounts of information to have a projection on them.
How do we encourage How do you encourage your clients?
How do you encourage your patients and people you meet
to rise from judgment to understanding In a world where
we don't have time, we don't have energy for that,
it requires so much more effort.

Speaker 1 (01:09:00):
So I don't know about time, but it does require
more energy, and it does require more effort until you
learn how to do it. So I once had a
patient who I was in training at the time. They
were an adolescent and they had all kinds of behavioral problems.
So this is a kid who would start fights, would
smear feces all over the bathroom at school, and like

(01:09:23):
what everyone does. This is so sad. But when someone
does something really crappy, what we want to do is
punish them. But if you want to stop that behavior,
what you really need is compassion. So if you sort
of think about judgment, judgment is like a narrowing, right,
So I'm saying like you are bad. So there are

(01:09:44):
a couple of things that create judgment in the brain.
The first is activation of negative emotion. If my adrenaline
is high or if I feel angry or afraid or anxious,
this does something really interesting. It narrows our peripheral vision

(01:10:04):
from one hundred and eighty degrees to thirty degrees. So literally,
if I were angry with you right now, I would
be zoomed in on you because you were the threat.
You were the danger. The really interesting thing is that
it does that psychologically too. We stop seeing context. When
this person dumped me.

Speaker 3 (01:10:23):
Oh so good.

Speaker 1 (01:10:24):
I didn't think about what's going on in there or
not even dumped. When this person said no, I don't
want to go on a date, I didn't think about
what's going on in their life. I didn't think about
the way I smell. I didn't think about any of
those things. All I see is that hurt, and it
causes me to see red well, and then I will
snap into judgment. And this is evolutionary, by the way,

(01:10:47):
So when a tiger, when I'm like work in the
fields and a tiger shows up, I don't want to
be like hmm, I wonder how the tiger's feeling today.
Is the tiger hungry? Is they not hungry? This is evolutionary.
Fear and anger cause us to zoom in see black
and white and act before we think, which is the
only way that we survive. So what we really need

(01:11:09):
to do to stop judgment is to lower those emotions.
And we see this so much with Israel, Palestine, Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives, men, women, right,
everyone is angry. Everyone is fighting for survival. And when
you fight for survival, there's no room for compassion. There's
no room for empathy, there's no room for understanding. So

(01:11:33):
what we need to do is two things. One is,
if someone is coming at you really hard, try to
be compassionate. And this is what's really interesting. You know,
it's like weird, like being trained as a psychiatrist, Like
we get trained in this stuff formally it's really hard
to do. But when a patient comes into my office,
you know, like like you're terrible, and psychiatrists are all terrible,

(01:11:53):
and like, you know, like I hate being here and
I don't need to be here, and all y'all you're
just trying to scam me, like big farm is paining
you to fill people up with meds. The natural reaction
is like no, they're not. No, I'm not you know, no, no, no,
no no. But I'll be like okay, hold on a second,
I can see you're really upset. But tell me, like
why you hate psychiatrists so much? Like what have been
your experience is? I really like to understand. And when

(01:12:17):
someone comes at you with hard emotional energy, if you
sort of make yourself like water, if you kind of
give them that space, they kind of deflate. Right. So
if I come at you like you know, I argue
with my wife all the time, and if I come
at her hard, like she's done an awesome job recently
of like really handling my anger where I would come

(01:12:38):
at her hard and she would fight back, right, And
if she comes at me hard, like I'll fight back,
We've done a really good job of like giving each
other space. But like I get you your pissed, Like,
tell me more, let me understand, help me understand. So
don't respond to that negative energy with like a negative
emotional energy. It'll narrow your view and for those that
you judge. So, if someone is coming at you, I

(01:12:59):
think you got to cool off a little bit, right, So,
and then if someone is coming at you, try to
be compassionate towards them. Now, this is where a lot
of people get tripped up because they think compassion means
giving them what they want. So sometimes people will come
in and will be like, I need riddlin, I need
adderall I need it. I need it, I need it.
Don't you understand, Doc, If you don't give me this,
everything's going to fall apart and things like that. And

(01:13:21):
I'm like, okay, look, I already prescribed you once. I
told you that if you lose your medication I'm not
going to prescribe it to you again. I totally feel
that these consequences are there. I'm not going to give
you more meds, right but I recognize that doing that
is going to put you in a really tough spot.
I'm going to hold my boundary, but with compassion. What

(01:13:42):
else can I do? Do you want to non stimulant medication?
Do you want to do some other things? Do you
want me to write a letter to your professor telling
you that your ADHD is particularly bad right now? I
don't have to include details of your clanico history, but say,
can you please give them an extension for medical reasons.
I'm happy to work with you. I'm going to hold
my boundary, but I'm going to be as compassionate as possible.

(01:14:03):
And what a lot of people think is that compassion
means letting people run all over you. That's not what
it means. So you want to be compassion, but you
want to be stable. Now, if you are feeling judgmental,
I think, take a step back, take a breath. Also,
pay attention to the way that you are indoctrinating your mind. Right, So,
if we're spending a lot of time on social media,

(01:14:25):
if we're like spending time in echo chambers, your judgment
is going to be through the roof. And oftentimes if
you are judging someone else, sit down and let them
add their human context to your projection. You think, this
person is doing this, and they're doing this, and they're
like this, and they're like this, and all women are
like this, all men are like this. No, I don't

(01:14:45):
know about all men or all women. But this human
being is not all of those things. There is unique
human being. And as you train yourself, and it ain't easy,
this is where doing some emotional regulation practices and things
like that not should thee bran I am and activating
your para sympathetic nervous system and stuff. We have a
guide to meditation. It's all about that kind of stuff.

(01:15:05):
But I'm sure, you're familiar with you know, alternate hostile
breathing and things. So as you do those kinds of
things and you like emotionally regulators you calm down, then
you'll be able to do that. But that requires a
lot of energy and effort. Like you're spot on, reacting
is really easy. One of the most draining things. So
if you look at willpower as a battery, one of

(01:15:25):
the top drainers of willpower is regulating your emotions. It
is the most emotionally taxing thing you can do, so
it's hard, but then you'll get better at it.

