Speaker 1: Hey everyone, It's Jay Sheddy and I'm thrilled to announce
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Speaker 3: Don't say I'm anxious, Say I feel anxious because and
Speaker 3: that allows you to be a human having an emotion
Speaker 3: and trying your best to figure out why. Sharing your
Speaker 3: anxious feelings in a way that you don't identify with them,
Speaker 3: that invites connection and now we can talk about it.
Speaker 3: And once we start revealing it, that's really the first
Speaker 3: step to healing.
Speaker 2: The number one health and well in the podcast.
Speaker 1: Jay Setty, Jay Sheddy, see Lenly Jay shet Hey everyone, welcome,
Speaker 1: back to On Purpose, the place you come to listen,
Speaker 1: learn and grow. Today's guest is on for his third time.
Speaker 1: Came on in season one. I'm always super grateful to
Speaker 1: my friends who showed up when we were this tiny
Speaker 1: little podcast trying to figure out our way, and when
Speaker 1: they come back with new exciting information, reflections, revelations, I
Speaker 1: can't wait to have them back on the show. Today's
Speaker 1: guest is none other than Humble the poet, an artist, rapper,
Speaker 1: spoken word artist, international best selling author, and former elementary
Speaker 1: school teacher.
Speaker 2: If you didn't know.
Speaker 1: Known for his tattoos, beard, head wrap, and infectious smile,
Speaker 1: he captivates audiences with thought provoking ideas that challenge can
Speaker 1: conventional wisdom. Humble's dynamic live performances have taken him to
Speaker 1: major festivals all across the world, and he's been featured
Speaker 1: in The New York Times, BuzzFeed, Vogue, Rolling Stone, and
Speaker 1: hulf Post. Humble is the author of Unlearned Things No
Speaker 1: One Else Can Teach Us, and here to talk about
Speaker 1: his latest book, which I want you.
Speaker 2: To grab right now.
Speaker 1: It's called un Anxious Fifty Simple Truths to help overthinkers
Speaker 1: feel less stress and more calm. If your goal this
Speaker 1: year is to manage and navigate anxiety better, this is
Speaker 1: the book for you. It's called Out Anxious. We'll put
Speaker 1: the link in the comments. Welcome back to on Purpose,
Speaker 1: My dear, dear friend, one of the realist guys I know,
Speaker 1: someone that I slouch around when he's here, and my
Speaker 1: full self because we do this offline anyway, Humble the poet.
Speaker 2: Humble. It's great to have you back then.
Speaker 3: That's great to be here. Thank you so much. That
Speaker 3: was an awesome intro.
Speaker 1: Dude, It's just it's so fun when, like you know,
Speaker 1: I've really been thinking about that first season so much lately,
Speaker 1: and it's because there's so many guests who've kind of
Speaker 1: come back. So we just had doctor daniel Lehman on.
Speaker 1: It's been his fifth time he's been on in six years,
Speaker 1: which is insane. Chloe Kardashian just came back on for
Speaker 1: the second time, and she was one of those first
Speaker 1: people that really helped us grow. And so it's just
Speaker 1: like people who believed in the show when it was
Speaker 1: you know, finding its way, and you were one of them.
Speaker 2: So I'm very grateful to you.
Speaker 3: I appreciate you having me back then. It's always been amazing.
Speaker 1: You're the best, all right. I want to dive in
Speaker 1: because this book. You dropped so many bars in this
Speaker 1: book that I was like, the only way to do
Speaker 1: the book justice and for people to realize it's worth
Speaker 1: picking up is me to read stuff from the book.
Speaker 1: And right in the introduction you say something, and I
Speaker 1: think it just sets the tone for the rest of
Speaker 1: the book. You say, anxiety isn't something that needs curing.
Speaker 1: Why was that important for people to know right at
Speaker 1: the beginning.
Speaker 3: I think when I started the journey, it was really
Speaker 3: about meeting people where they're at. And I think now
Speaker 3: how that mental health is, like mental health awareness has
Speaker 3: really become normalized. It may have gone a little bit
Speaker 3: too far with people identifying with certain things that they're
Speaker 3: struggling with. And it's like, anxiety is not a problem.
Speaker 3: It's not a disease, it's not dandruff. It's not a
Speaker 3: condition that we have to deal with. It's a signal
Speaker 3: it's here to help us. And what we need to
Speaker 3: do is reevaluate our relationship with it. Right now, where
Speaker 3: we're at is we medicate, avoid, and distract, and all
Speaker 3: of those are understandable coping mechanisms. They help us in
Speaker 3: the moment, they help us feel better, but none of
Speaker 3: that in the long term is going to help us
Speaker 3: become better. And what it is is we just have
Speaker 3: to pay attention to what anxiety and anxious feelings are
Speaker 3: trying to tell us. And the big thing with that
Speaker 3: is changing our relationship in a way that makes us
Speaker 3: not think like, oh, because I'm having anxious feelings, that
Speaker 3: must be weak, something's wrong with me. Nobody else is
Speaker 3: dealing with this, and it's like, no, you are absolutely
Speaker 3: normal for having anxious feelings. And to start that's the
Speaker 3: first idea. We have to understand, treating ourselves with grace
Speaker 3: that this is completely normal. And then once we get there,
Speaker 3: we can start this journey going from managing it in
Speaker 3: helpful ways and then also growing from it. We don't
Speaker 3: want to just keep soothing anxiety. We want to gain
Speaker 3: strength through paying attention and understanding what it's trying to
Speaker 3: tell us.
Speaker 1: One of the things me and you talk about a
Speaker 1: lot when we're having our offline conversations is this difference
Speaker 1: in the idea of East and West. So the Western
Speaker 1: ideology is I had anxiety, I don't have it anymore,
Speaker 1: So everything's painted as this before and after, and we
Speaker 1: know that the East, which we both take inspiration from,
Speaker 1: is more cyclical, where it's like, well, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: anxiety isn't going to go away. It's going to keep
Speaker 1: showing up in my life in different ways. Now, if
Speaker 1: anxiety shows up in the same way, it's because I'm
Speaker 1: not learning, I'm not strengthening, I'm not hearing the signal
Speaker 1: as you just called it, absolutely, and it's going to
Speaker 1: show up in different ways because even if I hear
Speaker 1: the signal of anxiety here, anxiety is going to show
Speaker 1: up in another way over here. And so I love
Speaker 1: that you really make it clear off the bat that
Speaker 1: this isn't about solving a problem. Yeah right, it's not
Speaker 1: about getting rid of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. What I'm promising in the book is I'm not
Speaker 3: promising to cure anxiety. I'm promising to cure the despair
Speaker 3: around anxiety. And the despair is when we feel hopeless
Speaker 3: because we don't think we have options. So this book
Speaker 3: is full of options to better understand anxiety and to
Speaker 3: go from managing to striving and growing and becoming stronger
Speaker 3: from it. And because we feel hopeless, that's where we
Speaker 3: stop and a lot of the tension that we carry
Speaker 3: comes from resisting these emotions. It's not the emotions themselves.
Speaker 3: Anxious feelings aren't harming us. Resisting and avoiding these anxious
Speaker 3: feelings or what's actually doing the damage.
Speaker 2: Oh, I love that. I love that.
Speaker 1: I think it resonates so strongly with me because I've
Speaker 1: been thinking a lot about how when you're anxious about something,
Speaker 1: you feel like you only have two options. So it's
Speaker 1: like I either overcome this and my life's going to
Speaker 1: be better, or I'm stuck with this for the rest
Speaker 1: of my life and my life's over right. We kind
Speaker 1: of get these two extreme options and the fact that
Speaker 1: you're saying, well, wait, wait a minute, there's a third option, fourth,
Speaker 1: and there's fifty in here. That's actually what we all
Speaker 1: want to feel. I remember when I was anxious about
Speaker 1: the fact that I hated my job, my career wasn't
Speaker 1: really going where I wanted it to go. But then
Speaker 1: I was anxious about leaving. I realized the problem was
Speaker 1: my anxiety was all based on the fact I had
Speaker 1: limited options.
Speaker 2: I thought, I.
Speaker 1: Either stay somewhere I hate, or I leave, and then
Speaker 1: I'm lost because I don't know what's gonna come. And
Speaker 1: as soon as I started updating my LinkedIn resume and
Speaker 1: I saw other job offers coming in and there are
Speaker 1: other options, I was like, oh, it's not as bad anymore.
Speaker 1: But nothing really changed apart from the fact that I
Speaker 1: could see a few steps further. What have you found
Speaker 1: is the best way to open up your mind to
Speaker 1: more options when you're in a position where you feel
Speaker 1: imprisoned and trapped by your thinking.
Speaker 3: So I love the idea that curiosity is courage in disguise.
Speaker 3: And what we realize is is often when we have
Speaker 3: this kind of dualistic thinking, this is good, this is bad,
Speaker 3: this will help, this will hurt, that's us limiting our scope,
Speaker 3: as you said, and that's us being judgmental. And the
Speaker 3: only antidote to that is to be curious, is to
Speaker 3: ask more questions, to explore the gray between the black
Speaker 3: and white. And as we start doing that, more options arise,
Speaker 3: and we also start to realize often the fear that
Speaker 3: I'm dealing with is related to a story that I've
Speaker 3: told myself that I can only do this, or I've
Speaker 3: gone so far, I've climbed this mountain, and now people
Speaker 3: will seeing them a failure if I have to climb
Speaker 3: all the way back down to find a new mountain.
Speaker 3: So I realized, keeping our mind open, keeping our hearts open,
Speaker 3: requires curiosity, and that really is what courage is. And
Speaker 3: often we think this is a light switch. We think,
Speaker 3: you know, either I'm confident or I'm not confident. I'm
Speaker 3: going to fix this or I'm not. And it's like, really, no,
Speaker 3: it's a dimmer and it's not simply a failing on
Speaker 3: our part if we start to feel like this. We
Speaker 3: live in a society that really encourages us to Okay, well,
Speaker 3: if this is difficult, let's rearrange our lives to avoid it.
Speaker 3: You know. A personal story for example, this book was
Speaker 3: inspired through one of our conversations when I was reaching
Speaker 3: out to you to come on the podcast the Last Book,
Speaker 3: and I explained that I feel a lot of anxiety
Speaker 3: around asking for help and you know, and you said
Speaker 3: many beautiful words to me to help soothe that, but
Speaker 3: I didn't address the fear of rejection I had. I
Speaker 3: didn't address any of that. And then I caught myself saying, well,
Speaker 3: you know what, maybe this will be the last book
Speaker 3: and I'll never have to ask for a favor. Again,
Speaker 3: that is not healing. That is me rearranging my life
Speaker 3: so I don't have to face the thing that is
Speaker 3: giving me anxious feelings. And there's no growth in that.
