Here's Where It Gets Interesting - The Man Who Named a Bluebird After Me with Carlos Whittaker

Episode Date: July 19, 2021

In this episode, Sharon meets with her dear friend and bestselling author Carlos Whittaker to discuss how to let go of fear and change the world in a positive way. In an era of social media and ‘cancel culture,’ it seems more daunting than ever to pursue a cause or passion. Whether it's fear of public backlash or the intimidation that comes with comparison to other world-changers on social media, Carlos and Sharon explore how to take a risk in order to rescue the world. Carlos offers listeners practical advice on how to identify, expel and replace the lies we believe about ourselves with truth. Heartfelt, entertaining and authentic, this episode is for everyone - because we are all responsible for changing the world. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Yay! You're here again! I'm still pumped from the last time. This episode, I am chatting with my buddy. My buddy, Carlos Whitaker. If you know him, you already love him. He just cracks me up all the time. He also talks about things in a way that makes sense to me. What I mean by that is, he thinks about things carefully and he knows, listen, you might not arrive at the same conclusion as me, but you're still welcome at this table. And I absolutely love that about him. This conversation is both hilarious and poignant. Let's dive in. This is Carlos Whitaker, the man who named a bluebird after me. I'm Sharon McMahon, and welcome to the Sharon Says So podcast. Hi, I want to talk for hours with you. All right, well, here I have a few questions for you.

Okay, cool. One of the things that I want to talk to you about is advice for somebody who wants to be a positive change in the world. Somebody who wants to change the world for themselves. Somebody who wants to make an impact. Somebody who wants to be more than just somebody who scrolls Instagram. Yeah. Gosh. What advice would you give to somebody?

Not to just dive right into it? Yeah. This is one of those things that I feel like people feel helpless, powerless. They feel despair over. They feel like nothing I do will make a difference. Right. Right. Me writing a letter. What's I going to do? Yeah. You know what I mean? I would love to hear from you, your feelings on this topic. You know what I mean? I would love to hear from you, your feelings on this topic. Yeah. So this is a great, I love the question because the first thing people have to understand is the reason why they don't think that they can make a difference. The reason why. So you got to go to the re I always, I'll go to the reason first before giving tips on how to, giving tips on how to, right? Like the reason why is because they believe a lie, right? And so,

so like you, you find the lie and normally this lie, this lie could be different for different people, but normally this lie is going to be based on worth. This lie is going to be based on their worth and their ability to even do anything. So what I tell people is, okay, so first, let's get back to the root as to why you actually don't believe you can do it. Because the only people changing the world right now are people that believe they can. It's not just a switch that you flip. It actually is probably going to take a little bit of work. It's probably going to take a little bit of therapy, maybe. You know, like finding somebody, paying a friend some money. I call my professional paid friend as my therapist and I pay them $120 so that they can listen to me and they can tell me and they can help me find the lie that's holding me back from my fullest potential. I have seen so many people

achieve their breakthroughs and finally start living their purpose when they found the lie that they believe and they replaced that lie with truth. What kind of lies are people believing? What are the lies that people are telling themselves? Yeah. I mean, I can list 10 off right now, but here's simple lies. I am worthless. That's a big one. It doesn't even have to be that bad. How about I'm not good enough? I am too something. So not the lack of, but maybe I'm too emotional. I care too much, right?

So people won't try to change the world because they think, well, I don't know if I have the capacity to handle all of what I'm going to be feeling. I'm too much of an empath. And then you can get into lies like, you know, I'm too fat. I'm too ugly. I'm not educated enough. All of these lies are the things that are getting in the way of our behavior that ultimately will change the world. And so for me, my lie that kept me away for so long was that I'm not smart enough. That literally was my lie. So I can tell you right now, I remember specifically the moment when I had a friend look at me and said, Carlos, like, you're just kind of like, it's like, you're almost there.

Like you're, you're just kind of teasing your full potential. And he worked with me for a minute. I said, a friend, a therapist. I love that. I literally am friends with my, they're like, they're like, a therapist. I love that I literally am friends with him. They're like, they would not be my friends if I didn't pay him. And he just said, there's a lie that you believe. What is it?

