Healing from Festered Emotions ft. CrankGameplays (co-creator of Unus Annus)

part of the reason that we're excited about sort of talking about imposter syndrome today it's something that affects a lot of content creators but we recently launched uh like a beta program for like people like high potential and high performance folks from our community and it seems like imposter syndrome kind of crops up a lot in that group so for those of you who don't know we have a we're running like a beta program for group coaching for people who are like what we call hypos or hypers so hypo stands for high potential if we look at our community there's a there's kind of like different themes that different people need some people need to learn self-compassion some people need to learn how to forgive some people need to learn how to overcome procrastination and so we have this high potential group which there are about 13 spots left in our beta and the group is geared towards helping people who are like sort of lacking life purpose lacking discipline feeling isolated feeling like they have low self-esteem and confidence like this is sort of geared towards the student population so a lot of times these people are actually like quite functional and quite successful academically and so we're trying to sort of serve that population a little bit better so if you guys are interested y'all can sign up we've got 13 spots left in our beta you know another thing that comes up we see this a lot especially for like the ivy league students and stuff that we have in our community is that they've got some imposter syndrome so hopefully we'll dig into that try to understand it a little bit better how you doing man i'm doing good how are you i'm doing well i had a little bit of a rough night my kid woke up randomly like super early in the morning and came and woke me up so didn't get quite a full night's sleep but part of being a parent you know yeah how old is your kid i have a five-year-old and a three-year-old oh those are those are definitely waking up early ages yeah it's it's it can be fun but yeah it's very very fun and and what do you go by uh usually just by ethan ethan okay um yeah and yeah man so um you want to talk about something in particular today or um i mean yes and no like kind of down to just go with the flow but um yeah the main thing uh i guess was just uh imposter syndrome was a big thing uh and uh yeah just sort of the pressures of being a content creator and a person online absolutely i just took a month off of youtube uh which was really huge and sort of like very eye-opening for me um yeah so you want to just actually start off by telling us a little bit about where people can find you and and what kind of content you make yeah uh so i do mostly youtube and and streaming stuff just crank game plays everywhere i've been doing it for it'll be nine years in august i started when i was 15. um yeah and uh it's been a it's been a crazy little little journey yeah sounds like a little bit longer than a little journey yeah yeah it's it's been a long time which is weird because it both seems like it hasn't i haven't been doing this for a long time and i've been doing it for an eternity wow incredible and so what what kind of um so crank game plans i assume you play games yeah mostly gaming stuff i'm trying to now branch out a little bit more uh just because again i've been doing it for almost nine years and i want to do something uh i want to make more content that's a little more like creatively fulfilling um just because after doing it for so long it's not as much of a challenge anymore and i do really like figuring things out and you know being a little bit more creative um yeah and i just uh i just finished doing a channel with a friend of mine for a year we made we made videos for a year and then deleted everything um and that was all we made a video every single day doing just like random [ __ ] for most of the time so it sort of adds i guess there's sort of this timeless quality to youtube videos and um and and then you guys i guess made it i guess what would did you guys want to delete everything like yeah yeah that was frustration no that was that was the goal from the beginning the channel was called unis honest which means one year in latin and so we were every video started with a timer of how much time was left uh and so we did a year's worth of videos and then we ended it with a 12 hour live stream where at the end of the live stream we deleted the channel while we were streaming from it and wow everything went away that sounds like quite creatively fulfilling yeah it was it was really really awesome um it was super stressful but uh it was like definitely an awakening i think for both of us being like oh wow like doing this kind of stuff is really really fun and also we don't just have to do gaming stuff like we can do other things that sounds really great man i'm you know it's interesting because you were saying you want to creatively branch out but that sounds like i've never heard of anyone doing anything like that before yeah i think that's why i want to branch out more just because that was so fulfilling in every single day was something different um and so yeah it just it helped my brain a lot actually can i think for a second yeah so ethan i'm noticing sort of like an interesting branch point already whereas i i know so i know a lot of times like people come on here and and the idea is that we're going to talk about something negative like imposter syndrome and bad emotions and burnout but um honestly like half the work that i do is is literally has nothing to do with the negative it's sort of like bridging people from let's say like the journey from being like depressed and then like one day people will come into my office and then we'll sort of have this conversation about you're not depressed anymore you're just unhappy and that there's a difference oh thanks son um and there's a difference between being unhappy and being depressed and so when i think a little bit about like you know you said you took a month off and that was you know it sounds like it was rejuvenating and maybe there's some amount of imposter syndrome there's also this sort of like personal development arc or like personal growth arc finding fulfillment what is the nature of suffering what is the nature of happiness what is the nature of contentment when when we sort of have those kinds of conversations we can still draw a little bit on science so we can talk about like maslow or there's a psychologist named eric erickson so you know in the west we have a lot of this stuff but we also can draw a lot on kind of eastern principles of spirituality stoicism um almost take a slightly more philosophical approach and and it's odd ethan but like when i'm sitting across from you there's a part of me that just kind of like feels like maybe that's the direction we need to go at some point in the conversation yeah yeah for anything that's the other thing is like i don't even really know what i want to talk about necessarily um which is also like another thing that i have a hard time with like my adhd is pretty bad uh and so like having having conversations and me having coherent thoughts is also something that i struggle with um yeah so if i ever get lost in the conversation um that's why yeah so okay so why don't can you just start with telling us a little bit about like how you started on on youtube and what kind of inspired you to create content uh yeah it was basically boredom um me and my best friend from back home one summer in august of 2012 uh we were just bored one night and we had been watching a bunch of different youtubers it was mainly like pewdiepie and the game grumps and we were like huh like you have a computer and we like messing around on camera like let's just do this because they do it and we like video games so why not uh and that's that's how it started and then eventually i just went off on my own and and made videos and um yeah it mainly stemmed from boredom and then it grew into this passion um in this thing that i really really love to do and i had been making random videos uh since i was a kid like just like home videos my brother and then once youtube came out just like random youtube videos here and there with some friends um and that's what i wanted to do when i was a kid not specifically be a youtuber but i wanted to be an entertainer in some sense like i wanted to be an actor for a really long time um and then i found youtube and it was like oh it's sort of like this new wave of entertainment or whatever absolutely and then it just kind of happened and so what was it that appealed to you about being an actor or entertainer uh probably at the time when i was a kid it was being the center of attention i was always just pining for people's attention all the time um and that's something that i'm even like really insecure about because looking back at like home videos and stuff like that or even my older videos from when i first started i feel super embarrassed by them and like i'll show them to people because i know that's part of it like that's part of like hey look where i came from blah blah but it is kind of embarrassing uh just seeing that kid and being like oh you're trying so hard what's embarrassing about that um i think it's i think it's that thing of like oh you're trying so hard to like be the center of attention and you're being like too much um and like too bombastic and crazy and stuff like that um and that's that's also kind of what i was being told when i was a kid too sure not necessarily by my family sometimes by my family um but like i didn't do well in school and my teachers were always like hey like you need to settle down um blah blah and it was also back in a time where um you know adhd was still not really understood that much sure um and it was just like oh you don't have an actual mental thing going on you just have too much energy and your disruption to the class um yeah you know ethan it's it's so it's sometimes so sad like how kids with adhd like we place value judgments on them right like you're being a bad kid yeah and and and it's it's actually quite devastating like i i've seen this a lot where it's like a lot of people with adhd just feel they carry around so much like shame from early in their life that they don't even understand because it's it's been so normal to them yeah you know that they're they're being told to function in an environment that their brain just isn't suited for um and and it can be really rough so i'm sorry you were in that situation and it sounds like you know people weren't happy with you yeah no and that's that's something that i've struggled with for a really long time not only like the thought of like oh i was a bad kid and i know that i wasn't a bad kid or anything um but i've always felt stupid like my entire life um and that's something that i'd still struggle with now and i think it really comes from that and come comes from me being in school and not being able to learn the way that everybody else learned um and so i just thought i was stupid because i just didn't i just didn't get it and you know obviously like i went to a public school so it was you know 170 or 140 kids in my grade and so it's not like the teachers can individually teach kids in the way that they learn like it's just not realistic but yeah my whole life i've sort of dealt with that with and i know that i'm not stupid but that's always been a thing in the back of my mind like i feel dumb all the time okay which i think also contributes to my imposters intro sure so we can talk about hmm so i i'm finding so many different forks in the road ethan and i don't know what direction to take things so i'm gonna need your help yeah and we can go we can go anywhere so i think it's actually incredibly insightful for you to say i know i'm not stupid but i carry this feeling around and there's a part of me that's like wants to just explain to you or like ask you like how does that work and then even explain to you like this is where we go into a little bit more of like teaching mode where you know i i can i can because a lot of people don't understand that it can be really confusing that like i know i'm not stupid and it's kind of weird right because even when you show home videos to people you're kind of owning that insecurity you're kind of saying i'm not going to let the insecurity like i'm i actually am confident in myself i'm confident with how far i've come and so showing people like home videos of the blunder years if you really think about it is actually a sign of like confidence and at the same time you feel insecure doing it even though there's a part of you that's like yeah this is where i came from i should be proud of it like i've come a long way like wow like i really didn't you know know much back then and so it's almost like you have these two opposite poles that exist within you at the same time does that make sense yeah um and and i think that there's some value to be gained a little bit about you know understanding like how how does that work because like no one teaches us like why does my mind do these things yeah um and if you want to we can kind of go down that route uh we can also talk a little bit about imposter syndrome which i think it has maybe something to do with that but but i think there's more to it than that usually um or what we can do is you know i can ask you questions about how you felt stupid and then you can end up becoming emotional on stream if that's the right because that sometimes that's what people are looking for they're looking for like emotional catharsis as opposed to teaching and yeah and it really it's like what are you in the mood for bro i'm i'm down for anything um i'll cry on stream if you want me to it's not about what i want man it's about what you want uh let's let's explore that that first path a little bit okay so how do you understand no like okay i'm gonna ask you a question okay are you stupid no i'm not stupid why do you feel that way um oh now that's a good question um i mean it's just something that i know i know i'm not stupid um i i i'm aware that my brain