she comes to China she gets me we go on a plane for like 16 hours from China to Ireland emotion no damage this is a trauma that is so character this day my mom put me in the school said to the principal here's Stephen it was not one person who could speak Mandarin in Miles you're in for a very special treat today because we have a conversation with the one and only Stephen he the creator of the original emotional damage meme so much more than that he's a filmmaker he has a monster Mr YouTube Monster Tick Tock following and he has a full TV show in the works that's coming out in March I'm really excited for it in this conversation we talk about his real emotional damage from childhood and obviously we had to touch on social media and its effects on Mental Health it's time for the checkup with Stephen he Stephen he hello welcome oh my God I'm familiar are you excited I I can't believe I'm in this building it's yeah you're faking it though you were you knew you were in the building because we just did our Tick Tock War which you unfairly beat me in can I tell you a secret I'm continuously nervous the whole day why is it because bear you're scared of bear no it's because I I've watched your channel a lot and so I'm yeah I'm just nervous oh well that's awesome okay well don't be nervous the goal is to have a good time uh and we want you to come out of this experience saying that you also want to be a doctor actually make your parents proud that would be wow if you if you manage to change my entire career tonight that'd be very significant so tell me uh tell me what was it like when you misheard what your parents wanted from you when you were a child misheard yeah what do you mean well your parents said become a doctor you heard actor and you became an actor so that's what I assume happened I was the best Chinese kid that did exactly what my parents wanted me to do and did not get a degree in anything that could earn me any money what was your degree in my degree is called acting and Global theater wow that is a bachelor's degree from London okay and then I came to were there any other Asian participants in this program ever it would be funny if I say no and I forget I actually had to ask me not Chinese not Chinese okay not Chinese yeah the reason I ask is because traditionally that is not a widely accepted and celebrated craft am I right and I agree with them now wait so now you're on team parents yeah yeah 100 because okay I need to like I want to share this this Insight because I didn't have it and it hit me like a bus yeah uh the inside that how many actors actually make minimum wage let alone a living let alone paying rent and having a family um I was under the impression that I'll get a degree I'll become a good actor through all the teachers teaching me and I'll go and get jobs yeah no that's not what happens no so uh I was um I was I lacked that Insight that I wish I had back then where do you think most actors know this going in or is this something that hits everybody at some point it yeah it's not a common enough Insight I think really none of people know it but isn't the reason why your parents don't want you to go into acting is precisely because of that reason it is yes so like they tell you but so I I guess a known about the one in a million thing that it's you got to be lucky you got to do all of that but thinking about it as a starry-eyed teenager is not as impactful as getting rejected three thousand times got it so it's the boss that hit me that drilled the inside into my head so it was the rejection not your parents telling you hey you shouldn't do it yeah yeah man we need to but you're saying you are unhappy that you didn't listen to your parents you wish you would have listened to your parents that uh oh what I think the current version of me is my favorite I'm very glad okay that um I went and I gave it a try and that I was absolutely slapped out of the audition room thousands of times I'm very glad that I I can kind of continue on a journey with those experiences living in me so I'm proud of it and I would not change a thing so how did you go from like I'm actually curious specifically what has been one of the worst auditions that you went off where either the casting people were Savages or you did a really bad job or an amazing job some cool story from your casting oh it's it's a lot I know you have something good it's a lot of Grimmer I saw for example I have a lot of these experiences that I hope other people don't but it's happened many times where I'll get an audition like I'll submit to something first um I'll get an audition and then I would spend half an hour learning the lines I spent one hour traveling that's it half an hour and you learn the lines yeah you're that fast two pages no that's hard is that right I tried to try out for these things for real I can't memorize you are you have great memories no I don't I couldn't do it really I couldn't do it uh props okay sorry I interrupted that's good um then uh I traveled for an hour to the audition room I sit in the waiting room for 25 minutes I go in um the assistant says there's your mark okay I'm rolling go ahead and do your thing I perform to the best of my ability and then I exit and I swear I'm not exaggerating a word of this the casting director behind the table does not look at me once oh not once no eye contact yeah she doesn't know what I look like after spending all of that time working for nothing uh there was that I've had is that is that the norm is that what they're supposed to do like are they supposed to like see what you look like on the film not what you're like in person or is this rude it's rude yeah yeah and that's why I say I hope like anyone who wants to be home I hope you don't have that but it's gonna happen to them probably you know there there's just occurrences sometimes where the the system is ineffective like here's an example um more often than I would like to admit they'll ask a hundred actors into an audition room to audition for a part that's already cast so there is no purpose what's the what is the value so for example um for Billings like they're trying to make money is that not necessarily justify their jobs oh usually it's not about usually it's more like um if I make a production I want to cast this guy he says yes and I'm like okay cool he drops out a week before oh no we have no leading actor let's let's call in 100 actors in and then audition day comes and he says he's back again uh so it's a complete waste of time for those hundred people that I called in got it so you don't even get to audition they just say you came for no reason bye or they like that to your face they don't do your face and as a hopeful actor you know you're thinking rather delusional things like oh now I'm in their books and they have heard of me and they'll call me back wow how many auditions do you think you've gone on jeez that's so in I'll briefly explain how like an actor um starts off you apply to to castings and then when you have an agent your agent does the same thing like submits you um to castings so when I was when I just graduated I would wake up in the morning and I would submit to 20 jobs and I was so so hungry that I was willing to lose money for an opportunity to act I was willing to travel to like Kentucky to do a Shakespeare play and cover my own travel and lodging wow and lose money just so I can be on stage a couple of times and I did that I did that many many times as well um so the submissions I have submitted a over three thousand and one hundred submissions and how many of those did you go to oh the the problem like the the percentage of those that call you in I would say one to two hundred okay because you did one to two hundred how many of those were rejections I'm it's I think through my entire career I think I landed seven what no wonder you're discouraged yeah yeah discouraging some other folks hey now oh it's it's an Insight you know whether it's good or not it's the fact so is that why you've made the uh sort of pivot move to leave the traditional gatekeeper world of Hollywood and come into the world of social media YouTube Tick Tock have your giant viral moment with emotional damage yeah everything else that you've been doing is that what led you here yes it was um I needed I needed to Pivot because I I saw what was happening around me and what I was personally experiencing and I was like yeah this is not ever gonna pay my rent ever um so I have to kind of think outside the box and at the moment it was because I had noticed an imbalance in the marketing industry where yeah I love how you're not because you know yes that's exactly what we do um that um marketing and New Media was extremely effective way more effective than traditional and so the logical kind of progression was uh Brands and companies would shift more of the marketing budget into New Media and that is a large large amount of the TV industry's Revenue so upon noticing this I I kind of formulated a prediction that if I could wield millions of viewers then that would give me leverage in the casting room or even straight to the producer okay um so you didn't view it as a money making scheme that you were more so saying this is a way for me to get into the thing I still want to do yes I saw it as a strategy so that I could maybe go into a casting room and say hey if you wouldn't mind three million expert viewers cast me yeah uh that come completely backfire that did not work at all well it's the same reason why I got into uh sort of social media and medicine I viewed it as a way that if I started my practice I could show patients what I'm capable of doing and they would come in to see me in the office and now we don't even want that to happen I want to keep Both Worlds very separate so we both started off with aspirations in One Direction but kind of found a form yeah oh yes that very much happened I remember it was is it was exactly 220 videos in wow um and I had been making nothing making maybe one or two dollars a day off of YouTube AdSense you were their Premier member oh yeah I had one guy that watched my videos probably it was me uh oh thank you thank you now I return the favor um and there was one day where A video popped off and it got it got it got on for thousand views and I was making its way up there and all of a sudden in one day I think I made 50 bucks oh that blew my head off I could not believe I'd made 50 bucks in one day because that could pay for lunch I could pay for everything and keep in mind I was an actor making nothing I was you know my mom and dad were helping me pay rent so that was huge for me and then the next day I think I made three hundred dollars oh so I was like wait wait wait a second what's going on and the next day I think it was 800. um what video is this this was I think it was a video called Asian parents going through your room okay very specific yes or they just roast everything about their child um so that was when I realized wait a second there's this money in this um and it continued on and it became a career that I could finally like tell my mom hey mom I have an