Unlocking Your Potential: The Power of Transcendent Awareness and Self-Discovery

I know that you are in the field of computer but if you're oh there we go if you're struggling I can use my racial

bonus to tech support oh is that is that what you get you get a racial bonus to that so I'm I'm you know I'm the kind of

person who like I've just gone through life and I've never like gotten proficiency skill in computers I've just

been writing that racial bonus it all Mak sense I I don't I don't know what my racial bonus is I'm just like generic

white guy so like what do I get I mean your your name is Thor that is true you have racial bonus to axes you have raal

racial bonus to hair that's true I do have that I have that bonus racial bonus to axes and hair possibly drinking maybe

I you I do have a high tolerance I just don't use it yeah so that's funny as how you been man so

you're doing good yeah doing really good in fact I've I've been able to execute on pretty much all the things that I

wanted to over the last like when was the last time we talked how many months has it been it's been a while but I I

absolutely loved our conversation I have no idea what I don't remember what we talked about but I remember just

thoroughly enjoying it yeah it was super awesome actually a lot of the community Pops in all the time and they're like I

just saw your Dr K video it's super awesome so like no it was super fun to talk about man I really enjoyed it as

well gave me a lot of stuff to think about and kind of doubled down on all the things that I was doing oh really

interesting can you tell me about that yeah yeah so like the stuff that I was doing with ferret rescue right so I've

kind of expanded the idea out for that now where we're going to be building the largest F rescue in in the United States

is the idea um I've gotten a piece of land so I moved or I'm in the process of moving we're waiting on the county has

finally approved the project to be able to build fiber there which is huge W so we're going to be able to build a

building that is going to be the largest fa rescue in the United States I'm going all in on that having a lot of fun with

it and hiring in people that are going to be full-time uh Veterinary work and and management for that so they can run

it and then we can have that as a side thing and uh yeah that's that's kind of like the big thing that I'm doing with

that the game Jam that I was running actually exploded so we did, 1400 games for that we ended up giving out $330,000

to the winners of that so we've helped fund those new new aspiring Studios for that so that was a huge winning for that

and then um I'm looking into either building a publishing house or working with a Publishing House to try and

direct that to help with new Indies wanting to get published in that direction so that's made me pretty happy

with that that's a that's a really long-term goal of mine that I had had and it's much more attainable now also I

hired on all of my moderators so everybody is now well six of them are salary right now we're starting with

half the team and then we're going to do the other half the team once we make sure that all this is financially stable

enough to do it and uh they all get benefits so medical benefits dental vision uh all the healthcare stuff that

I can throw at it basically and and retirement as well for all of that and I've set it up in a corporation so the

corporation's finally done did an ESC Corp so there's no way that I could ever IPO it it has to be you know I can never

go back on that promise we structured in that way to get rid of any perceptions that could happen and then made sure

that all of that was done in a way where basically the employees are going to be taken care of as much as possible cuz I

can't can't do this without them they can't do it without me that's awesome dude so basically just executed on

everything I wanted to yeah so so um can you tell me a little bit about what is game Jam so a game Jam is a whole lot of

people want to make video games right and they may not have sort of the the drive to do it they're like I don't know

if I want to do this I don't know how to start I don't know where to do this so you give them a two-e period and you say

you have a theme this is the theme for the game gam it'll be something ridiculous our last one was um it's

spreading right so like you're going to make a game around spreading mechanics in some way whatever it's going to be

and they build that game as a prototype and then they submit it and then we vote on it and then we give them feedback and

we try to basically build this environment where they feel safe failing you you should fail doing this it's

likely that you will not succeed so you get a a really good safe environment to fail at you learn a bunch of stuff and

then you move forward as a Game Dev and if you win it is likely that you will be able to take that to be a game that you

can go and sell on steam or show other people or whatever we want to do with it at that point you get buch accolades and

things like that so people build a game in two weeks yes oh yeah and it will usually be a prototype that's kind of

junky right but like they get the core of an idea of something that's really good really compelling and then they can

expand that out into the future we've already gotten dozens of games that have contacted us and said like hey I'm

planning on building a studio out of this now thank you for doing the game Jam I'm so inspired to do this or people

that say you know I didn't I didn't finish or like but but I I never felt like I was comfortable enough to make a

game I didn't think I could so they went did it the first one I ever did like this I actually tricked her community

into learning which was quite funny so many people were like I don't want to do that I can't make a game I can't program

and I was like okay then we won't do a game Jam about making a video game we'll do a game Jam about what you would do if

you did make a video game so they created what's called a game design document which is you make a piece of

paper that says everything you would do on the if you made a game all the tools you would work with all the things that

you would learn everything you needed to know how you would plan it out and then that was the first week of the game Jam

I was like it's just a week long Jam after the week was over I said okay second week bonus round go make the

Prototype and they went well I already know how I'm not afraid anymore I did all the research that it's easy and they

went and did it we had um I think it was 98% of the teams actually went forward and made a prototype on our first game

Jam as a result that's awesome dude yeah it's also interesting because that reminds me of something that we do in