just works in in different ways than other than other people's do yeah and when i get into the i think i know i'm not stupid because i've proved to myself that i'm not stupid because in the right environment i can thrive um and that even happened in school where specifically um in physics i did really well in that class because we did a lot of hands-on stuff where like the teacher showed actual examples of the way that things worked and it was like oh like this is this is something that that's being shown right in front of me and also we're doing like hands-on stuff and so like i could figure out how it worked and i did really well in that class because i was in the correct environment and so there have been a lot of things like that where it's like oh i know i'm not stupid because i i'm actually doing well at this thing i just learn differently yeah so so now i'm gonna i'm gonna you know this is gonna be tough for you ethan so i'm gonna press you okay because i think you're not stupid at all i think you're incredibly insightful i think you're a smart guy so i'm gonna ask you hard questions is that okay yeah are you feeling anxious if i say something like that no i i don't feel anxious about it at all i'm down for anything okay so so if you have proven to yourself that you're not stupid why do you still sometimes feel stupid um i think i feel that way because most of the time i'm not in that kind of environment where i do feel where i feel comfortable like a lot of times if if there's like a large discussion going on in a room i'll just stay completely silent because i i'm afraid of well there's a few things that i'm afraid of one like i don't want to like embarrass myself and say something that like i don't know anything about um but two it's another thing of like with my adhd like it's so hard for me to follow along especially in group settings and so i just like hang back and i just am sort of like a fly on the wall um i forget your original question yep no i think it was so that's also incredibly insightful right so i i don't think that that was as anything with adhd i think i asked you a question and your mind went to a place where you were like oh when i'm in group settings i asked you like why do you sometimes feel stupid and then you started talking about group settings and then you also talked about how you've essentially adapted to survive in group settings yeah does that make sense like that's how i interpreted what you said but then the question still remains in a group setting do you feel stupid um a lot of times i do yeah because i i feel like i don't have anything to contribute most of the time uh because i'm afraid and like anxious of saying something that i don't know uh about or you know not following along correctly whatever so let's be a little bit precise here okay so you're saying that you feel afraid or anxious because you don't have something to contribute yeah okay so i'm gonna toss a hypothesis to you that it's the other way around okay it is your fear and anxiety and insecurity that causes you to conclude that you don't have anything to contribute what do you think about that that makes a lot of sense it's interesting right because we say like oh i have nothing worth saying therefore i am afraid or anxious or i shouldn't speak up but it's actually the other way around it's really tricky subtle yeah because our mind always makes us think that it's logical but i actually think the root of that is your insecurity i guess that you have a lot to contribute i don't think that you randomly become stupid in groups of people now there may be like a certain amount of adhd where you're not able to attend to what everyone is saying like that's totally fine um but i i think that you probably have a lot to contribute but it's that your insecurity becomes active in that situation what do you think about that yeah that that makes a lot of sense and that that's something that i've sort of realized in the past like year or so is that um and i think me being on youtube has actually made it a lot worse but i've realized that i'm way more of an insecure person than i thought i was um and there's like a lot that i that i like hold back and there's a lot that i like i don't uh open up to a ton of people uh i think like for me to like truly open up and talk about stuff um that i am insecure about like that's a really hard thing for me to do and like a lot of times i will just hold back because yeah because i'm insecure about it okay ethan i'm gonna need a minute can i have a minute oh yeah i just love what like oh man okay i think i think i'm finally getting a sense of maybe how we can take this conversation today okay i just need a second to make sure we can you know i can try to tie this together okay cool so okay i'm excited to get into it oh buddy it's gonna be walking a tightrope [Laughter] oh yeah okay here's my proposal now the downside is going to be that i may be talking more than you so you got to let me know if that rubs you the wrong way okay we're going to start with your insecurity we're going to start by understanding what is like like so you know when we say the insecurity activates in a particular environment it's going to start very very simple with principles of not quite psychology this is really more of like yoga and meditation about the way that the mind works so what i want to hypothesize to you and we'll explain this in more detail is that you're like a confident secure person generally speaking okay but that in some circumstances your mind activates insecurity.exe and then like you become like this person that you used to be and like you know even though you're successful and people like you have these like you know really risky broad creative pursuits like i've you are the first content creator i've ever ever heard of that intentionally deletes a year of their life and what they put in it is so incredibly wild and courageous it's so authentic and it's so ballsy right that's like look at the scrotum on that guy so we know that there's this huge like we know that there's this you who's like grown a lot the problem is that like you have this thing that you carry with you this insecurity that like is always at the back of your mind you're stupid and sometimes it becomes more active and when it becomes active it shapes your thoughts it says oh like i shouldn't speak up here so we're going to start by sort of explaining how that works in the mind the second thing that we're going to do is segue that into youtube and imposter syndrome so once we understand what that insecurity thing is we're gonna take a look at sort of like science and social media and things like that and see what youtube and social media does to this basic psychology you have and how that results in imposter syndrome then we're going to talk a little bit about how opening up is difficult and the crux here and i'm you know i'm really building a house of cards that could come tumbling down okay so bear with me so this is where like we're going to talk a little bit about like the more that that essentially youtube inflates both your success and your insecurity because they both rise together which i know is weird but that's really what we see that makes opening up difficult because like as you start to become a youtuber and you start to see that there's two ethans right there's the ethan who's like a badass who's been youtubing for nine years and is confident and knows that they're they're worth their weight in gold and then there's like this other ethan that's like well what if everyone just thinks i'm an idiot and if i open my mouth they're gonna think i'm stupid and it's all gonna come crumbling down yeah and and it's that it's that dichotomy which makes it hard for you to open up because like what if they see the other one what if it actually is that ethan like then what and so then what happens is you start to like be inauthentic you start to hide yourself you start to you know like you're doing the like when you were a little kid and you wanted to be loud and you wanted people to like see who you are i don't think that's like quite you know attention is one thing i think you have another way to think about is i think you genuinely have something that you want to share with the world and so the more you it makes opening up difficult the more you're closing yourself off with like what you show to the world and this is where we get to the personal growth part which is like we sort of end the journey with sort of understanding that like if you want to grow as a person and if you want the courage to take those creative pursuits you have to show people the ugly side of you you have to show be willing to show everything that you have to like the world and if you can do that then i think you're going to find co like you're going to start creating more content that's creatively fulfilling yeah how does that sound this sounds like a a great plan okay all right so let's start with the insecurity okay so let's start by understanding this kind of thing so we're going to start with the insecurity so when you feel so does it kind of make sense that the insecurity is like a program that activates in your mind and kind of takes over your thought process yeah so can you give me an example of like what situation like can you give us like share a specific example of like when you felt like you know stupid.exe was activating there's so many examples um yeah i mean like i like any conversation honestly um there's so many times where where it happens um you know if somebody is uh i don't know basically if somebody's talking about anything other than like youtube stuff or um like cameras or gymnastics i used to be a gymnast anything other than that i it's pretty much like out of my wheelhouse from being if i'm being honest and so there's a lot of times where i feel like i i can't weigh in on stuff and to give you some history like i was uh i was a gymnast from when i was eight until 17. i worked out five days a week three and a half to four hours a day um and then when i was 15 i started youtube um and so splitting my my time between youtube school and gymnastics and i didn't really have any social life at all um and then i got really shitty grades and my mom was like you have to stop gymnastics or school or sorry gymnastics or youtube um and so i chose to continue youtube and so can you tell me about that conversation yeah um it was my sophomore year i think um yeah end of sophomore year my mom found out that i got two d's on my finals i got like i got like a b multiple c's and two d's on my finals um and she like freaked out about it um because basically all i cared about was youtube and and gymnastics i didn't care about school which looking back like why should i have cared about school because it wasn't it was an environment that made me feel uncomfortable in so many different ways um and so she she got really upset about it and she was like okay you have to take school more seriously you can't be doing all this stuff you're juggling way too much you have to pick two of these one of them has to be school um and how did you feel that was the first time i ever had a panic attack um i like completely broke down like i was like like it was really really bad like i was like screaming like screaming crying uh because i just didn't know how to handle that because that uh i think it was a couple things one because i loved both of these things so much but in the back of my mind i knew that i was about to choose youtube and gymnastics was like this huge thing like it really shaped who i am as a person and knowing that i was about to give that up just like completely like shattered me okay so what what was so devastating about because i'm going to use the word sentence yes it sounds like sentencing to me yeah like i'm envisioning you like almost being like in a courtroom where there's like your mom with a gavel and she's like yeah that's kind of what it was like which child will you execute yeah what was that what was what caused the panic attack for lack of a better term i know it's kind of a weird question because i i think that you just phrased it really well it was like i'm killing one of i'm killing myself off like this version of myself and i have to choose which person to put the to point the gun at and like that that was something especially at that age too like i just didn't know how to how to handle that um and i like looking back i i solved that problem um really well i think i was like okay well let's look at my future like if you're going to be like a career gymnast like your career kind of stops when you're like 25 26 because your body can't handle it anymore so really like where can you go from there after that like maybe you get some sponsorships but then you kind of like become a coach and that's kind of it and then i was like but with this other thing like maybe i could go more into film and like blah blah so i was like okay this one's better for my future okay beautifully set okay so this is what oh crap so i would love ethan boy man this is one of those interviews where i really wish we had like five hours because there's so much to dig into here because i think there's there's more to it so i'm gonna just like jump to the punch line here and the punch line is a hypothesis because we don't really know but i think there's another element right it's not just which where do you point the gun it's also like what you are like who is your mom so so what i i want you to think about for a second is what is your mom so your mom is asking you to point the gun but she's also asking you to not only kill off a part of yourself what is she asking you to become yeah so she wants me to become a good student is at the end of the day that's what she wants you to become so she's asking you to become a student what is she sentencing you to i mean she's she's basically asking me to like choose the version of myself to pick the version of myself that i want to be i guess and then nope she's not she's not no she's asking you to make the choice that you don't want to be she sent it because are you going to be a good student no i still was not a good student after that