earnings now um I can't pay rent and I can't do stuff like that now it was yeah it would have never been the case in like 30 years if I had kept auditioning um that started growing and then it grew to a bigger business and now the opposite has happened where I can no longer kind of afford to audition anymore because um I have a team that make the video with me and I need to take care of my people and if I give say a hundred hours of my time for free to auditions like I did last year no that was the year before 2021 then I would lose a lot of Revenue and I wouldn't be able to take care of my team so uh it's it's kind of interesting how yeah I'm 100 flipped that this career is more fulfilling you get to do what you want to do you're not um at the mercy of of someone above you that tell you no you're not good enough if you're not handsome enough you're not tall enough and you actually get to make fulfilling content and entertain people how do you balance that with not having to please a gatekeeper someone above you an exec but having to please the algorithm or whatever the audience wants out of you when it's not what you might want to do oh that's that's a great question wow that's a really great question and it makes me think too yeah I I think um yes every Creator meets the struggle of the algorithm wants you to make this but it's not necessarily what you want to make it could be for many reasons for me it was like I had made 64 I think right now about 64 Asian at sketches okay and I'm running out of ideas sure but they're what gets so um so how do we navigate that when I make a general sketch it's not about my upbringing growing up in China the views are significantly lower and half sometimes less um I I have a friend Ian who told me this piece of advice that may be helpful to others as well which is he calls it the 2-1 rule that you do two things for the algorithm and you do one thing for yourself this is from Entourage is that right yeah is that a book no no entourage is a TV show about making it in Hollywood this is a show you gotta watch it's that's why I didn't make it in Hollywood it's about a guy who from Queens and his friends how they all move out to LA and become well he becomes the famous actor but his agent would tell him you do two for you two for them and then one for you but you have to do the two yeah I don't remember if that's the right ratio he gave but it was Ari Gold I think who gave the ratio oh gotcha okay he was actually based off a real figure in Hollywood so yeah that's interesting that Ian pointed that yeah so it'll be the experiment this year and the the scene is constantly shifting as well so like recently um I've started making shorts and that that was an interesting pivot that uh really freed me um because to write a 60 second sketch is quite a different story from writing a two minute three minute sketch um all of a sudden the process is different what I need in it is different the amount of joke is vastly different I could do a sketch without progression without plot without development so um that was a really nice kind of burst of creativity that I think I needed after doing a lot of the same sketches did you find yourself burning out how long did you do uh before you became you said 200 videos before you went viral uh I yeah the progression is I had made about 120 videos before I got my first video with a million views okay uh and the others were like and how long you know how long of a period of time was that oh that must have been a year I think it was a year so a year of making 120 pieces of content yes then one does well you get a million views how long has it been since that moment oh then it went down oh it went down yeah so video number 120 I remember the so well it's a video that I made made satirized how my mom used to throw slippers at me okay uh and then I went down back to about 5 000 views for another 100 videos okay these are these are shorter because I I started on Tick Tock as a strategy um at video number 200 uh that was when the money came in for the first time uh then from then I grew to about two mil two million subscribers on YouTube long form I didn't make sure it's then um that might have taken another 40 50 videos and then emotional damage happened and the world just exploded okay how did you come up with emotional damage so it was a sketch I wanted to write a sketch about and for those who don't know by the way emotional damage is a tagline or joke that you have that if someone you do it you explain what it is better than us okay because I don't want to misrepresent your catchphrase it's like meech it's like you trying to figure out what the heck pee whoop means or whatever there's a meaning there's a meaning see I did not know there's no meaning just a random sound I make but I love that sound the emotional damage is a meme it's sort of off of a sketch that I made called when Asian is a difficulty mode um I had made the sketch it was not about emotional damage but somebody took that about three second clip and sort of putting it behind videos of like a roast or a joke um and from then on it had been put behind hundreds and then there was hundreds of thousands of videos it got turned into a sound song remix um and uh now it's kind of commonly sent among peers as a personal like as an inside joke thing yeah send it to each other and it was actually in one of my uh YouTube videos it was yeah yeah well no I think you saw it because a lot of people tagged you and they're like oh my god look you're in this and I'm like oh this is so cool we can connect yeah we ended up meeting uh on the YouTube event at the YouTube yes so over this period of time uh like 100 200 videos a lot of time goes by how does your mental health and physical health change during that time oh that's a really interesting change it's a it's actually more exciting and passionate than now wait your health was you're taking care of your health you were more passionate about it then also what I mean was like um in the beginning portion before I had made money that was fun it didn't feel like hard work it didn't feel like I had to force myself to do anything no stress yeah it was genuinely fun creativity yes oh full freedom of creativity and then uh more pieces started to come in you know a team started to come in and other concerns and of course the monetization side the sponsorship side and the side of the algorithm that have to do certain things to please the algorithm and the audience that came in and it did it started um making the process a lot more complicated like I missed the days where I would go that's a great idea I'd write it I shoot it I make a great sketch today it's more like at any time I'd have five sketches in production at the same time no one's in a revision one's in the edit who wants to shut today so the process got more complicated for sure and I find myself um spending too much time in the non-creative stuff like the paperwork the business the running the the companies learning about taxes I don't like any of the boring stuff yeah yeah um so uh yeah next step I guess is to learn to um to have that handled so I can go back to the creative mind more than the people so when you're not in the creative mind is your mental health suffering yes the oh this is a large um thing that happened to me in October last year October of 2022 um in while I was producing a series called ginormous it's going to be out March 25th so what happened in that period was um I was running too many things I was running kind of three large projects project number one I was editing General I thought I could do it myself because I've edited videos but I heavily heavily underestimated it um so I was editing at that week the worst of it 12 hours a day wow and uh simultaneously I was doing a lot of work with the producing side like um the Press preparing content to launch preparing a schedule uh looking at venues to host screening so the producing side of things and on top of those two I had my six channels that I had to make content for um and I remember there was one point where things got bad because of my kind of lack of ability I couldn't run those three things at the same time well because you're human yeah yeah this isn't your lack of ability yeah this is your truth of being a human yes I could like a shadow clone myself yeah I need to learn that so all three projects started failing um the the edit was way behind which caused a Cascade effect into I had to call up Good Morning America and say I'm so sorry can we push the launch date can we hold the story um the the Press side stuff wasn't getting done and my channel was three weeks behind all three verticals had failed and for the first time and I'm 26 for the first time in my life my body started not being reliable like I had very often moments where my heart would beat very uncomfortably to the point where I had to stop I had to like stop editing take the time to breathe anxiety Panic it could be it could be and also for the first time ever I started to lose balance that that really worried me I'd be walking or going to the shop and all of a sudden I'd miss a step I was like okay I'm scared something is not right and it's because you weren't there in the moment your mind was elsewhere or you were physically out like head spinning room spinning not necessary rooms like this equilibrium yes for for glimpses for like one step if I'm walking somewhere uh and uh just a general a little bit of a nauseous feeling I remember very clear this one day this one day I had to my laptop wasn't uh capable enough of editing I needed to get a more powerful laptop I walked to Apple and that that was in the thick of it that was when everything was going down um I remember I would lose balance every now and then have to catch myself from a step and then I was in World Trade Center New York people started coming up to me and and I got like a group of about seven people talking to me and taking pictures and I fell like I could fall at any second oh my God so I must have behaved very strangely in front of them but yeah that I told my mom about it and I was like this should not be happening I hope your mom encouraged you to get checked out yes yes and she encouraged me to um to take a step back and so I took the loss you know I am I I delayed the show for three months um cost another like thirty thousand dollars to hire on editors to do what I couldn't do which is funny because they do a better job anyway um and I learned that from then on like okay I've gotta make an effort to not abuse my body too much did the symptoms fully resolve when you made those changes it got a lot better yeah yeah it definitely got a lot better the the losing balance thing went away now I don't lose the balance uh the heart beating uncomfortably thing it was still there for maybe a week and then it slowly got back to normal yeah isn't it incredible um how the human body create symptoms based on what is going on situationally around you and me as a doctor would never be able to know unless I run tests or we change your situation what is the cause of these symptoms because