Speaker 1: Hey, hey va fam.
Speaker 2: All right, this is our last episode of twenty twenty one.
Speaker 2: I cannot believe it. This has been a year of
Speaker 2: so many ups and downs, twist and turns, and especially
Speaker 2: these last few weeks, as we have been throwing our
Speaker 2: love and our support and our condolences to our beloved
Speaker 2: Tiffany in her time of need after such an unimaginable loss,
Speaker 2: it just got me thinking how grateful I am for
Speaker 2: this space that we have created, this community that we
Speaker 2: have created these past six and a half years, And
Speaker 2: I just wanted to say thank you to each and
Speaker 2: every one of you who has listened to the show,
Speaker 2: supported our show for so long. Thank you for your
Speaker 2: patience as we give Tiffany the time that she needs
Speaker 2: to heal, and we look forward to seeing you again
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty two. Now, to close out the year,
Speaker 2: what better way than by sharing the very first episode
Speaker 2: of Brown Ambition. For a long time, I thought this
Speaker 2: episode was lost forever. I thought the Internet had gobbled
Speaker 2: it up and it is just gone. But thanks to
Speaker 2: a beloved member of the BA team I'm talking to you, Dennis,
Speaker 2: we managed to dig up this old original episode of BA.
Speaker 2: And when I tell you these babies. The way that
Speaker 2: we talked about everything from love and money to work
Speaker 2: and family. It honestly gives me chills when I look
Speaker 2: back and listen to this first episode, and I hope
Speaker 2: you guys enjoy it. After the show, stick around to
Speaker 2: hear one of our favorite guest interviews with doctor Imani Walker.
Speaker 2: If you guys haven't had a chance to listen to
Speaker 2: our interview with doctor Imani Walker, this is one, especially
Speaker 2: after another year where the forbidden Panini continues to rage on.
Speaker 2: We've all been through so much highs and lows, twist
Speaker 2: and turns. As I've said, doctor Emani has some really
Speaker 2: useful advice on how we can protect our mental health
Speaker 2: heading into the new year. Thank you again for always listening,
Speaker 2: and we'll see you next year.
Speaker 3: Y'all. Hey everyone, I'm Mandy.
Speaker 1: Hey, it's Tiphany and this is Brown Ambition.
Speaker 2: I've been a reporter in New York City for five years.
Speaker 2: Right now, I'm a writer at Yahoo Finance. I write
Speaker 2: about money, business career, basically anything to do with the
Speaker 2: world and.
Speaker 3: How it impacts your wallet.
Speaker 4: And I am Tiffany but much better known as the
Speaker 4: Budget Lista and I'm a financial educator, bestselling author, speaker, teacher,
Speaker 4: all things personal finance.
Speaker 1: Basically, on this podcast.
Speaker 4: We're going to be talking about career, relationships, life and
Speaker 4: living in this brown skin.
Speaker 2: We work, we start businesses, we help one another. We
Speaker 2: do everything we can to make a better life for ourselves.
Speaker 2: And that's what Brown Ambition.
Speaker 3: Is all about.
Speaker 2: So here are some topics you might hear us talk
Speaker 2: about on the podcast.
Speaker 1: How to deal with office bullies and microaggressions.
Speaker 2: Coping with being the only one in the.
Speaker 4: Office, Yes, how to get money for a new business
Speaker 4: even when you have no idea what you're doing. Should
Speaker 4: you care if people think you have resting bitch base guilty?
Speaker 3: What to do when bee earns less.
Speaker 4: Than you guilty guilty, Whether or not we should use
Speaker 4: the word bae in everyday conversation.
Speaker 3: I have a lot of thoughts about this. Well, thank
Speaker 3: you so much for joining us.
Speaker 2: Guys. We're going to start off the podcast by talking
Speaker 2: about some buzzworthy headlines that are cropping up in our lives,
Speaker 2: and we want to talk.
Speaker 3: More about this week's buzzworthy.
Speaker 1: Yes, I'm excited about this one.
Speaker 2: I think I know. I'm excited to have a lot
Speaker 2: of opinions about this, and.
Speaker 3: So does the rest of America.
Speaker 2: Yes, so many opinions on how a young woman today
Speaker 2: decides the right time to step into motherhood.
Speaker 1: Yes, baby limbo, baby.
Speaker 3: Limbo, it's this, you know.
Speaker 2: I kind of came up with this terminology for a
Speaker 2: story I did on young people millennials eighteen up to
Speaker 2: their mid thirties who are stuck between do I have
Speaker 2: this college debt or do you know, pay that off
Speaker 2: and focus on my career, or do I also have
Speaker 2: a baby or you know, what should come first? And honestly,
Speaker 2: it's such a difficult question because mother nature doesn't wait
Speaker 2: for you to pay off your student linked debt. And
Speaker 2: I think that women have to recognize that fact. And
Speaker 2: it's maybe not so comfortable because you know, obviously we
Speaker 2: want to talk about how much control we should have
Speaker 2: over our own bodies, which is absolutely true. You should,
Speaker 2: you know, be your own body's boss. But at the
Speaker 2: end of the day, like that clock is ticking.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 4: So I'm thirty five and I turned thirty six in October,
Speaker 4: which is not far away, and I mean, I've been
Speaker 4: thinking about it a lot because I am in a
Speaker 4: serious relationship me and my boyfriend Superman, he already has
Speaker 4: a daughter.
Speaker 1: She's eight.
Speaker 2: She's great daytaking a man with a daughter. That's some
Speaker 2: grown up dating.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but I love it, honestly, because one, I'm at
Speaker 4: an age now and because I work for myself, I
Speaker 4: realize I don't necessarily want a huge family. I came
Speaker 4: from a family there was five girls. My mom and
Speaker 4: dad raised all five of us. And I don't know
Speaker 4: that I want a big family, but I at least
Speaker 4: think I'm pretty sure I want at least one kid
Speaker 4: of my own. I mean, according to my mom, I
Speaker 4: really need to get on it. And I kind of
Speaker 4: feel like that too. My best friend just had a baby,
Speaker 4: and my sister just had a baby, and so their
Speaker 4: babies are all under a year.
Speaker 1: Old, and so I've been like, yeah, a little bit,
Speaker 1: But sometimes you're overt.
Speaker 4: More so than I'm like, Oh, I'm gonna be thirty six,
Speaker 4: so when are you gonna make a choice. A friend
Speaker 4: of mine had she made her choice at thirty six
Speaker 4: and had her baby at thirty seven, and she said,
Speaker 4: I wish I would have started sooner.
Speaker 3: That's what I hear.
Speaker 2: I'm afraid, yeah, sooner would be I'm twenty eight right now,
Speaker 2: and I feel like, am I going to regret not
Speaker 2: having a baby now? I don't know, but it seems
Speaker 2: like I just don't want to do it.
Speaker 4: Her reason for saying she wish she would have started
Speaker 4: sooner is that she wished She really wants to have
Speaker 4: a second, and she doesn't know if she can. Yeah,
Speaker 4: she can. So that's why I don't know that I
Speaker 4: want to have a second. I mean, I would want
Speaker 4: to have two kids, but between his one and my one,
Speaker 4: I'm like, well, there it goes one plus one.
Speaker 1: Max two for free.
Speaker 4: Yes, she's the bonus kid and so and plus I
Speaker 4: do so much work and I really want to and
Speaker 4: I know this might sound a little selfish, but I
Speaker 4: want to maintain my individual personality and maintain okay, you know,
Speaker 4: as long as you know. I mean, I think selfish
Speaker 4: would be more so having ten kids and still wanting
Speaker 4: to fly around.
Speaker 1: The country and speak and teach. And you don't have
Speaker 1: enough time for your children. So I don't want to
Speaker 1: spread myself super thin.
Speaker 2: Right m h, Well, hopefully you just have one kid
Speaker 2: to start.
Speaker 1: I know, Well, my boyfriends are twins, so.
Speaker 4: He is, Oh jesus, I'm like yo, he told me.
Speaker 4: I already Like, so I'm aiming for this.
Speaker 2: Does that gene come from the male line or that
Speaker 2: is more likely.
Speaker 1: To go somebody, somebody email us.
Speaker 3: At Brown Ambition Podcast, yes.
Speaker 4: And tell us how exactly are twins formulated? Does that
Speaker 4: come from the male line, the female line? Is that? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Is it hereditary or is that like some sort of
Speaker 1: random I do.
Speaker 2: Think it skips a generation. So you might be good. Okay,
Speaker 2: maybe you're If you have a daughter, then she's got
Speaker 2: to worry.
Speaker 1: But you're good. So so you say.
Speaker 4: And so I come back to the next podcast and
Speaker 4: I'm like, so, y'all, I'm having twins.
Speaker 1: Thanks Manny, I can talk well.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm twenty eight, and I don't necessarily feel
Speaker 2: pressure to have a baby, Okay, but I feel I
Speaker 2: guess that's not true. I don't feel pressure from myself, Okay,
Speaker 2: I don't. I look at puppies and I feel my
Speaker 2: my ovaries twins, like I really want a puppy very badly.
Speaker 2: Babies not so much, but they're cute. What I do
Speaker 2: feel is intense pressure from you know, I'm dating. I've
Speaker 2: been dating my partner boyfriend for through over three years. Now,
Speaker 2: which is my longest relationship, and you know, we live
Speaker 2: together and we're kind of we're kind of playing it
Speaker 2: as we you know by ear. His family, however, is
Speaker 2: not waiting, especially his mother. He comes from a very traditional,
Speaker 2: close knit community and family. I guess it's not giving
Speaker 2: away too much if I says Dominican. So I'm in
Speaker 2: a mixed race relationship. And his mother is very Catholic
Speaker 2: and very old school and she is like the mother
Speaker 2: of mothers. She lives to nurture her son's two sons.
Speaker 2: They are schooled rotten. But you know, I feel her
Speaker 2: looking at me and wondering. Not just feel, but I
Speaker 2: hear it because she tells me, Mandy, Amanda, why why
Speaker 2: no baby? Why? Her English isn't very good, but she
Speaker 2: can she gets her point across.
Speaker 1: Where's the baby yet?
Speaker 3: Where it's been three years?
Speaker 2: I asked her, you know, uh, don't she want us
Speaker 2: to get married first and get married and do all
Speaker 2: that and you know, the right order of events.
Speaker 1: And she's like, no, just have a baby.
Speaker 2: Wow?
Speaker 1: Would this be her first grandchild?
Speaker 3: This will be her first grandchild.
Speaker 1: There's so much pressure.
Speaker 4: I know, what how about you come from a family
Speaker 4: of five girls, and no one has kids. My mother
Speaker 4: every day on the phone, so my my Nigerian name
Speaker 4: is Adoci.
Speaker 1: My mother would call me and say, it's so adult.
Speaker 4: She's still not married, still no baby, and I'm like,
Speaker 4: good oldest, no second oldest, Okay.
Speaker 1: So they're just like so somebody that the oldest.
Speaker 4: Is married and she's working on it, and I'm the second.