right and i think you understood that and so it's not just like getting rid of gymnastics or youtube it's like forcing you to like here's like so there's two ethan's right there's the ethan who can be proud of what they accomplish there's like the youtube ethan and the gymnast ethan and i like those are those are good ethans yeah tell me about ethan the student i mean i just didn't care at all so there was there was a few reasons why i didn't care so number one reason was because youtube and gymnastics was just everything um that's where my passion was i wasn't passionate about anything in school like i wasn't learning anything that i was interested in um and then the the environment that i was in was i went to like the best public school in the area or whatever and so they they were really proud of the people that went to their school and it was always like oh like all 99.9 of our students going to college and like blah blah blah and like being in that environment and knowing that so many people around me were these like grade a students and like we're going on to these big universities and then and again me being like well [ __ ] like i feel stupid all the time and i'm getting bad grades and i'm like i i didn't feel like and i i think that this is true for a lot of kids like i didn't feel like i was a part of the school in a lot of ways because i i didn't do anything at school like i wasn't a part of any clubs i didn't do any sports through the school i went to school when i had to i left immediately i didn't hang out with anybody because i didn't have time because i was too busy doing youtube and gymnastics um which also looking back is like i was a really really passionate and dedicated kid to what i cared about um and i think that in the environment that i was in like that was kind of hard to find actually um and i remember one of the proudest moments i think was a couple years after i i graduated and i was doing youtube and i was working full-time as a manager at a restaurant and i was making two videos every day and my dad told me that he's never met somebody that works as hard as i do and like that that like that made me just like explode um what does that mean just like hearing that hearing that one at all after i just kind of felt like i was a [ __ ] up for a really long time because i wasn't traditionally doing well because i got shitty grades and i didn't participate in school and hearing somebody be like seeing somebody recognize how hard i worked um and especially that being my dad was just like really really huge and my dad and i have a really great relationship and he's someone that i really really really look up to and so hearing that come from him just it was really really big for me big in what way just really validating that like the the time that i had spent working as hard as i did because i at the time i was working full time at the restaurant so 40 plus hours a week i was waking up at like 4 30 or 5 a.m every day to record videos before work and then i would get back it was very unhealthy at the time but i would get back from work uh and then be editing until like midnight or one and i would do that like almost every day for a really long time and so just having somebody validate that and say like hey i recognize how hard you're working but also on top of that like you are one of the hardest working people that i know and it was also i don't remember if he actually did say it but i mean it kind of goes along with what he said anyway it was just like having somebody say i'm proud of you was just like really really big for me and i don't know um i think everybody loves that having somebody validate you know what they're doing and have having somebody say hey i'm proud of you don't uh ethan don't do the mistake of you know i didn't like it when you compared yourself to everyone there i think don't don't cheapen your experience and how significant it was for you by just saying you know everyone likes to be told they're proud like i don't think that's what happened there you didn't just get told you were proud so here's here's how i i'd understand your situation so like your mom like was tell like like so there's two ethans right there's the ethan who's like passionate and like good at stuff and then there's the ethernet ethan who's like sort of a failure and you say that you didn't care about school and that's why you did bad that's another thing where i would encourage you to see if it's the other way around because it's really hard to be a kid who feels like you're stupid who's surrounded by and you're giving us a lot here right so like let's just think about i'm just gonna tell you what i heard like you're a kid who knows like you don't know you've got adhd but like you just know that this is the best public school and that people are going to go off to college and they get all a's and then there's you and what's wrong with you ethan why can't you get good grades because you're stupid you're a stupid kid and that's and so like it's hard to be invested in something that you don't believe that you can do yeah i don't think that the care like i don't think you did bad because you didn't care i think you probably when you were five and six and seven you tried really really hard and your mind did not comply yeah and so to pre like it's it's one thing to like so it's almost protective to stop caring because if you did care about school what would that mean for you i think that that if i did care like that probably would have [ __ ] me up way more absolutely right so not caring is not the reason you didn't do good at school not caring is the adaptation for not doing good at school and then here is your mom and she's saying here's the gun you pick which one goes but it's more than that because it's not that you're just getting rid of one it's that she's forcing you to be stupid ethan she's like here's this kid that is like bright and talented and is a good gymnast and is doing well on youtube and is passionate about this stuff and she's like i'm gonna take one of those away and i'm gonna force you to be crappy ethan 50 of the time and now we get to the story with your dad because it's not just like oh like everyone enjoys being validated oh yeah my dad tells me i'm proud makes me feel good like i completely agree like you know everyone feels good but i think it's actually like it's so much like it brings me to tears man like you know like that kid is like you know they're struggling hard right like it's it hasn't been easy for you and to have like your dad recognize that like you're not dumb like it's just you're like working so hard it's like immense it becomes incredibly powerful it's not just being told sorry i'm getting myself i'm just thinking about it i was gonna be the one crying i told you i was gonna talk a lot today so i'm gonna do the crying too um but i i think i think it's like it feels really significant to me because it's this moment where you were seen right it's this moment where you were like appreciated and this is going to all tie back in the imposter syndrome and like what i was saying at the beginning about not beginning but earlier where like i think what you need to do to create is to like let people see you you know like you need to give people the chance to like do what your dad like you need to put yourself out there right and let people see you um and then in terms of imposter syndrome there's also something very clear about you know being in this straight a school or whatever and being the one kid with d's and whatnot so like maybe you felt like an imposter's in there i think there are a couple of themes which we can touch on and does that make sense yeah yeah that makes a lot of sense um yeah okay i'm just thinking about it yeah why don't you just take a second and then let me know when we're ready to move on or if you have questions or want to try to recap i it's it's very interesting thinking about it in the in the way that you presented it of like my mom forcing me to to kill off a version of myself and like i also recognized that it was like my mom having to make a really hard decision too sure because like because i it was bad for me like to be juggling all of all of that stuff and like i looking back i don't think like my mom was the bad guy or anything like that but but it was it really was her being like all right like i almost in a way wish she would have just said okay no no more gymnastics or no more youtube because i feel like not having a choice in that circumstance like me having having the weight of the decision not be on me i think would have been so much easier and like i and again i think that's why i freaked out was like i have to make this choice yeah absolutely right so when you talk about a panic attack i think it like it's not surprising because i think that like in that moment your mind understood like what future like there's a door the door to your bright future is being closed and you're being like put on this path of like academia and like failure and like it makes perfect sense that you had a panic attack and i also want to say like as a disclaimer here so sometimes when we talk about parents we make it seem like they're evil i don't think your mom was evil or bad by any means i think like parents do what they think is best for their kids and sometimes it's inevitable but like we're gonna psychologically traumatize our children no matter how much we love them and that's just the nature of life it's the nature of our mind seriously i'm not kidding yeah yeah you know and and so the parents did the best that they could and they also i'm sure that your mom did a lot of wonderful stuff for you too and yeah so you know i just want to be clear that i don't think she was a bad person or anything it's just like you know her kid is doing too much and they're failing out of school and like no one know like you know you being a youtuber wasn't a thing back then yeah so it's not like there's actually you know so your mom was just doing what she thought was best and sometimes it's the little things that can actually be like psychologically very difficult so now i'm going to we're going to go to can we move on phase two okay so we talked a little bit about feelings so here's ethan okay and then so here's like there's like this whole complex of gymnast oh [ __ ] so you have to excuse me so i i don't know if you know this but i'm a physician which means that i have terrible handwriting um all right okay so there's this is the ethan right so and then there's school so here here you are at the age of sophomore year and then your mom has this conversation then you have this panic attack yeah okay so and then what is like what are you feeling in the panic attack do you remember um yeah it was the first time that i'd ever felt like overwhelming emotions like like that yeah i remember i i grabbed on to a lamp that we had that had like three three sort of prongs that that went out to hold the uh the lampshade and i just grabbed that and i just squeezed it as hard as i could and it was metal um and like that's all i could do was just like squeeze the lamp while i was lying on the floor um okay and then that's kind of all i remember yep and then you you remember like do you remember when you kind of reconstituted like you said like you made this calculated decision and you kind of calmed down quickly was that the same day or next day or what it was the same day it was over the course of like a couple hours i think of like actually calming down because i just kind of like laid on the floor and like hyperventilated for a while and i remember my mom uh my dad was at work and she called my dad and she was in the other room but i could hear her and she was like hey i need you to come home like i just had this conversation with ethan and he's freaking out and like it's really really bad and i need you to come home okay and i remember like by the time that my dad got home i was like winding down i was still probably like hyperventilating and like sobbing a little bit but like the main part of it was was sort of over yeah so as you start to rationalize where does that emotion go [Music] um i mean it sort of went into um it was more like analytical in me being like okay here here are my options and just sort of like in my brain sort of lining everything out of like i was kind of doing like like the doctor strange like infinite universe kind of thing where i was just like all right how how many circumstances can i make in my brain with the options that i have and what is the best outcome okay i'm going to choose this outcome um i was sort of doing that kind of thing and so i i think rationalizing it actually probably helped me calm down a lot as soon as i started to think about it that way sure makes perfect sense okay so i'm going to give you a quick scenario normally i run through this in a little bit more detail but we're just going to get to that so like this is the example that i like to use so let's say i'm walking down the street with my five-year-old and she sees a dog and she tries to pet it and the dog bites her what happens to her emotionally uh she's gonna be traumatized and she's probably gonna cry yep right so she's crying and then i kind of calm her down a little bit and then i ask her if she wants ice cream right so i distract her hey do you want ice cream and she's like yes definitely five minutes later she's eating ice cream and she's happily talking to me about princesses make sense yeah crying emotion is gone right what happens the next time she sees a dog she's gonna probably get afraid that she's gonna get bitten again okay so where is that emotion coming from it's coming from the trauma that she had with the dog perfect right so now i want you to understand this so now why is that emotion so i want you to think about it this way so this this emotion gets stored into our unconscious mind does that make sense and then what causes the emotion to like cross over into the conscious mind uh by seeing the thing that made her feel that feeling very good so let's think about um like a triggering environment does that make sense yep and so like i know this sounds kind of weird i i keep