Speaker 1: I want to wake up more happy and depressed. I
Speaker 1: want to enjoy life. I'm not the final form of myself.
Speaker 1: I don't know what that's going to be. He's one
Speaker 1: of the most influential voices in morning radio. Yes the
Speaker 1: world most Dangerous Morning Shot to Breakfast Club. Charlemagne's like, gosh,
Speaker 1: I had no idea who I was. There was this
Speaker 1: character that have been created named Charlamagne. I'm like, I
Speaker 1: don't know who this person is. At some point I
Speaker 1: remember saying to myself, well, what's wrong meedd?
Speaker 2: I thought it was okay, Hey everyone, I've got some
Speaker 2: huge news to share with you. In the last ninety days,
Speaker 2: seventy nine point four percent of our audience came from
Speaker 2: viewers and listeners that are not subscribed to this channel.
Speaker 2: There's research that shows that if you want to create
Speaker 2: a habit, make it easy to access. By hitting the
Speaker 2: subscribe button, you're creating a habit of learning how to
Speaker 2: be happier, healthier, and more healed. This would also mean
Speaker 2: the absolute world to me and help us make better, bigger,
Speaker 2: brighter content for you in the world. Subscribe right now.
Speaker 3: The number one health and wellness podcast.
Speaker 2: Jay Sheet, Jay shedny Y everyone, welcome back to On Purpose,
Speaker 2: the place you come to become happier, healthier, and more healed.
Speaker 2: I'm so grateful that you're lending me your eyes and
Speaker 2: your ears for this time, investing in your growth. And
Speaker 2: today's guest is someone who I'm so grateful to because
Speaker 2: he came on the show back five years ago when
Speaker 2: we were just starting out. The platform was not established,
Speaker 2: and I'd reached out to him and I said, hey,
Speaker 2: I'd love to interview you. He came on as one
Speaker 2: of our earliest guests, did me a massive favor. Over
Speaker 2: the last few years, I've been on his incredible show,
Speaker 2: The Breakfast Club so many times now. Some of my
Speaker 2: favorite conversations brings out a different side of me. I
Speaker 2: get to have an honest, vulnerable, truthful, reflective conversation. And
Speaker 2: he's a New York Times bestseller and his new book
Speaker 2: is out right now. It's called Get Honest or Die Lying.
Speaker 2: Why small talk sucks. I'm talking about the One, the Only, Charlemagne,
Speaker 2: the God Charlemagne. It is so great to have you
Speaker 2: back on Purpose and honestly, man, the friendship and the
Speaker 2: genuine connection that we've built over the last few years
Speaker 2: has been a real honor for me. And as I said,
Speaker 2: I'm very grateful to you because you believed in me
Speaker 2: when I was just starting out and it really meant
Speaker 2: a lot to me and still does today.
Speaker 3: Man, thank you for that. I received that.
Speaker 1: And to see you grow into you know, your purpose,
Speaker 1: you know, and see you have this massive platform has
Speaker 1: been amazing to watch.
Speaker 3: So thank you.
Speaker 1: I'm happy to be here, happy to be here with
Speaker 1: one of my favorite people and on one of my
Speaker 1: favorite podcasts.
Speaker 2: Thank you man.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: Well, let's dat straight into it, because you put this
Speaker 2: book out and I think it's really true to the
Speaker 2: times that we live in. I think we're living in
Speaker 2: times that are defined by quarrel, defined by hypocrisy, defined
Speaker 2: by lack of self awareness, defined by gossip. And here's
Speaker 2: a book talking about all of that. And I wanted
Speaker 2: to start off simply by asking you, why have you
Speaker 2: built up such an animosity towards small talk? Where does
Speaker 2: that come from?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 1: Number one, I hate small talk, you know, just on
Speaker 1: the literal level. Right when somebody sees you and they
Speaker 1: try to, you know, make conversation and they're not really
Speaker 1: talking about anything, and it's just like, you know, you
Speaker 1: and this person are in this unique moment in time
Speaker 1: where y'all get to share space and nobody is saying
Speaker 1: anything that is annoying to me, And it's annoying to
Speaker 1: the point where I'm like, I would rather just tell
Speaker 1: the person like, Oh, we don't have to do this.
Speaker 1: We can be on our phones, we can be reading
Speaker 1: the book, we can sit here in silence, like you
Speaker 1: don't have to try, you know, to make conversation.
Speaker 3: But then on a.
Speaker 1: More macro level, I feel like we're having too much
Speaker 1: small talk. You know, we're having too many micro conversations.
Speaker 1: We're taking these micros and making them macros. Like the
Speaker 1: things that people you know, get online and discuss and
Speaker 1: debate about and argue about.
Speaker 3: Over and over and over and over.
Speaker 1: And the biggest scheme of things mean nothing. And that's
Speaker 1: why things just come and go in this era. Every
Speaker 1: day you get online and you know, it looks like
Speaker 1: there's a conversation that's the biggest thing in the world.
Speaker 1: Wait three hours, Wait four hours, wait twelve hours, it'll
Speaker 1: be completely gone and it'll be like, well, damn, I
Speaker 1: thought everybody was so concerned about this, you know, two
Speaker 1: days ago. So I just have a problem with everything
Speaker 1: being so macro that shouldn't be nowadays, and the things
Speaker 1: that we should be discussing, like the big macro conversations,
Speaker 1: we have a way of making those so micro and
Speaker 1: that's the background noise. That's why, even like you know,
Speaker 1: on Breakfast Club or a my podcast Brilliant Idiots, when
Speaker 1: we do discuss things right that might be rooted in
Speaker 1: pop culture, I'm always trying to see, like, what's the
Speaker 1: bigger conversation that we can be having behind this. It
Speaker 1: can't just be that y'all think this person is a
Speaker 1: terrible person, that was a bad tweet. Like what's the
Speaker 1: psychology or what's the thing that we can you know,
Speaker 1: discuss that people are gonna actually learn from.
Speaker 3: That's what I I want to do.
Speaker 2: And how do you break that cycle? Let's say you
Speaker 2: bump into someone that you haven't seen for a bit,
Speaker 2: and I think a lot of people struggle with this.
Speaker 2: She's at a party an event in the corridor and
Speaker 2: you go, hey, how's going, Oh yeah good, yeah, cool,
Speaker 2: and you know you're not listening. You know, there's no
Speaker 2: real thing. How do you break that? If you can?
Speaker 2: So one example is you say, look, we don't have
Speaker 2: to do this? How do you break it in a
Speaker 2: positive sense? Like how even people with their friends, with
Speaker 2: their family or our family dinner and everyone's talking about whatever,
Speaker 2: how do you actually break that and elevate that, Like
Speaker 2: what's a healthy way.
Speaker 1: Tell them be honest about what you're feeling in that moment, Like, Yo,
Speaker 1: we ain't talking about nothing right now. I'd be like, yo,
Speaker 1: well who's going to start the conversation? Throw something on
Speaker 1: the table? Like literally, that's what this book is. This
Speaker 1: book is literally just a series of topics that I
Speaker 1: feel like, you know, you could just throw in at
Speaker 1: a lunch throwing at a dinner table, you know, throwing
Speaker 1: if you're just sitting around on a plane with somebody
Speaker 1: and you want to have a conversation but you can't,
Speaker 1: Like we make this a lot more difficult than we
Speaker 1: need to, and it takes is for somebody to break
Speaker 1: the ice. That's all you're literally waiting for, and you're
Speaker 1: sitting at it. You know, you're sitting around with somebody.
Speaker 1: You're just like I want to talk, but I just
Speaker 1: don't know what to say, and you're thinking, should I
Speaker 1: bother this person? Should I not bother this person? Does
Speaker 1: this person want to be bothered. Does this person want
Speaker 1: to talk? Maybe they do, maybe they don't. Maybe that's
Speaker 1: a question, right, You can ask them, like you feel
Speaker 1: like having a conversation. If that person says no, respect that,
Speaker 1: don't ask them that, hoping that they say yes. But
Speaker 1: if they say no, you're still going to force them
Speaker 1: to have the conversation. Like sometimes you should just ask
Speaker 1: a person like, yo, you got time to talk? How
Speaker 1: often do you get that?
Speaker 3: Jay? Exactly?
Speaker 1: People just run up to you and they just throw
Speaker 1: their stuff on you all the time, instead of saying, yo, Jay,
Speaker 1: you got time to speak right now? And if you
Speaker 1: say not, at the moment they're offended. You may not
Speaker 1: want to offend them, so you take time to have
Speaker 1: this meaningless conversation, this small talk. You're just telling them yeah,
Speaker 1: just because you don't want to offend them. But then
Speaker 1: you're not even really paying attention. So nobody's doing it.
Speaker 1: We're not doing each other any favors about doing so
Speaker 1: just be honest about what you're feeling in that moment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I feel like the reason you pointed out there,
Speaker 2: the reason why so many of us are struggling to
Speaker 2: be honest with people is because people are offended by honesty,
Speaker 2: even if it's genuine, and even if it's thoughtful, like
Speaker 2: you just said, Like if I asked you, I was like, hey, Charlamann,
Speaker 2: can you talk about this? And you were like, Jeae,
Speaker 2: I don't have time right now because of this, this
Speaker 2: and this or whatever. I'm in between something. As a
Speaker 2: respectful person back, I'm going to like, I understand that
Speaker 2: I actually had someone that message this morning. I'd message
Speaker 2: someone inviting them to an event and they didn't get
Speaker 2: back to me, and they messaged me this morning and
Speaker 2: we're just like, Jay, I'm so sorry. I was like
Speaker 2: getting ready for the mat and my outfit went wrong
Speaker 2: and then like I had to figure this out and
Speaker 2: it's been crazy and it all worked out, but I
Speaker 2: wanted you to know, you know, I always respond to you.
Speaker 2: And I was like, yeah, I wasn't offended at all.
Speaker 2: I respect that and thank you for explaining and it
Speaker 2: turned out. But a lot of the times I feel
Speaker 2: we're scared of being honest because we're scared the other
Speaker 2: person's going to turn around and go, oh, you never
Speaker 2: get back to me, Oh you think you're too important
Speaker 2: for me. We are scared of offending people. We don't
Speaker 2: stop being so offended, because I feel like anything offends
Speaker 2: anyone these days.
Speaker 1: That's a multi laying answer, right, because number one, I
Speaker 1: think we have to stop being people pleases. And I
Speaker 1: think that you know, if you grow up in a
Speaker 1: certain environment, you've had certain things you know happened to you.
Speaker 3: Like my therapist always told me.
Speaker 1: Like, I know exactly why I'm a people pleaser, right,
Speaker 1: and I talk about it in the book. I'm a
Speaker 1: people pleaser because you know of abuse to ourselves at.
Speaker 3: The age of eight.
Speaker 1: Right, So me not wanting that young lady to touch
Speaker 1: me anymore turned into her calling me ugly and saying
Speaker 1: I had a big nose. So in order for her
Speaker 1: to stop doing that, I would continue to let her,
Speaker 1: you know, touch on me. So it's like, you don't
Speaker 1: realize how that carries on into adulthood to where you
Speaker 1: just become this people pleaser. You don't want to let
Speaker 1: anybody down because if you feel like you let them down,
Speaker 1: then they're going to start speaking ill about you and
Speaker 1: doing things that hurt your feelings.
Speaker 3: So you just continue to do what's best for them,
Speaker 3: sacrificing your own piece.
Speaker 1: And we can't do that, you just got to set
Speaker 1: boundaries for yourself and be like, yo, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to be a people pleaser in any way, shape or form.
Speaker 1: And man, honestly, if my boundaries, you know, caused somebody
Speaker 1: to feel offended, then that's the whole point of having
Speaker 1: the boundary in the first place.
Speaker 3: I kind of have a boundary from.
Speaker 1: This person to begin with, because you're upset with me,
Speaker 1: because I'm placing a boundary for my peace of mind.