Speaker 4: The third is not married, the fourth is married and
Speaker 4: she just had a baby, so we're like whoo, and
Speaker 4: but just watching her. She's literally like the milk machine.
Speaker 4: So she's only allowed to take ten paces away from
Speaker 4: the baby before the milk machine has to return and
Speaker 4: dispense milk.
Speaker 2: You mean, it's not glamorous, and she's not like Blake
Speaker 2: Lively taking selfies of herself, you know, breastfeeding in a
Speaker 2: field of sunflowers.
Speaker 4: That is a straight because honestly, she's like, I'm so tired.
Speaker 4: Her feet are swollen, and she's just like, how can
Speaker 4: I My mom is like, my mom is a nurse,
Speaker 4: and her my mom was telling her you need to
Speaker 4: put your feet up.
Speaker 1: She's like, oh, when when I'm beeting the milk machine.
Speaker 2: I work for a company and obviously y'allhoo has very
Speaker 2: generous maternity and paternity benefit programs, which isn't the norm nationwide.
Speaker 2: It's actually America is one of the only developing nations
Speaker 2: that doesn't have a federally mandated and paid maternity or
Speaker 2: paternity leading law. But I'm lucky enough to work for
Speaker 2: y'allhoo and we have sixteen weeks off. That's awesome, And
Speaker 2: dads get eight weeks off, and at least I know
Speaker 2: I have that, Yeah, sort of if I'm still working,
Speaker 2: you're gonna have a baby, have that kind of cushion.
Speaker 2: But can you talk about, like I'm curious as an
Speaker 2: entrepreneur's self, you know, you own your own business, how
Speaker 2: are you going to plan your leave?
Speaker 4: So I've been like, honestly like kind of like planning
Speaker 4: now because I'm going to be thirty six, like I said,
Speaker 4: and I mentioned, and my boyfriend and I have been
Speaker 4: talking about marriage and kids. So right now, the way
Speaker 4: my business is is that I start off at zero
Speaker 4: basically like every month, meaning like my income, I never
Speaker 4: know what's going to come in. People would just email
Speaker 4: me and call me and say we want you to
Speaker 4: speak or teach or whatever, and so as a month
Speaker 4: rolls on I make money. I cannot do that and
Speaker 4: the kid because one, you know, I'm gonna have to
Speaker 4: be home. I do a lot of speaking around the country,
Speaker 4: you know, so that's a worry for me. So I thought, well,
Speaker 4: how am I going to make this work? So one
Speaker 4: of the things I'm implementing is I'm looking for other
Speaker 4: ways to make passive income. So I have two books
Speaker 4: that do fear really well. I'm coming out with a
Speaker 4: children's book hopefully that will boost up my income. In
Speaker 4: two I'm launching this academy called the Live Richer Academy,
Speaker 4: where it's going to be like a monthly fee and
Speaker 4: you can take classes on investing and business and all
Speaker 4: this kind of stuff. And so the Live Richer Academy
Speaker 4: will definitely help to put regular income into my stream
Speaker 4: without me having to leave the house because I'm not
Speaker 4: going to be able to, at least not for a while.
Speaker 4: So I'd love to hear what the BA audience has
Speaker 4: to say. Tweet us at the BA Podcast. You can
Speaker 4: find us on Facebook at Brown Ambition, and you can
Speaker 4: email us at Brownambitionpodcast at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: Let us know are you and baby Limbo? What is
Speaker 1: your story.
Speaker 4: We'd love to hear it, maybe share it next time
Speaker 4: we're on. So next up, this is one of my
Speaker 4: favorite segments. It is brown break.
Speaker 3: Brown bread, some music.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's like break.
Speaker 4: Man's gonna really how about you share? Like what what
Speaker 4: is a brown bakman?
Speaker 2: A brown break is just something in your life that
Speaker 2: you are tired of having to deal with or explain
Speaker 2: as a.
Speaker 3: Person of color. And this week, my brown.
Speaker 2: Break is white feminism. This is a very uncomfortable issue.
Speaker 2: I know, we like to keep things light and fun
Speaker 2: as much as we can, but white feminism is something
Speaker 2: that I'm starting to learn a little bit more about
Speaker 2: and just to give some background on what brought me
Speaker 2: to this necessary break in my life. So two of
Speaker 2: my favorite authors for very different reasons. These authors couldn't
Speaker 2: be more different. Erica Jong amazing author, very popular in
Speaker 2: the seventies and popular even now. She's a new book
Speaker 2: coming out. She was seen as sort of like one
Speaker 2: of the first female writers to really embrace women's sexuality,
Speaker 2: writing about a woman who's had sex and saying curse
Speaker 2: words and sleeping around with no apology. And she did
Speaker 2: a talk recently at the Decatur Book Festival shout out
Speaker 2: to Atlanta, my hometown with Rox Sane Gay, another one
Speaker 2: of my favorite authors. She's the author of Bad Feminist.
Speaker 2: And someone asks Erica Jong how she feels about white
Speaker 2: feminism and the concept of white women generally speaking about
Speaker 2: feminists in a way that can sometimes exclude women of color.
Speaker 2: And this is not a new issue. It's been around
Speaker 2: since the seventies, when the first or not even the seventies,
Speaker 2: but you know, when women were trying to get the
Speaker 2: right to vote. Cut to the seventies, when women were
Speaker 2: fighting for equal pay and things like that, and generally
Speaker 2: white women would speak of feminism as if it only
Speaker 2: applied from their point of view, and we weren't hearing
Speaker 2: so much from black and brown women. So this is
Speaker 2: something that I care a lot about. And I have
Speaker 2: to say as someone who really respects Erica John, Erica
Speaker 2: John from like the bottom of my heart, and I
Speaker 2: love her writing.
Speaker 1: The way that she.
Speaker 2: Handled that wasn't I think the best way she could
Speaker 2: have handled things. She got really defensive, and I can
Speaker 2: understand why you'd be defensive because if you identify as
Speaker 2: a feminist. And I give her so much respect, she
Speaker 2: has done so much for the cause for feminism in
Speaker 2: America and supported so many women, but she immediately was
Speaker 2: discounting the whole white feminism thing.
Speaker 3: Oh no, of course not.
Speaker 2: You know, Oh, We've done so much for all women
Speaker 2: of color, all women of color. You know, everything I've
Speaker 2: done has been through this lens of you know, all women,
Speaker 2: all women, And it just seemed like a second iteration
Speaker 2: of the whole all lives matter thing. And you know,
Speaker 2: we kind of saw this play out with the whole
Speaker 2: Nicki Minaj and Taylor Swift beef on Twitter where Nikki's
Speaker 2: trying to make a statement about how black women are
Speaker 2: treated in the music industry, and then Taylor comes in
Speaker 2: and talks about, why are you.
Speaker 3: Trying to make it about you?
Speaker 2: All women in music industry are marginalized and you know,
Speaker 2: sexualized in different ways and disenfranchised. But no, Taylor, No,
Speaker 2: Black women and women of color are way more likely
Speaker 2: to be marginalized in the music industry and not just there.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about in terms of like the wage gap.
Speaker 2: That's a huge cornerstone of the feminist movement today is
Speaker 2: the fact that women are still earning less than eight
Speaker 2: eighty cents on the dollar for a man. What gets
Speaker 2: lost when you stop the conversation. There is the fact
Speaker 2: that Latina and black women are much more likely to
Speaker 2: make less than that. And yeah, I'm just over I'm
Speaker 2: over people stopping the conversation. At here's what it looks
Speaker 2: like for all women, because all women don't have the
Speaker 2: same story exactly.
Speaker 1: So you need a brown break from white.
Speaker 4: So my brown break is this whole debate of perm
Speaker 4: versus natural rap.
Speaker 2: So I am sitting with my fed up like my
Speaker 2: half perm, half relaxed awkward transition face.
Speaker 4: So many's half and half right, And here I am
Speaker 4: fully natural. I have locks for the last like seven years.
Speaker 4: But honestly, I've been natural since I want to say,
Speaker 4: two thousand and one. I don't Matt good so I
Speaker 4: know how many years.
Speaker 3: I fifteen years.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was honestly natural for the majority of my life.
Speaker 4: I had a perm. Yeah, I was like totally like
Speaker 4: the natural girl before it became cool when I went natural.
Speaker 4: At first, I had honestly, here's where I went natural.
Speaker 4: So all throughout high school I had I had a
Speaker 4: natural hair. I had braids, the Brandy braids for those
Speaker 4: of you who can remember Brandy Norwood.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. I want to be damn.
Speaker 4: So so I had the braids because I played sports.
Speaker 4: I played tennis, and so it didn't make sense for
Speaker 4: me to have a perm and have palms hair and
Speaker 4: played sports, and so I was natural mostly all my life.
Speaker 1: And then when I went away to college, I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I want a PERM.
Speaker 4: I felt like perm was like the next level of
Speaker 4: like womanhood for black women, and so I got a
Speaker 4: PERM and two years in my hair.
Speaker 1: Started to fall out, like I had alopecia. So alopecia
Speaker 1: is really.
Speaker 2: Wet putting a very toxic chemical and your hair wasn't.
Speaker 4: Good for it, I know, And so my styl of
Speaker 4: was like, you know what, Tiffany, your texture of hair.
Speaker 4: It's just like I have really really tightly coiled hair
Speaker 4: and it just was not blending well with the perm.
Speaker 4: So literally the side started good go first, and then
Speaker 4: the back and the front, and then finally she was like,
Speaker 4: you're just gonna have to let the perm go, and
Speaker 4: so I cut off all of the perm and I
Speaker 4: was left with this spiky fro, and I realized it
Speaker 4: was too short to get braided, so I was kind
Speaker 4: of forced to walk around with spike fro, and I had,
Speaker 4: so it started to grow out, and I kind of
Speaker 4: liked the fro.
Speaker 1: It was cute.
Speaker 4: It was a cute little afro mini afro. But women
Speaker 4: and older black women started stopping me in the street
Speaker 4: and literally saying, why would you do that to yourself?
Speaker 4: My my wasn't my mother and my father either one
Speaker 4: of them. One of them said to me, so you
Speaker 4: don't plan to Maddy, I'll translate, so you never want.
Speaker 1: To get married.
Speaker 4: I was like, excuse me, So you don't want to, Mattie,
Speaker 4: that's what this hair is seen, that's what this is
Speaker 4: what my so.
Speaker 3: You're putting out there.
Speaker 4: Yes, so this is what I was told. So I
Speaker 4: couldn't believe how. I don't know, just like how politicized
Speaker 4: my hair was. I literally just stopped getting a perm
Speaker 4: because I was going bald. I wasn't trying to make
Speaker 4: a statement. I wasn't trying to, I don't know, trying
Speaker 4: to like prove my blackness. It was, hey, I'd like
Speaker 4: not to be bald. Let me go back to the
Speaker 4: where my hair was.
Speaker 3: Yeah, very practical.
