Speaker 1: In case you're just recently joining us, or however long
Speaker 1: you've been a listener of the show. You may not
Speaker 1: realize we have years and years of incredible episodes in
Speaker 1: our archive. We've had so many wonderful guests that we've
Speaker 1: decided to hand pick one of our favorites that may
Speaker 1: be new to you, but if not, it's definitely worth
Speaker 1: another listen. We hope you'll enjoy this episode with Sonja
Speaker 1: Renee Taylor. Is this thought I'm having giving me access
Speaker 1: to peace, power, joy, ease or pleasure in my life? No?
Speaker 1: Then why am I invested in thinking it? Welcome to
Speaker 1: the one you feed Throughout time. Great thinkers have recognized
Speaker 1: the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in,
Speaker 1: garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true.
Speaker 1: And yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen
Speaker 1: or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Our guest on this episode is Sonya Renee Taylor, a
Speaker 1: former national and international poetry Slam champion, author, educator, and activist.
Speaker 1: Sonja is also the founder of the Body Is Not
Speaker 1: an Apology, which is a digital media and education company
Speaker 1: promoting radical self love and body empowerment as the foundational
Speaker 1: tool for social justice and global transformation. Today, Sonia and
Speaker 1: Eric discuss her book, The Body is Not an Apology.
Speaker 1: The power of radical self love. Being consistent with your
Speaker 1: habits is the engine that drives your transformation and growth.
Speaker 1: Think about it. You can't feed your good wolf one
Speaker 1: big meal a year and expect it to thrive. Consistent
Speaker 1: steady bits of food fuel a good, healthy wolf, but
Speaker 1: it's hard to create consistency. You might listen to this
Speaker 1: podcast on a Thursday feel really inspired, but then life
Speaker 1: takes over and by Saturday night you've forgotten all about it.
Speaker 1: That's why I'm hosting a free live Q and a
Speaker 1: town hall zoom meeting on Thursday, February where I'll be
Speaker 1: answering your questions about how to take what you know
Speaker 1: and turn it into what you consistently do. Had to
Speaker 1: when you feed dot net slash town hall to register
Speaker 1: for this free live session with me. During this town hall,
Speaker 1: you'll ask me your specific question and I'll answer it.
Speaker 1: It's that simple. So if you would like my help
Speaker 1: creating some tools to deal with real life when it
Speaker 1: gets in the way of your best intentions, let me
Speaker 1: help you. If changing habits feels overwhelming, if you struggle
Speaker 1: to make time for things because life is so busy,
Speaker 1: if it's easy to get caught up with your to
Speaker 1: do list, you feel consistently behind and taking time for
Speaker 1: yourself feel selfish, then let's talk. The things we do
Speaker 1: consistently are more important than the things we do once
Speaker 1: in a while. In this free town hall session, you'll
Speaker 1: ask me your questions and I'll help you find what
Speaker 1: works for you, how you might look at things differently
Speaker 1: and create the structure to help you do the thing
Speaker 1: you really want to do. And if you don't have
Speaker 1: a specific question, just come listen to the conversation. A
Speaker 1: little bit of something is better than a lot of nothing.
Speaker 1: Truth is, you can make a lot of progress by
Speaker 1: doing just a little bit. To register for this free
Speaker 1: zoom session on February go to one you feed dot
Speaker 1: net slash town hall. That's when you feed dot net
Speaker 1: slash town hall. I hope I get the chance to
Speaker 1: meet you there. Hi, Sonia, Welcome to the show. Hi,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for having me here. It is a
Speaker 1: real pleasure to have you on. We're going to be
Speaker 1: discussing your book, The Body is Not an apology the
Speaker 1: power of radical self love. But before we start with that,
Speaker 1: we'll aren't like we always do with the Parable. In
Speaker 1: the Parable, there is a grandmother who's talking with her
Speaker 1: grandson and she says, in life, there are two wolves
Speaker 1: inside of us that are always at battle. What is
Speaker 1: a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery
Speaker 1: and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the
Speaker 1: grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second.
Speaker 1: He looks up at his grandmother. He says, well, grandmother,
Speaker 1: which one wins? And the grandmother says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. Thank you. I think one
Speaker 1: of the things that may be most excited about coming
Speaker 1: on your podcast was this parable, which I find so
Speaker 1: powerful and for me, I think my work really centers
Speaker 1: on what is the relationship between the one we feed
Speaker 1: as individuals and the one we feed as a collective.
Speaker 1: I believe that we are innately good. We come here
Speaker 1: with the good wolf. We come here with the wolf
Speaker 1: that is inherently connected to kindness and love, compassion, connection,
Speaker 1: and I think that we are immediately birthed into a
Speaker 1: world that's like, Hey, here's this other wolf, and it's
Speaker 1: the one we've been feeding for a long time, and
Speaker 1: so we expect you to feed it too, and then
Speaker 1: through that process we become split. But I don't think
Speaker 1: we start off split. I think we become split as
Speaker 1: a result of the conditions of our world, the conditions
Speaker 1: of our families, the conditions of our own sort of
Speaker 1: encounters with lack or not enoughness, and then that becomes
Speaker 1: the wolf we feed. Yeah. I love that you talk
Speaker 1: in your book early on about a concept of natural intelligence,
Speaker 1: which I think speaks a little bit to what you're
Speaker 1: saying here. Could you tell us a little bit more
Speaker 1: about what you mean by natural intelligence? Yeah, So one
Speaker 1: I don't want to take credit for a term that
Speaker 1: is not mine. I was speaking in the book about
Speaker 1: a quote that I had heard from author Marian Williamson,
Speaker 1: who was comparing this idea of natural intelligence to an
Speaker 1: oak tree, and that an acorn doesn't have to state
Speaker 1: that it intends to become an oak tree, right, that
Speaker 1: it is imbued with all the mechanisms cellularly that it
Speaker 1: needs to become its highest version of itself. That's natural intelligence.
Speaker 1: That we come here already wired for the highest versions
Speaker 1: of ourselves, or the good wolf, if we're going to
Speaker 1: compare to that parable, and then the work is not
Speaker 1: about like how do I become the good wolf? The
Speaker 1: work is how do I identify all of the things
Speaker 1: that are obstructing the good wolf from flourishing into the
Speaker 1: fullness of its being? What's in the obstruction of that acorn? Right,
Speaker 1: if that acorn falls from a tree and lands on concrete,
Speaker 1: then it will not be able to do its job.