And I had to go back. And Sharon, I went back to a moment. This was probably 20 years ago. I was working for a boss in Southern California. And I was trying to raise my leadership capacity. I had one intern working for me at the time. And I remember to, you know, I had like one intern working for me at the time. And I remember thinking like, gosh, we could really get more done if I had some more help. So I walked into his office. This all happened in therapy. I figured this out. I walked

into his office and I said, Hey, can I like, you know, can I get some more help for what you're asking me to do? And he said, Oh, Carlos, you're actually like, you're not a leader. You're more like a, like the player. Like I'm the coach. You're the Kobe. He actually said this. I'm Phil Jackson. You're Kobe Bryant. You just need to perform and let people like you so that they can see us. And then we can bring them in and I can lead them in the organization. And I just remember what happened in that moment, Sharon, was I believed a lie. I made an agreement with the lie that I'm not a leader and that I'm not smart enough. And what happened? I ended up living 20 years of my life. And I never like cognitively would think about that conversation,

but it was in the back of my head. So what did I have to do? I had to, with my paid friend, I had to break the agreement I made 20 years ago. And see, this is, this is the thing when, when people want to change the world and they're not doing it, most of the time, these lies aren't lies that have developed over the last year. You're going to have to go back to when you were a teenager, when you were a child, and do a little bit of digging, do the work, break whatever agreement you've made with that lie, but then replace it with truth. You find the lie, you replace it with truth. And now suddenly it's like, not only am I a leader, but I can actually positively impact this planet with my words, words that I was told I was never going to be a speaker. I just need to sing.

Cause you're a singer. You're not a speaker. You're a singer. You're not a communicator. People would tell me these things, Sharon, and I would believe them. And so we don't believe these lies just because we're like, you know, weak. We believe these lies because people tell us these things. We've got to constantly be breaking these agreements and replacing them with truth. I think at that point, this may not be where you wanted the question to go, but I believe that at that point, your listeners or anybody that is wanting to see that breakthrough where they can take, now we can put action items into place. Now it's like, Hey, just do it. Like once you break that agreement, you're going to have something rise up inside of you where you're just going to be like, you know what? I see Sharon in six months

changing people's lives across planet earth. Guess what? If Sharon would not have believed that she could, I mean, I guarantee you, I wasn't, I wasn't in your head, but I guarantee you the first time that you had to thought, you know what? I wonder if like my followers could get together to actually do something. There probably was a little bit of hesitancy because you don't want to look dumb. You don't want to fail in front of everybody. And so like, that's the thing you just have to, you have to do it. Once you build that truth, replace the lie. Now you just have to start doing things. Now you just have to risk. And so taking that risk after you've replaced the lie with truth, because it's going to be risky. You're going to fall on your face sometimes. You're going to fail.

But it takes risk in order to rescue. I say that all the time. If you want to rescue something, if you want to rescue whatever it may be, whatever thing is passionate in your heart, you're going to have to risk. There's never been a rescue on planet earth, whether it be a Navy SEAL or a teacher rescuing a student that hasn't involved risk. And so if there's no risk, then there's probably not a lot of rescue happening. So it's going to be risky. It's going to be scary. When you break the agreement with the lie, replace it with the truth, start risking. You're going to see a lot more of that rescue happening in your life and you're going to start changing the world. You can do it. I love all that so much. I want to talk more about too, how did you go about replacing the lie with the truth? What was that process like for you and how long did that take?

Was it a light switch moment? Was it gradual over years? I'm going to tell a story that I think will kind of make all of this kind of lie and truth kind of thing make sense. Well, first of all, let me also say, this is an ongoing thing. You're going to have to be replacing lies with truth every day. Last week, I spoke at an event where this man named Bob Goff, a lot of people like this guy. He's like the super charismatic, multi New York Times bestselling author. Everyone loves Bob. He's like so whimsical. And I remember walking into the event and I saw my name right after Bob. And I remember immediately, what did I think? Oh my gosh, I'm speaking right after Bob. Nobody

is going to care what I have to say because Bob is so charismatic. So what happened? That was a lie. That was birthed in that moment. That wasn't birth and childhood. That was birthed at 1159 PM. So what did I have to do? I had to go in the mirror. I had to look at myself. Even though I didn't believe it, I had to say it out loud. It's proven that when you speak things out loud, that it will change the atmosphere in your heart. It'll change the atmosphere around you. And you will start to believe things. So I had to go in the mirror and I had to say, I am just as good as Bob Goff.