Speaker 3: Nah, I don't need you on my life to begin with.
Speaker 2: Yeah, how early? Well, when were you ready to revisit
Speaker 2: that eight year old self? Like when did you feel
Speaker 2: comfortable to even reflect back on that in therapy? Because
Speaker 2: I imagine that, or you can tell me when you
Speaker 2: were eight did you just block it out in the
Speaker 2: next few years and then when did you go back
Speaker 2: to it and say, oh, actually, that's where a lot
Speaker 2: of it started.
Speaker 1: I was watching an episode of Open Winford and Tyler
Speaker 1: Perry was on there, and Tyler Perry was, you know,
Speaker 1: crying about the abuse that he experienced from a woman
Speaker 1: in his family. And I think I was in my twenties,
Speaker 1: and I remember saying to myself, like, what's wrong with him?
Speaker 3: Why is he you know, upset about that.
Speaker 1: And then when at some point I remember saying to myself, well,
Speaker 1: what's wrong needed I thought it was okay, but then
Speaker 1: you kind of suppressed it again because I wasn't going
Speaker 1: to therapy on my twenties. But when I started going
Speaker 1: to therapy in like my late like mid thirties, that's
Speaker 1: when I started to unpack a whole lot of that stuff,
Speaker 1: because you know, you go to therapy for one thing,
Speaker 1: You go to therapy because you're dealing with you think
Speaker 1: you're dealing with anxiety and depression. Then you start peeling
Speaker 1: back all of these different layers and you start realizing
Speaker 1: all of this other trauma you know that you've experienced,
Speaker 1: and you know that was that was one of those
Speaker 1: things like you know, being a people pleaser, not setting
Speaker 1: proper boundaries because of that moment that happened to me,
Speaker 1: you know, when I.
Speaker 3: Was eight years old, and carried on throughout my whole whole.
Speaker 1: Adult life until I finally realized, like, oh, this is
Speaker 1: why I don't like letting people down. This is why
Speaker 1: I do things, you know, for people even when I
Speaker 1: don't want to. This is why even if I'm not
Speaker 1: happy necessarily about doing something. I just go along to
Speaker 1: do it because I don't want to upset or offend
Speaker 1: that person, to cause that person to be, you know,
Speaker 1: looking at me in a negative way. So I would
Speaker 1: say like mid thirties is when I really started unpacking it.
Speaker 1: So it's probably been like the last ten years of
Speaker 1: really unpacking it.
Speaker 2: And when you ate, how long did that abuse lost?
Speaker 2: Like how recurring was it?
Speaker 1: And I don't know, man, because and I even mentioned
Speaker 1: it in the book, I suppressed so much abuse that
Speaker 1: I experienced when I was young that it wasn't even
Speaker 1: that one person, you know, but you just you suppress
Speaker 1: it because in a lot of ways, it becomes the norm.
Speaker 1: Like I remember being young, like nine, ten eleven years old,
Speaker 1: having conversations with other young men I grew up around,
Speaker 1: and we were all talking about older women we was
Speaker 1: dealing with, and we thought we was lying to each other.
Speaker 3: But now when you look back.
Speaker 1: On it, it was just all a bunch of young
Speaker 1: kids getting abused. But when you were a young man,
Speaker 1: you don't look at it like that. When you were
Speaker 1: a young man and you're just like, oh, I'm getting
Speaker 1: action early. You know, I'm getting action early, and I'm
Speaker 1: getting action with older women early, so you don't look
Speaker 1: at it like that until you get older and realize
Speaker 1: how man, how a lot of that impacts you, you know,
Speaker 1: like mentally and emotionally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what were some of the ways that you think
Speaker 2: that impacted you? And it's interesting, I love what you
Speaker 2: said that, like, when you're young, you actually see that
Speaker 2: as like ego, bravardo, arrogance, Like it's cool. What were
Speaker 2: the things that you started to extrapolate through therapy and
Speaker 2: the work you did where you're like, oh, that's the
Speaker 2: kind of impact that it's had in my real life
Speaker 2: and my real adult life.
Speaker 1: The biggest one for me is the people pleasing aspect.
Speaker 1: That's literally the biggest one. Like not having no boundaries
Speaker 1: and when I did try to set boundaries with one
Speaker 1: of the women in particular, her you know, getting in
Speaker 1: my head psychologically, calling me ugly and saying I got
Speaker 1: a big nose and all of this other stuff. So
Speaker 1: for me, the biggest, you know, issue was the fact
Speaker 1: that I just did not know how to set proper boundaries.
Speaker 1: And when I did set them, it was like it
Speaker 1: wasn't the brick house, it was the straw house. You know,
Speaker 1: you could just blow it, you could just blow it away.
Speaker 1: So I never really set any proper boundaries. It wasn't
Speaker 1: until I started unpacking a lot of that stuff that
Speaker 1: I realized, like, no, I'm gonna set my boundary and
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna be upset at you know, any bad,
Speaker 1: big bad wolf that's mad that they can't blow my
Speaker 1: house down.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: What I find interesting especially is I think we all
Speaker 2: developed a peacemaker people pleaser personality type through different reasons.
Speaker 2: How have you found yourself not being a people pleased
Speaker 2: with your therapist? Because I find a lot of people
Speaker 2: end up playing that role where they can't be honest
Speaker 2: with their therapist because we want our therapists to like
Speaker 2: us and say well done, like good work, you know,
Speaker 2: like oh you really? So how did you find yourself
Speaker 2: getting that ability? Because I think a lot of people
Speaker 2: listening and watching maybe going to therapy. They may be
Speaker 2: trying to turn to help, but actually they find themselves
Speaker 2: playing that same role with that therapist.
Speaker 1: Man, I got a new therapist know this passion, and
Speaker 1: my first therapist I might have been lying to her
Speaker 1: probably fifty sixty percent of the time, just because there
Speaker 1: was so many things that I thought I wanted to share,
Speaker 1: but I wasn't, and it wasn't until earlier this year,
Speaker 1: you know, having me and my wife went away on
Speaker 1: this nice little spiritual retreat for a weekend, and you know,
Speaker 1: we was indulging in plant based medicines, you know, ayahuasca
Speaker 1: in particular, and one of the things that came forth
Speaker 1: for me was literally stop lying to yourself and stop
Speaker 1: volunteering those lies to other people. And so much came
Speaker 1: up in that moment, you know, so much, you know,
Speaker 1: like I said, abuse to that experienced as a child,
Speaker 1: all of that type of stuff. And that's when I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, I've been I've been telling half truths.
Speaker 1: I haven't been being completely honest, like I've been telling,
Speaker 1: you know, just enough of a of a story to
Speaker 1: get just enough back. But that's not how you you know,
Speaker 1: properly heal anything, Like you gotta deal with it all,
Speaker 1: you know, don't even don't even don't even try. And
Speaker 1: so for me, I feel like, you know, I probably
Speaker 1: was lying to like my first therapist for like, I
Speaker 1: would literally probably stay half of the time.
Speaker 2: And do you think we do that because we're actually
Speaker 2: scared of having that address?
Speaker 1: Is that the reason one hundred it's still fear, it's
Speaker 1: still insecurity that we're not willing to share with anyone.
Speaker 1: Like even that night that I was, you know that
Speaker 1: that that that first but that was the second night
Speaker 1: of the journey on ayahuasca. Like me and my wife
Speaker 1: been together twenty six years, and I was sharing things
Speaker 1: with her that I never had shared with any anybody,
Speaker 1: and that felt so so, so so freeing, And even
Speaker 1: in that moment, I'm like, I don't think there's anybody
Speaker 1: else I trust to share these things with, not even
Speaker 1: a a therapist, no matter how good the therapist is,
Speaker 1: no matter how you know, great, the therapist is. Like
Speaker 1: this individual that I've shared majority of my life with
Speaker 1: is the only person I feel comfortable, you know, putting
Speaker 1: all that on the table for Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think that's a really interesting point because I think
Speaker 2: the words honesty and vulnerability have somewhat been exploited in
Speaker 2: and of themselves in this idea that if you're honest,
Speaker 2: everyone has to know everything, like you have to just
Speaker 2: put it all out there. What you just said is actually,
Speaker 2: even with my therapist, they're not going to get one
Speaker 2: hundred percent version of me because my wife, my partner,
Speaker 2: who's been with me for over twenty years now, it's
Speaker 2: like that person not only deserves it, but we've built
Speaker 2: up enough trust and there's earned respect where we both
Speaker 2: can share that. What's been your take on the Internet,
Speaker 2: like oversharing, undersharing, overtelling, undertelling, Because I feel like there
Speaker 2: was a point in time where it's like, if you're
Speaker 2: vulner you better say everything to everyone, right, Like that's
Speaker 2: what vulnerability is. And I think there was like this
Speaker 2: false pressure that you had to share all your business
Speaker 2: with everyone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think on the Internet a lot of people
Speaker 1: crying out for help who probably not probably who need
Speaker 1: to be in therapy actually talking to somebody, And there's
Speaker 1: a whole lot of people just lying. But that's what
Speaker 1: I mean when I say, you know, stop lying to
Speaker 1: yourself and stop volunteering those lies to other people. Every
Speaker 1: single day people wake up and just volunteer lies for
Speaker 1: no reason. And I'm not saying lives have to be negative,
Speaker 1: Like they just lie about their life, They lie about
Speaker 1: who they are, they lie about what they do, and
Speaker 1: it's like nobody asked you for that, Like nobody, So
Speaker 1: you're inviting all of this negative energy into your life.
Speaker 1: You're inviting all of this opinion and all of this critique.
Speaker 1: That's literally going to have real world consequences because that's
Speaker 1: the stuff that's going to give you anxiety. That's the
Speaker 1: stuff that's going to, you know, cause you to have
Speaker 1: a Boucher depression and you're you're going to be sitting
Speaker 1: there dealing with all of this stuff for you created
Speaker 1: like what is the point of that? So it's like
Speaker 1: for me, man, we really all just have to stop volunteering,
Speaker 1: you know, the lies we tell ourselves to others.
Speaker 2: Yea, what led you towards plant medicine is a method
Speaker 2: of healing, as a method of reflection? Like what made
Speaker 2: you go down that route? Because you've done therapy for years,
Speaker 2: you've talked about it, you're a big ambassador for mental health.
Speaker 2: What was the opening there?
Speaker 1: I mean, it was just something I wanted to try
Speaker 1: and then they always say, you know, you don't you
Speaker 1: don't do it unless it's calling you. And so you know,
Speaker 1: just reading about it and you know, seeing you know,
Speaker 1: what other people's take on it was like two things
Speaker 1: that really attracted me was everybody that did it was
Speaker 1: telling me like, y'all I saw God, like I knew
Speaker 1: people who were atheists, like like Neil Brennan was an
Speaker 1: atheist and he did it and now he's like a
Speaker 1: believer and you know, and I was like, whoa. And
Speaker 1: I've always had faith and I've always been a believer.
Speaker 1: So I just wanted to kind of see, like I
Speaker 1: want to see, you know, see see more of that.
Speaker 1: And I think people saying how it detaches you from
Speaker 1: your ego, Like I thought that was very powerful because
Speaker 1: that's something that we all try to do every day.
Speaker 1: But they was like, no, it feels like somebody literally
Speaker 1: takes your ego and just rips it away from you.
Speaker 3: And I wanted to know what that felt like.
Speaker 1: And man, absolutely overstand what it felt like, especially that
Speaker 1: that that second night.
Speaker 2: Yea, where did you go for it? Where did you
Speaker 2: try it out?
Speaker 3: I was in I was in California, Okay.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, great, Great, you didn't go too far? No,
Speaker 2: because I've heard of I've had friends go out to
Speaker 2: like Costa Rica and then you and.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Sean, and I talked to was like, welly, I
Speaker 1: even I think it was. I don't know it was
Speaker 1: Perule coach Riga was somewhere. I forgot where it was.