Speaker 3: That is me temporarily managing it because I'm going to
Speaker 3: have to ask for help. And what we have to
Speaker 3: realize is these challenges are an invitation for growth. Our
Speaker 3: triggers are an invitation for growth. There's an opportunity here
Speaker 3: for us to not only deal with them in a
Speaker 3: healthy way, but then also to growth through them because
Speaker 3: all of our growth happens outside of our comfort. And
Speaker 3: that's a really interesting thing where I've realized, I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 3: I can feel better by avoiding asking for help, or
Speaker 3: I can be better by leaning into this and being
Speaker 3: okay with that.
Speaker 1: It's powerful when you paint that picture. Because I'm sitting there,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm trying to think about all the times
Speaker 1: I've avoided things that I didn't want to do. And
Speaker 1: I remember at one point I just avoided working out,
Speaker 1: Like I love playing sport, but I just didn't want
Speaker 1: to work out. I didn't enjoy it. I come up
Speaker 1: with loads of excuses. I arranged my life in a
Speaker 1: way that I didn't have to do it. And as
Speaker 1: I grew older and you realize the value of getting
Speaker 1: stronger and taking care of your body, not just esthetically
Speaker 1: but for the purpose of health, like to actually live
Speaker 1: a healthy life, a strong life. You start going, well,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, actually, it was only doing the thing
Speaker 1: and turning up when I didn't want to that has
Speaker 1: left me feeling better and stronger as opposed to when
Speaker 1: I was running away from it, I was just getting
Speaker 1: weaker and weaker.
Speaker 3: And that's exactly how we should look at mental health.
Speaker 3: I think right now we're looking at mental health like
Speaker 3: it's this very fragile crystal that we have to protect
Speaker 3: from the world and like, oh, I'm going to avoid
Speaker 3: this person to protect my mental health. No, and mental
Speaker 3: health is a tool, it's a muscle. It's what allows
Speaker 3: us to deal with struggle. Struggle isn't the enemy. Struggle
Speaker 3: is the vehicle that makes us more of a that
Speaker 3: makes us more emotionally strong, that makes us more self aware.
Speaker 3: Every time we have a negative experience that we get triggered,
Speaker 3: we're giving ourselves data. That data is a gift for
Speaker 3: our self awareness so we can better understand who we
Speaker 3: are and it's just like you said, if you want
Speaker 3: to help me move a couch, working out at the
Speaker 3: gym and voluntarily lifting heavy things, we'll prepare you for that.
Speaker 3: It's the same thing with our mental health. We have
Speaker 3: to voluntarily put ourselves in uncomfortable situations. We have to
Speaker 3: challenge ourselves on purpose voluntarily, so when challenges find us,
Speaker 3: we're more resilient, we're more confident, we'll feel more safe
Speaker 3: to deal with that stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this isn't about making your life harder. It's
Speaker 1: being able to make your life harder in a controlled,
Speaker 1: choice based environment. Like it's not like just like you're
Speaker 1: not just training drama in your life. That's not the point.
Speaker 3: Definitely not drama. But I think the name of the
Speaker 3: podcast on purpose. When you discover your purpose, even if
Speaker 3: you devote fifteen minutes to like digging in and picking
Speaker 3: up as much weight with that purpose as possible, that's
Speaker 3: going to energize you to a level that most of
Speaker 3: us never experience until we figure out that thing that matters.
Speaker 3: So it's really not about adding drama to our lives.
Speaker 3: But it's really about carrying as much weight as we
Speaker 3: can to see how strong we can be. We can
Speaker 3: only get stronger through struggle, and if we voluntarily put
Speaker 3: ourselves in stressful situations. And it could be even like
Speaker 3: think video games. We're not going to buy a video
Speaker 3: game if it's easy. You know. We want there to
Speaker 3: be a challenge. We want to fall on our face,
Speaker 3: get back up and try again. And it's the same
Speaker 3: thing with life. It's this is how our batteries get charged.
Speaker 3: It comes through choosing to do hard things voluntarily on purpose.
Speaker 3: And that can be anything for some people. It could
Speaker 3: be a specific art. It could be drawing, it could
Speaker 3: be working out, it could be jiu jitsu, it could
Speaker 3: be any type of challenge. And this is going to
Speaker 3: charge our batteries so much more than a two week
Speaker 3: vacation lying on a beach doing absolutely nothing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it builds more confidence, right, because when you're
Speaker 1: doing difficult things.
Speaker 2: I always say to people.
Speaker 1: Someone asked me the other day, they said, Jay, how
Speaker 1: do I feel confident before I do this? And I said,
Speaker 1: I never feel confident before I do something. I feel prepared,
Speaker 1: I feel organized, and I feel practiced. I feel confident
Speaker 1: after I conquer it. So when I'm about to give
Speaker 1: a talk, I don't feel confident before I give a talk,
Speaker 1: But I know I've practiced, I know I've prepared, and
Speaker 1: I know I'm organized. Now I give the talk, and
Speaker 1: then I feel confident because I've built and you muscle
Speaker 1: built a new skill, whatever it may have been. And
Speaker 1: so this idea that I need to feel confident before
Speaker 1: I do something, I need to not feel anxiety before
Speaker 1: I do something is actually quite unnatural. How do we
Speaker 1: get comfortable with discomfort? How do we get comfortable with
Speaker 1: uncertainty when we're wired to want things to feel good
Speaker 1: and be comfortable.
Speaker 3: I think it's recognizing that a we're wired for a
Speaker 3: world that we don't live in anymore. So we are
Speaker 3: getting way too much stimuli. We're comparing ourselves to way
Speaker 3: too many people, we know way too many people. You know,
Speaker 3: we're really wired to be in much smaller communities. And
Speaker 3: bringing up this concept of confidence I think is really
Speaker 3: important because it goes back to that idea that it's
Speaker 3: not a light switch. I like to think about reading.
Speaker 3: We didn't not know how to read, and then one
Speaker 3: day know how to read. We started by learning the alphabet,
Speaker 3: learning the sounds, two little words, three little words, four
Speaker 3: little words, until we could all read big, complex novels.
Speaker 3: That was like a fourteen to fifteen year journey. You know,
Speaker 3: we may not have realized that was happening because it
Speaker 3: was in school. It was fun. We may not have
Speaker 3: had a choice we had to go anyways. But as adults,
Speaker 3: the thing is all of our growth came from doing
Speaker 3: the struggling with a book when you were reading it. Now,
Speaker 3: as we become idols, we avoid all these things that
Speaker 3: are struggling. And it's really reevaluating our relationship with difficult
Speaker 3: things and challenges. And it's absolutely correct. Both motivation and
Speaker 3: confidence they don't come before action. You can't wait till
Speaker 3: you're motivated to do something. Doing something will make you motivated,
Speaker 3: Doing something will make you confidence. And this also brings
Speaker 3: up a really important idea that as we have this conversation,
Speaker 3: this is really going to hit people logically like, oh
Speaker 3: that makes so much sense. That makes so much sense.
Speaker 3: But for the body to really believe this, you can't
Speaker 3: make sense to the body. You have to practice this. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, if I asked you to stand up and
Speaker 3: fall backwards and I say I'll catch you, your brain
Speaker 3: might be like I trust them. Your body is still
Speaker 3: going to be a little bit nervous. Let's say I
Speaker 3: catch you, and then I'm like, let's do it again.
Speaker 3: You'll be a little less nervous, but you're still going
Speaker 3: to have some nerves. We might have to do it
Speaker 3: fifteen times for your body to completely trust the process.
Speaker 3: We have to practice. Practice makes progress, and we have
Speaker 3: to get out of this binary of like I can't
Speaker 3: do it, or I'm perfect at it. I can't do it,
Speaker 3: or I've mastered it. We have to just continually be
Speaker 3: on a journey and celebrate the progress that comes from that,
Speaker 3: and that progress is what builds our confidence and slowly
Speaker 3: turn up that dial because that's the only way it's
Speaker 3: going to happen.
Speaker 1: You say, anxiety overestimates the threat and underestimates our ability
Speaker 1: to deal with it absolutely.
Speaker 2: What did you mean by that?
Speaker 3: So I heard a really interesting quote which was anxiety
Speaker 3: is when your intelligence grows quicker than your courage.
Speaker 2: Hmm, okay, yeah.
Speaker 3: And oftentimes when when we're younger, we accomplish amazing things
Speaker 3: that we don't know we're supposed to be afraid of it.
Speaker 3: We don't even know we're be afraid of playing on
Speaker 3: the street or what have you. What the stresses are.
Speaker 3: You may have accomplished something where the odds were against you,
Speaker 3: but you didn't know the odds, so you didn't feel
Speaker 3: that anxiety. So when our intelligence grows, now all of
Speaker 3: a sudden, our imagination is being used to invent threats,
Speaker 3: right to detect threats, things that may or may not happen,
Speaker 3: and then that holds us back from actually acting because
Speaker 3: the triggers are at Magdalah. We have a little tiny
Speaker 3: part of our brain, the side of an almond, called
Speaker 3: the amygdalah. In the book, I call it our survival brain,
Speaker 3: and it's like a very undertrained but loving bodyguard that
Speaker 3: wants to protect you from everything. But its definition of
Speaker 3: danger is uncertain, unrecognizable, unfamiliar, uncomfortable, and these we know
Speaker 3: aren't things that are actually dangerous. Struggle isn't danger, challenge
Speaker 3: isn't danger. But when we come across that, we're gonna
Speaker 3: speak ourselves out of it. So it's really important to
Speaker 3: understand this kind of idea that we need to feel
Speaker 3: the fear and do it. Anyways, resilientiance doesn't feel good
Speaker 3: when you're being resilient, when you have to be resilient,
Speaker 3: when you have to be strong, it's not going to
Speaker 3: be a great feeling, and that's okay. Building resilience voluntarily
Speaker 3: doing difficult things may not be a good feeling, but
Speaker 3: that's okay because we're not here to live a life
Speaker 3: without suffering. We're here to see our own potential and
Speaker 3: see how much we can endure. And again, it's not
Speaker 3: about putting yourselves in uncomfortable and dangerous situations. It's about
Speaker 3: realizing that life is chaotic, life is random, most of
Speaker 3: it is out of our control. Let's stop tensing ourselves
Speaker 3: by trying to hold onto everything, let the chips fall
Speaker 3: where they may, and trust ourselves that we can handle
Speaker 3: whatever's come in our way.
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Speaker 1: years I'd given talks about how failures are stepping stones
Speaker 1: to success and how like you got to feel the
Speaker 1: fear and do it anyway. And then I remember when
Speaker 1: I went through some real stuff and I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: and at the same time, I remember that I'd been through,
Speaker 1: like you just said, real stuff when I was younger,
Speaker 1: and I never gave myself credit for it because I
Speaker 1: just assumed that that's what life was. I didn't realize
Speaker 1: how much hardship i'd been through in my early years
Speaker 1: because to me, it was just normal. And I think
Speaker 1: that's true for a lot of people. And then there's
Speaker 1: the other side of it, where it's like I may
Speaker 1: talk about these ideas, I may hear them, but then
Speaker 1: life's going to throw a challenge at me.
