what_is_passion.md

0:00 you do four years of high school then you go to university then you get your degree then you go to the internship then you get your job fair you go to the 0:07 job fair you get your job you start as a junior analyst then you become an analyst then you become an associate 0:12 then you become a senior associate then you become a vice president and then you become a senior vice president and then you become a director and then you 0:18 become a managing director and then you become a partner and then you will be happy 0:23 aboard the train everyone's telling you to board the train but there are no train 0:28 tracks anymore it's like what we need today is atvs but the generation that 0:33 came before us was all boarding trains go to college you'll be fine go buy a house 0:39 after two years of working with a bachelor's degree the world used to be railroads and train tracks and now it's 0:45 all atvs baby okay this is great dr k what the actual hell Reddit post 0:52 is passion so hi dr k healthy gamer community and team first i'd like to i'd like to say 0:58 that i really enjoy this content and in the digital space to be in and share my issues and problems as i see that they 1:05 are pretty common within a lot of people it is truly virtuous thank you you're most welcome and thank you for posting 1:13 my question right now revolves around the idea that passion your dream job is we culturally use in the western 1:19 world at least the idea of finding and pursuing your passion is this work subject that gives 1:24 you so much motivation that makes work feeling like it isn't work as confucius would suggest 1:31 it is called ikigai in japanese culture what is your current idea around this 1:36 figure i suspect that there are a lot of myths and misconceptions around this idea or 1:41 at least this is what my experience suggests to me we tend to form this idea as if there is an actual 1:47 and only work field that is so perfect for us that would give us all the power within 1:53 us to perform and succeed like we would enter a super saiyan berserk mode in an anime world and let us obliterate every 1:59 obstacle we find in our way for this work what a great description right my current understanding of mental 2:05 health suggests that it is not a good thought process it seems like a very hedonistic thought 2:12 also if you think of it logically it doesn't make much sense either let's say i love basketball which i do and that is 2:18 my real passion and since i am in 2022 that is very convenient because basketball is a pretty accessible right 2:24 now but if i had lived a century ago i wouldn't even have had basketball would 2:30 i have had to settle then and live life miserably i don't think so i ask you this because i find myself 2:36 very confused right now and i feel like i have no passion or i don't find anything sufficiently exciting to pursue 2:42 i think there are a lot of fascinating interesting things in my in my field of study and other hobbies 2:49 that i have but nothing puts me in a situation of being satisfied i'm not that interested much right 2:56 in basketball as a profession and i'm investing to be a trainer focused on posture and health 3:03 and i have a lot of interest in making content around it and even want to do gaming content but i 3:09 don't feel a drive for actually embracing it with force and determination i'm doing it because i feel that it is 3:15 my best bet right now knowing my values and interests i believe that you could give us a lot of insight on the topic 3:23 thanks in advance and much appreciation really fantastic question 3:29 so the first thing that i'm going to comment on is the question itself 3:35 and i think the question is actually a sign of how far our community has come 3:40 so if you look at a lot of the questions especially early on in our both our community and the rest 3:46 of the internet what people will ask is how do i find my passion 3:52 right so you'll have like some interview on some like stanford like stanford business podcast or whatever right 3:58 you'll have some like podcasts and like a fancy place like a ted talk or something like that 4:03 and then you'll have some expert who has accomplished things with a capital a 4:09 and then the interview will ask them like how do you find your passion like how did you discover your passion like that's about your passion they'll be 4:15 like oh yeah like you have to like grind 24 7 like boss babe like you know whatever they'll give some answer 4:21 and then we all walk away with this idea that there's this thing out there called my passion and this is a 4:28 beautiful description of it and it's like once you find your passion once you find it 4:35 everything becomes easy work doesn't feel like work you have so much motivation you enter 4:41 the super saiyan mode where you're like you're grinding man it's like so like like you can't stop working and like you 4:47 know you're burning out because you're so passionate about it and then all the obstacles fall away 4:54 so we have this idea that there's this thing out there and that passion is something to be found 5:00 right you get an infinite buff beautifully put it makes all the hard things easy 5:07 and so we start seeking for this thing and then like we find one thing that we're kind of interested in but we don't 5:12 turn into a super saiyan so like oh that's not my passion so we keep looking keep looking