Speaker 1: But he was just like that's a jungle. He was like,
Speaker 1: you don't want to have that kind of experience in
Speaker 1: the jungle. I mean he wasn't knocking anybody. He just like,
Speaker 1: for you on your first time, I just don't, you know,
Speaker 1: recommend that. So it was just kind of like the
Speaker 1: vine alignment, Like it was one of those things like
Speaker 1: it had been calling me for the.
Speaker 3: Past I would say, five or six years.
Speaker 1: Wow, and then like the opportunity just presented itself, you know,
Speaker 1: with some with some some people with some really great energy.
Speaker 3: And I was like, yeah, why not and it just
Speaker 3: all lined up.
Speaker 1: It's one of those things is like, oh, I'm actually
Speaker 1: treat this weekend.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the wife wanted to do it. We went to
Speaker 3: do it.
Speaker 2: It's beautiful. What did you What have you found? Has
Speaker 2: been the hardest thing for you to be honest with
Speaker 2: yourself about everything everything.
Speaker 1: You know, it's so easy for us to get caught
Speaker 1: up in line ourselves because we do it to protect
Speaker 1: ourselves in a lot of way. Right, So, like it
Speaker 1: might be a person that you genuinely have love for,
Speaker 1: like genuinely just as on a human level, Like you
Speaker 1: love this person and like you know this person might
Speaker 1: have a talent or skill set that you know you
Speaker 1: want to help amplify, like provide an opportunity for but
Speaker 1: you know as well as I do that you know,
Speaker 1: character talent sometimes will take people with character can't sustain them.
Speaker 1: So even though you see this person's talent, you know,
Speaker 1: once they get in a certain position, you realize that
Speaker 1: character isn't going to be able you know, to keep
Speaker 1: them there, but you will constantly lie to yourself about
Speaker 1: this person's character over and over and over and over,
Speaker 1: and then you wonder why things aren't working out, and literally,
Speaker 1: it will affect everything that you're doing. Like let's just
Speaker 1: say it's a team and you put this person as
Speaker 1: part of the team, and this person is causing problems
Speaker 1: with the rest of the team, and you see it,
Speaker 1: but you make any excuses for it, you know. And
Speaker 1: it's like even a friend that you might have been
Speaker 1: friends with a person for a long, long, long time,
Speaker 1: and you know, y'all have very deep intimate conversations, so
Speaker 1: you know this person differently than a lot of other
Speaker 1: people know them. So you get a soft spot, you know,
Speaker 1: in your heart for said individuals. So when you're hearing
Speaker 1: everybody else talk about how terrible this person is. You're
Speaker 1: lying to yourself about it. You're like, no, y'all just
Speaker 1: don't understand this person. Like it's like, no, the reality
Speaker 1: is they are a terrible person and they need to
Speaker 1: do more work and they need to really, you know,
Speaker 1: figure themselves out. So you know the biggest thing, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just we constantly a lot ourselves about everything. You
Speaker 1: might you might look in the mirror and know you
Speaker 1: need to lose twenty pounds, Like you might put a
Speaker 1: shirt on and know it don't quite fit right, but
Speaker 1: you'll pull on it and tug it, and you know,
Speaker 1: how does this look? You know, somebody like, oh, it
Speaker 1: looks like it look good and you're like, hey, it does.
Speaker 1: And then you get on Instagram and then you get
Speaker 1: humbled because it's a bunch of people that don't know
Speaker 1: you at all who are willing to tell you the
Speaker 1: truth about how you look. Then you out to yourself
Speaker 1: again and you say this stuff, Oh, they just hating.
Speaker 1: You knew that was whack when you put it on.
Speaker 1: You knew you had no right putting that shirt on
Speaker 1: before you put it on, but you decided to do
Speaker 1: it anyway.
Speaker 3: So I just feel like we. I think every single
Speaker 3: moment of.
Speaker 1: Our lives is an exercise in being honest with ourselves
Speaker 1: first and foremost, and then the rest of them world,
Speaker 1: and then choosing who to share that honesty with, because
Speaker 1: sometimes people aren't lying.
Speaker 3: It's just none of your business.
Speaker 1: And I think that's something that people forget too, especially
Speaker 1: in this.
Speaker 3: World of oversharing.
Speaker 1: I have to constantly remind people that, especially in this
Speaker 1: era of the Internet. I'm like, when you're talking about celebrities,
Speaker 1: you don't know any of these people. I don't care
Speaker 1: what they post on social I don't care what you
Speaker 1: hear in their music. You genuinely do not know any
Speaker 1: of these individuals.
Speaker 2: Stop lying yourself like you do in what sense? Because
Speaker 2: I'm thinking of something, But in what sense do you mean?
Speaker 2: Like we don't know the more? How that applies to us?
Speaker 2: You think we're commentating on a life that we don't
Speaker 2: know about it.
Speaker 3: People?
Speaker 1: You know, people past these judgments, Like you'll see whole
Speaker 1: psycho analysts about people, right, and it's like, how did
Speaker 1: you come to that conclusion?
Speaker 3: Like literally you're breaking down a person's whole path.
Speaker 1: Oh, they're are narcissists and they're egotistical, and they're out
Speaker 1: for this. I'm like, how do you know based off
Speaker 1: a tweet? How do you know based off one conversation
Speaker 1: that they had? You don't know this person. This person
Speaker 1: has lived, you know, thirty plus years, forty plus years,
Speaker 1: whatever it is. You do not spend every waking moment
Speaker 1: with this individual. How do we come to these full
Speaker 1: blown conclusions about people that we don't know. I had
Speaker 1: somebody get mad at the other day because I told
Speaker 1: them I don't know this person personally. We were talking
Speaker 1: about an artist, and I was like, I don't know
Speaker 1: that person personally. Now that the person I was talking
Speaker 1: to did so, I understand how they felt, But I
Speaker 1: don't have that same personal connection or feelings towards this
Speaker 1: individual because I don't have a personal connection with them.
Speaker 1: And when it comes to public figures, a lot of
Speaker 1: times it makes you more objective because you don't have
Speaker 1: any bias, because anybody that you actually have a connection with,
Speaker 1: you're going to have a natural bias toward them.
Speaker 3: That's another thing we lie to each other about.
Speaker 1: We lie to each other like whereas so honest and
Speaker 1: so objective when we all have our biases for people,
Speaker 1: we all have our biases for places.
Speaker 3: We all have our biases for things, and that's okay.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And if you can address that and say, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know I got a bias, then you could actually
Speaker 1: have an honest conversation about whatever it is you're talking about.
Speaker 1: Our look at things, you know, from an honest perspective.
Speaker 1: If you can't even be honest about your biases, then
Speaker 1: you're starting off from a lie.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I often find it's this observer mindset that we're missing,
Speaker 2: where it's like, okay, we're having a conversation right now,
Speaker 2: but can I actually allow myself to look at it
Speaker 2: from this perspective? If I can't do that, like if
Speaker 2: I can't see, oh, I'm currently displaying ego and the
Speaker 2: other person is currently displaying defensiveness. If I can't see
Speaker 2: what I'm displaying and what someone else is and I'm
Speaker 2: only seeing what they're displaying, then I'm not really observing.
Speaker 2: I can't be objective absolutely, and I find that that's
Speaker 2: exactly what's missing where and I can testify to what
Speaker 2: you just said, whether it's inaccurate guest lists at people's
Speaker 2: wedding that are printed in the papers, or whether it's
Speaker 2: inaccurate oh, I know the news saying oh, they're going
Speaker 2: to get a divorce, or their kids hate them, or
Speaker 2: whatever else it is. You notice, Yeah, I can testify
Speaker 2: to having knowing people going None of that's true. And
Speaker 2: it goes back to the point you started with, which
Speaker 2: is this idea of we get so lost commentating on
Speaker 2: everything and everyone else that we know nothing about that
Speaker 2: we don't have time and energy to work on what's
Speaker 2: going on inside here. Absolutely, and I find it remarkable
Speaker 2: that we spend our lives trying to solve, psychoanalyze, entertain
Speaker 2: ourselves by someone else's problems rather than fixing our own.
Speaker 1: We do that on purpose, because if we can talk
Speaker 1: about everybody else, then we can avoid that hard, painful,
Speaker 1: excruciating work it takes to deal with our own bs. I.
Speaker 1: If I can look at everyone else, I can avoid
Speaker 1: looking in.
Speaker 3: That mirror all day long.
Speaker 1: I'm too busy sight seeing other people and commentating on
Speaker 1: other people, so I never have to look.
Speaker 3: In the mirror. You know, at at at what it
Speaker 3: is that I need to fix. Yah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you said something that's interesting too, man, And that's
Speaker 1: why that's why this error we're in is so difficult.
Speaker 1: And I think even you know, our positions as media personalities,
Speaker 1: because you know, I remember when I used to work
Speaker 1: for Wendy Wims. She used to always say to me,
Speaker 1: you're either gonna be of the people or of the industry.
Speaker 1: But it's almost impossible when you're in the business, because
Speaker 1: you're gonna actually meet people and you're gonna develop relationships.
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of times when we have
Speaker 1: a different perspective of things because we're kind of in it.
Speaker 3: Like I've literally been with individuals.
Speaker 1: Couples, watching them love on each other, watching them kiss
Speaker 1: on each other, and then it'll be like breaking news
Speaker 1: they're getting a.
Speaker 3: Divorce, they hate each other, like they're a part.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, this is a mind because I'm like, whoa,
Speaker 1: And it puts so much in perspective, and not even
Speaker 1: just that, like us as individuals, you'll see things about
Speaker 1: yourself and you like that's not remotely true, Like that's
Speaker 1: not even accurate at all, And everybody around you will
Speaker 1: be mad, and everybody around you be upset, and you'll
Speaker 1: be pissed off too. But then you have to really
Speaker 1: say to yourself, what are you gonna do. I'm not
Speaker 1: going I refuse to go on the defensive and start
Speaker 1: explaining to myself to a bunch of people who never
Speaker 1: even took the time to learn the truth. Anyway, if
Speaker 1: you didn't, you never took the time to learn the truth.
Speaker 1: So you would rather just put this out there, you know,
Speaker 1: printice say these things, not care if you're accurate, you know, not,
Speaker 1: not care if there's any falsehoods, You just whatever. So
Speaker 1: why would I take the time to explain the truth
Speaker 1: to you?
Speaker 4: Now?
Speaker 1: Now not only am I validating what you've said to
Speaker 1: a certain extent or not now what you said, but
Speaker 1: validating you and your platform.
Speaker 3: Now I'm actually giving you more content. Yeah, yeah, I'm
Speaker 3: not doing that at all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, for sure, I was going to go
Speaker 2: back to the personal again with you, because I feel
Speaker 2: like a big turning point in your book that you
Speaker 2: talk about that a calm wait for people to dive into,
Speaker 2: is this moment where you realize that your father was
Speaker 2: cheating on your mom, and like that is like a
Speaker 2: really big moment for you at that point because you're, like,
Speaker 2: I think, seventeen years old and you're learning about this
Speaker 2: and naturally you feel like, tell me how you felt
Speaker 2: like in that moment, because it almost feels like the
Speaker 2: first time you discovered that something's alie, like in a
Speaker 2: big way.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, that was a very macro conversation, you know,
Speaker 1: because I had made up my mind in that moment
Speaker 1: that me and my pops couldn't have no small talk
Speaker 1: about this situation because you know, we live in a
Speaker 1: small town, so you're hearing it constantly, right, and you're
Speaker 1: you're driving by, you know, this house, and you're seeing
Speaker 1: his truck out there, and you know, you're fully aware
Speaker 1: of all of the different eyes that he's that He's
Speaker 1: told my mom like, oh, I'm just I'm over there
Speaker 1: doing work. Oh, that's my secretary, all this other stuff. Right,
Speaker 1: So finally, you know, just deciding to have the macro
Speaker 1: conversation and say, Yo, you out of hit cheating, No mom,
Speaker 1: what you do in is file.
