So my wife Ruthie Kenoja, CEO of Healthy

Gamer, and my boss always wants me to

make a video about how high performers

are different. And she's like, "Oh,

look, you know, you work with all these

people who are like billionaires and

CEOs, and you work with like these top

content creators, and you work with

really, really amazing people, right,

who are so exceptional, and you work

with all these degenerate gamers, these

losers on the internet." She doesn't

really think of them as losers. I am one

of those people, so she loves y'all,

too. But she's like, "Can you talk about

how these two people are different?

Like, what's the difference between

these two groups of people? What's their

secret that makes them exceptional?"

Because that would be so useful for our

community. And so, I'm going to make

that video, but I think it's going to be

a little bit different from what people

are expecting because my experience with

these high performers is actually that

they're broken in the right way. So many

of us are afraid of failure for example.

But a lot of the high performers that I

work with aren't just afraid of failure,

they are terrified of failure. Every day

when they wake up, they are paranoid

about being a failure or having a

particular insecurity. Every night when

they go to sleep, they are terrified of

not doing a good enough job. And so this

fear or terror or insecurity or lack of

self-confidence

drives them to excel when the rest of us

would be content with doing a decent job

and sort of spending our time like

chilling a little bit more. And this is

something I see a lot with people who

come to my office. And this is when

we've been working for a little while,

like a couple months in, they will share

a terrifying thought with me, which is

that I know I am capable. I know I'm

just as smart or even smarter than my

friend and yet I can't accomplish what

they accomplish. How do I accomplish

what someone else accomplishes? And it

turns out that the easiest way to do

that is to be broken in the right ways.

So let's talk about what those are.

First is they're terrified of failure.

Second is often times they're incredibly

insecure. The third is they have a

healthy degree of entitlement. And the

fourth is that they plan. So let's talk

about each of these in turn. So you know

oftentimes when we look at people who

are very successful, my, you know,

favorite example of this is here's how I

founded a hund00 million company at the

age of 30. So this is wake up in the

morning, have an organic coffee. Step

number two, go to the gym. Step number

three, get a $500 million investment for

my parents. Step number four, lose $400

million of that investment. Step number

five, have a $100 million company. So,

everyone looks at very successful

families and very successful people and

they look at the advantages, the

financial advantages that these people

grew up with. But the truth of the

matter is that there are all kinds of

psychological factors from families that

are exceptional. And this is something

that I experienced firsthand. Both of my

parents are doctors. They're immigrants

from India. So, when I was growing up,

my dad was like, "One of y'all is going

to be a doctor. One of youall is going

to be a lawyer." When I was 7 years old,

6 years old, 5 years old, my grandmother

was like, "You're going to make a great

doctor one day. You're going to make a

great doctor one day." When I was 15

years old, I told people, people would

ask me, "What do you want to be when you

grow up?" I said, "I want to be a

doctor." And they'd be like, "Oh my god,

wonderful. You're going to be a great

doctor." So, I had so much immense

pressure on me. And for all these media

things that you hear about, oh, this

person like, you know, grew up and was

really privileged. What they don't show

you is the literally thousands or ten

thousands of kids who grow up privileged

who wind up using heroin, cocaine,

drugs, you know, that daddy has a yacht

and they're burning all this money

through getting taken advantage of in

some like Emirati investment, right?

They don't show you all the drug addicts

who wind up in my office who also have

really rich parents that are paying for

their treatment. So, this is what we've

got to understand. It's not just about

financial advantages. It's also about

the psychological expectations that

these people are placed under. And if

you really want to understand what

separates a lot of these high performers

apart, it is this kind of stuff. They're

broken in the right way. When people

hear about our coaching program, their

first response is usually, "Why would I

work with another human being when I can

watch YouTube videos all on my own?"

Working with a coach is about amplifying

your time and effort. We're great at

wanting things and even making some

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struggle with follow through or have

some kind of setback. And that's exactly

where working with a coach can help.

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you. The second thing is that they're

very insecure and grew up with something

that I would call conditional love. So,

everyone says parents unconditional

love. Love them no matter what.

Honestly, when I work with many of my

high performers, they didn't grow up

with unconditional love. They grew up

with conditional love. Yeah. So, this

person, their kids went to Harvard, so

you need to go to Harvard, too. This is

my business partner. Everyone's going to

Ivy Leagues. Your ass better go to an

Ivy League. They were not loved

unconditionally. They were loved based

on their performance. And when you are

loved based on your performance, you do

not grow up feeling secure. And the only

time that you feel secure is when you

actually perform at a very very very

high level. And so since your your

psychology, right, your heart, this part

of you that wants to feel loved is so

unloved, it drives them to perform. And

so the first two are very hard to sort

of act on or learn from. So I've had

lots of patients who grew up in poor

families who also had conditional love.

The problem is that if you grew up in a

family that was kind of poor, the

conditions for you to be loved may not

have been excellent performance. And so

the I I hate to say it, but like these

two things are not things that you

should try to duplicate. The good news

is that the second two I think are

things that can be learned or

duplicated. And if you're someone who

has a lot of talent and a lot of

potential but struggles to make that

potential a reality, these are the two

things that you can learn from. The

first is a healthy sense of entitlement.

