Duncan Trussell Family Hour - LIZZIE VELASQUEZ

Episode Date: May 5, 2014

Lizzie is one of 3 person on earth with a rare syndrome- she can't gain weight!  She's 25 and weighs 40 pounds but hasn't let this stop her from waging a campaign against online bullying.  Check out... her TED talk:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c62Aqdlzvqk She's the best. I feel really lucky to have gotten to spend some time with her.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Ghost Towns, Dirty Angel, out now. You can get Dirty Angel anywhere you get your music. Ghost Towns, Dirty Angel, out now. New album and tour date coming this summer. Hello friends, it is I, Duncan Trussell, and you are listening to the Duncan Trussell Family Hour podcast. And I think I've finally done it.
Starting point is 00:00:23 I have discovered the secret of happiness. And it isn't what I thought it was. All this time I thought it was for meditating, discipline, maybe falling in love, selfless service, opening yourself up to the universal consciousness, allowing the angels to move through your thought patterns and out of your mouth giving gifts to children and homeless people or planting trees,
Starting point is 00:00:50 spreading love everywhere you go or eating kale all the time. All of these things are great, but they pale in comparison to what I have discovered, which is riding a bike. I can't believe it. I know it sounds ridiculous, and I'm only being 10%. I'm only exaggerating 10%. It's amazing.
Starting point is 00:01:19 All this time I've been climbing into my damn car, a steel coffin, encapsulated in this metal prison surrounded by other people separated from nature, going from point A to point B, not even thinking about anything except getting to point B. A bike eliminates all of that. When you get on a bike, all of a sudden you're outside, you're connected to nature, you hear birds,
Starting point is 00:01:52 you smell people cooking from their houses, you figure out little side streets to go down so you don't get plowed over by some drunk LA garbage truck driver who just found his wife humping his brother, which can happen. There's dangers out there. It's true, but wow. All I want to do is ride my bike.
Starting point is 00:02:16 I woke up this morning at 7 a.m. and went bike riding. I couldn't sleep. I was so excited about the idea of getting on my bike and driving up to a Griffith Park near my house, which I did. I almost had a heart attack going up a hill. I'm badly out of shape. I go jogging every once in a while, but trying to get a bike up a big hill in a park
Starting point is 00:02:39 when you just turn 40 and your heart is basically covered in Crisco and old crisps of marijuana edibles that you haven't quite digested and have been pushed out of some tube to spray all over your heart. When you're like that going up a hill, you forget. But somewhere halfway up this hill, I had to stop and I almost threw up gasping for air. One of those Lycra bicycle people went shooting by
Starting point is 00:03:08 and I couldn't look at him because I was so embarrassed. I know he must have. He probably thought I was getting what I deserved. He saw that I wasn't in the Lycra. I wasn't wearing the uniform. And let me tell you, friends, I'm going to end up in Lycra. I can already tell it's going to happen. I'm going to put on the uniform.
Starting point is 00:03:28 I'm going to squeeze into some of those tight bicycling pants and put on a ridiculously colored Lycra top, strap my helmet on and go shooting down the bike trail with that weird intense gaze that you've probably seen that bikers have. I never understood that gaze is I went plotting up the bike trail, jogging like some reanimated hamburger man. Just plotting up the trail, gasping for breath, moving so slowly. Those bikers, they shoot by and you can almost feel the disdain
Starting point is 00:04:10 radiating off of them, but it's not disdain. That's what I thought. I thought it was disdain. They don't even see you. They're basically flying. That's what it's like. Bicycles are as close as you're going to get to riding a broomstick in this incarnation
Starting point is 00:04:24 unless you're a witch with access to baby fat and ginseng and what's that other man drake that you could rub all over your body. Don't do that. I don't even know where you would get baby fat these days, but what you can do instead of rubbing baby fat all over your body is you can squeeze into lycra. I know I use this example a lot, but it's like you go to listen to house music and you're not on ecstasy and it sounds like the chirping of a dying ET.
Starting point is 00:05:00 It sounds like an awful mixture of hammers beating against the side of a crashed UFO. It sounds cheesy too, like elf trumpets or something. It's awful, but the moment you take MDMA and listen to house music, not all of it's good, but you listen to the good stuff and it just makes sense. In the same way you now lycra makes sense to me. This is an insider club. Fuck the Freemasons in the Illuminati. They have nothing on bicyclists.
Starting point is 00:05:38 It's like a secret hidden thing that the, I don't know, maybe the oil industry doesn't want people to know that riding a bike will simultaneously, will throw you into some kind of nirvanic bliss trance while getting all that fat off your body that slowly developed as you were driving your car to wherever you were going, shoving Doritos into your mouth and listening to Elliott Smith and weeping over whatever girl recently broke your heart. Let me tell you, none of that.
Starting point is 00:06:17 You're not thinking about that when you're on your bike. I've only been doing this. I've had a bike for less than 24 hours. We'll see how I feel in a couple of days. I'll probably be sick of the damn thing. There'll be cobwebs all over it and it'll be moldering behind my house. But right now, I, if you're going to do, if you're going to give yourself a gift, if you really want to do something that's going to change your life
Starting point is 00:06:41 in the most intense way for under a thousand bucks, there's a few things you could do. Some of them are outside your control. For example, you can meet some incredible person and start falling in love with them. Well, good luck with that. You can't control that. That just happens. God slings those throwing stars down a few times in your life
Starting point is 00:07:06 and if you're lucky, one of them will smash right into your poor, lonely heart and send you into that incredible, oxytocin-induced seizure of joy and bliss that lasts for, if you're lucky, a lifetime, but more than likely a year. And then that ends with you laying in the classic smoldering hell crater that we all fall into once we're cast out of the sweet heaven that love allows us to exist within for such a temporary time. Another way is if you're lucky, you'll find some very clean, some kind of clean LSD or MDMA or some kind of nice psychedelic
Starting point is 00:07:51 and you'll do it in the right way in a responsible way, in a safe way with some intention behind it and that will point you in the direction of this sort of samsaric state that is accessible to all human beings. That can happen too. But, you know, there's some drawbacks to that. You can end up thinking that you're with a cool person and the next thing you know, you're living inside of a scene from Jacob's Ladder
Starting point is 00:08:19 as your friend starts having a neurotic episode where he thinks that you're his mother or something. That can happen too if you're not careful. And who knows? Maybe you got this stuff from the wrong person and you ended up taking some of that toad oil that makes your soul vanish for 4,000 years, subjective years. It'll only last like six minutes,
Starting point is 00:08:42 but you feel like you're gone for 4,000 years. You're falling into a swampy world of toads with spiral eyes that breathe fire that incinerates everyone you've ever loved over and over again. That can happen too. So you got to be careful with psychedelics. You can meditate, but you know, that's like trying to get a cat in a bathtub and it's great. Meditation is fantastic and that's super cheap.
Starting point is 00:09:19 Or you can buy a bike. Just buy a bicycle. Go buy a bicycle and a helmet and find some nice areas around your house to bike. And I'm telling you, you will quickly realize that you have been hoodwinked by yourself into thinking that it's better to drive. All my friends who got rabid about biking, they got calls from my friends and they would say the most horrifying thing I'd ever heard, which is that they would ride their bike to meet me at the restaurant or bar.