Speaker 4: But what I found was with time, as time went on,
Speaker 4: I found that people were politicizing it.
Speaker 1: For me. I would go to like Harlem or New York,
Speaker 1: and people.
Speaker 4: Would say hey, sister, like they would treat me differently
Speaker 4: than my friends who I was walking with who had
Speaker 4: a perm. You know, I wasn't when men even would
Speaker 4: approach me, it wasn't the same like hey, shorty, what up?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 1: It was like Hi, I just want to tell you
Speaker 1: that you're so beautiful.
Speaker 4: And it was different, and I thought that was so yeah,
Speaker 4: so strange, and but now what's happened. At first it
Speaker 4: was like I was so happy to see that people
Speaker 4: were embracing their natural hair, and I was like, yeah, yeah, yay,
Speaker 4: But now what's happened. It's like there's two camps. There's
Speaker 4: the perm camp and there's their natural camp. And sometimes
Speaker 4: I find that each camp is like looking down on
Speaker 4: each other, right, And I'm like, to me, it's just hair.
Speaker 4: It's just a choice, like a dress or pants or shoes,
Speaker 4: and you should be able to make your choice, and
Speaker 4: you shouldn't be shamed for having a perm. You shouldn't
Speaker 4: be shamed for being natural. When to me, it should
Speaker 4: just be an expression of like just how you want
Speaker 4: to look today, you know, or even if you want
Speaker 4: to make it, if you want to make it politici.
Speaker 1: That's fine, but that's just not me.
Speaker 4: And we're here and we're back, and we are going
Speaker 4: to give you some tips brown ambition tips for today.
Speaker 3: So what are your tips for today? Tips?
Speaker 4: So my main tip for today really is for those
Speaker 4: of you who are starting a business. If this is
Speaker 4: a very first kind of stage of your business, you
Speaker 4: have to make a decision of whether or not you
Speaker 4: want to be.
Speaker 1: A business or look like a business. Right, so this
Speaker 1: is a business.
Speaker 4: There's a fourteen year old girl on your block who
Speaker 4: babysits and she gets paid to. She has a business,
Speaker 4: no very informal, but a business nonetheless, because a business
Speaker 4: is just when you have a product or service that
Speaker 4: somebody wants to buy and they do. Now, if you
Speaker 4: look like a business, looks all fancy. You have your
Speaker 4: business cards and pens and everything, but haven't made a sale.
Speaker 1: The fourteen year old has a business. You do not.
Speaker 4: So here's how I can help you get to a
Speaker 4: place where you can actually make money on your business. First,
Speaker 4: you want to make sure that that your return on
Speaker 4: there's a direct return on investments in the things that
Speaker 4: you buy. So what that means is this that anything
Speaker 4: that you're buying in the beginning stages of your business
Speaker 4: should directly make you money.
Speaker 1: So let's just say you want to be a baker.
Speaker 1: If you want to be a baker.
Speaker 4: Getting a bakery is not going to directly make you money.
Speaker 4: Having business cards is not going to directly make you money.
Speaker 4: That looks like a business. That's not a business. Eggs, flour,
Speaker 4: sugar shortening, vanilla seasoning, whatever, those things will directly make
Speaker 4: you money because you can bake them, to make bake
Speaker 4: goods and sell them. So in the beginning, I really
Speaker 4: urge new entrepreneurs to really only put your money into
Speaker 4: things that you can directly repackage and make you money.
Speaker 2: You're speaking to my dad right now, I think, Hey,
Speaker 2: Manny fat big Al, who also does photography, find at
Speaker 2: Alton Windriff dot com.
Speaker 3: Excellent. Thank you, that's a great tip. Thanks.
Speaker 2: So I want to talk about how to save on
Speaker 2: rent and make rent more affordable. And these are tried
Speaker 2: and true tips that I've actually done to lower my rent.
Speaker 2: In fact, I moved into a new place about a
Speaker 2: year and a half ago and I managed to save
Speaker 2: It will be twelve It'll be two four hundred dollars
Speaker 2: once we hit our two year mark because I got
Speaker 2: them to shave one hundred bucks off their asking price
Speaker 2: for the rent, which I was really proud of. And
Speaker 2: again it's just like I said, those little asks. Just
Speaker 2: ask for the little stuff. You never know what they're
Speaker 2: going to say. My first tip to save on rent
Speaker 2: is obviously, don't be afraid to negotiate, especially if you
Speaker 2: know that maybe you're moving to a place where there's
Speaker 2: not as much demand for rental places.
Speaker 3: Ask your landlord.
Speaker 2: You know, let's say you know, for example, your rent
Speaker 2: is sixteen hundred dollars a month, you have excellent credit,
Speaker 2: you have references, you come correct with references, and you're
Speaker 2: ready to show your landlord what a responsible tenant you are.
Speaker 2: If you can show them how responsible you are, then
Speaker 2: ask them for one hundred dollars or ten percent deduction
Speaker 2: in the rent. It can work, but again you have
Speaker 2: to come prepared with those references and with that good credit.
Speaker 4: A tenant of mine did that once. Oh really, yeah,
Speaker 4: she was twenty six years old.
Speaker 1: I remember.
Speaker 4: I was like, I don't know, but because she came
Speaker 4: so prepared with everything, and she actually pre wrote the
Speaker 4: checks a year in advance to me so when she
Speaker 4: asked for less, I was ahead, but she was like, amazing, No,
Speaker 4: But that works because I used to be a landlord
Speaker 4: and her coming so prepared, I was willing to offer
Speaker 4: her less just to have a good tenant in there.
Speaker 2: Offering months in advance rent payments, that's a good tip,
Speaker 2: a good strategy, And I don't know if it's so
Speaker 2: common outside of New York, but a lot of landlords
Speaker 2: asked for first and last month's rent plus security deposit,
Speaker 2: which I know is hard to come up with. But
Speaker 2: if you can, if you can offer to pay two
Speaker 2: or three months, maybe even half a year's rent in
Speaker 2: advance upfront, they'll be willing to shave money off your
Speaker 2: rent if you ask them.
Speaker 3: They might be.
Speaker 2: At the end of the day, a landlord has a
Speaker 2: product that he's trying to sell and he wants someone
Speaker 2: who's going to be living there and be responsible to
Speaker 2: be and not going to move out, you know, and
Speaker 2: break your lease early. And if you show that kind
Speaker 2: of commitment, paying in advance can really help you. Another
Speaker 2: strategy that I've used is picking a good time of
Speaker 2: year to rent. Studies show and my experience shows that
Speaker 2: the winter, winter and early spring are some of the
Speaker 2: more dry seasons, and as a landlord, there's less competition
Speaker 2: out there, which means that they're more desperate to rent
Speaker 2: their place out. And I think that's probably a lot
Speaker 2: of the reason why I was able to negotiate my rent.
Speaker 2: On top of having when was it you good credit?
Speaker 2: I moved in. We were looking for an apartment in February.
Speaker 2: Moved in March first, so it was a great time.
Speaker 2: It's way more difficult to negotiate a rent because there's
Speaker 2: so many people looking for places in May and in September,
Speaker 2: end of college and begin in the school year exactly, definitely,
Speaker 2: So think about your timing and if you can time
Speaker 2: it around winter time. It sucks to move in the cold,
Speaker 2: but money keeps me way.
Speaker 4: I was gonna say that what I'll wear a money jacket,
Speaker 4: And my last tip would be protect your belongings.
Speaker 2: This is like, please eat your vinom, meet your vitamins,
Speaker 2: and like eat your vegetables and stuff. But seriously, Renters
Speaker 2: insurance is no joke. You need to have it. It
Speaker 2: costs like ten to fifteen dollars a month. You can
Speaker 2: easily get a policy. If you have car insurance, call
Speaker 2: your I'm sure your insurance company probably offers a renter's
Speaker 2: insurance policy. You can go through your bank. You can
Speaker 2: go to just random bank and ask them like USAA
Speaker 2: has a great renter's policy and get renter's insurance. Here
Speaker 2: is why if something were to happen to your apartments,
Speaker 2: they a fire, or a flood or the spring. You know,
Speaker 2: someone's bathtub overflows up above, which has happened to people
Speaker 2: before that I know, and it drips down and ruins
Speaker 2: all your furniture. Your landlord is going to definitely pay
Speaker 2: to repair this structure, sure, and to repair the floor
Speaker 2: in the ceiling. But he has or she has no
Speaker 2: obligation to take care of your stuff, which is why
Speaker 2: you have to have renter's insurance. And one of the
Speaker 2: perks of renters insurance is that it won't even it
Speaker 2: won't just cover the stuff in your apartment. If you
Speaker 2: take your laptop computer, you leave it at a friend's
Speaker 2: place or in your car and it gets stolen, really
Speaker 2: it'll still cover it.
Speaker 1: Thatll be awesome. Yeah, And it's not even all that expensive.
Speaker 2: It's literally ten to twelve dollars. You can do estimates online.
Speaker 2: You can go to Traveler's insurance. They have a cool
Speaker 2: tool that you can use. Bank Rate has a cool
Speaker 2: I think retros insurance calculator you can use.
Speaker 3: Just call and get a quote.
Speaker 2: All you have to do is go through your apartments,
Speaker 2: start with your closet and work you through each room
Speaker 2: and get a rough estimate of how much you think.
Speaker 2: Like I think for our place, I have a policy
Speaker 2: for fifteen thousand dollars. Okay, you know, just something that'll
Speaker 2: cover your stuff. Yeah, in the event of an accident.
Speaker 2: Insurance hip excellent return on investment.
Speaker 1: Yes, I like that tip.
Speaker 4: So hopefully if you like our tips, you will let
Speaker 4: us know. Tweet us the BA podcast at the BA
Speaker 4: Podcast at the BA Podcast, Facebook, Brown Ambition and email.
Speaker 1: Podcast at GAI. We should be a singing.
Speaker 4: Great So we are closing out this week's podcast with
Speaker 4: our winds.
Speaker 1: All I do is win, win, win, no matter what.
Speaker 2: But you like that one, right, Gonna save that for
Speaker 2: every every single segment we do of the winds.
Speaker 4: Oh, we should let me practice my notes first, but
Speaker 4: you know what's good? So this wind is near and
Speaker 4: dear to my heart. We talked about baby Limbo. I
Speaker 4: am a first time auntie and we have a little
Speaker 4: boy and a family full of women who are ready
Speaker 4: to spoil.
Speaker 1: She told me, she told me before the baby came.
Speaker 4: You know, I'm not buying anything, right, and true to form,
Speaker 4: she didn't have to, not with four aunties who are
Speaker 4: just doting on this little baby. He's the cutest and
Speaker 4: I love my little peanut, that's my nickname for him.
Speaker 1: And yeah, so that's my win for the week.
Speaker 3: Good for her, Good for you. New babies are great.
