Toxic Productivity w/ Bjergsen | Dr. K Interviews

i think we've still got nihachu on wednesday and and asman gold on friday um and today we're gonna be talking with the bjergsen beer the beer bjergson welcome thank you um and what do you what do you go by uh sauron okay sorry that's good and um you know you can call me alok or dr k like you know whatever you prefer okay um yeah so thank you so much for coming on soren how are you doing today i'm good i'm nervous but i'm good i think most people usually are and i i still don't know quite what to do about that um there's only so much you can do i think yeah so what are you nervous about uh just being vulnerable on such an open platform i mean that's the kind of beauty of it but that's also uh i guess what makes me nervous at least yeah and are you planning on being vulnerable today i think it's kind of hard not to be on on your channel from all the talks that i've seen well yeah at the fair point but you know we can help you not be vulnerable if if you don't want to no i mean i think being vulnerable is a it's a good thing it's just a difficult difficult thing absolutely man well said well said um did you have an idea of what you wanted to talk about today uh i have an idea where we can start and then sure i'm happy to go wherever you kind of see the conversation going or any observations that you might have sorry one second so you know yeah so um yeah so what where would you like to start sauron uh it might be hard for me to to kind of vocalize this because i haven't really told anyone but uh so in league of legends whether you're coaching or playing there's a very distinct like on season and off season and people grind really hard in the on season and then [Music] you have a lot of free time sometimes even kind of months so you're not doing where you're not really working and i feel sometimes like i'm two different people especially in terms of uh the things that i really miss in season are the things that i feel like are really different or especially i don't really have a lot of feelings during the season i'm very like robotic uh good things bad things i'm pretty stoic okay uh and and that feels pretty different when i'm off season i'm definitely more in touch with my emotions i feel like okay and the other thing is kind of just creativity i guess or seeing things from a different perspective being more aware of my surroundings and i'm kind of aware of myself even uh in the in the season i feel like that kind of goes away and i'm really just grinding and sometimes i don't really have a good perspective on how to solve issues or see things in a different way and uh i have had that sometimes during the season and i feel like those are kind of some of my best times where i'm able to just be more aware of what i'm doing and how i can kind of optimize the way that i'm living and working and trying to do my job the best that i can okay so let me just um kind of repeat back what i heard make sure we're on the same page um first of all turn this sounds like very intriguing to me i'm i'm i i'm um it seems like an observation that i actually have like imagined very few people actually have the awareness to sort of make um it seems like a very kind of uh it seems like you're aware of your internal environment and how much that can change drastically between the on season and the off season is that a good way to put it and so you've noticed that you have you you maybe don't feel a lot of things during the season and in the off season are we saying that you feel too much or you feel a normal amount or what a normal amount okay i'm not kind of bursting at the seams as soon as the season is over but okay more and more kind of natural things like uh i'm able to kind of cry when it's appropriate during the season i'm kind of very just uh stoic i guess is the word that i would use okay and that you also mentioned something about awareness and how you're able to see things differently during the on season off season and that maybe you're not quite as aware of things during the on season and then you also also said that sometimes when you have been aware during the on season that it's been actually really good can you help me understand that [Music] i think it's just the times where non-season it was really helpful for me it's just really being aware of team dynamics or the issues or how we can improve the way that we are working together or talking to each other or it's obviously really flexible when you are aware of those things but i think a lot of people in the league of legend scene can really well just talking to people they feel like they get really lost in the sauce during the season and they just end up kind of going through in the motions and kind of doing the same things over and over again and then after the season is over it's like wait what i was just doing this thing kind of over and over again and not really um able to reflect and see things from a different perspective and i very much feel that same way i'm noticing that there's a lot of autopilot once the season starts it's just grind grind grind yeah i mean i think in the beginning people are motivated and excited and trying new things and more creative and then kind of as the season goes on as the months of grinding goes on i think it a lot of things become more automated how do you understand why that happens um maybe just a sheer amount of hours i'm not really sure i mean i didn't have a day off from late december till like the second week of april uh of course i had time off and i didn't have a kind of day off to myself so i think obviously the time where you're away from the game and what the time where you're doing different things and away from the team i think that definitely gives you uh kind of a different perspective and more time to self-reflect that sounds insane man yep yeah this may sound like and you know i i don't want to um if we skirt close to anything that could be like you know sharing internal secrets or things like that please steer you know i'm just going to ask you a question just let me know if anything i ask is out of line but how on earth do you not have a day off in four months how does that work why well i think most people do is just i'm the head coach so on the typical off day i'm usually doing i'm usually watching our matches for the weekend and preparing them for our meetings next week i'm having meetings with my staff i'm having meetings with my general manager head of esports and also ceo uh so that's on your off day yeah because it's hard to fit it in on my my birthdays okay well you know sword i i know this may be a little bit different from what you had originally said but i think that may be worth talking about what do you think uh yeah okay i think it could be worth talking about what makes it hard to fit in meetings with your ceo and general manager on your work days no i mean i definitely could in the evening it's just a lot of the time i'm pretty pooped uh just from i think a typical work day we meet up at 10 and then we're kind of done with team practice around either 6 p.m or maybe 8 p.m and then on some days of the week i'm having kind of individual meetings with the players and um the last day of the week going into matches there's also always a lot of prep around kind of different aspects of the game the the opponent the draft and i'm responsible for a lot of that not that prep for the opponents luckily i have a strategy coach that helps with that but um it's just hard if it fit things in and i also need to have a little bit of uh off time obviously on those days or i kind of might lose my mind yup absolutely so let me ask you something what would happen if you missed two hours of team practice on monday monday's actually our day off but yeah on tuesday i don't know what happened because i haven't tried i mean sometimes i do ask my assistant coach to take over for me if i'm just really exhausted or uh if i just want a different perspective see someone else lead meetings and review thoughts i haven't been away from practice at all what keeps you so close to practiced i mean i'm a new coach this is my first five months of coaching so i feel like i have a lot of catching up to do and i um yeah i just feel like i guess i need to work harder than everyone else because i'm so new in coaching but i still want my team to do i don't want to hold my team back so i guess i just want to make the most of every opportunity to learn and grow and become better what she's looking for oh sorry okay [ __ ] you're damn right [ __ ] okay so let's let's unpack this a little bit okay so sorry if did i just make you nervous by smiling and saying you're damn right [ __ ] no i mean i i know i definitely have a little bit of a maybe toxic productivity kind of mindset tell me what okay what do you mean by toxic productivity mindset can you help us understand that phrase [Music] i don't really know how to okay let's phrase it okay okay yeah is it okay if we dig into this today yeah okay um i'm gonna ask you that question two or three more times because i suspect that we're going to get to feelings that may feel actually uncomfortable and and my concern is that you have such a toxic productivity and growth oriented mindset that even if things are uncomfortable you'll never say no well a big part of why i'm even here is that the i'm just trying to get outside my comfort zone more okay and i guess because you're trying to grow [Laughter] ain't nobody got time for that that's what i'm saying you know gotta grow whatever the cost to you a little bit okay i think that's what that's what toxic toxic productivity i've never heard that phrase before but i i think it's well said coined well so let's start with this okay i'm gonna lay things out and then we're gonna explore and what i the reason i'm gonna lay things out is because um i'm imagining that there's a part of your mind that's really really concerned about like stepping into a trap of some kind you mentioned you are nervous i think you have you're going to have a tendency to set aside your own feelings for the sake of growth so i'm going to try to alleviate this a little bit it's not usually how i work usually we'll have the revelation at the end but i'm just going to give it to you anticlimactically at the beginning and then we're going to explore it and the reason i'm gonna do that is that i hope it'll put your mind a little bit at ease okay okay so the first thing is that you know i've seen this a lot so i've worked with a fair number of esports organizations before and and not just esports but basically any high performing top tier like 0.1 organization you go to so i've seen this at places like harvard business school i've seen