Speaker 3: And my dad was like, yo, you only got one girlfriend.
Speaker 3: You know one day you.
Speaker 1: Gonna understand, like he that's what That was his reply
Speaker 1: to me, and that that messed me up for a
Speaker 1: while because that's my hero. Like still to this day,
Speaker 1: I love my dad. Like my dad, I fully understand,
Speaker 1: you know, the totality of my father as a man
Speaker 1: and as I've become a man myself. At forty five
Speaker 1: years old, I overstand you know, everything that you know
Speaker 1: he went through. And so when he said that to me,
Speaker 1: I felt like I had to live up to his expectations.
Speaker 1: So that's when it became a thing of oh, let
Speaker 1: me show him that I can get a roster. I
Speaker 1: don't have to be, you know, committed to one person.
Speaker 1: And yo, that lasted for a while, not not a while,
Speaker 1: but too long for my liking, right, And so I
Speaker 1: remember later on years down the line, my dad saying
Speaker 1: to me, you know, the worst thing that he ever
Speaker 1: did was caused my mother to leave him, and telling
Speaker 1: me that I always had it right, because he you know,
Speaker 1: I'm with the same woman right for twenty six years.
Speaker 1: He was like telling me I always had it right,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, damn, that's why you shouldn't always listen
Speaker 1: to a dotes bro. Like, just because you love a
Speaker 1: person and they're older than you and they got more
Speaker 1: experiences than you, don't mean that they're always right. But
Speaker 1: I give my father so much grace because, you know,
Speaker 1: one of the first breakthrough, the first breakthrough I ever
Speaker 1: had in therapy, I mean, the thing that led me
Speaker 1: to tears. Was just realizing that my father used to
Speaker 1: discipline me for things that he never taught me. And
Speaker 1: now I even take it a step further and say,
Speaker 1: my father used to discipline me for things that he
Speaker 1: never taught me, but also for things that he never
Speaker 1: learned himself. So a lot of his his his his
Speaker 1: his raising of me was he was raising me through
Speaker 1: fear and not love, right, so because he just didn't
Speaker 1: want me to make the same mistakes.
Speaker 3: That he made.
Speaker 1: He was terrified of me going down, you know, the
Speaker 1: same path that he went down, and I ended up
Speaker 1: going down that path anyway, like even down to you know,
Speaker 1: the mental health journey. Like when I wrote my second book,
Speaker 1: you know, Shook One anxiety playing tricks on me. When
Speaker 1: I wrote that, I was all the way discombobulated. I
Speaker 1: had no idea whether I was coming or going because
Speaker 1: I had just started going to therapy and I had
Speaker 1: just started peeling back a lot of those layers.
Speaker 3: So I was just raw, like I had.
Speaker 1: I had no idea who I was. There was this
Speaker 1: character that had been created named Charlamagne. I'm like, I
Speaker 1: don't know who this person is. Then I'm dealing with
Speaker 1: Leonard myself. I don't know who this person is. So
Speaker 1: I was just all over the place, and I literally
Speaker 1: just put it all in that book and had a
Speaker 1: doctor ish major do clinical correlations to the things that
Speaker 1: I was talking about. But he, my father, had read
Speaker 1: that book and I talk about this story in the book,
Speaker 1: but he had read that book. And that same week,
Speaker 1: I had a cousin who had completed suicide. And he
Speaker 1: had attempted to complete suicide like four other times, and
Speaker 1: the fourth time he completed it. I think he was
Speaker 1: like twenty five years old. So my dad was triggered
Speaker 1: by a.
Speaker 3: Lot of that stuff.
Speaker 1: He was triggered by a lot of the stuff I
Speaker 1: wrote in my book, and he was definitely triggered by
Speaker 1: my cousin completing suicide. So my father calls me and
Speaker 1: he tells me, you know, he read the book talking
Speaker 1: about my cousin a little bit and he goes, man,
Speaker 1: you know, I tried to commit suicide thirty plus years ago,
Speaker 1: but I didn't because of you know, your older sister
Speaker 1: and you. And he was like, you know, I was
Speaker 1: on two to three medications. No, he was actually on
Speaker 1: ten to twelve medications and he was going to therapy
Speaker 1: two and three times a week dealing with his own
Speaker 1: mental health issues, and so much so that the state
Speaker 1: of Sart Carolina just started giving him a check. And
Speaker 1: that's what they used to call it, a crazy check.
Speaker 1: So I remember asking my mom, like, yo, you know,
Speaker 1: you know Dad was going through all of this, and
Speaker 1: she was like, I just thought he was playing crazy
Speaker 1: to get a check. So just think about that, Like,
Speaker 1: think about if he was able to just express self
Speaker 1: and have those conversations with us as a family back then,
Speaker 1: how that would have saved me, you know, so much
Speaker 1: grieful when I was dealing with panic attacks and stuff
Speaker 1: as a child and thinking something was you know, you know,
Speaker 1: wrong with me, And.
Speaker 3: Just all of that makes me give my father a
Speaker 3: whole lot of grace.
Speaker 1: He's just a man who was just trying to do
Speaker 1: his best, you know, with what he had and the
Speaker 1: knowledge he had at the time. So I don't hold
Speaker 1: I held a lot of that against him for.
Speaker 3: A long, long, long, long time.
Speaker 1: But it was in that moment in twenty eighteen when
Speaker 1: he told me everything he was dealing with. I don't
Speaker 1: know why, it just clicked, Like my dad just a man, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like he just a man, Just like I'm a man, like,
Speaker 1: who am I to not give him the same grace
Speaker 1: I want.
Speaker 2: Totally what's allowed you to have that Charlaman to be
Speaker 2: able to zoom out and have that context and that
Speaker 2: grace because I think when we're analyzing these things and
Speaker 2: you kind of connect the DUTs, you're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: my dad treat me like that. That's why I became
Speaker 2: like that, That's why I made that mistake. And you
Speaker 2: can spend so much time in this very linear back
Speaker 2: and forth journey of that was the past, that's how
Speaker 2: it connects to the present, that's how it impacted my life.
Speaker 2: But you're almost looking at it from a bird's eye
Speaker 2: view looking down, going, oh that makes sense, So my
Speaker 2: dad went through and then you can give grace, you
Speaker 2: can have what was the key in therapy and in
Speaker 2: your personal work that shifted it from being this linear
Speaker 2: thing to being a bird's eye view of this situation.
Speaker 1: I honestly think I've always had that as a child,
Speaker 1: like always like I've always had a bird's eye view
Speaker 1: with things, Like I've always felt in tune to something
Speaker 1: to something else, Like there was always like this voice
Speaker 1: in my head or this spirit that was you know,
Speaker 1: moving me in certain directions are causing me to see
Speaker 1: certain things. Sometimes I will see things I wasn't supposed
Speaker 1: to see, you know, literally and figuratively, right, And I've
Speaker 1: always had these visions, and I just I remember my
Speaker 1: dad always telling me when I was a child, if
Speaker 1: you don't change your ways, you gonna.
Speaker 3: End up in jail, dead or broke under the tree.
Speaker 1: And a lot of people hear that but don't actually
Speaker 1: learn that and apply that. For some reason, I was
Speaker 1: able at a young age to actually start seeing people
Speaker 1: that I love go to jail, like for prison sentences.
Speaker 1: And I was going to jail, and you know, I
Speaker 1: saw people around me that were actually getting killed. And
Speaker 1: I saw older cousins who I used to look up to.
Speaker 1: They are sitting under the tree kind of like not
Speaker 1: doing much with themselves.
Speaker 3: And I'm like, oh, that's not gonna be me.
Speaker 1: And I literally could see, all right, everything I do
Speaker 1: today directly is gonna impact what happens to me tomorrow.
Speaker 1: So I need to start doing what I need to
Speaker 1: do today. It's like, yo, if I, you know, continue
Speaker 1: to eat like this, I'm gonna be fat in the future. Right, Like,
Speaker 1: if I don't read this book. You know, my knowledge
Speaker 1: is gonna be limited in the future. So I've always,
Speaker 1: you know, by the grace of God, just tended to
Speaker 1: have like a bird's eye view with things like my
Speaker 1: third eye is has been opened for quite a long time,
Speaker 1: like to the point even when I think about, like
Speaker 1: me and my wife had a nonprofit back in the day,
Speaker 1: Well we thought it was a nonprofit when we set
Speaker 1: it up. We set it up as a nonprofit, but
Speaker 1: we never went through the proper channels to make it
Speaker 1: a nonprofit. It just sounded like, oh, we go set this,
Speaker 1: you know, it's one of those things.
Speaker 3: And so we had.
Speaker 1: It was called third eye awareness, like literally that's what
Speaker 1: it was called. Even when like the first tattoo I
Speaker 1: ever got was Wolverine from The X Men, because I
Speaker 1: love Wolverine, right, I love the x Men. I'm a
Speaker 1: big comic book guy. But back then I got the
Speaker 1: tattoo when I was like seventeen years old. This one,
Speaker 1: tattoos were illegal in South Carolina. I got the tattoo
Speaker 1: because the thing that attracted me towards Wolverine was his
Speaker 1: healing powers. And so the tattoo I got on my
Speaker 1: arm is Wolverine holding a microphone in his hand because
Speaker 1: I thought rap was gonna be what changed my life.
Speaker 1: But lo and behold, it was these type of microphones
Speaker 1: that changed my life. And you know, now I feel
Speaker 1: like my purpose in life is to not only continue
Speaker 1: to heal myself, but to continue to help as many
Speaker 1: other people.
Speaker 3: You know, get on there, get on their healing journey.
Speaker 1: So I was sixteen seventeen years old thinking about stuff
Speaker 1: like this. Sixteen seventeen, you get a tattooed like that,
Speaker 1: and in your mind you're explaining it perfectly. I'm like, yo,
Speaker 1: I'm attracted the wolvernverine because of his healing.
Speaker 2: Powers, and then.
Speaker 3: Wrapped the microphone.
Speaker 1: But now I'm forty five, about to be forty six,
Speaker 1: I'm looking at it like, oh, I understand what that
Speaker 1: was now. And that was another revelation that came to me,
Speaker 1: you know, when I went on my Awaska journey, it
Speaker 1: was like, Yo, nothing has been wasted, literally nothing. There
Speaker 1: is absolutely nothing that has happened to me in my life.
Speaker 3: Whether you want to label a good, bad, you know.
Speaker 1: Ugly, pretty, whatever it was, nothing has gone to waste
Speaker 1: in my life. Every single thing has a purpose and
Speaker 1: had a purpose and has gotten me to this point.
Speaker 1: And I think, man, when you look at things through
Speaker 1: that lens, it just kind of like shapes. It shapes
Speaker 1: your understanding of trauma, and you know why so called
Speaker 1: bad things happen in a different way.
Speaker 3: I don't look at it as good or bad.
Speaker 1: It was just like one process of life that gets
Speaker 1: you to this point.
Speaker 2: I think, you just nail something so powerful. Then I
Speaker 2: want to emphasize it for people because I think we
Speaker 2: go through this loop where we say, oh, now I
Speaker 2: get it. Everything else I was wrong, I wasted time.
