Drama Queens - Sarah Shahi - BONUS!

Episode Date: February 20, 2026

Sophia's conversation with actress and author Sarah Shahi continues with a deeper dive into three of the most revealing and transformative chapters of her new memoir, "Life is Lifey: The A to Z's of Navigating Life's Messy Middle." She also opens up about why - right now in her life - Sarah's forcing herself to "put her money where her mouth is" and follow the relationship advice she spells out in the book.   Get your copy of "Life Is Lifey" here.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Hi, everyone. It's Sophia. Welcome to Work in Progress. Welcome back to Work in Progress with our favorite girlie, Sarah Shahi. I cannot wait to pick her brain specifically about her new book, Life Is Lifey. Okay, so we talked about it a little bit in our first part, but Life is Lifey is, it's just a delicious book. and it's funny and it's empowering and it's raw and like there's moments that make you blush a little bit.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's so much I want to talk about, but a few chapters I want to really dig into. And we talked about this earlier. You know, the notion that you talk about in courage about how we will choose familiar hell over unfamiliar heaven. You know, this requirement for practice, just to take a risk or get a divorce, but to actually start to make decisions about, as you say, doing the shit that feels daunting and uncomfortable. Can you talk a little bit about realizing that courage is a practice, not a place you arrive at?

Absolutely. For me, the way I was able to do it, because I am a people pleaser, right? Or I should say I'm a recovering people pleaser. I would turn myself into a pretzel. And I think a lot of women do this in order to be able to say yes to everybody, except allowing myself to do what I needed to do or wanted to do. And the way I was able to practice courage is, first of all, I saw this fantastic quote.

I'm not sure who said it, but it was speak up even if your voice shakes. So that allowed me to, again, carry my fear with me. I don't have to feel brave as I'm saying this. I can feel really scared as I'm saying this too, and that's okay. and but just started speaking up in little moments. Even if it was something small like, hey, can you watch the kids? I really want to take a dance class.

Or can, you know, is it okay if we rain check this? Like, I really do want to see you, but I'm really tired tonight. And I just, I feel like I've got to prioritize my rest. I'm so sorry. You know, like I was even over apologizing at first because it was how I felt the most comfortable

being able to say no, to somebody and over explaining that it's not a rejection on them, but I just had to put myself first. So it was very scary, but I just started using my voice in situations that I normally wouldn't. Or like I remember this one time, you know, like Target, I was at Target. And if people would cut in front of me in line, normally I'd be like, okay.

And I wouldn't say anything. But I started saying something the next time that it happened. I would be not that, you know, people cut in target. in front of me all the time. It doesn't make it sound like it's like a daily thing. But like, like, I would just be like, hey, I'm so sorry. Like, you know, I was here first, you know, and and or I would be like, I'm sorry, was I here or were you here for like, you know, it was just like, how do I use my voice? How do I get this across in a way that feels comfortable for me to do? And now I'm a little bit better at it. So I don't need to apologize so much as I'm

saying it. But it was just those little daily things that I started doing. that helped build up to the bigger things. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I love that. Yeah. So do you now have a practice or a way that you like to psych yourself up before you take a leap? Is there kind of a formula to it?

Or is it really situationally dependent? It is situationally dependent. And I think the way what I have recently learned in this space of a year of knowing myself again is when I come from a place of grace. So when I come from a place of grace and the highest form of love, because I believe there's only two frequencies, two real frequencies,

you can break everything down to either love or fear, any emotion. You can break it down to either love or fear. And when I come from a place that is purely altruistic, where I'm like, I need to, whether it's, end something, end a situation, end a relationship,

either a working relationship or a romantic relationship, and I'm coming from the highest place of love and the highest place of grace. You know, that's when, for me, the situation doesn't feel, doesn't mean it doesn't hurt, it still hurts. But it becomes more, this is a, it takes the emotion out of it. It lessens the fear. and turns it into more of like almost like a matter of fact situation that this is not serving either of us anymore we're trying to fit you know like a a square in a circle we both just got a it's

gonna suck it's going to hurt it's going to whatever but but this is what needs to happen and when i when i remember my own grace or you know again coming from that highest most purest place of love love can destroy and it can build yeah love can do both that's when I'm able to be the most effective in using my voice. Yeah, I mean, you talk about in failure and fucking up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. When referencing a very personal situation to make one of these points, you say, own your shit, learn from it, and keep moving.