Speaker 2: Yes, if you're ready for that, yes, Okay, my win
Speaker 2: of the week. I need to call out a I
Speaker 2: would say this associate to mine. We went to college together,
Speaker 2: and you know how you go to school with someone
Speaker 2: you know them well, and then you leave school and
Speaker 2: then you kind of drift apart and you go do
Speaker 2: your own thing, and but you still follow each other
Speaker 2: on social media. Like I still kind of social media
Speaker 2: stock her, and I've been following her career and I'm
Speaker 2: really proud of her. I think she's doing our school proud.
Speaker 2: Her name is Macy Peterson, and she has this app
Speaker 2: which is pretty genius. It's called on Second Thought. It's
Speaker 2: for Android users, and this is going.
Speaker 3: To solve one.
Speaker 2: It pretty much solves the problem all of us have
Speaker 2: faith with our texting. It allows you to take back
Speaker 2: a text. Really yeah, not take it back in the
Speaker 2: sense that you send it and you can get it back.
Speaker 2: But I think how it works is that you send
Speaker 2: a text through the app and then you have like
Speaker 2: an hour delay or a twenty four hour delay, like
Speaker 2: if you think you might regret sending it in the morning. Okay,
Speaker 2: let's say you had a couple glasses of wine. You're
Speaker 2: not toasted, but like you're just needing anything. Maybe I'll
Speaker 2: send it to a second and have like a five
Speaker 2: second delay. Nice. Nice, and you feel like you feel
Speaker 2: some kind of way about what your mom said to
Speaker 2: you about you know, your hair last week, and you
Speaker 2: want to let her know how you feel. You can
Speaker 2: send it you on second on second thought the app
Speaker 2: and have a day or an hour delay before the
Speaker 2: app the text actually gets sent. Okay, pretty smart idea
Speaker 2: is So she presented this at I think it started
Speaker 2: at south By Southwest last year, and in just a
Speaker 2: year's time she's raised hundreds of thousands of dollars and
Speaker 2: she's moving the app and her startup from DC to
Speaker 2: Silicon Valley. She's like living the entrepreneur's dream. She's a
Speaker 2: brown girl, and she's a brown girl in tech, which
Speaker 2: is so rare and so necessary, and it's awesome to
Speaker 2: see her doing so well.
Speaker 3: So I just want to give Macy a shout out.
Speaker 1: Yes, Macey Virtual Color. Yeah right, maybe.
Speaker 3: I'll stop just stalking her, let her know.
Speaker 1: How I really feel. No, that's awesome, Macy.
Speaker 2: We should have her on Monday. I'm sure she has
Speaker 2: lots of tips to share.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'd love to hear that. So hope you enjoyed
Speaker 4: this week. Show Me and Mandy enjoyed being here with you.
Speaker 4: If you'd like to find us, where can they find us?
Speaker 2: You can find us on Twitter at the BA podcast,
Speaker 2: on Facebook at Brown Ambition, or please send us emails, compliments, complaints,
Speaker 2: send us your wins of the weeks, your brown breaks.
Speaker 2: So email us at Brown Ambition Podcast at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: See you soon, and we're back and browner.
Speaker 4: We have the amazing, the beautiful, the intelligent, and the
Speaker 4: real doctor Emiani.
Speaker 3: Okay, now I like that hire everybody and hire to
Speaker 3: you guys. I like that, though, Yes, it is browner
Speaker 3: just because I'm here, uh so, so yeah, I'm totally
Speaker 3: like I'm so highed to like meet you guys virtually
Speaker 3: because new normal. But yeah, like this is this is great.
Speaker 3: I'm super happy to be here.
Speaker 2: So doctormani, you have been a practicing psychiatrist for how long?
Speaker 3: Now, let's see my I'm like looking at one of
Speaker 3: my degrees on the wall in my office. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 3: that's all right. Sorry, yeah, like that really wasn't a flex.
Speaker 3: But I realize now it sounds like one of my degrees,
Speaker 3: one of my four things on.
Speaker 2: The wall, you pay for them. Let's let's respect. Well, okay,
Speaker 2: I will.
Speaker 3: I will admit, like, honestly, I didn't pay for them.
Speaker 3: My parents did, right, So so I actually spoke about
Speaker 3: my mom. I spoke to my mom about this because
Speaker 3: we have a YouTube show actually that we usually do
Speaker 3: it every Monday, so I have to do that in
Speaker 3: a couple hours. But I never let anyone know in
Speaker 3: school that I didn't receive financial aid or that I
Speaker 3: had a scholarship. So I would always memorize where the
Speaker 3: financial aid office was because at the end of the year,
Speaker 3: apparently you have to do like your financial aid wrap up,
Speaker 3: and I don't know anything about like I've heard of
Speaker 3: loans like stafford loans and stuff, but that didn't apply
Speaker 3: to me, so I would just memorize where the financial
Speaker 3: aid office was because I didn't want people to know,
Speaker 3: you know that my basically my parents saved up for it.
Speaker 3: And I did have a scholarship. My alma maters is
Speaker 3: Xavier University in New Orleans, and I had an academic scholarship. Yes, yes,
Speaker 3: but yeah, I never My mother told me when I
Speaker 3: was a senior in high school. She was like, well,
Speaker 3: you know, if you want to go to a school
Speaker 3: in the Northeast, and I'd gotten into like Wesleyan and Vassar,
Speaker 3: which is my mom's alma mater, she was like, you
Speaker 3: can do that. But she like she was really really
Speaker 3: adamant about me going to Xavier because I wanted to
Speaker 3: be a doctor and it's basically a black doctor factory
Speaker 3: and has been for decades. So she was like, here's
Speaker 3: the thing. We can pay for your college because it's
Speaker 3: significantly cheaper, like it was much much cheaper than Northeast
Speaker 3: like Ivy League suition. She was like, I can pay
Speaker 3: for you college. You can get a car, you know, basically,
Speaker 3: like you can be out here. But when but if
Speaker 3: you go to a school in the Northeast, You're gonna
Speaker 3: have to take out loans. And I was like, well
Speaker 3: then no, I was like, I'm not doing that, so
Speaker 3: my my. So basically that's what happened. So when I
Speaker 3: would be at a college, like I said, at Xavier,
Speaker 3: and then when I was in med school, I knew,
Speaker 3: I mean, the majority of people that I knew who
Speaker 3: were my med school class were on scholarship or you know,
Speaker 3: received financial aid. But and I knew where the office was,
Speaker 3: I knew the building, but I had just never been
Speaker 3: in the office because it didn't apply to me.
Speaker 1: So it's amazing.
Speaker 3: I love that story.
Speaker 2: And also how odd that you were ashamed of something
Speaker 2: that was so amazing.
Speaker 3: Yes, it was. I mean honestly, it wasn't that I
Speaker 3: was fearful of anyone shaming me, and I wasn't. I
Speaker 3: wasn't ashamed of having like my friends, know, like the
Speaker 3: brown and black, you know friends that I had. It
Speaker 3: was more so like I was like, I don't want
Speaker 3: these white people to know because then like it's like,
Speaker 3: oh so, because the assumption is you're on financial aid
Speaker 3: when we all know that white women benefit the most
Speaker 3: from you know, affirmative action, and in those types of scholarships, right,
Speaker 3: or those types of situations. I just didn't want to
Speaker 3: have the conversation of like, Okay, you know, my parents
Speaker 3: are very they're they're very what's the word I'm looking for.
Speaker 3: They're very austere. And that's what they taught me, and
Speaker 3: that's what they taught like, you know, my cousins and
Speaker 3: everybody else in my family. So I always saw money
Speaker 3: as a tool and not something to just be spent.
Speaker 3: And I guess I didn't want anybody to think that, like, oh,
Speaker 3: so you think you're all that. So I actually I
Speaker 3: haven't admitted this to anybody outside of my circle of friends.
Speaker 3: I don't think until like this year, because I just didn't.
Speaker 3: I just didn't want. I just didn't want people to know.
Speaker 3: I'm like, if that's my personal business. And then also
Speaker 3: the way I grew up, it was like, you know,
Speaker 3: you keep your financial business to yourself. So we always
Speaker 3: I guess, I mean, like we were solidly middle class.
Speaker 3: Then we became middle upper class, but we still you know,
Speaker 3: went to Sam's Club, went to Costco. Like my mom
Speaker 3: grew up on welfare. My dad wasn't on welfare, but
Speaker 3: he he you know, just had two hard working parents
Speaker 3: that weren't getting a lot of money in the Jim
Speaker 3: Crow South. So I was just taught to you know,
Speaker 3: like yes, money but like it you know, it ain't
Speaker 3: for you like you, Oh you want outfit, that's that's cute,
Speaker 3: Go get a job. So I've been working since I
Speaker 3: was fourteen ever since you could have get your working
Speaker 3: papers in New York.
Speaker 1: Yes, I remember that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, work, go to the high school and get your
Speaker 4: market papers working this summer.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I used. I went to this. There was a school.
Speaker 3: I went to Calhoun on eighty first in West and
Speaker 3: Manhattan and there was like a I don't know if
Speaker 3: it was like a special needs school or something similar.
Speaker 3: It was like a block away. And I remember when
Speaker 3: I was fourteen, I went over there and got my
Speaker 3: working papers. And I've been working. So if I'm forty
Speaker 3: four now, I've been working for thirty years. Wow. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So anyway, I'm sorry how to answer your question because
Speaker 3: I just did I even ask a question this story.
Speaker 3: I have so many follow ups I have, like I
Speaker 3: can go on Tannis, so just like you know, be
Speaker 3: like Emani okay, tap.
Speaker 2: Out you do from your own podcast? Can we just
Speaker 2: say Imani's state of Mind.
Speaker 3: Check it out. I love it.
Speaker 2: I listened to the one of the most recent episodes yesterday.
Speaker 2: Oh nice, nice, iocast on today. It's super fun. I've
Speaker 2: been So I've been a practicing physician since two thousand
Speaker 2: and nine.
Speaker 3: That's all right, that was my question.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but no, I love it.
Speaker 3: No ten years. Wait, two thousand and five, so fifteen years, No,
Speaker 3: two thousand and nine. So two thousand and nine, I've
Speaker 3: finished my fellowship in forensic psychiatry. So since then pretty
Speaker 3: much I've been treating psychiatric patients.
Speaker 2: So you are well, so business must be booming.
Speaker 3: Yes, business is booming, I would say. I mean, like
Speaker 3: straight up, when this when all this happened, like I
Speaker 3: freaked out like everybody else, because it was basically it
Speaker 3: was like Friday, and I'm out here in LA so
Speaker 3: it was like I think it was March thirteenth or
Speaker 3: something like that. Friday, it was like, okay, so we're
Speaker 3: probably gonna be on quarantine and I was like, okay, well,
Speaker 3: I don't really know what that means, like as it
Speaker 3: pertains to me. And then Monday we were all on lockdown,
Speaker 3: and I was like, oh my god, like, do I
Speaker 3: have a job, Stille, what am I gonna do? So
Speaker 3: I've pretty much been exclusively seeing patients via telehealth, so
Speaker 3: either by video conferencing or by the via telephone. And
Speaker 3: is business booming? Yes? I work at a hospital. I
Speaker 3: am the medical director and also the chief medical officer
Speaker 3: at a mental health hospital out here in Los Angeles
Speaker 3: called Gateways Hospital. And the patients that I see, because
Speaker 3: I have a forensic psychiatry background, these are patients who
Speaker 3: came from jail or came from the state mental hospital.