it at hospital systems you know tech companies um there's this idea that more is better so for example like in residency training like we we do like 24-hour calls we do 30-hour calls there's this kind of this idea that like you know if you work 80 hours a week or a hunt working 100 hours a week is better than working 80 hours a week you know that that like work like working more is better and and i've i've struggled a lot to sort of like get people to experiment with this and i'd say the the hardest uphill climb i've ever had to make which i failed to make was working with a korean overwatch team and that's gonna be a challenge and they just didn't like accept that working less could lead to better results and and this is where and i've managed to convince some people that actually like you know rather than doing team practice for 12 hours a day or eight hours a day that doing team practice for like four hours six hours a day and doing like an hour of meditation and yoga and an hour of like something else actually leads to like better outcomes than just grinding what do you think about that i think one of the most difficult things about the game that i was playing professionally for a long time and i'm coaching is that it changes a lot that really rewards the grinders because the game is always changing a lot so you always need to adapt and figure out what's strong what counters this new thing that's strong this thing that was powerful it's now been made maybe five percent ten percent weaker is it still viable which situations is it viable uh so it really rewards grinders and honestly the biggest grinders are the most successful in league of legends okay um so it definitely it does require putting a lot of hours but of course up until a certain point um yeah so so and this is where ultimately you're the expert here right because i don't know how many hours of grinding before you start hitting diminishing returns it's generally speaking been my experience that people tend to overemphasize grinding and and i i don't know really to i mean and each esport is different but it's been my experience that most of the time like in 80 of the esports orgs i've worked with that de-emphasizing grinding usually leads to better performance that being thoughtful it doesn't mean that you're not thinking about the game it's just being thoughtful about your practice is actually better than like grinding yeah um but that's not where we're gonna go what we're gonna go then what i would say when i was a player is why can't i be thoughtful while grinding yeah okay there it is okay so so so wha why would you say that as a player where does that come from um because that that sounds like the best of both worlds you're kind of getting all the benefits right be more deliberate in your practice but also shooting for the best yeah okay so but what we're going to talk about is you feel like you have a lot of catching up to do long have you felt that way wow uh in general i assume you mean more in general yeah um now we're hitting the the big stuff i don't know if it's the big stuff but uh it's pretty public i made a facebook post many years ago that i was bullied really heavily in school from fourth grade to eighth grade when i actually dropped out of school and dropping out of school kind of caused me to play a lot more video games which somehow turned into a job which somehow brought me where i am now so i was really fortunate in that sense but i was kind of in and out of school for i can't remember how long because honestly a lot of my young past is kind of a blur at this point but i was in my own school for a long time i pretty much didn't leave my room i didn't see anyone outside of my family and had a lot of anxiety interacting with other people and even when i started going to esports tournaments i felt just like very underdeveloped for my age and even coming to the us here when i was 17 18 i wasn't really able to upkeep a conversation with another person uh the only thing i really knew was the game and that's what i dove into uh and i think at that point i definitely felt like i'm uh i guess undeveloped underdeveloped for my age like my life skills my social skills these kinds of things and it was super uncomfortable but i just tried to still spend a lot of time with people and learn how to be a normal person screw your feelings right um [Music] i don't know that's a difficult one i mean when when i was listening to my feelings when i was depressed they were just telling me don't see other people stay in your room play video games all day uh and it was really when i i guess just really got outside my comfort zone i went to an esports event in sweden met a bunch of other met my teammates in person which is really terrifying because i was really deeply insecure um but then my team got top eight i think and then we actually qualified for the lcs when lcs was starting back in season three so this is maybe eight years ago so we qualify for lcs and then that really got me the job as an esports player so so you have to work harder than everyone else yeah i think i always felt that way i never felt like i was super intrinsically talented i always felt like a lot of my skill came from my work ethic i think that's certainly true by the way i loved your answer to screw your feelings because you were like it's tough because sometimes my feelings tell me to stay in my room and not interact with anyone and you've had to learn how to master your feelings at times yeah they still do tell me that sometimes wow okay and then you also said i don't want to hold everyone back can you tell me um [Music] yeah i mean i think the natural progression of a coach is kind of to start coaching maybe individual players and then maybe coaching an amateur or academy team but i went straight from playing lcs to coaching kind of a top-tier multi-million dollar team so i just don't want to hold them back with my inexperience do you feel underdeveloped [Laughter] um do i feel underdeveloped um i feel like i don't have a ton of experience yet i would say so does that kind of answer your question or does it not i think it's uh it's a very artful dodge that could be an answer if i wanted to accept it as one and and i'm not i'm not you know if it's an answer it's an answer so if your answer is no i don't feel underdeveloped what i feel is inexperienced and there's a difference because i think the other challenge here is soren is that i think that yeah what would you say to that i just don't understand the the difference between the two okay inexperienced and underdeveloped okay you would say that those are the same thing uh in this coaching case i i definitely will develop with experience of course it's not the only thing but yeah yeah so here's my concern is that as long as you feel like you have catching up to do you're going to act in a way that alleviates those feelings and the challenge is that there may come a time where you have caught up but just because you've technically caught up may not actually have anything to do with the feeling of having caught up and and i i'm curious also yeah you don't really know when you've caught up because you i also don't really see other yeah i mean it's just a hard thing it's not a very linear thing like oh now i've caught up now i have these skills exactly so i i see you putting yourself into like an unwinnable proposition because you're never gonna know whether you've caught up or not and you're gonna be like driving yourself forward because you feel like you need to catch up and even though and i know this sounds weird so like sometimes certain people who have your your complex for lack of a better term you know these people who feel like they're under developed feel like they have to work really bad i mean really hard feel like they've fallen behind they will like work so hard that they'll actually rise i know this sounds absolutely crazy they'll rise to the top of their field and sometimes even in video gaming for example are like 20 million players in this game called league of legends and they'll actually rise to a top tier team in a professional league of legends capacity and they still feel like they have catching up to do i know it sounds absolutely crazy no right so what does catching up look like [Music] can i ask is that such a bad feeling to have or do you just think it's kind of a deep-seated uh like you don't you don't ever feel like you're enough it's not kind of the is that how you feel like you never feel like you're enough [Music] i i don't ever think that but if i think that i can always grow maybe yep well said right so so i i'm not hearing that you really i don't have really negative self thoughts like i'm like i'm not enough but i do have like oh i need to be better yeah that's kind of what i think a lot yeah so so i think that that's a very very good new man you're very nuanced soren so there's there's a there's a there's a new there's a important difference between i'm not good and i could be better right i suspect that those are two sides of the same coin and i think that always striving to be better can come from a dissatisfaction with who you are i personally think that's what you've got down there i think you've just you've just put such positive psychology language around it like you just talk about growth but like i do think that there's fear and other negative emotion like i don't want to hold everyone back implies to me that if i really had to guess what i'd say is that in your mind you're afraid that you will hold everyone back and that's why you have to work harder than everyone else because your teammates don't deserve to have someone like you hold them back they deserve to have someone who can really like live up to expectations and like be the coach that your team needs and the coach that your team deserves and you're going to work really hard to be that thing but i think that there's still a fundamental like fear underneath there that you're like you have to work really hard because deep down if you just auto pilot it it's not gonna be enough um yeah so then you asked me the question is that necessarily bad because i seem to be placing a judgment on it what do you think um i guess maybe this is not what you're asking but i guess i feel like a lot of the time the way that i spend my life or live my life on autopilot uh just doesn't really make me happy i think i think i think i think i waste it's uh i get like sucked into things very easily like social media and obviously those are built to be addicting but uh if i wasn't kind of pushing myself to be a better person and to live life more intentionally and use my time wisely that's why i have this stupid skull because it reminds me