Yes, yes. And that struck me really intensely because, again, one of the things I'm working on is not feeling ashamed by other people's judgment, you know, of failure. or my relationships. It's like, why do I care what a stranger thinks about my personal life? Like, but it's hard not to. And I'm, I don't know, I'm really curious about that because you seem so solid. You're like, I had this and then I didn't.

I was in this relationship and then I wasn't. Now I'm learning this and I'm grateful. And I'm like, damn, girl, like, where do we get the confidence cocktail? Like, is that also a practice? Well, it's from a lifetime, Sophia. of doing things I swore I would never do. You know what I mean? And it's from me learning.

It's from me learning through my own situations. You know, that's why I'm so upfront about my failures in the book is because the amount of times I swore up and down that I passed judgment on somebody because they did something and I swore I would never do it only to find myself doing the exact same thing later on in life and another situation. It has taught me that you don't have the right to judge somebody else. Like you, you know, our mistakes or our learning lessons are tailor made for us. And because I do choose to live from a very spiritual place, I know that we only attract situations to us that inspire our highest growth.

So your lessons, your challenges, they are tailor made for you. And for you to pass judgment on somebody else's learning lessons or barometer of their challenges, it's like judging a cloud for being too fluffy. Like it doesn't make sense. Like everybody's rock bottom looks different. Everybody has to hit their rock bottom at a time that is meant for them that can inspire the most growth for them. So, and at the end of the day, it's like we're all here just to walk each other home. Like all of us are, we're all human beings sharing this.

We're all souls that, and I believe we've all made this agreement to come down to Earth school. We're all going to learn. We're all going to like, you know, and we're all going to help each other through it. We're not going to have it figured out, right? But it's our, it's sort of like this unspoken agreement that we've made with one another before coming down that like, I'm going to attract your highest growth. I'm going to present you with a partner who cheats a lot.

I'm going to present you with somebody who abandoned. you so you can get strong. And so I just live from this place of like everything happens for a reason. Whether it's good or bad, it doesn't matter because it all inspires my highest growth. The people that serve as those haters that are passing judgment, it's like, you know, especially when I first had my divorce, it was, I mean, the, oh my God, I had to turn, I had to get off Instagram, turn off comments. I know you've probably been in this similar position.

And then I'm like, but now when things come in, I just don't care anymore. You know, there's also that great Dr. Seuss quote, which is those who matter, don't mind. Those who mind, don't matter. Don't matter. And now a word from our sponsors who make this show possible. Tracks. Let's go. New music.

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I think we need something new. Discover IHeart new music. Always fresh. Always first. Stream now on the free IHartRadio app. It makes me think of what you wrote about in value, because you say when you show people your worth, you'll also see who agrees.

You'll find out very quickly, very quickly who agrees with you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If you don't, if you do not believe in yourself and you do not, know you're awesome, how can you expect other people to? You know, if you don't think you're worthy of a partner who loves you unconditionally,

if you don't think you are worthy of a partner who can accept your dark and your light, you know, then you will constantly attract people who don't until you start seeing yourself for that and then you will attract somebody who measures that. So it, and again, that goes back to courage. Like, you know, My Angelou, who's a woman that I have spent countless hours studying and she's probably one of my greatest mentors and heroes in life. You know, she talks about courage as being of the seven virtues, courage is the most important virtue because without courage, you wouldn't have the guts to practice anything consistently. Yeah. I think it sounds so obvious.