Speaker 3: They might have committed some really like really egregious crimes,
Speaker 3: but it was due to their symptoms from mental illness.
Speaker 3: So I basically get them stable and keep them stable.
Speaker 3: So it hasn't it hasn't necessarily increased for me. It's
Speaker 3: it just I had to change the mode with I
Speaker 3: had to change the mode of how I was seeing
Speaker 3: my patients, which honestly, I really I really like being
Speaker 3: at home. Honestly. I mean, I think we've both talked
Speaker 3: about how we were introverts.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The intersection between mental health and what's happening right now,
Speaker 2: I mean, everything happening in the world is just a lot,
Speaker 2: right now, and I feel like it is the exact
Speaker 2: right moment to have you on because we're like five
Speaker 2: or six months into this thing, and I was telling Tiffl, like,
Speaker 2: we really haven't taken a step back to pause and
Speaker 2: examine sort of how has this affected us all?
Speaker 3: So, I mean, what would you say.
Speaker 2: I know that your you know your patients have like
Speaker 2: you were saying, you know, severe mental illness, But what
Speaker 2: are sort of like, can you break down, like mentally
Speaker 2: sort of what it is, what's happening to us, what's
Speaker 2: going on?
Speaker 3: Why?
Speaker 2: Why anxiety is up? It feels like people who had
Speaker 2: maybe low grade depression before probably more prone to having
Speaker 2: it pop up now. I mean, like, tif, how's it
Speaker 2: been for you? Like, I feel like we just need
Speaker 2: someone to explain to us what's happening and how we
Speaker 2: can like cope, Yes.
Speaker 1: It's been.
Speaker 4: There were especially in the beginning. At first I was like,
Speaker 4: I'm good, I'm good, I'm good. I'm not good, you know,
Speaker 4: And then so there's just been this wave of good
Speaker 4: not good, good not good. And I remember last night
Speaker 4: I was scrolling through social and I literally had to
Speaker 4: say no. My husband wanted to show me one of
Speaker 4: those videos we all know what I mean, what we
Speaker 4: mean by like, you know, black dead, black beaten bodies.
Speaker 4: And I said, honestly, babe, I refuse, I refuse. I'm
Speaker 4: not looking at any more of those videos.
Speaker 3: I'm not.
Speaker 4: It's too much, it's too much, And yeah, that's how
Speaker 4: I'm feeling that, I'm feeling that, I'm feeling in a
Speaker 4: place where I feel like I'm striving hard to protect
Speaker 4: my peace because it's just all too much.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I.
Speaker 3: Have always known that, Like I'm not good with seeing
Speaker 3: people in the act of being hurt or being tortured, Like, don't.
Speaker 3: I don't want to invite that into my Space'm loud.
Speaker 3: I'm fine with, you know, picking up the pieces and
Speaker 3: helping someone after the fact. But for me, all I
Speaker 3: need to know is like, okay, so tell me what happened. Okay, great,
Speaker 3: those are the facts, all right, now, how do we
Speaker 3: get it better? I haven't watched one video, probably since
Speaker 3: I'm not even lying, probably since Rodney King. I'm like,
Speaker 3: I'm not watching this shit, like I'm not. I don't
Speaker 3: need to invite that into my space. So, you know,
Speaker 3: I'll look at the news, like not look at it,
Speaker 3: but I'll read the news from my news app on
Speaker 3: my phone for like fifteen minutes and a day and
Speaker 3: then that's it because everything else is like speculative and
Speaker 3: conjecture and things that you know. I don't know if
Speaker 3: you guys have been noticing this, but like the news
Speaker 3: that bubbles up through the COVID cracks, if you will,
Speaker 3: is some wild shit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because it has to take away the headlines from
Speaker 2: COVID's wild.
Speaker 3: I saw us like apparently there's like I mean, it's summertime,
Speaker 3: but you know, kids in cars overheating and dying and
Speaker 3: some there was some woman who like kills her grandparents.
Speaker 3: Like it's just it's so much weird ness that's going on.
Speaker 3: So I purposefully don't like if there's a video, I'm like,
Speaker 3: I'm watching that, like I'm not trying.
Speaker 2: It's not just that pandemic. It's also it's this reckoning
Speaker 2: we're happening. We're happening, Yeah, I can talk. We're having
Speaker 2: with the reality of what it's like to be black
Speaker 2: in America, black and brown in America, and that is
Speaker 2: happening at the same time where like everyone's lives are
Speaker 2: at risk and the world's on fire and the pandemic's happening.
Speaker 2: I mean, so you mentioned killer Locus.
Speaker 3: I'm just kidding. There's no killer Locus. There's killer wasps
Speaker 3: or something, right, Like.
Speaker 1: There's aliens on Venus today, I was.
Speaker 2: There's aliens on Venus. Can we join them? They like,
Speaker 2: you know, you know, can I apply for admission?
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I saw that, but I was like, and this is
Speaker 3: the nerd in me. I'm like, is that possible? Because
Speaker 3: I think Venus is like a gaseous planet. But whatever, whatever, again,
Speaker 3: let's not even focus on that because I'm super nerd.
Speaker 3: I'll nerd out.
Speaker 2: So let's my knowledge of Venus is like sailor Moon
Speaker 2: from you know, high school. That's where as it goes.
Speaker 2: But so okay, But but fifteen minutes so limiting news.
Speaker 2: I think that's something that I need to do that
Speaker 2: because I am obsessed with telling my Google. Like I'm like, hey, Google,
Speaker 2: tell me the news just whenever I have downtime or
Speaker 2: I'm cooking or like walking the dog.
Speaker 3: I just ime kind of obsessed with listening tones.
Speaker 2: But you're right, like it doesn't really change, but something
Speaker 2: about that has become like a tick for me to
Speaker 2: want to consume it just to see if something new
Speaker 2: has happened, or if there's new information.
Speaker 3: There's something I was told last week I was doing this.
Speaker 3: I was being recorded for this document about millennials and
Speaker 3: mental health, and my topic was anxiety. And there was
Speaker 3: an interesting term the producer used, which was what do
Speaker 3: you call it? Doom scrolling? And I was like, I
Speaker 3: was like, what's doing scy app? But it sounded like,
Speaker 3: I mean again, I'm a nerd. It sounded I was like,
Speaker 3: is that like Ninja scroll? Like the anime movie from
Speaker 3: back in the day. He was like, Now, I was like, okay, sorry,
Speaker 3: but it was but he so who What he explained
Speaker 3: was doom scrolling is the act of basically like what
Speaker 3: you what you explained, like you're in your in your
Speaker 3: news app, or you know, you ask you your nearest AI,
Speaker 3: you know, machine, alexis, Siri, whoever, like, oh, tell me
Speaker 3: the news because it's it's everything is so out of
Speaker 3: our control, and just being able to at least, you know,
Speaker 3: ask and ask your phone or ask your device, hey,
Speaker 3: can you tell me the news is somehow comforting because
Speaker 3: it's something we can control. But then when we start
Speaker 3: to actually read or it's we're told the news, we
Speaker 3: consume the news. We are trying to gain more control
Speaker 3: of our lives. But the problem is that, like I
Speaker 3: said before, there are certain things that are factual in
Speaker 3: the news. There are a lot of things in the
Speaker 3: news that are factual, but there's a lot that there's
Speaker 3: a lot of a lot of news stories that are
Speaker 3: very speculative, like we think Biden might win, Oh, but
Speaker 3: we think Trump might win. We might think that, and
Speaker 3: it's and it's it's not doing us any good. I
Speaker 3: understand that these news outlets need content, but it's not
Speaker 3: doing us the public, any favors because it's just creating
Speaker 3: this this creating this mood of like I don't give
Speaker 3: a fuck, but then I'm mad anxious all the time.
Speaker 3: It's like, you know, it's like, well, I'm anxious because
Speaker 3: I don't know what's going to happen day to day.
Speaker 3: But then at the same time, it's like, well, okay,
Speaker 3: well what do you want to do? Like I don't
Speaker 3: know what can I do? Like I can't go outside,
Speaker 3: I can't go do hood rashit with my friends. I
Speaker 3: can't like you know, like like I can't like I
Speaker 3: can't like be me so to answer your question from
Speaker 3: like five minutes ago, my bad. I think what's been
Speaker 3: happening as far as let's you know, let's use doom
Speaker 3: scrolling as an example, is very similar to what happened
Speaker 3: in the beginning of the pandemic with the toilet paper, right, So,
Speaker 3: why did everyone suddenly want toilet paper? Why did everyone
Speaker 3: suddenly want bottled water? Like, it's not like, oh, we
Speaker 3: have a pandemic now the water is the water is poisoned.
Speaker 3: It's not poisoned. It's just that we wanted to be
Speaker 3: able to have control of something when everything else was
Speaker 3: completely chaotic, like our world's turned upside down. I went
Speaker 3: from you know, being a work on a Friday and
Speaker 3: now I'm home on a Monday, like, oh, what am
Speaker 3: I supposed to do now? And that was really that's
Speaker 3: that was really scary to a lot of us because
Speaker 3: we maintained schedules and our mind our minds were maintaining
Speaker 3: routines that even if the routine we're annoying, like sitting
Speaker 3: in traffic or you know, having to go to work
Speaker 3: and talk to your coworker who you don't like, they
Speaker 3: were still things that your mind could count on. So
Speaker 3: humans are first of all, social creatures, and we're also
Speaker 3: creatures of habit, and when you take away both, you're
Speaker 3: gonna have what we now have, which is probably the
Speaker 3: largest global mental health crisis that we've ever encountered. So
Speaker 3: if we're going to talk about, you know, why do
Speaker 3: people feel this way? Even why do I feel this way?
Speaker 3: Sometimes because again, we're used to habit and we're used
Speaker 3: to structure, and it's gone. It's gone. Like we're trying to,
Speaker 3: you know, six seven months in, I can honestly say
Speaker 3: that I have a better structure, but it's still not
Speaker 3: what the what I'm used to for the majority of
Speaker 3: my life. So we're kind of just looking for things
Speaker 3: to you know, gain control over. I think for you know, honestly,
Speaker 3: for people who are anti masks wearers, Yes, it's silly
Speaker 3: to me as a physician, like why would you not
Speaker 3: wear a mask? Like I respect myself and even if
Speaker 3: you don't respect me, like you should respect yourself and
Speaker 3: not want to get sick potentially for me. But I
Speaker 3: think a lot of it is that they're like, Okay,
Speaker 3: I can this is something I can control. I can
Speaker 3: control whether I want to wear my mask or not.