that i don't live forever and i try to make the most of of my days it's a little bit more of a time within my room but it does help me especially when i have a hard time getting up in the morning but why do you have to make the most of your days why do i have to make the most out of my days i think it just makes me feel fulfilled and it's not like all i do is work right it's even just uh being more intentional about even like spending time with other people i think when i live life very much on autopilot i also isolate myself a lot i'm definitely pretty introverted and if i'm not kind of making myself get out there then i isolate myself very much can i think for a second sure take your time can you tell me about bullying tell you about bullying what do you want to know so you mentioned that you dropped out of school in fourth grade eighth grade eighth grade so can you tell me about what what happened between fourth grade and eighth grade what school was like for you uh it was really bad uh looking back i don't know i don't know how hard i was being singled out compared to kind of how sensitive i was because my my parents always told me that i was a very sensitive kid especially compared to my brothers but i felt very singled out by some people in my class by my teacher at the time i felt like he was uh somewhat bullying me or singling me out uh but of course i was a kid so i don't know how much that is true but that was very much my reality what do you remember don't remember too much to be honest i remember more so like in eighth grade when people would uh when the bus was coming like steal my backpack and hold it until the bus left so i would have to go home without my backpack or i would have to stay and then i would end up walking home a lot but it's like uh it's like a five mile walk or something for my walk um and just being bullied a lot for being skinny especially i was a really really skinny and short kid so bullied a lot for my body weight my school was kind of up against the kindergarten so they would throw me into the kindergarten because they said i i looked like a kid in kindergarten because i was small and skinny that was really [ __ ] painful at the time for sure underdeveloped oh hey look i was full circle i tried to map things out for you so i didn't i didn't spring it on you bro you know uh-huh that's right i didn't even i didn't even realize that i was talking about it yeah i'm just gonna cry quietly to myself for a second okay um yeah let me ask you what what uh all right soren we're just getting started buddy so when when this thing happened with the backpack like what did your did you tell anyone hmm i don't think so because that was in eighth grade so i think back in sixth seventh fifth grade i would tell my parents and then they would wanna contact the school contact the principal contact their parents and of course when you're a young kid you care a lot about being cool and i was always the kid who so that's kind of like the popular group of kids and i would always try to tag along but i was never really a part of of that circle so i would be the kid that's getting picked on in the popular circle uh but i so desperately wanted to be a part of that circle so i didn't want my parents to talk to their parents and and obviously it's really silly now but at the time it's to social status is really important doesn't sound silly to me well i think if i was who i am now i would just there's a lot of kids at the school try to find people who okay accept me and that i could get along with you don't have to be a part of the most popular clique in the school sure well in that sense i think i would have done better if i was i definitely admired the kids who you know kids would get picked on for drawing or for doing things that were considered nerdy but they were really they knew what they liked and they knew the kind of people that they were and i guess i was more so just trying to fit in so in hindsight as i got older i had a lot of risk i have a lot of respect for those kids who are able to be true to themselves and what they enjoy even though it's not cool or it's not what most people like to do and and i know this is going to be bouncing what what oh is this funny when you when you smile i feel like you're like oh okay this makes a lot of sense what do you think is going on in my head right now um i don't know okay i can't really tell you um do you like being fulfilled um this feels like a trick question but um yeah okay it really wasn't a trick question it was just sort of a um you know i know it's certainly i can see what you mean in terms of i'm trying to i'm trying to let you know well in advance before i lay out a trap for you okay okay um but yeah okay how would you feel if i if i could give you a pill that would make you content would you take it actually that's a bad question but but let's just hear your answer anyway i feel like of course you would want to say yes but i guess i'm worried that it's a complicated question yeah what's complicated about it because of course you want to be sorry what is the word content uh but i guess i just worry that i i might kind of let myself go but also does that really matter if i'm just content but then i would probably also die young because i would just not exercise and not do these kinds of things that are going to make me a healthier person but i'm definitely overthinking the question nope i don't think you are i think you're i don't really know i can't tell you you may be underdeveloped in many ways soren but i don't think you're underdeveloped in your thinking i think you're a very precise thinker so i've got kind of a fork in the road one is you know we can get more to what i'm pretty sure is some sense of okay here's here's what i'm hearing okay so i'm gonna try to once again avoid pits but i'm detecting what i will call pit soren so there's like a sauron who's like stuck in a pit and this is the soren that maybe was bullied maybe dropped out maybe was isolated maybe felt underdeveloped you know like you were kind of in this dark place and like it was really hard to like be you and i think that like on paper you've crawled out of there right like i mean here you are head coach of of a very popular league of legends team you know you have a a pretty star like a pretty respectable professional career behind you you've clearly landed on your feet you've gotta you know you're rocking a pretty awesome beard um you know there are a lot of things about you that are like you can really be proud of and yet you don't strike me as someone who's like and i think this is where things get really tricky because i think you are proud of what you've done i think you have grown you have matured and i genuinely don't believe that like you know i think you really do appreciate that but then you've got that skull in the back of your room and and then like you know it's one thing to want to live every day to your fullest but you have this weird thing where you need a reminder and you need a graphic reminder because what i see in that skull is like a fear that unless like if you ever slow down you're gonna be back to pitsoren that you've climbed fully out of the pit but you need reminders to keep you striving and this is where you kind of say like is that a bad thing is like feeling like you're not good enough or wanting to grow i think you've cloaked it in positivity it's absolutely adaptive it's absolutely responsible for your success but there's a fundamental lack of fulfillment there like that that can't exist with fulfillment and any time you start to feel fulfilled i think you look at your skull over there and it reminds you that you're gonna die one day so better start feeling unfulfilled because it's time to grow like we've got a lot of growing to do and like we can't stop growing not even for a single day heaven forbid that i take a day off in four months because i have so i would like to yep i i think you would so what gets in the way uh i a lot of it is just my work schedule so i think i wouldn't be able to give you much more than a practical answer no but that's an impractical that's not a because your work schedule is determined i think right so this is where like i'm going to toss out a hypothesis usually i wait for hypotheses hypothesis formation at the end but i think it comes back to this feeling like you have a lot of catching up to do right so like you can't afford to take a day off that's what i if i had to piece things together that's what i would think based on what you've said is that you don't have the luxury of a day off [Music] partially i think also just at least this is what my kind of ex-girlfriend told me that being a head coach is a very very time consuming job and if you want to be good you do have to put a lot of time into it and maybe it's more so that the kind of person i am i found myself coming into this role does that make sense so i found myself coming into this job that maybe fulfills this drive or insecurity that i have what do you think about that [Music] there might be some truth to it i mean i i enjoy responsibility for sure and you have a lot of responsibility as a head coach yeah it's interesting to think that you know you picked a job that will always make you feel like you have more to do yep is that sort of the implication that that your ex-girlfriend was making yep how do you feel about that um maybe but i don't really see playing as too different i always had that mentality when i was a player that there's always more that i can do um but of course i i tried to balance that as well with other maybe things that are healthier for me yeah i wasn't just playing 14 hours a day so so let me ask you this do you feel underdeveloped in other areas of your life yeah i would say so like what or i'm kind of unsure about it if you asked me years ago i would say yes but now i i think i realize a little bit more that a lot of adults or mid-20s people are kind of winging it and they don't well set uh whereas uh i definitely have an issue of kind of comparing myself to others okay thinking that they have their [ __ ] together and i don't i think that kind of goes back to this like idea that we were touching on earlier that like i think you've started to realize that you may not actually be underdeveloped but you carry that feeling with you yeah so you mentioned earlier that you felt like sort of behind socially too maybe around eighth grade or after you dropped out of school or when you met your teammates that you felt like very nervous do you can you tell me a little bit more about that feeling or what was in your head [Music] what was in my head that was a super vague question so let me ask it this way it's kind of difficult