Speaker 3 (01:15:34):
That's a brilliant answer. The idea that anxiety, anger, and
fear narrow your viewpoint and therefore don't give you the
ability to see everything else in the context around it
is such a such a useful lesson to know why
that's happening and how to regulate. And I'm thinking about

(01:15:55):
talking about your wife. I was thinking about some of
my wife. She sent me an idea recently for a
new venture that she wanted to start, and in my
head all the fear and anxiety went off, and I
messaged back and I was like, yeah, no, but I
don't think it's gonna work, Like, you know, she just
shared an idea. She's like, I'm really excited about this.
And my response was like, yeah, I don't think that's
gonna work. And here are all the reasons why it's not

(01:16:15):
gonna work, and maybe we could do it in like
five years, like all this stuff. And then again, my yeah,
my wife's amazing at this, and she just called me
out in the most compassionate, loving way, and she was
just like, hey, I was just showing something I was
excited about. I wasn't saying we have to do it.
I wasn't saying we need to do it. And I
would have just loved for you to just at least
hear my idea out right, to just give me the
space to say, oh, tell me about your idea, tell
me what you're excited about, rather than And it's so

(01:16:37):
interesting because even though I would generally naturally do that,
in that moment, my anxiety. The reason why I didn't. Yeah,
I'm now reflecting back was my anxiety and my fear.
My there wasn't any anger, but my anxiety and fear
were high. Yeah, and therefore my response was not helpful.
And therefore, if my wife had not been as evolved

(01:16:57):
as she is, then we would have just had a
full blown argument about nothing. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:17:02):
The one thing that really shocks me is how much
yogic training and psychiatry training don't prepare me to be
a good husband, like being a good husband and a father. Actually,
so what.

Speaker 3 (01:17:18):
It does, Preva?

Speaker 1 (01:17:20):
I mean, So that's that's the crazy thing, man, I think,
Like I thought I was like, oh, I got this
stuff on on lockdown, you know, like I'm yogi and
I'm knocked at it, like great, it's going to be. No,
it's like it's really hard. Like my wife brings out
like some of my worst tendencies and I really have
to work on it, and she's awesome. It's like I
turn into a different person around her in like not

(01:17:41):
a good way, you know. And so I think that's
also healthy in a sense because she's not a patient
of mine. She's not like a client or someone in
a meditation class or whatever. And when I go into
psychiatrist mode, it pisses her off a lot of course,
like oh tell me how you feel. Yeah, So I
think it's it's it's hard for everyone, myself concluded, and
it's been shocking, Like how much you really have to

(01:18:03):
train like I have to train myself like every single
day to try to be a better husband.

Speaker 3 (01:18:08):
Yeah, well, I think because that's I think it's so
common that the person that you love the most in
the world sadly gets to see the worst of you,
absolutely man, the totality of you, the three sixty degree
view of you. And there's a beauty to that too,
because you feel you can show it to them. You
can't show that to anyone else. And obviously we don't

(01:18:29):
want Again, I'm not encouraging or condoning physical verbal abuse
in any way, and that's not what I mean. But
there's a beauty in being able to show your full
self to someone with the vulnerability of it, as long
as it's not harming them. Yeah, and for them to
help you with then for you to help them back.
That's why I think that is that one relationship. I
don't think anyone knows me better than my wife. Yeah,

(01:18:49):
it's the only person who knows what you're doing at
six am and what you're doing at midnight, and you
know everything else in between, and so it's beautiful. But
I wanted to touch something with you that I wanted
to talk to you about actually, because I've watched so
many of the interviews and I've been today's my intention
and my focus has been to really mind that spiritual

(01:19:10):
clinician side in you and to find some of that
maybe more etherory or stuff, which is such a deep
expand as well, because I think the two compliment each
other so wonderfully. In your expertise, what is that spiritual
evolution that's being demanded of humanity right now? When you
mentioned it earlier, like we've kind of reached the peak
of our material evolution based on ego development. What is

(01:19:33):
the spiritual evolution that we're being invited to?

Speaker 1 (01:19:36):
Yeah, So I think this is where, like I got
to start with a big disclaimer, So I think this
is where, like we're talking about spiritual evolution, which is
not clear whether this stuff even exists or a scientific perspective.
So I may touch on studies and things like that
on neuroscience and meditation and brain changes sort of some
evidence of this stuff, but there's a lot of stuff
in the spiritual traditions which there's no scientific evidence for.

(01:20:01):
So before I even started med school, I was in
a Yeah, yet I was in a tai Chi lab,
a Neuroscience ti Chi Lab at Harvard, and so we
were trying to understand this like concept of chi or
branna or life energy. And so the really interesting thing
about this kind of stuff is that there's no scientific
evidence that it exists. But when you do a practice

(01:20:25):
that supposedly activates this stuff, it outperforms physical exercise like
yoga for example, right or taichi. So we were studying
tai chi and so there seems to be like something
where like the health benefit is greater than physical exercise,
but we can't really detect.

Speaker 3 (01:20:40):
What are you measuring to know that it's greater than
physical exercise.

Speaker 1 (01:20:43):
I mean it depends. So you know, one of my
early mentors was, uh, doctor Wong has a great paper
in the New England Journal of Medicine on tai chi
and arthritis. So she's just measuring the improvement of arthritis
if I give tai chi, if I do exercise, and
chiese superior. So I was trying to study the mechanism

(01:21:03):
of that, and the mechanism is super interesting. So I
was in a chronic pain lab, and the really interesting
thing about chronic pain is that it locks your brain
into like one part of your body so someone who
has chronic pain, they're always thinking about what hurts.

Speaker 3 (01:21:19):
YEA, so true.

Speaker 1 (01:21:21):
And then what happens when we do yoga tai chi
is that we're putting our body in different places to
where I'm like, if I'm standing on one leg and
twisting myself into a pretzel, my brain is focusing on
other parts of my body and that trains my brain
to move away from the hurting part. And then once
I move away from the hurting part, then I feel

(01:21:44):
it less and so the pain actually feels better. And
this is also what we do mentally with yoga and stuff.
It's like, let me move away from this ruminant of thinking,
let me return my attention to the breath. So you're
literally training your brain to do what you tell it to.

Speaker 3 (01:21:59):
But it's just what you said right at the beginning,
which was thinking about yourself as is paying attention.

Speaker 1 (01:22:03):
Absolutely right. So the beautiful thing about yoga and tai
chi is that they force you to observe yourself because
once you stand on one leg, so you can do
a simple like so I'll challenge everybody in your audience
to just raise their arm. That's it. I just want
them to raise their arm. And we're just going to
continue talking. Okay, We're just going to have a conversation,
and over time, what's going to happen. You don't have

(01:22:23):
to do that because I want to converse with you, you
won't be able to converse, right, So people are going
to pay attention if they're still doing it, and then
the longer we go, they're not going to be able
to hear anything we're saying. We're forcing our attention over here,
so the change of our attention becomes really really important. Anyway,
I was talking about tai Chie and chronic pain, but
you asked a question about for physical and spiritual evolution.