keep looking for my passion 5:18 where's my passion where's my passion where's my passion is this my passion is that my passion oh then what happens is someone uses this term ikigai 5:26 and then they read books on ikigai and how to find ike and then they go look and they go look and they're like oh there's this thing there's flow state 5:31 there's confucius there's ikigai this guy in this ted talk was talking about finding your passion and so we go looking for this 5:39 mythical super saiyan state and then we don't find it and then we start asking lots of 5:45 questions right so this is actually the right question let's start by defining it not forget about finding it 5:52 what the hell is it what is this thing that we call passion how does it work what are its dimensions 5:59 what are the what are the laws of physics that govern passion right what are the equations is it 6:05 something that's found is it something that's discovered is it something that's built is it a temporary state is it a state of 6:11 mind is it a physiological thing like what is it because once we understand what it is 6:16 then we can figure out constructing it or how to find it but the first question is like what is it 6:22 okay so we're going to talk about today is a couple of different things 6:28 and a couple of the different problems that we run into when we are looking for our passion okay 6:36 so the first thing that we're going to start with 6:43 okay so uh i was about to say how to find 6:48 passion but that's incorrect that's the default question we actually don't want that one we want what What is Passion? 6:54 is passion okay 7:00 so here's the first thing is that there are a couple of there are three major problems that we run into 7:05 when trying to answer this question or find our passion okay 7:11 the first is that we equate passion with Passions and careers 7:16 a career or a job this is mistake number one 7:24 so here's the first thing to understand so when when i start to think about my passion as a job or a career 7:32 let's think a little bit about what passion is let's think a little bit about being human so over we here we 7:38 have a human being so if we want to understand passion the first thing we have to understand about 7:44 human beings is that human beings are individuals okay 7:51 so there are a lot of different things that make you you right so different people have different interests 8:01 different fulfillments so what you find fulfilling may be 8:08 different from some what someone else finds fulfilling right and then they also have different circumstances 8:15 as this person points out like their passion is basketball but if they lived 200 years ago does that mean that they 8:21 just live a miserable life is a reason that like so many people in our community are miserable is because they were just born in the wrong era 8:28 is that sort of you just sol because your passion is underwater in space basket weaving 8:35 and since underwater in space basket weaving doesn't exist right now y'all are just doomed to be unhappy 8:42 so the first thing to understand is that individuals have all of these these things that make us tick 8:48 right so what makes me tick what i get excited about well 8:54 people are getting caught up in that the underwater in space basket weaving is feeling everyone is that what your 9:00 real passion is well then make it pave the way for the future for all of the people who 9:07 are left out and feeling directionless in life so 9:12 individual so like passion first of all well we're not gonna say passion yet but let's start by acknowledging that what 9:19 makes human beings tick what we're attracted to what we're interested in what we find 9:24 enjoyable is going to be individualistic now here's the problem 9:30 is when we look at a career or a job as a source of our passion or a way to like make our passion a reality or whatever 9:38 careers and jobs and education that's the third big thing right so people will look for their 9:43 passion through education the problem is that these are institutional 9:51 what does that mean so what's the job what is the goal of a university that's trying to teach you 9:58 how to code it's not individual at all in fact it's the very opposite of individual right 10:05 it's like cookie cutter here are the 15 courses you have to take first year here are the 15 courses you have to take second year here are the 15 courses you 10:12 have to take third year and then you get some choice in the fourth year so institutions are cookie cutter 10:18 in that way jobs and careers are cookie cutter too like if i go work as an analyst in an investment bank or i work 10:24 as a junior dev in a aaa game studio or i work as a junior dev in an indie studio like 10:30 these people like there's a job description right there's nothing individual about it these are like the characteristics that we're looking for 10:37 this is what it's going to be so the first problem that we run into is that we equate passion with job 10:42 and jobs careers and education tend to be institutional and cookie cutter whereas we are individuals so the first 10:48 thing to understand is that this is a fundamental disconnect you are not gonna i mean you can sort of we'll talk about 10:54 how to find your passion in a job and stuff but the first thing to understand this is the wrong place to look because you're never going to find your passion 11:00 