Speaker 1: But if that acorn falls from the tree and lands
Speaker 1: and fertile soil, it will. And so how do we
Speaker 1: create the conditions of fertile soil so that that which
Speaker 1: is already cellularly within us can come to its fullest fruition. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love that idea. I practice Zen Buddhism, and we
Speaker 1: talk about this all the time in Zen. You know,
Speaker 1: it's just your original nature if you just when you
Speaker 1: strip everything else away, it's what naturally emerges. And it's
Speaker 1: always right here. It's always right here, exactly exactly. And
Speaker 1: we all have so many different names for it. And
Speaker 1: in my work I call that radical self love, you know,
Speaker 1: but there are all kinds of terms, you know, mirroring
Speaker 1: lives and calls it natural intelligence, you know. Buddhism calls
Speaker 1: it Zen. Like we have all of these terms for it,
Speaker 1: but it really does speak to what is innately in
Speaker 1: us that wants to become manifest in the world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I want to return to this idea of radical
Speaker 1: self love, the term that you use. But before we
Speaker 1: do that, why don't we start with the title of
Speaker 1: the book, which is The Body is Not an Apology.
Speaker 1: Share with us the story of where that idea is
Speaker 1: birth from, because I think it's pretty powerful as a
Speaker 1: story in and of itself, and I think it's pretty
Speaker 1: central to everything that's going to come after it as
Speaker 1: we talk totally. So I've had many iterations of lives.
Speaker 1: I feel like I've lived many lives in this lifetime.
Speaker 1: And one of those iterations was as a professional performance poet,
Speaker 1: traveled around the world competing in poetry slams. And I
Speaker 1: happened to be in a poetry slam in not Ville, Tinnacy,
Speaker 1: getting ready to compete with a group of folks, a
Speaker 1: team friends of mine from Washington, d C. And I
Speaker 1: was in the room with one of my friends having
Speaker 1: a conversation and we are having you know, I'm a Scorpio,
Speaker 1: and so I'm notorious for having really deep conversations, whether
Speaker 1: you want to be having them or not, It's just
Speaker 1: kind of my nature. And so I'm having this intense
Speaker 1: conversation with my teammate and she is sharing with me
Speaker 1: that she is afraid that she might have an unintended pregnancy.
Speaker 1: She's not sure yet. And we start to sort of
Speaker 1: unfold this conversation and it becomes clear to me that
Speaker 1: the person she thinks she might be pregnant by is
Speaker 1: just kind of a casual, uh partner sometimes, not anyone
Speaker 1: she's particularly invested in. And I am also as a
Speaker 1: result of perhaps the scorpio placement as well as one
Speaker 1: of my former lives as a sexuality health educator. I'm
Speaker 1: a person who will get in your business from a
Speaker 1: place of love, is the way I think about it.
Speaker 1: Like I'm gonna ask you some uncomfortable questions, never from judgment,
Speaker 1: but always from a here are the things that I
Speaker 1: would explore in this Have you explored this? You know?
Speaker 1: So I asked my friend why she was having unprotected
Speaker 1: sex with this casual partners. She wasn't all that into
Speaker 1: since we know how babies happen, And my my friend,
Speaker 1: you know, answered me. I like to say that three
Speaker 1: things were present in this conversation that created what I
Speaker 1: like to think of as like a transformative portal, this
Speaker 1: opening where all of a sudden life got rearranged. And
Speaker 1: I think that those three things were radical honest, the
Speaker 1: radical vulner city, and radical empathy. I asked a radically
Speaker 1: honest question, but I asked it from a radically empathetic place.
Speaker 1: I understood, and she responded to me in radical honesty
Speaker 1: and radical vulnerability. And my friend had cerebral palsy and
Speaker 1: she said that, you know, her disability made it difficult
Speaker 1: already for her to be sexual, and so she didn't
Speaker 1: feel entitled to ask this person to use a condom.
Speaker 1: And when she said that, the words came through me,
Speaker 1: they were not of me. It was like, oh, this
Speaker 1: is coming from someplace else for this moment. And I
Speaker 1: said to her, your body is not an apology. It's
Speaker 1: not something you offer to people to say sorry for
Speaker 1: my disability. And when I said that, something stuck. That
Speaker 1: wasn't just for her, it was immediately for me too.
Speaker 1: It was like, for all these ways that I too
Speaker 1: have given myself away as an apology. I'm sorry for,
Speaker 1: you know, my blackness. I'm sorry for my womanness. I'm
Speaker 1: sorry for my loudness. I'm sorry for my fatness. I'm
Speaker 1: sorry for my you know, depression. I'm so there are
Speaker 1: all these things I'm sorry for. And there was this
Speaker 1: moment where it was like, oh, what if there isn't
Speaker 1: anything to apologize for? And so I said it, and
Speaker 1: I was like, damn, that was really poetic. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: have to do something with that. And so I decided
Speaker 1: I was going to write a poem because I was
Speaker 1: a poet, and so I wrote this poem called the
Speaker 1: Body is Not an Apology, and I began performing it
Speaker 1: and about six to eight months after I had written
Speaker 1: the poem, I had this selfie in my phone that
Speaker 1: I've been hiding. I really felt fabulous in it and
Speaker 1: delicious and beautiful, and I had been afraid to share it.
Speaker 1: And so someone one night in February of two thousand
Speaker 1: and eleven shared a photo of a plus sized model
Speaker 1: on my Facebook page and she was fabulous, and I
Speaker 1: googled her and she had on the same exact kind
Speaker 1: of outfit that I had on, and I had this
Speaker 1: moment where I was like, Oh, this person is being
Speaker 1: very unapologetic in their body and they're being paid for it,
Speaker 1: all right, somebody paid her money to put her juicy
Speaker 1: thighs on the internet without shame. And here I I'm
Speaker 1: hiding this photo where I feel beautiful, but I feel
Speaker 1: like I'm not supposed to. I'm going to share it.
Speaker 1: And I asked people because I'm always recruiting other people
Speaker 1: to do the things that I'm scared of with me,
Speaker 1: and so I asked a strategy. Yeah, it's totally my
Speaker 1: life strategy. It's been working, uh, And so I was like,
Speaker 1: share a photo where you feel powerful and embodied in
Speaker 1: your body. And the next morning, thirty people that tag
Speaker 1: me and photos. I was like, this is awesome, Like
Speaker 1: maybe we just need a space where we're allowed to, like,
Speaker 1: where we have permission to be unapologetic in our bodies.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna make a Facebook page. And since I
Speaker 1: have this poem called the Body is Not an Apology,
Speaker 1: I guess I'll call the Facebook page the Body is
Speaker 1: Not an Apology. And we started with thirty people and
Speaker 1: then we have, you know, three hundred and three thousand
Speaker 1: and thirty thousand, then writers, and then a company and
Speaker 1: then a book deal, and then it has transformed my life. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you for sharing that story. And maybe there's some
Speaker 1: people when they hear that story they don't have an
Speaker 1: interior feeling of knowing like, oh my god, that's me,
Speaker 1: but I certainly do. And I'm a straight white male, right.