Starting point is 00:09:52 Their bike? Like what do you think you're in fucking Paris, Lance Armstrong? Who do you think you are? Tooling around on your bike with your well-developed calf muscles? You out of your mind getting your car? How about that with dead dinosaur juice and meet me at the bar and let's get fat together? Pedaling around on your damn bike like an eight-year-old after his big birthday party. You creepy, weird, healthy person actually experiencing wind blowing in your face
Starting point is 00:10:26 and connecting to humans and going down strange paths that you never would go down in your car. What do you do? Well, you're out of your mind. I thought my friends were sick or having some form of healthy midlife crisis. But now I see the truth. Bikes are the answer. It really does make you see out just how very satanic the roads are filled with cars. When you're pedaling down a bicycle path and you start imagining what the planet would be like
Starting point is 00:11:00 if there were more bicycle paths than roads, if for whatever reason we decided to go in that direction and bikes were the primary transportation device, we'd all be in great shape. We'd all be in great shape with sore asses because it hurts your ass. Do you get used to that? That's a question I have for the bicyclists out there. When you play guitar and you get calluses on your finger, am I going to get a nice thick callus on my ass? A biking callus? Does that happen or is my seat the wrong way?
Starting point is 00:11:41 That kind of hurts. Also, another question for you bicyclists and then we'll move on. Is it considered embarrassing if you have to stand up to pedal to get up a hill? Is that an embarrassment because I feel like when I'm doing that I'm somehow like, you're supposed to stay down in the seat and pedal your way up a hill, but I can't do it. Also, is it when you, for the lycra cyclists out there, when you zing by some hipster almost vomiting into the grass of the park in the morning, do you laugh at him? These are the questions I have for you.
Starting point is 00:12:21 Let me know. You can email me through the contact form located at DuncanTrussell.com. Holy Kamoli, we have got a seriously good podcast for you. But first, some quick business. We have a new sponsor each Hulu Plus. We did it. We got a big time badass sponsor. Hulu Plus is now sponsoring the DuncanTrussell Family Hour podcast.
Starting point is 00:13:00 Anybody that I plug on this show, it's a company that I use and I use Hulu Plus. Weirdly, the reason I use Hulu Plus is not for the greatest thing about Hulu Plus, which is that they have episodes of current TV shows. They have a ton of great TV shows, The Colbert Report, The Daily Show. They've got also the entire collection of certain TV shows like Doctor Who or Lost. So what's the best thing? Not life in life. Sometimes you're not always in the midst of some beautiful romantic love affair. Sometimes some weekends you find yourself stoned in your boxer shorts, bored.
Starting point is 00:13:51 And what do you want to do? What are you going to do in that situation? Sure, you could go jogging, you could go for a nice hike, or you can climb into bed with your dog, put on Hulu Plus, and binge watch every episode of Lost. And that's a lot better than doing what a lot of people do, which is taking their dog to the local bar or jerk off massage parlor and getting involved in some terrible activities. Getting drunk and frying their liver, or getting some kind of awful venereal disease from a sex slave. You don't want to do that. Hulu Plus will keep you from being possessed by Satan. How many people, when they're standing there in court, looking at the judge and watching his lips move as he tells them that they will spend the next 50 years of their life in prison?
Starting point is 00:14:46 How many of those people have responded by screaming to the sky, if only I had been binge watching Lost that weekend? How many? How many people feeling the burn of the lethal injection drug flowing through their veins, frying their livers, and slowly destroying them in Utah were thinking through the incredible list of TV shows that they could have watched that Hulu Plus provides? Instead of doing that massacre at the deli, they could have watched every single episode of Grey's Anatomy. Instead of tying their enemy to the back of their truck and dragging his twitching body down gravel roads for several hours, they could have enjoyed a season of Kitchen Nightmare, or Frasier, or my name is Earl. But that's not all that Hulu Plus has to offer. They also have the entire Criterion Collection, and that's what I like about it. If you want to impress your girlfriend or boyfriend and not just watch some, I don't know, basic movie, you can watch the Criterion Collection, which if you don't know what the Criterion Collection is, it's every great, great movie on Earth.
Starting point is 00:16:11 These are the movies that change your life. So instead of going and taking part in that massacre or going down to Tijuana for the weekend and waking up seven years later as the star of a donkey show, you can go sign up for Hulu Plus by going to HuluPlus.com. If you sign up, you will get two free weeks of Hulu Plus. That means for the next two weeks, you can binge watch TV shows, and if for some insane reason you realize that even though Hulu Plus is trying to save you for spending the rest of your life in solitary confinement or in Guantanamo Bay being electrocuted by secret service agents, you can cancel. But you're going to realize this is a great service and it's a great way for you to watch TV wherever you are. So because you can stream it, it's on nearly every device. As far as I'm aware, it's every device. I know it's on iPads, it's on Xbox One, PlayStation, tons of other devices, Apple TV, it's there for you.
Starting point is 00:17:26 Sign up for Hulu Plus. Not only that, but it'll help the podcast and it will help you avoid those waspy demons of lust that can come flying into your mind when you find yourself alone during the weekend and you want to distract yourself from that terrible cauldron of misery that exists in your heart. You can open your heart. Sure. You can get enlightenment. You can find Nirvana. Right around and experience the absolute joyful bliss of being a free bearded hipster rolling through Los Angeles, grinning ear to ear as you recognize how beautiful it is to be outside. But not everybody's ready for that.
Starting point is 00:18:06 You can instead of doing that or even in the midst of doing that, you could get Hulu Plus. Think about that. You could not only buy a bike and enjoy riding around in nature, but you could take Hulu Plus to a picnic. And if you have a device that streams the Internet, you can actually watch your favorite episode of Frasier while enjoying a nice glass of wine and some grapes with your beautiful, lovely mannequin that you carry with you wherever you go because you've given up on finding true love from human beings because they always fail you. HuluPlus.com Please sign up. You get two free weeks. Impress my new sweet darling sponsors.
Starting point is 00:18:52 Make them feel like they did the right thing by linking up with the Dugga Trussell Family Hour podcast. It's a great service. I love it. I use it. It's wonderful. HuluPlus.com What's better than binge watching shows? What's better than that moment when a show sinks its meat hook fingers deep into your brain and drags you through 20 hours of pure bliss?
Starting point is 00:19:22 It's a blast. I'm not saying do it all the time, but every once in a while it feels good to climb into that stinky cocoon of your bed and fade out from the apocalypse. Every once in a while, we don't have to always have our faces turned towards the maelstrom, do we? We don't always have to have our heads stuck in the fiery furnace of hell. Every once in a while, technology will allow us to pull out of that terrible, terrible-ness and binge-watch a show. Lost. Remember Lost? That show's freaky.
Starting point is 00:19:59 I think I'm going to revisit it. I actually hadn't taken a look at the list of shows that Hulu had until they sent me the list of shows that they have. And there's some on here that I definitely have been wanting to watch, but just haven't taken the time to deal with it. For example, Sleepy Hollow. I want to watch that. I don't know how that is. They have the current season of Sleepy Hollow, but they have full seasons of My Name Is Earl. Full seasons of Sabrina the Teenage Witch.
Starting point is 00:20:34 Full seasons of The Cosby Show. If you really want to go back and reminisce to those glorious high school days when you watch The Cosby Show, it's there. South Park. But here's the De Numa. We all know that there is nothing better than when you find yourself in a hotel room and what comes on TV. Law and Order Special Victims Unit. What's better than that? Well, now you can have every single episode of Law and Order Special Victims Unit just by signing up for Hulu's Plus.
Starting point is 00:21:11 That means that if you sign up by going to HuluPlus.com, you can spend the next two weeks watching Law and Order Special Victims Unit. And that's going to be the best two weeks of your life. I guarantee it. We're also brought to you by Amazon.com. There's no need to go outside anymore, friends. You don't need to do it. You should spend your time. If you're going outside, it should be on your bike, which you've ordered from the Amazon portal located at DuncanTrussell.com.