to answer yeah it was way too vague terrible question see i i could do better um can you tell me a little bit about like what happened after you dropped out after the eighth grade um i don't remember exactly but in denmark you have to finish i guess high school like 9th grade so i would be gone for a bit but then i don't know if i want to say the authorities but people came to my house and talked to me and talked to my parents like you have to go back to school it's part of the law someone kind of go back to school drop back out back to school drop back out here comes the the underdeveloped maybe and around this time i was diagnosed with a non-verbal learning disorder and i started going to more like a special needs school with just less students and a lot of them were kind of on the autism or asperger's spectrum and it was just kind of hard for me to fit in i didn't really feel fit in at the regular school and i didn't really feel like i fit in at the specialty school and now that i've gone older i feel like there's a good chance that it was kind of an inaccurate diagnosis just based on being in a really deep depression i think that really changes you but whether i am or have that or not i don't really know but it was was really tough on me at the time how did you feel what do you remember how did i feel i want to say the first thing that comes to mind is i felt like my life was over i'm not sure why i felt that way but yeah totally it's a good answer and um i remember also feeling that way when i first realized i had to wear glasses because that was also apparently a life ending thing when you're a teenager how would you feel if you missed two hours of practice [Music] um [Music] weak maybe help me understand that um i guess in a sense that is kind of saying that i'm unable to kind of cope with the stress of the job in my free time so i have to take a little time off of practice have you felt weak before [Music] yeah i mean i think being human is being weak in a lot of ways and here years ago i always as a player i really kind of idealized the korean chinese work ethic which is like sacrifice everything play all day you don't need to exercise you don't need relationships you don't need balance you just need to grind that was maybe four years ago maybe even longer maybe like five six years ago that was really kind of what i strive to be and then as i got older i realized i'm human i should look out for sure that sounds very healthy i mean in terms of i i guess kind of what i'm hearing soren is like when i think about so what exactly happened with the kindergarten thing what did they do they like move through me over the fence yeah and so i didn't quite unders i couldn't quite paint a picture in my mind but like when i think about so i was bullied a lot growing up too and if i had to describe one word i'd never thought about bullying this way but if i had to describe like one word if i had to pick one word to describe how i felt it was weak um yeah so like this is where you know i i feel like i'm really leading more than following in this interview which is like arguably a mistake because generally speaking like i should like listen to what you have to say and then like form a hypothesis but i'm seeing like a pretty clear chain here and it may be hard i could be wrong because i'm really not doing a good job i'm not following the rules of normally how i approach this but i i mean here's what i'm hearing from you soren is that like you carry this like fear of weakness with you and that like you won't relent at all for fear of like being back in the pit like you're not gonna go back there ever ever no one's ever gonna throw you over the fence you're never gonna be weak they're never like like it's never gonna happen like you've been there before and you and and this kind of comes back to the question of i think you've paid a price to be where you are and that price is having that skull on your on your piano right it's like if i ask yeah do you think that this is something i can change or do you think this is just how my life has shaped me to be do you want to change it um i don't know i mean i like i like who i am i think you do yeah i don't know so you said is this something you can change or is this something that your life has shaped you to be i don't think that's an either or question i think both are true so i think you've been shaped this way for better or for worse and can you change it absolutely but i think in order to change it you have to do something that you really don't want to do which is that you have to take you have to like schedule your ceo meetings during the week right and i think what we what's really holding you back is i i don't i don't really and this could be me being ignorant right so i i really don't know what your team functions like but i've like i understand the inside of i think a few professional law organizations and and i've seen this a lot like i'm i've seen this everywhere like i've seen this in investment banking i've seen and i just don't i just don't think physiologically that like not taking a day off in four months leads to the best performance would you this is kind of separate from the whole conversation more practical but for me i'm really balancing like do i want to have some more free time in my day-to-day in my work days or do i want to have more workload in the work days and then have have this day off that i can kind of call mine i think that's the wrong way to think about it oh okay right so i i think i think it's going to be challenging but and i think the real thing is that your real barrier i think is actually emotional because i think that like you don't want to feel weak like you want to feel like you're not letting people down like the possibility i think you i know it sounds weird you know like if you set a limit on how much you do and like you let your team down as a result how would you feel about that yeah but i would just feel awful why um hmm just because um yeah i don't know i think they deserve better i think what do you deserve work work has always been a just a big part of my life sure so i would probably feel it's always been my north star to kind of do better at i don't even really call it work but i would do better as a player better as kind of a part of this team uh so if i was to not put in my full effort i think i would probably lose kind of part of who i am or my identity yeah so i think that's a challenge so a sword i'm going to talk about something and i i don't know if is this useful is this conversation useful to you i mean would you rather be crying right now because we can make that happen no i mean i had a few opportunities to cry but i laughed it off instead i i mean i feel like this is this is really important because i think like so a lot of times when i work with people who are very successful like we talk about letting go of ambition and and they sort of say like it's ambition that's gotten me this far like i don't understand like if i let go so like a good example is like like i work with a lot of people in investment banking and so those people like these people like work really really hard like they were crazy hours you know it's like like big big deals like 100 million dollar deals billion dollar deals and and they're they sort of like it's always like there's always more to do there's always a promotion there's always another deal and it's ambition that's gotten them this far and so they get really really concerned that if i let go of my ambition like i'll be nothing like this is who i am right like you're someone who likes soren i think you're never gonna be weak again like to hell with that like you would never put yourself in that situation i think that the challenge here is that you know if you look at the physiology of performance and there's been a lot of work on on this kind of stuff like having high levels of cortisol a stress hormone which i imagine is going to be higher in your system when you're working for four months without a break is going to lead to less creative decision making so when cortisol is floating around in your system and adrenaline is floating around in your system these are stress hormones that we release more of when we work way too much it actually reduces your capacity for creative thinking because when the way that our brains evolved like when our fight or flight system is involved like we don't want creative thinking like when i run into a tiger in the woods i don't want to think creatively like my body needs to act so like nuance gets lost and everything becomes black and white and i don't think and it's interesting because we started off talking about sort of this feeling of autopilot and awareness that decays throughout the season and you say to me like oh yeah we have it at the beginning i can think creatively but then we fall into the grind i think it's absolutely physiologically or neuroscientifically because literally as the season advances your your brain is going to change and and so i know this sounds absolutely insane but like when i talk to these people and i'm like yeah you don't need to be striving for a promotion to be doing your best work and they're really confused because they think that like if i'm not striving for a promotion i don't know how to work and the beautiful thing is that they i mean oftentimes they wind up in my office because you know things need to change and then and then we kind of get to the point where i teach them how to let go of their ambition and they do wonderfully because i i think it sounds kind of weird but they're like other reasons for you to work than ambition and there are things that you can do like your loyalty to your team not wanting to let them down needs to be separated from your personal feelings of weakness does that make sense yeah i can't say i know how to do that but yep so and and that's why we're not going to crying rap because i'd like to teach you today and for everyone else who like beats themselves up to try to be something because there's a huge difference between not letting your team down and you feeling personally weak and i know it sounds kind of bizarre but it's my there's a hypothesis i don't know if this is right or wrong that you letting go of your feelings of weakness will actually be like will allow you to be the best coach for your team yeah i agree i definitely feel like i don't know this is related but sometimes i definitely do feel like uh i'm too focused and worried about myself when i should really be putting all my focus on on the players yeah that's really tricky because you're gonna just put i mean you're gonna find any reason to beat yourself up so like i take that with a grain of salt right