(01:22:44):
So the first thing to understand is why have we
stopped physically evolving? Because we started shaping our environment. So
evolution happens in order for us to adapt to our environment.
But once I start building cars, creating air conditioning, having
cell phones, what we are doing is we are shaping
our environment to let whatever I am now continue to exist.

(01:23:07):
This way, I don't need to grow, right if I
shape my environment around me. If I'm a narcissist and
I surround myself by people who will say, yes, you're great,
you're great, You're great, I will never need to conquer
that narcissism. So I think there's a couple of things
going on in terms of spiritual evolution, and those things
are somewhat reliable to completely crazy. So like take this

(01:23:30):
with a grain of salt. So I think the first
thing is that first stage of spiritual evolution is that
since we're shaping our environment in this way, our environment
is making lots of changes to our brain and lots
of changes to our mind. So this is why we
have a mental health crisis, Like it's so weird. Right.
Science is progressing. We have more neuroscience papers than ever before.
We have so many fMRI labs and things like that.

(01:23:52):
Our understanding of the brain in the mind is increasing,
but people are getting worse. So the next stage of
evolution that we need in your own life, I use
the word loosely but maybe not so much, but is
actually like evolving your mind, right, And I know that
sounds kind of weird, like evolving your brain, like learning
how to change yourself, which is what evolution is to

(01:24:15):
survive and thrive in this level of the world around us.
So this starts with stuff like ego. Like we talked
about emotional regulation not letting these su scars or emotional
baggage pile up. You have to do a ton of
mental training to survive in today's world. Then there's like
other weird things going on. So like the other weird
stuff is like when you start talk to talk more

(01:24:36):
about these spiritual traditions, so weird stuff. There's a study
that was done on DMT that ninety two percent of
DMT users will encounter other worldly beings. Now we have
no scientific evidence of this, except I think this is

(01:24:56):
kind of could be argue to scientific evidence. I'm not
saying it's it's it's complete evidence. But now what we
have is we have something like a telescope. If I
like look through a microscope. If I look through a
microscope and I see a lot of bacteria, you can't
see that with the naked eye. But if I use
this technology, I can see something that my normal perception
cannot allow me to see. So I think what we're

(01:25:17):
starting to do with meditation is this is a spiritual technology,
and there are some meditation techniques that will give you
insight into your past lives. That has been very helpful
for some of my patients with trauma that they have
this trauma that doesn't come from this life. It actually
seems like it sort of comes from past life. I
can go into detail. I know it's unbelievable, but there's

(01:25:39):
a great researcher out of the University of Virginia who's
been looking at like past life research. Occasionally some crazy
scientists will get into the stuff. So I think that
we are sort of being able to detect things that
are kind of beyond it. And I think this is
where things get kind of weird. But like, it's so strange.
But if I was talking to a bunch of my
friends who are neuroscientists cert neurologists, and I was asking them,

(01:26:02):
what proof do we have that thoughts exist? From a
scientific perspective, we have none. We can't detect thoughts right
we can what is an fMRI or an EEG detect.
EEG detects electrological activity in the brain, fMRI detects blood float.
Neither of those things are thoughts. So it's kind of weird,
but we have no proof of the existence of thoughts.
So I was trying to figure out, Okay, what's going on?

(01:26:24):
Then scientifically, some people think it's like imagination. I think
what's going on is that there's a certain realm of
human experience which we can't detect with an instrument yet.
So this is subjective experience, it's consciousness, it's thinking, and
so I think that we don't have a measurement of consciousness.

(01:26:44):
But that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. This is where
a lot of people, I think, disagree with me. So
some people say, since we can't detect it scientifically, that
means it doesn't exist. I think that human beings can
observe it. It's a conserve human experience. Everyone can observe
their own thinking. I think it exists. We just haven't
developed the ruler for consciousness yet. So the other area

(01:27:06):
of spiritual evolution is to evolve your consciousness. So to
take your conscious experience, use some of these more esoteric
meditation techniques, which is usually how this is done, like Kundalini,
sadna and stuff like that. So as you do these
weird kind of like jukras, sadhnas and stuff like that,
you will start to have it's hard to describe a

(01:27:27):
change in your subjective experience of the world. So as
I move through the world, right, I try, but I
also like start to see, Okay, bad stuff happens to me,
I'm not so worried about it anymore. This is a
negative garma. That's sort of the logical way to explain it,
but that's not how it feels on the inside. So
I recognize that there are periods of my life where
like negative garments are manifesting. So I'm like, let them come,

(01:27:49):
let them come, let them come, like I'm going to
work through it. I have to work through this stuff.
There's some kind of bad energy out there, and I
realize how indefensible that is, but I really think that's
what's going on. And so a lot of people are
needing to evolve. They're hungry for this evolution. They're hungry
for like this world around me. Even if we talk
about growth and goals and ambitions, this is not satisfying.

(01:28:14):
They need to grow in a different dimension. And I
don't mean that like, oh there's like alternate. I mean
like there is material growth, there is professional growth, there's
academic growth, and there is growth just within you. To
be able to experience different kinds of things, to be
able to understand like how you connect to other people.
That's a level of spiritual evolution. And when I work

(01:28:35):
with my patients, what I oftentimes you know, will start
with is like meditations to help them treat depression. But
eventually it's like, Okay, if you're depressed because you know,
you think you're a loser, let's see if we can
cultivate an experience of cosmic connectedness. And if you have
that experience, and this is also what we know from psychedelics.

(01:28:58):
You can use a psychedelic that's not healing. Specifically, you
can ask someone what happened to you when you were
using the psychedelic If they had an ego death experience,
that correlates with treatment improvement, and treatment refractory depression, that
improvement that correlates with improvement in trauma. But if all
you see is colors and synesthesia and stuff like that,

(01:29:19):
clinical symptoms don't appear to get better. And this is
what we know from our traditions, right, is like, as
you have these higher senses of consciousness, the ahumgaara, the
ego starts to dissolve your atma blends with the cosmic soul,
and like we can sort of duplicate that in a
lab now, at least the subjective experience of it. Then

(01:29:39):
that gets to the question of is that subjective experience
real or not. I think it's absolutely functionally useful. We
can detect the change, we can detect the health benefit
in it. So I think that spiritual evolution that we're
seeing is like at the level of consciousness, and hopefully
I've tried to explain that in a somewhat mechanistic or
technical way.