in a job because a job is cookie cutter and generic and you are not 11:05 okay second problem that we run into Passion is found 11:12 is that we think about passion as something that is found 11:18 right so like oh find your passion we even use the verb find your passion 11:23 i found my passion for five years i was spinning in the wind and then i found my passion 11:30 i discovered hybrid taxidermy from extraterrestrial beings 11:36 and i take i travel to different continents and worlds and i take different animals and then i 11:42 like stitch them together to make weird hybrid things right 11:48 this is my passion and then before that i felt like i wasn't even alive so there's this idea 11:54 that passion is found and this is important because this implies that passion 12:00 is external you all get this 12:07 it's external because if you find it like then it's like something you're looking oh i majored in this and i 12:12 wasn't able to find my passion i went to this job i wasn't able to find my passion i looked over here i talked to this person you're looking externally 12:20 whereas as we sort of mentioned passion is individual in nature so the other thing about finding passion 12:27 is that it tends to be both an internal journey and an external journey and we'll get to that a little bit more 12:33 okay so if you're looking for your passion it's not going to be kind of like you're not 12:40 going to find it lying somewhere right like you're not just going to like it's not going to be like a random 12:45 drop from you know some kind of world quest where it's like oh i'm gonna go here and 12:52 i'm just gonna walk in the door and i will eat i will see a cookie on the shelf and i will discover oh my god my 12:58 passion is to be a baker i just i had this cookie and it was so amazing that it transformed my life 13:05 right so you can't like point one percent passion drop you can't check the loot table and things like that so this is 13:12 where passion is both an internal and an external journey so like there are external things we 13:17 have to look for but i want you all to think a little bit about you know passion comes from within this is also something that we say it's kind of true 13:24 so it's like both internal and external and what i'm going to talk about here for a second if you guys caught this is we had a lecture on burnout recently 13:31 and burnout is a really really good example of a hybrid internal external phenomenon so this is what we're sort of 13:38 discovering i don't know that we've even discovered yet but i'm seeing this for sure is that a lot of the unhappiness that we 13:46 have where the individual meets the workplace is a hybrid unhappiness there's an 13:51 internal component and an external component so for example we know that 13:56 a discrepancy in values creates burnout in the workplace so when the individual 14:03 values one thing and the company values another thing this is what leads to burnout 14:08 now what a lot of people may say is that okay what you should do if you're a person is just move to company number 14:14 two that is more aligned with your values whereas i would say it actually goes 14:19 both ways you can also modify yourself into person number two that is can be more aligned with company values right 14:27 so there's an internal component to change and whether you want to do that or not sort of depends on you i'm not 14:32 saying you should always align with company values but for example like if you're just a lazy ass and your company 14:38 wants you to do a certain amount of productivity it's not the worst thing in the world to like become more productive 14:44 as a human being it's not just like an endless pursuit for a company where you can automate your job which is if you 14:50 want to do that then go for it my point is that there's an internal change and there's an external change 14:55 another maybe a better example of this is control so this is where another source of 15:00 burnout is the discrepancy in control between the person and the company 15:07 so the company may control too much or it may control too little as a human you may need more support structures you may 15:13 need like you know more guidelines more like you know structure around you so if there's a discrepancy between control 15:20 between you and your company sometimes you have to adjust your own appreciation of control or your comfort for control 15:27 or you have to find a company that's better suited for the way that you want to be it can be both 15:32 right you can adjust yourself or you can adjust the external 15:38 world so when it comes to finding your passion what we're going to talk about is actually the same thing we're going 15:44 to do both so this is the third thing that we run into in terms of defining passion is Dimensions to Passion 15:51 that there are a lot of dimensions to what i would say 15:57 your passion is so if we think about passion it's sort of this idea that it's fulfilling 16:06 it's naturally motivating 16:12 there's an intersection between 16:18 internal and external right so these are the qualities that we 16:25 sort of think about when we think about passion but now as we start to get more precise 16:32 what we start to discover is that finding your passion or having a job or a career that's fulfilling involves a 16:39 lot of different dimensions and when i've worked with people who i would say have found