3. Cage-fighting jobs unloyal to us: The fortitude to withstand work

When you have 20 apps open on your phone, do you respond to every ping and message?

Work can get too stressful. Fast. Especially if you live in the US. Sometimes work is too stressful because we don’t have a say, we feel like we can’t control our future, and we feel like we are obligated to do things. And people just go, “that’s just how it is.”

So what can you do about it?

Besides the mind-numbing advice on avoiding overwhelm, self-care, and mindset shifts—what exactly is the philosophy we should adopt when we’re facing a cage fight every time you go up the elevator to your office, lab, or cubicle? 

When the advice to “work ‘til you drop” is no longer appealing, and yet the bloodthirsty appeal to “go big or go home” still rings—what can a mixed-heritage, a foreign student, an immigrant living in the US, or even just a well-intentioned person do?

If work is too stressful, and yet we still want to bear the responsibility of ownership over our lives and others’—how do we build a cagefight fortitude that withstands jobs that have no loyalty to us?

Listen to this episode if the noise of day-to-day busy-ness in the US gets too much, and you’re wondering what to do when work is too stressful. 

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In case you’re out and about without WiFi later, download this episode now.

Music: Silhouettes by Tobias Voigt (License code: 8IDBGGC5WXLDYLAU)

Previously: “An Ode to: Making it in Hollywood with a mixed-heritage background”

In this episode:

A cautionary tale of the individual hero journey.

Tribalism and group alignment: what we may have overlooked.

Why the mental health industry is tracking all the wrong data: What you really need to know

Peacock’s Bel-Air: Fresh Prince, Carlton, and the internal competition in pursuit of self-discovery

Who we really are within a family, friendly competition, and sibling rivalry

Episode 3 TRANSCRIPT

The cage-fight fortitude to build a safe house from jobs that have no loyalty to us

Paul Puri: Storytelling in its current form feeds this too, which we think about, like individual, like the hero's journey. It's an individual story in some ways. He that sort of isolationist identity. 

Thalia Toha: Yeah. And I was talking about this with somebody else, about kind of that lone wolf hero journey. I don't know why there's such a focus in that in other cultures. I know it's a little less so maybe now. But they're really starting to hone in on that, mostly because of the leadership of the Western World. And also definitely the storytelling aspect from the globalization of film making and TV. 

But given the structure of society that we live in right now, what's the alternative? Do we try to create localized communities to like, what are some options?

Paul: I think that we're at the same time with all this. We're butting up against the animalistic tendency towards tribalism, which is, you know,  … We are maybe tribal beings, and that our focus is on our individual or our group. Which involves then “othering” others. 

Anything that involves seeing another person for who they are, seeing them as being human, rather than an object, is going to help. Probably that gets facilitated through sort of group identities or group activities. And I think that the kind of trick with that is not limiting yourself to just one of those.

If you have multiple different groups that you are a part of, then it's less likely that you're going to get caught up, or sort of extremist in a single identity. 

Thalia: That makes sense. 

Paul: It’s kind of like developing a sort of psychological flexibility in who you are. I'm not one thing. I am 10 things. If you’re overinvested in one thing: One, you're going to take that to an extreme; And two, if anything pushes back on it, you're going to get very defensive. Or you're going to crash hard when that, you know, if that breaks down the ball

Thalia: Right. That's interesting. Because most people right now: their take is on the individuality or the tribalism that you mentioned. Does that take the form of, do you think, in the modern world, in you just kind of participate in many different projects? Or what do you think? How do you apply that? 

A cautionary tale of the individual hero journey and tribalism: What we may have overlooked

Paul: I don't actually know. I mean, I think that there's, I don't think there's an answer yet. I think that we are in search of sort of healthy versions of that. I think that there are, you know, if you go back to sort of classic forms. 

There's sort of the family and the village. And, you know, within it, there may be other subgroups, like a specific religious sect. And then maybe, you know, a collective group that does an activity together. Like a sport or a craft or something else. And those are, like, I don't think those are terrible models to be able to start with. We can probably do more than that. 