Speaker 2: Now I get it, and then a few years later
Speaker 2: we go, oh, no, no, no, I just waste the last
Speaker 2: few years. Now I get it. And we constantly have
Speaker 2: this belief that we have to neglect and reject our
Speaker 2: past in order to establish our present. We feel like
Speaker 2: we have to constantly say our past was a waste
Speaker 2: of time in order to establish that our present is
Speaker 2: now us doing the right thing. And I actually fully
Speaker 2: agree with you and completely disagree with that, because what
Speaker 2: you're doing is you're negating all of the lessons, all
Speaker 2: of the wisdom, all of the learning, all of the
Speaker 2: growth that actually got you to that point. Absolutely and
Speaker 2: then you're also negating the fact that all the skills
Speaker 2: you learn during that time, all the habits, they could
Speaker 2: still be useful. But because you're writing off that time,
Speaker 2: you're writing off all of that growth. And I've been
Speaker 2: saying that so many people lately. Even when people are
Speaker 2: like I think I'm wasting my time. I'm trying to
Speaker 2: find a new job. I want to do something I'm
Speaker 2: passionate about. Oh, Jay, Like the last few years, I
Speaker 2: just waste them being anxious. Now I'm confident. It's like no, no, no, no, no, Like,
Speaker 2: you need to remember that because that's how you got here.
Speaker 2: And by the way, life is going to give you
Speaker 2: those scenarios again, and you're gonna need to remember this
Speaker 2: because next time it will be a familiar right, It'll
Speaker 2: be like a familiar feeling of Oh, I've been there,
Speaker 2: I know how to deal with this.
Speaker 1: That's why when even when you're talking to, you know,
Speaker 1: young people in the field, and they'll say things to
Speaker 1: you like, well, what if I, you know, leave New
Speaker 1: York and go to Atlanta and things don't work in Atlanta?
Speaker 1: I'm like okay, Like and like, what do you mean
Speaker 1: if things don't work? Because what you're going to realize
Speaker 1: later on in life is regardless of what happened when
Speaker 1: you were there, it worked. I don't care if you
Speaker 1: went down there and you worked there for six months
Speaker 1: and got fired. There's going to be something you pick
Speaker 1: up in those six months. There's gonna be somebody you
Speaker 1: meet in those six months. It might just be a
Speaker 1: time of your life that you actually enjoy and you
Speaker 1: need that. You might just need to be in a
Speaker 1: different environment, you know, for a little while, But there's
Speaker 1: gonna be something you pick up within those six months
Speaker 1: that's gonna make you realize, like it worked. I think,
Speaker 1: you know, we have these extremes when it comes to work.
Speaker 1: I could easily look back in my radio career and
Speaker 1: be like, I got fired four times, So those were
Speaker 1: four times things didn't work. That is a complete lie.
Speaker 1: Every single one of those situations I got fired from.
Speaker 1: I had the time of my life and I learned
Speaker 1: so much from and I met people that are still,
Speaker 1: you know, my friends to this day. So I wouldn't
Speaker 1: trade any of that for the world. Like for all
Speaker 1: I know, how do we know what we're doing now
Speaker 1: is working?
Speaker 2: Yeah, we don't.
Speaker 1: This is just what we're doing in the moment. I
Speaker 1: know what's working for now. But who's to say this
Speaker 1: is what we're going to be doing when we're fifty
Speaker 1: years old. Who's to say this is what we're going
Speaker 1: to be doing we're sixty, we might be still trying
Speaker 1: to hold on to breakfast club and on purpose and
Speaker 1: God is like, I need you to move. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: might even still let you keep it, but you'll be
Speaker 1: sitting here unhappy, depressed, angry, like, oh, why isn't things
Speaker 1: moving the way I want him to move? It's because
Speaker 1: God asked you to move a long time ago, but
Speaker 1: you didn't want to because you're still trying to make
Speaker 1: this work and it's not working no more. Just because
Speaker 1: something is successful doesn't mean that it's working totally, you know, totally.
Speaker 1: That's such a good point. That's such a good point,
Speaker 1: and it reminds you. There's this beautiful story that the
Speaker 1: Buddha used to tell about person. He's on a journey,
Speaker 1: and they're on this journey and they come across an obstacle,
Speaker 1: and the first obstacle is this fast flowing river. So
Speaker 1: they realize, I need to build a raft. So they
Speaker 1: get the bamboo, they get the they tie it up
Speaker 1: they build themselves and owe and then they paddle with
Speaker 1: all their strength and they get to the other side,
Speaker 1: and then they think, this raft saved my life. I'm
Speaker 1: going to take it wherever I go. So they strap
Speaker 1: it to their back and they carry on walking. And
Speaker 1: then the Buddha says that, just like us, this person
Speaker 1: gets to another challenge, and the challenge is not a
Speaker 1: fast flowing river. This time it's a tall wooded forest
Speaker 1: with trees dotted at every other step. So now the
Speaker 1: person's trying to walk through and the raft keep getting stuck,
Speaker 1: and they're trying to maneuver, and they're trying to get through,
Speaker 1: and the raft is getting chipped. The raft is blocking
Speaker 1: them from walking through, and the Buddha says, the person
Speaker 1: has two choices. They either hold on to the raft
Speaker 1: and they struggle to get through, or they put it
Speaker 1: down and they walk on freely. And it's the same
Speaker 1: thing point that you're making right now, this idea of like,
Speaker 1: what are you holding on to that you believe made
Speaker 1: you successful, but is actually stopping you from breaking through
Speaker 1: the next challenge. And if you keep holding onto it's
Speaker 1: just going to hurt your hands, going to hurt your back.
Speaker 1: You're never going to walk through. And I agree, success
Speaker 1: is probably the greatest prison because the feeling of success
Speaker 1: is so intoxicating that you think, I'm just gonna keep
Speaker 1: doing this like a drug because it makes me feel good,
Speaker 1: but actually I may not be actually feeling healthy well,
Speaker 1: feeling like I'm moving in my best self. And I've
Speaker 1: seen that even in my career. I remember when I
Speaker 1: first died my work. We grew based on videos I
Speaker 1: made on Facebook, and today, eight years on, I don't
Speaker 1: make those videos anymore.
Speaker 2: Facebook is not our core platform anymore. We had to
Speaker 2: move on and evolve, and I've seen that time and
Speaker 2: time again, whether it's been a YouTube platform or whatever
Speaker 2: it is. And I think we get tied to platforms,
Speaker 2: we get tied to algorithms, we get tied to patterns,
Speaker 2: We get tied to all these things, and then eventually
Speaker 2: we become a prisoner of the pattern and get it
Speaker 2: become a prison of the algorithm, and letting it go
Speaker 2: is hard. And what you're saying right now, like recognizing
Speaker 2: that what you're doing right now maybe something you have
Speaker 2: to let go of is a healthy he thought.
Speaker 3: Man, I'm living proved.
Speaker 1: I talk about that in the book, you know, getting
Speaker 1: on us to die line while small talk sucks shameless plug.
Speaker 1: But I talk about that in the book because two
Speaker 1: thousand and sixteen, that's why I was at with it.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm six years in on the Breakfast Club.
Speaker 1: I'm having more success than I ever imagined. I'm making
Speaker 1: more money than I ever imagined. Like, you know, I
Speaker 1: put out my first book, Black Privilege. It's an instant
Speaker 1: New York Times bestseller. Like we moving like things are great,
Speaker 1: things are fantastic. But I'm not happy. And the reason
Speaker 1: I'm not happy because I'm still dealing with this anxiety.
Speaker 1: I'm still dealing with, you know, this depression. And I'm
Speaker 1: starting to feel like, you know, I'm becoming a character
Speaker 1: sure of myself to a certain extent. And it was
Speaker 1: like when I made the decision to start going to
Speaker 1: therapy number one. But then you start going to therapy
Speaker 1: and you start saying to yourself, like, all right, this
Speaker 1: has gotten me to this point, what is going to
Speaker 1: get me to that next level of life. I wasn't
Speaker 1: thinking about career or anything like that. I said, what's
Speaker 1: going to get me to that next level of life?
Speaker 1: Because I want to enjoy life. I want to wake
Speaker 1: up more happy than depressed. You know, I want to
Speaker 1: you know, wake up feeling you know, more secure about
Speaker 1: myself than imposter syndrome? Like what's going to get me
Speaker 1: to that? And what got me to that was letting
Speaker 1: go of just what I felt like people wanted from me.
Speaker 1: And that's another reason the comments and stuff was so
Speaker 1: dangerous because you can put things out there and immediately
Speaker 1: get real time feedback, and you know, this is this
Speaker 1: is twenty eighteen, right or twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen, you know,
Speaker 1: or prior to that, it was two and twenty sixteen.
Speaker 3: Things weren't weren't that toxic on social.
Speaker 1: Media, so you could kind of get like some real
Speaker 1: world criticism and you would see these things that you know,
Speaker 1: I guess people like about you, so you would constantly
Speaker 1: feed them more of that. Or you got publications saying, oh,
Speaker 1: Charlamagne is the hip hop Howard Stern.
Speaker 3: You're like, oh, what does that mean?
Speaker 1: So you start giving them more of the wild, you know,
Speaker 1: crazy antics before all. I know, they could have meant
Speaker 1: that because of you know, the introspective interviews that that
Speaker 1: that that get done on Breakfast Club as well. But
Speaker 1: I wasn't seeing that aspect of it. I was just
Speaker 1: seeing the raw ride of wildness. And so for me,
Speaker 1: just personally and professionally, I just was not happy and
Speaker 1: I had to, you know, let that go. So that
Speaker 1: was the most freeing thing for me because when I
Speaker 1: did that, I experienced way more. I wouldn't be with you,
Speaker 1: you know, having the success that I've had if I
Speaker 1: hadn't let that raft go. And there was also a
Speaker 1: period where, you know, because of this cancel culture era
Speaker 1: you live in, you be definitely ashamed to see some
Speaker 1: of the stuff that you you know, used to do.
Speaker 1: You're not You're not necessarily ashamed of it. You're more
Speaker 1: so afraid of, oh, they're gonna use this against me whatever, whatever.
Speaker 1: But guess what, you can't care about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the reason you can't care about that because if
Speaker 1: you really have faith in the Higher Power, if you
Speaker 1: really trust, you know, God to God, you have to
Speaker 1: know that every single moment that you were in you
Speaker 1: were the person you needed to be for that moment,
Speaker 1: because it's just the journey and it's a process and
Speaker 1: eventually you become who you're supposed to be. And even
Speaker 1: the version you're looking at me right now, not the
Speaker 1: final form of myself. I don't know what that's gonna be.
Speaker 1: Nobody does, but I know that I'm on the journey
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna keep walking.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: One thing I wanted to pick your brain about was
Speaker 2: this idea you kind of alluded to it there. It's this,
Speaker 2: We have this rhetoric on social media which is like,
Speaker 2: we want people to be more empathetic and compassionate and kind.
Speaker 2: We want people to when they share their vulnerable mental
Speaker 2: health journey that we all gotta listen and be attentive.
Speaker 2: But then when sometimes we see someone with a mental
Speaker 2: health challenge make them act different, we're the first ones
Speaker 2: to point out that they're an idiot, they're a loser,
Speaker 2: there's something wrong with them. There's I'll give an example
Speaker 2: of what I mean by this. Like Tom Holland talked
Speaker 2: about this when he came on the show. He was
Speaker 2: talking about how, you know, he's always been seeing as
Speaker 2: Spider Man and this cool kid and all the rest
Speaker 2: of it. And then when he started talking about his
Speaker 2: mental health or actually know, when he just announced that
Speaker 2: he'd given up alcohol and he was sober, all the
Speaker 2: news was like he was saying this he was saying.
Speaker 2: All the news was like, oh, Tom Holland, the happy,
Speaker 2: go lucky kid wasn't actually he was depressed. And it
Speaker 2: was like and they made it a whole thing, and
Speaker 2: he was like, no, I just gave up alcohol. I
Speaker 2: wasn't like an alcoholic. I just didn't want to drink anymore.
Speaker 2: And so all of a sudden it was like twisted
Speaker 2: the other way where it was like, oh, the kid
Speaker 2: that you think is happy, isn't he's depressed, or the
Speaker 2: kid that he's got mental health or whatever it may be.
Speaker 2: And it wasn't in the kind of compassionate way. It
Speaker 2: was more like a well, look, you didn't see this.