on insisting on using this example but if you go to let's say a hotel let's say you're traveling ethan and you walk into the public restroom of the hotel and how do you know how to operate a toilet that you've never seen before because most toilets are the same exactly so where does that knowledge about the toilet come from my past absolutely and what causes you like so so i know this sounds kind of weird but like are you thinking about flushing the toilet before you see the toilet no right so so like there's this very simple principle of the mind that it scans and this is something that the intellect does or the buddhi it scans your environment and it kind of says like okay what is the appropriate experience that we need to activate to help us deal with the situation does that make sense yeah works for toilets works for trauma it's the same thing it's a very fundamental idea of mind so then the question becomes you know so now you say to yourself so now we're going to kind of like reconceptualize this a little bit okay so you say to yourself i know i'm smart right damn it can i do this or okay looks like i just can't do this okay whatever um so you know you're smart and yet there are times where you feel stupid so how does that work so we have our manus which is our emotional mind our ahamkara which is our ego and our buddhi which is our intellect and there are certain environments so you essentially have a stored emotion of stupidness and like it like even though it's not active most of the time like you know you're smart like you know like logically like your intellect has concluded that you're a worthwhile dude but essentially you have this thing called a some scar which is essentially that balled up undigested and emotional energy of feeling stupid and there are certain times in your life where your brain is scanning the environment like when you're with a group of people and it's like oh [ __ ] yeah this is when we're stupid because if i had to guess i'm sure we could find lots of instances of you sitting in a classroom with lots of people talking about stuff that you may not know what they're talking about and the teacher calls on you and you feel really really dumb yeah and like when you feel really really dumb like where does that feeling go how long do you feel dumb for when you're in that classroom uh i mean that i think that that feeling was just kind of always there like the the dread of being called on because i was like nine times out of ten i'm not gonna know what we're talking about and i'm i'm not going to be able to contribute so it just kind of was constantly there let me ask you ethan when you are in a group of people who are talking about something does your mind tell you i don't really know what we're talking about i'm not going to be able to contribute um yeah it kind of does a lot of so like it's weird right it's like the same damn thoughts that you used to have in the classroom you now have in groups of people is that why i still have nightmares about uh high school so yes yes yes absolutely so nightmares so so now we get to okay great great point because we have this is a deviation that we haven't talked about so this is what i want you to understand okay so in our emotional mind you have this experience of sadness feeling stupid actually let's call it feeling stupid not sadness okay and then what happens is that like your mind distracts yourself in some way or you use rationalization and then this thing goes dormant okay let's say this is the line of your conscious mind okay and it gets stored as this thing called a sumscar which is like this ball of undigested emotional energy which then gets recalled at particular times you with me so far yeah okay and so now the question is like then how do we ever get rid of this right because like like it's kind of interesting so this is where you know now if you were to if you were to be in an experience where you felt stupid what would you do with like what would you do i know it sounds kind of weird but we've talked about when you were 15 and when you were like eight but like now if something bad happens to you like what's something bad that's happened to you recently can you do you mind sharing anything it can be anything uh anything bad it could be even a tiny thing like any negative emotion that you've had recently uh i mean does being sick count not really um i'm tr i'm trying to think of of any and yeah i know i'm kind of putting you on the spot no it's totally fine i just fell apart but oh uh i was i was moving out of my my old apartment and uh because i just moved kind of recently and i still had a bunch of [ __ ] there that i had to deal with and it was just super super stressful for me to have to like go back there and deal with stuff that was still there and and what did you do with those emotions i know it sounds like kind of a weird question because we don't even realize what we do with the emotions but like um i i tend to just kind of like on to them and not not like i'm going to be upset all day but i just kind of like it's almost like i'm absorbing them and just like yeah okay that's okay so we're gonna have to teach you a different way yeah okay so so here's here's what tends to happen as we get older so if we look at like the psychiatry and psychology right most of the time like the money's in childhood and the reason for that is because as we grow older our ability to process emotions improves like if i'm walking down the street and i get bit by a dog like what kind of thoughts do you like what's my initial reaction uh i mean at least for me if i get bit by i'm probably just gonna get like upset and like angry yep and then what are you rather than rather than cry sure and then what happens is walk away i guess sure right so like like you kind of walk away and okay maybe this is what we need to work on a little bit so like this is also where like you know most adults will do some amount of processing right like so in the same way so we can talk about this in terms of stupidity actually we have a good example of this where you sort of rationally look at your situation and you kind of say like oh actually i'm not stupid i just feel stupid right now but like i actually have a lot that i'm you know i contribute to people et cetera et cetera does that sort of make sense so there's this process of like actually digesting or metabolizing emotions so this is what psychotherapy is so when you go and you talk to a counselor and you like talk about your feelings it's kind of weird like how does that help people like what is the mechanism through which talking about the bad stuff in your life actually like helps you in any way shape or form because a lot of times people will think about the bad things in their life it doesn't help them at all it just makes them feel worse so there's actually this process of metabolizing and digesting your negative emotions and the more that you do that the more um you're kind of free of those some scars so if i get bit by a dog and i kind of like process it then like i'm not i'm not going to get triggered by the dog anymore and i'm sure if we like tunnel down enough i can ask you enough open-ended questions that you know it's hard to lead you in the right direction but i'm sure if you look in your life you'll see that there are times where you felt emotionally bad and you like did the work of talking it through with a friend or you like went for a long hike or like you did something right you didn't just shove it aside you didn't stick it under the rug but you actually spent some time grieving so grieving is another good example of this emotional processing thing where like some people don't grieve and then they stay stuck does that make sense because that ball of emotional energy that some scar is just living down there and grieving is how we like get over it psychotherapy is how we get over it okay so let me just think about where i wanted to go with this any questions about this does this make sense yeah no it makes a lot of sense and it's making me think about like how i because specifically for anger when i get angry i've learned how to deal with that and i don't i rarely ever get angry but like when i get really mad or frustrated now i'll go and work out or i'll go running because it's just like a way for me to get a lot of energy out really quick and that's sort of how i process that but i don't have that for any other emotion yep that's very very well said so the other thing beautiful ethan so good okay so a couple of important principles your body and your mind are connected right so there's like there's like a pseudoscientific practice called tapping or the emotional freeing technique which now actually has a little bit of data behind it which is like a technique that people use for trauma which actually now has clinical trials that show it's like it actually does something so the idea is that like it's kind of weird because it sounds pseudo super pseudo scientific and what people do is like there are these people who are tappers and what they literally do is they just like tap on parts of your body to like free the pent-up emotions kind of like acupuncture or something sort of i think acupuncture uses a different a whole different modality but yeah yeah so and the point here though is that like physical and we know that for example the diagnostic criteria for for anxiety includes muscle tension so there's clearly a connection between your body and your mind and you can actually process emotions physically if you want to that's a completely valid doesn't have to be psychotherapy you can actually go and like hike and climb mountains and that will help you like process your emotions the other interesting way that the mind processes emotions which is i think what your mind has learned how to do is dreams and nightmares so every time you have a nightmare about that i know it's unfortunate but like my hope is that you're digesting a little bit and there are actually particular techniques that we can do i i can walk you through those maybe that's not gonna be our meditation for the day at the end of the day about how to like think about nightmares and how to like work with them a little bit so that like you sort of use that nightmare to like do the emotional processing and let it go because your body and your mind are gonna do whatever they can to heal like if you get a cut it's just gonna try to heal and your mind does the same thing it does the best that it can so it'll and and so if you have nightmares about how often you have nightmares by the way um i mean i don't have nightmares all that often um the like school ones the like stress stream kind of things i'll have like maybe once every few weeks or once a month maybe yeah so i think that's just like your your brain is like you still have that pent up emotion i know it sounds kind of weird but in the nightmare so our when you're in the nightmare is the nightmare real no uh or like is it is like what's happening something that actually happened is that where you're asking is your experience of it real uh i mean yeah because i'll wake up and feel stressed yep so like like and even then like the emotions that you feel in a nightmare are they real yeah it's bizarre right yeah but absolutely so i think like this is your and if we think about like this emotional catharsis and when people like like come into my office and they start crying like what we're doing is bringing those emotions back into the conscious mind so that we can experience them process them and let them go and so i think that your mind has just learned how to do this through a nightmare because you don't know how to do it other ways or maybe you have i don't know if you see a therapist or not but like you know that's another way i would suspect that if you start going to therapy i'm assuming that you don't already know but that if you start i just i just stopped going to therapy actually i just like took a break because doing stuff over zoom every week like i couldn't like get into the right like mindset every week and so until i can go back in person we we took a little bit of a break but i just stopped going like a few weeks ago good good i i think taking a break from therapy is like important too like it should be part of your vacation um but anyway so hopefully you can kind of work on some of those things there but i think it sort of makes sense to me that you have nightmares about the sort this kind of stuff yeah so the just to kind of summarize so ethan do you mind just sharing with me like what you've taken away from the conversation so far like key points that yeah uh i mean the the sort of realization of like having to like kill a version of me off i think has like affected me a lot more than i initially thought and like and i think i get this from my dad but like i very much don't process my emotions like something will happen to me and i'll just kind of brush it off um and i also just like will kind of roll over for people too what does that mean well just like i don't know uh i don't i don't like stand up for myself all that much um and also i don't know how to say no to anybody um which is something that i've been sort of like working on um and i think that's part of me my insecurity is like i don't want this is something i've actually talked to my therapist a lot about um is that i don't want people to think that i'm an [ __ ] and so if somebody asked me to do something i'll just like kind of bend over backwards for them and be like oh yeah of course because i don't want them to think i'm a dick okay i'm curious did you feel pressured to come on here today no okay would you tell me if you did yeah okay yes i'm very excited okay because i would hate to i would hate to you know have you bend over backwards for no you know um okay so so really i'm glad that so now i'm going to give you a choice so what i'm actually hearing ethan is that the the biggest thing that was helpful for you was sort of this realization about your mom and sort of being you know forced to looking for the right word amputate a part of yourself yeah and and so now you know i i've sketched out this beautiful plan but i'm