And, you know, we get into, you know, a collective online culture of, like, a fan group or something else. But that, I think these are reasonable things. Like finding something that people have in common. And yet, figuring out how to be able to use that to facilitate people's connecting to each other. And then figuring out how to do it. 

To me and that you are either excluding or having to be better or scapegoating those that aren't in your group. That's sort of the science of it. Then we have to get into the technology of it. That has to get figured out. 

I don't know that we're particularly good at that in modern life. But …

Right now, we're investing in our jobs and in career and industry that have no loyalty to us,  and don't really facilitate identity very much. 

Paul: Look, there's exceptions, like if you're firefighter. I think you bond pretty well with your colleagues. More so than, you know  … We writers are connecting on a picket line right now. 

But most of the time we are all sitting typing on our laptop. So, like, I think we're stuck in a very isolated culture without a whole lot of exit ramps. 

Why the mental health industry is tracking the wrong data: What you need to know

Thalia: Well,  … But I think even to your point, just the understanding and awareness really, that this is really kind of skills that we have to retool and retake. 

But speaking of multiple things that were involved with, you are now, you mentioned earlier in our conversation, that you have a new med tech venture. 

Paul: Yeah, it's a new startup. We’re still in a bit of stealth mode. So I'm not talking hugely publicly about it. What I would say is that it's essentially a collective of people in stakeholders and mental health. And I mean that we’re going beyond sort of clinical experts, just like anybody who has something that they believe. They believe we can improve mental health. With a platform that solves the structural issues of the mental health system—is the idea. 

I know that sounds fairly broad, and it is by design. But that's sort of the idea. It's called wealth without it has a little bit of what's called the Web 3-side to it. Which is, you know, unfortunately now corrupted by all the scams within the Crypto industry. 

But the technology is probably pretty useful for aspects of sort of individual identity and agency over your data on sort of finding new ways to have trust with other people online. So it's trying to do—it's a very big swing at an idea. But we have a team of people. And we're going after grants. And ultimately, investors—a little further down the road. 

But it's, I left a different company a bit ago. And I thought for a while about, like, what I want to do, anything else in the space. And I have my own, like, when I was a resident, I designed one of the first like iPhone apps on mental health apps for iPhones. 

And then when I left this last company, which I was doing in parallel with everything else, I just, I asked myself, “Do I want to do anything else in this space?” 

And I just sort of noodled for like a year with some changes, and came up with this concept. And now just working on building it. We just got incorporated a few months ago. And been building the team. And now we're getting ready to go off for grants. Both like federal and private foundation. 

And we'll see, I think it's a really good idea. I know I'm not. I'm speaking in abstract terms here. But my hope is that it's an online system that actually changes the way all the things that are out there that work and interact with each other. 

I mean, I've written like a 35 page white paper, and there's like pitch decks. And, you know, logos and websites and all that stuff designed. And we have like 10 people on the team, besides myself. We’re like researchers and blockchain experts and data scientists and, you know, clinicians. And, you know, there's all of that stuff in place. And now we just, we're going to be going out for funding. And hopefully building our MVP. 

But the idea is to design the group and the governance of the group in a way that we can continue to sort of iterate and solve more and more of the kind of problems. Like fragmentation of the market. And misaligned incentives. 

And I think, honestly, the industry tracks the wrong kind of data. The industry, mental health industry, largely tracks how symptomatic you are. As opposed to the data that actually says how you're doing in your life. Like your quality of life. Your well being. Things like that. 

So there's a lot of pieces to it. Simultaneously, it’s a complex  … , and I know I'm not doing it justice, talking about it here. 

Thalia Toha: But no, even just the thing that you mentioned about, I do agree that there are certain measurements that are completely off in the medical field, that I'm kind of like, whenever I go to doctors, I'm like, “Why do they do that?” I mean, I get it. But it's just data that doesn't seem to have any relevance. 

