Good Life Project - Najwa Zebian | You Are Your Home

Episode Date: October 21, 2021

Najwa Zebian is a Lebanese-Canadian activist, author, speaker, and educator who developed a passion for language at a young age, immersing herself in Arabic poetry and novels. As someone who found herself repeated displaced, leaving Lebanon for Canada when she was 16, not realizing it wasn’t just a trip, but rather a permanent change, would she’d find herself searching for a home—what Najwa describes as a place where the soul and heart feel at peace, a quest that continues into her adult life.Her passion for language, quest to understand her place in the world and compassion for those who’ve been displaced and disenfranchised led her to pursue a Ph.D. in education. But it was an experience teaching young refugees that rekindled her love of writing, after having left it behind because of an association with pain. She began to heal her sixteen-year-old self by writing to heal her students. Since self-publishing her first collection of poetry and prose in 2016, Najwa has become an inspiration to millions of people worldwide, and a trailblazing voice for women everywhere.Drawing on her own experiences of displacement, discrimination, and abuse, Najwa uses her words to encourage others to build a home within themselves; to live, love, and create fearlessly. Her new book, Welcome Home, invites us to explore how to create that feeling we so yearn for within ourselves first, before looking outside.You can find Najwa at: Website | InstagramIf you LOVED this episode:You’ll also love the conversations we had with Humble the Poet about defining your own identity in a world where you don’t seem to fit the mold.My new book Sparked.-------------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

To the heart in you, don't be afraid to feel. To the sun in you, don't be afraid to shine. To the ocean in you, don't be afraid to rage. To the love in you, don't be afraid to heal. To the silence in you, don't be afraid to break. Hey, so my guest today, Nezha Zebian, is a Lebanese-Canadian activist, author, speaker, and educator who developed a passion for language at a really young age, immersing herself in Arabic poetry and novels. And as someone who found herself repeatedly displaced, leaving Lebanon for Canada when she was 16, not even realizing at that moment that it wasn't just a trip, but rather a permanent change, she would

find herself searching for a home, what Nezha describes as a place where the soul and heart feel at peace, a quest that continues into her adult life. And her passion for language and quest to understand her place in the world and compassion for those who've been displaced and disfranchised led her to pursue a PhD in education. But it was an experience teaching young refugees that rekindled her love of writing after having left it behind because of an association that she had with it. And she began to heal her 16-year-old self by writing to heal her students. Since publishing her first collection of poetry and prose in 2016, Nezha has become an inspiration to millions of people worldwide and a trailblazing voice for

women everywhere. And she's been featured widely in the media, collaborated with everyone from Google to RBC, Kohl's, and even Cirque du Soleil. And drawing on her own experiences of displacement, discrimination, and abuse, Nezha uses her words to encourage others to build a home within themselves, to live, love, and create fearlessly. And her new book, Welcome Home, it invites us to explore how to create that feeling we so yearn for within ourselves first before looking outside. So excited to share this conversation. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever.

It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary.

Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. it is so nice to be able to spend some time with you um i've been diving into you and your work and really so deeply moved by it. Thank you. And I want to walk through some of your journey on the planet and also your most recent book and some of the ideas in it. You grew up in Lebanon, from what I understand, the youngest of six kids and describe yourself as sensitive, kind of an old soul from the very earliest days. I'm curious how that showed up when you were a kid. I just remember feeling extremely out of place because I had too much going on on the inside,

too much emotions, too much thought. But I obviously didn't know how to label those things. I just felt that I was in a state of constant chaos on the inside. And I wanted to say what I was thinking and feeling. But that wasn't welcome, because it was considered, you know, you're too sensitive, or you're worrying about things that you shouldn't worry about, or this means that you're not grateful for everything that you do have so I just would go quiet and as you know the quieter you go when you have anything going on on the inside the more power you allow it to have over you and as a child again not knowing how to label anything I thought

this must mean something must be wrong with me, because I can't get rid of this, whatever it is. So I just internalized everything. And it was not fun. I wouldn't say it was a happy, you know, experience deepened my belief that I don't deserve a place where I can be fully heard and seen and understood. And all of this is, again, it's at an experiential level, not in a, like, obviously, as an 11 or an eight or a six or seven year old, I don't know how to put words to that. But that's what I experienced on the inside. Yeah. It's so interesting. So I was curious about your name, Nezha. So I looked up the etymology because I was like, such a beautiful name and I didn't know it.

And tell me if this is accurate, because what I saw was that the etymology is it actually translates roughly to secret or whisper or passion, which in kind of an odd way translates to the experience that you're sharing. Yes. So that's one of the meanings. And the other one is, you know, to have a conversation about your innermost thoughts and feelings, you know, with the with the higher power. So it's kind of like divine talk. And it's interesting, you know, when I found out what my name meant, I was like, did my parents know? Like, did they manifest my life experience by naming me that name? Yeah, so I actually wear, people ask me this all the time. You'll notice in all my videos, I wear a necklace that has like a little scribble. That's my name in Arabic. So my name holds quite a bit of power over how I view life and what I cherish about myself. have a sense at a young age then for that second definition also did you feel like you had access to something bigger than yourself where you could have dialogue as a way for you to sort of process

internally even though you didn't feel comfortable doing it externally absolutely so i grew up in a very religious environment so the village where I lived in Lebanon was everybody there belonged to the same religion. And you know, religion was just such a big part of life in general. And I remember being extremely spiritual in the sense that I would have conversations with God. I remember that when I was younger. I remember constantly, anytime that I had an issue that I was going through, or if I felt a certain way and I wanted that feeling to go away, I would pray internally. Or there's something that I still do up to this point in my life where if I'm having a hard time making a decision, because I could see, you know, the positives and

the negatives, and I don't know what's best for me. So I say, you know, if this, whatever it is, is good for me, then let it happen with ease. And it's if it's not good for me, let it go away with ease. And I kind of just release my power over it and just let the universe, God, whatever power it is to take control. And it's not out of submission. It's out of, I know I've done my best and I'm going to leave the rest up to that power. So yes, I do remember from a very young age having those conversations. And I used to think for the longest time that I'm only having these conversations with God. But now I see that I was also having these conversations with myself. You know, I was by giving my thoughts and feelings of voice internally,

I was listening to myself, like I was giving myself permission to say, it's okay to feel this way, or it's okay to think this way, or it's okay to not want this or to want this or to wish for this or wish that this would go away. And I genuinely believe that that is the whole purpose of faith. It's to remind you that you as you are, are enough. Like you as you are, don't need that external validation from other humans that the way you feel is okay or is permissible. Yeah. Here's something I never thought I would say. I never say these kinds of things in interviews. I never really talk about faith and how that's intersected with how I view myself.