wondering if we should actually abandon it and just maybe like dig for a couple more of those gems like what do you think we can go down our standard track of okay here's the way that some scars work this feeling of insecurity is essentially like pent-up emotions from these past times that then activate we can now move on to like youtube and think a little bit about how that entire process is exacerbated by social media then we can talk about how opening up is difficult and then we can sort of talk about you know becoming your best self or we can dig for gems what do you want to do uh we can do we can do either of those um your time bro i'm going to force you to choose oh [ __ ] no i'm not no i can't i'm so sorry i'm so sorry okay oh god wait um you don't have to choose you choose you do you want to choose no not really okay i will choose for you okay okay let's let's let's stick with our original thing okay i'm so sorry ethan oh god it's very funny i didn't mean to all right so let's talk about youtube so you say that you suffer from imposter syndrome or maybe something like that what do you mean by that um so definitely over the past year because the the channel that i was doing with a friend of mine like really boosted my career a lot and boosted my own channel and everything um and so i just sort of feel like um just kind of standard imposter syndrome of like the things that i have i don't deserve or um i i think a lot of um i think a lot about like why am i in this scenario and like uh you know a lot of a lot of people in my life especially over the past year have had really shitty things happen in them and here i am like you know on paper like living the dream in los angeles um and so it's a lot of like why am i this person that's experiencing this um and there's there's a lot of guilt that i that i feel with the success that i have and i don't feel that i deserve it basically do you feel like you don't deserve it from like a cosmic sense or do you feel like people haven't figured out that you don't make good content yet [Laughter] oh i i think i think it's the latter it's in my mind like there's so many other people that make way better stuff than i do like i don't think that i'm particularly interesting or that i and again this is something that i'm working on with my therapist of like i don't feel like i'm worthy of people's time most of the time so i'm noticing a couple of different things and i wouldn't call all of them imposter syndrome okay so can i try to tease apart untangle this ball of yarn so when i think about imposter syndrome so here's for better or for worse i feel like i'm understand it quite well now um you know we've worked with a lot of streamers and and uh we have like a program with twitch where we support content creators and so one of the things that that when i think about imposter syndrome i'm going to use sort of this eastern kind of conception of it as well so we have an internal sense of self right and this is the way that you view yourself and we have the way that the world treats us and so the way that i view myself is different from the way that the world treats me does that make sense generally speaking though actually so let's go back to your dad for a second so there are times where like harmony is built when these two things are even so i think like the significance of like your dad talent like appreciating you for who you are is like you knew deep down that you were working really really hard and you were trying and so you had this view of yourself but what did the world think of you that i was a failure right so but like the world kept on telling you were a fail you were a failure does waking up at 4 30 in the morning making youtube videos going to work and then coming back home and editing them if i describe that to someone like what adjectives would you use to describe that person like hard-working and dedicated and probably successful passionate right yeah so there's a there's a there's a disconnect between your internal sense and what the world is telling you that can be very devastating for people and then here comes your dad and he's like he's a signal from the outside world that aligns with like your passion and your dedication and so it can feel really good so in that situation your self-esteem is up here the world is treating you down here and so that's kind of feels bad man right impostor syndrome is this it's when you have a sense of yourself like you're just like an ordinary guy like you're 24 year old ethan you know there's some things you're good at some things you're not great at and the world is like oh my god it's it's ethan he's so great like look at the school stuff he's doing all the time man oh my god i love ethan and then you're like wait a minute hold on a second yeah you know so what i see in imposter syndrome and i see it a lot at places so i teach at harvard medical school and like i see it a lot there bizarrely and you'd think that like you know like what's the correlation between success and imposter syndrome and generally speaking the more successful people are the more that they feel imposter syndrome and and essentially what happens is like generally speaking our internal sense of self and external sense of self tend to like stick with each other so if you think about a standard person it's like oh you know i'm a high school student i feel terrible and then you like become a freshman in college then once you're a freshman in college you feel like a like you know a nobody like you're a freshman you're a noob and then you go back home for christmas and then you hang out with people who are one or two years younger than you yeah and then like then you feel like a big swinging dick you know yeah it's like look at all these high school plebs and like i'm in college now [ __ ] and so there's kind of this weird like this slow growth right and then you finish high school and then you go back and like you like like do a career panel for like high schools i mean sorry you finish college and then you get a job and then you're like 24 and you go back and you like do some career panel at the guidance office or whatever and they're all these 21 year olds and like you're a 24 year old and you're like paying your own rent and then you like feel like someone right but you're the most junior person at the the the company so you don't feel like much there so generally speaking there's like an even sense of like societal respect with like an internal sense of value because that's the way that we're sort of designed we're not designed to like inherit vast amounts of success over brief periods of time because things like social media like i don't know if this makes sense but you know 10 000 years ago you couldn't blow up in your tribe yeah there's only like so big that you could get right and so like sure like you could maybe like you single-handedly killed a tiger and then everyone's like yay and then you're like yay look at how awesome i am and like 15 people think you're great yeah and so our brains are just not designed like the concept of blowing up was not technologically possible yeah in the environment like you go look at a tribe of like a pack of deer right like how how much can their social status change yeah very little right and so like enter youtube where suddenly now we have these things where like people get elevated a lot so if you heard of a company called goldman sachs you know yeah okay so like i also work with a fair number of people at goldman and like goldman is sort of like it's like a platinum tier investment bank it's where everyone wants to go they're like super famous super rich whatever and so we see a ton of imposter syndrome before like when i'm working with a 22 year old who's applying to be in goldman he's like at the top of his class he's the most competitive he feels really good about himself and then when he lands at goldman within six months he's got impostor syndrome because then when he introduces himself to people and he's like oh i work at goldman and then i was like oh yeah and then he's like but wait a minute because he's like the most junior kid on the totem pole so every day when he goes to work he feels like clueless and here he is getting all this external respect yeah so bizarrely what what i see in imposter syndrome is like when there's when there's a quick elevation the imposter syndrome gets worse because then you're kind of confused because everyone's treating you like you're the best thing since sliced bread but like i know this sounds kind of weird but like you still [ __ ] the same every morning yeah right and you're like wait a minute yeah you know does that make sense yeah it makes a lot of sense and and so that's i definitely see that and i think that like basically is if you do like self-reflective work and stuff like that we can talk about spirituality and stuff that's one thing but i'm also detecting something else which i don't think is imposter syndrome which is sort of the sense of worthiness what's fair do i deserve this and i don't really get the sense that i feel like that's a little bit more almost like spiritual in nature what do you think yeah i'm so i i why is that different from imposter syndrome of like because you sort of described it as like uh other people saying like oh you're hot [ __ ] and really you're just a normal dude um but how is that sort of different from feeling like oh like i have this stuff and i don't feel worthy like why me yeah so so the reason i'd say that that's different is one has to do with a comparison it may not be different right so it may be the same so i'm kind of proposing to you but what i'm like especially when you talked about like other like so if you ask why am i successful and other people are not that doesn't have to come with imposter syndrome that i think is a really really important question from like a spiritual and karmic perspective like why do you have the life that you have and imposter syndrome is about sort of like being afraid that one day everyone's gonna wake up and like start to think that like you make crappy content they know they've figured it out right so so the being afraid of them figuring it out is different from like understanding like ethan why were you given the gifts that you were given you know you say your adhd and you have struggles and things like that totally get it but like i think you've discovered that you are brilliant right i think that is not a word that i would use to describe myself but i'm also very very bad at uh giving myself any credit at all or saying anything nice about myself yeah so i think that that feeling of unworthiness can grow into imposter syndrome but i think that has deeper roots dude because i think you were taught you were unworthy from a very young age what do you think about that yeah no i i definitely feel feel that and it's it's so interesting because i i don't feel that at all from my family because my family has always been uh they've always supported like everything that i've that i've ever done and like both my parents when when i moved out to la they were like you have to go and do this like you need to go and make this leap you can always come back blah blah blah but like from kind of everybody else in the outside world i've always felt like oh i'm doing bad and i'm stupid there it is so there's the sump scar it's the persistent feeling you carry with you right so i i think that impostor syndrome can grow on this but this feels deeper to me than because like there are a lot of people who blow up and have impostor syndrome but are like narcissistic pricks who don't bend over backwards for anyone right so i think your particular combination is like an insecurity that pre-dates the youtube followed by an explosion of social media where like you know now suddenly everyone's treating you well and it's like doubly perplexing because there's the normal dose of imposter syndrome and that compounds with like the sense of like am i really good at what i do am i really worthy so now the question becomes where does that you know i'm curious what what do you think about the content you make i think it's fine honestly like i i i think that it's entertaining for people but it's nothing it's nothing great um i think that i have made really cool stuff but um yeah no i i do think that i just am another dude on youtube like making videos and i i think that i'm doing things that anybody can do and that i'm i'm nothing special and then i just got lucky and i was at the right place at the right time i could get behind that so so i know this sounds kind of weird ethan but i think that that's okay what do you think yeah yeah no and like i i think that that's very real where it's just like i do genuinely think that like anybody can do what i do it's not like i do anything profound and like i like i i make decent content and i got really lucky and like i worked really hard and that that worked out somehow do you feel unworthy um yes and no it depends it kind of depends on the mood that i'm in um because there are parts of me that sort of like with the stupidity thing where i can recognize like i i busted my ass for years and years and years to like get where i am um but then there's there's other parts of me that that are like i know people that work so much harder than me and are are you know better people than i am and you know why don't why aren't they where i'm where i'm at why was i the person that got got handed this i don't feel like i deserve it okay so i don't know why ethan but i'm just kind of in a teaching mode today and maybe it's because you're working with a therapist but you seem very insightful to me so i want to give you some stuff to kind of think about as opposed to like maybe like meet you where you're at which is normally what i do so here's here's what i'd recommend to you and this is part of the process of like helping people overcome imposter syndrome why do you compare so that's that's something that i have a really hard time is i'm constantly comparing myself to others um and i think it's because of like the people that are in my friend group and like specifically on youtube like most of the people that i'm