Psychotherapy which is um so if someone doesn't want to talk about something we use this technique called going meta so

someone says like oh I don't want to talk about my relationships and you know totally fine to respect boundaries we

don't NE the goal isn't to push um but what we'll do is we'll ask people can you help me understand why you don't

want to talk about it totally fine we don't have to talk about it but what's your reason so what we do is like here

is the thing that is psychologically activating and what we want to do is move one layer like meta or one layer

like remove from it and talk about the obstacle to the thing that is that is scary and it almost sounds like y all

stumbled into that or thought of that right which is like okay we're not going to actually make a game we're going to

we're going to do something else that feels emotionally safer and moves us closer to the topic and then we often

times find that that's very effective at getting people to like open up yeah the basic idea I had about it was like

because I have a background in Social Engineering right it's part of my job part of my work and I was like the the

one thing that's stopping people is they're afraid and they're mostly afraid not because of anything other than they

just don't know what it takes and because they don't know what it takes they're worried about failing so I was

like well what if we structure that around exposing them to What It Takes and do it

in a way where it doesn't matter if they fail or not and it worked and it up working really really well so it was

kind of stumbling into that frankly yeah that's cool General understanding what is social engineering so social

engineering is when you were trying to either manipulate a situation to get a certain outcome with another person

right or um I use it more often to try and figure out what somebody needs in order to move forward or move past the

thing that's blocking them a lot of the times I used it when I was in you know offensive security to try get into areas

of access that I wasn't supposed to be in I roleplay as a character or I do anything like that to try and move

forward to do that you know to try and trick them into letting me have access where I shouldn't have access or get

information out of an employee that I shouldn't have a good example of this is let's say you're a customer service

representative and I call in and while I'm talking to you about my customer service problem that I have I say hey

I'm thinking about applying at your business and uh I'm wondering you know I can't really cook I'm not good at that

can you tell me what like the best places to eat in the area cuz I'll be there pretty soon for an interview and

then you tell me where you eat in the area and now I know where to go to be able to clone your badge if I need to

break into your office that is part of social engineering it's starting kind of a situation like that for an ulterior

motive is the idea and that's kind of what that first game Jam was the alterior motive was to get people to

learn so you can do it for good reasons but yeah that's so that's so interesting so what what so this is not coding what

you're what you're social engineering is it's people dissection right yeah Behavior

freaking no freaking is phone hacking so this is behavioral analysis social engineering is it's a very common thing

it usually comes down to acting and understanding body language and behavior but a lot of it is done by intuition not

through reading it is through learning that every time I learned it hilariously from playing Dungeons and Dragons

because I roleplay as a DM like I'm a DM and I have to role play a bunch of characters and I can see the immediate

emotional response from my players so I know how to act in certain ways streaming does the same thing for you as

well you immediately react to how chat is reacting you see the things that you say if they function or don't function

how you say things the inflection that you use all of that kind of stuff yeah super important that's so fascinating

because you said role playay as a DM and I was like oh that's interesting were you were you playing characters as DM

who's pretending to be a DM like that would be yeah pretending to be one yeah no

definitely um I pretend to be a DM yeah and uh I do sometimes it's good yeah that that's so fascinating so it sounds

like you've uh and the social engineering stuff is I think a really interesting topic of discussion because

that that too is something that so it sounds like a lot of what you do is very similar actually in a lot of ways to

what what we do or what I do which is also trying to help people understand what makes them tick and how to make

tasks easier for you to complete how to understand your mind and like how it works and your brain um yeah and so

that's super cool yours comes from a a very different background than mine though mine is very intuition based so

there are going to be gaps for me like 100% And I think that's really interesting I think it's interesting

that you have kind of two paths that lead to the same goal there in different ways oh give me a second this is my oh

hey what's up hey y'all I want to take a second to talk about star Forge PCS so I am in love with these gameing machines

because I love gaming the problem is that I started building PCS when I was 12 and I just don't have the time for it

anymore and if you really think about it like sure you can keep up with all the trends and stuff but chances are

especially if you're a healthy gamer you may have better things to do with your time so if you're like a college student

I love that they have the horizon line which is like more economical really solid gaming PC and instead of like

spending 15 hours following trends like you know study your your final and like get a better grade and then get a better

GPA then get a better job and then go live your life so if you're like me and you're like a professional and you want

to really solid gaming PC because you're a gamer but you also don't want to waste the time to figure out what's good and

what's not I highly recommend star Forge all of their PCS are built in Austin by Gamers who really know what they're

doing and if you're like me like you build a PC once every 3 years and you screw up the gel on the heat sink if you

know what I'm talking about you know what I'm talking about all this kind of crap you don't have to worry about

they're going to do everything for you it'll be a solid PC it'll run your games and this is the crazy thing every single

one of their PCS I've ever used also run Zoom at top specs so check out star Forge I absolutely love

them so you know it's interesting that you say that there's going to be Gap in yours um I mean I think that that is

undoubtedly objectively true but I think one of the things that I've learned about sort of like this dichotomy

between like science and spirituality so if you look at like Psychotherapy versus like let's say meditation

training the yogis and these like Buddhist monks and people like that they sort of had a sample size of one and

they were just interested in the subjective they were not interested in um objectively what is correct for all

of humanity they were interested in what works for an individual yeah so their their laboratory was a single

person the interesting thing about the Western perspective we think it's Superior because it's scientific and

scientific is about objective Truth The Challenge is that the application of science to an individual has a big gap

so even though we have a study that shows that cognitively reframing is healthy it it doesn't teach us how to

cognitively reframe so that is actually a subjective process so so I I think when when you say it's primarily

intuition I mean that I think is an interesting thought but I think that just because it is subjective or a

personal exploration does not mean that it is inferior to science I think it's experiential more I guess is better than

the intuition way of saying that it's more experiential so it's it's based on my experiences and it's based in uh not

in a clinical setting it's more in a in a you know out in the world setting so yeah that makes more sense definitely

yeah that it'd be interesting to kind of compare notes yeah definitely I think the biggest Gap that I get in that

regard is terminology there's going to be terminology like I said last time terminology is just going to be missing

because of that because it's it's like I learned this thing out in the street you know yeah no but I I think that that the

terminology is it's really interesting because you mentioned that is there's actually a an interesting study I forget

what it's called it's something report back in the early 1900s there was a so medical education was not

standardized so like you had all these Med schools that were just teaching whatever the hell they wanted so there