Yeah. Well, it also, it seems you have a really unique experience of faith, especially from a really young age, you know, the way that you, you describe on the one hand thinking, okay, I'm expressing this to some, some being, some entity, however I described, you know, like that notion of God. But, but in hindsight, reflecting back and saying, well, actually part of what I was doing was just giving myself an opportunity to give language to what was spinning in my head, which to a certain extent, I would imagine makes it real, even if only to you. Yes. I wonder if that alone, that internal sort of like inner defining had some benefit. It absolutely did because, you know, with Welcome Home, my fourth book, it's all about

the realization that we build our homes in other people. And what that means on a practical level is you base the definition of who you are or who you can be or can't be or who you should be or shouldn't be or how you can behave or can't behave on what others tell you now that could be a certain person it could be community it could be society as a whole it could be religion it could be religion, it could be, but you are abandoning yourself and who you are. Sometimes, actually, most times without even knowing who you are, but you say, I would rather follow what that person or this community or this religion or whatever it is tells me I should follow because they know the answers than spend enough time with myself to figure out who I am and what I think is right for me.

So that internal dialogue that you have with yourself is so crucial for you to figure out who you are, how you define yourself, what your boundaries are, what your purpose in life is, what courage and vulnerability mean to you. When you don't give yourself an opportunity to have that dialogue with yourself, you have no place to go to. You're always going externally to figure those things out. And so most of us, I do believe the reason that at 31 years old, I am able to think the way that I think is that I spent so much of my time thinking of how do I put this thought into words, like, quiet down, sit down and write it as it is. Like I was listening to my innermost everything that was going on that chaos that I told you at the beginning I was sorting through it someone messaged me yesterday and said you know I'm taking your

advice about sitting down and writing everything but the moment I sit down I get all of these thoughts and feelings and I don't know where to start what do I do and it reminded me of what I would do is I would feel that chaos. There's just so much. You start with one thing and it leads you to another and you haven't given yourself enough time to go over the first thing. And then it's just these racing thoughts, like you're running a marathon, but there's no end in sight. And so what I said was sit down and write those things out in point form as they come to you and then start tackling them one by one give your focus and attention to each one on its own that's what I did by having

that internal dialogue is and also not just giving my focus to each one on its own but also understanding like why did I jump in my mind from this to this, to this, to this, to this? Like I have an assignment to do right now. I'm really stressed because I believe if I don't do well here, then this is going to happen. And if this happens, then this is going to happen. And if this happens, then it's like you're jumping all over the place, but you're not really dealing with the current issue that you're dealing with. And so when you give yourself that reminder that awareness is the most important thing, like just paying attention, and once you pay attention to something internally, you take away its ability to subconsciously control you. You can't pay attention when the

moment you have a thought or something that's recurring on the inside, you say, oh, this is too much. Let me go watch some TV or let me go talk to a friend. Maybe they'll know or let me look up what someone else has done, maybe they'll know the answer. It's like, but their answer might not be your answer. So I always say your internal being is like a child that, you know, comes home after school, they've experienced something, they don't know whether it's important, whether to put it to something, they don't know whether it's important, whether to put it to words, they don't know what to do with it. And you either pay attention and understand what happened and figure out what you want to do, or you don't pay attention and

just let those things pile up and let yourself continue to internalize what those things mean about you. Yeah, that analogy is so apt. I know for you, like the inner dialogue at some point also turns into the written word. It sounds like in your early teens, you had a friend, Mariam, who gave you a journal and that to a certain extent becomes a bit of an unlucky key for you to start to take the thoughts that are in your head and really turn them into the written word, which tell me more about that, because I'm curious whether you experienced that as creative expression, as coping mechanism, as processing synthetism or like all of the above or none of the above.

It was so many things at the same time, but the way I would describe how I felt the first time I sat down and wrote in that journal at 13 was no one is telling me I shouldn't feel this way or think this way. No one is judging me. Nobody's going to see this but me. And I would immediately feel a sense of relief anytime I wrote down because yes, I was processing. Yes, I was creatively expressing. Yes, I was literally transforming a feeling or a thought exactly into what it feels like, whether that meant for me, you know, using analogies or, you know, using certain examples or stories. But my goal

was always to liberate myself of what was going on And I would immediately feel relieved. And I would immediately feel like, I don't need to talk to someone about this because I've talked to my journal about it. And again, in a way, I was talking to myself about it so instead of depending on you know someone to hear me or see me or help me process or listen to me or whatever I depended on myself and I'm grateful for that I really am because I don't think had I not been pushed to like fully describe it's like someone giving you an apple at 13 years old and saying if somebody can't see this it's like a feeling that you have on the inside or you're thinking something or whatever what's the best way for you to describe it so that this

person knows what you're talking about and you're like sitting there for hours, sometimes just trying to explain it to your full ability. And that's what I did with everything that was going on on the inside. And I just never needed to, you know, show that apple or have someone say, oh, it's actually there. I just, it was enough for me that I did that for myself for so long. But when I look back, I think I was extremely sad because I also like wished all the time that this wasn't my only coping mechanism, but it was. I think if there were people around me who listened and helped me process, I probably would have felt really good about it. But I don't think I would have developed the emotional maturity I have. I don't think I would be able to write the way I do. I don't think I would be able to understand people's pain as much as I do.

So yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's such a powerful reflection. I'm fascinated with the concept of sliding doors. What if one thing had been different? And I'm curious, do you ever reflect back at that time? And have you ever wondered, what if my friend didn't give me that journal? What if I didn't in one moment have an opportunity to start to channel these things in my head into the written word and have them be this conduit for expression and coping and reimagining? Do you ever reflect on that? Or is that sort of just something, it is what that journal, because I do believe it's part of who I am. So I think even if she didn't give me that journal, I probably would have opened a notebook myself one day and started writing, maybe not at 13. Because from a very, very young age, I would sit in front of my dad's library. So my dad had a whole wall in our house from floor to ceiling that was full of books. And I would just sit and open poetry books in Arabic and just read through them.

And I also remember when I was in school and we were studying scripture, I was like the top of my class because we also had to study, you know, the symbolism of certain things and the connections and inferences and all of that. And even though I was the youngest in my class, because I started school when I was three, so I was always a year or two younger than anyone else in the class. I was at the top of my class when it came to just the power of the written word. So I do believe that, you know, my friend gifting me that journal at 13 was, I'll never know how my life would have been had that not happened. But I do believe that one way or another, I was walking in that direction. Maybe it would have manifested in a way where I was, you know, singing or, but using words somehow to express myself and help myself and others heal.

Yeah. It seems like it's just such a part of the fiber of your being that it does seem it would have found a way out. Yes. One way or another. If you're at a point in life when you're ready to lead with purpose, we can get you there. The University of Victoria's MBA in Sustainable Innovation is not like other MBA programs. It's for true changemakers who want to think differently and solve the world's most pressing challenges. From healthcare and the environment to energy, government, and technology, It's your path to meaningful leadership in all sectors.

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Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg.

You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. So this becomes something that is really central to you understanding who you are and expressing who you are, even though you're expressing it literally just to yourself during that particular window of time. Then 2006 hits, war in Lebanon. You end up going

at the age of 16 to Canada. For somebody who's struggling to find her sense of self, her sense of home in your country of origin, then at the age of 16 to be transported to another country. I can't imagine how disruptive that must have been for you. It was disruptive in a way that was so intense that I stopped dealing with how disruptive it was. So there was a part of me that said, nope, this is a choice I'm making because that was easier for me to live with than saying I was forced to do this. So I came to Canada, I believe it was a few weeks before the war broke out. And it was to visit my family as I'd visited them, you know, for the past three years at that point every summer. So I got here and then the war broke out. And it was the year right before grade 12. And I had to make the

decision of either staying here or leaving. But my whole family was here. No one was going back. So at 16, obviously, I had to stay. But I told myself, no, I'm deciding to stay here because it's better for my future. I'll get to go to a good university. But I knew deep down that that wasn't a choice. I knew that framing it as a choice was a defense mechanism for me. And so my writing just didn't serve the purpose that it served for me up to this point. So I just didn't want to write anymore because writing was feeling right? Writing is I'm putting everything that's on the inside into words. And

I felt such helplessness because I was so aware of how I'm feeling, but even more aware that there's nothing I can do to change it. So instead of, you know, building some resilience for myself at 16, I didn't know how to do that. I just said, I don't want to feel anymore. I just, I lived my life in black and white, I would say for the next seven years. And it wasn't like a black and white in a way that's like, you know, I was neutral. It was more like I was numb. But beneath that like I was important, period. Like I had some kind of significance, like I added some kind of value. that if I took the time at 16 to be okay with the fact that, you know, I had to stay in Canada at 16 because of the war and because, you know, it might actually

be better for me to stay here because, you know, school and whatever. I think those seven years would have been a lot more alive and a lot more full of opportunity to express myself more. of pain and struggle that accumulated over those years was so high that the moment I went back to writing, it was this prolific experience that I couldn't stop. And, and it was extremely, you know, sometimes when you, I'm struggling with finding the word, but sometimes when you read something, you need to read 10 pages before it makes sense to you. My words were, and I believe are up to this point, you read it and you immediately understand. You immediately feel seen in a way or feel heard in a way. There is no, let me explain this in 10 pages. There is, here it is.

And I do believe that is a result of the years of accumulating so much internal chaos that was unexpressed, not given an opportunity to be released or to be given a voice. And all of a sudden, once it could be given a voice, it's like it was roaring. It wasn't whispering. It was just, this is who I am. This is what I think. This is what I feel. This is how this feels. This is, it was just, it's like you're pushing up a mountain and the moment you start going down, that's it. You don't even need to push anymore. That's what it feels like. So it's like the, the earlier private conversations with God became the conversations with the God in all of us. Yes. There was a moment, I mean, for those seven years, you know, you weren't just sort of

like sitting around waiting for the world to come say, hey, it's time. Like you're pursuing your education, you're studying, literally studying the field of education. Tell me about the actual moment that becomes the release valve for you, where you come back to writing and say, after seven years, now is the time? Yeah. So during those seven years, I was doing what all of us do, following the footsteps of what those around us tell us, this is going to lead you to the right place. So I went to school, my parents wanted me to do science. I did science, hated my life during that time because I just

didn't like, I didn't enjoy what I was doing. And then I went into education because that felt on the inside like it was right for me because it involved helping others. So in a way, it was like I was following my intuition, but not being aware that that was what I was doing. So the first day of teaching that I had, the principal of my school, I was teaching at a private school at that time, they were paying me minimum wage, it was really not the ideal first teaching job that you would get. But I was like, I need experience. And so I went to that school, and I was the ESL teacher. So I was teaching English as a second language. And the principal walks in with a group of eight students and they

were, you know, different shapes and sizes. They're from different grades. And he said to me, these are your responsibility for the rest of the year. You are going to teach them English. You are going to help them with all their subject areas. You are going to be involved in their, you know, inclusion into the school. They're your responsibility. So I'll never forget where we were standing in the school. I'll never forget the feeling I was feeling in the moment, but they looked at me in a way that just immediately reminded me of what I felt at 16 when I arrived here. And it was a look of what am I doing here? I don't belong here. You know, I, I used to do so well back home in school and now I'm at this new place and, and I need to fight to prove that, you know, I deserve to be