surrounded by are these insanely successful talented people and i constantly feel like hey that i'm always overshadowed by them and that i will never be able to escape that shadow ever and i'll always just be that dude that's friends with x um and also uh where what was the other point that i was gonna make i'll ask the question again why do you always compare um oh yeah that's the other thing is that people always compare me to them all the time it's like okay ethan did this this person did that um or like i wish these people would do these things together or whatever and it's always people comparing me to my friends um and so i always feel like i i always compare myself to the people that i'm around because other people do that to me as well how does it how does it feel to be compared to these other people um there's two sides of it which are very opposite and conflicting one part of it is like i'm honored to be even remotely associated with these people because these are people that i look up to and um that make some really amazing stuff and that i genuinely like believe in the content that they make and they're talented people and then the other side of that is the exact opposite where like it can be really degrading where anything that i do is going to be compared to what these other people are doing and it really sucks sometimes where it's like okay can you just look at the thing that i made without bringing up these other people like not everything that i do has to be connected to these other people can i think for a second now i'm facing the challenge of how how to try to condense you know weeks of work into like 15 minutes because there's definitely a road forward i just don't know how to condense it so let me just see if i can pull this off ethan do you have a particular if you don't mind sharing do you have a particular like religious or spiritual bend i'm not religious or spiritual at all okay all right let's start with this who are you what a loaded question uh i genuinely don't even know how to answer that yep uh i don't even know where to s to start answering that don't worry about being right yeah just tell me who do you who are you um am i allowed to just use a bunch of adjectives absolutely you're allowed to say whatever you want to nothing is wrong with what you were going to say cool um i think that like at my core i'm a very like passionate um and i i do think that i'm a very insightful person um yeah i think i think at my core like i'm very passionate and i think that i'm a pretty thoughtful dude like i i do go out of my way for the people that i care about a lot and um yeah so i'm hearing compassionate insightful and dedicated is that fair yeah i think i'm pretty easy going sometimes too to a fault yep uh yeah so that's okay so here's here's i know it sounds kind of weird but like when i work with people with imposter syndrome like i think it ultimately comes down to the ahamkada or the ego which i don't know if you remember when i drew but there's like emotional mind there's the intellectual mind and there's this thing called the ego and if we think so the one of the functions of ego is to compare so like what the ego does when we're feeling bad about ourselves is that it compares us to other people sometimes it does so to reinforce the fact that we feel bad about ourselves but otherwise it also does it to kind of pump ourselves up yeah but if you kind of think about it like i know this sounds kind of weird but like you know i want you to look at two rocks and like just think about this for a second and like you can compare them you can say one is bigger or smaller but like it doesn't mean anything does that make sense yeah and so i think this is once again where like social media reinforces or conditions our mind to compare and especially when people are making comparisons so it's almost like there's an assault on your mind which is in uh increasing your aham god now the interesting thing is a hamgar is technically translated as the sense of i so sometimes people who have a hum card it's not necessarily like ego like it's not necessarily that they're egotistical you can still have a sense of i that has a very low impression like i can beat myself up a lot i'm so stupid i am this i am this i am this or you can be like i'm the best thing since slice friend the yogis would actually say that it's the i am part that's the problem what's on the other end of the spectrum is always going to lead to suffering whether you say you're the best thing since sliced bread and you're super narcissistic those people suffer immensely or you beat yourself up those people suffer immensely as well and so oddly enough i think that like you know you your your mind can make comparisons but i think your true freedom and the reason that you're going to continue to have imposter syndrome until you recognize who you are because and now we get to the punch line as long as you don't know who you are where does your sense of identity come from what other people tell me exactly right so so this is where like when when it comes to your sense of self ego is when the sense of the self comes from the outside oh dr k oh harvard harvard oh did you see it did you see it oh so beautiful right and so like you know it's like as long as that's what your identity is based on like you're gonna suffer and and so like even the people at harvard like they suffer a lot because there's always you know someone higher than them or even if you rise to the head of a department and you run a division there are other divisions and so like as long as your sense of identity is based upon comparison like the imposter syndromes to a certain degree gonna be there and so now the question becomes how do you discover who you are no idea okay close your eyes who are you ethan what is your experience of yourself the first thing that i want to do is just say the things that i already said okay when you asked me before of who am i okay so you can say those things so now let's pick insightful show me where insightful is like in this experience if this is the only moment that you existed how would i know that how how would you know how would you know that you're insightful uh by just the fact that i can reflect i guess okay okay good experiences that i've had and me as a person okay so that's actually a far better answer than i thought was possible it shows that you're insightful but yeah so but but i'm i'm gonna say like it goes it's a little bit weird because i'm gonna still tunnel down so what the real answer is the capacity to reflect so i want you to notice that like so are you a man i don't know what your gender identity is but do you identify as a man how would you know if this is all that existed if if you were alive for just a moment in time and it was this moment how would you know that you were a man because i think that i am a man okay but where is the madness in you uh i don't know right it's weird yeah so so once again you gave the right answer which is a step forward which is that because you think you're a man are you a youtuber yes how would you know uh because i make content on youtube okay and were you a youtuber 15 years ago no were you you 15 years ago yes well then how does that work then how can being a youtuber be a part of you because we're constantly growing and changing we you're correct we are constantly growing and changing but who is the you that is constantly growing and changing yeah right so you can open your eyes let's check in how you feeling right now what what are you just how was that for you confusing do you feel i don't wanna i don't want you to feel stupid but i encour i understand that we're walking on like very unfamiliar territory that's difficult for most people yeah no i don't i don't feel stupid actually um genuinely um it's it's really really interesting being asked those questions because that's not something that people like nobody goes up to somebody and it's like who are you like deep down who are you and so it's really really weird thinking about that and asking and i think that that's most of what therapy is is just having somebody ask you a question that you need to ask yourself and asking myself that question and genuinely not really having any idea how to answer it it's also kind of terrifying being like oh i don't really know who i am at at my core um and so it's it's kind of to answer your question it's kind of scary yeah a little bit good so that's what we want because i think that's going to be your road forward so here i'll leave you with a couple of thoughts so here's the thing ethan you are what you are and maybe now we'll sort of segue into like you know so let's just touch on opening up is difficult so like you have this idea of all this [ __ ] that you are but you're not any of that stuff all the stuff that you're afraid to show other people is not actually who you are because what you are and this is sort of the yogic perspective is there's a eunice that transcends body so like when you were a child you were still you and when you're an adult you're still you but the body has changed before you were a youtuber you were still you right like and after like when you were a tiny youtuber you were still you and now that you're a successful youtuber you're still you like you're still that kid who would wake up at 4 30 every day to make videos that's like that's a part of you there's like a piece of you that wants to like share something with the world and that part of you doesn't care really about anyone else it doesn't care about whether you're bigger or smaller or get compared or don't compare it or whatever right because like i think when you really stop and think about when you make your best content it is when you are the furthest away from what people think you are and it is the closest to when you are you because i know this sounds kind of weird but when you were working as that manager and you were making you two youtube videos a day were you being you yeah absolutely absolutely right you were so close to yourself back then and the crazy thing is like when your mom told you like pick one the reason that that was so painful is because she was asking you you were so close to who you were back then you had figured out who you were and she was like lop a piece off and you were like no that's not i'm not a student it's just not who i am yeah and so i know it sounds kind of weird but like there's a eunice that transcends your physical body there's a unis that even transcends your mind because their fluctuations with the mind one day you're sad one day you're angry but you're still you one day you're egotistical one day you feel unworthy maybe you feel those things more constantly but i guess that when you're taking a dump you don't really feel unworthy you're just like you're just exactly exactly right and maybe if you're on your phone and you're checking twitter then you will feel unworthy and and so you know i mean but like like there's there's a eunice ethan and this is the thing is i i would encourage you to walk that journey and now it's going to be tricky because i don't know you know therapy is a good place to start but i think it's a little bit more spiritual in nature of really like go through this process of like when you close your eyes and you like sit down like i want you to go experience different things like go and like hike and then like ask yourself like who's doing the hiking is this a youtuber like where are they because i'm not gonna i don't think you're gonna find one i don't think you are a youtuber yeah i think a youtuber is just a mantle that you put on right and i think that the closer that you get to that identity like the less that this vacuum of identity will be filled up by social media and as you become solidified and grounded in yourself and i know you've been this you probably are to a certain degree it's just social media is going to pull you away from that because in terms of identity it's like and you were taking a month off right so like i think you got closer to you yeah and does that make sense yeah no and there there were parts of of that month where i did feel really close to myself like uh there was just like a there was just a night where i just and it was very cathartic and very good but i just like sat and cried for like and it came out of nowhere but i just sobbed on my kitchen floor uh for like 15 or 20 minutes out of nowhere and like it was really good because i think that i don't allow or like subconsciously i don't allow myself to feel my like deep emotions all that much and i think that's a thing that a lot of youtubers struggle with because we sort of like wear this mask of like okay i need to make a video now i need to go on stream now time to be happy because we need to do an alexathymia workshop for y'all but okay yeah um that's uh that's something that my therapist uh brought up like a month or two ago she's like i think that you have alexa thymey and i was like i don't know what that is and explained it and i was like oh yeah because i uh i can only this is something that we've been working on is that when she asked me how i'm doing or how something affects me most of the time my go-to thing is weird or fine and i have such a hard time explaining how something actually makes me feel can you explain to people what alexa thymey is uh from my understanding of it it's sort of the inability to uh the inability to express uh or articulate your emotions i guess well said so i kind of think about it as someone who's colorblind to emotion yeah that's a good way of putting it right so it's like it's like and so we see this a lot actually in in men especially because men are actually conditioned to suppress emotions and like not recognize them so men are allowed to feel basically one emotion any guess what it is there's one emotion that's socially acceptable for us to express anger absolutely absolutely right so like even when we get shamed and we get dumped we feel pissed off yeah it's the only real thing that we understand like it's like you could tell anger but everything else is weird yeah and even positive emotions are like oh it's fine you don't you don't walk in and