Speaker 3: Even though you know, maybe I'll get a ticket depending
Speaker 3: on the town or the city, or you know, maybe
Speaker 3: somebody will yell at me, you know, depending upon the
Speaker 3: business they answer. But it's I mean, it's become, unfortunately
Speaker 3: and overwhelmingly very political. But it just reminds me a
Speaker 3: lot of like we have to hold toilet paper and
Speaker 3: water because you know, what's like, what's going to happen.
Speaker 3: I'm like, I have no idea what was up with
Speaker 3: the toilet paper thing, but I actually have like obsessive
Speaker 3: compulsive personality disorder, so I have a habit of hoarding
Speaker 3: cleaning products. Anyway, So I was actually pretty good, you said.
Speaker 2: I do feel like theirs, the Survivalists, they really came
Speaker 2: out on top. Oh listen, but they were life and
Speaker 2: like second their can beans for months.
Speaker 4: Yes, they're like I told you. And someone like my
Speaker 4: mom who's a nurse and who.
Speaker 1: Was like I've been told y'alln't watched him filthy.
Speaker 3: And exactly like yeah that daybody. I mean, as a physician,
Speaker 3: I've been around a lot of sticky, you know, nasty
Speaker 3: kind of situations, but it really was until this pandemic
Speaker 3: that I was like, damn, Like, people are nasty, like
Speaker 3: y'all like collectively, like y'all do not wash your hands
Speaker 3: like it used to be, you know, like I would
Speaker 3: go out to the movies and then you know, I
Speaker 3: would you know, go use the bathroom and go wash
Speaker 3: my hands in the in the restroom, and then if
Speaker 3: there would always be like somebody in there who wouldn't
Speaker 3: and we would all be like, oh, like she's nasty.
Speaker 3: But you know it was because of you know, like
Speaker 3: people like that are people who you know, oh, let
Speaker 3: me drink after you, let me be all up in
Speaker 3: your face. I mean that's you know, unfortunately, how you
Speaker 3: know some of us got sick.
Speaker 2: Well, let's talk about healthy ways of coping. I mean
Speaker 2: you mentioned sort of like you want to control something,
Speaker 2: So like, what are the things we can do to
Speaker 2: bring back some sense of normalcy and control in our
Speaker 2: lives when everything feels like it's batshit crazy?
Speaker 3: Right? So, I think the first thing to do is,
Speaker 3: and this is kind of the hard the hardest thing
Speaker 3: to do is to admit that your stress. Admit that
Speaker 3: you're anxious, Admit you're depressed, Admit that you can't sleep,
Speaker 3: Admit to yourself that you know, even though we've been
Speaker 3: in this for a long time. We're now at the
Speaker 3: point where we're quote unquote used to it. We're not
Speaker 3: on like a fundamental level, but it's like, Okay, today's Monday,
Speaker 3: I'm going to do this. I look at my schedule,
Speaker 3: I'm going to do that. But it's not an ideal situation.
Speaker 3: So admitting that you have an issue, admitting that you
Speaker 3: are not comfortable, like things are not right to the
Speaker 3: point where it might be interfering with your day to
Speaker 3: day and interfering with your mental well being is key.
Speaker 3: After that, I would think that the best thing to
Speaker 3: do is for someone to talk to someone they trust,
Speaker 3: because you'd be surprised. And I'm speaking as somebody who
Speaker 3: has a history of depression and anxiety, you'd be surprised.
Speaker 3: Or I was really surprised at how helpful it was
Speaker 3: to get my feelings out of my body. And when
Speaker 3: you're dealing with depression and anxiety, a lot of it
Speaker 3: is guilt driven. It's like, well, I don't want to
Speaker 3: burden this person, you know, with my personal issues because
Speaker 3: they're going through all this stuff too. And you know what,
Speaker 3: if that person is a real, real friend to you
Speaker 3: and they really care about you, and love you. They'll
Speaker 3: listen to you and they'll you know, kind of help
Speaker 3: you through it. And that person might also be going
Speaker 3: through things and you could also serve as an inspiration
Speaker 3: but that you know, for your friend the loved one
Speaker 3: to be like you know what, like I you know, like,
Speaker 3: let's talk about this. I think the third thing to
Speaker 3: do is to really set a routine. And Mandy, you
Speaker 3: and I spoke yesterday and I definitely agreed with you
Speaker 3: at the time. Like I like routine versus schedule. Like
Speaker 3: a schedule sounds like, oh, this is my class schedule
Speaker 3: for the day, like these are things that like I
Speaker 3: have to do, but I don't really want to do.
Speaker 3: Versus a routine, which is like, oh, I'm gonna wake
Speaker 3: up at this time because that's when I want to
Speaker 3: wake up or that's when I might need to wake up.
Speaker 3: It's a routine to me sounds I mean, it's semantics,
Speaker 3: but it sounds like it's more it's something that I
Speaker 3: can control. It's more manageable, so you know, depending upon
Speaker 3: you know, the person's you know, lifestyle or what they
Speaker 3: need to do. I mean, I remember in the beginning
Speaker 3: of the pandemic, I actually was trying to schedule like
Speaker 3: cocktail hour during during the early evening, like I can
Speaker 3: maybe not yeah, like maybe not even drinks, but like
Speaker 3: cannopis like something like I was just like I need
Speaker 3: something to just make my day feel like, oh, look
Speaker 3: at this, we're having a good time. And then I think,
Speaker 3: you know, the other thing that people really need to consider.
Speaker 3: And as terrible as this pandemic has been for a
Speaker 3: lot of people, the one thing that has really been
Speaker 3: great about it is that there are actually it's actually
Speaker 3: easier to get hooked up with mental health services because
Speaker 3: most mental health clinics aren't open, but they do see
Speaker 3: patients or you know, or referrals or clients via apps,
Speaker 3: via video chat, via telephone. Even so, it really has
Speaker 3: at least in psychiatry and psychology, whereas telemedicine or telehealth
Speaker 3: was something that some of us were into, Like now
Speaker 3: we all have to be into it because if that's
Speaker 3: if we don't get used to it, we don't get
Speaker 3: acclimated to it, we're not going to have patients. We're
Speaker 3: not going to be able to treat people and have
Speaker 3: and help people feel better the way that we need
Speaker 3: to right now. And you know, I think the I
Speaker 3: think the last thing. And this is going to sound,
Speaker 3: you know, kind of obvious, like Captain obvious. But you know,
Speaker 3: I tell people. I tell my patients like, you know,
Speaker 3: if you if you don't have a pre existing medical
Speaker 3: condition that's preventing you from going outside, like go outside,
Speaker 3: like go outside. Because I'm as an introvert, I love
Speaker 3: being in the house. I'll stay in the house all
Speaker 3: day long. But when I finally am like, okay, we
Speaker 3: got to go outside, I'm like, oh my god, it's
Speaker 3: so nice out here, like look look at this, like
Speaker 3: look at these trees. Like I can feel the air
Speaker 3: now right now in La and in California, like the
Speaker 3: whole state's on fire. So that sometimes there's like, yeah,
Speaker 3: maybe don't bring you deeply out there. Yeah, like yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean I've been in the house for the past
Speaker 3: like four or five days, so I'm starting to feel
Speaker 3: a little bit antsy. But you know, I think exercise
Speaker 3: is important, like you like, we really need to find
Speaker 3: what we can do to increase our levels of serotonin
Speaker 3: in our brains so that we don't end up dipping
Speaker 3: into depression anxiety, but unfortunately a lot of us have.
Speaker 2: It almost brings up another important point you mentioned, like
Speaker 2: guilt and shame, And I feel like there was this
Speaker 2: something that happened with the pandemic where people who were
Speaker 2: at home. It wasn't just like let's go outside. It's like, Oh,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna this is what I'm going to train for
Speaker 2: a marathon, or I'm going to learn how I'm going
Speaker 2: to start the triathlon. I always wanted to do myself personally.
Speaker 2: I got a peloton and I'm now it's something that
Speaker 2: I'm like, oh, why am I not on the peloton?
Speaker 2: Why do I don't have a hundred rides yet? And
Speaker 2: it's almost like, you know, you can take these little
Speaker 2: things that maybe make you feel better, but then that
Speaker 2: becomes the stick that you beat yourself with a little
Speaker 2: bit when it comes to like guilt and shame.
Speaker 3: So how do we like talk, How can we.
Speaker 2: Just give ourselves a break for not going so over
Speaker 2: the top of this extra time that we perceive that
Speaker 2: we have. And you know, like there's this idea that
Speaker 2: you can win quarantine by learning.
Speaker 3: A new hobby or a language. Why are we doing
Speaker 3: that to ourselves? We're doing that to ourselves because we
Speaker 3: were so go, go go before the shutdown. So I
Speaker 3: remember distinctly, I'd wake up, I'd go work out at
Speaker 3: six am. I'd come home, help my son with his
Speaker 3: lunch and make him breakfast, take him school, come back home,
Speaker 3: run four miles, check my schedule, seem you know, Like
Speaker 3: I was like, the amount of things I was cramming
Speaker 3: into a day was absurd. It was absurd. And it
Speaker 3: wasn't until you know, I was as we all were
Speaker 3: forced to take a step back that I was like,
Speaker 3: what why are you doing this? Like like are you
Speaker 3: gonna win something at the end? Like no. So once
Speaker 3: I was able to slow down, it really afforded me
Speaker 3: the opportunity. I mean, it was hard, but once I
Speaker 3: was able to slow down, I was able to really
Speaker 3: just take stock up, you know, like what do you want?
Speaker 3: Like what do you want out of life? Not out
Speaker 3: of Wednesday, not out of this job? Like what do
Speaker 3: you want? And I was like, honestly, I'm like, I'm
Speaker 3: I've been grinding since two thousand. I had a med
Speaker 3: school in two thousand. I'm like a bit is tired.
Speaker 3: I'm tired. I'm tired, you know, Like I still want to,
Speaker 3: you know, see patients and make a difference, but you know,
Speaker 3: I don't need to, you know, start training for the
Speaker 3: for you know, a bodybuilding competition or whatever, like these
Speaker 3: goals I had beforehand. It's it again, is is that
Speaker 3: it's that desire to have control of your life, but
Speaker 3: by distracting yourself. So there were a lot of things
Speaker 3: that I was doing just distract myself because I had
Speaker 3: to realize that I wasn't happy. And when I was
Speaker 3: able to do all of those things during the day
Speaker 3: and just pack my day with stuff, did I feel better?
Speaker 1: Maybe?
Speaker 3: Superficially, like did I feel like I'd accomplished something? Yes?
Speaker 3: And I think I equated accomplishing whatever it was quote
Speaker 3: unquote with feeling good about myself. And once that, once
Speaker 3: this pandemic pulled the rug out from under us, we
Speaker 3: were searching for things to do. Like like I saw
Speaker 3: some some meme on Instagram that was going around like
Speaker 3: if you don't come out of this pandemic with the skill,
Speaker 3: then you wasted your time. I'm like, first of all,
Speaker 3: don't tell me what to do. Okay, That's that's number one.