their passion what they've really managed to do is align a lot of 16:46 these dimensions to be like congruent so i'll give you all an example so the first dimension i would say is spiritual 16:53 and what does that mean that means that if you want to find your passion or define what passion is you have to do 16:58 some amount of like internal work so there's some amount of like deep internal work 17:06 that you have to do and what does that mean that means that like you can't just watch youtube videos all day and find your passion that way like i don't think 17:12 that's gonna work you have to ask yourself like what is it that gets me excited about life and you may say like 17:19 your default mind is gonna say i'm not excited about anything but that's incorrect as a human being i don't buy that 17:25 there's nothing that excites you or has nothing has ever excited you so this is where you have to like look 17:31 back like okay what what did truly excite me like when when did i feel fulfilled when it when did work feel 17:37 easy to me so you start to ask those questions and start to introspect you may be surprised at what you're not 17:43 considering when you ask yourself that question so i'll give you all just a simple example 17:49 so i i was working with someone who has a very famous cooking endeavor now 17:55 and so they were like basically a nobody and then through social media and these different content creation platforms 18:02 what they really realized is that they love like experimental cooking so like they 18:08 weren't happy about their job they weren't like and even socially they weren't really great at it 18:14 you know doing like different kinds of work and stuff like that like they just weren't they weren't 18:21 really happy socially they weren't happy professionally what they really love doing is like making complicated food 18:26 for friends and even the friends like the most social engagement that they had was when 18:32 they were making complicated food okay and so then like what they sort of like and as we were talking about they're 18:38 like okay what really excites you and they're like well i love like i love like hosting dinner parties basically right where i'm like making cool and 18:43 experimental stuff and so and they were like but that can't be a job right and it's sort of like well i don't know if it can be a job but 18:50 why are you letting that restrict you why don't we just talk about like okay how can you do more of this so if you do this like what would it feel like if you 18:56 did it once a week oh it'd be absolutely amazing okay so then let's think a little bit about like okay if you wanted to do it 19:02 once a week what's getting in the way so we started to operationalize things out how can you monetize it can you do it 19:07 once a week how much does it cost do people need to pay for it started working through all those details but it started with this deep internal work of 19:14 like okay what actually satisfies me then what we have to think a little bit 19:19 about is the neurological component 19:25 and these are sort of like arbitrary things that i kind of made up but this is where if we look at our brains 19:32 our brains are wired in different ways so some of us love routine oh sorry 19:39 so like what's kind of dopaminergic for us right what makes us tick 19:47 so what gets your like dopamine neurons like kind of going like do you want a job that's kind of like 19:52 problem solving right like or do you want something that's like 19:58 um you know more routine like like what is it that makes you like your brain tick like do you like creative 20:04 work or do you like problem solving work like do you like to create things like write a book or make music or do are you 20:11 like more about like a tinkerer right so like some people have like uh 20:17 like a personality or a brain that likes to tinker with stuff do you like to take things apart and put them back together 20:22 is that what makes you tick or do you like to draw things from scratch right like what kind of brain do you 20:28 have so and this is where a lot of times people sort of recognize oh i like math well what do you like about math i like 20:34 math because it's orderly and i really like things that are order i want to understand how the human brain like how 20:40 things work so sort of like a neurological component about just what makes your brain tick what gets you excited this is a little bit different 20:46 from the spiritual side about like what's fulfilling this is like what does your brain enjoy occupying itself with 20:54 okay then we get to the physiologic 20:59 and what do i mean by physiology so this is also sort of like a term that 21:04 i'm kind of tossing out there but if you look at different people's physiology some people are geared towards routine 21:10 whereas some people are geared towards like being more dynamic okay some people really like working 24 21:17 hours on call so i'll have some physicians who are hospitalists and these people will work 21:24 for one week and then they get one week off 21:30 right so it's one week on one week off i've worked with people who are like engineers on oil rigs as well and they 21:35 really like their lifestyle because they're there for two weeks where they like work a ton and then they like take a helicopter home and they get to chill 21:42 for like two weeks at a time so what is what is your physiology