like like i i think the number of ways in which you have thought through that you can be better is tricky because i think that's the problem on the one hand you're absolutely correct but on the other hand like why aren't you good enough was that an actual question yeah why am i not good enough yeah i don't really think i have an answer to that do you feel not good enough uh i mean it just goes kind of back to where we back to the beginning right i feel like i can be better i feel like i'm learning do you need to be better yeah why to serve my team and my players better can i think about that for a second sure let me put it this way and i don't know how much progress we're going to make here are you enough for your team um the way that i am yes um no i don't think so how would you know if you were [Music] i don't think i would know which is why i say i don't think so i don't i don't know for a fact right so what if i told you i'm just i'm gonna i'm gonna say something and i want to know what your instinctive reaction is to these words you're enough for your team you're exactly what your team needs in the way that you are in this moment you don't need to be any better than what you are it's hard hard for me to believe that that's a very sugar-coated response what what did you think what were you thinking is that what did you think and feel as i said those words what did i think and feel uh that that it was very nice of you but that that you don't really know there cuz you don't know how i work you don't see my work yep and if i did see what would i notice what is it that i don't know about you soren that you do uh i mean i don't even know yet of course there are a lot of things that i know i can do better and then there's the things that i'm kind of yet to discover yeah so this is tricky but i'm going to try to say this one more time like if i knew you the way that you know yourself soren what would i what's the difference right because i i can tell that like when i said that what i saw in your eyes was this guy has no [ __ ] idea what he's talking about right so tell me what i don't know what do you not know what are you um i don't really know how to answer that question not knowing how to answer that question is different from like there's something i'm missing right because for me to say that it's like ignorance does that make sense like yeah yeah i mean so educate me educate you what am i ignorant of what part of you don't i understand what am i missing well i'm thinking more in relation to to my work right sure um yeah i guess just i feel like i can i feel like i can always do more and i can always work harder which is maybe not what you want to hear but yeah so i think that what we're getting into is a is a conflict because i think you're like i think you have to unsugar coat it to be able to say it so so let me let me let me this i'm not trying to hide anything i'm just i i i don't think you are i think it's just gonna be tough right so maybe i'm barking up the wrong tree but like i can tell so the reason that i said that is because i know you're gonna have like when i said like i think you are enough right like i think you're fine by your players by the way have you ever talked to your players about whether they feel like you're letting them down [Music] no what do you think about having a conversation like that [Laughter] um yeah i don't really know i feel like most of them would just be be really nice about it what does that mean be really nice about it oh sorry i'm just i need to answer a message from my manager okay um i think if i was to ask a question like am i letting you down i think that obviously if someone was to ask me that it would kind of seem like they need reassurance so i would probably give them reassurance maybe i would yeah i guess that's just how i feel okay so how would they signal to you if they really thought you were not letting them down what could they say to you that would convince you that they think you're doing a fantastic job and they're happy to have you [Music] do you mind repeating that yeah so like how would they signal to you so like let's say so here's what what okay let's just take a step back start from the top okay so it's my belief that you have a sense of inadequacy that keeps you striving to be the best but is personally like tortures you like i think it's got to be like a hard way to live your life where you wake up like somewhat content you're like ah let me sleep in and then you see that skull and the skull is like [ __ ] you get out of bed weakling right you're like on the days that i'm really tired i look at the skull and it reminds me that i need to be better in that i'm not good enough and so okay fine so then i turn to you and i say something absolutely idiotic which is soren i think you're fantastic just the way that you are and you're like this [ __ ] guy that's his job he sees the best in everyone right it's his job to like accept people but he doesn't understand right totally understand like that's fair it's completely fair i don't i don't know you bro i'm missing something it's my job to see the best in everyone and there's like something in you that is clearly not the best fine i accept that too because i don't know you you're right then i ask you so fill me in tell me help me understand what it is about you that i don't know you have a lot of trouble answering that because there's like if we think about it like you can't protest against my statement unless there's something like because your your your protest is like quite strong and so i think that like it's like pit soaring down there that's like you didn't see me when i got tossed over the fence into the kindergarten then you had to like walk through the [ __ ] kindergarten back to your school like you know like that's pathetic man and yeah right so i think that that like leaves a scar and i think this is the scar that we're running up against and now we get into a real problem because your adaptation to that scar is responsible for your success it's the work ethic it's the the constant feeling that you could be better and like like that's what's gotten you to where you are and so fair i don't know your team i don't know league of legends i'm a noob fine i don't know you fine right because the response that i heard when i said i think you're good enough is you don't know me like you don't you don't really know you don't know what you're talking about fine so there's something there about you that is not good enough fine so then let's let's turn to someone who does know right like because your teammates know like they're your teammates like they know whether you're doing a good job they know whether you're doing enough and and then we get to the real crux of the problem is that like if you go to them and you say like am i doing enough like what are they gonna see they're gonna see someone who's weak who needs reassurance and they're gonna say yeah no so uh soren you're doing great man oh man you're so handsome you're so smart right like that's like you feel like you're gonna be like like now i'm almost getting like like they're gonna put you in the special school all over again like they can't they can't give it to you straight and so the two things that i'd point out to you is first like how would you know right if they actually did think that you did an awesome job and that like like because i i'm i can almost i can i'm pretty sure if i had the opportunity to talk to them this is what they'd say that your work ethic is amazing that you're an inspiration and that like they're really optimistic because like you're on their team and that they think you're doing a fantastic job like i would i would give you ten to one odds that that's what they would say and now the problem is like now i'm gonna point out to you like where the problem is is like how are you gonna know like how are you gonna know if you're enough even if they tell you if i tell you like no as many people as you want to can tell you but as long as that voice is there discounting and undermining everything all of the signals that get sent your way this is not going to change and what i'm talking about is like a radical change this is reshaping who you are it's like accepting that you actually are enough today and you can do more tomorrow don't worry you don't have to let go of being better tomorrow but what i want to let i want you to what i want you to do is let go of like feeling fundamentally not good enough because i suspect that like in other parts of your life too you know and i don't know how much to read into his ex-girlfriend but you know in other parts of your life too like i'm afraid that there may be situations where you are actually fully adequate but you don't feel that way that that is actually on point yeah in my relationship i often felt like i was not or i felt like she was dissatisfied with me a lot even though then she would tell me i am satisfied with you but maybe like there's this thing or this thing but those things would hit me very hard so so this is what i see in in people who like have what you have is that they become self-fulfilling prophecies so like when someone feels inadequate in a relationship their partner will tell them no i actually really like being with you but their mind will latch on to the 10 of what their partner says instead of the 90 i really do want to be with you and of course you're not perfect and then your mind is like there it is let's let's shove aside the 90 of contentment and and zero in on the 10 and that actually becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy we see this as well in people who have a fear of abandonment where like they think like they're they tell their partner or the they're afraid that their partner is going to leave them partners like no i'm not going to leave you like i like being in this relation they're like you're going to leave like no i'm not and then like they tell them like you're gonna leave i know you're gonna leave you didn't text me back who are you with you're gonna leave me you're gonna leave me you're gonna leave me i have i i have also had that in a relationship and i did at the record right and it's like it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy so i think like soren you're playing a rigged game man and it all cut like it doesn't matter like who you hear it from how qualified there are like even if you heard it from the ceo you're like he doesn't know right like like if if your ceo is like hey i saw and i think you're doing a fantastic job like you'd be like he doesn't see what i do day to day that voice is always do you see the voice that i'm talking about that's just like always there yeah so do you want