Now, a lot of people who are very

successful have an unhealthy sense of

entitlement. But what I'm talking about

is a healthy sense of entitlement. So,

I'll give you all a a great example of

this. This happened to me about a month

ago. So I gave a a talk at this

organization called YPO which is Young

President's Organization. So YPO is a

company uh is a is a professional

organization that in order to join you

have to have started a company or run a

company that is worth at least $25

million. So I went to one of their their

health and wellness conferences. It was

a super cool event. So I'm there with

about like 300 to 350 like CEOs, right?

And so some of them are running like $30

million companies. Some of them are

running $300 million companies. Some of

them are running $3 billion companies.

So when I was with this group of people,

I was giving a talk. When I was with

this group of people, I was amazed at

how entitled they were, but not in a bad

way. So like I was at dinner one day and

I'm making small talk with a group of

people. Okay? And so one person walks up

to me and he's like, "Hey, can I have he

asks the three people that I'm talking

to, he's like, "Hey, can I have Dr. K

for 5 minutes?" And it struck me how

rare this is, right? And I don't think

this person was bad. I don't think they

were behaving in a disrespectful way cuz

I had sort of offered right so I'd said

like hey after the talk a lot of people

came up to me and I was like I'll be

around at the conference if you guys I

know we had a bunch of questions but

we're at time for today so like if you

guys you know need something just grab

me so I sort of left that door open but

the thing that really shocked me was the

person said I have something important

to talk about these people are

socializing right now it's okay for me

to go up to these people and say can I

have Dr. K's time for five minutes. It's

important. Now, when you look at this,

there's a tendency to think, "Oh my god,

this guy's such an entitled asshole."

But I don't think that's what I see with

the high performers. It's not that

they're entitled or they think

that, you know, no one interrupted me

when I was like having a serious

conversation, right? People would come

up to me for the rest of the conference

and like they'd ask me some questions

and things like that, but they never

like took away important time from

something else. But if I was

socializing, they would just walk up to

me and say, "Hey, can I I have a couple

of questions. Can I ask you a few

questions?" They were polite about it.

But it shocked me how so many of my

patients were not taught that life is

supposed to help you in some way. That

there are human beings out there that

you can ask for help, that you can ask

for support, that if your boss is

mistreating you, it's okay to leave that

company. you actually don't owe them

anything. Right? This is the kind of

stuff that I see so much on the internet

where everyone's like upvoting all the

stuff about your boss don't owe you

crap, right? And there's a bunch of

people who are like not getting what

they deserve in life, but instead of

actually like taking what they deserve,

they're upvoting how unfair the world

is. And that's what I think. I'm not

trying to like burn y'all or be an ass

here, but there's like a lot of people

who complain about how unfair the world

is. And if you really look at the high

performers, they're the people who are

like, "Okay, if this situation is not

okay, I'm going to move." And that's

something that I've done time and time

and time again because I grew up with

parents who were empowered in some way.

So, they taught me like, "Hey, if

someone is like not treating you well,

you should not try to win them over. You

should leave." and then go get what you

deserve. If you are working hard and you

are doing a good job, find an

environment where that gets rewarded.

And this kind of agency, this kind of

idea that you have the power to create

the life that is actually deserving for

you is something that so many of my

patients have never experienced before.

The last thing, and this is what's so

interesting, so many of the people that

I've worked with who are incredibly high

performers hate contentment. They hate

sitting still. And if I had to give

y'all, if you're someone who is not

living up to your potential, the number

one thing that I think you are doing

wrong is you are too okay

with doing nothing. This is the number

one thing that separates high performers

from low performers is their capacity

for contentment. And so this is where if

you want to change one thing about your

life, be more dissatisfied

with your contentment. Now this gets a

little bit tricky because often times

when I work with people who are

underperformers or low performers, they

have a lot of dissatisfaction

with themselves. They have a lot of

dissatisfaction with the world. They

have a lot of dissatisfaction with

negative things. Somehow that sometimes

motivates people in the right direction

and sometimes motivates people in the

wrong direction. I don't know how else

to say it, but that's just what I've

seen. You know, sometimes when you're

like, "Oh my god, my boss is such an

asshole." It's like, I'm going to just

even though I'm unhappy with it, I'm

unhappy with the way I spend my time.

I'm unhappy with so many things. I'm

just not going to do anything about it.

There's something about being unhappy

with a negative thing that creates a

fork in the road where either you have

the motivation to change it or the

negativity piles up so much that it

feels overwhelming, triggers a fight,

flight or freeze response and then we

don't end up doing anything with it.

High performers are different in a

subtle way. They're unsatisfied with

contentment. Right? So when you say okay

I have to study for a test so I've got

four chapters to read let me read my

four chapters and when you are done with

that you are content that's the problem

because the high performer when they

read the four chapters they're not done

when they're done they're not done

contentment isn't sufficient they have

to work even harder and this is the

really interesting thing this is why I

think I see this so much in people who

struggle with things like video games

when you were done with the work that

you're supposed to do. If you're someone

who's not living up to your potential,

you feel relatively content. So, the

drive goes away and then you shift to

activities that make you complacent.

I'll start to play video games. I'll go

to a movie. And I'm not saying

recreation is bad, okay? This is

important to understand. So, I'm someone

who works very hard. I'm somewhat

content with contentment. And I'm

somewhat unsatisfied with contentment.

And I think recreation is fine. If

you're setting aside time to have a good

time, if the goal of that time is to

have fun, go for it. But what I see with

the low performers is they're not

interested in dedicated time to have

fun. They get relatively content and

then they move into this like

fastforwarding kind of world where

they're just doing activities that

accelerate the clock on their life. And

that's what separates people for who

excel from people who are just average.