How To Break Free From the Loser vs. Winner Identity Trap | Dr. K

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0:42Is there a part of your identity or ego that still gets the best of you? Every day, all the time.

0:52Dr. K:I think for me, it's being a loser. That's what you believe or think? Yeah, I am a loser. Like, I'm like, literally, I lose every day. I make so many mistakes. You know, like, I failed so many classes. I had applied to medical school to 120 times to get in. You know, took me three years to get into med school. Wow. Even today, you know, I'll make a YouTube video that sometimes has a million views in 10 days, sometimes has 100 ,000 views in 10 days. I am a loser. So here's the other thing. There are parts of the negative parts of our identity are only a problem if we make them a problem. And I can accept like, of course, I'm a loser.

1:38Dr. K:That doesn't mean I'm not also a winner. I have both of these things within me. Yeah. Right. I'm a good. I'm a good husband. Really important. and I'm a bad husband. The moment that I start believing that I am exclusively a good husband is the moment that my wife gets screwed. Really? Absolutely. I need to accept that at times I'm a bad husband. At times I'm a good husband. No one on this planet is perfect. So there's a lot of data that shows that the more cognitively flexible you are around your identity, the better off you will be and and i don't know if this kind of makes sense i know it sounds weird and i know it runs kind of contrary to some of the stuff that you may say but i i think you do this right i i think you you must in order to achieve what you've achieved you must consider your weak parts you must acknowledge 100 you know right that if i do not act in the right way my baser nature will take control.

2:43Dr. K:Yeah, of course. There is an addict, a degenerate gamer who lives inside of me. And if I'm not careful, that will come out again. Right, right. There's an importance of stepping into an identity that is more empowering than disempowering, I believe. Yes. As opposed to, I'm a loser, there's no chance I'm going to win this game. I'm going to mess up. You know, if I'm having a disempowering identity or belief, it's probably not going to serve me. Absolutely. So here's, here's, if you think you're a winner, it starts to become other people's fault. Then you're, you're right that it, there's a tension because now if you think of yourself as a winner and you get data that you're not winning, now your identity is threatened.

3:25This is what happened to me also, because here, first I was a loser. And then I was like, I was picked last, you know, on teams. I was made fun of, I was in special needs classes. So all these things, I didn't have the psychological or emotional tools as an eight-year-old on how to navigate the emotions of the world and fit into groups and societies and teams. So I just associated, oh, I'm picked last. I'm in special needs. I'm in the bottom of my class. I am a loser. Those I am statements, I believed. Then I said, let me work so hard to improve this so that I'm never picked last and so that I'm a winner.

4:05And I did that for years and it worked. I started getting picked first. I started being, you know, the best on a team, whatever it is through middle school and high school. But then everything became about winning. It was like, if I don't win, then my identity is going to crumble, right? It was like, now I'm a loser. And so my whole life became threatened with the idea of if I'm not a winner, then I'm a loser. That way I have to win at everything. And I associated winning with being right. So if I was wrong, I'm a loser. If I lose, I'm a loser. And so I tried to defend this identity, like you said, by being right and winning in everything, sports, business, relationships, until I hit about 29 or 30 years old.

4:51And I realized life was not about winning and losing. It was about win-win. How do I create a win-win scenario, even if I'm losing in a situation? And that became a part of my process was seeing everything from a lens of how do I create win-win? What does that look like? This experience. Instead of, I need to be right, I need to win at all costs.

5:19Dr. K:So I think it's beautiful because people are probably asking, how do I get from loser to winner to beyond? And I would even argue that you are doing what I'm saying. Yeah. So and people can even rewind this and pay attention to the subject of your sentences. Yes. How do I create win-win? The object is outside of you. I am a winner. I am a loser. So when we transcend identity, we don't focus on the ego. We focus on the action. We actually divorce our identity. we become independent of the action. This is a lesson that I learned the hard way in residency because, you know, you get trained to, like you think as a doctor, like I save lives, right?

6:09Dr. K:Like that's a, don't save lives. And then you like learn the hard way, like you can't save a life. Yeah. And people die on your table. Absolutely.

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