The Science Of Catching Up In Life

today we're going to talk about the science of how to catch up in life and you may be one of these people that's kind of wondering is it too late for me to start or you're thinking like oh my God I should have started a long time ago there's no way I'll catch up and you sort of recognize that people in life Who start early are the ones that get ahead right because it's like getting a like 4.0 in high school lets you get into a good college if you get into a good college then you do well there and then you can sort of get into a good grad school or you can get a good job and then if you're like working at a prestigious company or you go to a fancy like medical school like Harvard Oriel then you'll sort of get more advantages and then you get better training and sort of we kind of feel like if you miss the boat at some point you're sort of screwed if you're ready to take the next step on your mental health Journey check out Dr K's guide it's an immersive resource that distills over 20 years of my experience laid out in a way that is tailored to your needs so if you're ready to better understand your mind and take control of it check out the link in the description below so this is a video about how that is absolutely not true and we're going to start by giving you evidence that you can absolutely catch up and then chances are what's going to happen is you're not going to believe me which is totally fine then what we're going to do is we're going to teach you the science of how to catch up and we're going to sort of explore the science of growth and how human beings actually grow we're going to lay it out for you really good and at that point you still may not believe me and then we're going to get to the best part of the video which is how the mind sabotages your ability to catch up and I've worked with a ton of people as a psychiatrist who are behind in life These are d-gen Gamers these are people like who are alcoholics and they've fallen so far behind that they think that they can't catch up but it turns out that the one thing that gets in the way more than anything else is themselves so let's dive in let's start with sort of the science of catching up okay so we're going to start by looking at things called something called catch-up growth so if you take infants between the ages of six months and two years and they sort of miss out on nutrition it turns out that they're kind of like small right so they're kind of their growth is stunted but if you start feeding them normally after two years if they miss this critical period of growth it turns out that they actually completely catch up to normal and they can actually be a completely normal size so we sort of know that biologically catching up on growth is actually built into our genetic structure and our physiology and if you sort of think about this this makes evolutionary sense right let's say that I'm like a monkey and then there's a period of like drought and so I sort of Miss like a one year of like eating really good and so I'm smaller than all the other monkeys but then evolutionarily like as soon as I get food it is an advantage for my body to learn how to catch up for lost with lost time right so I want to still continue to grow so that I can fight and mate and all that kind of good stuff so the moment that I get food my body is actually going to be more optimized to absorb those nutrients and catch up but if you're someone who's fallen behind you're going to say something like oh but Dr K that may be true but that's the body like the body is different and the mind is different Dr K it doesn't work for the Mind turns out that that is false it absolutely works for the mind so there's another area of research called attachment and behavioral catch-up right which is kind of weird it's called the ABCs and what attachment and behavioral catch-up is about is about the formation of relationships so we also know is that there are critical periods in our development where we form relationships if y'all are kind of familiar with attachment Theory it sort of helps us be secure in the world if we're kind of like if we grow up in a secure environment where we feel safe it leads to our confidence as we become confident we can trust other human beings as we can trust other human beings we can connect with them we can sort of apply for job interviews and we can believe in ourselves and like all that other good crap there's so much stuff that comes down to our core relationships and so what people may think is that okay but like what if I had a screwed up childhood on like I'm behind I don't know how to make friends I don't believe in myself well that's what's so cool about the the research behind ABC or attachment and behavioral catch-up is we actually know that there are ways that you can catch up in all of that stuff too you can develop confidence in yourself you can start to feel safe in the world and you can develop like lasting and meaningful and impactful relationships instead of just being you know a bundle of anxiety all day long and so we actually have research on the outcomes of the ABCs which work well so we have good evidence that catch up is actually baked into our genes our physiology and even our neurochemistry that evolutionarily the body and brain are designed to catch up after a period of like you know things not working well or things not being ideal so the next thing that we're going to get into is how what do we know about the