Paul Puri: Some of my friends in health tech talk about, like, there's like startups that are talking about little digitized, all of the medical records that you have. And we'll turn it into, like, quantifiable data points and tracking. 

It's like, the problem is that most medical records are kind of junk. Like they don't really have that useful of a data in it. A lot of it is very archaic. And so it's kind of garbage in, garbage out. 

It's not useful data going in. So you can plug it into an AI system. It's not going to produce anything, probably. very useful. Because it's not useful data that you're training the system on in the 1st place. As opposed to, “How can we thoughtfully design what data we're gathering and make it non exploitatively people and use it to actually help, like a community?” 

That's the, yeah. Well, that's a tall order.

Thalia: And I hope that that, yeah, that sounds great. And I'd love to hear more about it when you're, you know, further down the line, for sure. 

Who we really are, friendly competition, and sibling rivalry: An internal competition in pursuit of self-discovery

Thalia: You mentioned you have another project. Is it Bel-Air that you're kind of cooking right now? 

Paul: Yeah. I've consulted on Bel-Air for its 2nd season. They have a character, Carlton, who's struggled with anxiety problems. And so that’s sort of assisting in the shaping of that story. I don't know if you're familiar with the show?

Thalia: I've seen snippets of it when I, when it was much younger. Back when, you know, Will Smith was involved. 

Paul: So basically, they took the same characters from there. They took the names of the characters in the original halls and they made it a drama instead of a comedy. Like, super serious. 

And so it's like, you know, it's an intense sort of drama about the same thing. A boy who has to go into LA. Because he got kicked out of Philly for getting arrested. But now he has been chased by a gang member that he got into a fight with on the basketball court in Philly. 

And now he's in LA, and he's trying to figure out his identity. And then basically his cousin, Carlton, has essentially a drug problem and a severe anxiety problem. And so how do you shape that story in a way that’s sort of thoughtful? And that dovetails with the rest of the story they're trying to tell. 

Because he's kind of a young, overachieving black man. Trying to fit in, and excel at, a largely elite, white, private school. And so it's like putting together the sort of psychological profile. And how to make that manifest if someone who's trying to have his own identity in there.

At the same time, it’s tough. Especially when he's butting heads with his cousin, who thinks, you know, “Just be yourself and do it big.”

Paul: And it's, yeah, it's a good show. I think it's one of Peacock’s breakout show. 

Thalia: OK, cool. I'll have to check it out, you know, kind of the sidekick complex. I don't know if there is a complex. But in my opinion, just seeing real life references, friendships, and people who have that dynamic of the lead person. And then you have this one kid who's always on the side. Just kind of helping the other person be a little bit more out there, and get the girls, or get better at school. Yeah, I'd be interested in seeing that for sure. 

And how that, how that can still create a, you know, responsible, meaningful life. Because if your entire identity had been shaped by being kind of the help: maybe that's a good thing; maybe that's bad thing. I don't know. Maybe it's something in between. 

Paul: Yeah. I mean, his is less so of a helper. Even though he has time where it functions that way. And it's been more of like, a stand out kid on campus, and like the, you know, them heading up to valedictorian. 

And now my cousin comes in. Who is much more of a hot shot. And grabs a lot more attention. And questioning my identity and what it means to be black and have a racial identity here. And who is, you know, better than me in certain sports. 

And so, “I have an underlying anxiety problem for pushing myself so hard.” So, like, how do you manifest that in terms of use of and abuse of drugs? To push yourself. As well as the anxiety attacks that you can manifest from that kind of pressure. And from feeling his way through finding his identity amidst all of that on the show. So It's a good setup for a story. 

It's been less so about the sort of sidekick mentality. Though that's, it's a little bit in there. Because he fights the idea of being his cousin’s sidekick. Because it's sort of, it's his home territory. 

Thalia: That's interesting. I'm definitely gonna have to check it out.

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