Speaker 3: Number two is number two is everybody should be allowed
Speaker 3: and everybody is allowed to live their own life as
Speaker 3: they see fit and you know, do I do I
Speaker 3: want to learn how to knit? Do I want to
Speaker 3: learn how to you know, do needle? Point of course
Speaker 3: I do, But this may not be the right time
Speaker 3: because I'm not able to full I don't have Like honestly,
Speaker 3: we're at a point where we don't know what's gonna
Speaker 3: happen tomorrow, Like I like, I legit, don't know whereas
Speaker 3: before the shutdown, like you know, people would say metaphorically like, well,
Speaker 3: you know, tomorrow's not promised, so live for today, and
Speaker 3: you would feel it on like a certain level. But
Speaker 3: now I feel it and I know that on a
Speaker 3: cellular level, like I do not know what's going to
Speaker 3: happen tomorrow. I don't. Yeah, I don't know what's gonna happen. Politically,
Speaker 3: I don't know what's gonna happen, you know, news wise,
Speaker 3: I don't know what's gonna happen regarding COVID, Like you know,
Speaker 3: are we due for the killer locuswarm that you know
Speaker 3: we should be experienced? What's the point of it all
Speaker 3: about it?
Speaker 2: Like why this is I'm like playing Devil's advocate, but
Speaker 2: this is like a small part of me inside my
Speaker 2: brain that I'm constantly trying to talk down off the
Speaker 2: ledge is like, what's the point in saving?
Speaker 3: Why don't you just blow your money now? Like I
Speaker 3: mean on what really?
Speaker 2: But you know, I feel like financially people are and
Speaker 2: you and I talked about this too, like the sense
Speaker 2: of the structure that you have with your budget, Like
Speaker 2: even something as simple as a household budget seems to
Speaker 2: feel so silly or like doesn't really compute with today's world.
Speaker 2: So how can you adjust, like mentally, how you look
Speaker 2: at your finances and your financial planning. So much of
Speaker 2: that has to do with the future, which none of
Speaker 2: us can predict right now. A lot of it, like
Speaker 2: when we were talking before, a lot of for me,
Speaker 2: budgeting is very tied into my self worth because budgeting
Speaker 2: involves money and I have you know, we're in a
Speaker 2: capitalistic we're in a capitalist society, so I have oftentimes
Speaker 2: equated more money equals you know, better better self worth,
Speaker 2: which is really terrible in hindsight for me to have
Speaker 2: even thought that, But that's really what we're taught, right
Speaker 2: I would say that I'm sorry I asked me that question.
Speaker 4: Again because I totally forgot you are so much likely
Speaker 4: I'm like doctor money.
Speaker 3: Are we like, uh no, it's cod yesterday. I'm like
Speaker 3: this may like I'll be like yeah, and then I'm like, wait,
Speaker 3: what the future? The future?
Speaker 2: How do we like make decisions today when it's so
Speaker 2: hard for us to like remind like Wanda, we were talking,
Speaker 2: Tiffany imagines herself in the future as Wanda, and everything
Speaker 2: she does is for Wanda, so Wanda can be happy
Speaker 2: and you mean, like.
Speaker 3: Love Wanda, Like I got you.
Speaker 4: Right, because Wanda sounds like the sassy old lady dad,
Speaker 4: because I just see Wanda custoder I made.
Speaker 3: I mean, I've always I've always I've always contended my
Speaker 3: spirit animal. Yes, because honestly, I mean, and that's that's
Speaker 3: kind of a good point to make right now. Shannane
Speaker 3: was is I'm guessing she's still alive in our consciousness.
Speaker 3: Shnane is a small business owner. She does very well
Speaker 3: with her salon. She has support. She had key Lo
Speaker 3: Lo and her other friend and every you know, and
Speaker 3: she every so often she got to, you know, have fun.
Speaker 3: But for the most part, Shannane was a hard worker.
Speaker 3: So I think, you know, if I imadgine it myself
Speaker 3: as Bartin's character art Lawren's character on Shanne like that
Speaker 3: that actually, I mean real talk, That honestly is probably
Speaker 3: what I'm gonna do when I get off this phone call,
Speaker 3: because I do need to like work on my budget,
Speaker 3: but I think that that's a good thing to do.
Speaker 3: Like what like imagining yourself as Wanda, Yes it's you. Yes,
Speaker 3: I mean we're kind of used to in this day
Speaker 3: and age with social media, imagining ourselves as an avatar.
Speaker 3: But there's something in psychiatry psychology that we call like
Speaker 3: like you. When I'm talking to somebody, let's say, who's
Speaker 3: experiencing depression or has in the past, and I will
Speaker 3: sometimes ask questions to determine if their goal oriented or
Speaker 3: future oriented. Right A lot of us are not goal
Speaker 3: or future oriented right now because we don't know what's
Speaker 3: going to happen from day to day. But if we
Speaker 3: can kind of imagine ourselves not as our Oh, I'm
Speaker 3: going to be my best self. I'm going to run
Speaker 3: this marathon. I'm gonna have like a thousand rides on
Speaker 3: peloton this month. Like it's not that it's not it's
Speaker 3: not like a goal oriented like I hit this goal.
Speaker 3: It's more so needs to be about imagining yourself in
Speaker 3: a happy place despite what's going on, because we are
Speaker 3: we're in a new normal. It's not going to be
Speaker 3: the same way as it was before. It isn't. I mean,
Speaker 3: I don't know anybody personally who would feel comfortable walking
Speaker 3: around without a mask, like in the airport, in a
Speaker 3: rest and you like anything like that. So I think
Speaker 3: it is. I think it's good to focus on what
Speaker 3: do I like. I want to be someone who is
Speaker 3: at peace. I want to be someone who definitely feels confident.
Speaker 3: And when it comes to budgeting, I know that I
Speaker 3: was having a hard time last month because I actually
Speaker 3: was starting to slip back into having some anxiety and depression.
Speaker 3: And so I was telling Mandy this yesterday. I was like,
Speaker 3: you know, I like there were some bills that they
Speaker 3: were like, Amie, are you gonna pay these bills? Or
Speaker 3: like what's up? Cause you usually do and now you're not.
Speaker 3: And it was because I was just so cloudy with
Speaker 3: my thoughts because some of my depressive and my depression
Speaker 3: and anxiety symptoms came back. And honestly, I would say
Speaker 3: over the past two weeks, as I had my medication adjusted,
Speaker 3: like I had an increased I have been more go
Speaker 3: with the flow, like water off a ducts back. But
Speaker 3: I was, I mean seriously, like stressing in bed, like
Speaker 3: damn you didn't pay you at and T cell phone bill,
Speaker 3: like look at you like like you like you really
Speaker 3: fucking up right now. And it's not that serious. It's not.
Speaker 3: It's just that I needed to get to a better
Speaker 3: place where I felt better. So I think that when
Speaker 3: it comes to budgeting, it's it's important, but I'm I'm
Speaker 3: gonna have to change my budget to reflect the fact
Speaker 3: that like I don't go nowhere, I don't have to
Speaker 3: I don't have to include my restaurant the restaurant portion
Speaker 3: of my budget where I that I would usually use. Now.
Speaker 3: I will say this last month, when I wasn't feeling
Speaker 3: that great, I was, I was like, oh, nobody's on
Speaker 3: Postmates word okay, like and then it's like, oh, well,
Speaker 3: that's going to cover it up. But then I ended
Speaker 3: up like feeling bad about it later because I was like,
Speaker 3: you don't need to do that. So I think we
Speaker 3: need to really look at the at a budget or
Speaker 3: this this new normal budget as things that we need
Speaker 3: not necessarily to feel happy and great because I bought
Speaker 3: a lot of dumb shit, and I'm like, where are
Speaker 3: you gonna go with them? Sneakers? Nowhere? Like you don't
Speaker 3: need these things? But I think we really need to
Speaker 3: just just look at you know, how can we make
Speaker 3: things easier for us? How? You know, do we need
Speaker 3: to outsource certain things? Does our budget allow for that?
Speaker 3: Because it wasn't really until like maybe last year that
Speaker 3: I was like, Oh, I really need to like outsource
Speaker 3: these things, like there are things that I can afford
Speaker 3: to outsource, or you know, there were even things that
Speaker 3: I would barter for other with other people with for
Speaker 3: other people with. So you know, I think we need
Speaker 3: to get to a point, or people hopefully can get
Speaker 3: to a point where they feel they feel better about themselves.
Speaker 3: And that really might involve someone talking to a mental
Speaker 3: health therapist or a mental health clinician or a psychiatrist, psychologists,
Speaker 3: what have you, but also talking about like what are
Speaker 3: the things that make me me? What are the and
Speaker 3: maybe what are the negative coping strategies that I was
Speaker 3: using before the pandit, before COVID that I've carried with
Speaker 3: me into this pandemic.
Speaker 2: Snacks, Yes, I was just looking all of that in
Speaker 2: to have you've been quiet, what are you thinking over there?
Speaker 4: I've just been thinking that, Like one of the what
Speaker 4: I love, Well, I guess if there is any bright
Speaker 4: side to all of this darkness is how comfortable people
Speaker 4: have gotten talking about therapy and suggesting therapy to each other.
Speaker 4: And when I mean people, I mean black folks. That
Speaker 4: never was a thing. It was like, gree you better pray.
Speaker 4: No one talked about therapy, and it's just become like
Speaker 4: I just said it to someone the other day.
Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, well, you know, have you considered therapy?
Speaker 1: They're like yeah, yeah, even.
Speaker 4: Like my churchy friends, which is like, I mean, you know,
Speaker 4: that was never a thing. Like when I have a
Speaker 4: super churchy friend and she was like, oh I talk
Speaker 4: to my therapist today, so great. And I just thought,
Speaker 4: you know, if there is a bright side, it's the
Speaker 4: fact that people are understanding that you need help and
Speaker 4: that going to therapy is not a replacement for God
Speaker 4: in prayer, and that they can work in tandem together.
Speaker 3: Thank you, you know.
Speaker 4: And I'm loving because people like you know, like Sarah
Speaker 4: Jake's Robert, she says that all the time, which I
Speaker 4: love because so many people look up to her TJ's daughter,
Speaker 4: and so, yeah, So I guess I was just thinking
Speaker 4: about that because quite honestly, I've been dragging my feet.
Speaker 4: I've been needing a therapist. I want a black woman
Speaker 4: for the longest, just to there are what I do.
Speaker 4: I have several companies that I want. It could be
Speaker 4: really stressful, and sometimes I won't even know that I'm
Speaker 4: stressed until I'm like, yeah, so, what's the last time
Speaker 4: you slept fully? You know, So just having a place
Speaker 4: to because I'm like the go to for everyone. There's
Speaker 4: literally times when I feel like I'm everyone's pulling a
Speaker 4: finger a toe. Yes, I'm just like like what people
Speaker 4: are like I text you, I'm like, I have fifty
Speaker 4: unread text text is a new email?
Speaker 2: I mean?