Speaker 1: You know, as I read this book, it was so
Speaker 1: clear to me that I don't know that you can
Speaker 1: grow up in this culture and not have body issues
Speaker 1: unless you're nearly perfect. And even then, I think it's
Speaker 1: just so much a part of everything, absolutely, And I think,
Speaker 1: you know, if we think you don't have body issues,
Speaker 1: then you're probably defining body way too narrowly, which is
Speaker 1: what I usually experienced people like, I mean issues with
Speaker 1: my body, And then I'm like, mmmm, you know, what
Speaker 1: were the messages that your father told you about your
Speaker 1: manhood when you were a child, And you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm not allowed to cry? What do you mean do?
Speaker 1: Where do tears come from? Friends? They come from your body? Right, Like?
Speaker 1: So part of it is about really expanding and understanding.
Speaker 1: When I say body, what I'm talking about is all
Speaker 1: of the ways in which we do life in this
Speaker 1: corporal vessel, and all of the relationships that we've been
Speaker 1: told about that the relationships with our identity with gender,
Speaker 1: our relationship with size, our relationship with race, our relationship
Speaker 1: with age, our relationship with ability, our relationship with mental health.
Speaker 1: All of those things are the body. And so when
Speaker 1: I say the body is not an apology, I'm not
Speaker 1: just talking about do you like what size genes you're wearing?
Speaker 1: You know, I'm saying, what are the messages that we
Speaker 1: have been told about our humanity based on these physical vessels?
Speaker 1: And how has that stifled the ability for that acorn
Speaker 1: to become the yoak tree? How is that squashing our
Speaker 1: natural intelligence? How is that feeding the wolf we don't
Speaker 1: want fed? Yeah, I think that is really well said.
Speaker 1: And as you go through that list, you know, one
Speaker 1: of those is aging. So even if somehow you get
Speaker 1: to a certain age where like I've always felt great
Speaker 1: about how I look in my body, you're like, well,
Speaker 1: but just hang on because it's coming. It's coming with age.
Speaker 1: Although as somebody who is just the upper side of fifty,
Speaker 1: I will say that in addition, one of the great
Speaker 1: things that age has brought is time to heal some
Speaker 1: of those things so that I don't have the same
Speaker 1: fears and challenges around it I had as a child.
Speaker 1: And that's really what I would like to maybe spend
Speaker 1: our time on, is what can people do to heal
Speaker 1: the issues they have around their body, around their self image,
Speaker 1: around all these different things. And I thought maybe we
Speaker 1: would start with first saying, you know, you talk about
Speaker 1: that what we want is radical self love, and I'd
Speaker 1: like to contrast that with terms like self esteem and
Speaker 1: self confidence as a starting place to sort of say
Speaker 1: that that's not really what we're talking about. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: So I opened the book by being like, here's what
Speaker 1: you're not going to get reading this book. You're not
Speaker 1: gonna get help with your self esteem and your self confidence.
Speaker 1: And the reason that I say that is one because
Speaker 1: both of those things are very conditional experiences. How you
Speaker 1: feel about yourself, how your confidence is situated, varies from
Speaker 1: day to day depending on what's going on. Did I
Speaker 1: get the promotion that I thought I was gonna get, right,
Speaker 1: I feel great going into the meeting. I come out
Speaker 1: feeling like, man, I'm just just this never works for me.
Speaker 1: You know that, I'm in my story about I'm not
Speaker 1: good enough, right. Confidence shock for the day. Self esteem,
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, I feel important or good or fabulous.
Speaker 1: You know. I often give the example of like I
Speaker 1: put on a fly outfit. I'm like, yes, it's fabulous,
Speaker 1: and I go outside and no one gives me a
Speaker 1: compliment on my outfit. That day, I'm like, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: maybe I'm not as cute as I thought I was.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to wear this again, all right, and
Speaker 1: so so these things that are conditional and externalized and
Speaker 1: change with the weather, right and again. Radical self love
Speaker 1: is not fickle in that way. It's not conditional. It's
Speaker 1: not determined by whether or not it is externally validated
Speaker 1: by the outside world, the same way an acorn doesn't
Speaker 1: become a fig tree because somebody outside said you look
Speaker 1: better as a fig tree, right, Like it is wired
Speaker 1: inside of itself to be an oak tree. We are
Speaker 1: wired inside of ourselves to have radical self love. And
Speaker 1: when I talk about it, I'm talking about that inherent
Speaker 1: state of enoughness that we arrived here with that unconditional
Speaker 1: certainty that we were amazing. I think I've said this
Speaker 1: on every single talk I've ever done, is you've never
Speaker 1: seen a self loathing toddler, because I think it's an
Speaker 1: important marker for us to remember that there is a
Speaker 1: point through which we passed where we were embodied in
Speaker 1: our enoughness, and then something shifted right. And so if
Speaker 1: we recognize that we came here embodied in our enoughness,
Speaker 1: then the question isn't like, oh did it lead eve No,
Speaker 1: I mean, just from a physics standpoint, it couldn't leave.
Speaker 1: Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only transferred. Then
Speaker 1: it's still there. It's just doing something different. What is
Speaker 1: it doing different? It's being usurped by the messages of
Speaker 1: our external world that say that we're not enough, and
Speaker 1: that profit off of us really deeply believing that we're
Speaker 1: not enough. And so radical self love is different from
Speaker 1: those things because it is already there. It is the foundation.
Speaker 1: And then the other thing I think is really important
Speaker 1: for me about why it's not self esteem and self
Speaker 1: confidence is because I love folks, and I love what
Speaker 1: I do, and I actually want people to have good
Speaker 1: self esteem and self confidence. But I would not devote
Speaker 1: the amount of time and effort that I spend in
Speaker 1: my life tending to people's individual self esteem and self confidence.
Speaker 1: I'll get anything out of that. What I do get
Speaker 1: something out of is recognizing that there is a society
Speaker 1: that is rooted in our messages about who is good
Speaker 1: enough and who is not good enough, and that as
Speaker 1: much as we internalize those messages, we reinforce that system
Speaker 1: of not enoughness for other bodies. So the body that
Speaker 1: you are judging yourself against about whether or not you
Speaker 1: are enough is someone else's body, which means you are
Speaker 1: in the way of them being able to be in
Speaker 1: the fullness of their radical self love. As long as
Speaker 1: we believe that certain bodies, that white bodies are more
Speaker 1: valuable than black bodies on a structural level, than I
Speaker 1: as a black woman, am always going to be in
Speaker 1: a harder road towards accessing my radical self love. As
Speaker 1: long as we believe that neurotypical bodies are more valuable
Speaker 1: than neuro atypical bodies or you know, bodies that we
Speaker 1: say don't have mental health issues, as long as we
Speaker 1: believe that I have a harder road to radical self love,
Speaker 1: and so I do this work. The radical part of
Speaker 1: it is that we wake up to this system that
Speaker 1: we've all been indoctrinated in, and we get out of
Speaker 1: our own way, and we get out of each other's
Speaker 1: way so that we can all grow into the highest
Speaker 1: versions of ourselves. That's why it's radical self love. Right,
Speaker 1: And you talk a lot in the book about I'm paraphrasing,
Speaker 1: but there's a real two way street or a mutuality
Speaker 1: about this, right. It's by learning to both love myself
Speaker 1: and love others. Those things they mutually reinforce or what's
Speaker 1: the opposite of reinforced tear down, Right, the more that
Speaker 1: I learned to love me, the more I'm able to
Speaker 1: love you, And the more I'm able to love you,
Speaker 1: the more I'm able to love me. It's a it's
Speaker 1: a good thing versus. The more I judge myself, the
Speaker 1: more I judge you. The more I judge you, I
Speaker 1: end up judging myself. These things play off each other absolutely.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're all in an interdependent relationship, and so
Speaker 1: you know, we go into these often, this kind of work.