Speaker 2: Where I actually have to apply what I've learned.
Speaker 1: And you say something in the book where you say
Speaker 1: home is where the anxiety starts. I think a lot
Speaker 1: of us feel that we felt the anxiety of our parents,
Speaker 1: we felt the anxiety of our siblings, we felt the
Speaker 1: anxiety of the extended family, and we kind of just
Speaker 1: ingested all of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then it's only.
Speaker 1: Decades later that you kind of even realize that you
Speaker 1: might be sitting at like a dinner table at a
Speaker 1: holiday dinner at your parents' house, or you're sitting around
Speaker 1: with your family and you go, wait a minute, everyone
Speaker 1: here is carrying anxiety, and you can actually see it,
Speaker 1: but then you realize you've kept onto it for decades.
Speaker 1: What do you do when you feel like you've been
Speaker 1: carrying the baggage of anxiety that you picked up when
Speaker 1: you were a kid and you have an unpacked for
Speaker 1: twenty years.
Speaker 3: I think the first thing is be super super nice
Speaker 3: to yourself. You know, imagine eight year old you is
Speaker 3: dealing with these complex adults with their emotions, and they
Speaker 3: grew up at a time or emotional intelligence and being
Speaker 3: able to communicate an emotion wasn't a thing. So your
Speaker 3: coping mechanisms and your survival mechanisms, your your mental health
Speaker 3: tried its best to adapt the best it could with
Speaker 3: your limited eight year old nine year old brain, and
Speaker 3: then those coping mechanisms became habits. And then as adults,
Speaker 3: we continue those coping mechanisms even though we have access
Speaker 3: to more helpful ones. And instead of looking back and
Speaker 3: being like, well, I'm a product of all this trauma,
Speaker 3: or I'm a product of I made all these poor
Speaker 3: choices and now I'm stuck in this habit loop, just
Speaker 3: be like, look, my mental health has always been on
Speaker 3: my team. It's always been helping me. Now we just
Speaker 3: need to upgrade it with family. I do view them
Speaker 3: as the ultimate boss in this world of anxiety because
Speaker 3: it's like they can push our buttons because they install
Speaker 3: the buttons.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that point.
Speaker 3: And there's that and I always think about even in
Speaker 3: my household words like I have a lot, I get
Speaker 3: along with my family great. Just stepping into my childhood
Speaker 3: home brings up anxious feelings. It reminds you of versions
Speaker 3: of yourself that you don't want to remember. And I
Speaker 3: think the idea that really helped me realize this was like,
Speaker 3: if you learn the lesson, you won't be afraid of
Speaker 3: the test. So I think what ends up happening is
Speaker 3: when we have these feelings again, these are signals. It's
Speaker 3: like the smoke detector going off. Instead of pulling out
Speaker 3: the battery, ripping the smoke detector off the ceiling, putting
Speaker 3: a piece of tape over the light, let's look for
Speaker 3: the smoke, you know. So when we're at home and
Speaker 3: these anxious feelings start coming up, this is an opportunity
Speaker 3: for us to start exploring and figuring out what it is.
Speaker 3: And as simple as feeling the feelings, you know, and
Speaker 3: maybe in a moment it may not be the best
Speaker 3: time for you, So do whatever you do to suits.
Speaker 3: You know, if it's if you got to go and
Speaker 3: look at your phone, please do what you got to do.
Speaker 3: Look at your phone. If you've got to go distract yourself,
Speaker 3: if you've got to medicate, you got to go have
Speaker 3: a cigarette, whatever you normally do. Cool. But the next day,
Speaker 3: when you're well rested, you've had a glass of water,
Speaker 3: you're hydrated, you know, you haven't read a bad text message,
Speaker 3: your bad email. Yet you're in a good place. Voluntarily
Speaker 3: go back into that. Maybe pull out a journal and
Speaker 3: be like, what is it about my family situation that's there?
Speaker 3: And now you're in a good place to peel back
Speaker 3: these layers and voluntarily lean into a trigger. And once
Speaker 3: we lean into it, that's the way it's actually going
Speaker 3: to heal. And then once it heals, we'll have room
Speaker 3: for something new to come. It's never going to be
Speaker 3: I've healed and I live ever after. We're not. We
Speaker 3: don't live this linear life. It's a cycle. And as
Speaker 3: you said, like you thought you can handle stuff until
Speaker 3: something new came. That's not a feeling on your part.
Speaker 3: That's the next level for you to build that strength
Speaker 3: and then as you as you've come out of that,
Speaker 3: which I've definitely seen you have, and you've come out
Speaker 3: much more wise, much more strong, and much more compassionate,
Speaker 3: much more kind to yourself and other people. Now something
Speaker 3: new may come, a new curveball may come, and as
Speaker 3: you continue practicing your swing, you'll be able to handle
Speaker 3: that as well. And that's what I believe our mental
Speaker 3: health should be, should be this confidence that, hey, it
Speaker 3: will be hard, but I'm not afraid of heart. Having
Speaker 3: a hard day does not mean I've experienced trauma. Having
Speaker 3: a person that is difficult to be with doesn't instantly
Speaker 3: make them toxic. You know, we've got to this point
Speaker 3: where mental health awareness has increased, but we may have
Speaker 3: swung the pendulumvel too far where now we've created identities
Speaker 3: out of these things. Let's not create an identity. It's okay,
Speaker 3: things are going to be challenging and let's train and
Speaker 3: trust ourselves to handle it. And that's only going to
Speaker 3: come through practice.
Speaker 1: So in England, I remember when I was at school,
Speaker 1: we'd have fire drills, right and even here you have
Speaker 1: a fire drill and it's like that fire drill may
Speaker 1: or may never come like the real thing may or
Speaker 1: may never come, but you're prepared, yes, and now you
Speaker 1: know that even in the face of a fire drill,
Speaker 1: you know what to do, you know what the exit is,
Speaker 1: you know what to take one not to take, you
Speaker 1: know where to line up outside school, whatever it may be.
Speaker 1: And I think that's what it is for life. It's
Speaker 1: almost like you can't fire drill everything, because that's where
Speaker 1: anxiety comes from too, because you're like, I'm going to
Speaker 1: prepare for everything possibly bad that could happen, and that
Speaker 1: could be an unlimited list. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: it's having the confidence that I've built the skills to
Speaker 1: know I can deal with certain things. And by the way,
Speaker 1: there will be curveboards that I don't have a clue with.
Speaker 1: I want to go back to what you said about family.
Speaker 1: What do you do when the family that, as you said,
Speaker 1: installed the buttons, when they push them, what do you do?
Speaker 3: I think immediately in terms of managing them, you know,
Speaker 3: before we worry about growing through it. The magic word
Speaker 3: is going to be boundaries. And I think what's important
Speaker 3: is we define boundaries in a way that matters. Boundaries
Speaker 3: is teaching people how to be with you and your
Speaker 3: boundaries can be universal. For example, I can have a boundary. Listen,
Speaker 3: if you were gonna remind me of my age and
Speaker 3: that I haven't gotten married and had any kids yet,
Speaker 3: and that you know I'm not living out my purpose
Speaker 3: in life, then obviously I'm not gonna call this much mom,
Speaker 3: you know, But if anybody else does that, it's going
Speaker 3: to be the exact same thing. It's teaching people say, listen,
Speaker 3: this is how I expect to be treated. I'm not
Speaker 3: telling you what to do, but if I'm not treated
Speaker 3: this way, I probably won't be around here. And this
Speaker 3: is what my I'm setting a standard and I'm really
Speaker 3: teaching you how to be around me. And I think boundaries,
Speaker 3: at the end of the day, are saying I care
Speaker 3: about you so much that I want to improve our dynamic.
Speaker 3: And I think that's a really important thing when it
Speaker 3: comes to family, because that's the hardest place to set
Speaker 3: up boundaries because everybody is so used to it. And
Speaker 3: I'll be completely honest when somebody has hit me with boundaries,
Speaker 3: it was uncomfortable for me. You're still used to things
Speaker 3: being a certain way. Sudden change for anybody is not
Speaker 3: going to be comfortable, and we have to approach this
Speaker 3: with a lot of grace, grace for ourselves and grace
Speaker 3: for other people. So I think boundaries is generally the
Speaker 3: first place, and then also having context and just being like, look,
Speaker 3: they really did try their best. When I worked with
Speaker 3: the therapist, they were always reminding me, listen, your parents
Speaker 3: were in survival mode. They may not have been the
Speaker 3: most emotionally nurturing, but they were trying to put food
Speaker 3: on the table. They were trying to make sure you
Speaker 3: were good, you were safe, and like, that's what they
Speaker 3: were doing. That's all the tools that they had. And
Speaker 3: I think it's really important because what I realized, especially
Speaker 3: in the last year, is the kinder and more gracious
Speaker 3: I am to myself, the kinder and more gracious I
Speaker 3: can be to other people, and vice versa. The more
Speaker 3: I put an effort to be more understanding and kinder
Speaker 3: to other people, the more effort I can put to
Speaker 3: be kinder and more gracious to myself. And that's removing judgment,
Speaker 3: which takes us back to courage through curiosity.
Speaker 1: And that's the thing that even when you set boundaries,
Speaker 1: that person's still going to break your boundary. If you
Speaker 1: set the boundary, which I'm just going to use you
Speaker 1: as as an example. If you talk to me about
Speaker 1: getting married and having kids in all this traditional way
Speaker 1: of living, I'm going to talk to you less. You
Speaker 1: may find that even when you make an effort to
Speaker 1: talk to that person, they still bring it up. You
Speaker 1: may find whenever they get an opportunity they message you
Speaker 1: about it. So they're going to do that anyway. I
Speaker 1: think the challenge people have is they feel guilty for
Speaker 1: not loving their family, not being seen as a good person.
Speaker 1: Maybe they even feel guilty for not delivering on the
Speaker 1: promise that they're or the expectation that their parents have,
Speaker 1: and then that guilt and shame, which you call like
Speaker 1: anxieties BFFs, Like it's really weird because you're like, now
Speaker 1: going you're breaking your boundary to make yourself feel better
Speaker 1: for how you take care of that person or because
Speaker 1: you just love them, but now you're breaking it. But
Speaker 1: then they upset you again, so it gets really messy,
Speaker 1: Like how do we really define it in a way
Speaker 1: that we go, Yes, that makes sense, now I know
Speaker 1: why I'm going to keep it that way.
Speaker 3: I think it's not even guilt. I think I realized
Speaker 3: over time it's people pleasing, it's abandoning ourselves for somebody else.
Speaker 3: I think true guilt is when we abandon who we
Speaker 3: are based on our own values.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: Let's say you were having a bad day and you
Speaker 3: spoke to somebody that you cared about in a way
Speaker 3: that you don't normally do, and then a little bit
Speaker 3: time goes by, you're like, I really.
Speaker 2: Wish I didn't do that, And that's guilt.