was some report I'm blanking on the name that um analyzed like the different medical schools and like tried to figure

out like okay is there any consensus here and in the process of that report they also point out that medical jargon

is specifically obtuse yeah to try to keep regular people from understanding and preserve

the status of like a medical doctor that's why they use Latin for everything instead of just saying like oh you have

like you you know osteoarthritis as opposed to my my knee hurts yeah um so it's it's really interesting because the

terminology is actually used to gatekeep yeah I I think it's actually funny is that reminds me of Idiocracy though

because if you go too far in the other direction you end up getting something that makes no sense where you're like oh

my bones suck you know like okay but what does that mean you know like yeah there's a lack of precision yeah a

little bit yeah we see that I think a lot with our emotional vocabulary where we're not precise about what we feel and

what we think um when I I think a lot of times people lack the kind of words to express that though not not to discredit

or say that that's that's like their fault or anything it's just many people don't talk about emotions they don't

talk about their feelings and like Society doesn't like you to do that a lot of the times frankly and I think

that sucks yeah yeah I I think it's it's absolutely something that is discouraged so one of the the best examples that I

can think of is that everyone says that communication is important for a relationship you know they'll ask you

like oh like you've been married for 40 years what's the secret they'll say like communication communication

communication what does that means yeah yeah what does that mean so one yeah go ahead super common it's it's just a

super common thing and it's true it's like communication matters but it's like what what does that communication entail

it means telling your partner you're upset it means telling him that you are upset that you don't like the thing

that's going on telling him why you don't like that thing it means and to be honest with you sometimes it means

Fighting Man sometimes it means having a verbal argument not a physical argument obviously but a verbal argument about

something is sometimes that's what what's needed if there's an emotional thing on the table and it's it's deeply

distressing having a verbal argument about it is normal there's nothing wrong with that just don't make it bad you

know like okay take it too far I think that's that's certainly an important part I I think one of the things that

worries me there are a couple times that you know I've talked to people about their relationship and one of the things

that actually worries me one of the things that I consider sort of a yellow flag or red flag is a lack of

conflict yeah so often I learned that in the past in relationships M it's like wow it's perfect until it wasn't and we

didn't have any practice fighting we had no practice having arguments the entire time and then we had an argument and it

was real bombastic and that sucked you know and it actually it self-destructed the relationship because it was like we

went from this Whiplash of just like perfect perfect perfect everything's fine to we fought you know argument real

bad couldn't recover from it cuz there's no there's no like getting rid of the stress over time it was just like a

powder kick it was like a pressure cooker right so it all goes off at once you have to you have to argue sometimes

you have to make that known it's interesting I I I did a lecture a couple months ago I think we uploaded it to

YouTube about how red flags early in relationships are good so like this really yeah it's super fascinating So

like um like I would say 50% of successful relationships that I've seen as a psychiatrist I don't do a whole lot

of couples counseling so I have a lot of patients who have very healthy relationships and when I ask them about

like the start of their relationship um they're like they're usually red flags like in in half of the

cases they're like solid red flags so in one case uh 22y old what kind yeah 22-year-old um with basically no career

prospects uh asking out a 16-year-old right so big big big big big no no oh um with with parental awareness

so there was nothing Shady so like the person like went over to the 16-year-old's house and was like hey I

would like to take your daughter on a date and parents were actually like okay with it um and how old is a person

22 oh man maybe 21 even then yeah so right that's what I'm saying they're they're like they're

happily married now and like they've been married for you know like 20 some years and they've got kids in a life and

and all this good like it's it's crazy started weird started weird started weird and and the interesting thing is

that you know the the parents were really like like cuz the the the the guy was quite I mean they were like quite

impressed and they're like this guy seems like respectful and decent and also like seems like to really care

about you know she's I feel like that hey look I'm telling y'all it's it's red flag is

early I'm not I'm not suggesting largest red flag yeah yeah that's seen it so another another really good one is

like uh so two people met at a professional event like a conference and then they like text back and forth and

they like make it a point to like go to conferences where like one person is and that's like the start of their

relationship where like hey are you going to this conference okay like if you're coming then I'm coming and it's

like they're not not dating they're just texting back and forth and then they like show up and for a period of like a

year they're just meeting randomly at conferences for like you know every two or 3

months and and so that that's the kind of thing where it's like you know flying halfway across the country to see

someone that you're not dating and you've got a professional reason to do it like you can go to the conference and

make it worthwhile but to do that repeatedly like you know another red flag it's a little weird it's a little

weird I I don't know if that one's as big of a red flag to me it's just a little strange it's like there's there's

various kinds you know yeah there's definitely yeah different kinds I think the interesting thing is that when you

have a red flag early it gives you an opportunity to like work through some negativity and so what tends to happen

when we look for green flags is exactly what you described which is like oh this person's great great great great great

great great and there aren't like challenges and then when a challenge comes along like your your ability to

deal with challenges is like underleveled whereas when you're with someone who

there's some kind of conflict early on like it lets you level up your conflict resolution skills I think that actually

happens over time with multiple relationships too like as you have relationships throughout your life you

will have ones that fail and you learn stuff from each one of those and you get better at conflict resolution you get

better at communicating you get better at finding out what's the Line in the Sand for you right of like what works

for you as a person and what you need in a relationship and I think many people don't really realize that like I had a

bad relationship now I'll never have one again it's like no you will you'll have more you should have more and you'll get

better at it it's a skill like everything else right yeah I I think this theme of being safe to fail I think

that's the challenge is I see that so much um in relationships which whereas people instead of thinking about it as

something that you will get better at better at over time you have a relationship and if one person considers

you Unworthy of love then a lot of people will make a conclusion in their mind once again not their fault that I