I am just as charismatic. People are going to love me. And I had to say that over and over. So that's a little aside so people know that this is going. But also I want to share this story because this is going to make sense to people. My dad tells me a story about when he was a pastor from Panama, right? So he grew up preaching in Panama. They'd have

these revival nights and ask people to come forward if they wanted to pray. And he said, this woman came forward every night and would ask him to pray that God would clean the cobwebs from her life. And my dad was like, oh, it's kind of poetic. I don't know really what that means, but whatever. So he kind of prayed, you know, God clean the cobwebs from her life. And my dad was like, oh, it's kind of poetic. I don't know really what that means, but whatever. So he kind of prayed, you know, God clean the cobwebs from her life. He said the next night she came and asked him again, can you pray harder that the cobwebs would be clean for my life? And then he prayed again. Then the third night, can you pray harder about the cobwebs?

And my dad said, he looked at her and said, no, we're not going to pray about the cobwebs. We're going to pray that we find the spider and kill the spider. And for me, I ended up writing a book called Kill the Spider because that was such a profound lesson to me. I actually teach this to corporations because so many people at the root of all of their fears, we're spending all of our time in cobweb land. somebody that say they believe a lie that they're worthless, but what they've done is that worthless lie has developed into behavior where they're not speaking out against injustice. Say for instance, let's talk about social media. Oh, well, my, my, my words won't matter, whatever. I, because deep down, that's the lie. What they do is they're like, well, no, I'm going to go buy a book and self-help aisle about confidence.

And I'm just going to read how other people are confident. And I'm going to place that on my shoulder. I'm going to learn how to be confident. Well, can I tell you something? The problem isn't your lack of confidence and you can't fix it by fixing the confidence piece. You have to go to the lie. You have to go to the spider. You have to go to the root. And so for me, I had a big lie that I wasn't a leader and I wasn't smart. But after, I don't know, six sessions of therapy and talking, yes, it was a light bulb moment. And it was for me like, holy cow, killing the spider or breaking the agreement with the lie or replacing it with truth. That's the easy part. The hard part is finding it, right? The hard part is actually doing the work to dig down and to go find it. And so, um, I tell you what, Sharon, it is, um, uh, it's so cool for me when I, when I do

these teachings again, say it said I did a like Nike designer summit and I have some guy like super brilliant designer. He designed sneakers, comes up in tears to my book table afterwards. And he's like, I just, I've never thought about it this way. Like, help me find my lie. Once you start thinking about it, it's not going to take you long to find the lie that you believe. And if you don't know what it is, again, maybe ask some friends, ask some family members, because there's normally one or two big lies that are keeping us from big things in our

lives. And then there's those little lies that every single day you got to break, you got to break, you got to break. Again, it's not self-talk for the sake of hyping you up. I literally look myself in the mirror and I just go find truths about who I am and I speak them over myself. I speak them over myself and I see lies die every single day. So anyway. What happens if somebody, let's say they feel like, I don't have any good ideas. I don't know. I don't know what to do. And that's, they, they decide that that is the lie that they believed. How do they find a truth to replace that with when they don't actually believe that? Yeah. You know what I'm talking about? People, you know, like I'm not smart.

Maybe that's your, maybe that's the lie you're believing. How do you actually begin to believe that in fact, the truth is real? Yes. Oh no, that, that is so good. And one way is to find other people that believe the truth about you. Now that that's difficult because for some people, they might, they may not have a community that speaks truth over them, right? Which is why it is important. I go back to therapy a thousand times to find somebody that can look past, uh, whatever lid you have, whatever blinders you have in your life and can look past you and allow other people to start speaking those truths over you. When I was in the thick of it, I'll tell you what, like I could have spoken self-help talk or whatever,

like all day long looking in the mirror. And I still didn't believe it. You know, I still, for some people that's faith, for some people that's going to a gym and finding, you know, friends in a gym that you work out with that can, you know, I'll tell you what physical manifestations of like changing your life physically, when you're with a group of people that every single day, you can do it, you can do it. And if all they're telling you is that you can do it by lifting five more pounds, well, that's still going to shift something inside of you. That's why a community is so vital. Find people that can speak these things over you. Find people that

can speak truth over you if you can't seem to find it on your own and then also know this there is not a new idea under the sun like like if you're trying to like find you know you want to be the originator of whatever idea it is that's going to change i'll just tell you right now everything is copy and paste find something that that moves you find something that actually makes you jump and then do that. And you'll find your salt and pepper. Sharon's not Oprah, right? You're not, but you're Sharon. And guess what? I've seen you say it a couple of times before. You used to watch Oprah and think, I want to be able to do something like that. And guess what? You're doing it now.