Starting point is 00:21:48 Amazon.com has literally every single item on Earth. You want to order the Holy Grail? It's there. You want to order a bag of purified child's blood to drink because they discovered that by drinking or injecting blood into your body, it can actually reverse the aging process? It's probably there. Go check. You want to have a big laugh?
Starting point is 00:22:09 Go to Amazon.com and look up Momosa Hostilus, which I'm not really sure what it's supposed to be used for, but apparently, Momosa Hostilus is one of the precursors for dimethyltryptamine. If you go look up Momosa Hostilus on Amazon.com, look at what people also bought. It's hilarious. Go through our portal located at DuncanTrussell.com the next time you're shopping on Amazon. Amazon will give us a very small percentage of whatever it is that you buy. It costs you nothing and it's a way for you to support this podcast. Go to DuncanTrussell.com and you will find an Amazon portal there.
Starting point is 00:22:45 Just click on that portal and buy yourself a bicycle. Also, sweet darlings, we have located at DuncanTrussell.com a lot of really cool t-shirts and posters and stickers. We're still waiting to get the new logo t-shirts. It's taken a couple of months because in Thailand, there's some kind of holiday happening, which is where our shirts come from. But we've got new shirts coming from Ron Regi. The design is incredible. I don't know when you're listening to this podcast, but go back and check the shop.
Starting point is 00:23:18 Keep checking the shop. Eventually, we'll get the logo t-shirts replaced. I'm sorry that I sold out on those things. I need to come up with a better system for keeping merchandise in stock there because it does sell out. Go visit the shop. Buy some stickers. Put them on your local churches or statues or bus station benches or on your children. Don't put them on your children.
Starting point is 00:23:42 I don't know. They might be allergic, but put them near your children. That would be very sweet. A big thanks to those of you who have been donating to the podcast. That never fails to blow my mind when people do that. Much thanks to you. Oh, shit. Finally, May 24th, not May 27th, May 24th at the Hollywood Improv,
Starting point is 00:24:07 we will be recording the first live Duncan Tressel, at least the first one we did in Los Angeles, Duncan Tressel Family Hour podcast. The guests are going to be Emil, who's been on this, you guys know who Emil is. He's been on the show like three times. Also, Dan Harmon is going to be on the show. Get your tickets now. It's probably going to sell out. You can get the tickets by going to DuncanTressel.com.
Starting point is 00:24:33 Woo! We did it. Okay. This is a very special podcast. Our guest is Lizzie Velazquez. Lizzie, you probably already know who she is because the odds are that you've seen her amazing TED Talk. But if you don't know who she is, she is one of three people on planet Earth with a rare syndrome that makes it so that she, no matter how much she eats, she can't gain weight. She's 25 years old, weighs 58 pounds and had some turbulent times growing up because she was bullied a bunch in school and someone actually made a video calling her the ugliest woman in the world.
Starting point is 00:25:23 She didn't let any of this crap stop her. She's a motivational speaker. She's a happy, radiant person. And right now, she's got a Kickstarter going to help raise some money to make a documentary about her life. If you want to find out more about that, you can visit her website at thelizzieproject.com. So, everyone, please open up your heart chakras. Send pure love in the direction of this incredible, saint-like being who has managed to not only overcome what would have probably sent a lot of people down a dark road, but has transformed her life challenge into something incredibly beautiful.
Starting point is 00:26:06 And she really does have what I would consider to be, if everybody adopted her method of dealing with bullies, because what's a bully really? I mean, bully is a new word for a very old thing. This is somebody who's trying to overpower you, subdue you, destroy you, diminish you. And usually our reaction to bullies is to fight back. We want to get revenge. But Lizzie has got a way of handling bullies that is so beautiful and simple that if we all adopted it, I think we'd be living on some kind of paradise planet. And the angels would finally come down from the moon where they've been hiding for all these millions of years and give us all sweet, wet kisses right on our greasy old lips. So now, please, everybody, open your heart chakras and send as much love as you possibly can in the direction of the wonderful Lizzie Velazquez.
Starting point is 00:27:14 Welcome, welcome on you, that you are with us. Shake hands, no need to be blue. Welcome to you. Wow, wow, wow. It's been so contrasting. It's so cool that you're here. I watched your Ted talk and like everyone else who saw that, I was immensely inspired. And then Tamar called and said that you would come by and do the podcast.
Starting point is 00:27:44 So thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. How's LA treating you? It always treats me very well. The comparison from Texas weather to LA weather is always very welcome in my book. So it's good. Where in Texas?
Starting point is 00:27:58 Austin. Oh, Austin is the best. I know it's the best, but it's really hot. And you can have every season in one week. Yeah, it's true. And it's so, yeah, it's blazingly hot there and it's just weird how Austin is this liberal bastion in the middle of this state that is generally like pretty Republican. I can't picture myself living anywhere else, but Austin.
Starting point is 00:28:26 Yeah, it's amazing. You should have, how often do you come to LA? Kind of often. Not like not that much, but pretty often. And were you doing these speaking tours prior to or to the TED Talk? Oh, yeah, I've been speaking since I was in high school, actually. It's been a long, long ride. I think I'm going on eight years.
Starting point is 00:28:47 Wow. Well, let's, before we get into that, can you tell me a little bit about sort of how you opened up the TED Talk so people who are listening can become familiar with your story? Oh, yeah. I was actually born with the very rare syndrome that only two other people in the world, including myself, that we know of have. It doesn't have a name. We have no clue how I got it, why I got it.
Starting point is 00:29:11 But basically what it causes is that I can't gain weight. That's the only really cause or thing that it affects. I can pretty much eat whatever I want whenever I want and not continue to gain weight. I've never weighed over 60 pounds my whole life and just turned 25 years old. Wow. If you look at it one way, it can be the best diet in the world. Yeah. But on the other hand.
Starting point is 00:29:35 Yeah. What is the other hand? Tell me about the other hand. The other hand is the girliest problem to have. Is that it can be hard to find clothes? But other than that, I mean, I've said it before, but it is kind of as great as it sounds. Yeah. That is an incredible, that is an incredible thing.
Starting point is 00:29:52 But there is a price and the price, you talk about the price on your TED Talk, which is that you've got to deal with people judging you based on the way you look. That's one of the difficulties that you experienced when you were in elementary school. Yeah, definitely. One of the biggest things that I had to deal with was kind of the downside of looking different. But at the same time, I realized it's one of those issues that even if you don't have this syndrome, it's something that kind of comes with life of having to deal with people who bully you or if you look different or if you feel different, anything like that.
Starting point is 00:30:24 You still kind of have to deal with that negative part. So I don't think that I'm the only one or upset that I had to deal with it because it's one of those things where I feel like everyone has dealt with it at some point in their life. You're using the past tense. I deal with it every day. Oh, I still do. I still deal with it every day, no matter because of the fact that I'm human and I have this syndrome.
Starting point is 00:30:48 Every day I have good days. I have bad days. And it's kind of one of those things where you have to make the choice. It's going to be with you all the time. So you have to decide, am I going to let this affect my day or am I not? Right. It's a decision. It's a decision.
Starting point is 00:31:03 It's definitely a decision. But how do you do that? Like let's say you're, you know, I think every human being that I know is fixated on the way their body looks. They're generally in some way or another obsessed with some flaw that they see in themselves. No matter how minor the thing is, it drives them insane. I have a friend, comedian Brody Stevens, he has a, you can't even see it. There's some kind of like scar that he thinks he has on his face.
Starting point is 00:31:34 You can't even see it. It was like, he went in to get some kind of, I don't know what he's getting. He's getting something taken out. I don't know exactly what it is. If he hears that, he might get mad at me. I don't remember the exact thing, but sometimes it'll come up to me like, can you see my scar? Do you see it? It's like, I don't see it, man.