what is your like daily routine like what 21:48 kind of work flow do you like because here's the interesting thing is that even if you look at something 21:54 like a standard job if you have the wrong kind of physiological circumstance it's not gonna go well so a 22:01 good example of this is writing so let's say that you do this and you decide okay writing is fulfilling to me and then you kind of 22:08 figure out okay i like creative work i like to write but then the way that you write could be 22:14 drastically different some people want to find a cabin in the woods for a month and like bang out a hundred thousand 22:20 words whereas other people like it has to be four hours a day every day and as you select for something like a job 22:28 if you pick the wrong physiologic routine or the wrong physiologic thing 22:33 dynamic versus routine you could be screwing yourself by doing that right so if you're not sort of adapting to the 22:39 the body that you have are you an early riser are you a late riser how does your job work is it for people who are early 22:46 rises at work from home is it you know freelancing like what's the situation there so you should also think about this 22:52 dimension and the last thing is what i would call kind of environmental 23:01 and the key thing here is you should think a little bit about the social nature of your job or you know what is your reporting 23:08 structure do you like to work in a team or do you 23:13 like to be freelance right and so the key thing here is you 23:19 all may say well what does this have to do with your passion so remember that like passion is about work that's fulfilling and naturally motivating 23:26 the key thing here is that let's say you want to be a writer 23:32 if you don't have some of this stuff aligned you're going to have difficulty with your motivation 23:38 so if you're the cabin in the woods doesn't work well for you because you get super distracted and you end up procrastinating and stuff like that you 23:44 may need something like a writing group right you may need to work closely with 23:50 an editor who keeps you on task with deadlines so what are sort of the environmental 23:55 circumstances that you need for your passion to kind of flow properly is it dynamic is it routine is it social 24:02 is a team are you a freelancer like all of these dimensions matter a lot and this is what i find people miss because 24:09 what people sort of look at is they look at one of these components oftentimes these two are the only two that they sort of look for and then they 24:15 try to find the right job and essentially what people will do is they'll hunt 24:22 for job after job after job that aligns these things kind of naturally and they find their dream job which naturally 24:29 aligns with like their four settings your environmental setting your physiologic setting your neurologic 24:35 setting your spiritual setting are all aligned and if you find that job then you luck out and then you found your 24:41 passion and then you start going and giving ted talks about finding your passion and then other people listen to 24:46 your ted talk and they try to do the same thing but it doesn't work for them because they didn't stumble into the right formula for themselves 24:54 so finding your passion is really about first of all understanding yourself and then thinking very very specifically 25:02 about how can i construct a situation for myself 25:09 where through in introspection i figure out what is the situation i need to make in the first place and then cultivating 25:14 that over time so passion is not binary you don't just find it it's cultivated over time 25:22 so i'll end with a simple example which is myself so any guesses what dr k's passion is 25:29 what do you all think my passion is what do i love what's down here for me anyone know 25:36 ah people saying dota wow teaching incorrect incorrect incorrect incorrect 25:43 talking memes coaching compassion 25:49 all wrong here's my passion this is what i love 25:55 more than anything else stories right so you wouldn't even know it 26:01 looking at me but this is what i love more than anything else in the world is stories 26:07 it's the reason i love fiction it's the reason i love video games it's the reason i became a psychiatrist 26:13 what's what's the tie that binds like why do i like love talking to people it's because 26:18 i love their stories i love like stories that's what i love i read bedtime stories to my kids 26:24 i read different kinds of mythology like what i love more than anything else is stories now here's the tricky thing Stories example 26:30 if i love stories you're not gonna think so like early on what i was thinking is okay i'll become an author 26:37 right or maybe i can become a game designer or what i ended up doing is being a 26:43 psychiatrist but these are all three different professions that are drastically 26:49 different they all have stories right so like why do i love elden ring in the souls games because the stories 26:55 are amazing and so opaque right or yeah sure i could become streamer 27:02 my point here is that the job is very different 27:07 from what actually like motivates me right and then you can actually develop a job that is like built on your 27:14 motivation so what are the things that i sort of discovered about myself the first is that i tend to work more 27:22 if people show up so if left to my own