no amount of fixing your life will make that kid go away right so like when I work with people who are I see you smiling so like when I work with people who' have been traumatized they will build amazing lives but they still carry that kid with them and the kid will come out at times there'll be particular times where if I'm a little bit like if I like treat you in the wrong way like you'll notice that you feel like that kid again when you're Idol you feel like that kid again so that psychological
those that neuronal wiring is there so you can build all this wonderful stuff and there's authenticity it's not like you're faking it this is a really common misconception are you faking no you're genuinely confident you're genuinely authentic you can't fake it and get to where you are and at the same time the wounds that we experience leave scars yeah 100% And the real way to heal is to go back to that moment and like deal with that kid right you have to dismantle the world viw that you have which is how you heal trauma is
when we get traumatized we adapt in order to come out of this situation I need to learn this particular thing so some kids that I've worked with adapt by becoming invisible I that's what I did I got bullied a lot so what do I do I learn how to be invisible some people adapt by being successful so if I'm successful it's an antidote to my shame I don't have to be ashamed anymore if I'm successful but that old injury is still there yeah and this is why it's so complex because what you've just said is
so unbelievably true but it's where the misconception happens because I don't go home and I'm not like insecure or I'm not unconfident like I'm I think like when I'm on my own I'm very very okay with Who I Am with myself I'm very very like I feel like the guy that you experience on camera is very close to who I am when I'm in the hotel room alone at night however it doesn't mean that I still don't have those like childhood bruises and that they can't be pressed by various things and so it's this sort
of this almost because you know when we say these words like insecurity and shame you think you'd think that like I walk into the The Green Room over there and I'm like oh that's not it's not my life but when I where I know that there's still something there is I go how that why are you still driving like this exactly when you are so well aware that it will not lead to any more happiness in any in any context like I'm so logically aware that becoming more will not have any impact on the things
that matter yet here I am still building businesses and you know and this is the constant thing I I battle with so I go okay well there must be a force that you're consciously unaware of that's making you go go on and go on exact yeah right so let's understand a couple things beautiful beautiful beautiful stepen beautiful so a couple of things to understand we think about heal as a as one Spectrum right so if I'm at negative 100 I can't also be at positive 100 those two things cancel out that's not how it works
so if I give you a glass of water and then I piss in it and then I add sugar it doesn't remove the piss these are both independent things this is what tends to happen this is what we don't understand about trauma you removing the piss requires removing the piss no amount of sugar will take it out of the drink okay so no amount of this is mistake number one no amount of building something good will remove something bad okay so healing and it's also like you know if I break a leg no amount of
bench press will heal my leg like I can build as much as I want to I can fix my hair I can brush my teeth but the leg is broken the leg is broken same is true of the mind okay second thing is what happens is we have like our Consciousness is divided now we're going to get kind of Technical and off the rails so we have all of these like dormant pieces of our Consciousness that activate in certain situations and all you have to do is pay attention to yourself in a five minute period
and you'll see this so when I walk into a bathroom that I've never used before then I start thinking about okay where's the flush where's the toilet how do I use this toilet you know so like I'll activate dormant information all the time so if someone asks me what's you know the quadratic equation that information is there and dormant in my mind and it gets activated so one of the biggest mistakes we make about healing is we look at what is active in our mind 90% of the time and we assume that the injury is
no longer there that's not the case does that make sense 100% right so the the injury just goes dormant then there are certain things that happen that can trigger that injury that's what we call triggers right so if I'm traumatized if we look at like PTSD and i' I've been traumatized by you know a a bomb going off literally my brain has certain circuits that scans my perceptual envir and decides what to activate so there are ways Stillness makes you feel small and [ __ ] you if you're ever going to be small again never
again never again never again I would bet money that if you sit by yourself and you're not occupied right that's why you have to watch crime shows because if you don't watch crime shows you're going to be still and if you're still that's unacceptable okay M so dormant things have to be healed where they belong you you don't need to worry by the way it's in your karma it's going to get healed and it's coming yeah I was laughing cuz it's so true yeah just laughing at the fact that I when I go to Bali
I end up that's like where I end up writing a book and I'm like and and people would kill for that right so many people out there are like oh man I would love to be you no you guys don't want to be Steven I know you think you do but this is the crazy thing we each as human beings have our own journey and are you privileged and should you be grateful and should people aspire to be you absolutely but they don't want to be you like your own problems are they don't need yours
too amen so now the question is how do we heal so I think the problem is like no amount of fixing things over there is going to go back to this and this is where I we can look at the science of of of healing trauma so here are the steps first thing is safety so that we can get neuroplasticity second thing is emotional awareness and emotional regulation and this allows us for number three which is really important which is identity so if we look at our human sense of identity how do you develop an
identity so if I were to ask you in three sentences St who are you my identity yeah tell me who who's stepen to myself or just to the world or is that the same tell me about who's Stephen I I'm an entrepreneur I am a I guess I'm a podcaster now um and I am going to say Manchester United fan okay so I think those are three features right so I've I read your bio so the other thing that you tend to do in your bio is there's a narrative right you were a College Dropout
yeah um you started a company yeah right you talked about this Louis Vuitton bag phase and then there's the post Louis Vuitton bag phase and even before we had this podcast you were talking to me about the phases of your life yeah so identity requ requires a timeline okay now the interesting thing is if we look at the formative moments of your life they all have emotion m so this is what's really important if you have an identity that is bad in any way you can never change that identity without emotions so what what happens
so my like when I tell my story it's like I was a kid 9 years old I got put on these expectations dropped out of college went to become a monk went to medical school became a doctor now I started this whole helping random people on the internet thing so each of those were emotional experiences so Who We Are is a narrative of our most emotional experiences and we see this in all of our like superhero movies right Batman had this tragic experience where his parents were shot by The Joker and then he became something
right there all all these moments these powerful emotional moments so if your emotions are dulled by drugs by technology by pornography by watching serial killer shows you will never change who you are it is impossible the Neuroscience of your identity development requires emotional experience okay so with trauma that's the next thing that happens once we have access to emotions then we can become someone else now the problem with trauma is that before we become someone else the beliefs we have about ourselves become our destiny so if I think to myself I'm a loser so I
I when I was interviewing for residency I went to an interview somewhere on the west coast and the director of the program called me in at the end of the interview and they're like we don't understand why you're here and I was like what do you mean you don't understand why I'm here and they're like your application is really good you could end up at any program in the country like why did you pick us and like I was like I picked y'all because I liked the way that your hospital works and I like that
the city it's in and I'm super into compliment like what what do you mean why am I here right but the way that he approached it with a lack of confidence he's like our program sucks and they had some problems at the program at the time so kind of makes sense but this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy if I go into a job interview and I feel a lack of confidence if I believe I'm a loser then I'm not going to get the job you used to go to clubs and buy bottles of Champagnes and thought
that you were a loser didn't end up where you wanted to go so this is what a lot of people don't understand everyone's focused on productivity but the single most important thing that will determine your future is your sense of who you are and that's not like some oh spiritual get connected with you this is like [ __ ] science right if you believe you are a loser the empathic circuits of other people's brains will detect that in you and they will treat you like a loser you carry who you are with you that's why
you get into failed relationship number one failed relationship number two failed relationship number three until you changed and when you change your sense of identity changes then your future will change the last thing to do is on a more microscopic level look at these responses within yourself so you asked me at the very beginning of the podcast and now we're coming full circle how do you start understanding yourself so you look at the drives within yourself right why can't I sit still and this is going to be so hard for you because if I told
you this is hilarious if I told you Stephen if you want to heal your trauma you need to go to Bal you need to sit on a beach and you need to do nothing you will still turn that into growth and progress because what you'll say is oh this is what Dr K told me to heal my trauma so now I'm doing even more important work than a podcast for 10 million people on the internet now I'm doing the healing of my trauma which is the goal and you're still running away from yourself there's no
way you can run away from it your mind will transform the very thing that you do into the problem and that's what trauma does I'll give you a chance to respond because I've been I'm waiting for the solution Dr K yeah so I mean I in your case I I think it's like sit just sit and you have to be careful because if your mind turns the sitting into a goal that I have to achieve oh I need to sit and that will be my growth no no [ __ ] goal just sit waste your
time what you need to learn how to do is waste your time do nothing sit be with yourself and watch out for that mind the second thing is awareness okay so as you sit you will notice all of these things come up so this is like you wanted to you asked me a question at the beginning how do you start so what I would say is sit for five minutes 15 minutes sometimes we'll tell people to stare at a wall for an hour and just look at what on Earth goes on inside you you will
discover that it is a zoo of thoughts feelings emotions drives panics worries distractions your internal environment is such a mess so what we need to do is just kind of calm that stuff down by like just letting it kind of run out of steam so this is a principle of the mind that if we in if we feed our mind it'll continue to grow but like what we need to do is just let it run out of steam so just sit and do nothing for a while people don't realize the part of our brain that
exerts willpower has something to do with this part of our brain called the anterior singulate cortex the anterior singulate cortex is a piece of where willpower comes from but it is also Al the part of our brain that monitors conflict so willpower and monitoring a conflict are actually technically the same thing the same part of the brain activates and if you guys if you pay attention to your own internal experience which you realize is anytime you're using willpower there's an internal struggle that you are paying attention to it's like I don't want to order chicken
I want to order Fried Chicken so there's a monitoring of the conflict that goes on that's anytime you're exerting willpower there's this thing this way and this thing this way but you are aware of it you can't exert willpower if you're behaving automatically right that's why it's so easy to get lost in Doom scrolling because you're not even aware of what you're doing before and then four hours have gone by and you're like what what happened you're not aware so this is the crazy thing from a neuroscientific perspective and this is what the yogis will
teach as well awareness is willpower awareness is self-control and I've worked a t tons of addicts they come up for air and maybe you've done this and maybe people at home have done this you go on this binge and then you come up for air and you're like what have I been doing for a couple of days what I've been doing for a couple of hours then you gain that awareness again so the more that you were aware in the present moment the more your problems will literally melt away it's like crazy I don't quite
know how it works but this is what yoga teaches you that as you were aware as you were aware as you were aware you stop rejecting things you start accepting things you focus on the present all the stuff that everyone talks about is actually rooted in awareness and we live in a society where I say if I say you don't need habits you don't need willpower you don't need discipline all you need is awareness people will reject me that doesn't mean it isn't true and the more that you explore awareness the more you will realize
like I used to think it was like 5050 I'm now at like 90% of the problem is awareness I know it's weird but no but does cuz we tend to look for solutions that involve action MH like you know buy that thing make that list go to that meeting watch that thing it's all about action action action as a solution to our problems so I was expecting you to tell me that the solution to everything we've discussed here is like the seven-step process of like write this thing down say this thing and you know okay
so let's let's understand this okay you work really hard Stephen is it hard to work hard for me yeah no okay so now we have to understand why is it not hard for you to work hard it's why is it not hard for me to work hard because it feels good to work hard absolutely so your pro see this is the whole problem that everyone makes so Stephen you started a company when uh first when I was very young but we count that cuz I didn't register the company so the first one that was registered
would have been when I was 18 okay and you started how many companies or been involved in how many companies 10 10 20 yeah and made like millions and millions of dollars and stuff yeah right started a podcast you've got how many millions of subscribers now um across the platforms maybe 10 million I okay cool right so like this is a lot of work and everyone's like oh my God I want to be like Stephen but the whole thing is it's not hard for you it's hard for you to not do it so this is
what I'm saying you don't need to focus on the action it's the internal thing that drives you like a [ __ ] slave that is responsible for your success if someone else wants a fraction of what you have 10% of what you have they don't need to duplicate your actions they need to duplicate what's going on on the inside this is exactly my point if you love The Dy brand and you watch this Channel please do me a huge favor become part of the 15% of the viewers on this channel that have hit the Subscribe
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