say like i feel like validated because people love me in the world and i feel like loved and appreciated like you still like you're just not taught how to even recognize that like i feel good today why do you feel good i i don't know i don't know it's fine i'm just i'm just surviving i'm vibing today you know it's yeah yeah so so alexa time is like not knowing what you feel and then the challenge is that like it's hard to you know process like what you don't which you can't feel or can't articulate and and then you know in medicine we have a saying that good diagnosis precedes good treatment and i think the big problem with lexithymia is that like when we're when we don't know what we feel like we can't really fix it because are you feeling sad are you feeling ashamed are you feeling afraid you know are you feeling guilty all these things are important and even like solidifying like the positive feelings is actually really important too yeah um but yeah i'm gonna have to think about that but anyway i'm sorry you were saying something else i kind of jumped in with alex i just made a side comment about i don't remember okay um yeah and then i think the last thing that i just want to toss your way is like i think ethan for someone who is as contemplative as you are so i'd tack one more thing i think you're insightful but i think you're also like a thinker i get the sense that you know you may not really view yourself this way because of the adhd but like like you think i get the sense you think about stuff um and so one thing that i would really encourage you to also kind of do going forward is like think about why you so like you know i personally do derive a lot of value from like thinking about karma um and i don't know whether it's real or not real but there's good scientific evidence that having an internally consistent way that you view the world is like a good way to find like peace and happiness and stability and builds resilience it doesn't say that a particular way is superior to other ways so it's not like the christian model is like better or worse than the hindu model but that just or even like being like a secular humanist is totally fine too but there is good data that spending some time thinking about it and then coming to your own conclusions about like what is the way that i'm viewing my life in existence can be helpful what do you think about exploring things like the theory of karma and stuff like that uh yeah i mean i'm always open to like exploring and uh and just gaining knowledge about stuff because that's not something that i've even ever really dived into ever okay i think it could help you answer these questions like why you like why are you lucky like why have you seen so much success over the last year when other people are struggling and then i think there's another piece of that which is that like if you are lucky like what do you what do you do with it yeah you're saying yeah like that that sort of struck a chord what do you can you share a little bit yeah i mean i i feel like i struggle with that a lot where where it's like okay like i am very lucky to be where i am like i have influence and you know i'm successful and blah blah blah but there's a lot of times where i'm like what the [ __ ] am i doing like yeah i don't know where i i feel sometimes that i'm that i'm not using what i have in the in the correct way yep yeah good i'm i'm very happy to hear that because i i think that's what makes the world a better place when people have resources and have talents and they think to themselves am i using this the best way that i can i think like that's where the light in the world comes from it's like when people like you are like hey maybe i can do something and you don't have to be big you know i think it's just everyone has resources at their disposal um but yeah ethan i can i pause for a second and maybe even start with a little bit of an apology yeah sure so here's here's what i i sort of got from our conversation today and i just want to make sure that you know i feel bad if this wasn't really what you were looking for it wasn't helpful but when i talk to you and when i listen to you like here's what i see there's a psychological component there's this some scar of feeling stupid and whatnot and and you know like that was born in a particular place you carry it around with you it activates when you you when you see the toilet flush that's when you think toilet so when you're in a group of people like you're gonna be transported and maybe this is a better way to put it i think you become eight-year-old ethan yeah in your mind right and it's weird because that can co-exist with successful ethan like here's one ethan who's like oh like how do i use my resources to better you like make the world a better place and like what do i do about like making oh i want to help the universe and then there's like oh my god stay quiet don't open your mouth because you're an idiot and you'll never you know yeah you can't this is weird right so the thing about a some scar is that the emotional energy retains the age at which it was formed so in psychology we call this regression but you get like your mind like boots up an old version of your os yeah and so it's really weird and it can be really confusing but the first thing to understand is that those can coexist right i can like i can i forget what it what's even called when you have like linux installed on a windows machine or uh oh yeah you got like multiple os's and you run one os inside the other dual boot yeah i don't remember i used to know this kind of stuff but anyway so it's like you've got these multiple os so that's the psychological component you know if you have i'm going to give you a chance to ask practical questions so that's where we kind of started with understanding the nature of mind understanding what a samskara is how that emotional energy gets stored it gets called up doesn't mean you're stupid it just means that there's an eight-year-old kid who feels stupid who is then maximizing on your desktop and covering all of your conscious space yeah second thing is that you know some of those insecurities like unworthiness and stuff can get exacerbated by youtube and social media and that has to do with as long as you aren't grounded with who you are on the inside all of that external stuff is going to determine who you are because the mind needs some kind of identity and if it can't figure out who we are if i ask you who you are and you can't answer that question your mind is going to fill it up with whatever you see on social media that impostor syndrome is going to be an escalation of external value that is out of proportion with your internal value and this once again gets to why it's important to figure out who you are because as you ask as you understand who you are that's going to even things out and then the imposter syndrome will melt away literally i've seen it melt away with people once they understand who they are yeah then we didn't really quite get into why opening up is difficult but i think like ultimately you know you should ask this question we kind of have this kind of spiritual component towards the end which is like discovering who you are because you didn't well know you know you just can't put words to it but you can say like i was close to myself then i sat down on the kitchen core for i cried and so for you to actually learn the systematic process of discovering who you are re-accessing who you are on a daily basis so you can kind of check in and be with yourself every single day and that the more you move towards that person and the more that that person grows within you there's a part of you like i know i mean i don't know but i'm gonna predict ethan that there are times where you have this idea and then you're gonna be like i wanna do this thing like this thing that you were talking about deleting all your videos and there's probably another part of you that like thinks to himself like what if everyone thinks it's stupid and then you're like you know what i'm gonna do it anyway because i think it's fun and so there are times where you shine forward and overcome all of the other voices telling you like oh what if it doesn't work or what if it thinks it's stupid but in that journey ultimately i don't think has to do with the psychology of imposter syndrome i don't think has to do with like your some scars i think that journey is a spiritual one and so what i want to apologize for is i feel like i've introduced a lot of different concepts and i've left you hanging on each one no i think that this was really good like it it just makes me think a lot more about again about like who i am as a person because that's not something that i really ever think about um and it also i don't know makes me think about my past a lot and and why i have certain feelings about things and like again going back to being like oh man i really had to like off a version of myself like that uh and i i think again like that's something as a male that we have an issue with is like i suppress a ton of stuff and it's like oh did i ever really processed that of like having to go through that and like you know going away from this other version of myself that was a giant part of my life for such a long time like i never i've never really processed that before or even really thought about it at all if i'm being honest yeah okay is there anything that um i can help you with or anything that you want more direction on um yeah i guess sort of like figuring out who who i am and that's that's obviously like a very broad thing but like i don't even know where to start of i don't even know where to start there and that that's something that i think coincides with like self-love too because i i think that i have a really hard time with that and i think that i i don't have a super great impression of myself and i don't even know where to begin with that like how do you even begin with like loving yourself and like because it's not like i hate myself but it's i don't know where to start you know what i mean yeah i i know exactly what you mean um me just let me just think for a second i want to share with something with you but for some reason i feel like it's it feels a little bit promotional to me and i don't want to do that and i'm just trying can i just like think through why okay i'm just going to steer clear of that um i made this guide to meditation and and let me just think okay because i think it does illustrate the point well but i don't wanna it feels to me like i'm i'm gonna advertise for something but i just don't want to but i think it's actually it's this is why i made it this is a common problem so people have been asking me like in our community for a long time like what is like how do i figure out like who i am and so this is where i draw a little bit on eastern spirituality but like we basically made this course on meditation hopefully it'll come out in a couple months um but a big part of this is something called the the atman pada so atman means soul or self and pada means path and so there is some like stuff about figuring out like what is the nature of self i don't know if that makes sense or not but like yeah it's interesting because we don't really think about it we don't like really get taught what it is so my hope is that you know this will help people on their journey and i would encourage you to check it out because i'm going to answer your question now but like there's more detail about it that i i like to share so it's a whole set of things like practices and and understanding but let's start here okay did that feel like i just felt like it was inappropriate to try to i mean i'm trying to promote it it's just i just it felt like i mean you have resources that you've made to help people with the exact same questions but it just it felt like disingenuous for some reason it did not come across that way at all um so here's what i would say like so the first thing is that like discovering who you are is absolutely a process and there are a bunch of different steps okay so there's an experiential route right which we touched on today and if you liked that kind of thing then i can guide you more there i'm going to give you like some kind of practice in the next five minutes there's also like sort of a journaling or almost like intellectual or contemplative route which is like using like logic philosophy thinking maybe taking a long walk it's not an experience so if i were to ask you to find masculinity within yourself if you identify as a man that's an experiential thing yeah so there's a little bit more of like a philosophical or intellectual or contemplative approach which is separate from the experiential approach and then the third thing that i'm going to offer you is um hold on let me think what was the third thing oh yeah the third thing is something relating to dreams and nightmares because maybe we can hit two birds with one stone there but there's particularly a practice which i think will give you a clue as to who you truly are that that relates to dreams and nightmares um so which one do you want do you want the experiential one the dreams and nightmares one or the contemplative philosophical uh let's do the experiential one okay do you meditate i don't um and that's something that i've wanted to do and i've tried before um and i've had a really hard time doing it because i get too distracted and my mind just like goes everywhere um and i because that's something that i would really like to do and i think that i would benefit from it but i don't really know how to how to do it with my brain beautiful okay this is gonna be this is gonna be easy easy peasy loving squeezy okay we're gonna do two we're gonna do two or three birds with one stone so what we're gonna do is use your adhd to help you figure out who you are so this is what we're gonna do we're gonna i'm gonna teach you a regular meditation practice which you're gonna be terrible at great and then what we're going to do is the real meditation practice behind that which is going to trick you into discovering who you are great okay so i'm going to give you meditation practice and this