And then again, going back to that earlier point, you're not going to learn something until you learn it. It's got to get in your body. Knowing you deserve courage, knowing you're worth it, knowing that you're not a failure when you're actually evolving out of something. Yeah. Yeah. And all that, that's right. And all of that comes from sitting with the discomfort. Yeah.

You have to sit with your discomfort. You can't, you know, you can't wish it away. You know, and at the end of the day, so emotions, the word emotion breaks down to energy in motion. That's what emotion means. They're just emotions. Like joy, grief, anger, fear, love. They're just emotions. And they are only as heavy as we make it to be.

So a situation is only as big or small as the weight we assign to it. So if we can take away to look at our pain and be like, okay, this sucks right now. But at the end of the day, it's not that big of a deal because I'm just sad over X, Y, and Z. I'm still breathing. Like I'm still here. Life, you know, I still have my friends. I still have a roof over my head. I still have all these other things.

But I'm really sad right now. And I'm just going to sit with it. And I'm going to allow myself to be sad. And I'm going to allow myself to cry. You know, I'm going to allow for things to feel crunchy on the inside because that's evolvement. That's growth. I read this quote on Instagram recently, which was like, pain is inevitable, suffering is a choice. Yeah.

And the more I feel like we allow ourselves to sit with our pain, to decipher it, to decode it, to, you know, dissect it, to see what it's trying to tell us. It's like, that's where the light enters. That's beautiful. Yeah. and everybody needs to read the book. Like, from your stories and all the best quotes you put together for us at the top of chapters, it's like, it really, it's so special to read something. I'll speak to my experience.

I won't speak for the whole audience, but to read something that reminds me of the things I already knew were true. Yes. And sometimes that's all we need. You know, it's like I say this too, it's like a miracle. Like we have the ability. we experience miracles daily. Daily, there are miracles happening in front of us. It's a matter of whether or not we're attuned to it.

And a miracle is just a shift in perspective. That's all it is. That's all it is. And this book really is. Yeah, like it was like, you know, and also we live in an age where I feel like because of social media and the algorithms, we are so used to Netflix telling us what to watch,

Amazon telling us what couch to buy next, The apps tell us who to talk to. We swipe and liken heart-like things. We've lost the ability to really get quiet and check in with ourselves. And I'm somebody, again, through my experiences, it's like, I can ask 900 people what the right thing for me is, but I wasn't able to act on it and really learn what the right thing was until shut out the noise. Yes. And that's what this book is designed to do.

It's designed to help you. like I'm not here to tell the reader what to do because I feel like advice is not prescriptive. It's not a one size fits all type model. What could work for you may not work for me, right? So it's designed to help you shut out the noise and to reconnect with like the wisest person in the room, which I feel is in here. Well, life is lifey. The 80s of navigating life's messy middle. Friends, it's out now.

clearly you know you need to read it and if you have been living under a rock catch up on paradise because season 2 starts February 23rd on Hulu I am waiting with bated breath I love the show so much The second season is a roller coaster Like if you thought the first season blew your mind

Oh my God The second season even I was reading the scripts And I was like what? What? Like how did you guys come off with this? It's so good It's incredible. It's incredible. You guys are doing such a great job. Okay, everything feels like it's really in flow. So when you look out at what's next, what feels like your work in progress? My work in progress is, I mean, you just hit the nail on the head, which is to continue being in flow.

You know, to just be present to not try to future plan. And my favorite thing to say is I don't know. Like I don't know what I want next. I don't know what tomorrow is going to bring. I don't know who I'm going to date. I don't know what job I'm going to have. But for the first time in my life, I am comfortable in that mystery. If anything, I feel safe in that mystery now.

I feel like I'm being held by mystery. And I've never had that outlook before. So the mystery was always a very anxious, anxiety-ridden place for me in the past. But now it's just moment-to-moment, just to stay in flow. Yeah, wherever it takes me, that's where I go. I love that. That's beautiful. Thank you for coming and hanging today.

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