Speaker 3: To me, that's authentic, that's great, that's betraying who you
Speaker 3: authentically are. Now the idea of like, oh, well, I'm
Speaker 3: speaking to Jay and he keeps bringing up these things
Speaker 3: I don't want to talk about, but I really don't
Speaker 3: want to let him down. I don't want to make
Speaker 3: him upset because he doesn't hear from me anymore. That's
Speaker 3: me trying to absorb your pain. That's me thinking because
Speaker 3: a lot of us do that in childhood. We absorb
Speaker 3: other people's pain because we don't believe in their resilience either, like, well,
Speaker 3: I can handle it. I'll handle their pain. I don't
Speaker 3: want to make my mom upset. I can handle their pain.
Speaker 3: I'm robbing you of the resilience that's going to come
Speaker 3: from you dealing with that challenge, and I'm betraying myself,
Speaker 3: increasing my own anxious feelings. And so I think, what
Speaker 3: we really need to do, And I have a quote
Speaker 3: the book, you can't guilt a caterpillar into becoming a butterfly.
Speaker 3: You know, we can't speed any of this up. So
Speaker 3: I really think sometimes when we use this word guilt,
Speaker 3: it really goes around us romanticizing some of these things.
Speaker 3: But really what it is it's people pleasing. It's wanting
Speaker 3: people to like us at the expense of us ever
Speaker 3: actually experiencing any real love. Establishing boundaries and then honoring
Speaker 3: your own boundaries. That's being your best friend, that's protecting
Speaker 3: yourself to a level. And as I said, this is
Speaker 3: just the beginning to manage it. At the end of
Speaker 3: the day, the secret here isn't to avoid these people,
Speaker 3: is to open a dialogue, open more vulnerability, build the connection,
Speaker 3: figure out where they're coming from, and strengthen the relationship. Accordingly,
Speaker 3: it's not we don't want to get to this point
Speaker 3: where anybody who presents any type of struggle or challenge
Speaker 3: for us we just continually cut them off from our lives,
Speaker 3: because this is just us rearranging our life to make
Speaker 3: it easier. No, we got to lean into the challenges,
Speaker 3: but just immediately, the boundaries got to be the first step.
Speaker 1: That's a great redefinition like that understanding. I don't think
Speaker 1: I've ever heard anyone say that before about that difference
Speaker 1: between authentic guilt and people pleasing.
Speaker 2: Because you're so right.
Speaker 1: That resonated completely, that idea that if I was if
Speaker 1: I was rude to someone, I would think about that
Speaker 1: the whole day because I'd be upset because I know
Speaker 1: that's not who I am. It's very different to like, oh,
Speaker 1: I want to make sure that that person likes me again,
Speaker 1: and that I hope that they Yeah, it's such a
Speaker 1: such a great redefinition and one of the biggest places
Speaker 1: we fit it as home, as you say, but we
Speaker 1: also feel it with our friends. And you talk about
Speaker 1: how anxious friends equals anxious you. To challenge today is
Speaker 1: a lot of our friends are anxious. If we get
Speaker 1: rid of all of our anxious friends, we may not
Speaker 1: have any friends left.
Speaker 2: So what do we do?
Speaker 1: Because I feel like, also all of our friends have
Speaker 1: different anxieties. Someone's anxious about their career, someone's anxious about
Speaker 1: their relationship, someone anxious about their appearance. Someone's anxious about this,
Speaker 1: how do you deal with an anxious friend?
Speaker 3: When we started talking about the specifics of like I
Speaker 3: have anxious feelings around my job, anxious feelings around my parents,
Speaker 3: what we're still saying is, you know this anxiety around
Speaker 3: things out of our control, anxious feelings about things that
Speaker 3: remind us of previous danger, anxious feelings about things that
Speaker 3: feel unfamiliar. And I think these become the headings that
Speaker 3: we can connect on if I'm vulnerable with you. When
Speaker 3: I share a vulnerable story, I'm generally going to be
Speaker 3: nervous about it because I'm afraid that you're going to
Speaker 3: judge me. And I'm sure your listeners have been in
Speaker 3: that situation. But the vast majority of the time that
Speaker 3: we're vulnerable with somebody, we're inviting them to be vulnerable
Speaker 3: with us. In the book, I talk about this idea
Speaker 3: of my friend in Berlin inviting me to a spa
Speaker 3: and I was excited to go to this spa and
Speaker 3: had hurt my shoulder dragging a broken suitcase. And we're
Speaker 3: on the way to the spa and he goes, I
Speaker 3: love how open minded you are, and I was like,
Speaker 3: why are you thanking me for being open minded. And
Speaker 3: then I realized he mixed up the word spa with sauna,
Speaker 3: and we are going to an all nude sauna and
Speaker 3: I'm about to see and this is the longest friendship
Speaker 3: I've ever had. I've been his friends since we're three.
Speaker 3: So I'm about to see him naked and a whole
Speaker 3: bunch of other people naked in Berlin and the voices,
Speaker 3: and I realized I wasn't afraid of being naked. I
Speaker 3: was afraid of being judged and afraid of standing out,
Speaker 3: afraid of not understanding a custom. How this is going
Speaker 3: to work. I'm in a different continent. And the first thing,
Speaker 3: you know that helped was admitting to him because he
Speaker 3: had just propped me up, saying, you're so open minded.
Speaker 3: I love that you're willing to do this. I didn't
Speaker 3: want to let him down. My people pleasing started to
Speaker 3: come up, but I'm like, look, now that you've clarified
Speaker 3: what this is like and this is not just a
Speaker 3: candlelight massage, I'm very nervous. And his response was I'm
Speaker 3: nervous too, and we strengthened the connection and it wasn't
Speaker 3: the easiest experience. But we got through it and it
Speaker 3: was a funny story, and you had to realize every
Speaker 3: thing that makes us interesting is a challenge that we've
Speaker 3: made ourselves go through. And I think the first step again,
Speaker 3: and I'm always gonna say this is the first step,
Speaker 3: not the absolute solution. It's going to be sharing your
Speaker 3: anxious feelings in a way that you don't want identify
Speaker 3: with them. I'm encouraging people and I got this from
Speaker 3: Melo Robbins. Don't say I'm anxious, say I feel anxious
Speaker 3: because and that allows you to be a human having
Speaker 3: an emotion and trying your best to figure out why
Speaker 3: I feel anxious because I'm about to be naked in
Speaker 3: front of you and a whole bunch of other people
Speaker 3: in this country, and I don't know if people are
Speaker 3: going to judge me or what have you. And I
Speaker 3: think that invites connection and if you get and someone
Speaker 3: else will be like, oh, I feel anxious because I
Speaker 3: don't know if I have job security. And now we
Speaker 3: can talk about it, and once we start revealing it,
Speaker 3: that's really the first step to healing, you know, jay
Speaker 3: Z said it, because you can't heal what you don't reveal.
Speaker 3: And we all know there's a value to this, because
Speaker 3: every single person has felt super stressed in their brain
Speaker 3: about how much things they have to do, and then
Speaker 3: they're write down the to do list and it's like
Speaker 3: three things, and they're like, why did that feel so
Speaker 3: heavy in my brain? It's just getting it out is important.
Speaker 3: And we are, again in a society that structures a
Speaker 3: lot of individualism, a lot of isolation. We need community.
Speaker 3: It's not, as I said, it's not about cutting off
Speaker 3: your friends who feel anxious. Everybody feels anxious, and we
Speaker 3: probably shouldn't label them as our anxious friends. However, if
Speaker 3: they decide to cling onto the identity and they are
Speaker 3: more interested in proving how hard life is versus looking
Speaker 3: at it as an opportunity to improve from it, then
Speaker 3: that definitely is a friendship worth reevaluating.
Speaker 1: Explain how this friend did not know the difference between
Speaker 1: his spat.
Speaker 2: I believe it was.
Speaker 3: You know what, yeah, he I honestly believe. He had
Speaker 3: lived in Germany for eight years at that point, born
Speaker 3: and raised in Canada, across the street from me. He's
Speaker 3: of Jamaican descent, and he had gotten married and they
Speaker 3: both moved to Berlin together, and I guess maybe eight
Speaker 3: years of him not speaking English every day, but it
Speaker 3: was most definitely I remember it vividly taking one of
Speaker 3: my parents' suitcases back then, because this is when I
Speaker 3: just started traveling, and you know, my parents bought us,
Speaker 3: you know, like six pieces for like thirty bucks, like cheap.
Speaker 3: Don't buy cheap luggage. There's a reason. And the wheel
Speaker 3: broke off and I was in London and I was
Speaker 3: dragging it up the stairs from the tube and I
Speaker 3: had pulled a muscle in my shoulder and I was
Speaker 3: so excited for a massage and he said. I remember,
Speaker 3: She's like, yeah, we're gonna go to the SPA. It's
Speaker 3: gonna be great. It was definitely him not speaking enough
Speaker 3: English for eight years, and it totally and it ended
Speaker 3: up becoming a situation where you know, now it's a
Speaker 3: great story, but all the emotions were there and it
Speaker 3: didn't get easier the moment I was there. The longer
Speaker 3: I stayed there, the more my body was able to trust, Okay,
Speaker 3: this is the thing again, and this is the big thing.
Speaker 3: Our brains will understand this immediately, our bodies have to
Speaker 3: catch up. And the way to reinforce it with our
Speaker 3: bodies is through practice. We have to practice this. We
Speaker 3: can't just hear an inspirational quote once and be like,
Speaker 3: all right, I figured it out. We have to practice.
Speaker 2: So you're encouraging everyone goes to it needs fun.
Speaker 3: Definitely going to go to an as but definitely, yeah,
Speaker 3: ud do the things we're like, I can't do this.
Speaker 3: When you voluntarily do something that you think I can't do.
Speaker 2: It's the same as sitting in the cold. What you did,
Speaker 2: I mean.
Speaker 3: Sitting in the cold. Definitely want of those things. And
Speaker 3: even that, what I've realized too is like, you know,
Speaker 3: got to go to poland got to train in the cold,
Speaker 3: you know, at the invite of Lewis house, and the
Speaker 3: irony of that was like, you know, sitting with Mike
Speaker 3: Poulsner in the ice for ten minutes freestyle wrapping, feeling
Speaker 3: like I'm the most resilient person ever. Fast forward six
Speaker 3: months ago, I am in asana with Lewis and we're
Speaker 3: just chatting. He goes, you want to take a dip
Speaker 3: in the pool. So this is October in la and
Speaker 3: I went in the pool and I couldn't stay in
Speaker 3: for ten seconds because I didn't keep practicing. Yeah, there's
Speaker 3: a value to the practice, but if you don't keep practicing,
Speaker 3: and in terms of having self compassion, that's okay.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I used to be able to sit in the ice
Speaker 3: for ten minutes. Now I can take a cold shower
Speaker 3: for three seconds. But I can get back there through practice.