here. And it was just a look of I'm lost and I don't belong here and I don't fit in here. And immediately something within me, I believe that's when the activist within me woke up. I just wanted to fight for them. I just wanted to say, you do belong here. Like, don't do what I did. Don't tag along. Don't just fight to just be in places and say, oh, I'm part of this. You know, don't be a bystander in your own life. And so I started writing short snippets about how I believe education is for students and about students and it should serve them as humans. It shouldn't be fixated on grades and standard tests and all of that. And so, you know, that was okay, because I'm writing to fight for

someone else. But then it was, like I said, it's like a can of worms, I just opened it and it I couldn't stop writing, I couldn't control what I was writing about anymore. It was this constant need to sit down and write. And in a beautiful way, as I was helping my students feel seen and heard and feel like someone was advocating for them, I was doing that same thing for my 16-year-old self who did not do any of that and did not have anyone do that for her. So my writings went from being about education to being about, you know, basic human emotions and, you know, universal human experiences that we all go through. And there was always, whatever I wrote about, there was always an, you know, beneath the surface, it was me talking about how I experienced those things. But it wasn't like I experienced this on this day. I wasn't telling the story. I was explaining what that story felt like. And so what that story would feel like to any person. And that's where it all began. And the rest is history.

I don't think I've gone for a day since then without either writing something or formulating something in my mind to prepare it to be written. And you described, I mean, a really, I think, powerful distinction that I think so often sometimes we miss, you know, the difference between here's what happened and this is how the thing that happened changed me or landed within me. I think a lot of times people look at memoir as like, well, it's a recitation of the things that happen in a person's life, but really the memoirs that move us, whether, or the poetry that moves us or the stories that move us, it's not when somebody just shares like, this is what happened. Here are the facts.

It's when they share that. And then they say, and this is what was happening inside of me that, you know, this is how it affected me. This is how it changed me. And that's because that's, I think, where we transfer into and step into a universal experience. Because we've all felt that, even though the circumstances may be different. Over time, you build on this and you end up, I guess, in 2016, self-publishing your first book, Mind Platter, which then a couple of years later actually gets picked up and republished traditionally. There's a dedication in that first book that is so powerful. I know it kind of follows everything that you do to this day.

Would you share that dedication? Yes. So I don't have it fully memorized, but it's to the heart and you don't be afraid to feel to the sun and you don't be afraid to shine to the ocean and you don't be afraid to rage to the love and you don't be afraid to heal to the silence and you don't be afraid to break. Those words came to me so rapidly. Like it was, I sometimes get a poem over a period of time and then I sit down and write it.

And sometimes it comes to me in a moment and I have to sit down and write it. And those words were that. It was in a split second that it just came to my mind and I wrote it down. And to me, that symbolizes, I believe, everything that I do. It's about waking yourself up and it's about giving yourself permission to be that ocean that rages and be that sun that shines, that shows people who you are. You're allowing yourself to project who you are into the world. You're allowing yourself to break

that silence that you believe protects you in some way because it's, you know, out of fear or out of not wanting to be too much or, and, you know, it allows you also to be okay with, you know, accepting love, like genuine love. And now that I think about this, because no one has ever asked me this question, now that I think about it, the element of when I say to the love in you, don't be afraid to heal, we have this warped view of what love is based on how we were raised and based on how we were shown love to be on TV or in books or what we've seen around us. And I so badly wanted to heal my image of what that love or my understanding, that's a better word, of what love means and heal my understanding that, you know, for so long, I believed I had to fight to be loved.

And I know people say this all the time. But what I mean by that is, I always felt like I had to earn love, like I had to do things for others to get their love, or I had to not do certain things for myself because of the way it would make others feel. So I'm thinking of these lines that I wrote, and I was telling the world to do that because I so badly needed to hear those words. I was always afraid of being angry. So the ocean and raging comes in. I was extremely afraid of admitting that I have feelings of admitting that, you know, as somebody who came from an extremely conservative, you know, upbringing and environment, talking about feelings is extremely shameful. Like, I know you hear this all the time from people here, but I grew up in a tiny village with a thousand people and everyone knew everyone.

And talking about love or feelings or having feelings towards someone from the opposite gender, because the same gender wasn't even, like, that's not even a thought that could cross your mind because that's really bad. You don't even go there. But to talk about things like that, or contemplate talking about things like that, was it's a no, no, like it's, it's not something you give yourself permission to do anyway. So once I started writing, it became clear to me that all of those things within me needed to be healed. My understanding of love, anger, speaking up, just being myself or allowing myself to be that confident person who knows who she is without believing that that makes me arrogant or that makes me too much.

That's where those words came from. That's a really long explanation, but it's a beautiful question that you asked me and this is on the spot. So I hope I gave a- No, and it's such a powerful reflection also because it was, I mean, when I read those words, it kind of stopped me in my track. And then I've seen you either weave those exact words or the symbology of those words literally into everything that you've done since that moment. And then I've seen you either weave those exact words or the symbology of those words literally into everything that you've done since that moment. And along with it, there's another piece of symbology that tends to flow through literally everything that I've seen you create since then, which is the symbology of a bird and the notion of this thought of don't break a bird's

wings and then tell it to fly. And that flows all the way through to the cover of your latest book, you know, where you have literally on the, on, you know, a picture of a bird with little gold threads and in the wings. So clearly like that is a very deep symbology for you as well. Absolutely. So I never ever, I wasn't aware that using the image of a bird and freedom and wings was present in all of my writings until I started writing Welcome Home, my first books. And I was like, I have written about birds and broken wings and freedom and being caged and flying and in every single one of my books. And to me, it's always been, obviously I'm projecting how I felt my life went, which was, I know I am a bird. I know I have freedom. I know I have the ability to go and explore and view new places and new ways of thinking. And I know I have the ability

to fly really high and look down, you know, look down at the sparks of Phoenix. I wrote, look down at your pain all the way from the sky. Look how small it is. And then I talk about, you know, look at all of the places you can go and all of the mountains you can climb. And, and then there's, you know, when you think of other people and how they, when it comes to manipulation or when it comes to wanting you to stay small, it's like, you know, they have your wings injured or tied down and they say, why aren't you flying? You know, you can fly. Why aren't you flying? And I always felt that because I allowed people around me to have so much power over me and over the trajectory of my life, I would just sit in that place of feeling so powerless and feeling like I was a victim. Like it's their