that to change is that voice a bad thing [Music] i guess my worry is if i don't have that voice i always had the feeling that if i ever lost my drive i just shouldn't be in this line of work because this line of work is like striving to be the very very best and you have to make sacrifices to do that so i guess part of my worry is if i was to lose that i don't think i would find as much joy out of this work and then i would have to find something else to do and i don't know what that would be so i disagree with that completely so i understand where you're coming from it just hasn't been my experience at all so can i can i try to convince you for a moment sure so i get what you're saying that like this voice is what drives you forward right and this is why i asked you at the very beginning and you asked me to you were like is this a bad thing then i asked you do you want to get rid of it and i don't think you do and that's the problem so like when i ask you like do you want to be fulfilled i don't think you do like i think that any time you you have like like i don't see you like ever relaxing like even when you win right i am i'm really afraid of complacency because i've seen [Music] i've seen i've been playing i have what i had and i could have continued to play if i wanted to i won the the north american season before i i chose to go into coaching and i played professionally for i think eight years and i saw just so many players find success and then become comfortable and then eventually uh stop playing because they kind of lost their drive and i understand that so i i think though soren you're not them i'm not worried about you losing your drive and i actually think that like the best that the best performance you're gonna see by all means grind by all means work a lot like i'm not telling you to like not work but i think that the best like literally like neuroscientifically and like optimizing performance wise when you're operating from a place of like positive energy and positive emotion you're actually going to outperform what you're capable of with like negative energy and negative emotion i do want to say i feel like before kobet i was closer to that uh living a kind of more balanced lifestyle i think covetous definitely maybe brought out the worst in that because we were also in a really strict bubble system in order to stay safe right so i was only at my apartment and at the office i didn't see any friends for six months well even longer obviously like for it so it's just kind of all my time has really gone into working which probably um strengthens these feelings so that makes me think even more so that like letting go of some of these feelings is going to be a step forward for you because if if in a high stress environment these feelings are getting worse like generally speaking like depression and anxiety and all that stuff is getting worse during coconut so it's not like your optimal function it's like it's almost like a coping mechanism it's like it's like your internal cheat code to keep working and something tells me that like you know i'm not seriously i'm not saying slack off but i don't think you're gonna slack off i don't think we have to worry about you slacking off like i don't think that if this changed in you emotionally i think there's too much programming in your brain your neurons have wired a certain way to where you're not going to just like wake up and do nothing like it's just not who you are and what's going to change then or what what could change them it's a good question um so i think that like like i was saying there are a couple of feelings that are tangled up here one is like striving to be the best one is not wanting to let your team down and the third is like feeling weak or inadequate what i'm saying is that i don't think that all three of those have to like go together right like you can care about your teammates you can want to not let them down but also recognize that like you are good enough that together as a team you guys can actually do this that you don't have to worry like you shouldn't be worrying about like whether you're good enough or not like you've got no head space for that you should be focused like fully on your team like you said you kind of think a little bit about yourself too much because i know it sounds weird but i mean if we're talking about self-fulfilling prophecies in relationships that could happen in the professional space too and the real problem here at the end of the day sort i think the real problem is that you don't like you can't ever know what's right and what isn't right like you can't ever know like what's gonna be enough if i tell you you're not gonna listen if your teammates tell you that you're not gonna listen so like if there was some objective measure of your enoughness then i'd say this is a whole different ballgame but in the absence of that like your mind is always going to tell you that you're not enough it's not enough that you need to be better and you can love your teammates you can want to like lead them to victory but like being fundamentally faithless in yourself which i'm using like exaggerated language here is like not gonna be and now we're falling into another chat because now i'm telling you that you you that you need to be better but you know like fundamentally believing that you are good enough fundamentally believing that you are what your team needs can lead to hubris or pride or complacency but i think in your case at the highest levels of performance sorin i think it starts to become maladaptive that for 99 of the road the work ethic that you've got in the emotions that you've got and feeling not good enough is going to get you 99 of the way there but if you want to walk that last step you have to let go of this what do you think [Music] um uh i agree and i have come up maybe against these kinds of things with with a therapist and they're just so deeply rooted that i i don't know where to begin you know okay so we can i'm glad you see a therapist by the way that's good um so let me now now let's let's do this together okay so if you're with me like where i i don't have an answer for you so we're gonna have to figure this out together okay what do you think about that sure i hear one of the tales but okay so so let's think about the conundrum so here i am telling you that you need to accept yourself more and that you are good enough right and really feeding into my thing that you're telling me that if i change something i can be even better yeah exactly exactly that so that's the problem so what what what do we what do we do about that because even if i try to tell you to move in the right direction i'm actually falling into your trap you're the one who's trapped me yeah i mean i honestly have no idea where to begin well sorry i was i was coming up at a point where i was learning more so to kind of accept and understand myself rather than trying to change yeah so so then then then i think that sounds right um so but then then i guess then what we i have a practical answer for you but i just want to appreciate the conundrum that we're in here which is that either you accept yourself where you are and then you don't strive to be better which is sort of i guess winning or i'm telling you hey like you need to learn how to accept yourself which is like you don't does that make it it's like it doesn't it was stuck right so if we truly accept you then what we should say is soren you should continue not accepting yourself that is acceptance yeah right and then if if we say like sorry you need to learn how to accept yourself that was very convenient for me right so or i can say soren you need to you need to learn how to accept yourself which isn't of itself not accepting yourself so we're stuck so the good news is that there's actually like a really simple way to move forward and i think you're well along this path the first is just to notice the absurdity of what we're talking about it's dumb the whole thing is unsolvable okay and i know it sounds kind of weird but every time you notice that feeling in you that you need to be better and then if you move towards saying like oh i shouldn't feel this way that's wrong and if you blindly follow it that's wrong too so like what we really need is simply just awareness to recognize that like either path we go down is wrong and so if we don't go down a path like what do we do like if i'm not moving like so you're saying if i walk down this path it's wrong if i walk down this path it's wrong so what are my options then i don't know it's it's weird so do nothing with awareness right just notice i know it's weird but just like notice the conundrum within you and on a much more practical level there are going to be times in your life where you're gonna feel like taking you know an hour off to do like meet with the ceo you're gonna feel weak like you should be able to handle it does that make sense yeah like throughout your week very practically there are going to be times where you feel weak where you feel inadequate where you're afraid of holding everyone back and so a lot of your actions and your schedule has been structured based on those negative emotions of fear and inadequacy and things like that does that make sense so this is going to be tough for you soren it's going to be very hard but don't give in to those negative emotions right and what i mean by that is notice that like like if you schedule a meeting with your manager during practice you're gonna feel like you're letting your team down and this is where like honestly what i would recommend i'm gonna give you like a very simple straight straight playbook so you go to your team and and you should have a conversation with them about hey we meet for practice eight hours a day i have some other obligations as coach i've got to meet with this person and this person how would you all feel about me taking some of those meetings in the middle of practice and then like the assistant coach like how would you guys feel if i missed like an hour or two of practice a day okay that sounds extremely uncomfortable yup there it is what are you feeling right now week because if i was the player i would say don't you have x amount of hours before and after practice to do those things why do you need to do it in the middle of practice okay sure so if that's what they say then you're going to listen to them well that's what i would tell myself but yeah right so so so and and this is what like like i think you've got to like like listen to your team right and say like do i need to be here i mean i'm assuming you guys you don't how many hours a week do you all i don't want to like ask you too many details about what your practice