am unlovable um it's funny you see the same thing in work as OD as that is when

someone gets laid off from a job M it's very similar in terms of the reaction which is I got laid off from a job I am

worthless because I tied my emotional self to the status of that job or I tied my emotional self to the status of that

relationship that's never healthy I never think that is at all like you are still an individual person outside of

that and I I find that happens far often very very often yeah so there there's a lot of interesting uh Neuroscience

evolutionary psychology and kind of like yogic stuff around that so the the tying of the

self to a particular aspect is something that speaking of terminology in Sanskrit is called the aamar or the ego right so

like we have huh that's one I actually know oh okay so that's what I actually know yeah so the the ego is when our ego

gets tied up into something and I think this is something that's so confusing for people is that they don't realize

that they are not their ego so I have a conception of who I am which is not who I am it is just a conception I I found

some of that is is also very cultural um so like I've been to France before and something I found in France is if you

ask someone what do you do they don't tell you their job they tell you their Hobbies they tell you their interests

they tell you things that they like and you're like no but what do you what do you do but here in America you say what

do you do and they're like oh this is my job yeah so like it's a defining Factor here where it's not a defining Factor

there of what you do for a living right and I I think that ties the emotional status to that much more because like

your title Your Role is who you are here and that's not the same everywhere yeah it's it's a great point I think it's

absolutely cultural um anyway what I don't think either one is wrong they're just different you know

yeah so the yogis would say that all identification on some level is wrong whether you identify with being yeah so

interesting yeah how do you have a sense of I guess you don't have a sense of self at that point you wouldn't have one

no no you all you have is a sense of self you don't have an identity so sense of self without

identity I understand okay I think I understand what you mean so sense of self with completely that identity you

don't have the extraneous Factor defining who you are AB yeah just the internal Factor so so the best way I

would describe it as like if you're on a desert island for an hour and you close your eyes and you just exist on the

desert island and imagine that in that hour what you experience is the entirety of your

life okay right so then like you're not going to have a social like you'll exist you'll be there you'll perceive things

you'll enjoy things you'll be frustrated by things but this overarching sense of identity that carries over from day to

day you just exist for that one hour right you don't have that broader identity you don't have a social

identity and then the really interesting thing is that if you really look at your life

your life is a string of those hours right your your life is just existing this moment and then existing

and then all of all of our sense of identity is actually abstractions that are strung together they're not based on

our experiences there external there external factors that we apply to that to tie them together if that makesense

tying together is the right is the right operative word right so when we string together a set of experiences like a

good example of someone who thinks they're a loser there's no such thing as a loser they look at all the negative

pieces and they say I'm a loser because yes they they string together unique experiences whereas those things are

losses so you can lose but the identity of a loser is not something that is like a physical reality it's not real yeah

it's not it's a per it's a perception issue that's really all yeah and and when when things are fed through the ego

when our ego is the one that is doing the perceiving then we end up with all kinds

of perception issues yep no that makes a lot of sense I can understand that no yeah no it's it's always interesting to

see like perception drives reality more than anything else it's it is absolutely the case and you get people that are

stuck in these weird perceptive Loops where they're like I suck they're like well why do you suck and they're like

because I made a mistake when I was 12 you know like like what look at all the stuff you've done outside of that right

look at all the things that you've done since then what all the things you've accomplished you like you live your own

you have you have your own your own place to live you have your own job whatever it's going to be you've

accomplished all these goals you have a cool relationship yeah but I made a mistake when I was 12 like okay like you

have to that kind of a perception can tear someone down even though it's it's not based in reality it's based in just

that you know that little piece of a memory that doesn't really matter yeah I I I think uh like I'm on the shtick

recently where over the last year I've been focusing a lot like in my own life and with people that I work with on

perception so I think perception is the one aspect ECT of cognition that we tend to not

underdeveloping our perception we'll think about improving our logic even our emotional

awareness um we'll do certain cognitive skills to improve things like like become more productive overcome emotions

the one thing that I think is actually the worst thing in society right now is that everyone's perception has become

very very weak so like I agree no I fully agree with that we see it mostly on uh social media you see it mostly on

social media you have people that have extremely like extreme opinions rather than having nuanced approaches to things

they don't know how to perceive anything beyond the exact thing that they've hyperfocused on in that one area they

don't know how to see a greater picture beyond that e and it usually comes across as they don't want to that

they're they're being you know jerks or anything like that a lot of people who are in those positions don't believe

that they're being jerks they're just hyper fixated on one little tiny thing and their perception isn't wide enough

to see the rest of the picture on that and that's not like a that's like a malicious thing a lot of the times it's

just a failure to expand the perception and I it sucks right it's made the internet really toxic it really has so I

I think that that there I would agree that social media and especially like these short form pieces of stuff don't

add for so so the the smaller the bit of content is Yeah the more our mind has to fill in to add to

it people are trained to get a dopamine Rush from that short content when it's not even when it's not positive when

it's destructive yeah yeah so so I I wouldn't say they're trained I'd say it's it's taking advantage of a

biological certainty sure yeah right and it's not it's not so what we know is that or my running Theory I think

there's plenty of support for this is that um emotional oscillation is what keeps people engaged in

content okay so I could see that if it's too dop and energic you'll actually develop tolerance it's just like if you

play a video game for 10 hours like you're not having fun on hour eight the reason you continue to play is because

of other mechanisms it's not fun right it's like achievement finishing out a particular round grinding towards a

particular goal that's why they have all those things because the if you really think about it like especially like MMOs

right grinding is not fun it's never been fun but people will do it for hours and hours and hours and hours and hours

to get the thing at the end yeah yeah so so so no that makes sense it kind of reminds me of

kind of like hunter gatherer sort of behavior how so we so I'll give you an example I go mushroom hunting right I do

micology so we'll go and find um like different mushrooms here in Washington yeah I do I love it it's super fun right