Speaker 3 (01:29:56):
Yeah, it's fascinating.

Speaker 1 (01:29:58):
I also think this is where I get weird. I
think it's weird. But if you look at the world,
we're all moving this direction, like meditation is exploding. Right.
We have, like you know, champions of it like you,
and you've spread a lot of knowledge about it. Like
something weird is going on. Where from a scientific perspective,
it makes sense that we have all these like technology
things and we need some kind of antidote to that.

(01:30:20):
From a neurochemical perspective, I think that makes sense. But
I do feel like we're all being called to meditate more.

Speaker 3 (01:30:43):
It goes back to that same point that you brought
up earlier. We're all being called to do this, but
then we struggle to do it, and we can't. We try.
Once we let go, we know we need to work out.
Everyone knows they need ten thousand steps today, we don't
get ten thousand steps today. Everyone knows they need to
eat better, but we still, you know, making all the
phossephood companies rich and wealthy. What's the disconnect there?

Speaker 1 (01:31:06):
So I think the biggest disconnect is information doesn't change behavior. So, like,
you know, I had a patient once. This was bad,
But I had a patient once who was I was
a medical student. And so they come in and they smoke,
and I try to tell him, hey, so like smoking
will give you lung cancer, smoking will give you heart disease.
And he's like, yeah, doc, I know. And I was like,

(01:31:28):
I'm a medical student. He's like yeah, I know, but
you're a doc. Basically, it's like, yeah, Doc, I know.
He's like, I'll stop, I'll quit. I promise. Comes in
a month later, as you're smoking. Oh yeah, I know,
I'm supposed to. It's not working. And I was like, okay,
maybe he wants some medication for that, and he's like, sure, doc,
give you the medication. Comes in a month later. Are
you taking the macage? Not really? Okay, let's give you Like,
let's try a nicotine gum, Like, let's try this, he's

(01:31:48):
not doing it, not doing it, not doing it. So
I was, you know, working with my preceptor, and I
read some about addiction and things like that, and I realized, like,
you have to you have to motivate him. And so
next time he comes in, I take a different approach.
I'm like, so tell me about yourself, tell me about
you know, what you're excited about. And he's like, you know,
I love being a father. I have three daughters, and

(01:32:09):
you know, I'll die happy the moment that the last
one is married because I know they're being taken care
of and it's going to be such a great day day,
Like my oldest daughter is married, it was awesome, Like
walking her down the aisle was one of the best
experiences I've ever had. And I asked him, oh, great
when you're when your second daughter gets married, do you
want to be wheeling an oxygen tank behind you? And

(01:32:30):
do you want to be pushed in a wheelchair when
your third daughter gets married? And he was like no, right,
Like I said something that was so mean. I was like,
that's what's going to happen if you don't stop smoking,
And so that was brutal. I wouldn't recommend it. I
was still learning. I was still a medical student. But
I think a lot of behavioral change comes from like

(01:32:51):
motivation within. You have to have a good reason to
do it, not in like an intellectual like, oh this
is like I'm not going to get cancer forty years
from now. Your brain doesn't understan answer. This is what
people don't get when I tell you, like, do this
or you'll get cancer. How does your brain know what
cancer feels like? So if you touch a hot pan,

(01:33:13):
your brain knows they're like okay, and then it's hard
to touch a hot man. But how does your brain
know this like hypothetical thing. It doesn't. So information goes
into this one part of our brain that really doesn't
shape our behavior. What shapes our behaviors emotions. So if
you think about when you get angry, then everyone's telling
you not to act. Stop, slow down, don't act that

(01:33:34):
we need to get angry you feel like acting. So
the first thing is that we need to focus more
on finding like our right like the right emotional reason,
like what is the reason for your change? What really
drives you to change. The more you connect with that,
then the information will become useful. There's another really interesting.

Speaker 3 (01:33:54):
Man, that's awesome. Yeah, it's so great.

Speaker 1 (01:33:56):
One other thing that I would say is a lot
of people don't realize. I don't know if this is sense,
but there's something called ambivalence, which is when we're internally conflicted,
and anytime somebody wants to change, there's a part of
us that wants to change, but there's a part of
us that doesn't want to do So when we want
to change, I tend to think about the benefit. So
in this moment, my brain is telling me like, oh, like,
we want to get let's get healthy. So you're thinking

(01:34:20):
about the benefit when you start, but as you start,
you see the cost. So when I go to the gym,
all it is is suffering. And so then what happens
is like the cost gets really big in my mind
because I'm reaping the cost. Now, I'm feeling the cost.
Now this is really hard and the benefit is far away.
So when I get started, I think about the goal,
I think about the benefit, but I'm not really appreciating

(01:34:41):
the costs. When I actually do it, I feel the cost,
but don't think about the benefit. So one of the
biggest mistakes that you can make is thinking about the
benefit when you want to do something interesting. So instead
what you should do is actually focus on the cost.
Tell yourself, Okay, this is going to be hard, right,

(01:35:03):
Like it's going to suck going to the gym and
accept the cost upfront. Do I want this thing? Yes,
but you need to balance it so when we have
high expectations, we're going to have low follow through. And
when we have low expectations, if you say to yourself, look,
this is going to suck, I'm going to do it anyway.
That's the approach you should take. Now a lot of
people will say, like, but I don't do it anyway,

(01:35:25):
And that's where you need to really dig for a reason.

Speaker 3 (01:35:27):
Yeah, that reason being the idea that emotion shifts behavior
and figuring out what that emotion is is so critical.
Like I'm thinking about most of my spiritual aspirations come
from a deep sense of gratitude, Like that's the emotion.
It's like a gratitude to my teachers, the people that

(01:35:48):
have invested so much time into my life when I
didn't deserve it, people that are far more enlightened and
far more well read, and people have actually dedicated their
life who found it? You just that I found so
useful and we're so kind to give me time and energy.
That's kind of what it carries from, because I'm like, yeah,

(01:36:09):
and then there are certain other things which coming back
to health. Yeah, knowing that hey, all my friends are
getting cancer at forty or fifty years.

Speaker 1 (01:36:17):
Old or oh my god, is that actually happening?

Speaker 3 (01:36:19):
A lot of them are sadly sadly yeah, yeah, really
sad truth to recognize. Oh yeah, I would like to
if I can avoid that. What's that going to take?
What does that mean? What do I need to shift?
What do I need to you know? And so then
there's certain motivator is like gratitude that are like these beautiful,

(01:36:40):
wonderful feelings. And then, like you said with the oxygen
tank example, and the wheelchair, there's certain emotions that are
much more fear based, yeah, and worry field and both
are useful for different things.