Starting point is 00:31:49 But it grabs his attention. Or like when you get a shitty haircut, you know, one shitty haircut can send me into a depressed spiral for weeks. It's all perspective. It's perspective. It's one of those things where if you don't know it's there, you'll never pay attention to it. But if you know that it's there, of course you're going to feel self-conscious about it.
Starting point is 00:32:09 And someone can think you're being ridiculous, but you know it's there. So it's going to bother you until you have to ask other people. Right. So you're saying that we could just make a choice, that I can wake up in the morning, look at my rapidly receding hairline, consider what I'm going to look like when I'm bald, just look at myself in the mirror and just make a decision and say, you know what? I'm fine. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:32:32 Yeah. It sounds simple yet complicated, but it really is kind of that easy. That easy. Wow. That's an incredible thing. You know, I kind of believe you too. I do kind of. Do you?
Starting point is 00:32:45 I think people need to hear about that a lot because it seems like one of the great delusions facing people these days is that we think that we're our body. Yeah. Do you think you're your body? No. What do you think you are? I think I'm my personality. I think I'm my values.
Starting point is 00:33:07 I think I'm my, I don't know what the word is, but not my body. I think I'm just inside my body. My body is what kind of carries me every single day. But my mind and my spirit is what makes me me. Are you a, are you religious? Yes. What religion? In Catholic.
Starting point is 00:33:29 So that must have been a huge help for you. Yeah. Yeah. One of the three things that I kind of credit my life to is my faith, my family, my friends. Can you talk a little bit about your faith? Like, just describe that. What's your spiritual practice? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:33:44 I mean, I think to kind of just sum it up, I was born and raised in the Catholic church and born with knowing that God kind of made me the way I am for a reason. And growing up in the church and having my church family and really kind of having a strong faith based foundation at a young age and having it carry me throughout my life and seeing it without my family. It's one of those things that it's all I knew growing up and it's been a roller coaster. I've been on a very crazy faith journey that has gone from highs and lows and it's something I'll be walking on the rest of my life.
Starting point is 00:34:18 But it, I don't know, I'm just, I've always been very rooted in my faith. Since you, since you, when you say lows, what do you mean? Lows of the times where it kind of coincides of age because I go through the middle school phase of not only having the awkward 13 year old time, but also kind of thinking, who do I blame? Who made me look like this? Because when you're 13, 14 years old, you look awkward. You're figuring out who am I and all this kind of thing.
Starting point is 00:34:49 Now throw on a syndrome that nobody knows what it is on top of being a girl and hormonal. It's like, it was a mess. It was a mess of things. And so I didn't know who to blame. Couldn't blame my parents. Couldn't blame my teachers. Couldn't blame my siblings. Who did I blame?
Starting point is 00:35:05 God. And I kind of looked at it as my syndrome was like a big curse and I hated it because at the time I was only focused on the negative. And so that's when it kind of affected my faith journey. And as I got older, I started realizing that that giant curse sign turned into a giant sign that said blessing. Wow. Yeah, that's really cool.
Starting point is 00:35:28 There's a term in Buddha. Have you ever heard that there's a term in Buddhism? They call it poison into medicine. And also an alchemy, you know, and there's the idea of transforming lead into gold. And it's all kind of exactly what you're saying, which is this, it seems like a lot of the things people were running from are the greatest gifts that they have strangely. Yeah. Yeah, definitely.
Starting point is 00:35:53 I think it's also, I think it's a process that can be very worthy to people because you have, if you look at it like a giant box and in this box, you have all these bad things, negative things, things you don't like about yourself, things that you're complaining about. But as you get older and you kind of take each one out at a time and kind of mold it and shape it into something that's positive by the time you go down a few months, a few weeks, a few years, you'll have a giant box of gifts and things that like you love and you cherish and you take them along with you and having, being able to look back at the journey that you had at the struggle that you had at the transformation, the time and
Starting point is 00:36:39 effort you put into making that transition makes those gifts a hundred times better. Wow. That is so cool. And it's what this is not common knowledge. What you're talking about is I don't think it really is common knowledge. People don't realize that people think I'm going to change. They think I will change what's wrong with me into the way I think it should be. They don't think I'm going to surrender to the way that I am.
Starting point is 00:37:04 They think, if only I can make this adjustment, six pack, if I get a six pack, wow, everything gets better. The moment I have a washboard abs, I am in heaven. And then if they get it, then nothing changes. They're the exact same way. Yeah. I feel like if you look at the bigger picture and you look at it and you think, okay, this is what I want.
Starting point is 00:37:25 I want the six pack abs. Now tell yourself, okay, I'm going to get it. Now what? What is that going to lead to? People who are attracted to me, but will I like them? Are they only liking me for my six pack? There's just so much to look at and consider that I think people are just so focused on the instant gratification.
Starting point is 00:37:44 And it's not just what you look like. I mean, look at social media. People post things because they're ready. They're waiting for the likes. They're waiting for the good comments. They're waiting for the shares. They're waiting for the viral video. Not gratification, but what does that lead to?
Starting point is 00:37:57 And I think one of the biggest things that I really want to focus on is being able to the fact that I was given this opportunity to have a viral, whatever, and I'm have this platform now. Now I'm ready to say, what's next? What can I take this into? I feel like I am in this little tiny car and I'm getting people's attention and now I want to say, come in my car and come with me so I can show you the next big thing that there is out there.
Starting point is 00:38:26 What is that? This is my thing. I've had such a passion and drive to kind of help people because I see the platform that I have. I see this once in a lifetime opportunity to be able to be this little person that's on this huge stage that I can say, okay, let's make a difference together. Come in with me and let's take this journey together. I don't take the opportunities that I have very lightly at all.
Starting point is 00:38:56 I take the fact that I was born one of three people. I take the fact that I look different. I take all of these things and instead of just helping me, I want to take them to help the world. I want to take them to say, you know what, I'm different, I've had a hard life. So have you. Now let's make this thing better together and I really kind of want to make the online community a more positive place.
Starting point is 00:39:18 I mean, I've had a lot of struggles and trials with the internet and I think again with social media being so big right now, a lot of people are kind of losing faith in it and I don't want to lose faith in social media because I've been able to connect with people around the world through social media and instead of it going down a bad path, let's change it and make an effort together to make it a more positive place and turn it around. How do you do that? How do you do that? How do you control these?
Starting point is 00:39:47 How do you stop the trolls? There's no way that. There's no way. There's no, it's not. And turn on the lights, which problem solver. It's a lot of steps that are going to be involved and do I know what those steps are? No. Nobody does because if we did, somebody would have done it already.
Starting point is 00:40:04 But I'm excited to take that ride and see what they are. Let's figure them out together. It is an incredible thing because what you're talking about when you're talking about social media is you're talking about one of the many new environments that technology is offering humanity and one of technology's functions, maybe one of its primary functions is it's an amplifier. It amplifies everything, it amplifies, it digitizes and then amplifies. That's what it does.
Starting point is 00:40:34 Right now, we're digitizing this conversation and then we're going to amplify it. It's going to get shot out into, who knows, 80,000, 160,000 years, but 80,000 people depending on how many years they have. But it's going to get sprayed out there. It's amplifying this conversation and it's a very potent and powerful tool. And I think that what you're talking about is one thing is to understand when somebody goes online with the intention of causing pain to other people, they clearly don't quite understand what they're doing.
Starting point is 00:41:16 They think they don't realize that when you send these, in the 1800s, you were very limited if you wanted to hurt people's feelings. You had the people in your village or you could, I don't know, the amount of time it would take to insult somebody in China would be a long time. If you wanted to say something shitty to somebody in China, we're talking, how long would that take? A year? You would have to scrape it on a rock.