I raise uh oyster mushrooms in Lion's man and chake and RI mushrooms super fun for me to do I really enjoy it and um

doing mushroom hunting here in Washington state we can actually go and get like um King bites King bites are

awesome but you're walking around in a swamp and it's just gross everywhere and then you see like a oh holy crap I got

the big king B they're like this big they're huge man and like I've got a bunch of pictures of them they're quite

cool I can send them over to you but uh there's this moment where it's like gross gross gross gross gross and then

you find it and you're like wow I got that and it makes me wonder like how far back does that kind of trait Behavior go

for humans because that's a survival trait AB that's a we survived because of this and now now it's being used to sell

you things on the internet but like yeah so Thor it's it it always amazes me how intuitive you are about understanding

some of these things so like um there's actually a lot of really interesting studies that were done in the mid 2000s

the early studies on video game addiction really discovered that it is the denial of the reward that correlates

with addiction right so so some people kind of think about this is like random reinforcement schedule where like you

don't always get but it's not just the randomness there's another part to it which is if you look at like from

software games like why are they so satisfying it's because it's hard to achieve right so like like you you wipe

on a boss you wipe on a boss you wipe on a boss and then you get so the the rush of dopamine that you get correlates with

the amount of denial and difficulty yeah and everyone who beats that boss when another person sees you do it they're

like I beat that boss and I understand how difficult that was end being a cultural like kind of group thing abely

so we we Society we value human beings based on the difficulty of their accomplishments

yeah right so absolutely and so the the real challenge is that this principle video games have figured out how to take

advantage of but the real challenge I'm just thinking about this concept of failure and making failure safe cuz like

the whole thing that's that's really interesting is the more you fail in life and if you feel like you're a

loser in the same principle of video games where the harder a boss is to beat when you beat the boss you feel really

good so the really interesting thing is that the more You' failed in life the more I will see like a rebound so when

people are super super behind and they get one break you will be amazed at how quickly they can catch up yeah that's me

I got my ass kicked for a long time yeah and and that's that's the real tragedy is that people who think that they're

losers in life they think that there is a linear like you know I the race is linear right but it's not you can ab you

absolutely have this weird potential energy which is like building up so I'm thinking about one particular patient of

mine who was like 32 years old when I started working with them and they had struggled with addiction their whole

life I think they finished undergrad and then in the span of like two or three so they were like basically not quite

homeless but they were financially dependent on on someone that they were close to like didn't have a career like

you know just really really bad uh worst possible scenario yeah yeah right and and then within two or three years they

wrote a novel they became a therapist themselves and like got healthy like got into a healthy relationship and in like

three years like they went from like Zero to Hero you know and like they've got a stable job they do work that pays

them well and like they find like invigorating and and gratifying and in addition to working 32 clinical hours a

week they spend 30 hours a week working on their like fiction novel and they like wrote a novel and in the span of

three years it's just amazing how much someone can accomplish and looking at what what they were how they were at the

age of like you would never know that this person was behind yeah it's the same

thing like um I've got a buddy on here primagen he's another streamer programming um he talks about it all the

time he used to be he was a meth addict right he was addicted to meth and he managed to dig himself out of that went

to work at Netflix awesome programmer now has quit Netflix and now does this stuff fulltime and is like kicking a

huge amount of ass dude is amazing yeah and it shows you and it's funny too because people contact me they're like I

Str struggle with addiction and I you can't really fix that for them a lot of times you just say hey look over here

you can see that people can get out of this and then you show them like it is possible and I think that that does a

lot of good A lot of the times is just showing them it is possible to succeed even in that very rough scenario that

you're in you know yeah so that's usually what I do is I'm like look at Prime he did it you you can it is

possible to do this but you'll have to find your route you know yeah I think that's the challenge right is that's

where the ego comes that's where the ego comes in and the ego says they did it but I can't do it because I'm different

yeah that's the that's the biggest thing is it ends up being you you end up being Your Own Worst Enemy there that's the

the best advice that I have for that one is then make a bet with yourself tell yourself okay I'll see if I can do it

I'm going to give myself three months I'm going to see if I can I'm going to put that to the side I'm put all the

fears to the side I'm just going to do this we're going to make a bet if that is right if I can't do it then at the

end of three months I'll have accomplished nothing but if the end of three months I made even a step forward

of progress then it means that I can do this and I can keep doing this and it's just a short BET right and what do you

got to lose nothing really you know so people try when they're given that kind of idea like oh I can just make a bet on

this I could try it and they'll usually find that in three months they've made some sort of progress and they can look

back and they be like now I've documented evidence I'm kicking ass I can keep moving forward and they just

keep making the BET and I found that works really really well especially for people that don't believe in themselves

and it's usually because of like impostor syndrome you have like an imposter syndrome scenario where someone

just has that little voice in the back of their head that's telling them you're not good enough you're not going to be

able to do this and I find that that is more of a defense mechanism than anything else they're trying to protect

themselves from failure so if you make that little bet and you say hey I don't believe you but we'll find out if you're

right or not and it it works you know yeah so it's really interesting because I I think there's a lot of cool

mechanisms that play there and I I I love the the Str the strategy so a couple of things that I'm kind of

hearing the first is that there's a really fascinating study about feeling overwhelmed

so a lot of times people think that feeling overwhelmed is a consequence of how many things you're dealing with

right so if I'm dealing with 10 things then I'm going to feel overwhelmed like this is objective so I think it's very

subjective it's very different for every person so so so it's it's really interesting but what what there's a lot

of research on anxiety which shows that the degree of overwhelmed you feel does not correlate with the number of things

that you have to deal with so you can deal with one thing or 10 things that's not what that's the feeling of

overwhelmed is what percentage of things that you were dealing with did you choose to deal

with I agree with it so there's this this concept called active challenges and passive challenges passive

challenges are like aggro like there are like challenges in your life that aggroed you when you were like walking

down the street so things like oh you know my parents have cancer or something like that like or

some Jesus yeah that's bad aggro like you know some negative downturn in the economy like things that you can't

control so the really interesting thing is that there's your your mind keeps a ratio like subconsciously of stuff that