schedule is and stuff like that because that could be like competitive information but i'm assuming that you know you guys are basically practicing like six days a week um [Music] the schedule is it's kind of different now so we have actually three match days and then one off day and then we have uh three practice days okay during season so so if it's if it's during season maybe you need to crunch things too so i'm willing to concede that like if you guys have three match days and three practice days maybe you don't want to miss any of that but i think it's worthwhile like having a conversation with your team and like this is the whole point is that you can't let your feelings of weakness determine what's right or wrong and if if it's season maybe you don't have time to because that sounds super tight to me like i don't i'm not hearing there's actually a whole lot of time so it's really difficult yeah but we don't have as much near as much practice as we used to be able to do so so then the question is like do you need to be meeting with your ceo like during this time uh uh i'm not sure okay so so so i i what i'm hearing from you sauron is that that like really if you guys have three match days and like one day of practice between matches that really doesn't sound like there's a whole lot of time to do anything else yeah so i'm i know that sounds kind of anti-climactic but i think i'm going to have to take a step back from what i was saying earlier because that really does sound quite different to me um but i i still think the general like idea of of you know not letting the sensation of like and in that case i i think the reason that you know you shouldn't scale back is not because you feel weak but because there's actually like a necessity you guys have eight hours of practice but essentially it sounds like you guys have one day of practice before a match um monday we have a day off and then tuesday wednesday thursday we practice and then we have friday saturday sunday three matches in a row oh i see so that's so yeah it still sounds super tight from a scheduling standpoint so i i know it sounds kind of i've been trying to avoid asking you details of your schedule just for like that's everyone's practice schedules okay um yeah i'm gonna have to accept some some teams that obviously don't take an off day sometimes or push the training schedule longer on some other days because we have less practice days and things like that but i'm trying to figure out how to salvage my argument because i i feel like i just torpedoed it um so i still think that there's like a broader point here i don't know about this particular schedule but i'm getting the sense that you're still motivated by a lot of like feeling inadequate what do you think about that [Music] yeah i think so so i i think your road forward is still the same in this particular instance i don't think it and i i i don't know if this makes sense but i still don't think that the reason you sh so you shouldn't meet with your ceo on a tuesday wednesday thursday that makes perfect sense to me at the same time i think the reason you shouldn't meet with them is not because you feel weak but it's like literally you just don't have time because you've got to work do you understand how there's a difference there [Music] kind of but there is time there is time for what i could have a meeting do you think that that would what would be the cost of that meeting if you met with the ceo on tuesday just kind of the flexibility of my time i guess those days where we end up practice it differs but maybe the average practice day we ended like 6 30 or seven and then i am kind of flexible to do i want to stay at the office and work do i want to relax and hang out with my players and staff do i want to go home but if i have that meeting then no matter kind of how i feel maybe how how stressed i am on the day i have to do this thing it's nice to have more flexibility because some practice days are are really hard and really taxing okay so i i think that that makes sense that you want flexibility so let me ask you this have you noticed anything in your schedule that is driven by the sense of feeling like if you didn't do that you would be weak if i didn't do that i would be weak sorry do you mind asking one more time yeah sorry i i think we're kind of getting like lost in the weeds here but like here's the general i was hoping that there was an easy application but upon hearing what your schedule is like i don't think there is but here's my general idea okay and and maybe we won't find a specific thing but so in your role as head coach you have certain like work responsibilities which are necessities right like you have to show up for practice you need to strategize you guys need to figure out what heroes you're gonna pick you have to like watch replays from like the matches that you have coming up like all that stuff is like necessary i totally get that what i'm hearing from you and i'm pretty sure that this is sort of like a theme that we've sort of uncovered is that at times your actions are not motivated by the necessity of the job and if you really tunnel down and you become highly aware you'll notice that they're not actually they make look like what is necessary in the job but really what it is is you feel like you would be weak or you'd be letting your players down if you like didn't do this thing so some actions are motivated by necessity and some actions are motivated by avoiding feeling weak yeah i think the that kind of gray area a lot of it for me is how much i'm studying the other regions play because there's an infinite amount of games from other regions that's really where i think as a coach you can really put in the hours and there's not a necessity for me to watch all the games because it's simply not possible but i think that's where a lot of the times i feel inadequate if i'm not up to date if i don't if i didn't watch the matches from last night um yeah i think that's probably one of the bigger ones that come to mind yeah so that that's i think that's a great example because that's something where like you could do work and it's reasonable for you to do work but i don't know exactly how you find this i think it's going to be through some self-reflection but right now you somehow decide how much to watch right like there's some internal calculus that on week to week like you either watch a lot or you watch less or whatever [Music] yeah it's kind of a difficult thing it's one of those things that i i haven't really been able to balance i'll watch a lot and then maybe i will kind of burn out and then need to take more time and then i will barely watch and i can't find this healthy exactly exactly so now i feel like this is salvageable because i think that that pattern of burnout or like a ton of work followed by burnout is a hundred percent what you see when someone is driven by a negative emotion right because you're beating yourself up you're like i'm inadequate i need to watch more i need to watch more i need to watch more and then you actually burn yourself out and then you don't watch and this is what i'm saying in in terms of optimizing performance is that if you pay attention to that feeling that drives you to watch to the point of burnout and you don't let that control you on balance i'd say four out of five people that find a way to balance that the way to balance it is actually your feeling of inadequacy at the beginning because that's what's driving you to burn out in the first place yeah and so if you can oh become aware of that feeling of inadequacy and and not be driven by it then you actually won't burn out and if you won't burn out you'll actually end up watching more matches more productively than you would in the way that you are right now yeah i agree 100 so the key there is going to be that like sort of deciding like how like sort of from a tranquil state of mind how many hours of things you're going to watch and once you sort of make like an initial determination if you feel inadequate in the middle you have to try really hard to at least be aware of that and then ask yourself this question because remember whether you if you don't watch the game we're screwed and if you do watch the game you're screwed but just ask you know that's the paradox we were talking about just ask yourself am i watching this game because i feel inadequate am i watching this game because i feel like i'd be letting my team down even though i don't feel like watching it even though i'm tired am i doing this because i don't you know because of that feeling the skull do you think you could ask yourself that question and when when the answer is inevitably sometimes going to be that i am doing it because of those things and what i do what do you think you do uh [Music] something i've been trying to do more recently is just kind of sit with those feelings more good that's the right thing yeah so like i know it sounds weird but whether you watch the game this is what's really confusing for a lot of people about like self-growth the actual action you take at the end of the day is not rewiring the neurons what rewires the neurons is asking yourself the question and being able to authentically answer it i know it sounds really weird but as long as you ask yourself the question and authentically answer it you will move one step closer to balance because on some days your mind is gonna actually generate the thought and it'll say you know what you can take a break and on other days it's gonna be like you know what you really can't deserve to take you don't deserve to take a break you need to watch this and we can't know which one your mind is gonna produce and it's actually fine either one it produces is okay the key thing is asking yourself the question and coming up with an authentic awareness of what's driving you that makes sense yeah thoughts questions about today i know things got super abstract and confusing there at the end so sorry about that no no that that was really helpful because i i am definitely aware that i didn't have a healthy relationship with that aspect of my work especially and then one last thought is when it comes to social relationships things like that or like you know non-professional things i would encourage you to pay a lot of attention once again to that feeling of inadequacy right and try to figure out like you know what which of your actions is being driven by that feeling and the more that you become aware of it the more it'll start to dissolve and then the last question that i'll leave you with which is i think ultimately soaring the one that you're gonna have to answer for yourself and this is for everyone listening to if you feel inadequate