you know if I if you ask me what are the symptoms of a stroke yeah I could say it's someone walking and then all of a sudden losing their balance and then not knowing exactly where they are or feeling out of it that could easily be a stroke but it could also be a migraine but it could also be a panic attack it could also be a sleep deprivation so like that's what's Difficult about medicine if you're practicing it in the day in the way that it is practiced in this day and age meaning right now most times you walk into a doctor's office it feels like you're an assembly line it's like an expressway where patients just move in and out in and out get them in and get them out so you come in uh the way that doctors practice these days oh you have this symptom okay so that's treatment uh B Imaging C okay here you go bye versus I gotta sit with you I gotta talk to you what's going on in October 2022 that you're feeling this way is there anything else going on are you sleeping well and only upon painting this full picture of however long it took us to get to this full conversation can I possibly even give you some reasonable thoughts of mine yes what to do next but no one gets that these days yeah exactly it doesn't make sense for a doctor to do all of that in 15 minutes yeah well if we get 15 minutes it's just even from a patient perspective I I don't know if you did you end up seeking help for this like did you go and get checked out by a doctor or December I went I did get checked out and I did blood tests okay so you did do some tests did you feel rushed by the doctor or you were comfortable you have a good relationship in Ireland by the way oh really why Ireland I'm from Ireland okay I should have started with effort okay I'm Irish when I was eight years old I was born and raised in China and then immigrated to Ireland wow okay um and as my Irish accent is going to start coming out and then grew up between Ireland and China uh 17 years old I went to London for for the bachelor's degree and then I came to New York okay so I went back home for Christmas uh saw a doctor I felt very well taken care of I don't even think there was anyone after me so I had any time okay as much time as I wanted so apparently we need to shift our model more towards what's going on in Ireland which I know nothing of so but you're saying it's good it's a positive experience yeah I I did not feel rushed yeah okay and uh everything came back you're good you're healthy we can expect millions of more videos from for me you could definitely expect videos I don't think I've gotten the test result back yet but what from December January it was in January uh so we'll see yeah I should have it okay I should check well I hope you should check it out if there's any questions feel free to send them my way I think he's gonna answer general questions um but yeah that's uh that's pretty incredible that you started feeling those effects on your health quickly uh I also know that in your past medical history you've had a surgery uh on your eyebrow yes tell me about that oh this will be the first time it's in public because it could have been hiding this okay there's an only time it's perfectly human exactly that's why like we need to break the stigma and I appreciate you doing so awesome awesome so this was from 20 21 Q4 uh it was a it was quite a stressful period because of deadlines previously I had been making content to however I want but suddenly in December I think I had like 13 continuous deadlines that I had to hit um and of course you know things go wrong all the time like edits are late or a video it needs to be re-shot revised so in about halfway through that um the period of work I had a bump started developing here right here you might not see it on your uh my right right eyebrow okay uh I didn't know what it was I didn't take it that seriously but then the bump got infected it's like a folliculitis I don't know what that word means infected hair follicle oh I think that's what it was yeah um it got infected and in like three days it puffed up to about the size of an olive wow that's very bothersome okay very bad and hard to make content with that yes and I did the most Chinese thing ever I slapped a Band-Aid on it and just filmed anyway really yeah and no one noticed no one asked questions a lot of people did a lot of people like why is wearing a Band-Aid so this is the answer because I had a I had an infected hair follicle I guess um I I went to the doctor's room I think I did I went to the doctors to give me antibiotics and it came back down to an unnoticeable little bump again but it's all noticeable if I touch it but you can't see it or anything yeah um then twice after that in periods of stress it has gotten affected and just become huge really is it because you pick at it like when you're stressed like are you picking up oh never no oh no I became like like traumatized I still to this I don't really touch that area of my face because I'm so scared of it you know doing the thing um this is a funny story We shot ginormal in September in La uh and it was this huge thing that cost a lot of money and like we had over a hundred people work on it so it's very important and I was like what are the chances it pops up during production did it pop up wouldn't it be so funny if it popped up in this time so this is a true story um it was an it was an eight day shoot across three weeks we survived through the eight days and the day after rap it popped up it became a huge wow so I got so long so you had like a stress cyst it was yes oh yeah after the time I was I thought it was luck I was like luck would have a hilarious sense of humor if it decides to do me now um but then I had the surgery to to remove the whole thing and the doctor the surgeon did tell me that it had a opening where bacteria can make its way inside the thing and when I'm stressed my immune system comes down bacteria makes it in and it gets infected so I learned that ah actually it was actually a pattern to this when I'm highly stressed it doesn't interesting interesting it's almost like not a hundred percent because it's a different cause but like a cold sore oftentimes comes up when you're sick or stressed and this thing just happened to be not a cold sore but a bacterial Source instead of a viral Source right it's just so that's so interesting it gets effect it is but now you've had it surgically removed yes it is removed rip stresses it's gone forever yes what the hell wow okay so that is the theme that's been happening um quite lately and it's caught me off guard so fast what what's the theme the theme of the theme of my body kind of just having things going wrong you're 26 nothing's going wrong exactly so I'll describe I'll describe um the things that I notice uh for my whole life I never had to think before I did movements if I needed to roll down the floor for a video I'd roll but that the last year has changed that now before I do a lot of movements I have to go okay so is my neck okay okay it's Grand is my you know whatever okay screen okay let's do it but for every video now I stretch which is the saddest thing that my editor has to watch what do you mean status this is the most productive proactive thing you can do like I'm celebrating this as a physician thank you it's like I wish I could be as carefree as I was last year and do everything um but now that's happened and the other thing is I I believe I have a pinched nerve on the back of my neck um it's been there for like two years now and it's gotten better and worse probably affected by stress as well what would happen is when my neck would be like in a certain movement I'd feel a shoot like a like a sensation um paresthesia we call them okay oh all in my right arm it didn't last it just flashes um and then um it got during the stressful period And this is like two days after the general shoot I did a very simple a movement that I always do I'm at my bed and I lean on my bed Harry's we're moving dude something happened and I felt a huge shock it was like someone punched the nerve the the feeling of the the tingling what did you say it was called paresthesia paresthesia okay the paresthesia changed it became something different I it became very painful and um I didn't move it I didn't know if I could move it look for for a minute 60 seconds I was laying there still because I was going through the pain um and then two weeks after that I couldn't move my neck wow so till this day it still has that paresthesia yeah what you're feeling that weird sensation okay yeah yeah the shooting itself is actually again I don't want to make a diagnosis because I don't know the full picture but it sounds a lot like something known as cervical radiculopathy okay where you have the vertebrae in your neck which are called the cervical vertebrae there's different sections of the vertebrae going up and down your back cervical thoracic lumbar sacral okay and the last one is the coccyx the little tailbone um but on top the cervical ones you have nerves that come out after each vertebrae and those nerves go and they give sensation to uh and movement to the rest of your body now the ones in the cervical area obviously are the ones that go down your arms and give sensation and muscular movement to the arms that's in fact how you're able to move your body feel things temperature regulation all of that now if the vertebrae for some reason go into a spasm whether it's because you slept wrong you were in a weird position you were cocking your head weird because you were stressed you were carrying your weight uh with your shoulders Shrugged up yeah um you can create such a position that those vertebrae those bone put pressure on the nerve therefore bother the nerve to send these weird signals all the way down rating down the length of the nerve yeah so that's my suspicion is a terrifying thing it sounds scary but it's treatable at the source so which is which is at the vertebrae likely again it's hard to know without doing all the tests and all but if if it is that it is at the vertebrae and that can happen as a result of something functional like you held your neck in a weird position you had something around your neck that you were wearing that made it uncomfortable or it could be anatomical which could be a disc bulge a growth a bone spur all these other things and those are the least likely options in many people especially a young person like you who's otherwise healthy but you don't rule anything out until you sort of get a good picture in examining a patient I see okay that was a very long-winded explanation about neck pain no it radiates out very scary it shouldn't be scary because it's treatable there's a lot of conditions that cause uh what you're describing as like a neuropathy which is like pathy in medicine is like a pathological condition something wrong um neuro meaning nerve so a neuropathy that goes down the the arms can be a common symptom for a lot of patients that have Lyme disease diabetes and they can't get rid of it treating their neck because it's coming as a result of an issue at the nerve okay and that's