Speaker 1 (01:36:54):
Absolutely, Yeah, yeah, I wouldn't rely on fear.

Speaker 3 (01:36:57):
Yeah, you know, it's a good one to get going. Yeah,
good one to get going.

Speaker 1 (01:37:00):
But yeah, I mean I think it's it's it's so
interesting I wonder if like, so this is you know,
when I work with people, I find first of all
that that's really common that there's some things, some emotional
valances that they can really connect to that get them moving.
And so usually what we try to do is connect that. Right, So,
is there some way to tap into gratitude about you've
been given this body and you know, like you know,

(01:37:21):
like what do you owe with this body? Or something
like that. So I think if you sort of think
about the emotions that really get you going, and for
a lot of men, like for example, it's anger, which
can actually be good, right, channeling that anger oftentimes that
will help people bridge the gap of if there's one
thing that does get you going, can you tie that
to a thing that you want to do?

Speaker 3 (01:37:41):
Yes, yes, yeah, yeah. I've always broken it down as
the in the buggle to get to the modes of
material nature are there, and so you have motive ignorance,
motive passion, motor goodness, and pure goodness. So Thomas Rogerson Suburne,
I've always seen that angers like a tum us motivat. Yeah,
it's like it's it's it's not ideal, but it gets
you going. Yeah, absolutely, And then Rogers is more of

(01:38:04):
a motive passion is kind of like having a goal,
having a desire or having an ambition like I want
to get a six pack, I want to be a millionaire, whatever.
But then above that is goodness and pure goodness, which
is more like love, gratitude, all these emotions that our
overall have a much more healthier impact and have more
longevity to them. Yeah, they don't die when you get there.

Speaker 1 (01:38:23):
The really interesting thing is that I think if you
use satviic emotions, your material success could be way lower.

Speaker 3 (01:38:30):
Yeah for sure.

Speaker 1 (01:38:31):
Right, So as you start operating from love and as
you become a little bit more detached, you may not
achieve as much, but you'll be happier.

Speaker 3 (01:38:39):
Yeah yeah. Whereas if you have a lot of motive
passion in your life, yeah, you'd be much more successful, but.

Speaker 1 (01:38:45):
You also have ulcers.

Speaker 3 (01:38:46):
Yeah yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. I really like
the idea about just going back to that mental training
piece around. Yeah, the emotion. What's at the root of
our addiction to pornography right now, Like, what's in the
root of that from a coal point of view, or
at the.

Speaker 1 (01:39:05):
Root is meaninglessness. So this is what a lot of
people don't realize. They think that pornography addiction is about sexuality.
They think it's about being horny. They think it's about lust.
It's not lust. So you know, one of the top
variables is too One of the top variables for addiction
to pornography is lack of purpose, lack of meaning. So

(01:39:28):
when I was designing our coaching program, I was seeing
that there's a lot of new problems, but they have
these roots that are a little bit different. So in psychiatry,
they don't teach us how to find purpose. But our
initial pilot's study of one four hundred and fifty three
people found a sixty eight percent increase in purpose and
direction in life at twenty weeks. So that's also where

(01:39:48):
you got to stick with it for a while. Doesn't
happen overnight. So I think what's going on is to
be like blunt about it. When you are addicted to porn,
you got to have a reason to not watch. So
what happens with pornography addiction. A lot of people don't
realize what this looks like. They think it's like automatically
associated with lust and masturbation. Oftentimes it's on the second screen.

(01:40:10):
So we're seeing a big explosion of it with like
work from home, people will really use it to regulate
their emotions. That's really the number one reason. So if
we think about sex and what it does to our brain,
if I'm feeling anxious, if I'm a man biological male,
and if my testosterone is intact and stuff like that,
you know we will oftentimes if we get sexually activated,

(01:40:33):
all of our negative emotions go away. And it's such
a powerful activator. It's like the most powerful biological way
to shut off your negative emotional circuitry. Happens immediately like
once you get horny, right, and a lot of guys,
and sorry if this is a bit vulgar, but you
know we'll experience this post not clarity, and literally what
happens in your brain is when these sexual circuits activate,

(01:40:57):
they suppress everything else, including our risk assessment circuitry, which
is why we make really bad decisions. They shut off
everything else. They shut off your reasoning, they shut off
your logic, they shut off your risk assessment, they shut
off your anxiety, they shut off your fear. So what
we're seeing is that as people become more directionless and

(01:41:17):
as their capacity to handle negative emotions decreases, they get
addicted to pornography because it's the most accessible biological tool
that you can use and it doesn't involve you know,
opiates and spending money and things like that usually.

Speaker 3 (01:41:33):
Yeah, And what are the negative effects of pornography anyway
that we're seeing, because if someone's watching this and going, well,
it's not that bad anyway, it switches off helps me
emotionally regulate.

Speaker 1 (01:41:42):
Yes, So I think the scariest one for me is
the rise of a rectile dysfunction under the age of thirty,
so erectils. Yeah, yeah, so a rectiled dysfunction under the
age of thirty used to be five percent, right, So
as men were in society, we tend to think like
as you get right, like once you have kids, once
you have grandkids, like that. It doesn't work the way

(01:42:04):
it used to do, right, But actually, what we're starting
to see is the rate some studies suggest a rate
of twenty percent of people under the age of thirty
boys men will have rectile disfunction. And the reason that
happens it's kind of also a little bit of vulgar,
but it's medical. So the hand grip strength, the PSI
the pounds per square inch of your hand can be

(01:42:26):
like one twenty one thirty. The vagina has a PSI
of like fifteen to thirty. So literally, what the way
you define a rectile dysfunction is it is the inability
to maintain erection until the completion of the sexual act.
So what we're seeing is that when boys start using
pornography and masturbating at a very young age without lubrication

(01:42:50):
and stuff like that, their body gets trained for a
certain kind of stimulus in order to complete the sexual act.
And when they engage in a sexual relationship there penis
doesn't know how to handle like it just just just
not enough. And then eventually they'll go at it. They'll
go at it, they'll go at it, they'll lose the erection,

(01:43:11):
which is physiologic, and then what happens is we have
all kinds of like shame associated with it, you know,
and then like once the shame kicks in, that shame
can be so powerful that the sexual drive cannot shut
that down, and then you have anxiety around sex and
things like that, and it can really mess up people's relationships.