Speaker 1: You know that people often lump my work into like
Speaker 1: personal development work, and you know, I can see why
Speaker 1: they do that, except I'm very clear or that I
Speaker 1: do social justice work. I'm just very clear that society
Speaker 1: is made up of people, and so people have to
Speaker 1: change in order for society to change. And so inside
Speaker 1: of this story in our current society is the story
Speaker 1: of individualism. That it's all about I can change, and
Speaker 1: then I changed by myself, and then my life improves,
Speaker 1: as if our lives are not intertwined with one another,
Speaker 1: as if we are not dependent on each other in
Speaker 1: hopes of ways. And so as I divest from this
Speaker 1: system that says that I am not enough, I become
Speaker 1: aware of all the other people it is said is
Speaker 1: not enough. And if I believe that that system is
Speaker 1: lying to me, then that system must be lying about
Speaker 1: all those other bodies too. And the only way for
Speaker 1: me to actually be able to live in my radical
Speaker 1: self love without obstruction in the world is to remove
Speaker 1: all of the obstructions that tell us that we're not enough,
Speaker 1: not just the ones that impact me the because eventually
Speaker 1: another one will pop up that will be obstructing your
Speaker 1: lane again. And so we actually are tied to each
Speaker 1: other in this journey of really living into the full
Speaker 1: possibility of radical self love for ourselves and in the world.
Speaker 1: I've started sending a couple of text messages after each
Speaker 1: podcast listener with positive reminders about what's discussed and invitations
Speaker 1: to apply the wisdom to your life. It's free, and
Speaker 1: listeners have told me that these texts really helped to
Speaker 1: pull them out of autopilot and reconnect them with what's important.
Speaker 1: When you get a text for me during your day
Speaker 1: to day life, it's one more thing that helps you
Speaker 1: further bridge that gap between what you know and what
Speaker 1: you do. Positive messages when you need them for me
Speaker 1: to you. So if you'd like to hear from me
Speaker 1: a few times a week via text, go to one
Speaker 1: you feed dot net slash text and sign up for free.
Speaker 1: You say that moving from body shame to radical self
Speaker 1: love is a road of inquiry and insight. Say a
Speaker 1: little bit about those two words, inquiry and insight. What
Speaker 1: is it we need to do. We got to ask
Speaker 1: ourselves questions. We have to be willing to explore that
Speaker 1: which is unexplored in us. So much of the experience
Speaker 1: of body shame, so much of the experience of body
Speaker 1: based oppression, exists because we don't ask questions about it.
Speaker 1: We don't ask questions about our own thoughts. They operate
Speaker 1: on autopilot inside of us. You know. I have to
Speaker 1: give the example of you go to a dressing room
Speaker 1: and you're trying on some genes and they don't fit,
Speaker 1: and the immediate thought is that there's something wrong with
Speaker 1: your body. The immediate thought is, oh, my gosh, of gain.
Speaker 1: And then they were in this cycle of of judgment
Speaker 1: about our bodies. Right, That happens probably a billion times
Speaker 1: a day around the world, with very little inquiry into
Speaker 1: the story that lives behind it, the story about why
Speaker 1: I judge my body, rather than being like, why don't
Speaker 1: make these James and more expensive sizes? Right, and immediately
Speaker 1: I take on the ownership of fault. There are all
Speaker 1: of these ways in which our ideas and beliefs about
Speaker 1: our bodies just go uninterrogated. And so inside the book
Speaker 1: I talk about in order to really begin this journey
Speaker 1: of radical self love, you have to engage in what
Speaker 1: I call it thinking doing being process. The first thing
Speaker 1: is that we actually we have to become aware of
Speaker 1: our thoughts. Oh, here's this self deprecating, judgmental thought I
Speaker 1: think every single day about myself. Then at this point
Speaker 1: I don't even ask myself about it, just runs on autopilot.
Speaker 1: What happens when I raised that to consciousness? What happens
Speaker 1: when I asked myself questions about it? Well? Who told
Speaker 1: me that I'm supposed to believe that? Who told me
Speaker 1: that this is true? Why do I believe what they said?
Speaker 1: Why am I applying that into my life? One of
Speaker 1: my favorite questions is does this give me access to peace, power, joy,
Speaker 1: ease or pleasure in my life? Is this thought I'm
Speaker 1: having giving me access to peace, power, joy, ease or
Speaker 1: pleasure in my life? No? Then why am I invested
Speaker 1: in thinking it? Oh, let's let's get into that, because
Speaker 1: each time you do that, some new insight shows up.
Speaker 1: That's where the insight comes up. It's like I had
Speaker 1: an inquiry and then it was like, oh, right, because
Speaker 1: that's what my mother used to say to me. And
Speaker 1: so I'm actually just talking to myself in the voice
Speaker 1: of my mother. Oh that's what that is. Okay. Well,
Speaker 1: now that it's at consciousness, I actually have a choice
Speaker 1: about how I move forward. Once we raise the thing
Speaker 1: to consciousness, then we are at choice about how we
Speaker 1: engage it. And so from that point I can say,
Speaker 1: what would an opposite action that did give me access
Speaker 1: to peace, power, joy, pleasure, ease, Look like, okay, can
Speaker 1: I take that action today? Just today? And each time
Speaker 1: we do that repetition that thinking, raising a thing to consciousness,
Speaker 1: choosing a new action, raising a thing to consciousness, choosing
Speaker 1: new action, the repetition of that creates a new way
Speaker 1: of being. All of a sudden, we stop being in
Speaker 1: the practice of it, and it just is how we
Speaker 1: show up. So now that self deprecating thought that I
Speaker 1: used to think all the time just doesn't show up,
Speaker 1: or it's so low now that it doesn't impact how
Speaker 1: I move. And now when I see it, I recognize
Speaker 1: and I'm like, that's not even my voice. Child boom,
Speaker 1: be quiet, and then I go on about my life. Right.