You're absolutely doing it, but you're doing it in your own way. And then someone else is going to see you and they're not gonna know who Oprah is. And they're gonna be like, I can do it because Sharon did it. So go find the ideas, but also surround yourselves with people that can speak the truth over you. If you can't find it yourself, whether it be in a faith space, whether it be in a gym, whether it be at a mom's group, whether it be there are people ready and willing to speak over you or whether it be in a therapist chair, you can find one person to speak truth over you because I promise you, DM me. Like if you need somebody to tell you how awesome you are,

I'll just do it. Like I'll just, I'll do it myself because you're awesome and you are capable. So capable. I'm Jenna Fisher. And I'm Angela Kinsey. We are best friends. And together we have the podcast Office Ladies, where we rewatched every single episode of

The Office with insane behind the scenes stories, hilarious guests and lots of laughs. Guess who's sitting next to me? Steve! It's my girl in the studio. Every Wednesday, we'll be sharing even more exclusive stories from the office and our friendship with brand new guests. And we'll be digging into our mailbag to answer your questions and comments. So join us for brand new Office Lady 6.0 episodes every Wednesday. Plus, on Mondays, we are taking a second drink.

You can revisit all the Office Ladies rewatch episodes every Monday with new bonus tidbits before every episode. Well, we can't wait to see you there. Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. I love all of this so much. I want to go back to this concept of risk and rescue because taking risks is scary. in one moment where in my childhood, if I wore a bad outfit to school, well, you know what? It was the 17 people in my second grade class. You know what I mean? The number of eyeballs that people that potentially are on you has increased so dramatically over what it was 30 years ago. I feel like for some people, the concept of risk, I mean, I feel like for most people, especially if you have social media, the concept of risk has grown enormously over what it

used to be. And this is an area that I feel like technology has outpaced our coping skills. Technology has outpaced our brain's ability to process the incoming input. How much negative feedback can one mind take in a day? You know what I mean? Short of some super high profile jobs, like maybe the presidency or maybe top level movie star, just get all kinds of incoming press about them all the time. Short of that, we're not equipped to deal with this. We're just not equipped to deal with it. And so can you talk a little bit about the concept of taking a risk in the age of social media? Woo, man. Yeah. So, I mean, I'm just going to vomit here for a second.

Um, yeah. So, I mean, I'm just going to vomit here for a second. Um, so, okay. Before we even talk about risk, let's talk about just the age of social media and the amount of content we as humans were not created with the capacity to handle good news or bad news. I'm just talking about any news, the amount of content we consume, we weren't created to. So for my last book, I found a study that showed that in the first 15 minutes we are awake. We consume because our phones are our alarm clocks. And then we turn it and then we swipe up and we start notifications and we just start consuming. The amount of content we consume in the first 15 minutes is the same amount of content that my great grandparents consumed in 30 days. Okay. So yeah, I believe it. So here's the thing. We were not created. Yes. Yes. We evolve. Yes. I believe that there's,

but there's no way that we were created to consume. Now I'm talking good news or bad news. I'm not just talking about bad news. I just don't think that we were created to know everything that we know all the time. So what do we do? You know, I do believe that how cigarette warnings came out in the fifties and sixties, we're going to have that same kind of warnings in the next 10 years coming out with phones and technology and content consumption. I think we're going to start to see what it's probably doing to our brains or studies being done on all that stuff now. So knowing, first of all, that we weren't created to consume that much. You got to know that truth before you can get to the next part. Once you know that, you can start making decisions every single day on how you're going to consume.

I actually posted this yesterday. I have the Wall Street Journal delivered by some man. I don't know who he is. He does it every single morning. I don't know who he is. He does it every single morning. He throws it out. This is like, it's like I live in 1982. A man drives by my house in the morning before I'm up and throws a newspaper in my yard.