Starting point is 00:41:46 You would have to scrape it on a rock, you got to get the rock to China. You got to get it on a boat, it might get attacked by pirates. But now, if you want to hurt someone's feelings in China, you can do it in a millisecond. If you do it in the right way, then you might actually get 20,000, 30,000 or 40,000 other people to gang up on this person in China that you've decided to attack. You can do it in an instant. Every human today, one thing that I think is happening is that people don't recognize their value.
Starting point is 00:42:15 They don't recognize how potent a human being existing today with this new technology rising around them is. The power of a keyboard, dangerous thing, but yet a very powerful thing. Very powerful. Now, I'm sure that you've had some pretty interesting encounters in social media with the probably you've experienced. I bet you've come in contact with the king of assholes. I bet you've come in contact with some real beasts out there.
Starting point is 00:42:44 Let me just say my favorite insults are the ones with the most spelling errors. I mean, honestly, if you're going to take the time to tell me something mean, let's use spell check before you do it. No shit. Or just not say it at all. Well, it's weird, isn't it? Because it's almost like their ugliness comes out in the grammar. It's almost like what's so awful about them is actually manifesting in the way that they're
Starting point is 00:43:10 right. Well, it's also, come on, let's face it, we're dealing with 12 year olds here, right? That's my point. I'm really happy that you said that. One of the things that I've realized is that on my social media, there can be a million people who are supporting me and so nice. And then there's that one person that kind of says something awful. And all of a sudden, all of those people who are so nice and supportive and we like you
Starting point is 00:43:36 what you do because you don't bully other people in a millisecond, they're turning around and they're being the bully to the bully. They're being, they're hating on that person. And you click on their profile and it's a 12 year old kid who I feel so, at this point, I don't let the negative comments affect me. I have the opposite reaction now. If I see it, I get sad, not for me, but for them because I don't know what their story is.
Starting point is 00:44:04 I can't get upset because the people who hurt other people are the people that are hurting the most. And I feel like you just have to, I want to hug them and honestly, like there's rare occasions where I can see things that people say really bad stuff to me and I'll reply to them and I'll say, you know what, I'm sorry, you feel that way, but I, I just want you to know that you're appreciated and you have a purpose in this life. And that's it. And just save it because maybe they're not being told that.
Starting point is 00:44:29 Maybe that's why they're hating on other people who are succeeding or doing well. So why not be the Isle of Branch that's kind of helping them out? You're the cure. What you're talking about is the cure. That is the answer. That's the only thing you could do. There's not, there won't be a cure. There'll be a remedy.
Starting point is 00:44:45 I'll be the remedy. There's no cure, huh? No. Well, because the people are numb. Yeah. I think I, there's never going to be a fixed online bullying. There's never going to be a fixed two judgment, but why not help it out to kind of steer it in a better way?
Starting point is 00:45:02 Okay. Let's, let's talk about the reality of this that you're talking about here, which is that some people out. You are, you are such a great example for me and for so many people. Thank you. Because you're not letting, it's anything that I'm about to say to try to rationalize being an asshole to someone online who I think is an asshole. It won't work.
Starting point is 00:45:30 It won't work because you've made a decision that you're not going to do that. And what do I have to be, I mean, you know, let me give you an example. Okay. So my, my, my mother passed away last year and she has a memorial webpage. Okay. Somebody posted on my mom's memorial webpage, you Jew cunt, I hope you burn in hell. Now, I know this is a podcast and people can't see my reaction, but my mouth is open right
Starting point is 00:45:58 now. I can't believe that. Well, you know, it was, okay, for one, um, my mom wasn't Jewish. Uh, I mean, I have to say, I'm not, I'm just, I'm not surprised as sad as that is. I'm not surprised that they would just make up some random thing. Well, it was, it's, it's, so it's, you know, let me give you another example. This is some weird thing I heard once from someone.
Starting point is 00:46:24 I think she was schizophrenic, but it really, it really like sometimes schizophrenics accidentally say the truth or they tune into something bigger and then she said to me once, there are people who dump gasoline in our rivers just to kill the rivers. There's people who pollute the world not by accident, but because they want to kill the earth. And I remember hearing that and it really gave me goosebumps because I thought, Oh God, what if that's true? What if there's an extreme, extreme version of this stuff that usually is accidental selfishness
Starting point is 00:47:00 that is an accidental selfishness, that there are people in the world who want to inject venom and poison into life? How do we forgive them? How do we deal with them? What do you do about that? That attitude? Yeah. It's, it's a choice.
Starting point is 00:47:15 That's the only worth that keeps coming to mind hearing that. That's all you can do is as long as you do it for yourself, somehow it's going to come out down the line and other people are going to see that you don't have to do this grand gesture or commenting them to start with yourself and then it'll kind of blossom out organically. What does that mean? Organically? It's very L.A. word. Yeah, they laughed when Lizzie's here with her friends and I, we have gluten free chocolate
Starting point is 00:47:44 chip cookies. I had one a few weeks, the last time I was here actually, I went to my first organic restaurant. Wow. It was an experience. Did you like it? It was good. I did.
Starting point is 00:47:55 I had pancakes. Oh. Gluten free? No, no, they were. How are you still alive? They were organic, but I had my first, the waitress was like, oh, let me get you a cookie. And I was like, what's the healthy part? You're not going to trick me.
Starting point is 00:48:08 And she said it was gluten free, but I ate it. It was good. It was good. It just tastes like there was something missing. Yeah. Well, I guess when you're able to eat anything that you want all day long, health food doesn't really seem as important anymore. Well, breaking news on your podcast right now.
Starting point is 00:48:27 I'm on a healthy kick because I'm 25 and I need to stop eating like a five year old. Really. I still order off the kids menu. I'm not going to lie. I mean, good for my wallet, not good for my health. It makes you feel better to eat healthy food. Yesterday was my first full day of a healthy misc, air quotes, but I felt good. We flew in yesterday, yesterday morning.
Starting point is 00:48:55 I was up at one to sleep, went to bed, two, 30, woke up four a.m. had a full day and I ate like really actually good stuff and not junk. Only had half a cup of coffee and my body just felt better. Is that incredible when you realize how much food and I slept really well? Who knew? Power of eating and sleeping. Who would have thought? Who would have thought?
Starting point is 00:49:18 Who would have thought the food you put in your body has any effect on what you feel? In my mind, I think I just always have the idea that if I could, I can eat whatever I want, so I'm going to do it. But the reality of the situation is you kind of just have to take care of your body and feed it the right things. Well, that's the thing because that's the weird paradox, isn't it? Here we are in a world where there's a sense, a feeling that you aren't your body. There's a feeling that we're so much more than our body and every religion points in
Starting point is 00:49:56 this direction. They all have different ways of saying it, but they all point in the direction that what you are is not this temporary shell that you happen to be riding around in, yet you still have to take care of this thing. You need the shell that you have to take with you. You need the shell. You need the shell. And it's easy to forget.
Starting point is 00:50:14 It doesn't matter what the shell looks like, doesn't matter how big or small it is as long as it's healthy. It'll take you from point A to point B, hopefully. What's point B? You decide what point B is. There's also point C, D, E. There's so many different points. Nothing stops. There's just so many things out there.
Starting point is 00:50:37 So as a Christian, you believe that there is a Creator and the Creator put you on this planet for a reason. You might me believe that, too. By the way, that Creator is a wonderful being in a certain way, but simultaneously there's this sense of like, why is it that the great teachers of the world are the ones who have to endure so much? Why do you guys always have to endure so much shit? What is that?