science of growth in the science of ketchup we're going to start with a really simple analogy of like working out okay so let's say that I'm doing bench pressing right because like I'm going to be a chair Dr Gay like let's get big man let's Get Swole so if we're gonna do that let's say I bench press and I do 10 reps so what is our experience of like what do we know about the science of like where the growth happens the first five reps I get very little growth next three reps I get a little bit of growth it's really during the last two reps when the strain is the highest that I actually get the most um kind of growth and stress on the muscle fiber and as I stress that muscle fiber for the last two reps that's actually what's responsible for the most growth so if you kind of think about even people who work out let's kind of think about that for a second right so if there's someone who works out for 30 years and someone who works out for three years is the person who works out for 30 years going to be necessarily more swole or in shape than the person who's been working out for three years and the answer is absolutely not what determines which one of those people is actually in better shape it has to do with the way that they work out right so if someone does eight reps for 30 years they will not be as physically strong as someone who does 10 Reps for three years because it's in that last window of time that we actually see the most growth and when I worked with people who are behind what we essentially optimize for is that last 10 to 20 percent of effort where the real growth happens and the big problem with people who kind of struggle with catching up in life is that they'll kind of half ass it right so you'll do like five reps you'll do six reps but you won't actually push yourself like completely to the Limit and there's a good reason for that and that's because if you really look at the last two reps those are the hardest to do so what do we know about the science of growth in the science of catching up that you need a small amount of help to make it successful now this is where immediately half the people that I've worked with or more than half of the people that I've worked with have a reaction to that they say oh my God Dr K you're saying I can't catch up without help and what they automatically start doing and you may be doing this as well is they start thinking like oh my God I have fallen so far behind I'm going to need so much help to catch up right it's not fair for someone I'm 10 years behind is someone supposed to help me like redo those 10 years the answer is absolutely not you do not need help for the whole journey you just need help for 10 to 20 percent of the journey so let's go back to our working out analogy and think about this right so when I have a workout buddy what does the workout buddy help me with they don't help me with the first five reps they don't help me necessarily with the next three reps they help me usually with their last rep and that's really all we need help for so what we sort of know from people who are like trying to catch up in life if you look at people who are like alcoholics or you look at something like psychotherapy be so if I'm working with a d gen gamer how much of my help do they actually need they don't need me to help them like 24 hours a day they don't even need me to help them 16 hours a day they don't even need me to help them every day all they need is one hour of support either coaching or Psychotherapy once a week and that's that tiny amount that really leads to that like exponential growth so if you're struggling to catch up in life one of the things that you really need to do is is get some help but you don't need that help to help you with the whole journey you can still do most of it on your own it's in those little moments where you feel like you can't do what you need to do that I strongly encourage you to ask for help so that can be something as simple as working with a coach or a psychotherapist for once a week it can be finding a workout buddy to try to help you like work out a little bit it can be recruiting a friend to help you like cook twice a week right or teach you how to cook you need actually a very small amount of effort or help to actually get you into that maximal growth phase okay so that's the first thing to understand second thing you need to understand about the science of catching up is if you want to catch up you've got to change your environment some so we sort of know about the science of addiction is when people have a particular friend group those people that friend group will lead to particular behaviors okay so if I have friends that I don't know like drink all the time and I hang out with them it'll make it easier for me to drink all the time if I have friends who are potheads or Gamers and those are the people that I hang out with on Discord or IRL that's the behavior that I'm going to end up engaging in so generally speaking if you fall behind in life chances are the reason you fell behind is because you were with other people who are generally keeping you behind so that can even be things like parents or siblings who are a little bit abusive or don't like support you in the way that you need or it can be a friend group of like fellow degenerates and I was one right like so the thing that we love as degenerates is when like everyone else is degenerate with us because if everyone else is like out there living their life then I'm going to