Speaker 1: And so that's the process of inquiry and insight that
Speaker 1: we have to engage in if we're going to take
Speaker 1: this journey back to removing those obstructions that are in
Speaker 1: front of our radical self love. I love that loop
Speaker 1: there of of thinking, taking a different action, finding our
Speaker 1: way into a new way of being. It reminds me
Speaker 1: of what happens in recovery from addiction. Right is the
Speaker 1: thoughts are there, I must have a drugs right, and
Speaker 1: but I take a different action. I examine those thoughts.
Speaker 1: Why am I thinking that what's happening? I take a
Speaker 1: different action, and over time I live my way into
Speaker 1: a new way of being where those thoughts don't have
Speaker 1: so much power. There's a great line in the introduction
Speaker 1: to your book, I cannot pronounce the woman who wrote it.
Speaker 1: Could you pronounce her name for me? Yes? Ie gioma
Speaker 1: A Luo, thank you. She has a line in there
Speaker 1: basically that an epiphany doesn't undo lifetime of conditioning. And
Speaker 1: I love that idea that, like, we can have these
Speaker 1: insights and yet it takes a while to live these
Speaker 1: things out of our system. So I think that process
Speaker 1: of insight and inquiry is really powerful. Let's talk about
Speaker 1: the three pieces. And when we say piece, we mean
Speaker 1: like peace as in the you know, the peace sign,
Speaker 1: not pieces of pizza, although we could mean that because
Speaker 1: pizza pizza is good too, but talk about the three Yes, absolutely,
Speaker 1: let's talk about the three pieces. Yeah. So again I
Speaker 1: talked about, like, what are the foundational things that we've
Speaker 1: got to kind of grapple with when we decide we
Speaker 1: want to take this journey. So if the thinking doing
Speaker 1: being is about like how do I begin to live
Speaker 1: a radical self love process? How do I stay on
Speaker 1: the road, this is about how do I even get
Speaker 1: on the road. In order to get on the road,
Speaker 1: there are three things we have to make peace with.
Speaker 1: The first thing we have to make peace with is
Speaker 1: not understanding. We live in a world that says you
Speaker 1: should know everything, and if you don't know everything, something's
Speaker 1: wrong with you. Everything should be google able, right, And
Speaker 1: so there's this relationship to the instant access of knowledge
Speaker 1: that forgets the reality of the mystery of humanity, and
Speaker 1: that forgets the reality of lived experience that you can't
Speaker 1: know because it's not your journey. As soon as we
Speaker 1: just give up needing to understand everything, we have a
Speaker 1: different kind of expansiveness. Some things just are because they
Speaker 1: are oh wow, ah feels really uncomfortable, and it stops
Speaker 1: me from having to feel like I actually can control
Speaker 1: the whole world, because it can't. I can't control everything.
Speaker 1: And if I get that that there are things I
Speaker 1: just don't understand, it creates some access around there because
Speaker 1: once we recognize that we don't understand everything, then we
Speaker 1: have the ability to make peace with difference, and making
Speaker 1: peace with differences about saying, right, there are things in
Speaker 1: this world that are just different than me. And we
Speaker 1: have so long equated difference with danger, difference with bad,
Speaker 1: difference with not belonging that it has created a world
Speaker 1: where we are desired to homogenize ourselves. But it's totally
Speaker 1: unrealistic and impossible. Right, It's actually not possible to be
Speaker 1: homogeneous as human beings, and that we don't expect that
Speaker 1: in any other part of the natural world. I did
Speaker 1: not see your dog and be like chihuahuas. Why are
Speaker 1: all dogs not air dales? Like? Right, I've never looked
Speaker 1: at a Saint Bernard and been like, you should be
Speaker 1: a poodle? Right, I expect there to be difference. I
Speaker 1: don't look at oak trees and think that they should
Speaker 1: be you know, rose bushes. There is natural diversity in
Speaker 1: the world that we value and need and see as beautiful,
Speaker 1: and then when we bring it to humans, were like, Nope,
Speaker 1: we don't want that. Diversity definitely right. And so the
Speaker 1: invitation to make peace with difference, which again starts with
Speaker 1: making peace with not understanding. It's like, oh, there's beauty
Speaker 1: in this thing I don't know anything about that's totally
Speaker 1: different than me, but brings new insight, that brings new perspective,
Speaker 1: that brings new possibility. How do I let that in?
Speaker 1: Because once we do all of those things, then that
Speaker 1: helps us get to the third piece, which is making
Speaker 1: peace with our own bodies. Because if I can accept
Speaker 1: that there are things that don't understand, and I can
Speaker 1: accept that difference is an innate and absolutely valuable part
Speaker 1: of human diversity, then I can accept it in myself.
Speaker 1: Then I can say, oh, here are the ways that
Speaker 1: I am different, That my body is different than the
Speaker 1: stories that have been told about what a body should
Speaker 1: look like. Here are the ways in which my brain
Speaker 1: operates differently than what I've been told about what a
Speaker 1: body should look like. And how do I meet that
Speaker 1: without judgment? How do I meet that without making myself
Speaker 1: bad or wrong? Because if I can meet that without
Speaker 1: making myself bad or wrong. I am opening the door
Speaker 1: to return to a radical self love way of being.
Speaker 1: You talk about radical love being a process of de indoctrination.
Speaker 1: You know that we look unflinchingly at our current set
Speaker 1: of beliefs about ourselves and the world and explore them.
Speaker 1: What are some of these beliefs about ourselves in the
Speaker 1: world that we need to let go of? Yeah, so
Speaker 1: I think there are some that are very universal, and
Speaker 1: then I think there are some that are particular depending
Speaker 1: on the body that you inhabit in the world. Right,
Speaker 1: But all of those things I really do believe. Like,
Speaker 1: if we start with whatever story is attached to it,
Speaker 1: I'm not enough for I'm too much and whatever it
Speaker 1: is that wherever that road takes you, Right, I'm not
Speaker 1: pretty enough, I'm not smart enough, I'm not rich enough,
Speaker 1: I'm not whatever the enough is. That is the first
Speaker 1: place to look for. Oh, where have I been indoctrinated?
Speaker 1: Because the story of enough is just not true? Right,
Speaker 1: Like the acorn is enough to become an oak tree.
Speaker 1: You don't have to do nothing to do it. It
Speaker 1: is enough. It came here enough, and that's true for
Speaker 1: us too. So the question is where is this story
Speaker 1: not enoughness impacting my life. And wherever that not enoughnessness
Speaker 1: is a place of indoctrination, It is a place where
Speaker 1: you've been told that because if it's not true, then
Speaker 1: it means we got it from someplace that isn't us.