Speaker 3 (01:43:29):
What's the mental training for someone who's saying, Okay, well
I want to disconnect from porn, I want to detach,
but I'm not going to find purpose tomorrow. So what's
the stop gap.

Speaker 1 (01:43:39):
There is no stop gap, and you have to stop
thinking about things happening tomorrow. Honestly, that's where you start.
So you know, our approach to pornography has three major pillars,
and I think you have to tackle all three. So
the first is like a very standard addiction oriented structure,
where like if you're trying to quit alcohol, you got
to stop going to bars. So from a structural standpoint,

(01:44:01):
what I recommend everyone is that they, you know, log
out of all their devices, use only one device for pornography,
and restrict your pornography used to like one or two
hours of the day, so it has to like stop
infecting every part of your life. That's the first part
we're going to kind of restrict it. The second thing
is emotional regulation. So as long as your brain requires

(01:44:24):
pornography to manage your emotional your emotions, it's you're never
going to be able to quit.

Speaker 3 (01:44:29):
So you need to.

Speaker 1 (01:44:30):
Develop alternate skills to manage your emotions. These can be
things like meditation practices, even going for a walk, stuff
like that. One thing that I also really recommend to
people is that they give themselves time to think before
before they go to sleep, So spend an hour of
idle time. I love pacing. We need a lot of
time to process emotions. You can also do things like

(01:44:52):
dream journals. So dreams are one of the main ways
that our brain processes emotions. So that emotional regulation is
number two in the The third thing is finding meaning
or purpose. So watch more episodes of On Purpose with
Jay Shetty. So as you develop that purpose, You're right,
it's not going to happen overnight. We see that it
takes about twenty weeks. That's when people weeks.

Speaker 3 (01:45:11):
Is amazing.

Speaker 1 (01:45:12):
Yeah, so it's focused.

Speaker 3 (01:45:14):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:45:14):
So what we did is we took some of these
like clinical things that used to be used to treat depression,
and we shift those the same conversational techniques exploratory techniques
to finding something like purpose. And that works incredibly well.
And then we can go into the details of you
know what that involves.

Speaker 3 (01:45:31):
I was going to ask you that that was my
next question. How do you how do you define purpose?
What are you looking at in the twenty weeks? What
are you trying to get people?

Speaker 2 (01:45:37):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:45:38):
So, so the funny thing about purpose is like, it's
not what everyone thinks it is. So the way you
find purpose is like really kind of counterintuitive. So it
actually involves, Actually I don't know what purpose is. Maybe
we can ask you, But what we know is what
are the scientific mechanisms. So if I take someone who

(01:45:59):
has no purpose in life, and I take someone who
has purpose in life, what do they do differently? Yes,
that's what we try to change. So the first thing
is self direction. So people, as long as you, as
long as life is happening to you and you are
not making choices, if you are forced to make choices,

(01:46:20):
you will feel out of direction. So this is kind
of counterintuitive, but the first thing I tell people to
do is start making choices. And then the first question
that they asked me is how do I know what's
right or wrong? That's not actually doesn't matter. What matters
in your brain is that you choose. And the whole
point this is really insidious. If you think about right

(01:46:41):
or wrong, if you figure out right or wrong, you're
not making the choice. The world tells you this is
right and this is wrong. That's the world making the
choice for you. This is right and this is wrong.
So forget about right or wrong and just make a choice.
I don't care what it is. Choose Macha instead, of coffee.
Put your left shoe on first instead of your right shoe.
Start brushing with your left teet or your left hand.

(01:47:03):
So you need to start making choices. There's a beautiful
element about anxiety that we can talk about there. It'll
also like drastically help your anxiety. Second thing that you
need to do is stretch your capacity. So we feel
like we have purpose in life because it's not purpose,
but this is like literally what the scientific makeup of
purpose is stretching your capacity. So we always feel overwhelmed.

(01:47:25):
I don't want to do it. I want to do
the bare minimum. We're a society of people who do
the bare minimum. We're a society of people who companies
use chat, GPT, and AI to review applications. Now everyone
is using AI to apply for jobs. It's just AI
talking to AI. We're trying to do as little as possible,
and we're seeing an epidemic of purposelessness. We're seeing an

(01:47:47):
epidemic of pornography use. But that's because in your brain,
these two things are connected. The moment you stretch your capacities.
Once again, it doesn't matter what you're doing. If you
swim ten ten laps, swim eleven if you are wake
up at seven at seven o'clock every day, wake up
at six point fifty nine. This is the beautiful thing.

(01:48:09):
The content of what you do is completely irrel not
completely that's not wrong, that's wrong. But the key thing
is that you stretch your capacities. I didn't think I
was capable of this. You don't even have to succeed,
you just have to stretch it. I didn't think I
could do this. Turns out I was wrong. At least
I tried. When you start thinking in this way, right

(01:48:29):
when I ask someone, you know, if I like a
quick thought experiment, we're always afraid of giving it all
or all in failing. But when you give it, you're all.
How do you usually feel? You can usually sleep at
night as long as some of this stuff like ego
and stuff doesn't get in the way. Right, at least
I tried my best. That can give you a good sense.

(01:48:51):
That's a hard lesson I learned in med school because
or in residencies like you know, what helps me sleep
at night is not whether the patient lives or dies.
Did I give it my all? Did I do everything
within my power to try to help this person? And
if I did the rest is out of my hands. Yeah, right,
so you have to stretch your capacities. The third thing,
and this is the hardest one, relatedness, So people have

(01:49:15):
to be able to see you and respond to the
real you. It doesn't necessarily have to be positive. A
certain amount of acceptedness accepting that person is good, but
other people has to be able to see who you are.
And that's really hard because people don't have the attention
for that. Everyone's on their cell phones. So I think
if you do, if you cultivate these three things, your
sense of purpose will increase in life.

Speaker 3 (01:49:37):
That's fresh. I like that. I like that you've used
what you'd see is the difference between a purposeful person
and someone who doesn't have purpose to find to what
paths to travel?

Speaker 1 (01:49:48):
Yeah. So, I think the really confusing thing is when
people think about purpose, Like if I were to ask you, Jay,
what is your purpose? How would you answer that?

Speaker 3 (01:49:55):
If you ask me what is my purpose? Yeah? So
my purpose would be to make ancient wisdom accessible, relevant
and practical for the modern birth.

Speaker 1 (01:50:03):
Perfect right, So that's what most people think it is.
They think it's like this thing, yeah for sure, right,
But this is what I want people to understand if
you really think about it, how do you know that
you have purpose or you don't have purpose?