responsibility to stop doing what they're doing for me to be free and to be able to go. And so, you know, I always say like, you have to remember that you have the ability to break free, stop waiting for someone to come save you, especially the one who caged you or the one who tied you down. Or so I always say like, come back to your beliefs about yourself. And if you genuinely see yourself as a free soul, genuinely see yourself as someone who maybe for years and years and years, you just defined yourself a certain way and you had this cage, this imaginary cage around you or boundary around you that you're like, I can't fly past this point or I can't go higher than this point. Or if I do that, then, you know, I'm not going to be able to come back to this place that I'm in. And that's what happens when people, for example, leave, you know, certain religious beliefs or cultural beliefs or family, whatever your norms that have

been set for you. If you believe that you are free to decide where you want to be and how far you want to go and which environment you want to be in and who you want to surround yourself with, then that freedom with the image of a bird allows you to just further feel that empowerment from within. Because you're not stuck in a place like a tree, for example, where you have to extend your, and I use this analogy in Welcome Home, I say where you have to extend your roots or extend your branches to get something, you're free. Like, break free and don't expect that it's going to be an easy thing. So that's why I say, you know, my wings are broken, but they are healing, you know, so I've used this analogy of birds and breaking free and in every, you know, at every opportunity where I had, you know, the ability to portray a certain feeling or a certain circumstance that people go through. I've tried to use that

analogy to say like it genuinely applies to everything because at the core of it, you are free and you have the ability to like flying is that's how you practice that freedom. Like how many of us look in the mirror, I did this for a long time, by the way, before I actually, you know, self-actualized for lack of a better way of explaining it, where logically speaking, I would be able to sit down with you and tell you exactly, you know, how I feel about myself, which is, you know, I love myself, and I would never allow someone to do this or that. And I'm powerful, I'm confident. But when it came to situations that, you know, put me at a crossroads of you either apply what you know, or you don't, I reverted back to my habits that didn't show self lovelove, that didn't show confidence, that didn't show, you know, I am self part where it's like you are putting your belief about

yourself that you are free into action. So it's that flying movement, or if that makes sense. Yeah, no, it absolutely does. And it also feels like there's a strong tether between that imagery, that symbology and that idea and, and your, your, your most recent book, Welcome Home, because there's a sense of, you know, like the freedom in the sense of the, of agency that you describe is also part of your notion of home, you know, and you're somebody who has spent 31 years essentially trying to figure out like what is home to me and you know and you've moved you've literally moved cultures countries um and wandered in a lot of different wildernesses asking a lot of questions that i think a lot of people don't ever just really pause

to ask and i think especially at this moment in time while we're having this conversation the question of what is home and how much of a sense of agency do I have in creating and defining and creating and feeling the experience of it? You know, like how much is that really in my purview at this moment in time? Because a lot of people I think feel, even if they didn't until now feel displaced in their own lives, you know? So, um, and this is a lot of what you write about and welcome home. And, and you have this, um, you've shared a number of times in our conversation that you had the notion that, well, first home does not exist in any other person or

place, you know? And I think that's the fundamental, that that's the root assumption that we need to start with. So tell me more about that notion. So home is not a physical place, neither is it a person or a thing, or it's nothing that is external to you. It's no one that is external to you. Home is the feeling that you can be your full self authentically and that you can be seen and heard fully without having to, you know, edit yourself or say something that you don't mean or fall into that people pleasing behavior. It's the place where you are 100% who you are, even if that's not perfect in every moment. So home is that internal system of I know who I am and my view of my experiences, my view of myself, my definition of who I am, the permission that I give myself to feel or think or whatever, all of that is I am the source that I come to for all of that I don't go to someone and say and you're obviously not going to say this word for word or you're not going to say it in words but you're not going to leave yourself and wait for someone else to tell you who you are, what you deserve, what you can or can't think, what you can or can't do. You come to yourself first and really listen to that internal system, to that internal dialogue that you have with yourself, to your intuition.

And say, what do I believe is best for me now? And you don't ever allow yourself to be, like I always say, you are not your plan B, you're always your plan A. Like coming to yourself about anything, that's the first thing that you do. Because what happens when you prioritize anything external to you, prioritize the power of that over how you feel about yourself or what you think about yourself, then you are abandoning yourself. And you are in a sense, in a figurative sense, building your home outside of you, because that sense of safety, whether it's emotional or intellectual, or that spiritual safety that you feel is not within you. It's in a thing or in a person. And we don't want to do that. We want to feel like we are the safest place that we can go to first. And I always say, if you haven't taken the time to figure out who you are, there is no way you can feel that home within. So in Welcome

Home, I talk about building a home within, right? But at the end of it, you are your own home. The process of building is just a way for you to visualize becoming aware that you are your own home, that you don't need anything external. And the emphasis here is on need. You don't need anything external to validate your existence or your significance or your experience, your truth, your story, your identity. You don't need that externally. And people struggle with me saying this because they think, well, we still need people. We need that connection. What if I want to build a home with someone? And I say, I agree with that. You do need people. But once you realize that you are your own home,

then you don't just, A, allow yourself to believe that someone else out there is safer for you and that you are fully defined by whether that person or that thing welcomes you or not. And you are able to decide who belongs in my life. Who do I allow into my home. And without knowing who you are, if your dependence on when it comes to any form of validation, if your first source is external. You are not the leader of your life. You're like a puppet of, if you imagine strings, those strings are everything that you are giving your power to. I hope that explains it. I can talk about home forever.

And you've written a whole book about it. Yes. I can talk about home forever. them or with them does not equate to allowing that relationship to define who you are as an individual and in relation to them. Yes. It doesn't define who you are and its absence doesn't erase who you are. Like so many of us, if a relationship ends, we are devastated. Feel the pain. Absolutely. There's a surrender room in Welcome Home where I talk about, you know, open the door to that feeling, feel it, whatever it is, open the door to hearing what's going on on the inside. But once you've fully defined else to be your safety net, it is terrifying to be with yourself. That's why you're in so much pain.