Starting point is 00:51:11 Who is this Creator? Isn't there a way to not have that aspect of the thorn that brings you wisdom? Why do you guys always have to deal with this? Ram Dass, my teacher, he had a stroke. He's having to deal with that. So many other great teachers out there having to deal with these problems. What is that? You don't have...
Starting point is 00:51:35 Wait. So are you saying like, look, why do people who are kind of being the voice of change, why do they have to go through struggles? So much struggle. You don't have to... That's the thing, though. You don't have to be the voice of change to make the difference. You don't have to have struggles to make a difference.
Starting point is 00:51:57 You can lead a great life and make a difference. You can lead a great life and not be a public figure. You can be an everyday person and make, like, okay, pretend I never had the syndrome, pretend I never was bullied. If I still had a little tiny passion to help someone or help make a difference when there's always issues out there, always. If I wanted to go out there and change it, I don't have to have struggles. You can do it.
Starting point is 00:52:25 The only reason that we know that people who are kind of being the voice of change has struggles is because you're the voice of change and you're talking about it. If you didn't talk about it and make it put it out there, how would you know if we went through something or not? You know what I'm saying? So I don't know. Like, you don't have to have... I don't know.
Starting point is 00:52:46 You're saying there's not a... The price of admission, is it necessarily a rare syndrome or some kind of... Right. Or struggles or not having money. Like, no, no, no. You can't. Yeah, right. Because somebody listening could think, well, I don't really need to do anything because
Starting point is 00:52:59 I'm basically okay. So what am I going to do? Listen, I started doing all of this with Google. I Googled how to be a motivational speaker and I taught myself how to do everything and I did all of that stuff. I wasn't this girl with a ton of money who's doing all these things and now I'm here. No, you can start from a little tiny foundation and build it to kind of like a mansion of things.
Starting point is 00:53:25 Wow. Yeah, that is the big message that seems to be going out to so many different people and I want to go back to what you said. You said work on yourself. Start there. If you work on yourself then everything else will emerge from that. Can you tell me, what do you mean work on yourself? What does that involve?
Starting point is 00:53:45 Figure out who you are. Put the pieces of your own puzzle together because we're all kind of made up of a million different things. What are those things that are different to every single person? To me, my puzzle pieces were my personality, the things that I value, the things that I believe, the goals that I have, the things I like to do when I'm not working. Putting those all together and kind of really deciding, okay, you have two choices. You can decide to put your puzzle together or you can decide to just kind of leave it
Starting point is 00:54:14 at a big mess and not do anything with it. Or you can do the whole putting the corners together, the outside, the main things, working in with the details and figuring it all out. Once you have it, it's like, wow, I put this puzzle together. Let's do another one. What is this puzzle going to be? You can be my next puzzle. This project will be my next puzzle and then just keep going.
Starting point is 00:54:37 Wow. So you're saying start with the first puzzle to fix is the... Yourself. Yeah, the weird puzzle that is yourself, all the various strange, misshapen bits. It's one of those things where you can't love someone else until you love yourself. That's like that, kind of. How do you do it? How do you love yourself?
Starting point is 00:54:59 You know, I was laying in bed last night, God, really mad. What was I mad about? I don't remember what it was. I was mad. I was thinking like, I was comparing myself to somebody. There you go. You just said my answer to your question. Which is?
Starting point is 00:55:17 You asked how do you do that? Don't compare yourself. First rule of thumb. Don't compare yourself to other people. That's what my answer is going to be. That is the, isn't that the, that is the fangs of the adder, isn't it? Comparing yourself to other people. I had to train myself to stop because I, it was, it was instant.
Starting point is 00:55:37 If I would see someone, I would think, oh, I, I wish my jeans fit like hers, or I wish I looked like that, or am I doing this? They're probably doing it better than me. Yes. What does I do? Instant negativity, instant doubt, instant, oh, they're better, whatever. Because you've got like a really self-destructive shitty friend, and then you can think about them and feel better about yourself in the most awful way.
Starting point is 00:55:58 No. No. You can't do that. Look at that loser. No. He's going to die in a couple of weeks probably. No, that's awful. I know.
Starting point is 00:56:06 I'm kidding. That's awful. No. No. Both sides, no matter what. All I'm saying is either you're going to feel bad about yourself, or you're going to feel the worst kind of happiness, which is the happiness that originates from the fact that your friend is dissolving it.
Starting point is 00:56:21 That's not true happiness then. That is not true happiness. It's not real. It's artificial. See, what you're, here's what I love about what you're saying, it's because, I mean, I don't know for sure. I don't know. Have you come in contact with any like Eastern philosophies, any, because what you're talking
Starting point is 00:56:36 about is exactly what a lot of things, a lot of various paths that I'm interested in talk about. And what they say, what Ram Dass says, what many Buddhist teachers say is all you can do is work on yourself. You can't change anybody else. You can't fix anyone else around you. And they say the very first thing to do is to love yourself. If you can love yourself and you can love every single aspect of yourself, then you'll
Starting point is 00:57:04 be able to love all the people around you. And just that is going to lead to something great, but you got to figure out how to love yourself first. And how to break those barriers of judgment of other people. Because you have to accept the fact that, okay, I love myself. I love everything that I'm doing. I feel confident in myself. I'm going to go out there and make a difference.
Starting point is 00:57:25 But at the same time, you're going to go out there and you're going to meet a ton of different people. Take religion, for example, to each their own. I don't go out and tell people my religion because I'm trying to convince them to be Catholic. I go out there to tell them, this is what I believe. Do you want to tell me what you believe? And I think that's awesome.
Starting point is 00:57:40 I want to learn from other things. I don't want to go out there and say, if you don't believe what I believe, then I don't like you. I'm going to cut you off. I'm not going to believe anything that you say. You have to be open and committed to kind of just breaking down those walls. Whole world out there, my friend. Whole world out there.
Starting point is 00:58:02 I want to get back to the idea of loving yourself. Can you define love for me? No. She's the queen of the greatest. Can you? No. No. But I can tell you this.
Starting point is 00:58:14 I can tell you that every single great teacher that I've had on here, the way I always know that they're ... The way I always know someone's tuned in generally is when I ask them a question like that, that they will proudly say, I don't know. I don't know. Whereas my tendency, because I'm not so tuned in as you are, if someone asks me a question, I'm getting better. But if someone asks me whatever the question is, it doesn't have to be some metaphysical thing.
Starting point is 00:58:40 It could be about quantum physics, and my mouth will start yapping some terrible explanation like I understand it at all. I mean mid-sentence, if someone asks me quantum physics, I'm like, I don't know. I don't know what you're talking about. That's a good one. So right away I'd be like, no, I wouldn't even take the pause of let me try to think of an answer. So you don't know what love is?
Starting point is 00:58:57 No. What a paradox then, because how do you love yourself if you don't know what love is? Okay. This is what I think. I think that every single person has a different definition for everything. I can't tell you what I define love. I can tell you what I define love as, but that's not like, if I looked in the dictionary and looked in love, I don't think that that's just what it is.
Starting point is 00:59:24 Does that make sense? Yes. I can tell you what I believe it is, but I can't tell you that I know what it is. I think there's a big difference between that. There's a lot of problematic words like God, love. There's so many problematic words out there because we're dealing with these little cubby holes that you're trying to shove the entire universe into. So it is a bit of a predicament, but I think there is something to be said for trying to
Starting point is 00:59:48 define what love means, even if it's just for you. Because when I think of loving myself, what do you do with the anxiety? What do you do with the sense of guilt? What do you do with the feeling that you haven't done enough or you're not doing enough? What do you do with the feelings of those feelings, the lack of contentment, the loneliness? What do you do with all that stuff? How do you love that? I think it kind of goes along to what you just said, how you kind of put it into the
Starting point is 01:00:16 little cubby hole or something. I don't like there to be limits. I don't like the fact that somebody could say, this is what love is. Because again, there's a whole big world out there with so many different things in it. So why wouldn't you want to include it? There's things that you don't know about that could be included. It could be the perfect fit for the love box. But because you don't know it, you're going to leave it out there.