Speaker 3 (01:50:15):
Yeah, it's not it's.

Speaker 1 (01:50:17):
An internal feeling. Like I wake up every day, Like
my guess is you wake up and you're like, I
have purpose. Yes, it's an internal feeling. So how do
we cultivate that internal feeling with these three things?

Speaker 3 (01:50:26):
Yeah? I love that. I think it's beautiful. I really
really like those three things, and they come closely to
some of the things I've thought about before as well,
in I think there's a need, and your people get
it because they're part of your community. But I think
belonging is such a first step in purpose. Like even
you know, recently, Air I took out pickleball, and I
feel like I'm part of the La pickleball scene and

(01:50:47):
I'll just walk up to a court and I can
just go play with anyone. You don't have to know
each other's names. I don't know what job they have,
they don't know what I do, and you're playing pickaball together.
And there's a sense of belonging which makes me feel
automatically link to something bigger than me. So belonging isn't
a sense of I have friends. Belonging is I feel
connected to something that is beyond me and beyond this person,

(01:51:09):
and I think that's such a part of purpose. The
second one, which is aligns with what you're saying to me,
is learning. But really it's what you're saying, it's that
challenge to stretch my capability to try something new every day.
That idea of curiosity is so key to it, as
well as a habit that this one's really important for me.
It's people who feel independently useful. So now you're part

(01:51:31):
of this bigger thing, but you know what you do.
So I'm the guy who brings the pickleballs, I'm the
guy who puts the net out right, like I have
a use that is unique to me.

Speaker 1 (01:51:41):
Yeah, So you know what's really fascinating is I love
And I'm amazed that my guess is that you did not, like,
read a bunch of scientific literature to come up with
these things.

Speaker 3 (01:51:54):
I've read enough, but I didn't use it to But
I'm definitely I'm always reading.

Speaker 1 (01:51:59):
I know you're you're quite well read and stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:52:01):
I enjoy reading it, you know, socie.

Speaker 1 (01:52:03):
But it's not like you're like, let me read a
thousand papers. That's how I came up with your right.
And so what I think is really beautiful is your
things can be mapped onto my things. And what the
data shows your independent exploration. Sure you're reading a lot,
you are, you keep up with signs and stuff like that,
but you're looking at your experience and you have belonging
this which is correlated with relatedness.

Speaker 3 (01:52:26):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:52:26):
You have this curiosity which causes you to stretch. You
have this independent usefulness which is autonomy, which is making choices.
I'm going to go ahead, no one needs to ask me,
and you find a utility like you know. And so
I think it's really beautiful, Like like, I love hearing
that because that shows me that if people pay attention right,

(01:52:47):
if they do what you did, which not to devalue
what you did, but I think is easier than what
I did. You don't have to read a thousand papers
on purpose to understand what it is right. You can
pay it tension to yourself. You can do some amount
of reading. You can listen to a few podcasts and
that is enough for you to find the right answers.
And it's crazy because you hit all three. You didn't

(01:53:10):
come up with four. You didn't come up with two.
You came up with three, and it's all the same buckets.
Really amazing. I have two more, really okay, So that's
actually really cool too, because if you've got two more,
I wonder if we're missing something.

Speaker 3 (01:53:23):
Yeah, and I'm not, and I'm not saying you are.
This is just my own refinra.

Speaker 1 (01:53:26):
No no no, but I mean I would bat money we are,
so tell me what. Okay.

Speaker 3 (01:53:31):
So having a sense of give back, having a sense
of being involved in other people's well being, which goes
back to you've it's really beautiful because I've heard that
idea before, but not as strongly and concretely. This idea
of you explaining what it means to not think about
yourself today is just like really cut through for me,
which is so powerful because it's been explained in a

(01:53:53):
clinical way, I think. And that's what that service element is.
It's like all those first things were still about in
once belonging was beyond you is think about something bigger
than you. But this one's a key part. It's like,
how are you doing things for things which are not
about you. I'm not thinking about how I'm useful, I'm
not thinking about this I'm trying to think about someone else,
so service. And then the fifth one comes back to
our point earlier on detachment, which is surrender. I use

(01:54:15):
the word surrender because it falls into my five acronym
that I have, But the last is surrender because there's
such a need for ultimately that detachment from what you
just so beautifully said that at the end of the day,
I can't decide whether I'm going to save someone's life
or not. The only thing I can be satisfied is
I gave it my all, and that, to me is
what surrender really is. The ability to say I did

(01:54:38):
everything and now I'm holding my hands up and I'm
living with the results because I can't control what's going
on exactly. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:54:46):
Yeah, And I think there's plenty of science for your
last two. I think the interesting thing is the scientific
literature doesn't thus far has not tied that to the
concept of purpose. Yeah, but I think, especially like you know,
service is really interesting. There's a study that found multiple
studies that found that people who suffer from major depressive

(01:55:06):
disorder and are depressed, one of the best things they
can do to improve their depression is help other people.

Speaker 3 (01:55:11):
Yes, yes, yes, yeah, right.

Speaker 1 (01:55:13):
So there's something really special about being a part of
a community. Giving back in some way has profound positive
effects on our brand.

Speaker 3 (01:55:22):
It's so great for self esteem. It affects all the
I think we used to argue this stupid debate over
can something ever truly be selfless service? Because you're doing
it for yourself and imagine not interested in that question.
It's more interesting to me the fact that if you
were useful, you'd feel more useful where you'd be more
useful and you do more for others, and that is
a positive cycle for people who have depression or a

(01:55:45):
struggling with feelings of not being worthy enough or not
mattering that idea. When you look at it through suicide,
it's like I didn't matter anymore. I didn't feel like
I was needed anymore.

Speaker 1 (01:55:55):
Absolutely, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:55:56):
It's like you don't want people to go through those
feelings and emotions.