you really have to pay be careful about how you respond to people that tell you otherwise right because i think the biggest issue here is that like you don't it's a lose-lose situation like no matter like if if your teammates say like yeah like you're doing fantastic you're gonna swat that down if i say it you're gonna swat that down sometimes people like the people that we care about us like when we're feeling inadequate we'll swat down what they say and you really have to like understand where that comes from like why are you so quick to swat down what other people say yeah definitely when i used to get compliments i would pretty much answer in like uh thanks but you don't know me yeah but i learned the socially acceptable thing is just to even even if i don't truly believe it to still yep well to try not to show that because that's a very disrespectful thing to show yeah so i understand that you learned socially what to say but then the question is like like what not on the inside and i think it's hard for you to answer this but like what is it that we don't know about you right when you say when your mind says you don't know me it implies there's something inside you that people don't know like they don't know something about you but when i ask you what that thing is like i'm not hearing anything no i've i've definitely made a lot of progress in when people give me a compliment or say nice things about me that a lot of the time i i do genuinely believe it whereas maybe five years ago i would never yeah so so i don't i don't feel constantly inadequate yeah yeah um yeah i i i hope i didn't give you the impression that i feel that that's how you feel oh no that that's that is how i felt in the past yeah i'm just saying that it's not that i always have that response so like oh you don't know me you don't know what's wrong with me uh so so here's what i've found when people have that kind of response like you don't know me the more you tunnel down and look where that response comes from the more it dissolves because usually that response like is a leftover emotion from a traumatic experience earlier in your life it's like you carry that sense of inadequacy or like like imagine what you were taught to believe about yourself between the fourth and eighth grade like the sense of identity and so like what happens is when someone compliments you is that part of your identity which was formed back then kind of like rises to the surface and tries to swat down the compliment whereas now like like how old are you soren ballpark 25 okay so like when we look at soren like 25 year old sorin who's won the north american championships and is you know head coach and all this other good stuff like that person has a lot of authentic reasons to feel good about themselves and to feel proud of what they've accomplished and things like that but inside you there's also like eighth grade soren who gets chucked over the wall and like that echo the echo of that identity is what rebels against the compliment and the more you tunnel down and you say why am i swatting this compliment away the more you look for it you're actually not going to find an answer it's just going to be that feeling and the more you do that process of looking for why you're swatting down the compliment the less that feeling the more that feeling will kind of go down and then you'll be kind of like go walk around not feeling you know like occasionally like you're weak like it emerges at times right it's like open up weakness.exe and then it runs for five minutes and then it closes down okay yeah that's really helpful thoughts questions um yeah this is really insightful thanks for having me on the stream guess what i'm thinking what i'm saying oh he's just saying that to be nice no no definitely not oh i mean that was part of what i was i guess what a lot of people hope for when they talk to you and i'll definitely have to go back and re-watch and think a little bit more about this stuff you seem to have a very contemplative face so i had some trouble kind of reading where you are right now can you help me understand like where you are right now contemplative face yeah you are you have a thinking face you seem to be thinking a lot i think i'm just a thinker i think that's possible um can you help me understand what was helpful or what was insightful about today [Music] um just kind of understanding better why i am the way i am and some of the i guess complexes that i have and bringing more self-awareness to them and maybe understanding a little bit more where they come from of course i know that my past is affecting me in the present but not always so aware as to how or how to help it um and it definitely it's a little bit blurry the the the kind of toxic feelings of inadequacy versus the more like you said like the necessity of what i have to do uh sometimes it's hard to tell the difference um what do you think is well i guess i already kind of know the answer but i assume that meditation is a good way to kind of cultivate that self-awareness in your thinking and your patterns and things like that what do you think i think so but it's a habit that i've never really been able to it's never been able to stick with me for some reason maybe because it's driven by my inadequacy when i do it ah tell me about that what happens when you try to meditate sorry [Music] what happens when i try to meditate uh it's not like a super uncomfortable experience for anything i just have a hard time just sitting down and getting it done i think a lot of the things that i do there's a very clear motivation to it but with meditation i don't really have one even though i know it's it's it's good for you but let me think about this for a second sure so your first question was how do you gain self-awareness i have had kind of bouts of meditating consistently and i definitely noticed especially an increased awareness of when i was really present and when i'm not when i'm really in my own head um do you want an easy meditation technique or a hard meditation technique whatever you think is i'm gonna give you a super hard one okay so oh we're gonna practice quickly i want you to sit up straight so i want you to as you breathe in through your nose say the word strength in your mind and as you breathe out i want you to say the word weakness in your mind just do one breath were you able to do it okay now comes the hard part every time you walk through a door a doorway i want you to breathe to yourself and inhale strength and exhale weakness i think i would feel really silly doing that but yeah you don't have to say it right so it just has to be an internal thing like just and if the strength and weakness feels weird to you you can even let go of that just inhale and exhale every time you walk through a doorway okay how does that feel to you is the strength weakness part a little bit cheesy [Music] a little bit so i'll leave that one up to you i had a therapist years ago that made me do a lot of uh kind of affirmations and positive affirmations you know stuff never really clicked with me perfect let's let's swap it around we're going to inhale weakness and breathe out strength how about that that sounds great does that feel more comfortable for you uh sounds a little depressing to be honest so so so which you tell me that no i i i it's the inhaling strength of the excellence is not it's not bad it was more having to look at myself in the mirror and say these things out loud i thought it was very cheesy but no but you're not looking at anything we're not no not with you i was referring back to what like yeah i think positive i think positive affirmations are terrible i think you're not not what i would recommend for you and and and i encourage you i know this sounds kind of weird soren but i encourage you to like actually play around with it so by all means do weakness and strength or strength and weakness whichever way you want to do it you can do both or neither the key thing is going to be going through the doorway but if it feels cheesy for you maybe that can be good and if it feels depressing that can be good and just play around with it right because it's two sides of the same coin i don't think cheesy's necessarily a bad thing okay so try that it's gonna be really really hard okay like this is like a you know uh like a professional level technique and the reason is because our brain is actually wired to reset our thought process anytime we go through a doorway it's why i don't know if you've ever experienced this but if you walk like you'll walk into a room and you'll be like why did i walk into this room what was i doing it's actually this weird thing about doorways but it's like the best way to cultivate self-awareness because it's so hard okay okay that's the meditation all right any last day meditation yep you're right it is an all-day meditation would anything less be sufficient for you uh i guess not right so the other thing is that sometimes i use this meditation technique to trick people into meditating normally because they try this for a week and they're like this is terrible i'm just gonna sit down for five minutes and meditate normally which if you decide to do that that's totally fine too but give it a shot um all right and any last thoughts or questions before we wrap up for the day um no okay thanks again for for having me thanks for coming on man i i hope um it was helpful and you know i think you're fantastic i really do think that your team is very lucky to have you thank you how did you respond internally uh no genuinely uh thankful yeah i got that because you're because you're not you're not um you're speaking from from your perspective and i can be thankful for your perspective i have a hard time when you're telling me objectively what i am that's yeah more difficult fair fair because i don't know objectively what you are yeah but anyway thanks a lot for coming on and and good luck with the season dude yeah thanks very much take care man bye oh any suggestions who we should raid let me see my my friend myth have you ever had him on here i don't think so but we can read myth i think we've raided myth before is he is he online he might not be online oh he's not so you uh oh i think your chat should pay okay our chat sure they would have a better idea than me okay thanks a lot and good luck seriously dude yeah thanks very much take care bye keep doing where you're doing take care right chat send asman gold some love playing some wow sounds like fun

Channel: HealthyGamerGG

Views: 191,162

Keywords: mental health, drk, dr kanojia, healthygamergg, healthy gamer gg, twitch, psychiatrist

Id: 5qNEAgcCT7w

Length: 116min 21sec (6981 seconds)

Published: Tue May 04 2021