devices i'm going 27:28 to just start gaming but if i have like an appointment if i make appointments from 10 a.m to 6 p.m i can work eight hours 27:36 like easy people someone shows up and i just talk to like you know if i get to help them like that's cool i can do 27:42 eight hours appointments no problem easy i can work 80 hours a week no big deal i can do 24 hours of call as long 27:48 as like i'm learning about people right and so author was hard for me 27:54 because i wasn't self-motivated enough so i didn't have like this kind of 28:00 environment structure and physiologic structure was like hard for me as an author 28:06 and so the key thing here is that you can you know no matter what your passion is you can construct it a lot of 28:12 different ways so don't lock yourself in into an institutional approach to finding your passion oh you have to 28:18 major in physics so you have to do this even something like psychiatry like okay let's like talk about something 28:23 else right so this is why i'm super lucky yo okay so what do i love so psychiatry is like 28:28 helping people presumably yeah but i like esports 28:36 so if i love esports in my sol if i'm a psychiatrist is the only option here people may think okay pro player 28:44 streamer right like those are my options 28:50 well it turns out that you can actually be a psychiatrist for an esports team which is pretty freaking cool 28:56 so don't restrict yourself based on like jobs forget about the job for a 29:02 second right like because like this is the cool thing about the world is that it's 29:09 it's evolving very rapidly and here's what i firmly firmly believe that if you want to be successful we're not talking 29:15 about success here we're talking about fulfillment but generally speaking it's my belief that the world 29:22 rewards value so if you bring value to the table 29:29 you are more likely to be rewarded okay now here's the other thing let's just 29:34 think about it logically for a second if you care about something if you're passionate about it 29:41 it's easier to give it one hundred percent 29:48 and if it's easier to give it one hundred percent you're going to create more value if you create more value there's a 29:54 greater likelihood that you'll be successful and so what a lot of people will say 30:00 they'll say things like don't make your passion your job it'll kill it if you're passionate about a particular 30:07 thing don't ever make it your work and i think that's sort of a near-sighted approach because it 30:12 presumes way too much it presumes first of all that you have a job it presumes that you know like 30:18 all kinds of things so like a good example is like people will love piano but if they become piano teachers or 30:24 they become professional pianists like they're not you know like destroys it because there are all these other elements that you don't like about it 30:31 you love cars but like don't necessarily want to drive uber like that's totally fine so be careful a little bit about some of 30:37 this like general advice because i think what you should do is bring value to the world generally 30:43 speaking you'll bring the best value to the world if you yourself are passionate about something and then what you have 30:48 to do is be very very critical about this kind of stuff and don't lock yourself into a job too easily because 30:55 if your passion what you'll really discover is that your passion is like more deep and it's not quite as 31:01 crafted it's a feeling right and then if depending on what your passion is there are a thousand 31:07 different directions you can take it depending on the circumstance so the person who's saying i love basketball now am i screwed 31:13 you know if i was born 100 years ago i don't think so because i think if i had a conversation with that person 31:18 it's not like they're in love with the basketball itself is it it's that there are certain qualities of basketball that 31:24 they really enjoy they're going to be quality so i've worked with like professional like nba players for example we talked to 31:30 them about why they love basketball it's about mastery it's about competition it's about setting your mind on 31:36 something and then getting better at it and better at it and better out it's about playing against a particular playing and getting a player and getting 31:42 crushed and then the next day going to game two and destroying that player 31:47 right these are the things that actually motivate them and it just happens to be basketball i think the manifestation can 31:52 be whatever right 31:58 so this is where like if you want to find your passion i would say break things down into these 32:04 segments what really makes me tick internally what do i care about 32:09 what is my brain like right do i like problem solving do i like creative work like what makes me 32:15 like tick mentally what gets me kind of excited like what can i get lost in 32:20 and then that's not enough because you can't just jump straight to a job then you have to start to ask yourself like physiologically like what kind of 32:26 circumstance do i need do i want to be in commercial real estate or like you know do i want to be like do i want like 32:32 a nine to five where i like go and i have people give me a list of stuff to do and i just kind of bang it out and 32:37 then i get to go home do i want to be like you know what kind of work life