I signed up for stuff that I didn't sign up for and when the majority of my life is doing things that I did not sign up

for this is what leads to burnout so the really crazy thing is and feeling overwhelmed and then like not actually

being able to deal with those things so the crazy thing is that if you're feeling overwhelmed in life the right

move is not to do less it's actually to take on more that is intentional things that you can control absolutely so if

there are like five things that I'm dealing with that are outside of my control to to take on two things will

actually improve my performance over time I actually really like that that's not something that I've ever thought

about in that direction I think that's that's really interesting because usually when it's when it's something

like that I I had never drawn the correlation between things that you did control or did not control and it's true

I've seen that for myself many times right where where I'm dealing with a whole bunch of things and I can handle a

whole bunch of projects spin a bunch of plates no problem and then you have something that's like throwing a wrench

into the machine and it's like oh you know it's like now I gotta handle this thing you know it's so irritating yeah

and I I think it's get I'm sorry go ahead I was saying I get that that actually makes complete sense and it's

not something I ever thought about yeah yeah so I I think when we you know when I first heard what you've been up to it

sounds like you had done this feret Reserve this game Jam you're working on their Publishing House it also sounds

like you're streaming I don't know if you have like a a job um this is the job okay yeah so so you're a full-time I I

didn't know oh yeah um so you know it's interesting because someone will look at that and they'll they'll think like oh

my God like this person is doing so much how is Thor super human well he is he does have that I sleep five hours a day

that's the Superhuman part that's the mutant um but but I I think that's what I tend to find is that when people take

on more they tend to do better and the other really interesting thing is that when you give someone this three-month

challenge it moves them out of the realm of cognition and into the realm of action and any shift from cognition to

action is almost always a good one and when people are just stuck in their own head like what's going to

happen is your mind will play through all these different scenarios that'll be hypothetical but you won't ever actually

get additional data to counter your perceptions that's the biggest problem with it is it's you you have to have you

have to have evidence otherwise the perception is just going to take over like if if you're sitting there telling

yourself you can't do it all day and you don't have any evidence to the contrary you're probably going to believe it you

know and if you give yourself even a moment to have any type of evidence you can defeat that immediately like well

what about that and it just disappears you know it floats away so I I think it's challenging because depending on

your mind your mind will shape the evidence so so what happens for a lot of people is that you know they will try

things and in their mind they acted but it's so challenging because our mind can shape our

experience yeah um and there there ways to kind of get around that but or there are ways to clean out what our

experience is so that it's more objective as opposed to not being shaped by the mind but that's a really tough

one to be honest with you changing it from like the subjective opinion to the objective opinion of what's going on

especially when you're the actor involved in that right when you're the one taking the action that's really

difficult for people yeah so it it it turns out it comes back to perception so if you look at like any action that you

take there is the objective reality and then there is what your mind adds to the reality so what is the significance of

someone not calling you back today what is the significance of an email from a company that says hey we really liked

you but we just don't have a position that fits at the moment yep and some people will interpret that as oh they

don't like me and some people interpret that as they do like me I have value but they don't

have a position that fits yeah so some people that's why I like analytics so much like that's something that I I

drive a lot of our businesses based on analytics right and I do that specifically because it's an immutable

fact it's it's one of those ones where it's like you have this thing that is evidence of what's going on Beyond

whatever your perception could be you could have perception that may back it up and move in different directions for

ideas you can try but you have solid evidence of what is going on how do you use analytics I use analytics for

anything that we want to do in terms of business Direction so anytime I'm doing anything I find out if people like that

thing we kind of do tests on it and be like hey I talk about this thing or we look at some game or anything like that

if I'm getting a sponsor in right and we play a sponsored game I go and show them analytics be like this is how many

people wanted to engage with this people may find that the game is really fun to watch they just don't want to play it or

people may find that they want to stop watching me to go play the game so like if you're streaming a video game that

you've been sponsored for and suddenly half of your audio audience disappears a lot of streamer would would probably

freak out they'd be like oh no people hate this but if you go and look at the analytics on steamdb for the game you

may find that the amount of players in the game has skyrocketed it as a result of this they just stopped watching you

to go play it because they thought it was compelling enough so you have to use analytics to kind of get rid of whatever

worried perception you can have because it's it ends up being a fact right and you can you can find that out as an

example of this is quite funny one of the best watched videos that I have on my YouTube is me playing through outer

Wilds but one of my worst stre days was outer Wilds because at the beginning of that stream I told people don't watch me

play this if you haven't played it before because it'll ruin the game for you and they left it was like two-thirds

of the audience just left so it's like the worst viewership I've ever had for that kind of a stream but the best

YouTube video because they after they played the game they wanted to go see how I experienced it after they could no

longer be spoiled yeah so you have to use analytics you have to otherwise you just you run into these weird walls

where I would have a negative perception I'd be like oh well I should never touch that game again you know but like no you

should you should learn about that you know yeah so it was interesting I I gave a a talk at I think GDC about two or

three years ago I forget yeah um but I was I I was talking to some advertisers about uh

sponsorships and and one of my beliefs is that I know a lot of sponsors want a 60-second thing within the first like

two minutes of the video yeah but I I was explaining to them that I think that if you really look at like user behav