It's not the person that you're hurting over. Maybe a little tiny part is the person that you're sad over. But the biggest pain you're experiencing is the pain of actually having to deal with yourself. It's the pain of actually having to find that safety that you once felt. You know, when we think of home, I always used to feel this way. At the end of any trip, I would think, oh, I can't wait until I get home. There's a, you know, to be around, you know, my parents, to see my nieces and nephews, to have a home cooked meal, to feel. And really what that was, it felt like warmth and love and a welcome. And I always ached

for that. So when I say I am my own home, it means that I feel that with myself. So even if I'm traveling somewhere, I fully feel like I am home. I'm with myself. I'm not waiting for that event to happen for me to feel like I'm okay or like I'm enough or I'm welcome somewhere surrounded by people. And so once you have that self-sustenance from within, then there isn't an ache for it to be found anywhere else. enough and you practice it enough, you know, you affirm to yourself that you are your home, you get to a point where you're not dependent on your relationships with people. You're not dependent in a self-depleting way where you are constantly trying so hard to keep those relationships and keep those connections and, you know, keep those things because they make you feel a certain way. You're not dependent on that because you understand that you will be okay with or without them. But when you don't feel that, when you're in danger and that safety is going away, what you're going to do is fight for it back. You're not fighting for the person or the thing, you're fighting for the

safety that you believe it gives you. So if that safety is inside of you, then nothing and no one threatens your being or threatens the way that you behave in the world and carry yourself in the world. Like to people listening, if you ever go through a moment, not if we all go through these moments, when you go through a moment where you think to yourself, how could I have done that? Like, I know better. How could I have said that? I know, but how could I have reacted this way? I know better. That reaction that you are regretting or that that's because you are feeling somehow that you're in danger and you need to get that safety back. And that is all in our minds. It's not true. And so if you catch yourself there, because that awareness is beautiful and say,

this reaction didn't really reflect me or how I actually think about myself. But sit with it and make a mental note. Next time this happens, I will understand that I am going to immediately be triggered to just hold on tighter to whatever it is that I feel is leaving or to whatever it is that I feel I'm not going to have anymore. Don't hold so tightly onto it because that is out of fear. So you're going to be triggered. So tell yourself, I know I'm going to be triggered. I anticipate that. I'm not going to allow that trigger to control what my body does in the moment. I'm going to, you know, whatever the plan is, take an hour before you respond or keep affirming something, whatever works for you. That awareness

is key because so many of us will carry, you know, carry on through life reacting, regretting that reaction, then doing it again, then regretting. It's because you haven't sat with it and you haven't learned about yourself what you need to learn about yourself. Mm-hmm. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever,

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Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot if we need him. Y'all need a pilot? Flight risk. In the book, you're very direct in saying, okay, so this doesn't magically happen. You don't just magically think, oh, I'm going to be at home with myself. And then poof, you are. You basically say, no, this is work. But it's work which is worth doing. And you lay out the metaphor of effectively building a home within yourself with a foundation and different rooms, self-love and forgiveness, as you described, compassion is a big one,

you know, clarity and surrender, right? And surrender, as we've talked about, it was interesting because as I was sort of like thinking about this, I had an interesting reaction to it, which is, I completely agree. The notion of investing effort in cultivating this within yourself is powerful. And I think it's important to also telegraph to folks, this is not just going to, it's not magical thinking. One was, I have a background in yoga and studying sort of the philosophy behind it and Buddhist philosophy and Sanskrit texts. And the notion out of that world, that domain is, in the Western world, it often is translated as transformation. But actually, the more literal description is liberation. And the distinction is transformation is becoming something else. Liberation is the process of revealing who you've always been. And it's like that famous, like with Da Vinci and the David, where he basically said, I didn't sculpt this,

I simply chipped away all the rock that was around the David, which was always inside of it. And when you describe the process of building the home, what immediately flickered into my mind was, I see this more as, yes, all these are the things, but it's almost like they've always been there. What the work that we're doing is in part, it's sort of like it's peeling away all of the things that stop us from seeing it and feeling it and experiencing that this essential nature that's always been a part of us.

So that was my interesting reaction as I was reading through it. I was nodding along and then I was saying, this also feels more like a revealing than a construction. Absolutely. So you'll notice in the clarity room, I talk about unveiling. And even though I gave the example of physically unveiling when I took my hijab off, I say, you know, when you stand in front of the mirror and look at yourself, there is that blur. you haven't seen yourself in a long, long time. You haven't been in touch with yourself for a very long time. So it's like a mirror that you haven't cleaned in ages. So when you look at yourself to figure out, who am I? That doesn that's in front of you. So that process of peeling the layers. Yesterday, I was talking to a friend of mine about this. I said, people think I magically woke up one day and said, my life is going to be completely different. I all of a sudden, I'm not afraid of breaking my silence. I all of a sudden, I'm not afraid of just being fully myself. I'm not,

it's, it does not happen that way. It happens step by step. So if you are unveiling and you are peeling different layers to get to see yourself and know who you are. That happens in moments. The world will present you with opportunities where you are able to fully be yourself and make a decision based on that or abandon yourself and make a decision based on what you think that decision will mean about you or will make you feel. And once you, in a moment, make a decision to be yourself and risk, you know, taking a road that you've never taken before. I always say this. I say, if the road you've been taking your whole life is self-abandonment, going home to yourself is going to be a very foreign road.