Speaker 3: My doll just went back the other way, and I
Speaker 3: think that's really important. We have seasons, seasons where we
Speaker 3: can be more resilient and build more resilience, and then
Speaker 3: we have seasons where it's like, no, I'm just in survival.
Speaker 3: I can just do the bare minimum. And I think
Speaker 3: that's absolutely okay.
Speaker 2: I agree.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we create so much extra tension with these expectations
Speaker 3: we have of ourselves, and it doesn't.
Speaker 1: Help, especially when you lock in a new habit. Then
Speaker 1: when it breaks, you're just beating yourself up about not
Speaker 1: having that habit. So like, I've been working out consistently
Speaker 1: this year, probably like four or five times a week,
Speaker 1: and I feel great, and then last week I was
Speaker 1: on the road and I genuinely just couldn't work out.
Speaker 1: I was in a different city every day, I was
Speaker 1: barely in the hotel. I would have been having to
Speaker 1: work out like ten pm or something, and I prioritized
Speaker 1: my sleep over my workout, and there was a part
Speaker 1: of me that was just beating myself up, going, ah, man,
Speaker 1: you just missed four days. You didn't work out, Like,
Speaker 1: oh man, you know you have got the discipline.
Speaker 2: Whatever it is.
Speaker 1: That doesn't make you want to get back on it,
Speaker 1: That just makes you feel worse. Whereas then I gave
Speaker 1: myself grace by the end of it, and I was like, look,
Speaker 1: you know what, I needed some time off. I also
Speaker 1: slept really well. I also didn't get sick because I
Speaker 1: wasn't pushing myself. And by the way, I'm really excited
Speaker 1: to get back to working out this week when I'm
Speaker 1: home because I've had a bit of break and my
Speaker 1: body needed it while I was traveling, and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, you're refreshed. And so there's so much truth
Speaker 1: in the fact that guilt blocks growth. You don't guilt
Speaker 1: yourself into becoming better. It doesn't work that way. You
Speaker 1: encourage yourself, like you got to talk to yourself. I
Speaker 1: think they've done studies where they looked at how teachers
Speaker 1: talk to students, and you used to be a teacher.
Speaker 1: Teachers who just told their students that they weren't small.
Speaker 1: They didn't figure it out. That never made a student better.
Speaker 1: Student who believed that their teacher believed in them made
Speaker 1: a huge difference to their result in their psychology.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, the big lesson that we were taught when speaking
Speaker 3: with children was addressed the behavior, not the student. So
Speaker 3: if a student was doing something that they shouldn't be
Speaker 3: doing it, you'd be like, hey, that choice. I'm not
Speaker 3: a fan of that choice. Can we can we crumple
Speaker 3: up that choice and throw it in the garbage. You
Speaker 3: you're a great person, but I can't see how great
Speaker 3: you are when you make that choice. And I realized
Speaker 3: that when we speak to ourselves, we're still speaking to
Speaker 3: a little eight year old inside of us. There'sn't in
Speaker 3: a child there that needs to be spoken with love
Speaker 3: and grace. It's not coddling, it's actually realizing that we
Speaker 3: have to be our own best friend. We have to
Speaker 3: be our own biggest advocate and viewer through the lens
Speaker 3: of is it helpful? Is it really helpful? Especially for
Speaker 3: folks who are like self employed, are trying to do things?
Speaker 3: Is it helpful to continually guilt yourself to do stuff?
Speaker 3: Do you get better results that way? Is it taking
Speaker 3: you where you want to go? Or can we have
Speaker 3: the conversation of like, hey, okay, you know what, you
Speaker 3: were making a lot of progress working out. You know,
Speaker 3: you were seeing great things happen, and now all of
Speaker 3: a sudden you got to go on tour and now
Speaker 3: it may be eating room service and it may be
Speaker 3: sleeping in different time zones, and that's okay, that's what
Speaker 3: this requires, and then we'll get back to the other
Speaker 3: stuff and that's totally good. And for me it's always like, hey,
Speaker 3: maybe one more game of FIFA before we start. And
Speaker 3: then for me, the big one was like, hey, let's
Speaker 3: go back in our history. You've been humbled upon with
Speaker 3: self employed for well fifteen years now. Have you ever
Speaker 3: played too many video games and messed up? Did you
Speaker 3: ever mess up a deadline? Did you ever mess up
Speaker 3: an opportunity because you played too many video games? No? Us,
Speaker 3: trust us. Let's trust ourselves. Go back into your own
Speaker 3: history and let that be the support and to speak
Speaker 3: to these words because a lot of these voices are
Speaker 3: not ours. They sound like us. They were both written
Speaker 3: by other people, these criticisms for somebody else, and they
Speaker 3: just sound like they're our voice. And we give them value.
Speaker 3: We don't have to believe everything we think, because those
Speaker 3: thoughts are often there just to keep us in staces.
Speaker 3: It's like, well, we're going to try to scare you
Speaker 3: guilty to stay where you are because if you try
Speaker 3: something new, we consider something new dangerous.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's not.
Speaker 1: It leads nicely on the next thing I wanted to
Speaker 1: pick out, which you said, don't should all over yourself.
Speaker 1: So I should be more productive, I should be happier.
Speaker 1: I should have this figured out by now. I should
Speaker 1: work out five days a week even when I'm traveling.
Speaker 1: I should never make mistakes. I should be in a
Speaker 1: relationship by now. I think we have so many should
Speaker 1: and should, as you clearly say, doesn't create a shift.
Speaker 1: None of us do more when we think we should
Speaker 1: do something. And you know what, don't you feel this
Speaker 1: way that we all know what we need to do.
Speaker 1: Even when I'm giving a keynote, I'm recording a podcast,
Speaker 1: it might I'm thinking everyone already knows what they need
Speaker 1: to do. Most people, unless you do something specific, like
Speaker 1: I'm trying to figure out how to build a business
Speaker 1: and I need to I don't. I may not know,
Speaker 1: but most of us know what we need to change
Speaker 1: in our life, like we're actually quite aware of it.
Speaker 1: What is the block? From I know to I am?
Speaker 1: And in the middle, it's like, the should is what
Speaker 1: ruins it? Almost right, we keep saying I should work
Speaker 1: out four times a week because we know we should.
Speaker 1: But then why is the should the block?
Speaker 3: I think the should is the language of perfectionism, And
Speaker 3: you know, it's the idea that everything needs to be
Speaker 3: perfect because we're afraid. And one thing that we do
Speaker 3: to try to counter this fear is have control. So
Speaker 3: it should become the language perfectionism. Perfectionism gives us the
Speaker 3: illusion of control, but the reality is perfectionism isn't about
Speaker 3: making things better, it's about finding flaws easier. So what
Speaker 3: we start to do is constantly look for flaws and
Speaker 3: that way that keeps us from having to do stuff right.
Speaker 3: So a lot of it's the same way I'm saying,
Speaker 3: curiosity is courage in disguise. A lot of this is
Speaker 3: fear in disguise. You know what it really what we're
Speaker 3: really just addressing is the fact that we're scared. And
Speaker 3: here's the thing, It's okay to be scared. And what
Speaker 3: I would encourage anyone to look at is like, maybe
Speaker 3: the step you're trying to take is just too big,
Speaker 3: and maybe we've got to break it down in something
Speaker 3: a little bit more manageable, into baby steps. And if
Speaker 3: those baby steps feel too big, let's do micro baby steps.
Speaker 3: Then let's do micro baby tiptoes. Let's keep going smaller
Speaker 3: and smaller until that next step feels manageable, because the
Speaker 3: only thing we have to do is know what that
Speaker 3: next step is and try it. And I think this
Speaker 3: goes back to having grace for ourselves, and this is
Speaker 3: why we overthink again. It goes back to this idea
Speaker 3: that we're so afraid that we're gonna trick ourselves to
Speaker 3: think that we're solving a problem by constantly running it
Speaker 3: on a treadmill and going through loop and now we're
Speaker 3: just inventing new problems to solve them. And all of
Speaker 3: that results in nothing, but it comes to anxious feelings.
Speaker 3: You can't think your way out of them. You have
Speaker 3: to act your way out of them. You know, there
Speaker 3: is something brilliant about Nike's saying, just do it. It
Speaker 3: really is. Just do it. It really is feel to
Speaker 3: fear and do it anyways and again, these are catchy
Speaker 3: lines that we've heard a million times. Our body isn't
Speaker 3: going to immediately accept them. We have to start small
Speaker 3: and practice that every day and say, you know, for
Speaker 3: five minutes, I am going to just do it.
Speaker 2: I do jiu jitsu.
Speaker 3: And it was really interesting because this actually helped, and
Speaker 3: probably because I was in a physical situation. I'm rolling
Speaker 3: with somebody who has many more years ahead of me,
Speaker 3: and we're rolling and in the middle of the roll,
Speaker 3: he goes, you're thinking too much. It's okay, we all
Speaker 3: make mistakes. And instantly it was like, okay, stop strategizing,
Speaker 3: just trust whatever I'm doing, knowing that I don't have
Speaker 3: a chance against this guy regardless. But what he was
Speaker 3: addressing was the pauses and the avoidance that I was
Speaker 3: doing in real time. And now when I'm sending a
Speaker 3: text message, sending an email, making a request, I keep
Speaker 3: hearing his voice. It's like, stop thinking so much. We
Speaker 3: all are going to make mistakes. The fear is the
Speaker 3: mistake I might use, I might say the wrong thing.
Speaker 3: If I ask Jake for this favor, let me reread it,
Speaker 3: approveriate at forty five times, let me run through chat JPT.
Speaker 3: Let me do all of these things, and it's like,
Speaker 3: what what we're just doing is ruminating to avoid the discomfort,
Speaker 3: and what we're really saying is this is hard. I
Speaker 3: don't want to do it. And that's okay, this is hard,
Speaker 3: I don't want to do it. That is a normal
Speaker 3: human feeling. But we have to go through that in
Speaker 3: order for us to grow. We'll start by being kind
Speaker 3: to ourselves and like, it is hard, let's take a break,
Speaker 3: but less address it. And sometimes it might be like, hey,
Speaker 3: we'll do it first thing in the morning when we're
Speaker 3: the most fresh that concept swallow the frog, will do
Speaker 3: that now. Or it could be like, hey, maybe this
Speaker 3: is too big of a step. Maybe today step one
Speaker 3: is this and that really and it is a reflection
Speaker 3: and go back to the people that we're around. If
Speaker 3: we're around people that we can share this stuff with,
Speaker 3: and they speak to us with that same level of grace,
Speaker 3: which is like, no, like you did a lot today,
Speaker 3: it really matters. And I remember this. In the beginning
Speaker 3: of my career, I came up with Lily seeing you
Speaker 3: know who we both know and as you know, one
Speaker 3: of the hardest workers I've ever seen, one hundred percent
Speaker 3: and it really signaled to me how hard I needed
Speaker 3: to work. And it was always this idea that if
Speaker 3: I wasn't working hard enough, she may think less of me.