balance do i want 32:44 and then environmentally do i want to work with people or do i want to work alone do i want to be a freelancer like 32:49 how what are all the dimensions of this kind of stuff and the more of these kinds of things that you align towards 32:55 yourself the more you're going to reduce burnout and there's an inverse relationship 33:01 between burnout and passion right but the thing that burns people 33:07 out is like this kind of crap it's these two dimensions oftentimes 33:13 it's like oh my god like i love writing but i hate my editor and so i'm gonna be 33:18 burnt out and now i hate writing and now i'm gonna be one of those people who says if you have a passion keep it your 33:24 passion and don't ever make it your job whereas like if you had a better editor your whole story would be completely different 33:31 okay so finding your passion is like somewhat of a complicated process 33:36 and it starts with defining it which is perfect it's the perfect question and as we define passion we sort of think about 33:41 it as something that's fulfilling that feels natural hopefully if you move towards it i'm in 33:47 support by the way of like you know making your career aligned with your passion 33:53 it just requires nuance like people just don't do it carefully that's why i think they struggle 33:59 and then as you think about all the dimensions that let passion flow and you construct those dimensions for 34:04 yourself then you will sort of start to enter something like super saiyan mode the thing about super saiyan mode is 34:11 that it's fragile people think about super saiyan modis is very resilient i kind of think about 34:17 super saiyan mode as like surfing we're like yeah there's a huge wave but you have to balance it very very 34:22 carefully to maintain that degree of awesomeness and what it really requires super saiyan 34:27 mode is a flowering it's a blooming of all of the circumstances aligning properly 34:33 and so what people don't realize and they think like oh i got to be more hardcore i got to be more hardcore i got to be more hardcore and then it's going 34:38 to be super saiyan and i'm resilient to all obstacles it's actually kind of the opposite if you think about your optimal function 34:46 it doesn't happen in sub-optimal circumstances right actually your optimal function 34:52 happens in the right circumstances and so as you craft those circumstances for yourself as you start to realize what 34:58 really makes you tick as you construct your life then you will find your passion 35:08 right and this is the thing for people who are saying like my dream career like this like 35:14 this is not their dream career is what you make of it right like there's so many different dimensions out there 35:20 and if you think about what you actually do day to day they can be wildly different but you can have one you know 35:25 core thing like you can love video games like let's just say like let's say i love video games 35:31 there are all kinds of things you can do with this right sure you could be a developer 35:37 even then you could go aaa you could go indie you can be one of these people like who 35:44 makes you know axiom verge or undertale like you can just solo it you don't have to work for anyone there's all kinds of 35:50 like weird indie studios out there right like super giant is a great example but then you could 35:55 also maybe you want to be like you know a writer for ign or something like that 36:03 right like i'm going to just work for a company that pays me to play video games and i have to like write reviews 36:08 for them or what you can do is be like a streamer right you can there's all kinds of stuff 36:13 you can do if you love video games you can even do something like you can become a physical therapist 36:19 and work with a team because here's the thing i love dota but i'm 1800 mmr chat there's no way i'm 36:26 ever going to be a professional dota player it's just not going to happen nora doesn't need to 36:31 the reason that we think it needs to is because our view is too narrow and when 36:36 our when we start to tie in a particular career to our passion i'm not saying you shouldn't develop a career from your 36:42 passion but we try to we try to take this individual thing that is our passion this is the crux of the problem Video games and passion - The crux 36:48 [Music] we try to take this individual thing that is our passion and we try to cram it into an institutional career 36:57 and in doing so we screw ourselves like gg 37:03 but you can absolutely construct for yourself something that is fulfilling 37:09 and that is aligned with who you are that is fantastic 37:14 right 37:21 so someone saying what if i can't i love motorsport and can't be a driver that's my point exactly is that motorsport if 37:27 you think about all the people who do things for motorsport are all of them drivers no in fact like 37:33 one percent of them are drivers or less right they're all the other like 37:38 organizations the tournament organizers maybe you can organize something that's the other thing so a friend of 37:45 mine is also super into esports loves esports sucks at the game 37:50 so what are they thinking about doing organizing a charity tournament right 37:56 there's so much stuff someone's saying review cars on youtube like that's the cool thing about the world today 38:02 is there is an unprecedented amount of freedom for