a very different image than what likely you were experiencing right and that becomes trickier I see it I do feel neck movements have a great impact on it which means that um that there's a term in medicine called reproducible pain okay and generally speaking when we say pain is reproducible that's a good thing generally speaking because if you're telling me you have chest pain and then I press on your rib and I can reproduce the pain that means it's likely not a cardiac it's not your heart because it's likely the muscle the tissue the bone things that are not super serious okay um if you're having uh pain on the other side and it's reproducible when you take a breath but it's because it's reproducible I know it's more likely to be the rib rather than the lung tissue so the fact that yours is reproducible oh if I do this Next Movement something happens it's more likely coming that from that as a source rather than something happening at the nerve itself oh the okay that's good I'm happy to hear that so I hope I could give you some reassurance from that there's another way it kind of affects me um in sports I very often get caught off guard with usually it's a reaching movement um I played badminton and I've recently kind of started learning tennis okay uh dude it's terrible but roughly every session I play it happens like once okay what happens um it would be a movement I'd move quite fast and generally be like I'm reaching this way or this way or anyway I'm reaching I'd feel the the attack the Stinger yeah the Stinger yeah and the Stinger usually stiffens this part up I presume that's like it trying to protect itself it could be again hard to know because also the brachial plexus is in this region which is the the grouping of nerves that start splitting up and giving sensation to the rest of your arm but it's something happening there how did you get into racket Sports it uh it's very popular in China like okay growing up there uh but you didn't grow up in China I did I was born and raised in China but then how old were you when you came oh eight yeah I mean you didn't grow up in China oh and then I had a separate three years oh okay so you went back yeah 12 to 14 15. like I lived in Russia until I was six I didn't grow up in Russia like pretty I've lived in China more than I've lived in any other country you're in an international Soul yes I have but I have gone too many places okay yeah so it was living in China uh badminton was the most popular thing everyone played badminton I came um kind of to the West in Ireland there was very little in America I found it as an interesting thing it's like the networking Center of Chinese people no way I've are you in a league no in a club it's very casual there's no tournaments or competitiveness okay um it's more like a certain group of people just show up and have fun okay no one keeps scores okay um but uh before I found it very late on because the pandemic kind of stopped everything so I found it four years into living in New York I had I don't think I had any Chinese friends but then I discovered abandoned club that all of us are like I know everyone by people I found you okay yeah yeah it's the only place that's big Mandarin hours I love it I go and I I am I chat with everybody and were they aware of your skits and your work oh yeah yeah they were yes they were there were a lot of bombs bringing their children there to meet me oh that's awesome that's absolutely adorable and then how did you make the transition to tennis uh oh tennis was very recent it was because I had been in La um and the tennis being a very common sport there and also in my field of film and television um just a lot of producers that I became friends with played tennis so I came I went along uh it was very difficult at first I could not hit the ball being a badminton player um but uh I enjoy it now I think I I do get a bit more of a soreness in my shoulder that's probably a pretty common thing right yeah very common thing I mean also I feel tennis I mean much like other sports like like golf it's very technique focused yes where people think that they have to be super strong to but it's more about the technique and how you use your whole body right as a unit as opposed to strength just strength and like overpowering this thing because that goes quite wrong in tennis very quickly yeah I've yeah a lot of the the nerve things did happen in tennis when you're picking up a new sport though weird things are are gonna happen to your body you're gonna you're gonna be in soar in places that you were never sore before that's like kind of a typical response because your body is adjusting it's almost like when you're a newborn not a newborn but when you're young and you're learning to walk and your body's with each step and each failure is sending new signals to learn and which muscles to grow which muscles don't need to grow and all of that process happens when you're on a tennis court so like that's so cool what's cool is nerves actually expand and you get better control and activation of certain nerves the more you use them so this is why practicing is a thing exactly yeah it's like neuroplasticity of the mind that it's able to reshape itself like they always say you can't regrow brain cells but you can reshape the way that your brain is designed like different parts of your brain depending on which ones you use and don't use that's why the ones that are have lowest rates of Alzheimer's dementia are the ones that keep social connections alive that are Physically Active because we see that using the brain helps rebuild build and keep those structures youthful it's pretty cool oh that is so interesting okay there's a few parts of that I find very interesting um the social thing the pandemic kind of did this to all of us where our social life was cut yes it was restricted um and that's where that's kind of started my content creation in the last year I made friends for the first time um I made friends with fellow creators for the first time who for the like no one else got what I was saying I would tell like you know my mom about retention rate and it was like she would have no clue yeah but then I found a group of people who got everything uh and that did wonders for my happiness for my mental health I felt great well you found a community social support yes I very much appreciate communities yeah that's normal that's like that we all seek that sort of not just approval but Mutual understanding it's very difficult when you go and you share your worries or concerns with someone yeah and even though they might be nice and say they understand if you feel that they're not being genuine in their understanding it doesn't feel real your brain knows yes I bet it doesn't yeah so what's the connection between the um neural building of those Pathways and mental health is it the same thing well it's part of it for example in mental health one of the biggest factors that decides whether or not you're going to have a good outcome meaning a good outcome that you will not hurt yourself that um it will be a short-lived experience with this mental health situation is your social support structure wow so part of what I do as a doctor when someone comes in with a concern uh of a diagnosis of general anxiety disorder or major depressive disorder is right away hammering out who's their support structure who do they lean on and that not just goes for their benefit and the decrease of disease burden but also their crisis planning for example if I'm worried about them potentially going to a dark place yeah I would ask them if you do go into this dark place can we create a plan who can you call so that you don't even need to think yeah in that moment you say oh I'm feeling this way this is what I'm supposed to do and we have a plan in place and that all stems from having a good social structure around you and the unfortunate reality is so many of us have a broken social structure or have been hurt by others where we don't trust many other people or don't have great friendships and as a result we struggle because loneliness is a true pandemic that's going on right now not that others aren't as well but that's the one that is very Universal especially in the digital age because we feel like we're more connected but we're somehow connectedly disconnected yes yes and we talked about that earlier when we were saying how everyone is fighting each other on social media and there's groups going into tribe against one another actually I'm curious to ask you this when it comes to mental health do you ever have people write negative things to you or example you know you do a stereotypical Asian parent does anyone get upset at you for doing that or do you own it oh that's pretty funny no I own it because there is nothing wrong with the way I speak exactly simple it's your own experience um what I find quite funny and this is a a new thing coming to America and seeing you know it would be strange I would consider a strange coming from where I came from is that the people that would type comments saying they're offended none of them are Asian people [Laughter] a little bit confused here what's uh what's exactly going on yeah um but like yeah I'm using the country so I'm still learning about everything why do you think that is why do you think it's not Asian people like do you think it's uh like a savior complex that's going on or am I going too deep with it I I completely understand where you're coming from um I completely do and hmm I can kind of see a perspective where there are people who mean harm bullies racist people um there are people who mean harm that kind of use stereotypes as a way to harm others um and uh because of that pain that many have experienced maybe that is what the bad taste is in some people's eyes sure whereas in truth there is absolutely nothing wrong with the way we are with the way we speak and I don't want to give power to those bullies because that's that's my answer from that no that that's very fair and I I like you'd like to take a charitable thinking approach to it and think that from a lack of knowing the culture because there may not be a part of it as you said that the loudest voices that you get in the comment sections are usually not ones from your culture they believe that this could be detrimental they get worried and with good intentions are now creating a problem yeah yeah it's it's a perspective that is not valuable basically right it doesn't help anyone and I don't think it should be the case yeah yeah because I think ultimately it stunts our ability to have conversation discourse comedy to laugh at ourselves in fact what do you take like you're basically a comedian these days on social media what uh and in film what uh what's your take on the state of comedy in general oh well it's very different around the world uh the United States is in a very unique spot that I do not see with many other nations where a culture how would I put this into words um people are losing the ability to laugh at themselves I think and it's not anybody's fault because I know it comes from a place of