feel really bad about myself so I actually end up avoiding those people that make me feel bad about myself and I join my tribe which is the degenerates and we're all going to be degenerates together we're going to be anti-capitalism anti-work anti the man anti everything and we're gonna sit here we're gonna smoke our pot and we're gonna play our games or we're gonna be it's gonna be great I'm not saying that capitalism isn't bad in some ways but what I'm encouraging you to think a little bit about The Company You Keep and what we know from like the science of things like addiction recovery is that changing your company is really important now the question is okay how do I do that Dr K how do I just change my company so I'm going to teach all a couple of really simple techniques okay so here is how you expand your Social Circle you go to a place where hopefully it's not the same people that you know so you can go to like a networking event you can go to a party you can go to a meet-up you can go to like you know everything like an escape room like just find a group of people it doesn't really matter and you've got opportunities just go there and then you're like but I don't know anyone so I'm going to teach all a really simple way to talk to people so that you can join people it's really simple so you can walk up to people like let's say you're at a conference or party you can say hi so look at them make eye contact smile okay so you want to go like this actually you don't want to go like that's weird if you're like look here I am don't do that don't do the hand emotions okay just look at them in the smile like so nod and make eye contact and then they know you're coming over this Dodges the problem that a lot of people who struggle with social activity struggle with which is like how do you insert yourself into the conversation you walk up to a crowd of people they're just standing there and then you're like just standing there awkwardly you're not participating in anything you're not like saying anything you can't get a word in so like how do you avoid that you make eye contact with someone in the group and you smile at them you nod or something like that and then you walk over so this person now knows that you are coming in okay next thing that you you can do is you can just say hi my name is alok I'm looking to expand my Social Circle or get into new things it's nice to meet you that's it because a lot of times we wonder okay what's my excuse for like entering into a group of people I need some kind of reason do I need to explain to them that I have no friends and I'm social up no you can just say hi my name is Alex I'm looking to learn more about whatever this is or I'm looking to expand my Social Circle it's a pleasure to meet you and then you shake hands with everybody now you're a part of the conversation okay that's simple so then the other thing that you can do is once you're part of the conversation you can just ask people open-ended questions about whatever they're talking about but you want to ask like one to two questions and then like let other people ask questions as well so you don't want to hammer them with question after question after question but if people are talking about I don't know they're talking about their favorite place to go scuba diving you can say oh that's really awesome can you help me understand like how you got into scuba diving so you can just ask an open-ended question about whatever they're talking about and then you'll be totally fine okay so that's how to insert yourself into a group of people so this is what we need to do we need to change our social environment because the social environment will inform our Behavior the second thing that we need to do to catch up is to change our physical environment so when I was trying to put my life together I actually had two desks and one of them I picked up on the street and I was poor and stuff so I had one laptop I had an I have space for two computers but what I would do is I take the same laptop that I would game with I'd log out of the laptop I'd move over to my other desk and I would stick the laptop there and I'd log into my work login even that kind of cognitive shift or that environment shift will shape the way that your brain thinks so if you can go to a library if you can go to a coffee shop if you can even just log out of your computer and switch to a different space like taking your laptop to a couch whatever you can do to shift your environment will shift your thinking okay so get a little bit of help it's okay to ask for help by the way and y'all may be wondering like hey like how do I ask for help it depends on what you're trying to catch up with so if you're trying to catch up with socializing you can walk up to people you can say hey I'm looking to expand my Social Circle you know are you all down to I've learned to love more I'd love to learn more about what y'all are talking about and then at the end of the conversation you can be like hey it was like really cool hanging out with y'all are y'all down to hang out sometime just ask right the worst that they can say is no and that's okay so you want to expand your Social Circle you need some amount of help whether that's a psychiatrist therapist coach friend workout buddy whatever get some kind of help change your Social Circle and change your environment so now if you've gotten this far you may be wondering a little bit about okay Dr K like this sounds great but like I still