Speaker 1: Then I can start being in my investigation and my
Speaker 1: inquiry where is this message coming from. I think that's
Speaker 1: a great idea. Let's take the stories of not enough
Speaker 1: and follow that. Where I think this get it's hard
Speaker 1: is that a lot of the not enough is because
Speaker 1: there's something we want that's out in the world that
Speaker 1: we feel like I'm not enough to get for me. Right.
Speaker 1: Growing up as a boy, when you're a young man,
Speaker 1: to be too skinny is just as bad as being
Speaker 1: too big, right, You're just you're just a little whimp, right,
Speaker 1: You're you know, scrawny. And so my thing was no woman,
Speaker 1: no girls ever gonna like me. There's a broad I'm
Speaker 1: not enough, but that I'm not enough ends in a
Speaker 1: very specific thing. I'm not enough to be loved by
Speaker 1: somebody that I would be interested in, right, And those
Speaker 1: things seem crazy real when you're stuck in them. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: they absolutely seem crazy real. That's why the work is
Speaker 1: to be in the confrontation of it, right like that,
Speaker 1: the work of radical self love is to choose to
Speaker 1: go slay the dragon under your bid the thing that
Speaker 1: seems is really real. The premise that I am proposing,
Speaker 1: and this is the foundation of whether or not you
Speaker 1: take the journey or you don't, right is the premise
Speaker 1: I'm proposing is it's not real. It is not real
Speaker 1: that being skinny makes you unlovable, no matter how much
Speaker 1: it feels, no matter how real it feels, and it
Speaker 1: does feel real, and we do live in a society
Speaker 1: that we'll reinforce that belief absolutely, And what I assure
Speaker 1: you is it isn't real. And the only way to
Speaker 1: really know that is to go and test it out.
Speaker 1: And so the invitation that I give to people to
Speaker 1: this work is, Look, you're living in this construct or
Speaker 1: right now, and it already sucks, right like, it already sucks.
Speaker 1: It sucks thinking that you're not good enough, It sucks
Speaker 1: thinking that you're never gonna be loved. It sucks. And
Speaker 1: so if it's gonna suck anyway, if it's gonna be
Speaker 1: hard anyway, if it's gonna be hard, be hard and
Speaker 1: test the thing that is likely to get you closer
Speaker 1: to your own freedom. If I'm gonna do hard, I'd
Speaker 1: rather do hard in service toward my own freedom. And
Speaker 1: I think this is something they talk about in recovery too,
Speaker 1: Like recovery isn't easy, right, but it's like, what do
Speaker 1: I get? What might I get if I just trust
Speaker 1: that it's possible. That's the invitation of this book. Can
Speaker 1: you just maybe try the experiment and see where it
Speaker 1: takes you? Yeah, And I think that's really powerful because
Speaker 1: the belief starts with just take care whatever, I'm not
Speaker 1: ex enough to be loved, and we then believe that,
Speaker 1: and so then we start acting that way in all
Speaker 1: sorts of ways that make it really likely that we're
Speaker 1: going to prove our theory true exactly. We it's a
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's a self fulfilling prophecy. And again,
Speaker 1: like I said, we live in a world that's happy
Speaker 1: to validate that for us. We are very very profitable
Speaker 1: inside of that belief. We're very manipulable inside of that belief,
Speaker 1: and so it's going to have to take some daring
Speaker 1: and I think, you know, various people in the world
Speaker 1: are offering like the you don't have to sort out
Speaker 1: the fact that isn't true yet. You just have to
Speaker 1: be willing to try a new thing and see. Right, like,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna hold the belief that it isn't true, that
Speaker 1: I wrote a whole book to tell you it isn't true.
Speaker 1: Now just play what it didn't see right, that's the invitation.
Speaker 1: That's the invitation. There's four pillars of practice. So we've
Speaker 1: talked about how to even get on the journey. We
Speaker 1: talked about this thinking, doing and being process. And then
Speaker 1: there are four pillars of practice that I thought we
Speaker 1: could talk about because I think if we hit those
Speaker 1: four we cover a lot of ground of various points
Speaker 1: I'd like to hit. So let's start with what the
Speaker 1: four pillars of practice are. These will not be an order.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say them, and then i'll order them later,
Speaker 1: collect a compassion, unapologetic action. I'll give them to your
Speaker 1: mind matters and taking out the toxic, taking out the toxic,
Speaker 1: thank you, and we just send them backwards. So the
Speaker 1: person was taking out the toxic. And so first, just
Speaker 1: to explain why I have such hard time remembering my
Speaker 1: own pillars, is when I wrote the book, I wrote
Speaker 1: tin tools to radical self love, and these were one
Speaker 1: are the practical applications that we can do every single
Speaker 1: day that help us practice build this radical self love muscle.
Speaker 1: Live into this. And after I wrote them, I realized
Speaker 1: that they each fell under a category, and I was like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: this helps people understand that the sort of like subheading
Speaker 1: of these categories, and so so I always forget the subheadings,
Speaker 1: but I remember the tools. So anyway, taking out the toxic,
Speaker 1: it's really about first if we're inside of this thinking
Speaker 1: doing being paradigm. And remember, all of these things are
Speaker 1: like scaffolding of the building, Right, I gotta build the layer,
Speaker 1: and then I build this layer. Right, so we've built
Speaker 1: the layer, we understand that in order to take this journey,
Speaker 1: we've got to be in a thinking doing being processed.
Speaker 1: Here's your first thinking project taking out the toxic? Where
Speaker 1: am I on a regular basis taking in messages that
Speaker 1: reinforce my belief that I'm not enough, that reinforced my
Speaker 1: belief that I need to be in comparison to assign
Speaker 1: my own worth and value, that reinforce my idea that
Speaker 1: somehow I'm deficient and failing. Where where is that message
Speaker 1: coming from? And how do I turn it down? How
Speaker 1: do I find the volume nob on that and turn
Speaker 1: it down? Some of that is literally the stuff we
Speaker 1: pay for. We're in a grocery store picking up a
Speaker 1: rag magazine that's gonna tell us all the ways in
Speaker 1: which we need to do this, that and the other
Speaker 1: to be desirable, and the thing we need to buy
Speaker 1: to be desirable. And why haven't we become desirable yet?
Speaker 1: And maybe if we did this particular thing, then we'll
Speaker 1: be desirable. And we just gave somebody ten dollars to
Speaker 1: deface us in the pages of their magazine, right, And
Speaker 1: so where am I taking in those messages? Where am
Speaker 1: I watching things that reinforce the message that somehow I'm
Speaker 1: not smart enough, not capable enough, not beautiful, whatever that is?
Speaker 1: And how do I start raising that to consciousness and
Speaker 1: then removing some of that? And then also where am
Speaker 1: I reinforcing that message inside of my own relationship with myself?
Speaker 1: Where do I notice that I just immediately go to shame,
Speaker 1: to body shaming myself, to talking disparagingly about myself. You know,
Speaker 1: I saw a mean one time that said, if you
Speaker 1: talk to a friend the way that you talk to yourself.