It's very unfamiliar. You've never gone down that road. It's scary. When you've never said no in your life, saying no is terrifying because you don't know what the result is. There's so much fear. When you've never decided for yourself, you've always followed certain people's footsteps or taken someone's permission. Making a decision for yourself is going to be terrifying. And you're going to feel like, I don't know how to do this. But you don't magically wake up one day and know how to do everything. You have to risk it and it might not work and you have to be okay with it not working

so I always always always tell people it is not this magical thing that you're gonna read this book and be like I'm done that's it I have a home within there is a lot of work involved peeling those layers not just peeling the layers to see who you are, because there's the self-awareness piece and there's the self-acceptance piece in the foundation of who you are. It's not just those things. It's also making self-love, like I said, your plan A, and not just an emergency thing for when you're not getting love externally. That's a beautiful thing to hear. It is hard to practice being your number one source of love every single day

because it's not just an affirmation. It's through action. You show yourself that you treat yourself like you would treat your most loved one. That's hard work. That requires not only maybe upsetting yourself sometimes because you might blame yourself for certain people walking away as a result of you putting yourself first, but you'll get upset with others getting upset with you for putting yourself first. It's, it's, those things are so hard. We don't want to feel them. We just want peace. We don't want conflict. We don't, then, you know, forgiveness, self-forgiveness and forgiveness of others.

It's very beautiful to say, you know, I've forgiven everyone and everything. But do you actually feel that on the inside? Like, have you let go and released the hold that the pain that someone caused you had on you for so long? Have you forgiven yourself or do you continue on a daily basis to beat yourself up over things you've done in the past? That's hard to do. It's a hard practice to sit with feeling that resentment towards yourself or towards someone else from your past and say, I genuinely understand and I have internalized that that doesn't mean anything about me now, that that happening to me or me going through that or me making that decision in the past that I knew better or not getting an apology for something from someone, I genuinely believe it doesn't define who I am. That doesn't happen overnight. Allowing yourself to feel your

emotions. I honestly believe this is the number one factor that breaks relationships these days, and it's lack of emotional intelligence. Because what happens is you're experiencing something on the inside, but you don't even want to sit with it. So you just allow that emotion to manifest in the way you speak and in the way that you react. And you end up saying something hurtful because of the way that you are feeling about yourself because of there's something that you're holding on on the inside, but you don't want to deal with it. So you need that release. So let's hurt someone, not intentionally, maybe intentionally sometimes, but, you know, tending to your emotions. I use the analogy of, you know, when pain knocks on your door, let it in, open the door for it, let it in, have tea with it,

then walk it to the door and say, it's time for me to experience something new. That's beautiful to hear. Extremely hard to apply. And you have to consciously make the decision to sit with it, whether it's a positive emotion or a negative emotion. So the whole process of, and this is in the surrender room, as I'm sure you're aware, the process, for example, of getting to know who you are, unveiling in the clarity room or getting to understand the power that you have over recreating your life, not as, like you said earlier, as you're not transforming, you now have given yourself that role of, I am the leader of my life. I get to decide whether I want to continue living my life the way I have been living it up to this point, or say,

this is a blank canvas that I'm going to, I'm going to ask myself. And I did this. I wrote down a list of how, what my life looked like. And I asked myself if I had a choice in this, would I say yes or no? Most of it was no. I would take it off my, the canvas of my life and say, I'm not doing this anymore. Like living at my parents' home. I didn't want to do that anymore. It didn't serve me anymore. So I, I'm not doing this anymore. Like living at my parents' home, I didn't want to do that anymore. It didn't serve me anymore. So I moved out. Or wearing the hijab, for example, at this point, I wouldn't have made that choice. I made it when I was 13. So look at your life and anything that has a certain significance in your life right now or affects the way that you live, write it all out.

That's not easy because on top of you giving yourself permission genuinely on the inside, like giving yourself permission to think for yourself, to understand that you have a choice, that is so hard because the first thing we want to do is please tell me what to do with my life. It's easier for us to follow someone else's plan or wisdom or whatever, instead of following our own. And that's just further, you're running away from yourself. So when you do, and the only one I missed was the compassion room, and it's all about boundaries. And that one is one of my favorites. And I think it's one of the least talked about chapters, but because it's titled compassion,

and usually you think, oh, that's what I show towards others, but there's also self-compassion. And, you know, part of that is, you know, when I give the example of when you invite people into your home, are you on that guest list? Most of us aren't. When we welcome someone into our home, we are there to be there for them, to make sure they feel welcome. We forget about ourselves. And this is not just with, with you know inviting people over for dinner it's also when we invite people into our lives we tend to prioritize them put them first and we forget about ourselves and then you know the example of if somebody came into your home and they insulted you or insulted someone that you love what would you do you escort them to the

door but most of us don't do that because we are so afraid of setting a boundary that might mean that this person will walk away for good or that they will change the way they see us or whatever. So when you put all of these rooms together with the solid foundation of self-acceptance and self-awareness, with initially the road to home, understanding why you haven't realized that you are your own home, why you haven't realized that you are the safest place for you. That understanding is what's standing in the way between you knowing things and you applying things. So for me, that whole process of, you know, building that home within that whole process of becoming aware, really becoming aware of who you are and the power you have over your life. And, you know, just being intentional with the way that you practice all the elements

of what it means to be home with yourself. It's not just a, you know, a 300 page book. That's a life-changing ritual that needs time, that needs a lot of pain to to dive through and to rise through and it's not a word you read and that's it you're done you have to be willing to put in the work and I from what I've experienced so far with people sending me messages and emails, I do believe that the stories I shared with the vulnerability that I shared them with, because I was extremely open, I did not care about what people, you know, might think when they read those stories, I was extremely open. And my intention was to lead through example and say, if I'm telling you to be fully at peace with who you are and be fully at peace with everything that's happened to you and to just not allow the past

and the future to have so much power over you, I wanted to do that in action. And so I really think that doing that has allowed anyone who's read Welcome Home so far to feel safe doing that. I love the fact that also you, with each one of these different sort of descriptions of the foundation and the room, you illustrate it through your own experience. You share ideas and then you also, you give people things to do, you know, which altogether forms what I see as a practice, you know, and a practice is something that is not, you know, it's different than a process where like you start with a, and then you finish the process and you're done.

A practice is, it's what you do. It's more how you live. It's how you step into your life and then sustain a certain way of being through your life. I'm curious also, as we start to wrap our conversation a little bit and we zoom the lens out, up until now, a lot of what you have written has been in verse. It's been poetic. There's a lot of metaphor.