how you make a dollar 38:09 like 2 000 years ago the way that dollars didn't exist back then but the way that you secured food and shelter 38:16 for yourself was like narrow like even my grandmother i was talking to my grandmother the other day she grew up in a village of like 200 38:23 people where everyone was a farmer it's like you don't have choices you can't do anything except for be a farmer 38:29 only option now it's like even with video games you can be a professional gamer you can be a streamer you can be a reviewer you can 38:34 be you know just like a content creator right you can be a gold farmer 38:42 there is an unprecedented amount of freedom and the problem is that we may think that that's a good thing but it's 38:48 actually a huge problem why is it a huge problem because we don't know what to do with unprecedented amounts of freedom Train tracks vs ATVs 38:54 because we've been raised in societies that are so damn institutional 38:59 you do four years of high school then you go to university then you get your degree then you go to the internship then you get your job fair you go to the 39:06 job fair you get your job you start as a junior analyst then you become an analyst then you become an associate 39:11 then you become a senior associate then you become a vice president and then you become a senior vice president and then 39:16 you become a director and then you become a managing director and then you become a partner and then you will be happy 39:22 board the train everyone's telling you to board the train but there are no train 39:28 tracks anymore it's like what we need today is atvs but 39:34 the generation that came before us was all boarding trains go to college you'll be fine go buy a house 39:40 after two years of working out with a bachelor's degree the world used to be railroads and train 39:47 tracks and now it's all atvs baby and we have not realized this 39:53 fundamentally and so then then there we are like 39:59 looking at across the water and we're like wow that water looks really great i really love 40:05 that water let me board this train and see where it takes me then we're all packing onto these trains that are going absolutely nowhere 40:14 so the ability to handle choice has become atrophied in our society 40:20 and we see this like in our dating for example like online dating it's like 10 40:25 000 people out there and has that made dating easier no it's made things harder 40:31 right it's like how many like oh my god like i'm so bored there's nothing to play 40:37 have you seen steam so we become paralyzed by choice because 40:43 we don't know how to deal with it because more and more like not only are our institutions railroaded even 40:50 video games are railroaded right and then every now and then we get a breath of fresh air like elden ring 40:57 that doesn't have quest markers and i was like this game is hard this game sucks and like everyone loves it 41:02 because that's what human beings like i'ma play elden ring the way i want to play alden ring i'm running around naked with a club 41:10 because that's what i want to do right 41:15 quest markers do this do this do this do this so if you all are struggling Challenges of this generation 41:21 i get it man it's it's tough like i don't think we appreciate how hard 41:26 some of the challenges this generation faces human beings we're not designed we've 41:33 not evolved for this many choices you just think about the animal kingdom we're not that different from like chimpanzees right 41:40 or even dolphins for that matter like most mammals are like pretty similar like what choices does a dolphin have 41:49 our brains have not evolved to deal with this much choice and technology is exacerbating this 41:54 problem what do i do with my life it's incredibly difficult to deal with 42:01 and then like we don't cut ourselves any slack nor do we get empathy from or compassion from other people who don't 42:07 even realize that like it was easy for people before i'm not saying that there aren't things that have gotten better 42:12 there are a lot of things that have gotten better now right like what i'm saying is like this is overall it's a net advantage you just have to learn how 42:18 to take advantage of it overall it's like freaking amazing it's sort of like it's like high risk high 42:25 reward 42:30 so yeah i ranted there for a minute 42:37 new meta that's the best way to put it it's absolutely a new meta and you can't 42:43 just use the old strats in the new meta 42:51 yeah so any chance that playing a lot of video games blinds us to our passions absolutely 42:56 so here's the key thing that a video game does it does not cause you to internalize or introspect at all 43:03 so what what video games do is they take your mind and they externalize it 43:08 towards a particular thing and they keep it occupied over here without any effort for like a period of hours 43:14 and so there's no sense of like internal exploration with a video game all it is is like that straight 43:20 dopaminergic stuff without like any of the other stuff so i think that's that's part of the 43:25 reason that we're getting disconnected from our passions because we don't know how to look within anymore 43:33 right i'm not saying they're bad i like them too i play 43:38 i played lost ark yesterday you know that's okay 43:44 probably played a little bit too much tbh but you know that's all right 44:01 you