Speaker 1: How long would y'all stay friends? Right? And I was
Speaker 1: like absolutely, absolutely, And so how do we begin to say, Oh,
Speaker 1: how do I how do I have a more loving
Speaker 1: dialogue with myself? And where is the toxic way in
Speaker 1: which I'm relating to myself? And then how do I
Speaker 1: do a fast of that? And maybe that's just for
Speaker 1: one day. I'm turning off every time I hear something
Speaker 1: that is trying to sell me a reason I'm deficient.
Speaker 1: I just cut it off. How many times did I
Speaker 1: have to cut off the radio? How many times that
Speaker 1: I have to turn off the TV? How many times
Speaker 1: did I have to get off the social media platform? Right?
Speaker 1: So many? And again, once you raise that to consciousness,
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, this is what I've been doing to myself? Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: I often joke that I generally don't watch TV because
Speaker 1: I feel so susceptible to it. Just show me one
Speaker 1: beer commercial with a lot of beautiful people, and I go,
Speaker 1: it's not that I even want It doesn't make me
Speaker 1: want a beer. It just makes me go, why is
Speaker 1: my life not like that? And home instant I have
Speaker 1: noticed how susceptible in certain mind states I am to
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff or can be. And the truth
Speaker 1: of the matter is like it works. That's why they
Speaker 1: do it. Like if the beer commercial thought you weren't
Speaker 1: going to be susceptible, it would not be dumping millions
Speaker 1: of dollars into acts in that way. It knows it works,
Speaker 1: and so we have to be as consciously aware of
Speaker 1: how it works as the advertisers. Right, that's the work.
Speaker 1: So that's the taking out the toxic. How do we
Speaker 1: become aware of what it is the messages that were
Speaker 1: being fed, and then how do we start auditing that
Speaker 1: so that we can consciously decrease it. Number two is
Speaker 1: mind matters. Yes, And so if we've done this thing
Speaker 1: to say, all right, I'm gonna take out all this
Speaker 1: trash that I've been dumping in my ears and eyeballs
Speaker 1: every day. Now that that space is clear, I've created
Speaker 1: some room, what do I want to put in it?
Speaker 1: What am I trying to cultivate in that space? Because
Speaker 1: like any tiled patch of grass, if you let it
Speaker 1: go long enough, weeds will pop up. Right, And so
Speaker 1: my matter says, all right, now that I've done that,
Speaker 1: what do I consciously want to begin replacing it with?
Speaker 1: And you know, in the book, I begin talking about
Speaker 1: meditation and meditations power to really begin to create space
Speaker 1: and shift our neuropathways to actually get us to start
Speaker 1: thinking differently. If we're talking about how do we get
Speaker 1: to that being part of the thinking doing being process,
Speaker 1: meditation is one of those powerful ways to get us
Speaker 1: to the being part by sitting and practicing, letting that
Speaker 1: clutter that comes in our brains leave, leave us right,
Speaker 1: and then what what do we want to put in
Speaker 1: that space? It also is about challenging some of the
Speaker 1: paradigms that that toxic thinking has had us in. So
Speaker 1: where am I stuck in binary thinking? Where am I
Speaker 1: stuck inside of things are either good or bad? I'm
Speaker 1: awful or I'm here you know our awfuler, I'm an angel,
Speaker 1: I'm a villain, or I'm a hero, i am a victim,
Speaker 1: or I'm a you know, or a perpetrator. Right, We're
Speaker 1: all inside of these really binary ways of thinking that
Speaker 1: limit the scope of our full humanity. How do we
Speaker 1: start to challenge those when they come up? How do
Speaker 1: we see that and then offer ourselves a more expansive
Speaker 1: version of our own humanity so that we have a
Speaker 1: wider feel to play in as we explore leaving these
Speaker 1: toxic message is behind and beginning to learn how to
Speaker 1: hear our own radical self love voice. That's the mind
Speaker 1: matters part. Unapologetic action is next. So if we've taken
Speaker 1: out the toxic, we've seen the things we've been dumping
Speaker 1: in that aren't good for us, and we've started planning
Speaker 1: some new seeds. Right now, it's time to do something
Speaker 1: right now, we're in the doing part. We dealt with
Speaker 1: the mind, We dealt with the thinking. What's the doing?
Speaker 1: What are the actions that I can take every day?
Speaker 1: How do I become reconnected to my own body? How
Speaker 1: do I reclaim joy? And in this vessel that I've
Speaker 1: gotten so many messages, that's deficient. Right. I talked about
Speaker 1: in the book being a kid and when you're a
Speaker 1: child in the teacher rang the veil for recess. I
Speaker 1: don't know about you, but I like grew wings in kindergarten.
Speaker 1: I grew wings and I flew outside. That's how fast
Speaker 1: I needed to get outside and play. And there was
Speaker 1: a joy to going and moving and being embodied. And
Speaker 1: then and somehow we were stripped of that joy and
Speaker 1: it became drudgery, moving our bodies became punishment. Moving our
Speaker 1: bodies became the thing that we paid twenty four hour
Speaker 1: fitness twenty dollars a month to never do because we
Speaker 1: never feel like going right like it became it became
Speaker 1: this really tense, visceral, antagonistic relationship. And so, what would
Speaker 1: it look like to reclaim joy in my body? What
Speaker 1: would it looked like to reclaim pleasure in my body?
Speaker 1: What would it look like to reclaim connection in my body?
Speaker 1: And how do I take action to do that on
Speaker 1: a daily basis? How do I replace those old activities
Speaker 1: of self deprecation with things that actually bring me a
Speaker 1: lot of joy? And so basically all of these things,
Speaker 1: these tools, I created a workbook where people can actually
Speaker 1: practice putting them in place, doing them on a daily basis.
Speaker 1: And so inside of the workbook and give us an
Speaker 1: assignment to rediscover the games that brought us the most
Speaker 1: joyous kids, like when to the last time you played
Speaker 1: red Light Green Light? When is the last time you
Speaker 1: played how do you go seek with a bunch of
Speaker 1: adults outside? And so there's this invitation to return to
Speaker 1: our site of joy, to reclaim that for ourselves, And
Speaker 1: so an unapologetic action. That's what we're asking. The other
Speaker 1: piece inside of unapologetic action is about, now that we
Speaker 1: recognize the stories we've been telling ourselves about how deficient
Speaker 1: we are, the stories that reinforce the larger societal and
Speaker 1: doctor nations. Now that we recognize those things, how do
Speaker 1: we create a new story? How do I literally tell
Speaker 1: myself a different story than the story I've been telling
Speaker 1: myself historically? And you know, again, inside the workbook, I
Speaker 1: give us the opportunity to actually practice writing a new story.