is what's going to happen your mind is not going to want to do it and then there is going to be a part of you that tries to force your mind into doing it does that make sense and so then the question that i really want you to pay attention you can fail catastrophically at the meditation practice let your adhd mind is wander as much as you want to i mean don't let it go but try to pull it back and what i really want you to pay attention to is what is the part of you that is pulling your mind back what is that right because if if we're saying that your mind is doing one thing what is the part of you that is controlling your mind does that make sense yeah so we're gonna go like a two-layer deep meditation technique where if you succeed great then you learned how to meditate and your mind paid attention no big deal wonderful okay we've tricked you into meditating and even if you fail i want you to just notice what is the part of you that is intending and what is the part of you that is failing does that make sense yeah and then try to figure out which one is the real you okay so next question i'll give you so now we have to come up with a generic meditation technique i really like to start with something for some people who have adhd i do something called alternate nostril breathing have you ever heard of that or tried that i'm not okay so i like this practice because it isn't easy to do so if you think about the mind with adhd if it's very if i sat you if i told you to close your eyes and observe your breath what would your mind do i'd start manually breathing okay good and then what would your mind do uh probably trail off um yeah so so with the mind with adhd we need to give you something harder to do and the more difficult it is to do like the more balls your mind has to juggle the more likely you are to successfully meditate okay okay so i'm going to teach you a weird pattern of breathing that you kind of like is hard to do and that's going to hopefully help us okay so it's going to be failures upon failures upon failures so first of all take your right hand okay can you fold can i see it can you move it in front of the camera yeah it can you fold the the these two fingers down yep good okay so now what we're going to do is i'm going to take my right thumb and block my right nostril very good and i'm going to breathe in through my left now i'm going to block the left nostril yep pinky yep pinky good exhale breathe in through the same nostril switch breathe out exhale in switch out in switch out we're going to pause for a second you got the hang of it yeah so it's confusing because you're going to breathe in switch and breathe out and then you breathe in again so you always switch on a full breath okay what some people want to do is they want to go in out switch incorrect yeah it's in and then what and then switch and then what and then out and then what and then in and then what and then switch and then out beautiful okay so we're going to do this for like how long you want to do it however long it takes okay we're going to do like one to three minutes okay so i want you to do that and if your mind wanders we're gonna stack stuff up so we're gonna go straight to hard mode okay so we're not if you just get if this is enough to occupy your mind and it's all you can handle that's great then we've tricked you into meditating here's a question what should i be thinking about focus on maintaining the the the rhythm okay okay if your mind starts to wander just try to make sure you're doing the practice properly or what you can do is focus on the sensation of the breath entering and leaving okay cool i know it sounds weird what you should be yeah and then remember if your mind starts to wander let it come back to the breath and then pay attention to who's bringing the mind back okay okay so we're gonna do this for like three minutes so close your eyes sit up straight and fail go hey me yes so okay go ahead and finish the round that you're on let your eyes stay closed for a second okay so i'm gonna ask what is your mind doing now what was your mind doing during the practice um it feels a little lighter now i guess is how i would describe it uh-huh during it i was going back and forth between focusing on breathing and noticing how congested i am okay um we're also thinking about uh what twitch chat was saying while i was doing that okay so what so i want you to so thinking was your mind what was the focusing on your breathing is that mind i would assume it's also mine just a different part of mind okay more like focused like i want to do the thing okay and and what so when you started thinking about what twitch hat was thinking about yeah and you returned to focusing on the breath or once twitch had entered the picture it's hard to get them out uh it was very ping-pongy so it was like a thought would enter about chat and then i'd be like no focus on the breathing and then i'd go back to focusing on the breathing and then i'd switch to this nostril and i'd be like wow it's really hard to breathe out of that okay nostril then i'd be like no back to breathing okay so now open your eyes so there's a lot going on there first of all i think you did a fantastic job cool okay so here's why even though you were thinking about a lot of stuff so many important things there that are so subtle so the first is that i want you to notice the interaction between noticing and thought so before you think about how congested you are what has to happen first like the spark of the idea in the back of my mind so the noticing happens first and you say spark of idea in the back of your mind it's not in your mind it's actually outside of your mind yeah so this is where the mind is a thinking machine it's where we experience thoughts and emotions and have identities about ourselves our ego our emotions and our intellect all exist within our mind when you watch a sunset and it's beautiful and you're just like vibing that's not really thinking it's not really emotion it's not joy or sadness there's not really ego you're not like oh like if you take a picture like if you take a selfie of yourself then that becomes ego but if you're just enjoying the experience that's not actually inside mind it's actually outside of mind does that make sense yeah so the yogis hypothesize that the noticing capacity actually exists outside of mind and what happens is you notice something like my nostril is congested and then your mind starts to make judgments about it does that make sense it starts thinking hypothesizing oh man this is crazy what are they gonna think can they hear it there goes the mind yep right do they think that i'm super congested can they tell there's the ego right and then what did you do did you let go of those thoughts and come back to the breath yeah how by i guess by me noticing that i wasn't on the breathing that i wasn't focusing on the breathing and then so i almost like got distracted by going back to the breathing yes yeah very good so noticing you're like oh my mind has run over there now so now the question i know it was your first time but i'm gonna ask you what the hell is it that does the noticing because if your mind is distracted how are you able to like what is it that's pulling the mind because we've concluded the mind is running out of like ryan is like oh my god what does switch chat think about the sound of my congested ass nostril that's what your mind is doing yeah so what is that how are you if your mind is by definition distracted how can you undistract it doesn't make sense you can't undistract yourself right there's the second faculty and like does that sort of make sense something is outside of the mind and like tugging on it you're like get back yeah and then the mind and then you focus on the breathing and then what happens in your mind and then i notice something again of like mostly my nostril because i can feel it yep so then you notice and then the mind starts again because boy does the mind love to like you know think like oh like if we think about social anxiety like oh that person is looking at me he must think i'm stupid there's just a noticing there's an observation that our mind attaches all this crap to it yeah and then it goes off to the races you can yawn or sneeze whichever you need to do bro i'm not sure which one it was going to be just like my face made a face all right so so maybe that's that's your body or brain's way of signaling maybe this is a good place to stop i think it is a good place to stop but i want you to just appreciate that there is some capacity outside of your mind that can restrain your mind and that's what i'm going to hypothesize to you is actually closest to the real you because i'd say that all of your best inspiration doesn't come from the mind it comes from that thing and then your mind starts to shape it think about how to execute it and all that kind of stuff but that the inspiration actually comes from outside of mind what do you think about that yeah that that makes a lot of sense actually uh because there's a i don't know a lot of times where i'll just have like a random idea that comes kind of out of nowhere and then i start thinking about it exactly so the thinking is separate from the birth of the random idea so spend time in that space and now i'm gonna ask you that noticing capacity if that's outside of the mind what is it or what are the qualities of it uh that is correct that is correct that is exactly correct so ultimately what the yogis concluded is that it doesn't have qualities yeah because like even when you're like i don't know how to describe it that is correct it cannot be described it is formless and this so this is the thing and now we're going to kind of get to the punch line right so like this is something normally that i don't you know i teach people over the course of weeks but now i'm going to give you a hypothesis for you to test and tear apart is that that observing capacity is what they call divine it is actually formless and like it doesn't have qualities it is neither good nor bad it is just it is what is it is that which notices everything else it's kind of like you know there's if i watch tv like there's water on the screen but is the water on the screen wet so if i'm sitting in the theater everything that happens in the screen of the mind can happen on the screen of the mind but sitting in the theater i can never get wet no matter how hard of a storm there is on the tv screen yeah and so all of the qualities that we think of in life happen inside our mind oh i'm better than this person i'm worse than this person i'm successful i'm on sex all that shit's in the mind it's not really who you are and as we tunnel down and like adult child whatever like it's not who you are what you are is that thing and the closer you get to that thing the better you'll feel and when you're cur when you're constantly grounded in that thing you will have attained enlightenment which is what would the talked about this was really really great by the way okay good good it really got me thinking a lot [Laughter] and also thinking about how to not think there we go well's done yeah good job ethan so listen yeah i'm really happy to hear that so you know i yeah spend more time in that space and even if your mind wanders if your mind can get feels congested that's totally fine because the other thing that you're doing i know this sounds weird but every time your mind wanders and you bring it back what you're actually doing that's actually a mental push-up so if you think about adhd adhd is your mind wandering around without any kind of direction because when you were eight years old what did you want your mind to do i wanted to focus absolutely could not so when you meditate and you start thinking about congestion and you bring the mind back what are you training your mind to do to come back yep and so the worse you are at meditating what does that mean about the number of push-ups that you're doing when you meditate i'm doing more push-ups and what does that mean for your swolness i'm getting stronger absolutely so the more your mind wanders literally you are strengthening a capacity in your brain called frontal lobe inhibition of other things every time your mind mind wanders every time you bring it back you are actually becoming more buff mentally you are training your attention it's like a dog that runs over there and you're like heel boy and then the more you train it the more it's going to start to listen yeah my mind is going to be so huge it's not your mind that's gonna be huge it's you that's gonna be huge i'm gonna be huge you're gonna be so small dude i don't know if you're in a relationship or what your you know sexual preferences but i'm just gonna assume a cisgendered male who's heterosexual and the ladies are gonna love it [Laughter] i can't wait [Laughter] well thank you so much this was this was amazing thank you so much for having me on yeah man it was great having you and i you know really fantastic i'm i'm really rooting for you ethan and i think like keep walking the journey that you're walking because i think it's going to be great yeah i i'm excited to to hopefully dive more into meditation and and figure that out and figure out how to do more mind push-ups not mind push-ups other yes yes yes so so it's interesting because in sanskrit they call it the other that's like what they because it doesn't have anyway but good luck to you man thank you very much for coming on and and you know best wishes yeah thank you so much thank you thank you twitch chat for hearing my congested nostrils ah see there's there's the insecurity there it is finds any way to peek its head it does it does so take care man bye all right have a good one all right chatars oh man that was great hopefully that wasn't like too much of a span of different things did that make sense to people

Channel: HealthyGamerGG

Views: 320,203

Rating: 4.9844203 out of 5

Keywords: mental health, drk, dr kanojia, healthygamergg, healthy gamer gg, twitch, psychiatrist, crankgameplays, unus annus, crank gameplays

Id: sXGhT4pJcj8

Length: 133min 11sec (7991 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 15 2021