possible hurt so uh you know no one's to blame and it's it's not necessarily a bad thing because if you're just trying to protect yourself I 100 understand that um but I do have a x kind of an extra caution that I have to put onto all the comedy that I write and to consider a lot about okay from what angle can someone get offended by this so you actively think about that when you make content yes yes all the time really yeah yeah if you didn't have to think about that would your comedy be different and how so uh like here's an example if I made comedy's cases in China if it all different stuff it would be a whole different story really yeah okay why you would be more free to make more jokes [Laughter] yes I think I'd be more free I think there would be more things I could satirize wow okay so one thing that I try to do is is individualize um all the all the satire that I make so I'll give an example um instead of making fun of Asian fathers I make fun of my father instead of making fun of failed actors I make fun of me the failed actor so every the butt of every joke has to be me uh whereas if I was doing this in China I'd make fun about you I make fun of everyone else so I think that's the main difference that the butt of the joke has to be me and me alone not other Chinese people not other young people not other actors not other do you view that as a positive thing or just whatever I I would like to see people regain the ability to laugh at themselves yeah I think there is great power because that takes the power from the bullies right I agree I think that's an understated point where by being able to laugh at yourself and laugh at your problems yeah comedy can be a healing tool and you wouldn't think that you would think someone's making a joke about me and certainly comedy can become toxic where someone is bullying you with their comedy and you become just full-on stepped on but then there is also a layer of you're going to a comedy show and the person is doing crowd work and they pick you out and they make jokes about you and while it may sting a little bit you're kind of laughing because you're enjoying it you're like wow this is actually really funny that's a good joke and I'm enjoying this so there is healing in that and because it requires Nuance to figure out and our social media digital world is devoid of nuance it feels like we have grown an allergy to Nuance that because of it we can't have the comedy that maybe you would have if you were in China yes yes yeah we lose a lot of Comedy a lot of Comedy that might be quick just even America 30 years ago right there lot of fantastic funny things that today would be considered um offensive and I'm still very much undereducated in in the culture here um but there it entertained people back then and there wasn't this perspective of everything has to be negative you know everything has to be I'm offended about this thing yeah I remember watching do you ever watch a comedian Don Rickles I'm not sure he would roast people all the time but he would roast everybody in the room like it didn't matter what race you were what religion you were what you look like tall sure like he would just roast everybody including himself and he did it with like a layer of love I remember even seeing skits of him saying like I hate everybody but I love everybody and because that I'm gonna roast everybody and you could see that transcend the hatred and I worry that we might be losing on on comedians like that because of their worry of staying monetized or not being uh or being canceled um to me I think there's a there is for me a very strong and distinctive kind of line and this transcends culture it's it's the same in China it's the same in the UK it's the same here and that's intention you know it's intention um the comedy that intends to satirize something and and laugh with people um in my eyes I would enjoy that whereas the bad thing comes when someone has the intention to harm sure so that I think that's Universal and it feels like most people would be sharp enough in a room to be able to distinguish the difference between it too yes like if you have one person get on stage and just be mean yeah oh everyone you would know yeah you would know in your heart you'd be like no this sounds wrong this is not coming off well and then if someone is doing it and everyone's involved and it feels like a engaging bringing people in as opposed to pushing people out I feel like that would be felt as well but because we're not feeling both we've lost our contrast this measuring stick of what is right yeah social media well it's so funny that you say social media because you told me you went into this because you get to Be Your Own Boss you get to create whatever content you want and then on the same flip side you told me you can't create the content you want because the audience and the algorithm demands something from you your comedy uh abilities are shifted because you're not allowed allowed to say certain things they're contrasting thoughts oh yeah that's a very fair point and all of them I guess are valid like my comedy isn't restricted much I'm it's more restricted by uh algorithm and having to to um do certain sketches even though I I've run out of ideas or I'm burnt out with that sketch um but the the the conflict of I was trying to please casting directors and now I'm trying to please an algorithm yeah that's absolutely true yes I am and the you know the stakes are if I don't believe the algorithm I'll get no views and my income will drop which it has many times um but that I very strongly would rather be in this side than the auditions uh because it's up to me you know uh every rejection has nothing to do with me it's because their league came back it's because another Act was taller so you feel like it's like the audience and the algorithm is more fair yes it gives everybody a shot yeah more democratized definitely definitely more democratized and when you look at things like the amount of Asian rules available in Hollywood uh versus um well this is a kind of a new thing but how Asians have the oh let's say opportunities opportunities that Asian people actors have in Hollywood versus opportunities that Asian people have here um it is a lot more fair I think for for New Media where I can reach hundreds of millions of people by making good content but as an actor you really don't ever have that power yeah I spoke to Cal Penn about this okay um from uh if you've ever seen the movie Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle or Van Wilder I mean you're missing some American I'm sorry but um he is an actor that spoke about this and how it was hard for him to get roles and he would get typecasted uh he experienced racism in the casting room I bet yeah um that they would constantly ask him to do an Indian accent even if the role wasn't for an Indian role um and he he it upset him but then it also as a catch-22 encouraged him to take certain roles that he wouldn't even want to take that were typecasted and maybe not good roles in terms of positioning an Indian person in a positive light because it would ultimately get him to the place where he could get the roles that he would want what's your take on that Catch-22 because you sort of did that when you were traveling to Kentucky and paying your own way with the goal of I'll take this role that's not paying me anything lose money because I might be the next Brad Pitt yes I didn't land that by the way [Laughter] um yeah the cat's telling you that you have to give value uh oh there's two ways of looking at it the the being exploited and the race thing uh I personally I don't think I've had much of that uh I might go up for rules that like need me to speak Mandarin or need me to play the piano or like do kung fu stuff I don't see that as anything negative you know I yeah I don't think there's any any negativity that comes with that so that's totally fair um but on the work exploiting side hmm I don't quite like that part what I mean by the work exploding site is say I'm a production I need to cast the lead actor and I invite 300 actors in each actor gives me maybe one hour of work two hours traveling so that's 900 hours that I've just asked for that I'm not paying anything and they get nothing out of it sure I don't like that um but I it's a funny thing because the same kind of social media you know a lot of people put thousands of hours into making videos um and uh don't make money yeah uh so the exploitation of work yeah I don't like it when it comes to auditioning because you know I'm a professional who has a who got a Bachelor's degree in order to do my professional work that I've worked for a few thousand hours a year for zero dollars um but the other side the content creation side it feels more like I'm investing in a business that I'm building and that it's fair you know it's not up to someone with power who likes a person it's actually up to do I make good work it's interesting because again I'm gonna keep pointing out these paradoxes yeah because they're interesting to me you say that there's a lot of hours that are spent going to these auditions yes and that the the work exploitation on that level is bad and then you also told me that when you were doing that and it was pleasant but then now when you're in your own business and you have all these worries you feel less healthy and more mentally stressed out than you did when you were casting oh yeah that I take that for granted I think it's a part of business that comes to every business okay so I take that from going to but I think you raised a very interesting point with um when I was auditioning how I was so hungry that I would um be exploited that I would lose money for an opportunity and I think the reason that is the reason this whole industry of millions of people doing this is because the demand and Supply is just two Bonkers yes like if there were a thousand actors every actor would get jobs yeah but because there are millions and millions and millions of actors fighting for you know a hundred jobs a thousand jobs that's what caused this uh this Norm they're like oh yeah you're supposed to work for 30 years and never make minimum wage I think it's because of of that extremely overpowering demand and the unfairness comes from the selection of who gets to get those roles from The Gatekeepers of Hollywood um but then on social media there's like this also work exploitation where now if you upload content you're not even a part of the YouTube Partner program you'll still get ads put on your videos which is Savage no it is kind of like so like they're monetizing your content and you're not even getting a piece of it anymore that is a strange situation yeah I don't know enough about that too you're like I'm not gonna attack YouTube they make me too much money YouTube gave me an opportunity no no I'm not speaking badly about it I'm just saying that this work thing is very tricky to figure out because it's the same with medical school where a lot of people are pointing out on my social media that medical school's too competitive they're saying it's too