Speaker 3: And then fast forward during the pandemic, I remember this
Speaker 3: having a call and she's like, look like you're your
Speaker 3: only job right now is like, stay healthy and stay
Speaker 3: in a good place. Don't try to be productive. We've
Speaker 3: been signaled that we need to be productive all the time.
Speaker 3: There's honor in suffering, there's honor in burning out. It's
Speaker 3: a badge of honor. And it's like, it's not a
Speaker 3: badge of honor, it's a warning sign that we're abandoning
Speaker 3: ourselves by doing too much, especially in the society that
Speaker 3: we live in, where there isn't the word enough doesn't
Speaker 3: exist when it comes to our productivity. So it's really
Speaker 3: important to surround yourself around people who are doing the
Speaker 3: same work, can have the same language, even if you're
Speaker 3: the first person to start these conversations, when what kind
Speaker 3: of to someone else will encourage them to be kinder
Speaker 3: to you as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think it's hard because I'll give you
Speaker 1: an example, Like I landed at Sunday, I would have
Speaker 1: gotten to bed by like one am, and I knew
Speaker 1: I had to work out at a am in the
Speaker 1: morning scheduled, and everything about me was like, I've been
Speaker 1: on the road, I'm tired, I've been working. It's all work.
Speaker 1: I gave four keynotes in four days podcasts. But what
Speaker 1: was really interesting is that I'm at a place in
Speaker 1: my life where I've actually realized that waking up and
Speaker 1: working out actually sets me up to have more energy
Speaker 1: throughout the day. So now I'm fully convinced. Now if
Speaker 1: this was literally three or four years ago, I would
Speaker 1: have said, no, I need to have grace on myself.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna let myself lie in. I'm not gonna work out.
Speaker 1: Maybe I won't even work out for two three days
Speaker 1: because I deserve a break. The thing is that actually
Speaker 1: didn't make me stronger or more resilient. It actually made
Speaker 1: me more sluggish. It actually slowed me down. So sometimes
Speaker 1: grace is actually choosing something that good for you, even
Speaker 1: if it doesn't feel good.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, as I said, it's not coddling, like, hey, you
Speaker 3: don't want to go to the gym today, you don't
Speaker 3: want to work out with the trainer, Let's just go
Speaker 3: for five minutes and if you don't like it, you
Speaker 3: can go home. Yeah, and then once you get in,
Speaker 3: you know continue Yeah. And I'm definitely like that. Whereas
Speaker 3: you know, I'm doing all the mental gymnastic oh i
Speaker 3: ate and it's only been forty three minutes. I can't
Speaker 3: go to jiujits. I might throw up on somebody. I can't.
Speaker 3: You're making all these excuses and then the graceful voices like, hey,
Speaker 3: just show up, try it out for a couple of minutes.
Speaker 3: If you don't feel good, sit against the wall. We
Speaker 3: see people doing it all the time. And the truth is,
Speaker 3: and then I go back into my history, you have
Speaker 3: always not wanted to go. You have never regretted going.
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly, even when I've.
Speaker 3: Gotten hurt, I didn't regret going. And I think that's
Speaker 3: the really important thing when it comes to this grace.
Speaker 3: We're not coddling ourselves. We're being our best friend, and
Speaker 3: we're encouraging ourselves to do it. And you're absolutely right.
Speaker 3: And this is how I would like us to view
Speaker 3: mental health. The same way. Let's train it. Let's constantly
Speaker 3: pick things that are different, the same way you're lifting
Speaker 3: a heavy weight to tear your muscles. And then have
Speaker 3: them healed to grow bigger. Let's continually put ourselves in
Speaker 3: challenging situations, whether it's a cold shower, whether it's holding
Speaker 3: a yoga pose, whether it's doing you know, calf phrases
Speaker 3: until you're feeling in the burn, any type of movement,
Speaker 3: any type of challenge where your mind is like I
Speaker 3: can't do anymore, Like, hey, let's just try to stay
Speaker 3: in a little bit longer. Let's do these things because
Speaker 3: this will help build resilience. And it's one of the
Speaker 3: things in addition to creating connection, in addition to practicing
Speaker 3: that we do and we're realizing I don't want to
Speaker 3: do it, totally understand that you don't want to do it,
Speaker 3: but try it and see how you feel afterwards. Because
Speaker 3: just like working out, the harder the workout, the easier
Speaker 3: the day. Yeah, and let's apply that to our mental health.
Speaker 3: Let's treat our mental health like a muscle. The more
Speaker 3: we work it early, the easier the rest of the
Speaker 3: day will be.
Speaker 1: I've always been saying that there's like there's two types
Speaker 1: of people. One needs to do the easy thing first
Speaker 1: to build confidence and get to the hard challenge, when
Speaker 1: there's other people that need to do the hard thing first.
Speaker 1: They need to throw themselves into the deep end in
Speaker 1: order to build confidence. And it's really important to know
Speaker 1: which one you are because some people. If you are
Speaker 1: someone who needs to do the hard thing first, and
Speaker 1: you keep trying to build up confidence through small things,
Speaker 1: you actually never ever get to the hard thing, or
Speaker 1: you'll feel like you'll take on a challenge that isn't
Speaker 1: big enough. Yes, And if you're someone who's like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, I need baby steps, and now your friend
Speaker 1: over here is lifting like ten times as much as
Speaker 1: you are, now you're pushing yourself, you won't do it either.
Speaker 1: And that's why it's such an individual journey. But I
Speaker 1: find so much anxiety is around timelines. It's all around comparison.
Speaker 1: And I was thinking about this. When you're at school,
Speaker 1: the one thing you don't have anxiety about as much
Speaker 1: is people being ahead of you or people having figured
Speaker 1: something out, because everyone goes from seventh grade to eighth
Speaker 1: grade to ninth grade. All of a sudden when you graduate.
Speaker 1: Now someone's getting promoted first, and someone's getting promoted last.
Speaker 1: Someone's getting engaged first and someone's getting engaged lost. Someone
Speaker 1: got the beautiful new apartment and someone is still living
Speaker 1: with their parents. All of a sudden, now there's this
Speaker 1: timeline effect where I'm now anxious because I'm not thirty
Speaker 1: and married and making six figures and whatever it may
Speaker 1: be building a family. How do you deal with that
Speaker 1: existential anxiety? Because this anxiety is more than the anxiety
Speaker 1: of just I'm anxious about talking to these people, I'm
Speaker 1: anxious about this friend. This is like this existential anxiety
Speaker 1: that sometimes we just don't even want to think about,
Speaker 1: but it's in the back of our mind. Crap, I'm
Speaker 1: thirty and I'm not married, I'm fourteen, I don't have kids, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think the first thing most definitely, And I
Speaker 3: love that you talked about school and how that was
Speaker 3: our world. The classroom or maybe the side of the
Speaker 3: school was our world, and that made a lot of
Speaker 3: sense for maybe, you know, up until the last twenty years,
Speaker 3: social media has expanded our world where now we are
Speaker 3: endlessly being exposed to people who are living lives completely
Speaker 3: different from us, and now we're comparing ourselves to that.
Speaker 3: And so when we hear the cliche line comparison is
Speaker 3: the thief of joy, we're constantly stealing our joy by
Speaker 3: spending time on social media and comparing ourselves to people,
Speaker 3: and we're not even comparing ourselves to a real thing.
Speaker 3: We're comparing our behind the scenes to this highlight reel
Speaker 3: of what we put on social media. So the first
Speaker 3: thing I would say is reduce the amount of exposure
Speaker 3: you have to compare yourself to other people. I would
Speaker 3: definitely make efforts to reduce my social media consumption. That
Speaker 3: would make a huge thing. I think also, the more
Speaker 3: we commit to understanding who we are, the more we
Speaker 3: start to realize that we need to design and develop
Speaker 3: a life for ourselves. I think currently we're just trying
Speaker 3: to deal with life. And I think as we commit
Speaker 3: to a mental health journey and voluntarily doing challenging things,
Speaker 3: we start to develop life and we start to understand
Speaker 3: what matters to us, for you, for me. As we
Speaker 3: go through these different challenges, we're like, wait, this is
Speaker 3: the shoe that fits me, this is the one that doesn't. Oh,
Speaker 3: I can afford the fancy sports car, but I realize
Speaker 3: that really isn't for me. But I definitely want to
Speaker 3: make sure I have a great hotep or I want
Speaker 3: to definitely make sure I have you know, I have
Speaker 3: a friend who just sold the company, and I was like, Oh,
Speaker 3: what are you going to do? He goes, I'm going
Speaker 3: to get my mom a personal trainer so she can
Speaker 3: open a jar until she's ninety. And it's like, this
Speaker 3: is someone who knows his priority. That's the first spand
Speaker 3: with the money, and that only comes through self awareness.
Speaker 3: Self awareness comes through paying attention to yourself and collecting
Speaker 3: information that's going to come when we have these anxious feelings.
Speaker 3: These are revealing things, you know. Triggers are a roadmap.
Speaker 3: They're telling us where the work can be done. So
Speaker 3: we have to abandon these ideas that like, oh, trigger warning,
Speaker 3: I have to avoid my triggers. Oh I have to
Speaker 3: constantly be in a safe space. That's just us rearranging
Speaker 3: life to never gain and we're denying ourselves that self awareness.
Speaker 3: So I really think self awareness is going to be
Speaker 3: the first thing. So now and again, this is not
Speaker 3: going to make it all go away. I still get
Speaker 3: jealous when I see people on social media. I think
Speaker 3: the other thing we have to realize is envy helps
Speaker 3: us understand what authentically matters to us. Let's say, for example,
Speaker 3: I watch you Know, I watch the show regularly you
Speaker 3: got a couple of guests on, then all of a sudden,
Speaker 3: a certain guest comes on, and let's say Rick Rubin
Speaker 3: comes on. I'm like, oh, I am so jealous. I
Speaker 3: wish I was in the room with Jay. I wish
Speaker 3: I knew this was happening. I wish I could have
Speaker 3: called j I wish I could have stood in the
Speaker 3: corner when I had that. What that is doing is
Speaker 3: that's not a bad thing to experience. That's teaching me that, Okay,
Speaker 3: something that Rick says matters to me, So I should
Speaker 3: go deeper into that because it teach me what's important
Speaker 3: versus if you have another guest on who I'm like, Oh,
Speaker 3: that's cool, but I'm not really excited about that. So
Speaker 3: I think there's something there that I think is really important.
Speaker 3: And I think the other thing that's really important is
Speaker 3: realizing are we trying to catch up or are we
Speaker 3: trying to improve? Are we trying to keep up with
Speaker 3: other people? And I think very often in going back
Speaker 3: to our families, it really often isn't to We're not
Speaker 3: doing things to make our family happy, We're doing things
Speaker 3: to keep them off our back, right, And I think
Speaker 3: there's there's definitely this when it comes to like, you know,
Speaker 3: being out here, going to advanced dressing up, all of
Speaker 3: this is like are we doing this to even stand
Speaker 3: out at the party? Are we doing this to make
Speaker 3: sure we don't feel irrelevant that we were falling behind?