Starting point is 01:00:42 So why keep the limitations of a box when you can just take it out and continue to put things in it? Who doesn't want to have more love? No matter what it is. Right. I mean, as you get older, you explore that box and you see what's in it and that's the exciting thing. Change is constant.
Starting point is 01:01:04 Everything's going to keep changing in the love box. But what about the happiness box? What about what's successful? There's so many different things that if you don't have these set definitions, if you don't have these set limitations, can you imagine? It's the best. It's the best. It's like digging and it's like getting Happy Meal toys for your whole life.
Starting point is 01:01:27 Like isn't that exciting? Yes. What is it going to be this time? Right. So it's why limit yourself to, why limit yourself, why are you imposing these limitations on yourself? Don't let the language chain you. It's a tool to free you.
Starting point is 01:01:47 Right, definitely. Pointing at the moon. Fingers pointing at the moon. You know about that? No. So it's like these teachings, the things that you're talking about, they're fingers, whatever it is, whether it's Islam, Catholicism, Buddhism, Sufism, any of the isms, they say that they're like fingers pointing at the moon.
Starting point is 01:02:10 And if you stare at the fingers, you're missing the whole point. If you get caught up in the symbols of this. I love that. Isn't that cool? Yeah. Yeah, it's really beautiful. And that's what you're talking about. But still, I mean, I don't expect, I don't expect you to give me the answer to all my
Starting point is 01:02:26 problems today. I was kind of hoping you were, but... I don't have answers. I have lots of questions and lots of curiosity. What are your questions? Give me a good question. I mean, I don't have like a specific question, but general questions like what is love? What is happiness?
Starting point is 01:02:42 Everybody has those questions. Nobody has the answer. Let's explore what the answer could be. Well I think that there's something to be said for exploring and, you know, this is my, it's just so funny. I know, if you go back and listen to some of the podcasts that I've done with some of the, I mean, I've done podcasts with comedians and I've done podcasts with a lot of different people, but sometimes I get to do podcasts with great teachers.
Starting point is 01:03:13 And I inevitably end up in this exact place with them where they won't give me an answer. Because they don't have them. They're in denial. They don't have, nobody has the answers without responses, not the answers. Right. And that's so frustrating isn't it? Hello and answer is a set thing and answer has limitations because you're saying this is what it is.
Starting point is 01:03:33 Hello limitations. Right. No limitations. No limitations. Having a response, putting them all together. And you, so many people, they break out. Let's say their face breaks out one morning and they act like they're in the Holocaust or something.
Starting point is 01:03:51 Like it's, that's, that's, you know what I mean? It's such an extreme comparison. It's true though. I've seen it happen. I believe you. I believe you. So many of us, and I do it too. So many of us have something like, I have things too.
Starting point is 01:04:04 You have things too, but you don't let them stop you. You're not a limited person. You're someone who has overcome or is in the process of consistently overcoming limitations. Right. And not only are you doing that, but simultaneous, simultaneously you are broadcasting this out into the world to let people know that they don't have to be limited either. You're compelled to teach. Yes.
Starting point is 01:04:31 Can you talk a little bit about bullying? I know, I know that that's, let's see. Oh, we've got some time. Can you talk a little bit about bullying? And I know that you have a movie coming out. I do. I do. Let's talk about that a little bit.
Starting point is 01:04:41 Yes. The, I'm going to be doing my first documentary, which I'm super excited about. I will be playing myself. Of course. I know. Um, but what I really want to focus on is kind of my story, who I am for those who don't know who I am. And I've thought about initially what are people going to want to see it because I've
Starting point is 01:05:02 done so much online. Do they know my whole story? No. I want people to see more than the 15 minute said talk that they see that was out there. I want them to get to know me as a person and what are the building blocks to me? What are the tools behind how I've gotten to this point? And again, I use the kind of car analogy. I want to show people this is how I came out of bullying.
Starting point is 01:05:25 This is the possibility. This is how it can happen. Now let's explore that to see what that can lead to because people can say, Oh, Lizzie, it's so good for you. You're deciding to be positive. All right. That's it. What are you going to do with it?
Starting point is 01:05:38 What I want to do is make the internet social media more positive. I don't want to say safer because it's the internet. Come on. Yeah, forget it. More positive because again, social media has a good and bad side. Let's kind of find the middle ground and make it a little bit better. Let's help. Let's find a way to stop bullying the bully.
Starting point is 01:06:01 Let's find a way to when somebody, when all the nice people turn into the bully, let's find a way to turn that around without causing a huge scene on the comments of Instagram. Bullying the bully. There's a story. There's a great story. Tell me if you've heard it. This is a, I think it happened in Japan. There's, I wish I could remember his name.
Starting point is 01:06:24 This isn't one of Ram Dass' books. He's an Akito teacher. No, he's studying Akito. He's studying a martial art and he'd been studying it there for years. The teacher told him, you know that you've learned this when you are never getting a fight again and you've truly learned what martial arts are. He's on a train and the train stops and this drunk guy comes in, drunk and big and loud and he shoves a woman.
Starting point is 01:06:57 He just shoves this woman. He's belligerent and loud. This guy's sitting there like, all right, I get to use martial arts today. I've all these years of training. I get to finally, I have a justified reason for violence. Here is just, if there ever was justified violence, it's to stop a man who just shoved a woman, a drunk man who shoved a woman on train. So he stands up and the drunk guy sees him becoming aggressive and there's about to be
Starting point is 01:07:27 a fight when an old man sitting there looks up at the guy and says, what have you been drinking? And the guy's like, socky. And the old man pats his chair for the guy to sit down next to him and he looks at the guy and says, I love socky. He says, the old man says, I love socky. You know, me and my wife, when the sun's going down, we sit and drink socky and the drunk guy starts crying and he says, my wife died two months ago.
Starting point is 01:07:59 And then within a few moments, the drunk guy's head is in the old man's lap and the old man is just patting his head saying, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. And the guy watching this realized I just saw a true martial artist. I just witnessed. Oh, I got the chills. Isn't that cool? Wow. Isn't that cool?
Starting point is 01:08:21 Yeah. The power of words. Yeah. The power of words. I've always said words can hurt more than actions or in this case, work more than actions. Yeah. And that's alchemy and there's lead into gold and there's this kind of magical transformation that's happened there and it goes against everything we've learned in the world.
Starting point is 01:08:39 We've got Putin going into the Ukraine and we've got troops all over the place running training drills and planes flying over and it's the same old story that it doesn't work. What you're talking about is not just fixing the problem of bullying or online bullying. You're talking about fixing a problem that's been haunting this planet since humans have been wandering around and it doesn't work. Getting back in the normal way doesn't work. Yep. And how did I learn that?
Starting point is 01:09:11 By figuring it out first, myself. When I found that video, I instantly wanted to bully the bully. I instantly wanted to sit there and comment back and... So justified. Yeah. Yeah. Just tell it. I didn't know what I was going to say, but I realized like I'm just going to be...