expensive and that's the part I very much agree with like it doesn't need to be that expensive we need to figure that out but then they say it's too competitive and then I start wondering what does it mean that it's too competitive if there's only certain number of medical schools with only a certain number of slots because we only need a certain number of doctors then it's appropriately competitive if we need to make more then maybe the competition will become a little bit more fair but we shouldn't arbitrarily lower the standards to becoming a physician do you agree like just say oh you know what let's make it easier to get into Medical School let's lower the requirements that is such a strange thing it's a dilemma I'm not sure I fully understand so people are demanding that because it is too hard to get in that they make it easier to get yes what a strange concept yeah and I'm I don't know I don't know if I Vibe with it because it feels like it should be appropriately hard to get in because it's a competitive field oh I see I see oh okay so so it's not about is it about the individual or the competition of pairing on the computer individual I see uh well I'm Chinese so you're like I'm used to competing yes yeah I'm used to come I have some stories to tell about that actually oh tell me a story I want to hear something okay so so to answer the question first hmm I think it should be issued first of all the the most important thing is that you have professionals capable of delivering the help that people need you cannot sacrifice that for the sake of easier entry to the profession um and I the other parts I not educated enough to to get a fair get an impression of it um so yeah in China so this is China is a very very competitive place where there are just a lot of people a lot of people fighting for for spaces although I just heard the population is the first year it decreased is that I would believe that that's the births I think wow oh yeah well one like my My Generation don't have siblings so it's a it's a culture-wide nationwide kind of impact that very much socially impact yeah hugely um so and that that perfectly leads into my experience being in China when I was 12 to 14 15 years old about 14 and a half um while I was there I this is I just realized it'll be actually interesting perspective for westerners um while I was there we were doing something called which is Middle School the first half okay so typically children are 13 14 15 years old for this period of school and China is a developing country and education kind of lasts until about when you're 14 then it stops and if you want to continue education you have to go to private schools because of that there is this massive competitive energy to get into the private schools I'm from Shenzhen which is one of the biggest cities with 12 million people and while I was there what I saw was an absolutely unreasonable amount of pressure on all the 14 year olds to to compete and the number that I had heard at the time that continue on is less than a half wow so that alone is you know it decides your life it decides what kind of career you can have it's very very difficult in China if you don't have education to start a career like like I did in America so you've kind of like this this this permanent unbreakable barrier that you're you're stuck to terrible jobs so labor probably work um and there's one aspect that makes this way worse and that aspect is that none of my generation have siblings except very rare twins so for the boys you are the only chance for your family to carry down their lineage and on your shoulders rest your entire lineage to do well to become a respected person to become a person of high social class so that's where the culture that I grew up in the culture that I satirized all the time of like parents saying you have to get A's all the time you have to play the piano it's because of that right it's because all the parents like this is our only thing that will pass on the lineage and it must be so stressful because now the health and well-being of your parents once they get older is on one person's shoulders as opposed to distributed amongst multiple siblings my personal friends um they're complaining about this it's hard enough as it is for a 25 year old to get a job or a career in China currently but each of them are experiencing say a young couple gets married they're in the 20s they now have four parents of theirs and eight grandparents that will very soon need them to provide for and that pressure is is very unfair yeah I this is what I hear from my friends who are in China wow yeah so the buff it's a hard it's hard was that why your family decided not to stay my mom I mean not the only reason but one of the reasons my mom just wanted to move uh I was not consulted in this decision I was told you come here okay thanks Mom what was the reason she wanted to leave China I think she wanted to see more of the world she wanted to experience other stuff and at the time my when I was four my mother and father separated and so I think you know she just wanted a fresh scene to just start anew and the reason we went to Ireland was that was the only other country we had family so we had a distant uncle in Ireland and that's why she went oh interesting she set up and eventually she married an Irishman who became my dad okay and I came over I became Irish immigrated and then grew up there wow what an interesting story yeah not a lot of uh and then why did you go back for the three years you're gonna face palm at this this is a hundred percent true story okay 100 uh in in our culture there is this kind of thing of authority um I do what I'm told period I don't ask questions I don't say anything if I'm talking about with that being oh yeah the Soviet family that I'm from yeah oh yeah so you would you would relate to this uh my uncle who's my mother's brother who was kind of like the the figure of authority in her family he lives in China um I'd been in Ireland for about two years that's how ridiculous stories my uncle came to visit uh and when he visited me he saw that I had I was doing things like for example I would out kick a ball by myself with no one else there I would just kick a football on the field okay or he saw me who he would see me doing math homework and because I saw every other kid did it I would like count on my fingers and he says Stephen is getting stupid he's gonna come back to China true story translated word for word Steven is getting stupid he needs to come back to China what is it how does kicking a ball in the yard by yourself translate to being stupid that's because to him smart kids are doing calculus not kicking a ball in a field and the math thing was I get okay fine it looks dumb when you do this it's fine yeah it's it's totally fine there's nothing wrong with me yeah and so I went okay I did what I was told I went where I went against that so I want to ask you this um it's about the experience of of immigrating to Ireland and I believe it had a strong impact on me when I first went to Ireland uh I was eight years old and this is the story of the first day I was there I'll give you a sense of how like much of a tiger mom my mom is um she she had been around for two years and I hadn't seen her in a long long time so she comes to China she gets me we go on a plane for like 16 hours from China to Ireland we land uh we land precisely I remember so well because of emotional damage it's just a trauma that is so characterless day we landed at 8 00 a.m my mom drove me to our house and she's like this is the house you're going to live in now it's like well okay what's going on here um and I met my stepdad and I was like uh he's he's my dad now and then she gave me a outfit she just put this on I was like what okay I put it on and then she drove me to school and I was in school by 11. there was instant I was in school by 11 A.M from Landing from Landing exactly I will always remember that day and that was one of the most impactful moments of me because you could just say scarring or traumatic because that's what that sounds like so here's the that's simple that's that's for a fellow veteran like myself the hard part was I was dropped in an environment my mom put me in the school said to the principal here's Stephen hello hello okay and then she left there was not one person who could speak Mandarin in Miles okay and eight-year-old me you spoke no no English not a word okay not a word wow my entire language was taken and I and as an eight-year-old I didn't have the social ability to go of course Google translator I didn't have that social ability Google translate didn't even think about this exist back then so um for the next like year I became extremely introverted and I I wasn't myself I was a child who loved playing with other children I love making friends playing games but because of that Synchro swim situation I became the child that was like sitting in the corner at lunch of course in fact I used to do this thing is really sad now that I think of it at lunch I would I would buy a sandwich and I would um I would continuously walk around the school pretending that I had somewhere I needed to get to oh I do that all the time but there was nowhere I had to get to I just had to wait until lunch was over yeah um so here's what I want to ask you I think it's possible that the experience kind of stifled my social abilities from for like 20 years 10 years 20 years 20 years yeah because I was just as an introvert I spent all of my teenage years in my bedroom playing a video game there was like one friend I met every now and then it was to play video games when I went to London I I was such a introvert that I I felt great anxiety going to any kind of party or anything so again I spent my entire bachelor's degree in my room um and only I'd say in the last last five years four years I guess it could be because the acting training too that I had opened up and found comfort in talking to people and making new friends so that's a theory that I have but I want to hear your your take on it um I to say that it's stifled it is hard to say yeah uh shifted okay pivoted for certain because you had to adapt to your circumstances and kids are really good at adapting and figuring things out just like how you were smart enough to figure out to walk around with a sandwich yeah I remember when I did that last but the whole idea of walking around and pretending I'm going somewhere I do that like I think I still do that to this day you do not know yeah but I do that like that's just like a thing I do oh my God like if I'm if I'm early for something I'm like oh this is not the right building I'm gonna walk around but meanwhile I know exactly where I need to go but I just need to kill some time okay so it's not out of like so that strategy was a coping mechanism yes yes very much um did it impact you sure can we say that it was a negative thing hard to say and I don't want to label it negative yes I am very very grateful for the path because the the fact that I can speak English to this ability it's like yeah how did you learn they