Speaker 3: And I think paying attention to that will challenge us
Speaker 3: to go back to what are our unique values? What
Speaker 3: are the things that we actually care about? And the
Speaker 3: more we discover that, the more we can share that
Speaker 3: with people. And for me, that also brings me into
Speaker 3: the thought of the gap between fitting in and belonging.
Speaker 3: We create so much stress trying to fit in, and
Speaker 3: we have to wear masks to fit in, and that
Speaker 3: is definitely going to feed anxious feelings. Instead, if we
Speaker 3: have a better understanding of who we are, if we're
Speaker 3: constantly exploring this universe inside of us, we know who
Speaker 3: we are and we can find people that we feel
Speaker 3: comfortable being around where we belong to the quote in
Speaker 3: the book that I say, everybody is a social butterfly,
Speaker 3: and maybe you're just in the wrong garden. And I
Speaker 3: think that's really important versus the self idea of I'm
Speaker 3: socially anxious. It's like or you're just in the room
Speaker 3: with the wrong people.
Speaker 2: So good.
Speaker 3: You know, if you really enjoy Dungeons and Dragons, go
Speaker 3: in a room full of people who play that game.
Speaker 3: All of a sudden, there won't be as much social
Speaker 3: anxiety as you may feel if you're in a room
Speaker 3: full of people who work in finance or full of
Speaker 3: Hollywood stars. And I think that's the really important thing,
Speaker 3: is like, go where you belong. Focus on where you
Speaker 3: authentically belong, and that requires a depth because they may
Speaker 3: not just be like, oh, well, I'm South Asian. I
Speaker 3: should be around South Asians. It's like, no, who am I?
Speaker 3: You know? I enjoy art. I should be around more
Speaker 3: folks who love art. I enjoy MMA. I should be
Speaker 3: around more folks that love MMA. I enjoy playing certain
Speaker 3: video games. I should be around people play those games.
Speaker 3: It's the deeper you understand yourself, the more you can
Speaker 3: share it. And it's really important because we want to
Speaker 3: be seen, we want to be heard, but the only
Speaker 3: way we can authentically be seen and heard is if
Speaker 3: we show people who we authentically are. And you can't
Speaker 3: be yourself if you don't know yourself.
Speaker 2: I love that.
Speaker 1: I mean that is such a big one because I
Speaker 1: hear that so often, and I think you're so right.
Speaker 1: Most people are going to events that they don't even
Speaker 1: want to go to to hang around people that they
Speaker 1: don't want to hang around, and then we're wondering.
Speaker 2: Why we're socially anxious.
Speaker 1: And we also say that person's an introvert or they
Speaker 1: feel like an introvert, and someone who knows them goes,
Speaker 1: they're not an introvert. They're really loud around their people,
Speaker 1: and that person is wild around their people. It's just
Speaker 1: right now, they're not around their people. And you have
Speaker 1: this beautiful quote in here, you say, the only way
Speaker 1: people can accept the real you is if you show
Speaker 1: them the real you. And I think that's what it is,
Speaker 1: is that sometimes we don't even know the people that
Speaker 1: are around us because if that's not their vibe, if
Speaker 1: that's not their crewer people, they're never showing the real them.
Speaker 1: And I know that for me, even in a crowd
Speaker 1: full of people, I'll try and find the person who
Speaker 1: wants to have a deep spiritual conversation. The amount of
Speaker 1: time me and you and Jeremy are good friends end
Speaker 1: up together at parties, right, So when we're at a
Speaker 1: party and I know humble and Jeremy are going to
Speaker 1: be there. I know we're going to find a little
Speaker 1: corner to have like a conversation, a discussion, a debate,
Speaker 1: a thought like that's what's going to happen. And that's
Speaker 1: why I don't feel out of place at the party.
Speaker 1: But if you expecting me to just kind of have
Speaker 1: two second conversations with lots of people and just hang
Speaker 1: around that, that's not my That's not how I like
Speaker 1: to spend my time. And I've got to look for
Speaker 1: I can still be at a big party and look
Speaker 1: for my community. And I think again, it goes back
Speaker 1: to what you're saying. It's knowing yourself. Where people just go,
Speaker 1: oh no, I just don't like big parties. It's like no, no, no,
Speaker 1: But there's a way in every space, in every world.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like people who have judgments about New
Speaker 1: York or LA or London or whatever it is that
Speaker 1: we can have these broad strokes judgments. It's like, no,
Speaker 1: you can create what you want here. It does exist.
Speaker 1: It just depends on if it exists in the way
Speaker 1: you want to create and how it works for you.
Speaker 1: But let's not sit around here and go I'm just
Speaker 1: not going to it's not possible in this place, because
Speaker 1: that's like saying one day you can get to the
Speaker 1: point where you go, this is on no one's my
Speaker 1: type on planet Earth. Yes, right, And it's like that's
Speaker 1: not a healthy mindset to have.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, And it goes back to the idea of judging again.
Speaker 3: We start to judge, which is a language of fear,
Speaker 3: and we start to limit. We're like, oh, no, I've
Speaker 3: met three people at this party. This isn't my crowd.
Speaker 3: And also for folks listening who are thinking, well, what
Speaker 3: about you know, I'm at work or I have to
Speaker 3: wear a certain masks to survive with places, I completely understand, right,
Speaker 3: And the best way to counter that is, when you're
Speaker 3: done with that, go to what place you belong. We
Speaker 3: all have to be in places, and we all have
Speaker 3: to play the game to fit in. Sometimes it's not
Speaker 3: you know, we have to survive, and that might be
Speaker 3: part of the game. But then to counteract that, to
Speaker 3: avoid burning out by doing that, go ahead and be
Speaker 3: in a situation where you belong, be with your people,
Speaker 3: be with your tribe. And again, it still starts internally
Speaker 3: by figuring out who you authentically are.
Speaker 1: Well said, there's one quote that I picked out here
Speaker 1: just because I loved it. You said our broken heart
Speaker 1: is an open heart, and said so much to me
Speaker 1: because I felt that if my heart's ever been broken,
Speaker 1: it's only led me the more compassion, more context. But
Speaker 1: I wanted to hear what why you inspired to write
Speaker 1: our broken heart is an open heart.
Speaker 3: I think for me specifically, it's this idea that when
Speaker 3: you know the idea in your head doesn't match the
Speaker 3: idea in front of you, like our expectations of life
Speaker 3: don't match the reality. That's kind of when what we
Speaker 3: define is unhappiness, And I think that's an opportunity to ay,
Speaker 3: you know, on a lower vibration, feel sorry for ourselves
Speaker 3: and reaffirm that life is so challenging, life is so difficult,
Speaker 3: But there's also an opportunity to grow, you know, when
Speaker 3: once we let go of that idea, like, well, there's
Speaker 3: something to grow from here. So when our heart is broken,
Speaker 3: when everything that we thought was is no longer the case,
Speaker 3: whether it's a broken relationship, whether it's losing something you
Speaker 3: care about, losing an identity, losing money, whatever it may be,
Speaker 3: there's an opportunity to grow in there.
Speaker 1: It's almost like a broken heart is an open mind,
Speaker 1: like that idea that now I can actually allow for life.
Speaker 3: It's like now you're, oh, now we're paying attention. All
Speaker 3: of a sudden, things aren't moving according to plan, and
Speaker 3: now we're actually focused and we're present and we're paying
Speaker 3: attention to things, and there's a lot of opportunity there
Speaker 3: versus just assuming everything was going to be on autopilot.
Speaker 3: This idea of that happily ever after you know these
Speaker 3: linear ideas, it's like, no, we're going to continually be
Speaker 3: in these cycles and anticipate things happening. And everybody listening
Speaker 3: knows how transformative that first heartbreak was, whatever it may be,
Speaker 3: and how much resilience can come from the moment it happens.
Speaker 3: I can't be here anymore. I can't deal with this,
Speaker 3: and then as time goes by, we start building resilience
Speaker 3: from it, and then all of a sudden, we are
Speaker 3: a much more rounded, three dimensional version of ourselves because
Speaker 3: of it. These hard times that form us and formulate
Speaker 3: us as people. And this is why it's the idea
Speaker 3: of like, look, obviously I don't want to have super
Speaker 3: heavy days every single day, but I got to be
Speaker 3: able to trust myself to deal with them, or at
Speaker 3: least try my best to deal with them and at
Speaker 3: the very least not sabotage myself by not sleeping enough,
Speaker 3: not eating the right food, not drinking enough water, not
Speaker 3: hanging out with people that give me energy. And I
Speaker 3: think that there's something important there, so I always look
Speaker 3: at it, especially as as my life has progressed where
Speaker 3: it's like the things that are breaking my heart right
Speaker 3: now are absolutely out of control. The people that I
Speaker 3: care about who have health issues, there's nothing I can do.
Speaker 3: I catch myself avoiding messages getting updates on some of
Speaker 3: these folks because it just it breaks my heart to
Speaker 3: think about. And it's like, this is me avoiding because
Speaker 3: it's so overwhelming. But I speak to myself with grace
Speaker 3: and say, look, it's overwhelming. Let's get you back to
Speaker 3: where you got to get to. Let's feel better, and
Speaker 3: then we're going to lean into this. We have to
Speaker 3: lean into this because there's going to be some growth
Speaker 3: that comes from it. The fact that this impacts you
Speaker 3: so much, it's a sign that you care, beautiful, because
Speaker 3: we need to care about more things in this life.
Speaker 1: I think the anxiety around aging and death for ourselves
Speaker 1: and the people we love. Is, without a doubt, the
Speaker 1: anxiety we avoid the most right the anxiety of, oh
Speaker 1: my god, I'm getting older, Oh my god, someone in
Speaker 1: my life is unwell diseased, God, someone just died. Like
Speaker 1: there's such an anxiety around that. What have you found
Speaker 1: to be helpful at that time as you're going through it?
Speaker 1: What would you wish you would have been told? Or
Speaker 1: what do you wish people would hear in order to
Speaker 1: help soothe that anxiety.
Speaker 3: There was something beautiful I heard from a scientist on
Speaker 3: Instagram and I don't remember her name. She said, you know,
Speaker 3: life was not beginning and ending. Life began once, you know,
Speaker 3: and we're all a part of it. We don't have
Speaker 3: a life, we are life. We're dropping this ocean, and
Speaker 3: I think there's something really beautiful about that, which is,
Speaker 3: you know, this is depending on your belief, this can
Speaker 3: be a vacation from not existing, and we can choose
Speaker 3: this existence to be whatever we want it to be.