don't think it'll work for me right you make it sound so easy there's no way brah you don't understand Dr K like I'm 15 years behind in life there's no way that walking up to a group of people and telling them hey I want to expand my Social Circle is going to make up for all the crap that I'm behind on you are absolutely correct and this is where we get to how the mind sabotages you when you try to catch up there are two things that sabotage us when we try to catch up and this is the real reason that people don't catch up it's because there's like tons of data right and like I'm a psychiatrist that trained at Harvard and I was faculty there I know what I'm talking about but what is your mind telling you right now it's not going to work for me that's not how it works we have evidence from physiology and nutrition we have evidence about attachment Theory and confidence we even have like a nice plan that's been laid out it's not everything right won't get you 100 of the way there but those are that's where to start but what is your mind doing your mind is saying no it's not going to work or that won't work for this reason because now we need to understand what really sabotages us when we need to catch up two things the first thing that sabotages us are our emotions so when you try to catch up in life your mind will give you reasons to not catch up right so it'll say don't go to that party no one will like you or it won't be enough these are really Classics that I've worked with tons of people who are behind it won't be enough it won't be enough and if you've been thinking that pay attention okay it won't be enough it's not going to work it'll work for other people which we'll get to so now if we pay attention to what's happening in your mind what is the direction of all of these thoughts the direction of all of these thoughts is to not do it okay now this is what we have to understand about the mind the Mind may present you with things that seem logical but generally speaking if you're behind in life chances are your emotions are controlling you the biggest misunderstanding in our society today is that even if we're logical our logical circuitry in the brain is literally controlled by our emotions our emotions have a controller where they're hitting buttons and they're controlling our logic and this is why when someone is behaving when someone is emotional you can argue with them as much as you want to but they will keep on coming up with reasons to logically disagree with you you can see this in political arguments you can see it with arguments with idiots on the internet it doesn't matter how logical you are they have plenty of logic to refute your logic and this is the real problem where people get tripped up is because when you have a lot logical reason to not do something what do you try to fix you try to fix that reason right you try to solve that problem okay how can I go there and make it worthwhile how can I be sure that this will work because it'll be a waste of time and then I'll be further behind so I can't afford to do this sounding familiar but what is the direction of all of these thoughts these direction of all of these thoughts is to not get you to do something and that's how you know that it's emotional in nature because if it's truly logical any logical thought should end up you know they shouldn't all end up in the same place when our emotions control our thoughts the direction of all of the thoughts leads to the same place and that's how you know that you're not even thinking logically so what do we do about this first of all just acknowledge that there's some emotion here and try to decompress that emotion as best as you can you can do everything from meditation to psychotherapy to even noticing that wow no matter what I do my mind is giving me reasons to not try and once you notice that what you'll sort of discover is that shame is behind this and why does shame get people to stop doing stuff so this is important to understand why does your mind even do this in the first place so if we think about shame if you are ashamed of yourself because you're behind you don't believe in yourself okay if you don't believe in yourself your mind calculates your attempts as failure so like your mind is thinking okay we're pathetic we're behind you need to be ahead to get ahead in life right and we miss that boat so we're screwed so if we try we are destined to fail if we're destined to fail then that hurts right because we're going to put forth all this effort and we're not going to get anything from it that sounds like a bad deal imagine I came up to you and I said boy do I have an opportunity for you you can give me ten thousand dollars and you're gonna get all for it right I'm launching my new crypto coin and you can buy it today for 10 grand and you will get one HG Dr K coin and the HG Dr K coin will give you nothing in return would you ever take that no of course not right I guess we're going to start our own cryptocurrency now and this is what your mind is thinking if you are ashamed of yourself and if you don't believe in yourself it believes that all efforts will lead to failure and if all efforts lead to failure it is going to try to convince you to not buy that cryptocurrency it is going to do everything within its power to protect you from that failure which is precisely why it tries to sabotage your attempts to move forward the second thing that the Mind does you have to watch out for I statements so this is also