Speaker 2: So I find it like the way we react to
Speaker 2: certain things. It's almost like we're being hypocrites in and
Speaker 2: of because at one point we're saying we should care
Speaker 2: for people to have this, but then we're willing to
Speaker 2: point it out. How have you kind of seen that
Speaker 2: navigate when you see the worst forms of what mental
Speaker 2: health can do to people versus someone maybe not displaying
Speaker 2: the worst mental illness externally, but it's just talking about it.
Speaker 2: Does that make sense?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I don't know how anybody can diagnose someone just by
Speaker 1: watching them.
Speaker 3: Through the media. Like you know, if that's the case,
Speaker 3: we're all dealing with mental health issues. People just shitty people.
Speaker 3: And that's the other thing. And by the way we
Speaker 3: say two things can be true, no, multiple things can
Speaker 3: be true at one time.
Speaker 1: Like you use the example of Tom Holland, why can't
Speaker 1: he be the happy gold lucky kid who said he's
Speaker 1: not But that's the only version of him you had
Speaker 1: in your mind. So now when you see another version
Speaker 1: that doesn't fit your expectation, you're upset with him.
Speaker 3: The happy gold lucky kid is not so happy anymore.
Speaker 3: That's life. You show me a human that's one emotion
Speaker 3: all the time.
Speaker 1: It's just that when you're a public figure, we get
Speaker 1: these it's like these these freeze frames. So Tom Holland happy,
Speaker 1: du you know this person crazy, Like it's just free
Speaker 1: like literally freeze for this person, always mad, angry for you.
Speaker 3: It's these freeze.
Speaker 1: Frames of people that's not the whole totality of a person.
Speaker 1: Like that's actually kind of insane for us to even
Speaker 1: think about it like that. It's like like like like
Speaker 1: even if you watch Jay Shaddy on purpose, you have
Speaker 1: a thought, a perception of Jay Shaddy in your head.
Speaker 1: You got a perception of charlamage in your head based
Speaker 1: off something you may have seen.
Speaker 3: That's your fault. That's the one thing you saw, and
Speaker 3: you came.
Speaker 1: To a whole diagnosis about an individual. So you know,
Speaker 1: even when you talk about people having empathy, that goes
Speaker 1: into what I'm saying now. We might want to every all, everybody,
Speaker 1: all of these humans might wake up every day saying
Speaker 1: to themselves, we're gonna be empathetic today and we're gonna
Speaker 1: be caring and all of that stuff until something happens
Speaker 1: to somebody that you don't like, and then that all
Speaker 1: that goes out the window. I tend to see that
Speaker 1: people have more empathy and sympathy, and they're more caring
Speaker 1: towards people they actually like. It's really a popularity contest,
Speaker 1: but nobody wants to admit that we're not looking at
Speaker 1: we're not being consistent about any of these things, and
Speaker 1: we're not being consistent with how we deal with people.
Speaker 1: There can be two people that come out in the
Speaker 1: news today with the same situation, and based off if
Speaker 1: we like the individual or not, we'll give that person
Speaker 1: a whole lot of grace and come to that person's defense.
Speaker 1: But if it's somebody that we don't like, or somebody's
Speaker 1: social media tells us we shouldn't like, Oh, we're going
Speaker 1: to bury them. We want them out of here, we
Speaker 1: want them gone. That's not consistent. And that means you're
Speaker 1: lying to yourself. And that means that you're not the
Speaker 1: person you say that you are, because you should be
Speaker 1: giving both those individuals the same amount of grace.
Speaker 3: But you not. Because we're all hypocrites. And that's fine.
Speaker 1: We're everything, like everything that we pin on other people,
Speaker 1: we are all those things and more. We just got
Speaker 1: to make sure that we're not projecting.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's powerful man, Yeah, that's and it's true. All
Speaker 2: of us are right. We all have bias. We all
Speaker 2: have the natural human tendency to be empathetic to people
Speaker 2: we like, and and we're all that way, and but
Speaker 2: we've got to be able to see that, because if
Speaker 2: we can see that, then it's something that we can,
Speaker 2: Like you said, we don't project. Otherwise we live in
Speaker 2: our tiny we were talking about this earlier, like we
Speaker 2: live in this righteous mind, as Jonathan Hyde calls it,
Speaker 2: like this idea of like my way is righteous and
Speaker 2: I believe the way I live and the way I
Speaker 2: think is the only way and the right way. And
Speaker 2: that's where it goes wrong, because the truth is, if
Speaker 2: everyone thinks like that, now you've just got a you know,
Speaker 2: eight billion righteous ways.
Speaker 1: We even have to watch how we express that language, right,
Speaker 1: because we all do it. We'll say things like, man,
Speaker 1: the way you're seeing that is strange? Are the way
Speaker 1: that I can't believe you're seeing things that way?
Speaker 3: Why? Because they're not seeing it the way you are.
Speaker 1: There's probably nothing wrong with the way that individual is
Speaker 1: seeing it, But because you think they should see it
Speaker 1: the way you are seeing it, you're upset with that person.
Speaker 1: Are you might have had the expectation, I know I
Speaker 1: can call this person because we love we love confirmation
Speaker 1: by this right, So I know that I can call
Speaker 1: this person because this person is going to agree with me.
Speaker 1: And then when you pick up the phone and call
Speaker 1: that person or text that person and realize that person
Speaker 1: has a different opinion. Now you're arguing back and forth
Speaker 1: with that person, trying to get them to see things
Speaker 1: the way you see things. It's like, no, let them
Speaker 1: see it the way they want to see it. Like
Speaker 1: one of the hardest things to do is to get
Speaker 1: is to step into somebody else's shoes. One of the
Speaker 1: hardest things to do is to see things from the
Speaker 1: perspective of other people. I literally fight myself to do that,
Speaker 1: and some people might say, oh, he's being a contrarian. No,
Speaker 1: I'm just literally I've literally taken the time to step
Speaker 1: out of myself Steven of that person shoes, see how.
Speaker 3: They see it, and I can understand where they're coming from.
Speaker 3: What's wrong with that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't see any I don't see anything wrong
Speaker 1: with that. And I'm not saying that person is right,
Speaker 1: that person's wrong. I'm just simply saying I can see
Speaker 1: where that person's coming from. Like I said, multiple things
Speaker 1: can be true at once. I can think a person's
Speaker 1: wrong and still see where they're coming from. I can
Speaker 1: think a person's right but still see where they're wrong
Speaker 1: at in their argument as well.
Speaker 3: I think that's very hard for humans to do, and
Speaker 3: I don't know why.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean talking about calls you talking
Speaker 2: about in the book, the calls that you get from
Speaker 2: Kanye Yeah, and that call, like will cuts through how
Speaker 2: that applies to what you're saying here where you're trying
Speaker 2: to see things through his perspective. But then year old
Speaker 2: select but I know Pete and were friends.
Speaker 1: Yeah, his perspective was I'm black, he's black. We both
Speaker 1: from hip hop culture. He's from hip hop culture. Pete
Speaker 1: Davidson is this white kid from Staten Island who does comedy.
Speaker 3: He's younger than us because we are wearing our forties.
Speaker 3: He's younger than us.
Speaker 1: You know, his.
Speaker 3: Ex wife is now out here Dayton Pete.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call Charla Magne because I need Charlemagne to start,
Speaker 1: you know, siding with me against Pete Davidson.
Speaker 3: And he should because.
Speaker 1: He's black and I'm the cultures as Kanye says, and
Speaker 1: it's like, no, Pete Davison is my friend. I can
Speaker 1: care if he's black. I can care if he's white.
Speaker 1: I care what race is. I don't care what age
Speaker 1: he is. That's somebody that I met when he was
Speaker 1: sixteen years old, when we was all doing you know,
Speaker 1: guy cold together, and we developed a real friendship and
Speaker 1: a real bond. I know his mother, like, I mean,
Speaker 1: me and his mom talk. We check on each other.
Speaker 1: I've been in his mom's house. You don't sit in
Speaker 1: somebody's mom's house and eat food with eat food with them,
Speaker 1: and call that person a friend and then turn around
Speaker 1: and do snake shit like that. Pete's been to my house,
Speaker 1: He's been around my kids, he's been around my wife.
Speaker 3: I know him.
Speaker 1: You're not going to call me and get me to
Speaker 1: turn on my friend and try to, you know, say,
Speaker 1: because we're black and we're of the coaches.
Speaker 3: It's like, no right is right, wrong is wrong.
Speaker 1: And as I told him, you know, and I had
Speaker 1: to quote Snoop Dogg from the nineteen nineties, you mad,
Speaker 1: don't be mad at the don't be mad at the player.
Speaker 3: Hate the game because your girl chose him. You know,
Speaker 3: I didn't say girl. I used some other language. I
Speaker 3: use the languge Snoop used.
Speaker 1: But your girl chose him, and she's a grown woman
Speaker 1: making her own decisions. Y'all not together, No more so
Speaker 1: for me, it's like, you're not gonna call me and
Speaker 1: try to guilt trip me, you know, using using blackness
Speaker 1: and hip hop to go against somebody I consider a friend.
Speaker 1: Because if I considered you a friend like that, Kanye,
Speaker 1: nobody could make me do that to you as well,
Speaker 1: you know, So it's really that simple with me. I
Speaker 1: don't have you know, I don't have flexible morals and
Speaker 1: values when it comes to people that I love and
Speaker 1: when it comes to people that I consider actual friends
Speaker 1: and consider actual family. That's why, you know, betrayal hurts
Speaker 1: so much. That's why when you realize that, you know,
Speaker 1: certain people's character gets revealed when they don't get what
Speaker 1: they want from you, Like that's something. That's another realization
Speaker 1: that I've been, you know, having a lot lately. It's
Speaker 1: just like, I don't know that person wasn't necessarily my
Speaker 1: friend like I thought they were. They were my friend
Speaker 1: based on what opportunity was being provided. Yes at the time, yes, right,
Speaker 1: And so it's like it's sad, but you do realize
Speaker 1: some of that stuff is transactional. That's why I say
Speaker 1: I'm not mad at being used. Just don't just don't
Speaker 1: misuse me. And when things don't go your way, don't
Speaker 1: all of a sudden start you know, kicking my back
Speaker 1: end just because things don't go your way, because I'm
Speaker 1: not going to do that to you other than you know,
Speaker 1: I'm lying I would do that to you, meaning that
Speaker 1: when I'm around my people, I'm definitely gonna be like
Speaker 1: that person is so fucked up, that person is such
Speaker 1: a like I cannot believe that that individual did such
Speaker 1: and such. But guess what, I can't believe it because
Speaker 1: I understand humans.
Speaker 3: So I give that.
Speaker 1: I give all of those type of you know, human
Speaker 1: is grace, but you know it does. It's it's very
Speaker 1: disappointing when you're more solid to a person than they
Speaker 1: would be with you. Because if I embrace you and
Speaker 1: I say you my friend, if I say I rock
Speaker 1: with you, I'm I'm I'm we're gonna ride to the
Speaker 1: wheels fall off.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, totally. And I find it's an interesting one
Speaker 2: because it's like it's it's almost like also it's it's
Speaker 2: only the people. The only people that attacked you are
Speaker 2: the people who you know wanted to do something with
Speaker 2: you but it didn't happen. Yes, right, what you're saying
Speaker 2: about changing morals, Like, I find like people attack you
Speaker 2: and they're like, oh, I want to do a podcast
Speaker 2: with you, but you didn't want to make it happen,
Speaker 2: so now I'm going to find a way to attack you.
Speaker 2: It didn't work out, And it's interesting because you go, oh, well,
Speaker 2: then it wasn't ever a collaboration, and it wasn't of
Speaker 2: high character. It was an opportunity. Now that the opportunity
Speaker 2: is lost, now you have a different view of this situation.