put me in a special AIDS class um for a year okay but still no one spoke Mandarin yeah exactly so they would show you a picture and then say a word I'm assuming no they didn't do that oh how did you how do they communicate with you I was uh I had a caretaker and I was in a group of um of mentally challenged kids uh and uh everything was kind of LED we were led to our kind of tables we were led to the back of the room at classes um and I didn't have anyone that explained it to me but I picked it up through kind of watching so like I see everyone else take out their red book I take out my red book and gradually I learned what the words meant God um so just association yes Association do you feel like I and I know I was joking around about it earlier saying the word traumatic that there was this traumatic experience do you feel like it was a traumatic experience oh there there were a lot of discomfort a lot um there was a lot of sink or swim a lot of uh anxiety I don't want to go out uh like not how you felt after the fact but in the moment in the moment yeah this is so funny because well no because the reality is we have something known as Ace uh in in the study of psychology and mental health which is called adverse childhood events and we know that as the number of traumatic uh moments in one's life increase higher risk for developing other conditions increase as well and I'm not just talking about mental health because I'm talking about physical health conditions like feeling dizzy and stuff like that okay um and feeling uh describing a traumatic moment obviously you go to the worst things watching a loved one die um like in a horrendous way like your family member dies in your arms or um something terrible a loved one mistreating you is a big one but coming to a new country being thrown in a sink or swim situation having no one to fend for you could be one of those yeah but it largely depends on the circumstances around it which I'm not familiar with and we could spend hours discussing it basically like I'll give you an example uh if you were put into that classroom yeah and you knew you you can come home and talk to your mom and your stepdad about it or dad however yeah I call them dead um about it and you felt like they you had their support you might go into that classroom hating it yeah yeah but knowing that you were still safe and that feeling of safety might have prevented it from becoming a traumatic situation for you fascinating okay but it all depends on what your mindset was at the time which is what therapy essentially turns into figuring those things out if that's something you choose to do with your therapist uh great point and I do have an answer for that um I have a coping mechanism that has stayed with me for my whole life and it's being stupid I I don't know if I did this purposely but there are many moments where I don't associate things like for example when I'm going through the things when I'm going through the anxiety and having to deal with the situation my mind does not go I'll be cool later I'll go home later it kind of just numbs up and I just go okay I'm here now oh this is uncomfortable but I'm here now uh here now and I I still do that yeah many times where I mean example this is to play terrible I won't name any names but um I I recently had a thing done where I needed to get stitches I needed to get stitches and uh the the operation I did not get properly numbed so I felt every bloody stuff oh no and my I went into stupid mode again I went okay oh that hurts oh that hurts instead of stupid let's call it something like this you dissociated from them yeah but it was hard enough I felt every Stitch Nara you felt it but emotionally you weren't emotion maybe yeah so what happened that was I was like okay no problem it'll end up it'll end and then 10 goes by a little and then 20 goes by how long will this go and it was my girlfriend who who just just went I was clenching my teeth but like I didn't say anything uh my girlfriend was like hey how you doing I was like yeah this is quite painful and the the person who was doing the stitches was like what what wait why did you tell me you could have told me like 20 stitches ago so that's an example of this this thing that I I close off and I go I go enjoy enjoy sure that's a sign that you could have traumatic effect because you developed a coping mechanism around it and uh it's a sign it's not definite and it's worth exploring with a mental health professional because I think working with a mental health professional even though it's really hard with our current system here in the US it sucks and not everyone has access we need to fix that but we all could benefit from it okay because we all have varying degrees of traumas and adverse childhood events some of them impact us more in certain ways that are positive some of them negative something somewhere in between and figuring that out with someone whose objective is really helpful and I don't want to become your therapist right now because that's not ethical and not ideal for you but um what I will say is that the idea of dissociating during hard times is not unique to people who have gone through difficult moments like you have I see but also it's just a natural human phenomenon and I can even give you one that I can relate to myself I had my uh boxing match in on Halloween and the person I was fighting against was significantly more skilled than my first fight my first fight I was happy to be there I was excited I was stoked I was nervous and I felt all the nerves but I was also excited yeah and then for this next fight because I was much more nervous or was much more afraid of being nervous as a protective mechanism my mind kind of dissociated from those emotions but what happens and is problematic in a lot of these scenarios is when you blunt emotion like what we do when we dissociate or you call playing stupid yeah we actually lose the ability to feel positive emotions as well during that time or for a long period a lot of times people dissociate for longer periods of time and when I say positive in that moment for example a positive emotion that moment for you could have been gaining the courage to say something yeah yeah but because you dissociated so hard you didn't even connect to your positive yes that's exactly what I've been talking about yeah that's it you just explained it perfectly yes so for me I couldn't summon up my nerves which would have been good because nerves and anxieties your body is preparing you for a challenge okay so I didn't get to summon that nerves those nerves and as a result I didn't perform as good as I could have had I not associated or you in your case with the stitches did not speak up yeah when you totally was a positive all it would have taken is a sentence hey this hurts and it would have gone away and when I said that it did go away because yeah exactly wow that's is there a name for that coping dissociation okay and that's something we do kind of as a survival mechanism as humans and that's why you frequently hear like sexual assault victims will say I froze up or I was like a deer in headlights and I didn't know what to do that moment that's almost like a mechanical form of dissociating where you kind of freeze up during those bad moments um but we went really dark with that yeah um but interesting right I could learn I could really learn from this because there are many occasions where all it takes is like I don't want to be here and I can get out of the the painful or um or uncomfortable situations uh this like a dog this is a light little thing well yeah because it's you you actually have more control than your body's your mind is letting you believe you have there he is but what was the story is this so uh two days ago I think two days ago oh my God I went from my first facial because I'm making an effort to take care of myself okay okay I love it okay this is great I went into the facial um and I remember the person started popping my pimples uh I I might as well cover so I couldn't see what tools they used but it was sore it was Wally it was going on yeah the popping like the the squeezing it was very sore and it just kept going on and it kept going on it kept going on after the fact of enduring that for like 20 minutes I said to my girlfriend I was like I don't think I'll ever do that again it was very painful and then she said why did you tell her to stop I was like yeah why didn't I tell her to stop yeah it would have been so easy to say yeah this is also cultural because again Chinese culture in respecting Elders yeah treating things in a hierarchy process is very similar in Russian culture so I have the same situation like I've gone for a massage before um and I was getting a massage and it was way too rough okay I'm like no this person is like they're trying that means like they're doing something really powerful and the next day I couldn't walk because it was like but again I didn't need to and now I'm trying to learn and say like okay it's okay to speak up it doesn't mean you're spoiled yes as long as you do it respectfully yeah and I think that's a cultural shift that we need to sort of adjust a little bit I love that that's the real thing that we have a lot of these yeah it is I hear I remember your stories from you tell them in your videos like um the way you grew up your dad made you memorize pages of a book that's hard Social Studies textbook I still remember it and that's why you still remember yeah I don't remember the words oh okay but I remember like reading the chapter about Native Americans or something and I'm I'm memorizing it he takes it he's holding it and I start off by saying the the and it was Anne the first word he hands me the book back go back but now I'm so grateful that he's yes so I'm grateful that I went through everything I did so it's like it's a good learning process because you constantly adapt one way or another and uh it's a cool process my last question is going to be about how you manage your emotions now because now you have failure failure management yeah as your motto and as your brand so how do you manage failure affiliate management is a funny thing it started as a joke you know I was satirizing how like um many times I would be called hey that's not good enough and that's nothing because you know we our culture are very similar in the way that um the parents has to hold up this tough Persona of nothing's ever good enough right Mom I wouldn't ask her why didn't you and two nothing's ever good enough yeah um and so it started off as a piece of satire as a joke but then I actually found power in the failures and the rejections um I'm a very like logical and mathematical person and I I just I I just thought about this one day I was like hey wait a second it's really easy to win a 1 Million Lottery all you have to do is lose a couple million times right and I started thinking about this in a very large scale of everything I've been doing um the rejections that I had gotten the videos that I've made that didn't work and at the time I had gone on a journey of studying people who I