something that's very important to understand so if I'm behind in life I start to form opinions of who I am and if you're listening to this talk and you're saying I can't do this Dr K the people that you worked with are different or the reason they were able to catch up is because they worked with you right your mind is going to generate all kinds of statements about how other people are different but I can't do this and it's also going to generate lots of logic right I didn't have those opportunities I'm not as tall I'm not as attractive I'm not as wealthy I'm not as smart I'm not as as disciplined I'm not as lucky I'm not all kinds of things and so here's the really weird thing when you start to believe something about yourself it starts to shape what you choose to do or not do so if I say something like okay I am socially anxious I am socially awkward that belief in myself is going to prevent me from engaging in whatever that activity is so I'm not going to go to parties because I'm so socially anxious and so the beliefs that you have about yourself start to shape your actions and determine your future and what always happens with the beliefs that you have about yourself is they become self-fulfilling prophecies so if I believe I'm socially awkward and I have all this evidence by the way Dr K it's not you know the reason you're saying that is because like bro you don't know me you don't know how socially awkward I am I'm absolutely socially awkward Okay cool so you're socially awkward so then what so you're not going to go to a party if you're not going to go to a party then what you're going to your social skills will atrophy and then what and then you will become socially awkward it's a vicious cycle in the wrong direction the key thing to understand is these are all ego based statements they're statements of I am and this may sound weird but all that crap is BS because who you are is determined by your actions right the reason you're socially awkward is because you don't go to parties and then your social skills atrophy what happens if you force yourself to go to a party it's gonna be painful but then you will start to accumulate social skills as you start to accumulate social skills your identity of being socially awkward will start to decrease and what I've seen with tons of people and myself as well is then your identity will change into I'm someone who used to be socially awkward and I'm telling you that as someone who used to be socially awkward I was on The Struggle Bus with that a while ago but now I've gotten better and this is the really devastating thing about catching up is once we start making these ego-based statements and letting them control what we do that is what we become because just think about it right so if I'm afraid of heights it prevents me from climbing a mountain versus I acknowledge hey I'm afraid of heights but I'm not going to let it control me I'm going to climb a mountain anyway how do I feel once I've climbed the mountain am I still afraid of heights yeah but I did it anyway and once you start doing that something revolutionary will happen who you are no longer dictates what you do and as who you are and your emotions no longer dictate what you do this is when you will start catching up this is the key thing what keeps people stuck for 15 years is that they they sabotage their efforts because their sense of ego identity and emotions get in the way of them even making progress that's the real problem it's not that catching up is actually hard to do or it may be hard but we know from all these studies about growth and like you know muscle development and stuff like that that you can absolutely catch up I've done it I started med school at the age of 28 and here I am today like I started you know late in life and you can absolutely do it but what really gets in the way is the way that your mind tells you it's a waste of time it's hopeless it's not enough this is not who you are since you are this way you cannot do this thing but the beauty beautiful thing is that once you crack that once you really realize that start doing the things that are in the opposite direction of what your mind tells you notice that all of the logic in my mind is leading to one conclusion my mind is actually trying to convince you why is your mind using logic it's trying to convince you it recognizes that this may not be true but if it convinces you it protects you from pain but leaves you stuck so if you want to catch up in life understand this principle of growth and that the last 10 to 20 percent of effort is actually where most of the growth happens try to get a little bit of help you don't need a ton of help and by the way now that we've sort of understood these emotions in this ego we can also see that even the way that you react to me telling you you need help oh you see those reactions the reaction is like no no no no no no it's too much no one's going to be able to help me it won't work you see that get a little bit of help change your environment change your Social Circle and most importantly pay attention to the way that your mind sabotages you and if you can do these things you will absolutely catch up foreign [Music]

Channel: HealthyGamerGG

Views: 1,094,047

Keywords: mental health, drk, dr kanojia, healthygamergg, healthy gamer gg, twitch, psychiatrist, catching up, science of catch up, life advice

Id: IOWelVx5CUw

Length: 24min 55sec (1495 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 05 2023