Speaker 2: And and I love that point you made about how
Speaker 2: that's why I think opportunities going well or not going
Speaker 2: well shows how someone responds to it absolutely right, Like
Speaker 2: when there's a yes or a no. Someone who actually
Speaker 2: responds well to a no and a healthy know again
Speaker 2: obviously in a way that is communicated effectively. Someone who
Speaker 2: responds in a positive way to a rejection or a
Speaker 2: no or a closed door, that person you should keep
Speaker 2: them around forever.
Speaker 3: Yo, man, Jay, you hitting it on the head so crazy. Pause.
Speaker 1: It's like, do you remember, like, you know, you ever
Speaker 1: met somebody who's so talented and you say to yourself,
Speaker 1: why isn't this person here?
Speaker 3: Like why isn't this person doing X, Y and Z
Speaker 3: Because they're so talented.
Speaker 1: And then when you start to like get in business
Speaker 1: with them and you go down the path with them
Speaker 1: and you start to you know, be around them, you realize, exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they haven't gotten nowhere they need to be.
Speaker 1: Because once again, my good friend Marvette Brittle always says,
Speaker 1: this talent will take you what character can't sustain you.
Speaker 1: So you start to see like this person is not
Speaker 1: really a hard work or this person really is a gossip,
Speaker 1: like this person just likes to talk about everybody else
Speaker 1: instead of focusing on what they should be focusing on.
Speaker 1: They're so worried about what everybody else is doing and
Speaker 1: trying to shoot down what everybody else is doing. And
Speaker 1: you're trying to tell them, like, don't worry about that,
Speaker 1: because you know, listen, sometimes jealousy and envy it's natural, right,
Speaker 1: but don't focus on what's going right for everybody else
Speaker 1: because you don't know what's going on in their lives.
Speaker 1: They might be looking like on the surface, like they're
Speaker 1: winning and things are great, but they might be going
Speaker 1: home crying every night, Like, don't worry about that. You
Speaker 1: focus on you, but you see that they can't do that.
Speaker 1: And when things don't go their way, Oh, they become
Speaker 1: the most they become the worst people. Everybody's the enemy,
Speaker 1: everybody's a terrible person. All of these people are out
Speaker 1: to get me. Nobody's looking out for me, And you realize,
Speaker 1: like that's exactly why you're not where you're supposed to be.
Speaker 1: I've had so many doors closed on me. I've heard
Speaker 1: so I've gotten way more knows you know than Yes,
Speaker 1: it's in my life.
Speaker 3: I never was bitter about.
Speaker 1: Any of those nose because I truly believe in God
Speaker 1: and so whatever God has for me will absolutely positively
Speaker 1: be for me.
Speaker 3: We love saying that, but we don't mean it. You
Speaker 3: don't mean it. That's when things don't go right for you.
Speaker 3: Guess what you say? Why? God?
Speaker 1: Why is this thing not happening for me? Because I
Speaker 1: don't want it to at the moment? Do you trust
Speaker 1: me or not? If you don't trust me, I'll be
Speaker 1: sitting here waiting until you do. And guess what if
Speaker 1: you never do, God bless literally exactly straight up, God
Speaker 1: will be sitting right there. I can bless you at
Speaker 1: any moment, but I didn't til you ready. You don't
Speaker 1: trust me anyway, So until you find that trust in me,
Speaker 1: good good luck.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I respect you for that in this I mean
Speaker 2: you're always like this off online and offline, but in
Speaker 2: the book, I really feel like you get honest with us.
Speaker 2: But you're about your own pain and trauma, but you
Speaker 2: also to get honest with us about just you know,
Speaker 2: you're just right now, you're just spitting facts like it's
Speaker 2: just reality. It's just the way it is. And I
Speaker 2: think one of the things you talk about is this
Speaker 2: desire to like you want to also make a joke
Speaker 2: when you can, Like you want to make it funny.
Speaker 2: You want to be able to let it, you know,
Speaker 2: let it kind of live in that world. When have
Speaker 2: you found it that it works? And when have you
Speaker 2: found that that doesn't work, Like when you're trying to
Speaker 2: make something into being funny or silly or kind of
Speaker 2: lightning the movie? When have you seen that be effective
Speaker 2: and ineffective? Probably quite often like way ineffective. I mean,
Speaker 2: I think it works both ways both times, right because
Speaker 2: because because like say you do it, if you're in
Speaker 2: a room full of people, somebody's gonna laugh. But then
Speaker 2: the person you might be trying to make a laugh
Speaker 2: does not want to laugh in that moment, so they're
Speaker 2: the one that's upset.
Speaker 1: Now you're really in your head like just trying to
Speaker 1: make this person laugh. I was just trying to do
Speaker 1: something good. So now you really like trying to get
Speaker 1: this person to just have you know, you're trying to
Speaker 1: put better energy on this person. Reality is should just
Speaker 1: leave that person alone in that moment. Everything does not
Speaker 1: require a joke. I have not learned that may not ever.
Speaker 1: I may not ever, you know, learn that I really
Speaker 1: may not. Like I just feel like I like to
Speaker 1: be around people who don't take things too serious, even
Speaker 1: when things are serious, because I don't feel like you can,
Speaker 1: you know, make really good sound decisions when things are
Speaker 1: too serious because emotions are too high. Like sometimes you
Speaker 1: gotta like, let's laugh about it, let's joke about it,
Speaker 1: let's really really really light in the room, and then
Speaker 1: let's like sit down and try to like figure it out.
Speaker 1: Like if you are sitting around a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: people and everybody's angry and everybody's upset, everybody's mad, you
Speaker 1: just got a team that's about to make a poor decision. Wow,
Speaker 1: somebody on the team got to just be like, whoa yo,
Speaker 1: everybody relax here. Somebody got to be the rational one
Speaker 1: in the room. And most of the time, the rational
Speaker 1: one in the room is the person that's not they're
Speaker 1: taking it serious, but they're just not taking it serious
Speaker 1: in the way that you want to take it serious.
Speaker 1: Cause I'm the type person I'm like, what can I do,
Speaker 1: Like there's certain situations that you hear about, certain situations
Speaker 1: you are confronted with in the moment and you realize, like,
Speaker 1: there's really nothing we can do about this except for
Speaker 1: let it play out. So while we're letting it play out,
Speaker 1: let's let's laugh, you know what I'm saying. Let's let's
Speaker 1: crack some jokes. You ever seen that movie? Uh, don't
Speaker 1: look up?
Speaker 2: Yeah of course, ye, yeah, yeah, exactly how they.
Speaker 3: Handled the End of the World.
Speaker 1: That's how like I'm talking about Leonard of the character
Speaker 1: when they were all at dinner, they were still pouring
Speaker 1: drinks and they were eating. They knew the inevitable was happening.
Speaker 1: They knew there was nothing they could do to stop it.
Speaker 1: They spent the whole beginning of the movie trying to
Speaker 1: stop it, and they accepted fate in that moment, and
Speaker 1: they decided, I'm going out like this because they knew
Speaker 1: there was nothing they could do about it. And I
Speaker 1: know that that's a movie and it it's probably easier
Speaker 1: said than done, but that's what I that's what I
Speaker 1: described for, Like, even in the face of adversity, even
Speaker 1: when it seems like you know, chicking little the sky
Speaker 1: is falling, everything's.
Speaker 3: Burning down around you. You're like exhibiting that video.
Speaker 1: He's just walking and everything's burning down and all this
Speaker 1: bad stuff is happening behind him, but he's just rapping
Speaker 1: and moving, rapping and moving.
Speaker 3: It's just like, Yo, that's how I feel like.
Speaker 1: I want to, you know, constantly live my life and
Speaker 1: that's the kind of people I want to you know,
Speaker 1: be around people that keep me in that space.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. Last question I ask you, Shelaman before
Speaker 2: we wrap up, is and it's interesting because it relates
Speaker 2: to where you just said, if you want to be
Speaker 2: around this people, how do we find belonging in a
Speaker 2: world we don't agree with, but stop ourselves from only
Speaker 2: being friends with people we agree with? Right? It's like,
Speaker 2: because right now we look at belonging, It's like, if
Speaker 2: we agree, then I find belonging. But we both know
Speaker 2: from what you're saying in the book, from what you're
Speaker 2: saying right now, from what you say on your podcast,
Speaker 2: from what you say on your show, is like, but
Speaker 2: you are very comfortable sitting down having uncomfortable, awkward conversations
Speaker 2: with people who people wouldn't place you with.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: From completely different backgrounds, different walks of life, different schools
Speaker 2: of thought, and you find that to be a very
Speaker 2: important thing to do. Absolutely, So, how do we find
Speaker 2: belonging in a way that we're not just creating little
Speaker 2: echo chambers and little confirmation biased schools where we just
Speaker 2: all just say what we think and we all double
Speaker 2: click on and go yeah, yeah, that thing, that thing.
Speaker 2: How do we create a culture where which you're doing
Speaker 2: through your work, through your book, how do you actually
Speaker 2: do that in your life? Because I think we like
Speaker 2: to be around people who agree with us.
Speaker 1: I don't even know if you realize it, but as
Speaker 1: you was talking, you refer to you refer to that
Speaker 1: stuff as little Yeah, and that's exactly what it is.
Speaker 3: It's small.
Speaker 1: That's why it's literally called why small talk sucks you.
Speaker 1: Macro conversations are big conversations that you can have with anybody.
Speaker 1: Like when you put yourself in those small boxes, right
Speaker 1: when you confine yourself to.
Speaker 3: Just speaking with the people that you agree with, when.
Speaker 1: You confine yourself to just being in those echo chambers,
Speaker 1: those rooms are so small they just seem big because
Speaker 1: of social media.
Speaker 3: But that's not how the world works.
Speaker 1: Yo, There's really there's really not too many people that
Speaker 1: are going to see the world exactly the way you
Speaker 1: see it, So that can't be true. All of y'all
Speaker 1: are aligned to each other because y'all just love the
Speaker 1: community of each other. Y'all are really a bunch of
Speaker 1: people who need, you know, support from each other. And
Speaker 1: y'all want to have a friend group just like all
Speaker 1: humans do. So y'all are all just going along to
Speaker 1: get along with each other. So y'all make this imaginary
Speaker 1: role book, this imaginary playbook, and y'all have this imaginary
Speaker 1: rhetoric that everybody has to say. And if you don't
Speaker 1: see things like this, if you don't say things like this,
Speaker 1: then you can't be in this club no more. This
Speaker 1: club is this big, like that club is so so
Speaker 1: so so small. So in order to just like understand
Speaker 1: that you live in a world that you are going
Speaker 1: to disagree with people, Like I said earlier, I can
Speaker 1: think you're right, but still not necessarily agree with you.
Speaker 1: I can understand where you're coming from, but still think
Speaker 1: you're wrong. Like I don't understand why we just can't
Speaker 1: sit down and have more conversations with people and then
Speaker 1: realize this surface that I saw this individual or this
Speaker 1: perception of this individual that I had in my head.
Speaker 1: If you sit down and actually have a conversation with
Speaker 1: them and listen to the whole totality of everything that
Speaker 1: they may be saying or experience, you'll never be able
Speaker 1: to experience the whole totality of a person, but you'll
Speaker 1: get closer to what you thought. If you just sit
Speaker 1: down and have a conversation with them, you'll realize, like, Oh,
Speaker 1: what they're saying isn't necessarily that bad, or oh, I
Speaker 1: understand why they see things that way. I disagree with them,
Speaker 1: but I understand it and I respect they're right to
Speaker 1: think that. We spend so much time trying to change
Speaker 1: people's minds because we're trying to make ourselves comfortable. We
Speaker 1: talk about all of this growth that we want to
Speaker 1: have as humans, and we talk about how, you know,
Speaker 1: and we like being uncomfortable because when we're uncomfortable.
Speaker 3: It's making us grow. We know that we're evolving.