admired there was an Insight that just blew me away and that is the people that I admired had failed way more times than I thought Leonardo DiCaprio on his Saga after interview says he was rejected for a year straight that blew my head off yeah imagine you're a casting director and Leonardo DiCaprio walks into your room and you're like nah gee so that I was like okay wait a second so it's not such a bad thing because all the people who have made it to Great length have gone there so that has taken power away um from the the negative rejections and the stuff because it used to make me feel like I was lesser like I wasn't good enough and stuff like that uh which yeah sometimes are true I'd have to get better yeah sure um but now I wear it with pride I don't fear failure anymore I know if I try to do one thing it's gonna fail hundreds of times but I'll pivot and I'll find a way um so that that emotion I have no negative emotion and I wish I wish this to I wish this insight to carry farther and uh de-villainize failure for more people as well because it's not to be feared um but the emotions thing that's a great thing you mentioned that because I have had extraordinary growth that has changed everything about my emotions and it's because of acting funny enough I went to a school called the neighborhood Playhouse in New York City it's actually the reason I came to the United States um is one of the best schools on the planet and while I was there I learned more about myself a lot more I learned why I am the way I am and I learned this concept that everything we experience every piece of Our Lives live inside us always so even if you forgot the day you accidentally dropped your ice cream cone on the floor when you were six it actually lives inside you and it works to affect the human you become and so gradually I started to understand myself oh so this is why I I feel um anger because I fear because you know when I was six for two years I would finish school and watch every other child get picked up by their parents and I'd walk on by myself so upon so essentially what kind of the neighborhood Playhouse teaches you to do is first to learn your instrument and that was massively impactful I learned why I am the way I am I learned why I feel every emotion I feel and then the other side of the acting is to use it as a as a professional skill and particularly the neighbor Playhouse teaches the Mizer technique which is a much healthier way to do it I think because it's not using your trauma it's using imagination to things that are not real and you know once you know yourself enough you can execute and Crown take 20 takes in a row for example like things like that and being able to let it go yes I can do it no way okay I'm not gonna make you cry though 20 takes in a row I did that once for a film it was only a little bit ago um but that process the the acting process now understanding like uh my dad said this thing to me over the last year there was a person I was very angry at very angry because I believed they wanted to exploit me um uh and now I would shout I I would be very like aggressive um and then my dad told me it's just you I was like what what are you talking about it's just me and he said oh it's it's they're pushing your buttons but it's your buttons and so I was like whoa wait a second so you're telling me the reason I feel this anger um is because of insecurities that are either poking at sensitive spots that I have to defend with the anger or stuff like that after I realize I look at everything differently now like any time I feel any negative emotion I go it's me now where's that button and why is it there wow and by realizing that it completely disarms the power of the anger I mean your level of insight is like a hundred right now you're like yeah like if you were a Pokemon and you had an Insight skill it would be a hundred out of 100 it would evolve to the final four yeah because most people don't do that um whether it's they don't know how they're not disciplined to um they're hurt so much further that they're incapable of doing that in the given moment because in reality we all could get to that point but it's hard we have to put a lot of our egos on the side it is the hardest thing I've ever done I I genuinely I wanted I meant harm to a person who hurt me very much and that's what was why the anger and to disarm that anger is the hardest thing I've ever done sure and it all comes from your successes in balancing your failure yeah celebrating your failure building up confidence off of those failures and then seeing all these things play out and how you have better control over your emotions so that you trust yourself to make those decisions yeah because it seems like you trust yourself now right uh what do you mean like like to make that decision to say yes this person's angry or I'm angry at this person but why I trust myself enough to figure it out because a lot of times we won't have faith in our ability to know the truth that maybe emotionally we're reasoning and are not being objective but it sounds like you're capable of being quite objective uh there is a there is a very famous Chinese poem and it starts off with these six letters um that are so profound it just it took me this long to understand it it's and it describes all humans are born good although your experiences might differ your nature is good that is the perspective that allows me to look at a person who I'm angry at and go oh damn if I'm in the position I'll probably do the same thing so that's charitable thinking you're doing you're doing all of the psychological terms that we would discuss in therapy you're naturally organically doing it which is great that's crazy it's very powerful thank you very much yeah so well done oh yay growth and today I'm gonna I'm gonna think about the disassociation thing more yeah because they're just uh there were just situations where I don't need to endure stuff and say I will say despite you having a hundred out of 100 Insight level working with a mental health professional goes so far in being able to bounce ideas off of to have a non-judgmental person who is completely devoid of emotional reasoning in the moment because they're not experiencing the same emotions you are or were that they can help facilitate your internal dialogue fascinating yeah interesting stuff yeah well that's why we cheers to failure management 2020. cheers 2023 so should we do the lightning round let's do it all right okay okay lightning round these are gonna be fast okay so we can get you out of here and you don't have to hate us for keeping you so late oh no I'm good okay which character that you've played whether it be on stage or one you've created on camera would live the longest wow these are these are hard for a fast fast let me run which character I've played plenty of characters would live the longest I think I have to go a fictional Stephen fictional Stephen that gets roasted all the time I think it's him okay shortest [Laughter] Pop Quiz There's an actual answer for this it's I played a I I played a character in Spring Awakening called maritz Stiefel and if you know the play he does not survive till the end merch default yeah um what's one thing you could do if you could never get hurt what's one thing I could do if I could never get hurt yeah like if I say you'll never get hurt doing this what would it oh oh okay in reality no put no superpowers or anything okay well the superpowers that you won't feel any pain or you won't have any you won't get hurt that's the superpower but only for that one activity yeah okay I think I think I would go into boxing really yeah no way if I don't get here because that's my main concern I just don't want anything you would you would like to box yes I think it'd be quite fun I think it would kind of want to take you into a box if I ever go be with you Doug Creator Clash three okay okay uh what's one thing that your body does that not everybody else's body does besides form stress cysts hope I was like yeah I've got plenty of that whatever you want I move well for being a thicker guy okay I think I move well okay we're gonna find that out in a box anyway have you uh ever almost died have I ever almost yes yeah there are a few experiences I could distinctly remember okay give me one um oh boy I didn't have parental controls for most of my life so so I wasn't many situations where I almost died uh okay so I'll do here's some of the easy ones I remember once riding a bike on a very narrow uh sidewalk right on a road cars go by there's a sidewalk I was riding the bike and um there was a pole directly in my way and things like this narrow yeah um I was like okay how am I good though I was speeding how am I going to get possible and a car was coming right at me at the perfect timing I managed to to execute one of these clock and then I I ducked the pole and came back I couldn't chuck the car end up the car yeah yeah so that's an example uh when I was young I was I tried a lot of stuff because there were no no parents tell me not to sure so I I went to um internet bars can I I went to internet bars when I was 13 and uh they were that was not a good place to go it was the the not legit ones it was the the scammy ones but behind many Alleyways someone's basement ones and in that place I saw many drug deals go down many illegal activities go down and it's a miracle that I managed to stay out of any of it wow and you were 13. I was 13. what's one thing you spend way too much money on I think I know the answer to that one money on big ticket I'm a watch collector yeah exactly yes we're just romanticizing about romanticizing um which country is funnier China or Ireland oh Ireland why oh bro I thought you were gonna say China for sure that's because I satirized but like the thing is Chinese humor is quite restricted okay um and life is harder so so not many people are as up for laughing okay whereas Irish people are very very free and uh they're goofy I think that's where I got my goofiness from okay do you have a personal health hack or tip that you love oh great question it's maybe misinformation so please listen to Dr Mike please listen to Dr Mike I like being upside down [Laughter] so let me let me paint the picture when I was young outside of my house there was a clothes hanging pole metal very strong I used to I was a kid back then I used to love climbing out the pole it was like a monkey bar thing yeah and you know yeah we like that I loved that and you still do that I I don't have anything to hang off of anymore I know what I'm getting you for the house it's a shame your birthday just passed because I would have gotten you this well yeah inversion table yes or the thing that you know in the gym yeah yeah I love that I love hanging off of the bed is that healthy I don't wanna I don't want to tell the camera anything people shouldn't do you love it it's healthy for you that's we'll leave it at that no medical claims to be proven or disproven thank you okay here's the actual real truth about sparkling water click here to check that out and as always stay happy and healthy