Behavior a sponsorship at the end of a video that is tightly tied to the content of the video will do way better

than something at the beginning cuz everyone's like we want more eyes but those eyes are not engaged right so so

people are like oh this is like they'll just get past it whereas if you have a sponsorship that is at the end of the

video related to the topic of the video I suspect that the user Behavior will be a lot better like in terms of what

people like even the fewer people will watch the the ad um their ability to engage with what whatever the advertiser

or the sponsor ultimately wants may actually be way higher so I think there's a lot of challenges with the way

that we get data and we see this a lot like in in the content creator like burnout management stuff that we do

where like the the internet gives us in platforms give us a lot of data that I don't think is actually helpful they

just give it because that's what they can measure this is the big problem with dating apps is that they can't measure

the things that actually correlate with like success in a relationship they can just upload pictures and you can write

things about yourself but there are no studies that show that making a good bio like correlates with relationship I mean

I'm sure that that would be true in a sense that because it's got to get you more dates but if you look at the things

that correlate with success in relationships they're not things that dating apps can detect or select for you

also get a lot of really weird gotcha images and things online that I find where people will be like look at how

many times I had to send out a thing before I got one reply and it would be like look 5,000 you know dates and like

it's one relationship and I think those are pretty misleading as well because it doesn't show you the full story there of

each of those interactions like how many swipes you did or anything none of that matters frankly well I find that to be

very I think it's incredibly misleading for a whole host of other reasons oh yeah there's a lot of reasons there it's

misleading but I think that one is that one is demoralizing to people in a way that's weird like really bad you know

it's not it's not benefiting anyone to put that out have you heard of this concept of the missing missing Reon

no so this is so fascinating I I got to send youall this link this is one of the most brilliant psychological

Explorations that I've seen sent you the mushrooms by the way okay cool thank you so the there's like if you look at

posts online especially about relationships there's this great psychologist I think or maybe it's not

even a psychologist who wrote this this book about the missing missing reasons so it is um so basically like when

someone shares a story on online there will be things missing from the story and the things that are

missing from the story are really where the money is right so someone will say oh like

I've been married for 30 years and then my partner just woke up and just walked out of the house and took my kids they

refused to talk to me they they they blocked me on all my numbers you know like and then they'll they'll like frame

things in some kind of like victim mentality but there's like stuff missing from the story

yeah and and so I think it's so common yeah so common yeah and and even in our own lives if you really pay attention to

the ego the cool thing about the ego is that the ego believes it's logical but it's very selective so the nature of the

ego is to ignore information that does not align with what you you your ego wants in that moment and so one of the

and even Carl Yung I know I'm kind of bouncing all over the place but Carl Yung I think discovered this when he was

talking about this concept of The Shadow which is even within our own psychology and in our own psyche there are parts of

our psyche that we actively suppress or ignore and if you want to grow those are the things that you need to confront

because that's really where the problem is and if you kind of think about if there's a part of life that you're not

looking at if that part of life is not fixed you will never be able to fix it and so a lot of times people don't

realize that you know they're living this life that things are going bad things are going bad things are going

bad and feel like they're a victim because this person screwed me over this person screwed me over this person

screwed me over you know the funniest thing about that yeah oh sorry go for it I think the funniest thing about that is

you can equit it to League of Legends or any competitive game oh if you're in bronze it is more likely that you're

going to blame the rest of your entire team for your team failing when you're not focusing on you doing better at the

video game which is going to increase your ELO so this happens all the time in competitive games like if you're in

bronze you deserve to be in bronze I've got a I've got a cool paper to show you hell yeah give me a

second but that's really what that is is like you you need to focus on improving yourself and improving your own

performance there not tearing down your teammates so it's not gonna help you this is I got to find it but what do you

mean it's always my team note ain't it's

uh come on where's this paper I know I've got got it come on you still can't carry four people no that's

true you can't carry all of your team all the time but in times where you could make a difference your performance

is what matters and you'll win more than more often that way and then you'll climb so I gotta I gotta do some

shenanigans on on my stream setup because I I got a screen share with you on Discord Shenanigans I can watch

the stream I can do that if that's easier um well I want to show people too so let me see if I can do this browser

plus 2 does this work oh sweet oh my god dude mods for the win this is great so now I can still see you and

show this so this is great oh yeah so cognitive flexibility in decisionmaking predicts expertise in the MOBA esport

League of Legends so look at this so you're saying that like you know when you blame your teammates all the time so

there's there's one thing that correlates with rank okay so data was analyzed by a means of correlation and

multiple regression analysis results showed that cognitive flexibility was positively related to rank percentile P

less than 011 um so this is a pretty big confidence interval so I don't know

exactly how they measure this but it seems like it correlates a lot with rank because this number is big but it's very

wide right so and what we're talking about is like the ability to pay attent like the ability to not

think the way that you're thinking that's what cognitive flexibility is so when people constantly blame their

teammates there's no cognitive flexibility right my team sucks my team sucks my team sucks they're not

flexible um let me just make sure yeah we don't need this one if you turn around you go but maybe I suck and then

you work on it you go and look at the analytics and you find out where were you sucking you you find out like if

your build is even making sense were you building you know magic into Mr Right you know basic stuff like that like you

have to you have to think about your own performance because you can't control your teammate's performance but you

definitely can control yours and that's the best thing you can start at and then if you're doing that you can set an

example for your teammates and maybe they modify their behavior well and then you win yeah so I I want to make this

video one day I've been recording myself playing DOTA and recalibrating on rank I mentioned this on stream a couple times

but I basically had an experiment so a lot of people will say like if you want to climb in video games like don't like

mute everybody because you'll tilt doesn't work that doesn't work it's so I I did this cool experiment I had two

accounts one that I use for streaming so that it doesn't leak my steam information and then I have a second