Speaker 1: We really don't like growing, and we really don't like
Speaker 1: being uncomfortable. We get to a certain point, and we
Speaker 1: all need to admit this. We get to a certain
Speaker 1: point where we're very comfortable and we don't want anything
Speaker 1: disrupting this comfort so to have new conversations and to
Speaker 1: talk to people that we may not necessarily agree with.
Speaker 1: Oh man, that scares us to death. That scares us
Speaker 1: to death. But I would say you should be more
Speaker 1: afraid of not growing. You should be more afraid of
Speaker 1: thinking that I've gotten to a certain point and I'm
Speaker 1: fine and cool here. The world is a beautiful place, Jay,
Speaker 1: Humans are beautiful people, Like, why would you not want
Speaker 1: to experience everything that God created? Because a lot of
Speaker 1: these things that we've learned necessarily of God. It's just
Speaker 1: the things that we've picked up in this world. Some
Speaker 1: people have picked up things that are different from us.
Speaker 1: But sometimes when you sit down and you listen to
Speaker 1: that person and that person shares their experiences, or that
Speaker 1: person you know, tells you what they've been through that's
Speaker 1: gotten them to that you know point in life, it
Speaker 1: can be eye opening. And it's been very eye opening
Speaker 1: for me throughout my life. Like my best relationships in
Speaker 1: life have come through me having conversations with people that
Speaker 1: I necessarily that I that I didn't have anything in
Speaker 1: common with. One of the greatest, you know, gifts my
Speaker 1: mother ever gave me.
Speaker 3: She don't see she was.
Speaker 1: An English teacher growing up in South Carolina. Like when
Speaker 1: I was going up in South Carolina, and she told
Speaker 1: me read things that don't pertain to you. So I'm
Speaker 1: in the library, I'm reading everything from UFOs, you know,
Speaker 1: Sasquash to Judy Bloom and Beverly clearly to the point
Speaker 1: where I'm like, this woman, Judy Bloom is a phenomenal storyteller.
Speaker 1: So I love Judy Bloom the same way I love Scarface,
Speaker 1: the same way I love jay Z, the same way
Speaker 1: I love ghost Face. She's that love storytelling to me.
Speaker 1: And now because of that love of somebody like Judy
Speaker 1: Bloom and me expressing that she's somebody I actually call
Speaker 1: a friend, she's actually somebody that I, you know, have
Speaker 1: gone down the floorida, you know, kicked it with her
Speaker 1: and her husband, George, me and my wife, Like I've
Speaker 1: been to her bookstore, in her movie theater, like we
Speaker 1: were just in together in New York a couple of
Speaker 1: weeks ago. Like that that comes from being open to
Speaker 1: other people, other experiences and just listening to each other.
Speaker 1: And that's really what you know, get at us. A
Speaker 1: die line, while small talk sucks, is really all about
Speaker 1: It's really about us, you know, getting to listen to
Speaker 1: each other. That's why I end every chapter by saying,
Speaker 1: let's discuss, because I want us to have conversations.
Speaker 3: I'm opening up conversation.
Speaker 1: I don't want you just to talk to the people
Speaker 1: that you agree with every day, tear down the walls
Speaker 1: of that echo chain. Being realized how big the world is.
Speaker 1: The world is infinite. That's what I want people to get.
Speaker 1: You know, you know from this from this book.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just the way you reacted to that, I could
Speaker 2: know how deep the topic is for you. It took
Speaker 2: me a second, but when you said O the way
Speaker 2: I said it was little, and then you were like, oh,
Speaker 2: it's actually small talk, like it applies. That showed me
Speaker 2: just how deep this is running for your veins because
Speaker 2: you picked up on that. It's like, yeah, I was saying, Yeah,
Speaker 2: these little groups and these little echo chambers and these
Speaker 2: little kind of like you know, text threads or message threads,
Speaker 2: whatever we have done, which is important, just get smaller
Speaker 2: and smaller and smaller. What's last question, what's the hardest,
Speaker 2: hardest conversation you've had to have to do a kid
Speaker 2: so far? So far or the most honest conversation. That's say,
Speaker 2: not hardest, the most honest conversation.
Speaker 3: Oh man, that's listen.
Speaker 1: I got a fifteen year old, an eight year old,
Speaker 1: a five year old, and a two year old, all girls,
Speaker 1: so I.
Speaker 3: Haven't had it yet. They're all hard.
Speaker 1: I think they're all difficult, Okay, every single one, especially
Speaker 1: you know, my fifteen year old because she's a sophomore
Speaker 1: in high school now, and you know, they're dealing with
Speaker 1: things that we never even thought of dealing with, like literally,
Speaker 1: like you know, and we're dealing with adults that we
Speaker 1: never thought of dealing with. And these kids are smart,
Speaker 1: Like you know, I remember during COVID, my daughter came
Speaker 1: to me and she came to me and my wife
Speaker 1: and she was like she was in tears, and she
Speaker 1: was just like, ya, I'm overwhelmed, Like I'm overwhelmed, Like
Speaker 1: this is driving me crazy. You know, my grades is slipping.
Speaker 1: I'm like, I gave her a hug. I'm like, we
Speaker 1: are in an unprecedented time right now, Like we're literally
Speaker 1: at home. I'm at home doing work. You're doing pottery
Speaker 1: class on the kitchen floor. Do you think I give
Speaker 1: a damn if your grades slip? At a moment like this, like,
Speaker 1: I don't care about any of that, But what made
Speaker 1: me proud in that moment was she had the language
Speaker 1: because you know, she's she's she's been the therapy. Not
Speaker 1: because anything's necessarily wrong. I'm just I'm just realizing that
Speaker 1: we're in an unprecedented time. Like they these kids deal
Speaker 1: with things that we don't have to deal with. So
Speaker 1: I want them. I want her to have the tools
Speaker 1: and the language early because I'm just the person still
Speaker 1: going through it myself. Her mom is a person still
Speaker 1: going through it herselves. So I want her to sit
Speaker 1: down and you know, talk to experts. So but just
Speaker 1: the fact she had the language. So when you say
Speaker 1: difficult conversations, honestly, the difficult conversations come from.
Speaker 3: Me having to check my ego as a parent because
Speaker 3: I'm forty.
Speaker 1: Five and I believe this little fifteen year old doesn't
Speaker 1: know anything yet she knows a whole lot and she can.
Speaker 1: She's teaching me, you know, a whole lot. Like there's
Speaker 1: some things that change, there's some things that stay the
Speaker 1: same in this world, but there's a whole lot that
Speaker 1: has changed. And I think that you know, we we
Speaker 1: we sometimes are too stubborn to realize that. And so, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess they answer your question. Every day is a
Speaker 1: difficult conversation. She got four girls. Every day is a
Speaker 1: difficult conversation. Like, I'm dealing with a different set of
Speaker 1: emotions every single day. The biggest thing for me is
Speaker 1: to stay centered, insane, and you know, not let my emotions.
Speaker 3: Get the best of me.
Speaker 1: Like, that's one of the biggest conversations me and my
Speaker 1: wife constantly have, Like we get together in our little
Speaker 1: prayer circles and huddle together like we are doing the
Speaker 1: best we can.
Speaker 3: I literally touch so funny I told you this yesterday.
Speaker 1: I was like, yo, you know, we've been together twenty
Speaker 1: six years and we've experienced so many different levels of
Speaker 1: life together. And so what I said to her, I
Speaker 1: was like, yo, the other we also realized, twenty six
Speaker 1: years go by fast. So regardless of how scretched out
Speaker 1: we get because of these children, let's enjoy the moment.
Speaker 1: Like literally, let's just enjoy the moment. We are doing
Speaker 1: the best we can. There is no manual that comes
Speaker 1: with this. You don't want to take everything you learn
Speaker 1: from your parents because you realize they didn't have all
Speaker 1: of the proper tools, and they didn't necessarily, you know,
Speaker 1: instill the right things in us, at least from a
Speaker 1: man's perspective. My mom, I felt was phenomenal, at least
Speaker 1: from a mass perspective. You know, I didn't have that.
Speaker 1: So we're just all doing the best we can. So
Speaker 1: let's just give each other some grace. Man and like
Speaker 1: and enjoyed his ride called Adulthood.
Speaker 2: Absolutely every one the book, it's called Get Honest or Dieline.
Speaker 2: You can get it right now. Why small talk sucks?
Speaker 2: Sell them and the God this is the book that
Speaker 2: I want you to get. Discuss it with your friends
Speaker 2: that sect it, allow it to infuse into reality. I've
Speaker 2: been really really happy that his books out because I
Speaker 2: spent last Christmas in London, which is what I usually do,
Speaker 2: and I started to find that even friends I've had
Speaker 2: for a couple of decades, I found that we were
Speaker 2: becoming less and less honest with each other, and I
Speaker 2: was feeling really disconnected. When I was back at Christmas
Speaker 2: and I was trying to figure out what it was,
Speaker 2: I was like, wait, a minute, is it because I
Speaker 2: left eight years ago and I've been living in the States.
Speaker 2: Is it because of this? Is this, and I realized
Speaker 2: it was honesty, and so I started to create conversations
Speaker 2: in my friends grew that were uncomfortable. And when I
Speaker 2: saw that you'd written this book, I was so moved
Speaker 2: by it because I was like, that was the exact
Speaker 2: issue that I felt I was moving further away from
Speaker 2: the people I was closest to because we were all
Speaker 2: now just playing a role, and everyone's playing their part.
Speaker 2: But there was no longer a get honest conversation. It
Speaker 2: was all small talk. And so I really hope that
Speaker 2: this conversation inspires people to get closer to the people
Speaker 2: you already think you're close to, right, and understand the
Speaker 2: people that you're far away from.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: And so the book is called get Honest or Die Lying,
Speaker 2: Why small talk sucks? Right, can grab it right now.
Speaker 2: We'll put it in the comments and the link in
Speaker 2: the caption. Charlamagne, thank you so much again, man. As always,
Speaker 2: I appreciate these conversations.
Speaker 3: I appreciate you time.
Speaker 4: Man.
Speaker 1: We always have macro conversations on air off air, and
Speaker 1: I mean, just what you've built with this platform on purpose,
Speaker 1: it is so necessary, man, Like you know, everybody's having
Speaker 1: these conversations about mindfulness and you know, wellness, and we're
Speaker 1: all just trying to be the best versions of ourselves.
Speaker 1: Something like this didn't exist five years ago, Like those
Speaker 1: conversations that people are having now weren't necessarily as loud
Speaker 1: as they were, you know, as loud five years ago
Speaker 1: as they are now. And your platform on purpose is
Speaker 1: a big, big, big, huge part of that. So thank
Speaker 1: you for your service, brother, Thank you. I appreciate you, absolutely,
Speaker 1: thank you.
Speaker 2: If this is the year that you're trying to get creative,
Speaker 2: you're trying to build more, I need you to listen
Speaker 2: to this episode with Rick Rubin on how to break
Speaker 2: into your most creative self, how to use unconventional methods
Speaker 2: that lead to success, and the secret to genuinely loving
Speaker 2: what you do. If you're trying to find your passion
Speaker 2: and your lane, Rick Rubin's episode is the one for you.
Speaker 4: Just because I like it, that doesn't give it any value,
Speaker 4: Like as an artist, if you like it, that's all
Speaker 4: of the value. That's the success comes when you say
Speaker 4: I like this enough for other people to see it.
Speaker 2: For Mental Health Awareness Month, I'm partnering up with the
Speaker 2: National Alliance of Mental Illness Know Me.
Speaker 3: If you were so.
Speaker 2: Some one you know is struggling with mental health, there
Speaker 2: is help. Call Namie Helpline at eight hundred nine fifty NAMI,
Speaker 2: or go to www. Dot name dot org, forward slash help,
Speaker 2: or text Helpline to six two six four zero for
Speaker 2: immediate twenty four to seven crisis support. Call your text
Speaker 2: nine eight eight or visit www. Dot nine eight eight
Speaker 2: lifeline dot org