Speaker 4: So yeah, So, I mean I just think that if
Speaker 4: if anything else is just is like tiven AAA to
Speaker 4: find a therapist. I don't know why I've been dragging
Speaker 4: my I guess I'm just like, ugh, I don't feel
Speaker 4: like interviewing people and figuring out the right person and
Speaker 4: how am I going to make time for them? I
Speaker 4: don't even have time for myself.
Speaker 3: True, But then you know it's funny, there was something
Speaker 3: there there was like this work. It was like busy
Speaker 3: work that I had to complete for my job, and
Speaker 3: I finally got around to like finishing it today and
Speaker 3: I was like, it's gonna say so long and I
Speaker 3: don't feel like doing it. It literally was data entry
Speaker 3: like this, It was not a big deal. And then
Speaker 3: today when I was doing it now that like, I'm
Speaker 3: not you know, my motivation is better because I'm not depressed.
Speaker 3: I was like, eman, you could have been done that,
Speaker 3: But I didn't get on myself about it. I was like,
Speaker 3: you know what, we're going to use this as a
Speaker 3: you know, a learning point, Like you didn't do it
Speaker 3: before because you weren't feeling right and you got some
Speaker 3: help and now you feel better and that's okay, so
Speaker 3: I will. But something that you said just now reminded
Speaker 3: me of the fact that a lot of people, and
Speaker 3: I think, especially like I'm Generation X because I'm I'm
Speaker 3: almost forty five, so but general X, the baby boomers,
Speaker 3: they always get on millennials and Gen Z like, oh,
Speaker 3: you are so lazy and youing your cell phones and this,
Speaker 3: that and the third. But honestly, I think, not think,
Speaker 3: I definitely know just by following social media trends and
Speaker 3: whatnot that if it weren't for the black millennials, we
Speaker 3: would not be talking about therapy like it's nothing like
Speaker 3: oh yeah, like because they'll legit be like, oh, I
Speaker 3: got a therapist, I got an individual therapist, I got
Speaker 3: a group therapist. Then I have a therapist that I
Speaker 3: check in with like every two months. Like they're very
Speaker 3: pro therapy. And as much as they were maligned and
Speaker 3: for I guess for being like the quote unquote adderall generation,
Speaker 3: they are really taking up the charge to just make
Speaker 3: it very normal. And I really appreciate that. You're welcome.
Speaker 4: Than millennial and I'm I'm generating next as well. I'm
Speaker 4: forty doctor money, so I'm generation LM as well. So
Speaker 4: Mandi's are a local millennial. I'm almost like, what did
Speaker 4: the millennials say? Even though sometimes Mandy's like an old lady,
Speaker 4: I'm like, girl, get with it.
Speaker 2: I'm a layered and complex individual like everyone else. I
Speaker 2: guess it's just like, don't feel it's the it's the
Speaker 2: negative thought spiral, which is and this is for me
Speaker 2: and food because listen, my coping mechanism is food. And
Speaker 2: I am really appalled at how much weight I put
Speaker 2: on in this pandemic. But it's almost like the shame
Speaker 2: of the eating habits that have plagued me for my
Speaker 2: entire life stops me from doing the things that I
Speaker 2: know I can do to make myself feel better, and
Speaker 2: then I feel bad. So then I just layered on
Speaker 2: with more food. And it's this like self fulfilling negative
Speaker 2: prophecy that man, I'm just like and I start beating
Speaker 2: myself up because I'm like Jesus Christ, like, you're thirty
Speaker 2: something years old, shouldn't you be over this by now?
Speaker 2: This isn't cute, but again that we're just we're so hard,
Speaker 2: hard on ourselves, and I this conversation right now is
Speaker 2: just reminding me like we just as much as as
Speaker 2: much as I say it, I know intellectually I need
Speaker 2: to be nicer to myself and just like one day
Speaker 2: after the next, but it's it's really hard to like
Speaker 2: be a human today, a black human, a woman, human, age, location, whatever,
Speaker 2: just a human in your specific part of the world.
Speaker 3: Well, it's interesting that you mentioned like like you're trying
Speaker 3: to intellectualize your your desire to want to make yourself
Speaker 3: feel better by eating, right, So not that I mean
Speaker 3: I'm using an eating disorder as an example. I'm not
Speaker 3: saying you have a eating disorder, but yeah, but probably
Speaker 3: I do go ahead when but when people are when
Speaker 3: people let's say, have binge eating disorder or even anorexia
Speaker 3: nervosa or bulimia where they binge and then they purge.
Speaker 3: I used to actually work at a hospital, an inpatient hospital,
Speaker 3: with with a page who had really really severe eating disorders,
Speaker 3: and the one thing that they all told me, whether
Speaker 3: they were binging, they're binging food or restricting their food
Speaker 3: or purging their food, is that they would get high
Speaker 3: from the maladaptive behavior. So anorexics get high when they're
Speaker 3: not like when I guess when they're blood sugar drops.
Speaker 3: I don't know, because I'm not innarexic, but they do
Speaker 3: feel this state of euphoria, and it's kind of similar
Speaker 3: when you know. I would say most of us, myself included,
Speaker 3: have gained weight during this pandemic because it's like like
Speaker 3: last month, I was like, donuts are amazing, and that's
Speaker 3: really it. So I'd like six and I'm gonna eat
Speaker 3: them every day. I'm gonna eat six donuts every day
Speaker 3: and that's that. Because it is boosting your serotonin in
Speaker 3: your brain, and that's making you feel better, but temporarily,
Speaker 3: and then the guilts and the shame sets in. So
Speaker 3: it's interesting that you know, you, even me, we like
Speaker 3: we're we're creatures that we can't human beings are creatures
Speaker 3: that can you know, intellectualize anything. So it's like, oh, well,
Speaker 3: why do I keep doing this? I've been doing this
Speaker 3: since I was a kid. It's not something that you
Speaker 3: can really, it's not something that you woke up one
Speaker 3: day and decided to do. It's something that your brain decided, well,
Speaker 3: is your serotonin lo, then let's eat everything and then
Speaker 3: and then we'll feel better for maybe like thirty minutes.
Speaker 3: So again, like what you just said in terms of,
Speaker 3: you know, we need to stop beating beating each other
Speaker 3: up so much. It's that's really what it is. And
Speaker 3: I know it's easier said than done, but I've really
Speaker 3: been trying to on the daily, like just think about
Speaker 3: things like you know what, like oh, you had to
Speaker 3: pay that parking ticket. You know what it happens pay
Speaker 3: the parking ticket. Like whereas before I would just look
Speaker 3: at it and then just get mad and then I
Speaker 3: flip it over and then you know, I'm like a
Speaker 3: day before I'm gonna get you know, I have to
Speaker 3: owe the city double. Like, there's so many things that
Speaker 3: I have personally guilted myself over that comple deletely make
Speaker 3: no sense, but that was a function of me having
Speaker 3: symptoms of mental illness.
Speaker 2: I feel like we could keep talking and talking and
Speaker 2: talking talking, Doctor Money. It's been really amazing you having
Speaker 2: amazing you. It's been so amazing having you on the
Speaker 2: show today. I just mean, it's been amazing you both.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Thank you, thank you. Where can people find
Speaker 2: out more about you and what you have going on?
Speaker 3: Now? Okay? Sure, So I'm doctor Emani. I have all
Speaker 3: social media pretty much, but I would say the place
Speaker 3: that I'm most active is Instagram. So I can be
Speaker 3: found on Instagram at doctor d O C T O
Speaker 3: R dot Imani. I also have a website of the
Speaker 3: same name. It's but it's doctor Hyphenemani dot com. People
Speaker 3: can find me on YouTube just search for my name again,
Speaker 3: it's doctor the word spelled out Imani. And I have
Speaker 3: a podcast which is called emanis State of Mind, and
Speaker 3: it's pretty much everywhere there are streaming there's a streaming
Speaker 3: podcast platform. A mini State of Mind is essentially me
Speaker 3: and one of my best friends, and we talk about
Speaker 3: mental health and mental illness and wellness, but we talk
Speaker 3: about it in a very casual, pop culture based situation.
Speaker 3: So it's it's not it's not it's not a sad podcast.
Speaker 3: Like we're definitely giggling the whole time and just like
Speaker 3: just acting silly. But you know, I'm someone who that's
Speaker 3: my personality. I'm just kind of goofy by nature, and
Speaker 3: that's how I am with my patients and my friends,
Speaker 3: and so I wanted to at least show people that
Speaker 3: mental health doesn't have to be dour and sad and scary.
Speaker 3: It actually can be a lot of fun. So that's
Speaker 3: that's really kind of like my baby, So that's why
Speaker 3: I spent so much time explaining that. But but yeah,
Speaker 3: Emani state of Mind, YouTube, Instagram, my website. I guess
Speaker 3: if you want to see me, you could always go
Speaker 3: to Bravo dot com, Sorry, BravoTV dot com. I'm one
Speaker 3: of the cast members of Married to Medicine Los Angeles. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and I think I pretty much exhausted all of my
Speaker 3: oh my avenues, what's your address?
Speaker 2: I know, right, okay, so I'm just kidding. Well, thank
Speaker 2: you so so much. This was illuminating. I mean, I
Speaker 2: feel like if every therapist was like you, people would
Speaker 2: not be afraid to go to therapies.
Speaker 3: Yeah that's so nice. Yeah, I'm an open book because
Speaker 3: I'm like, I mean, the patients that I see, I
Speaker 3: have clients, so because people are going to ask us
Speaker 3: the I'm sorry, what'd you say?
Speaker 1: I said?
Speaker 2: People are going to ask us. Yeah, how can I
Speaker 2: get an appointment with doctor Amani?
Speaker 3: So okay, I have been I have been considering reopening
Speaker 3: my private practice because that actually has been occurring more.
Speaker 3: But the patients that I see are actually their referrals
Speaker 3: through the hospital I work for, so I would I
Speaker 3: would say probably the best way to get at a
Speaker 3: quote unquote appointment with me is to listen to my podcast.
Speaker 3: It's really good, y'all.
Speaker 2: Listen to the most recent when the New Normal, and
Speaker 2: it felt like your friend on the other end of
Speaker 2: it was like everybody else just like, don't tell me
Speaker 2: it's the new normal.
Speaker 3: I refuse to believe it. Yeah, Cam as well, but yeah,
Speaker 3: we had we have a really good time. But yeah,
Speaker 3: I just wanted to have somebody on my podcast. That
Speaker 3: would be the common person as opposed to me who
Speaker 3: you know, if if, if you you know, keeps talking
Speaker 3: to me, I'm gonna start sounding like, you know, a professor,
Speaker 3: and I don't want to do that. You went to Xavier.
Speaker 4: True yeah true the doctor Fay true true true true.
Speaker 2: All right, Well y'all go check out Doctor and Money everywhere,
Speaker 2: and thank you again Doctor Money for coming on Brown Ambition.
Speaker 1: Of course, thank you.
Speaker 3: This was super fun. I'm glad I got to meet
Speaker 3: you guys,