Starting point is 01:09:25 And that video, I'm sorry. Can you describe that video because we haven't talked about it? Yeah. I'm sorry. It was a video called the world's ugliest woman video of myself, eight seconds long, no sound. Four million views when I found it. Thousands of comments ranging from just putting it under your head, killing yourself, why
Starting point is 01:09:41 didn't your parents just support you if you're going to be so ugly, on and on and on, all the things, awful, awful, awful. Not one positive comment, not one. How do I know? I sat there and I read them all, cried my eyes out, quickly went from sadness to anger to where I wanted to bully the bully. Yes. To then the kind of instant that was going to be the catalyst to changing my entire life
Starting point is 01:10:03 without knowing it. How did I know when I found that video wanting to listen to a Taylor Swift song that I would find the one thing that kind of would change literally the rest of my life? And I was, where were they going with this? Well, we're talking, we're talking about this, the reaction to the video. Oh yeah. Yeah. I wanted, I wanted to bully the bully back and again, it wasn't just my decision.
Starting point is 01:10:31 It was the support system that I had around me. My parents, I had to tell them about it, didn't want to tell them because I was more hurt for them than I was for myself because I knew they were going to feel helpless. Like they couldn't do something to protect me from all of that. So I wanted to protect them by not telling them, of course I have to. Told my family, everyone knew about it. It was one of those things where they kind of just reassured me. It was going to be okay.
Starting point is 01:10:55 They don't know who I am at the time. I was like, you're just saying that, you don't know what it's like, but I don't know what came over me. I don't know why I thought about this, but I just knew I didn't, I wanted to approve those people wrong. I've always been the type of person where if you tell me I'm not able to do something or if I can't do something and I know I can, I'm going to do it just to prove you wrong and hopefully do it better than you can.
Starting point is 01:11:20 It's just always been my personality, like dare me to do it and I'm going to do it as long as it's something legal and good. But I didn't know how I was going to do it, don't know when I was going to do it, but I knew I was somehow going to make it happen and it came in the form of figuring out my goals, which was being motivational speaker and author graduating college and had no idea that I was going to accomplish all those things in the next years that I originally set those goals. Have you had any contact with a person who accidentally gave you this gift?
Starting point is 01:11:56 No. The only contact that I had when we first found it, we tried to get it taken down and this was back when YouTube was still pretty new and didn't really know the rules of how to flag stuff and get it down. We tried, didn't really accomplish anything. Apparently the guy found out, posted it, sent me a message, said I don't care how many times you try, no matter what you do, I'm just going to keep reposting it. If you decide to put yourself on TV, you can put yourself on the internet.
Starting point is 01:12:22 And that, like as awful as it was, it kind of was like, wow, that's true and I'm not giving him credit for anything. But I put that message away. It's kind of what lit my fire. Like I don't know who this person is, but he's making me so mad at thinking about it. Like how dare he do this to me and I did it and you know what, can I tell you what's the best part about all of this? Now I had zero supporters and thousands of comments to this one video.
Starting point is 01:12:52 Now I don't have to do anything because if there's somebody who's talking bad about me, people don't fight back as much. Some of them say her name is Lizzie Velasquez. This is her website. This is her story. Maybe you shouldn't be that mean. And I never had to fight back in a negative way. I fought back with my accomplishments and people saw that.
Starting point is 01:13:13 Oh man, that is so intense. It's the best feeling, the best feeling. And isn't that, that's, I mean, if anything to me exemplifies Christianity or what Jesus was talking about, it's that. Which is that if you just, if you just love, everything's going to work out fine. Right. If you just accept everything, if you just decide to go the right path no matter what it is, it's exciting to think where to lead you.
Starting point is 01:13:50 Never in a million years would I think I would be sitting here talking to you saying I'm going to be doing my first documentary. Right. Right. That's incredible to think about that. And it just is so, it seems so counterintuitive to the way we've all been taught. Because the way we've all been taught is that it's all about winning, conquering, us and them, overcoming, destroying our enemies, ruining our enemies, dragging our enemies around.
Starting point is 01:14:18 Honestly, Tamar had told me about your, that YouTube video and I swear to God, I thought for a second, you know what? I'm going to announce that we find the person who did this and attack them. No. I know that's not what you want and that's what you're teaching. But the impulse that we've all been taught is so based on vengeance. So how many movies are, how many movies? That's like the happy ending.
Starting point is 01:14:44 Can you know what a lot of people have said? If you could take back all the bullying, if you could take back that video, if you could have cosmetic surgery, if you can do all these things, if you could take a magic pill to make you gain weight, would you do it? If you asked me when I was 13, I would say in a heartbeat. If you ask me now, I would say don't even tell me those words because I don't want to hear it. If I ever came face to face with the person that made that video, I would not be mad.
Starting point is 01:15:10 I've forgiven him years ago. Years ago, I would thank him because he was a catalyst to help me make this change. I feel like I've always kind of had it in me to kind of want to make a difference, be positive. It's how I was raised. But without this little thing, I call it little kind of massive. But without that, I wouldn't be here. I would want to tell him that I forgive him.
Starting point is 01:15:33 I would want to tell him. I would want to say come see this movie with me. We figuring out how to not bully other people would help you. And we can make this change together and you won't post bad videos about other people. I love you. You are the coolest person ever. It's true. Oh my God, this is, it's so good to hear this stuff, really.
Starting point is 01:16:00 We're having this conversation at exactly the right time. It's so perfect. So many people need to hear this right now. Who knows what people are doing while they're listening to this? What's that? Who knows what people are doing while they're listening to this and sharing the message. If you're running right now, listening to it, keep running. Don't stop.
Starting point is 01:16:17 If you're in the basement and you have your enemy tied to a chair and you're about to put a cigar on his eyeball, let them go, tell them you're sorry. Don't take the scandal route and use pliers, let them go, go have breakfast, get to know their story. Did you say use pliers? No, I said take one tooth. No, I said, do you watch the show Scandal? Oh no, I haven't seen that.
Starting point is 01:16:39 Okay, I'm obsessed with that show and they use pliers to get information out of people to pull their teeth out. See what I'm saying? Why are we taking this bad route? Bad route? Because that's the world that we're in. We're in a world where everything in the media says use pliers. Everything in the media says wrench teeth out with pliers, set people on fire, shove
Starting point is 01:16:59 people in front of trains. Have you ever read the Count of Monte Cristo? No. There's just so many stales of vengeance where the final thing, the glorious thing is the person who was persecuted standing over the decapitated body of the person who did it and that's it. They won. Well, lucky for us.
Starting point is 01:17:23 I'm here to tell you about my documentary that's going to help change media and if you want to join us, go to thelissiproject.com. Yeah, I think a lot of people are going to do that and wow, cool. So yeah, lissiproject.com and you're on Twitter? Yes. What's your Twitter? Little Lizzy V. Little Lizzy V on Twitter and where else can people find you?
Starting point is 01:17:44 My website at www.lissiproject.com, Instagram, Little Lizzy V. I'm all over the social medias. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. It's an honor to meet you and I really, really appreciate you giving me this time. Thank you. Thank you. You're the best.
Starting point is 01:18:02 So are you. All right, you guys. That was Lizzy Velazquez. I'm going to have links to her Kickstarter, which I really hope you'll help out with. Obviously, this is a person who needs to get her message to as many people as possible and those leaks are going to be located at dunkintrustle.com in the comments section of this podcast and also big thanks to Hulu Plus for sponsoring this episode. Go sign up for a two week trial at huluplus.com forward slash DTFH.
Starting point is 01:18:32 If you like this podcast, give us a nice rating on iTunes and go through our Amazon portal. But if you don't want to do any of that, get a bicycle. Go right around. That'll make me happy just knowing that a few of you have discovered the paradise that's waiting for all of you in your local bike shop. Hare Krishna. I'll see you guys next time. Have a great week and a great day and a great incarnation.
Starting point is 01:19:01 Goodbye.

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