Speaker 1 (01:55:59):
There's a I love what you said, and let me
know if we're like, no, I love it. Pickleball is
going back and forth too much. But you know, I
love this concept of service because I think many of
the questions you asked me, I think this is the answer.
So when you engage in service that dissolves your ego.
So if people are wondering, how can I stop caring
about other people? Give yourself in service, right, don't do

(01:56:22):
what they want. That's not really service. Service is not
giving someone that they want. It is doing what you
feel like for the benefit of others. It comes from you,
and you're saying like, this isn't for me, this is
for other people. And if you kind of think about
how do I stop caring about what other people think?
That is a selfish selflessness, right. I'm trying to make

(01:56:44):
other people happy so that they'll leave me alone, they'll
treat me with respect, they'll tell me I'm great. That's
actually selfish. But service is giving without expectation, giving, and
that's the whole point, right, And so I think service
is a beautiful way to decrease the humguard because it's
not about me anymore. And there's a really interesting neuroscience
to this, which is literally, when you were engaged in service,

(01:57:08):
the minutes that your brain are not thinking about you increases.
And for so much of our life, social media and
all this kind of stuff, we are constantly thinking about ourselves.
So literally, to spend time to give your break or
your brain. A break from thinking about you, worrying about you,

(01:57:29):
just focusing on somebody else is profoundly helpful for your
default mode network and your ego.

Speaker 3 (01:57:36):
Doctor K, I could talk to you vow is I'm
going to need to book you in again. This is
so much fun and we didn't even There's so many
things we can talk about. But we end every own
purpose interview with a final five at these questions have
to be answered in one word to one sentence maximum. Okay,
So doctor K thes a you a final five.

Speaker 1 (01:57:54):
Okay, let's do it.

Speaker 3 (01:57:54):
Question number one is what is the best advice You've
ever heard or received or given?

Speaker 1 (01:58:03):
Best advice I've ever heard or received or given? Can
we go to the second one? Well, I think about that.

Speaker 3 (01:58:12):
The second one's harder. Usually, what is the worst advice
you've ever heard, received, or given?

Speaker 1 (01:58:18):
The thing that's top mind for me right now is
be yourself.

Speaker 3 (01:58:21):
Yeah, that's what I agree. It's fully bad advice. I'm
so glad you said that, because I was on tour
earlier this year and I literally said downstage, I was like,
if anyone ever tells you to be yourself, it is
the worst advice over That makes me happy. Question number three,
what's something that you used to believe to be true
that you don't anymore.

Speaker 1 (01:58:42):
I'm great, it's a good answer.

Speaker 3 (01:58:47):
Yeah, that's a great answer.

Speaker 1 (01:58:49):
I'm really not That's how I.

Speaker 3 (01:58:52):
Can relate to I'll put my hand up with that.
That's a great answer. Question number four, what's something that
other people don't agree with you on but you'd fight
for till the end.

Speaker 1 (01:59:03):
I don't know that I would fight for this, But
I think the biggest thing is, like some of my like,
I think that this consciousness stuff is real. I think
there's a whole dimension of like human existence that science
cannot I get one answer, one word, but I think
that there is a whole I think that I believe
there's a layer of reality that can only be experienced subjectively.

Speaker 3 (01:59:30):
Great answer. Fifth and final question. If you could be
asked this every guest has ever been on the show.
If you could create one law that everyone in the
world had to follow, what would it be.

Speaker 1 (01:59:40):
I would never do that, I really wouldn't.

Speaker 3 (01:59:46):
I'll edit for you. If you could create one habit
that you wish everyone in the world would follow, what
would it be.

Speaker 1 (01:59:55):
I understand you're trying to help me out here. But
you know, answer, I am, I am so a verse
to doing one thing forever. Everyone interesting, right, Like, I
just don't think like yeah interesting, and I think I
really think like, I mean, I've learned this the hard way.
The moment I assume that anyone who walks in my
office is even a little bit overlapping with someone else

(02:00:17):
is the moment that the great answer?

Speaker 3 (02:00:19):
Yeah? I love that. Do you want to give the
best advice again?

Speaker 1 (02:00:22):
Yeah? So best advice I would give is focus more
on what is happening and less on what you're doing.

Speaker 3 (02:00:31):
Focus more on what is happening and less on what
you're doing. Yeah, I like that. Observe, observe, focus on
the observation, focus on the experience.

Speaker 1 (02:00:41):
Yeah. So, just to explain a little bit, right, touched it. So,
I think a lot of people don't realize what the
consequences of their actions are. So just to give you
a really simple example, we have a bunch of you know,
kids that are on iPads right now, and so a
lot of times what parents don't realize is, like, you know,

(02:01:02):
when your kid throws a temper tantrum and you give
them the iPad to calm them down, you're just training
them to throw a temper tantrum. For kids that are
slightly older, a lot of parents will be like, hey,
come down for dinner, Come down for dinner, Come down
for dinner. Kid doesn't show up for dinner, they're fifteen
minutes late. You go up there, you unplug the PlayStation,
and you're like, no PlayStation for a month. So what

(02:01:25):
you're actually training your child to do is ignore your
words and until you unplug the PlayStation. Does that kind
of make sense. Yeah, So like the first six times
you say something, you're not reinforcing that at all, right,
So you're actually training them to ignore what you say,
which is why you have to cont and then you
have to take a drastic action to get them to listen.

(02:01:46):
And parents feel insane because now I'm having to go
up and yell at you all the time in order
to get you do to anything. That's because when you
speak gently, there is no consequence. So tie the consequence
to the gentle, not the consequence to the yelling, because
if you tie the consequence to the yelling, you'll have
to yell again. That's the way they they'll get trained.

(02:02:07):
So pay attention to what is happening, not what you're doing.

Speaker 3 (02:02:11):
That's a great explanation. I love that the book is
called how to Raise a Healthy Gamer and Power Struggles,
break bad screen habits, and transform your relationship with the kids.
Doctor K. Subscribe on YouTube as well. If you don't
subscribe to doctor K channel already, Doctor K, You're gonna
have to come back and do it a bunch of
more episodes because we didn't even talk about kids today.

Speaker 1 (02:02:30):
Yeah, we didn't talk about kids, and I still want
to hear so much. I mean, it's it's amazing. You know,
your background with the GETA and stuff like that, so
I'm super curious because you seem super grounded in that
and and I haven't even read the whole thing, so
I want to learn about that.

Speaker 3 (02:02:47):
More than have you to. Now we know each other,
so yeah, we should connect offline as well.

Speaker 1 (02:02:51):
Absolutely, dude.

Speaker 3 (02:02:51):
Yeah, such a pleasure. Man, You're amazing. If you love
this episode, you'll love my interview with doctor Gabo Matte
on understanding your trauma and how to heal emotional wounds
to start moving on from the past. Everything in nature
grows only where it's vulnerable, So a tree doesn't grow
where it's hard and thick does it. It goes where
it's soft and green and vulnerable.

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Jay Shetty

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Dr. K: Feeling Lost in Your 20s or 30s? (THIS Mindset Shift Will Help You Find Direction & Purpose)