Speaker 1: To take that thing that was the most shameful that
Speaker 1: I had the most judgment about myself, the story of
Speaker 1: being the skinny boy who was never gonna be loved?
Speaker 1: How do I turn that story around in a literal
Speaker 1: way and write write myself an ending that is more
Speaker 1: aligned with my truth? And then how do I practice
Speaker 1: them living into that right? And so as we exercise
Speaker 1: these muscles, we create the conditions for medical self love
Speaker 1: not to feel like a distant thing, but to fill
Speaker 1: up close to us, like a thing we can practice
Speaker 1: and live into on a daily basis. Yeah, I love
Speaker 1: that there's so many good things in there. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think about stories, and I've talked about this on
Speaker 1: the podcast so many times we're making them up. So
Speaker 1: if we're making them up, why on earth would we
Speaker 1: not choose ones to back to your your earlier question like,
Speaker 1: is this belief or this thing giving me more peace, joy, ease, power?
Speaker 1: If my stories aren't doing that, Once we sort of
Speaker 1: really look at it and go, oh, I'm making meaning
Speaker 1: out of it. I'm the one that's creating all this.
Speaker 1: Why not? Why not? If I'm going to write a story,
Speaker 1: I might as well write the one where it's a
Speaker 1: happy ending. That's right, right as well? That's right? And
Speaker 1: then the last one, and this one I know is
Speaker 1: really important to the whole pick sure, which is why
Speaker 1: I wanted to make sure we got to it. Is
Speaker 1: collective compassion. Talk about this one. Yeah, So you know
Speaker 1: I say in the book, like you could do everything,
Speaker 1: you could do all the things. I said, you can
Speaker 1: do all the tools. If you don't do these last
Speaker 1: two tools, you're gonna struggle in this journey. You're gonna
Speaker 1: find yourself like on a side of a of a
Speaker 1: steep heel that's mud trying to climb up. Collective compassion
Speaker 1: is one that this is not an individual journey, which
Speaker 1: I said at the beginning of our conversation that this
Speaker 1: is not about individualism, that this is about interdependence. And
Speaker 1: the truth of the matter is, you have an entire
Speaker 1: societal infrastructure of systems and organizations and edifices that are
Speaker 1: designed to keep you not feeling enough, that are designed
Speaker 1: to make sure that you don't actually think that you
Speaker 1: can affect change in your own life or in the world.
Speaker 1: They are intentionally created as such. So if you've if
Speaker 1: you're gonna just do battle with that jugger, not by yourself,
Speaker 1: You're gonna be sadly mistaken. It's gonna be very, very difficult,
Speaker 1: near impossible to be able to maintain any kind of
Speaker 1: sense of power against that. And so we need each
Speaker 1: other in this. We have to be in a collective
Speaker 1: experience where we are battling those voices, not just me
Speaker 1: up against the machine, but us against it. Right. And
Speaker 1: so the more that you find your people, the more
Speaker 1: that you find the people who are in alignment with
Speaker 1: with the journey that you're interested in taking, far easier,
Speaker 1: the journey becomes so much more doable and sustainable, the
Speaker 1: journey becomes and so collective compassion requires us to find
Speaker 1: community and to do this work in community again, because
Speaker 1: our liberation is tied up together, our radical self love
Speaker 1: journey is tied up together. And then the last piece,
Speaker 1: and this is tool number ten, final to the most
Speaker 1: important thing you're gonna do. If you do everything and
Speaker 1: you fail to really live into this, you will find
Speaker 1: yourself back in this old paradigm. And that is give
Speaker 1: yourself some grace that we actually have to recognize that
Speaker 1: this is not a journey of perfection. And as soon
Speaker 1: as we're inside of a conversation of perfection, we're outside
Speaker 1: of a conversation of radical self love. As soon as
Speaker 1: you are judging yourself because you got it wrong. See,
Speaker 1: I always get it wrong. You know. I did a
Speaker 1: workshop on time and ah, the participant called it meta shame,
Speaker 1: shame for having Shane. I like this too much, y'all,
Speaker 1: just too much. And I feel bad for feeling bad.
Speaker 1: And now I feel bad. But it's a lot. And
Speaker 1: what I invite us to do is say, of course,
Speaker 1: I'm imperfect in this journey. That is one of the
Speaker 1: actual beautiful parts of my humanity is that I'm imperfect,
Speaker 1: that I'm gonna get it wrong, that I get to
Speaker 1: experiment and mess up and try again. That is part
Speaker 1: of the journey. I tell people all the time. I
Speaker 1: run an entire organization. I dedicated the last decade of
Speaker 1: my life to nothing but radical self love. And there
Speaker 1: are days I do not feel very loving about myself.
Speaker 1: I don't feel that. And the work, the work of
Speaker 1: radical self love is can I love the Sonya that
Speaker 1: doesn't feel loving toward herself until Sonya loves herself again.
Speaker 1: I love you Sonya that feels not enough. I love
Speaker 1: you Sonya that got it wrong. I love you Sonia
Speaker 1: that don't feel like loving me. And the more that
Speaker 1: I open up to that experience of love, of loving
Speaker 1: the imperfect version of me, the more I return myself
Speaker 1: to the stasis of love, to love as the foundation
Speaker 1: of how I'm moving through life. There's so many things
Speaker 1: in what you said there that if we can interrupt
Speaker 1: that cycle, that meta shame cycle, it's so important because
Speaker 1: what we end up doing is we go, Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be on a journey of radical self love and
Speaker 1: I'm not doing it good enough exactly, And so wherever
Speaker 1: we can interrupt that cycle is so good. And then
Speaker 1: that last piece about the collective compassion, and that that
Speaker 1: grace for ourselves is again, it's that reciprocal cycle we
Speaker 1: talked about earlier. The more that I have grace for myself,
Speaker 1: the more I can offer you grace, And the more
Speaker 1: I offer you grace, the more I have for myself,
Speaker 1: you know. And so it really is that interdependence that
Speaker 1: we talked about. And being on this journey alone is
Speaker 1: like you said, it's too hard. Yeah, it's just not sustainable.
Speaker 1: And I think if nothing else, what we can be
Speaker 1: looking at in this world right now is we need
Speaker 1: things that are sustainable. Yeah, we're running out of a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff here. We might be figuring out what
Speaker 1: what makes this journey possible for the long run, and
Speaker 1: that's together. Yeah. Amen, Well, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: taking the time to come on the show. I have
Speaker 1: really enjoyed this conversation. I loved the book. There are
Speaker 1: a ton of stories in the book I would have
Speaker 1: loved to get to which we didn't. But we'll have
Speaker 1: links in the show notes to your book. People can
Speaker 1: find you online and and I hope people check you
Speaker 1: out because it was a really great book and I've
Speaker 1: really enjoyed this awesome. Thanks so much. I really appreciate
Speaker 1: you inviting me. Thanks so much. Thank you. If what
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