Speaker 3: And I think for me it's been realizing. And actually
Speaker 3: have a tattoo on my chest inverted so I can
Speaker 3: read it in the mirror says that any moment you're
Speaker 3: dust and it was inspired by a friend who had
Speaker 3: said it, but another friend and I specifically remember where
Speaker 3: I was when he said, he goes our problems are
Speaker 3: only real because we forget we're going to die, and
Speaker 3: when we think about all these things were zooming in
Speaker 3: so much into our lives. But it's like we've heard
Speaker 3: the cliche, well this matter in five years, ten yures,
Speaker 3: Will it matter in ninety years? Will it matter in
Speaker 3: two hundred years? You know, any of us making out
Speaker 3: of this alive. And I think there's something really beautiful
Speaker 3: about that, where it's like we can only enjoy a
Speaker 3: movie because we know what's going to end. You know,
Speaker 3: if it was going on forever, if it's one of
Speaker 3: those TV shows that go on forever, we may not
Speaker 3: appreciate it as much. It's the finiteism of it, and
Speaker 3: I think that has to do with life as well.
Speaker 3: In the book, I make a lot of jokes, and
Speaker 3: one of the big jokes is the secret pill to
Speaker 3: get rid of anxiety. I make up a joke about it,
Speaker 3: but at the end, I'm like, the actual magic pill
Speaker 3: is remembers you're going to die when you're in these
Speaker 3: moments that just feel completely overwhelming. If you can remember
Speaker 3: not just with your brain, but with your body that
Speaker 3: you are going to die. And we have so many
Speaker 3: examples of that in history with people who have experienced
Speaker 3: near death experiences and then have thrived because they realized,
Speaker 3: I'm here for a deeper purpose. I'm here for a
Speaker 3: bigger purpose. I survived, you know, fifty cent survived nine
Speaker 3: shots and all of a sudden thrived in his career.
Speaker 3: It's like, that's the worst they can get me, not existing,
Speaker 3: So let's go. It's not no longer fear of embarrassment,
Speaker 3: fear of rejection, fear of not being seen, because some
Speaker 3: of these are the things that we just forget. We're
Speaker 3: living creatures that won't be here forever. And I think
Speaker 3: reminding yourself of that is really important. And there's a
Speaker 3: Buddhist and Eastern philosophy around Make it your goal to
Speaker 3: remember your mortality five times a day and watch the
Speaker 3: quality of your life improved. Allow that, make that part
Speaker 3: of the mantra, Make that part of the daily affirmations
Speaker 3: that I won't be here forever. Pick the year that
Speaker 3: you know, like in the year twenty two to thirty five,
Speaker 3: neither of us will be here. Okay, let's remember that
Speaker 3: when we're worried about sending a text message and not
Speaker 3: getting a reply, or when we're worried about putting ourselves
Speaker 3: out there and potentially getting rejected, or when we worried
Speaker 3: about anything else. And I think that's really important. This
Speaker 3: isn't to minimize anybody's problems. It's to minimize the unnecessary
Speaker 3: stress that we may come with that. And then we
Speaker 3: can realize that the stress isn't holding us back. The
Speaker 3: stress can actually stretch us to reveal our potential of
Speaker 3: who we can actually be. Pressure builds diamonds. We can
Speaker 3: really become something beautiful and massive from this, when we
Speaker 3: no longer view challenges as an attack on our existence,
Speaker 3: but instead an opportunity for us to grow, for us
Speaker 3: to thrive, for us to increase our capacity to not
Speaker 3: only be amazing to ourselves, but being amazed with other people.
Speaker 1: And there's the reason why stoicism has memento moury. There's
Speaker 1: a reason why Buddhism has the statement you shared. There's
Speaker 1: a reason why these wisdom traditions will remind us of
Speaker 1: that impermanence and insignificance to some degree. And again, I
Speaker 1: loved what you said it's not in a negative way,
Speaker 1: it's not in a morbid way. It's actually to free
Speaker 1: yourself of the pressure and stress you put on yourself.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, And I think even now we have these we
Speaker 3: have these concepts of like legacy, you know what I mean,
Speaker 3: there's there's also this stretch of like, oh, I want
Speaker 3: to be alive after I'm not alive, And it's like,
Speaker 3: these are stories that were being told that we think
Speaker 3: are important. And I remember seeing an interview with Alex
Speaker 3: Ramosi where he spoke about it, like when's the last
Speaker 3: time you thought about the Queen of England? You know,
Speaker 3: she was really popular and then she passed away and
Speaker 3: we're not thinking about her. On we don't need to
Speaker 3: have legacy, you know. Let's enjoy what we have while
Speaker 3: we have. The only thing we have is the present.
Speaker 3: Especially when we speak about Eastern philosophy, especially for people
Speaker 3: listening here, it really is us having to unlearn a
Speaker 3: lot of the stories that we were told. We were
Speaker 3: told these linear stories. Do this, do this, do this,
Speaker 3: get over this hump, and then everything will be smooth sailing,
Speaker 3: It will be happily ever after you can ride off
Speaker 3: into the sunset. Everything will be great. And it's like, no,
Speaker 3: there's always a day after, halfily ever after, And instead
Speaker 3: of wishing for an easier life, let's work towards being
Speaker 3: able to hold more weight, because the weight's going to
Speaker 3: keep coming. And just as you're working out, fifteen years
Speaker 3: from now, the amount of effort you put working out
Speaker 3: will have to increase just for you to maintain where
Speaker 3: you're at. So it's the same thing with our mental health.
Speaker 3: Right now. Our avoiding, our distracting, our medicating is us
Speaker 3: maintaining and by all means maintained. But at some point
Speaker 3: we want to get to the point where we're actually
Speaker 3: growing from it, and that's going to require us leaning
Speaker 3: into things being more difficult, having more difficult conversations, acknowledging
Speaker 3: difficult realities like our.
Speaker 2: Death home of a poet.
Speaker 1: The book is called un Anxious Fifty Simple Truths to
Speaker 1: help overthinkers feel less stress and more calm. As always,
Speaker 1: I love books humble because the way you divide up
Speaker 1: these fifty lessons is so beautiful and it's so easy
Speaker 1: to digest, easy to understand. There's highlighted statements, there's quotes.
Speaker 1: Each section of the fifty is like, you know, two
Speaker 1: three pages thank you for always making complex, big difficult
Speaker 1: topics simple, easy and accessible for everyone to understand.
Speaker 2: Congratulations than you.
Speaker 3: I just want to thank you like you. This is
Speaker 3: also a moment of like closing the loop for me
Speaker 3: because it's you know, you gave me a beautiful blurb
Speaker 3: on the book, but it was because I was brainstorming
Speaker 3: the ideas to you over dinner and you were having
Speaker 3: authentic reactions to them, and it was like this journey
Speaker 3: for the last two and a half he was writing
Speaker 3: this book. There's also just these moments of you coming
Speaker 3: to visit in New York US, having a meals tia,
Speaker 3: a lot of FIFA and and just for the record,
Speaker 3: I want everyone to know Jay is the most frustrating
Speaker 3: person to play FIFA with because whenever you score on him,
Speaker 3: he'll congratulate you. He'll be like, great job, that was
Speaker 3: an awesome goal. He'll still beat you, but he'll do
Speaker 3: that so it's like you can't even like talk crap
Speaker 3: to him. It's so frustrating to like play somebody who
Speaker 3: beats you but doesn't hold space for crap talk. Instead,
Speaker 3: he'll just like he'll, oh, let's watch the replay of
Speaker 3: that goal you got on me. That was so good,
Speaker 3: and then he'll score five more goals on me and
Speaker 3: it's so extremely frustrating. And but one thing that you
Speaker 3: said the last time we played is I had music playing.
Speaker 3: I had the volume down, and then you're like, this
Speaker 3: feels different if we turn the music off and we
Speaker 3: put the volume on the game. You're like, Ooh, I
Speaker 3: like this, this gives me the right type of anxiety.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: What I realize is while writing this book, I just
Speaker 3: have all these milestones of having all these different hangouts
Speaker 3: with you and running these ideas with you, and then
Speaker 3: I feel like today, having this conversation with you, having
Speaker 3: the book in your hand right now, it's this full
Speaker 3: circle moment. We kind of closes the loop, and I
Speaker 3: think it's that journey. It really is that journey that
Speaker 3: matters less than oh I have a book out now
Speaker 3: and I have to worry about how the book does.
Speaker 3: It's like, No, I got to have so much fun
Speaker 3: doing this with some of my favorite people, and you
Speaker 3: definitely are one of those people. So I deeply appreciate
Speaker 3: you for being endlessly supportive of this and all my projects.
Speaker 2: Man, No, man, it was fun.
Speaker 1: It was the best thing is hearing about your friends
Speaker 1: working on stuff and working on it with them, and
Speaker 1: you do the same for me and just I think
Speaker 1: that is the joy of it.
Speaker 2: And you're right, that is the best part about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the fact that now people can dive into
Speaker 1: it is beautiful. And yeah, I wrote on the front
Speaker 1: cover three pages in, you'll feel a thousand pounds later,
Speaker 1: And I really feel that way. It's just made so simple,
Speaker 1: It's made so easy and digestible, and I think that's
Speaker 1: what we all need right now. The world's complex enough.
Speaker 1: You talk about that in the book Family Life. It's
Speaker 1: all complex enough. We don't need growth to be complex.
Speaker 3: Yes, especially now with change. It's just please remember it.
Speaker 3: The change isn't the enemy us. Resisting this change is
Speaker 3: what's going to give us more anxious feelings. The change
Speaker 3: is going to happen regardless changes of promise. It's a
Speaker 3: constant wherever you are in the world. We're all experiencing
Speaker 3: a lot of change, and that's okay, and if it
Speaker 3: gets overwhelming, that's also okay. But please, the more we resist,
Speaker 3: the tighter we hold against it, the more that we're
Speaker 3: just doing damage to ourselves. It's not going to be helpful.
Speaker 3: So let's embrace the change that's happening. Be curious about
Speaker 3: the change because that's where our courage can.
Speaker 1: Be well said, and grab a copy of the book.
Speaker 1: I'm anxious it's available right now. Make sure you follow
Speaker 1: Humble across social media if you don't already and Humble
Speaker 1: I hope you come back many many more times to
Speaker 1: have more of these conversations and a commay to hang
Speaker 1: this weekend and chat more as well, my friends.
Speaker 2: So thank you, brother, thank you so much, appreciate it.
Speaker 1: I'm super proud of you and really grateful for what
Speaker 1: you're doing in the world and excited for BEEO able
Speaker 1: to read this.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Thank you brother.
Speaker 1: If this is the year that you're trying to get creative,
Speaker 1: you're trying to build more, I need you to listen
Speaker 1: to this episode with Rick Rubin on how to break
Speaker 1: into your most creative self, how to use unconventional methods
Speaker 1: that lead to success, and the secret to genuinely loving
Speaker 1: what you do. If you're trying to find your passion
Speaker 1: and your lane, Rick Rubin's episode is the one for you.
Speaker 2: Just because I like it, that doesn't give it any value,
Speaker 2: Like as an artist, if you like it.
Speaker 3: That's all of the value.
Speaker 2: That's the success comes when you say I like this
Speaker 2: enough for other people to see it.