account but DOTA recently cracked down so I stopped doing this but um so I basically calibrated to both at the same

time but in one be the most toxic teammate is that what you're saying and then are you are you saying that you

played both both sides or you like no no so so I I played I I did my calibration matches because you can recalibrate like

every year so I did my calibration matches on both accounts but in one I was muted and in one I was talking I

thought you were trying to say you were toxic in one and not toxic was like no I mean I I could be toxic I'm sure that

that would be a greater MMR variation but like it it's amazing I mean I I think it was it was like an 800 MMR

difference which is you know like a couple of ranks I want to say it's like 20 percentile points un healthy gamer BG

it's finally happening and and when you learn how to communicate in games like it's amazing you can I mean you will

gain like a th MMR and there are all kinds of things you know speaking of relationships it's like the same stuff

like you got to learn you know like one thing that I found is uh instead of telling like uh my carry player to like

stop going to some part of the map after they die three times in that part of the map I will ask them hey do you want me

to place Wards so you don't die there again or do you want to play around where I have Wards like tell me what you

want me to do and like 90% of the time when I ask them what do you want me to do and I point out like hey I can play

around this and place Awards where you keep dying do you want me to do that what they'll actually do is just

switch to the right part of the map yep but if you tell themed to them yeah dumbass stop going there you keep dying

they'll I'm G to do it twice as much now and that's what they do yeah and that that makes sense because like if if you

if you had somebody come and attack you for playing the way that you are when you were failing especially in the in

the most vulnerable moment where deep inside you know that you're screwing up and you want to lash out at everyone

around you and then you give them a Target to lash out of course they're going to lash out at you it's just going

to spiral the whole team out B you can't do that yeah it it's it's amazing sometimes I'll you know I'll have

teammates who are so good and I wonder how are they at the same rank as me and it's because they're just so toxic

yeah and they don't they can't prevent tilt and you know yeah tilting is is probably the worst it it it's funny

because there's a meme inside of league for a long time which is like oh it's 4 V6 right now you know that kind of

things it's like there's one of your oppon one of your players has moved to the enemy team when you're saying that

you're the one on the enemy team absolutely the the the really crazy thing that that I've started to realize

is I really do think we can learn just about everything that we need in real life from video games like I think all

the microcosm of gaming I think is sufficient like the stuff around cognitive flexibility how to not tilt I

mean here we are talking about making it safe to fail right and what's the purpose of that it's because we don't

realize that we're like tilted IRL like feeling overwhelmed you're tilted IRL you know like we blame our teammates

right so my situation in my life is not my own making it's a bad upbringing it's bad friends it's bad spouses and there's

no I mean there's a ton of data that shows that adverse child childhood experiences correlate with trauma and

depression and things like that so people do have sometimes have bad bad situations um but even the ability to

rise above those situations depends a lot on these like core video game skills yeah I think that's actually true I I I

think it's funny because video games taught me a lot growing up you know what all kinds of things like to to be real

with you being able to solve through problems being able to analyze problems and find different ways to do it because

the game doesn't care what you're emotional state is the game is always the same so if you're going to approach

a problem emotionally largely the game doesn't care about that you're going to lose you're not going to solve the

puzzle so it taught me to take the emotional feeling that I had put it on the side for a moment take a logical

approach to it and then kind of work my way through that that's where I learned that it was from games that's why I do

that today and I do that for everything now and I do it because I learned it from games when I was younger and that

allows me to go like all right I'm getting pissed off I'm going to take a minute we're going to look through this

logically and I'm just going to take that emotion put it off ins side and when you go through it logically like

logically process that you largely aren't going to be angry at the end of that conversation it just kind of goes

away you know we I think we talked about that last time we had a talk too was was the ability to just kind of take a step

back and wait and it's it's what I learned from games early on very early so I I'm kind of

curious Thor do you have any thoughts about so some people are able to like grind a game for hours and hours and

hours I can do that and then they have difficulty grinding IRL for hours and hours and hours do you have any sense

how to translate being able to grind in a game into grinding in real life immediate emotional feedback or

immediate feedback from the game the game tells you instantly when you get rewarding or when you accomplish a goal

or don't accomplish a goal that the best way I can look at this is homework if you give a student a online test or an

interactive test where they are immediately getting feedback from the answers I find that to be much more

compelling a lot of times for many people than giving them homework where they have to write it all down and they

find out the answers the next day they're less engaged with that because it doesn't give them immediate

interactive feedback and it's funny because I I see that more often with people that have ADHD I don't know if

there's a correlation there but that seems Seems correct to me see see what more often uh that people are less

engaged if they have ADHD I find them to be less engaged if they're not getting immediate feedback on the things that

are going on that the actions they're performing absolutely a correlation so we know that the the dopamine reward

circuitry in ADHD uh so their ability to delay gratification is impaired because the

the time window between action and reward is very very tight so the the that's what games give you frankly yeah

so that's really interesting because you know there's uh let me see if I can pull up some more research sure I want to

show you something it's more than just open it's just all all feedback whether it's good or bad it's all feedback

where's that Haggard paper oh that's why it always made me laugh is one of one of the memorable

things that I remember from Earthbound MH was Earthbound had a section of the game where to progress the story you had

to sit behind the waterfall for like three minutes okay and do nothing okay that's tough and it was so in today's

world I feel that many gamers can't do it that's a difficult one like I I really feel it's not a thing that's like

super common where waiting is the solution which is quite funny so like I always wondered like in games like

Earthbound how did they ever figure that out so you know so like I I I played did you

play the old Castlevania oh yeah so like you played Simon's Quest I don't know specifically which ones I played but I

play I played Castlevania when I was Castlevania 2 is just an amazing game so it was like go back and play these it