There's a lot of the language is, this is different. This book is different because it is very direct and it's prescriptive in a way that your prior writing has been, but not in a way that's direct like this. It's been more like, let me share an idea. Let me share language and rhythm and cadence and verse in a way where you will feel the essence of the ideas I'm trying to distill and maybe transfer into the words. But this is a very different book for you, you know and maybe transfer into the words. But this is a very different book for you, you know, because you're kind of saying, this is what I believe. This is my philosophy of life. And here are the things, here are the essential steps that have helped me get to a certain place and maybe it'll help you. I'm curious how that landed with you

when you were thinking about writing that book, because it is very different than what you've written before. Yes. So I've always been afraid of sharing the stories that led me to write the way that I do. And I don't believe that that fear was evident to me, but I do believe it was driving why I tried so hard to just, you know, explain the feelings and thoughts with such vivid detail, but not explain how I came to that. It was more like, well, I just know, you know, I just, I feel with others. I empathize with others. But through the journey of writing poetry and verse, the empowerment that it gave me or instilled within me, really, not just gave me, and the empowerment that I was aiming to give others, it got to a point where I just couldn't hide those

stories anymore. It just didn't feel right to me to do that because I was fully aware it's the fear of being fully exposed to the world because I'm a public figure. At the end of the day, right now, I'm a public figure. My life is out there. And it's once you put a story out there and share something from your life, it's hard to, it's impossible to take it away. So there was always that fear of exposure, there was always that fear of what are the people around me going to think? to not only comprehend on a personal level why I am how I am and who I am, but also to help anyone who's read my words in the past or who is currently reading them to do that for themselves. And so the original thought behind Welcome Home was it first came out after Mind Platter was self-published. So my first TEDx talk was in 2016 and it was finding home through poetry.

And that was an extremely on the spot speech. Like I cannot emphasize that enough. It was on the spot because I forgot everything I intended to say. And so when those words came out about home, when I said the biggest mistake we make is that we build our homes and other people, we build those homes and we decorate them with the love and care and kindness that we want to come home to at the end of the day. And when those people walk away, those homes walk away with them. And all of a sudden we feel empty.

That emptiness doesn't mean that we don't have anything within. It just means that we put it in the wrong place. And the lesson here isn't that, you know, all that we have to give is gone. It's that we are the source of what we gave. And if we gave it once, we can give it more than once. But maybe this time we can give it to ourselves. That didn't have a story, right? Powerful words didn't have a story. And so I wrote The Nectar of Pain and then Sparks of Phoenix. And then when it came time for me to write my fourth book, I knew I wanted it to be more longer writings because every time I would post something on social media or people would

read my books, they would say, what do you like? Can you please talk more about this? Like people always said, I scroll through Instagram and I pause when I see your name because it's deep. And I would, you know, people loved hearing stories. They loved longer reflections. So I knew I wanted to do that. So the initial intention was it's a book about letting go.

So I went to New York, I met with my new agents, everything happens for a reason. I had just stopped working with my last agent because I didn't believe, you know, there was that faith in me as a writer. So, you know, I made that big decision and I met with my new agents and we're sitting there the first time we met. And I told them, you know, this is how I'm planning on breaking the book up. And these are the sections. And, but the title, the title is not coming to me. I know it's about letting go. It's a guide that helps people to let go. But I just, I don't know what the title is. But back when I made that speech about finding home through poetry, when I went back to my hotel room,

like I knew that the title of that book would be welcome home because you're getting to a point where you can tell yourself welcome home. Like I could just see it. And they looked at each other and they were like, that's the book you need to write. Like it was it, that was the moment that it became clear to them and to me, this is the book I need to write. And I knew that for me to be my most authentic self, I knew I needed to write my story because I didn't want to hide anymore. I didn't want to just conceal certain parts of me, even though I could have. I could have written a poetry book titled Welcome Home and not included those stories. I could have just written a guide that didn't go so deeply into my personal life. But it didn't feel right for me to do that. So when I sat down to write the first chapter in the book, which is the chapter that actually sold Welcome Home, I found myself going back to the root of that belief that I have about myself, which is I don't deserve to be held on to.

I can't write that story without writing that story. Like if I had just said, go back to this to the first time in your life that you formed the most detrimental belief you have about yourself. What is your my you know, what is your why can't I have that story? What's that to you? What is the thing that you believed your whole life you can't have? I can't say that and have it have the power that it currently has without sharing the moment that as an eight or nine year old, I sat in that room and heard those laughs and giggles of my cousins getting gifts and feeling loved and, and thinking, why can't I have that? Like I couldn't write it without writing the story. And so it just, the whole process of writing Welcome Home was such a beautiful, therapeutic, genuinely a process of me further coming home to myself. process, because I'm no longer afraid to say this is who I am. I'm no longer afraid, whether it's

conscious or subconscious, I'm no longer afraid or, you know, feeling like I have to hide certain parts of myself to be perceived a certain way by the world. I am who I am and I am fully at peace with who I am. And writing Welcome Home was that in action. And that feels like a good place for us to come full circle as well. Yes. So sitting here in this container of a good life project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up? To live a good life, know who you are, accept who you are,

accept all that has brought you to being who you are today. that your home and inner sense of peace and safety is worthy of being on. That's what comes to me. Thank you so much. And that was on the spot too. Hey, before you leave, if you love this episode, safe bet you'll also love the conversation we had with Humble the Poet about defining your own identity in a world where you just don't seem to fit the mold. You'll find a link to Humble's episode in the show notes. And even if you don't listen now, go ahead and click and download

so it's ready to play when you're on the go. And of course, if you haven't already done so, go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app. And if you appreciate the work that we've been doing here on Good Life Project, go check out my new book, Sparked. It'll reveal some incredibly eye-opening things about maybe one of your favorite subjects, you, and then show you how to tap these insights to reimagine and reinvent work as a source of meaning, purpose, and joy. You'll find a link in the show notes, or you can also find it at your favorite bookseller now. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.

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The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot.

Flight Risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes.

The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary.