Transcription
How can people separate their sense of self-worth from their accomplishments? Um, I mean, it's a great question. So, I, I've got two or three different answers. So, the first is, see if you can, if you can absolve yourself of your failures, then you can have self, you can get rid of the self-worth from accomplishments. Does that make sense? No. So, see, if I fail at something, I'm a crap person, right? And then if I succeed at something, I'm a good person. So, both of those have to be separated. This is where a lot of people will focus on one but not the other. So, they'll say like, in, in both ways, right? So, if I'm, if I'm working with someone who's depressed, they're like, "I'm trying to help this person not feel depressed because they have failed at something." We're trying to separate the ego from the action. So, if you want to separate your accomplishments from your self-worth, like, you just have to untie both of those things. Fundamentally, there are two ways to do that. Kind of make sense? Okay.
So, there are two fundamental ways to do this. The first is to recognize, I know it sounds kind of weird, but you don't actually accomplish anything. Like, literally, it is impossible for you to accomplish anything. So, you can plant a seed, you can water it, you can do all the right things, but you can't make a plant grow. So, as a human being, there's a very fundamental principle that a lot of people don't understand, and I know this is going to sound crazy. You cannot, all you can do is the action. You cannot achieve any result. Give me an example. I can study at Harvard Medical School. I cannot save a life. It is not within my power to save a life. Like, I can be the best doctor on the planet, but like, I do not, nowhere does training give me the power of life over death or death. Like, you just can't do that. And this is where, like, another example. I can be the best boyfriend on a planet, on the planet, but I can't make someone fall in love with me. I just can't do it, right?
And this is where some people will disagree. I really think that if you stop and you do this very simple practice, close your eyes. What can you control, Chris? My movements. What else? My thoughts. Sometimes. What else? My breath. Can you control me? No. Can you control who watches this? No. Can you control how many views it gets? No. Can you control what sponsorships you're going to get or who's going to reach out to you? Can you control the comments in the comment section? Definitely not. Like, what the, right? So, here we are. You have a successful video, and you don't control that. All you control in life is what you do. And this is paradoxically how you become successful. So, it is the people who focus on the outcome of their actions that get screwed by it. Because understand this, if my, if my self-worth is focus, is dependent on my outcomes, then even if I achieve what I want, then like, oftentimes, people don't feel great, even if they live up to their expectations, right? It's like, one million, and then I need two, and then I need three, and then I need, need four. If you are relying on accomplishments to determine your self-worth, it will never be enough, right? Because you, there's always another promotion, there's always, there's a $100,000 car, there's a $300,000 car. So, if your self-worth is tied to something external, it'll never be enough. This is what we call moving goalposts, and it's why human beings, like, if that were the case, then anyone who makes $150,000 would just be chill, but that's not how it works. The reason we think that is because we've been conditioned. We are not our self-worth. But other people's worth, other pe, I'm sorry, not other people's judgment of our worth, is dependent on our accomplishments. No one gives a [ __ ] about who you are. They care about what you do. Oh, like, you get this award because you got a 4.0. That's why we get conditioned in this. So, then we adopt their view, but that doesn't work long term.
So, I think separating out and really recognizing that if you stop and think about it, all you control is like, what you feel. That is the only thing. If you cannot feel it, you cannot control it. Literally. Show me someone who can control anything outside of themselves. And this is where people will say, and this is, you know, but I can say particular things, I can work harder. Yeah, you can do all that stuff, but you don't actually control what happens. So, all you can do is take the right action. And then, like, you know, I remember, like, I, I learned this because one day I was in the emergency room, and a patient came in with three gunshot wounds. So, this person's dying, right? And it's like, we're going to do everything that we can, but holy [ __ ], like, we don't know if this person's going to live or die. Like, we, we just can't do it. And this is, like, one of the best hospitals on the planet, right? Amazing attending, this brilliant trauma surgeon, and like, we just can't save this, like, we don't know. And think about how advanced medicine is. Think about all these tools we have. We have antibiotics, and we have MRIs, and CT scans, and we literally, like, we can take, we can take someone's heart out of their body, we can give them somebody else's heart, and we can, we can replace your heart, we can replace your kidneys, but we can't save life. There may be graph versus host disease, like, you never know.
So, that's number one. Second thing is, just dissolve the ego. The moment that you dissolve your ego, which is, if we look at things like, you know, there are even studies now of psychedelics, for example, and psychedelics and trauma. And if you look at the studies of people who use psychedelics for the healing of trauma, you can measure, you can predict whether there will be a therapeutic improvement based on the type of psychedelic experience they have. So, if I see cool colors and patterns, I won't be healed. If I have specifically an ego death experience, that's what correlates with healing. So, a lot of, and this is also what the yogis and, and the Buddhist people, and Buddha, and all these people figured out, is the more that you dissolve your ego, the more content you will be.
What do you mean when you say dissolve the ego? What are you, person, what does that mean? I guess my experience of me is thoughts and identi, what is identity? A sense of self, a story that I tell myself. So, those are two different things. Which one are you really? So, if I were to ask, who is Chris Williamson? What would you say? Person, podcaster. Okay. So, this is where there's certain specific features of the ego. So, Chris Williamson is, dot, dot, dot, is a factor of your, a human, or your ego. Podcaster, man, Chad, savior, loser, or whatever. All of those. But the, the truth of the matter is, scientifically, those are not real things, right? I can't biopsy you and find a podcaster. These are abstractions of the mind. Loser, winner, what does that mean? One person has a trophy, one person doesn't have a trophy. That's what makes him a winner or loser. But what if someone cheats? Is a cheater a winner? No. Those are two different things. But hold on a second, I thought we said winners have trophies. So, these are all abstractions of the mind. And your first answer was the correct one, which is that you are that which experiences this person's life. You are a sense of experience. That's it. The rest of it is like glommed on. And if we sort of think about it, right? So, even if we think about the things that we think of as our identity. So, a man having an identity as a man can change nowadays. So, I've always been allo, sort of. But I wasn't always a doctor. I wasn't always a father. But I was still me. So, if you really look at the true essence of what you are, it is not any attribute that you can put on a piece of paper. It, it is you are the bundle of sensory experiences that lives your life. And that's all you are. The rest of it can change. The rest of it is fluctuating. The rest of it is an abstraction. You cannot x-ray someone and find a winner or loser. That is a judgment by someone else's mind, and a judgment by your mind. And this is where, I hate to break it to you, but a judgment by your mind is not reality. A judgment by somebody else's mind is not reality. If it was, then people could judge and say, "Oh, this person's, I judge, I think this person's a millionaire." Does that put a million dollars in your bank account? [ __ ] no. They're thoughts. Thoughts are not reality. It's crazy, but we all live in this world where we think thoughts are reality. They're not.
And this is where people will say, but what about, what about the EIC, like, you know, what if people treat you a certain way? That'll affect your life. All that stuff is true. There is a reality of how people will treat you, but that doesn't make you who you are. How people treat you is how people treat you. Does that kind of make sense? Like, even the language that we use. There's a difference between treated a certain way and what you are. And the more that you look at it, you know, and this is where, like, you can take a [ __ ], you can be president of the United States, you can be a dictator, you can be Hitler, you can be an influencer, you can be a child, you can be a bum. We all take shits. We're all human at the end of the day. And so, there are certain practices, like Shuna, is like the, the Sanskrit word for null or zero or void. So, there's some practices that you can do in meditation that, like, you literally dissolve your, your sense of identity. And the more that you do it, it's liberating. Because if you really think about it, who is the person that suffers? It's the ego. So, I'm a medical doctor today, which means that if one day someone takes away my medical license, then I will suffer. I will get pride from my medical license, and I buy myself some degree of suffering from losing my medical license. The moment that I become a Bo, a father, I get some joy in life from that identity, and I also open myself up to suffering if my kids ever say they hate me or something bad happens or whatever. So, we don't realize that if you really pay attention, the majority of people's suffering in life comes from their sense of identity. Because, "Oh, I'm number one." The moment that you become number one, you open yourself up to becoming number two, and the suffering that goes with it, right? So, you have to get rid of the pride, and you have to get rid of the shame. Get rid of all of it. And then people are like, "But then what am I going to do?"
And this is where I, I challenge you, Chris. Think about the best moments in your life. The best moments in your life is when you're, you really need to take a piss. You really need to take a piss. You really need to take a piss. And then you run into the bathroom, and all the urinals are occupied. And then you're like, "Oh, [ __ ]." And then someone finishes up. Thank God. You take a piss. Ah, bliss. What difference does it make whether you have 1 million subscribers or 2 million subscribers? Who the [ __ ] cares? You needed a urinal. You got to take a piss. That pleasure is the same for you. It's the pleasure of someone who has a homeless person, the pleasure of eating food when you're hungry, the pleasure of walking down the beach, the pleasure of sitting down and relaxing, the pleasure of being able to close your eyes. There's some material benefits that come from that. But, and this is really what it means. So, you have to separate. You have to realize that all you are is that which you can feel. You're just a, the body. That's it. And I mean, you can make all this stuff. Who knows? Maybe there's a, a nuclear fallout or something crazy happens, a meteor hits this, and then, oh my God, all your effort is down the drain. You can't control that. All you can control is what you do. And so, then something beautiful happens. This, I've seen this so much with. So, I did a lot of mental health work for doctors, and what I saw is some doctors tore themselves apart because they attached themselves to the outcomes of their patients. I learned this on pediatric oncology because in pediatric oncology, you have kids who have cancer, and sometimes they die. And the only way you can sleep at night is not about whether the child lives or dies, because it's, these are highly aggressive, like, myomas and leukemias and things like that, bad cancers. The only way you can sleep at night is if you did the best that you could. And so, specifically with that person with the three gunshot wounds, like, that was my moment of like, discovering, like, am I going to sleep at night? Could I have done anything else? No. And so, then you can sleep at peace because you did everything that you could do. And you had the power to do. What if you could have done something else? That's the beauty of it. So, if you could have done something else, the beautiful thing about ego, and when you eliminate ego, is you ask yourself that question, and there's no ego that has to protect itself from the answer. So, once you eliminate, you say, "I could have done something else." And then you suffer for a moment. But the next day, when you wake up, you do better. And then the next day, you wake up, you do better. Next day, you wake up, you [ __ ] do better.
In my case, it was failed out of college, went to India, learned this principle. I woke up. This is embarrassing. So, I was a kid who had graduated with a 2.5 GPA when I graduated from medical school. I did not go to the award ceremony because it never dawned, I never looked at my grades because I didn't give a [ __ ] about my grades. I was like, "I'm gonna learn medicine. I'm gonna try to be a doctor." This is what I was gonna do. I won two awards. I didn't even show up because it never dawned on me that I could have won anything because I'm the loser. I'm the guy who barely, I'm a guy who got rejected from 120 medical schools. And so, like, absolutely, if you can do better, you look at that. But remember, doing better is in these hands. So, you should 100% do that. Do everything you can with these hands. 100%. Don't shy away from the fact that you could have done better. And that's how you sleep at night. But it's not a comment on your self-worth as an individual, how you do the things that you do. So, so that's where I, I mean, I would say that in a weird way, that is a comment, right? So, if you are unhappy with your actions, then by all means, think less of yourself. MH. The beautiful thing is that once you reach this egoless kind of state, and you think less of yourself, it becomes very easy to correct it because in your control. Absolutely. Y. But yeah, I mean, I think you should feel some amount of shame and disappointment. Then you wake up the next day, and it's in these hands. It's shame and disappointment in your actions, not shame and disappointment in the outcomes. Both, all of the above. I think it's fine. I thought you didn't have control over the outcomes. You don't have control over, but, but you do have control over your actions, right? So, so, and that's where I think it gets a little bit tricky. But you could, I think this is where people get stuck a lot of the time. They confuse actions and outcomes. Could I have done better? Well, maybe I could, I could have done more. I should have, would have, could. Yeah. So, so that's where I would say, in my experience, as you notice the shortcomings in your behavior, that's what you should correct. But even if you had done that, it's not clear that the outcome would have changed, right? No one can look at alternate universes and actually collect data. That's what your mind may tell you. So, that's why I say, like, still focus on yourself. And if you're not happy with your actions, by all means, correct that. Compassion, man. Compassion for ourselves, compassion for other people. It's, uh, so funny. I think for a long time, I wanted the, the masculine urge to be seen as a competent, hardworking, achieving sort of guy. And compassion seems like weird and fluffy and, and weak, and you shouldn't really play around with that. But I'm pretty quickly coming to believe, I think it's like, it's a genuine strength, and it's something that I'm trying to cultivate more for myself and for other people as well. Yeah.
And I think there's, there's a beautiful wisdom in what you just said. Modern wisdom. Um, so I think you said, "I, I used to want to be seen." If you pay attention to your language, that's ego. Ego is about the way that you, you were seen, not about who you are. And the beautiful thing about compassion is, if you think about people who are ego and are concerned about ego and self-worth, their attention is on themselves. How do other people see me? I'm always looking at this and how this will be perceived. The moment that you focus on compassion, you stop looking at here and you start looking at actually human beings. That's why compassion also eliminates ego. So, if you look at all of these religious traditions, it's super cool because there's psychological neuroscience support for a lot of these, like, religious and spiritual traditions. And why did Jesus say, like, "Do good to other people"? And in, in Hinduism, we have ahimsa, and we have that in Buddhism too. So, it's why compassion? Because compassion actually eliminates the ego. Because what is it that makes it hard for people to be compassionate? It's because I'm so caught up on this. I can't afford to care about someone else because my needs are not being met. And, and when I look at all these people who are adversely judging Jordan Peterson or Jonah Hill or whoever, Taylor Swift, take your pick, me, you, what I tend to find is that the people who hate other people on the internet, often times cannot afford to be compassionate because of something going on in their life, right? Who is it that is spending the time to just make random toxic comments on the internet? These are not, many of these people, I don't think, have fulfilling lives. That's been my experience, anyway. I don't know. So, compassion is beautiful at, at dissolving ego. We'll get back to talking to Dr. K in one minute, but first, I need to tell you about Momentus. You might have heard me say that I took my testosterone from 495 to 1006 last year, and two of the supplements I used throughout that were Fadogia Agrestis and Tongkat Ali. I first heard Dr. Andrew Huberman talk about these really impressive effects, which sound great until you realize that most supplements don't actually contain what they're advertising. MST makes the only NSF certified Fadogia Agrestis and Tongkat Ali on the planet. That means they're tested so rigorously that even Olympic athletes can use it. And that is why I partnered with them. So, if you're not performing in the gym or the bedroom the way that you would like, this is a fantastic place to begin to naturally improve your testosterone. And there is a 30-day money back guarantee, so you can buy it, try it for 29 days, and if you do not like it, they will give you your money back. Plus, they ship internationally. Right now, you can get 20% off everything sitewide by going to the link in the show notes below or heading to livemomentus.com/modernwisdom using the code modern wisdom at checkout. That's L I V E M O M E N T U S dot com slash modern wisdom and code modern wisdom at checkout.