I go outside and I read it. And guess what? That is my news consumption. If something changes by tomorrow, guess what? I'll be okay. I can wait until tomorrow. I had to do that for my own. I'm not saying everybody needs to go get a new subscription,

but I'm saying for me, I was consuming so much content, so much news that I said, I have to do something different. So I don't have news apps on my phone anymore. I unsubscribed to all the news feeds on Twitter. I did all the things I knew to do. And I get my news once a day and I read it normally while I'm having breakfast

or I'll take it if I'm going on a trip and I read it on the, on the plane and that's it. And I feel like I'm pacing myself at that point. Okay, so there's that. You got to pace your consumption with the content and social media and everything that we're doing. And then the whole risk piece.

People are canceling people left and right, up and down for speaking what they're passionate about. And I believe that it's unfortunate. People all the time will DM me about, say, I have a conversation with somebody that they don't agree with that they believe maybe needs to be canceled. So how dare you, Carlos, talk to this person? Do you know, or like promote them? Do you know what they did? And I, this is what I always tell them. If, when I made my mistake, cause I made, I've made some huge mistakes in my life. I just happened to make them in 2011 as opposed to 2021. And guess what? I'm lucky. And I tell

these people, if I would have made the same mistake I made in 2011, that got, guess what? You you're reading my books about, because I grew because of the mistake that I made. And now I can help you. I've written all these books about, if I would have done that in 2021, I actually would have been canceled. And there would have been no availability for me to process, heal, and help other people because I just happened to make my mistakes

before cancel culture happened. And so I know that it's risky. I know that it's risky. Again, I say risk in order to rescue. We are going to have to begin to weigh the risks that we take when we speak out for what we feel passionate about. And the weight and the scale is going to have to be this, is my heartbeat and my desire to see the world changed heavier than my fear of losing something that I have. So there's going to be a trade-off. Okay. It can't be an equal balance. Great example. You're talking to them. All I used to talk about,

like I'm in the faith space. I was like in the faith space, right? So everything I talked about, and I'd go to churches, I'd talk on Sundays and it was great. That's the kind of what I did my whole life. And then 2020 came and I started speaking up on things I was passionate about that I didn't really know I was really passionate about. I knew, but it was the time. So I started speaking on racial injustice. I started speaking on some things. Well, can I tell you? I had to take my scale because when I put up my very first video on how my white friends can help the black community. My Instagram went in 24 hours.

My Instagram went from 32,000 to 27,000. I lost 5,000 followers. Now, those kinds of numbers, I thought I'd ruined my career. I was like, oh my gosh. Sharon, I almost deleted the IGTV. I almost did because I was like, uh-uh. I can't, it's too risky.

But I had to ask myself, what weighs more? My desire to see change or possibly what I'm going to lose? So guess what? I started losing some speaking gigs. It was risky because I started losing income because of what I was standing up for. But the passion was so strong inside of my heart, inside of my ethos that I said, you know what? Nope. I feel called to this. And I began to speak more. I began to educate and I saw those numbers begin to tick back up. And then I saw those numbers really explode because I took a risk and I'm telling people all the time, it's, it's risky. And guess what? You probably will lose something. Again, I think of a Navy SEAL, right? And I think if they go and they rescue somebody, they may lose some skin on their arm. They may lose a limb. They may lose all kinds of things, but they're still going to go do it because what they're going to rescue is actually

worth more than the risk. And so that's the thing. You got to weigh it. And I know it's scary, especially in this age of social media. I would say, you know, stand up for something that you believe in and just know that if you're doing the right thing, you know, I'm not, I'm not a big karma dude, but I do know if you're passionate about something, if there's something in your heart and you go after it and you lose something, don't stop. Don't give up. Like keep pressing through it. Cause I promise you, like you're really close to breakthrough. You're really close to the other side. So yeah, it takes risk in order to rescue. It's not going to be fun. It is going to be scary.

You're probably going to lose something. But man, what I've seen on the other side of my risk, it's changed my life. Like it's, it actually has changed everything. And so that's a lot, that's a lot about it. No, I love it. I also really resonate with this idea that you have to be willing to risk in order to be able to change something. And what you are willing to give up, what you are willing to risk is the price of admission for changing, changing the world. What you are willing to give up is, is the ticket price. Yeah.

And a lot of people, maybe, maybe today that person is not in the space of being able to say, I'm willing to buy the ticket. Yeah. Yeah. But someday they will be. Yeah. Someday they will be in the position of I'm ready to buy the ticket because I know that the cost of admission is, is going to be worth it at some point. Yes. At some point. I love to this idea that you, you have to be in charge of your own

mental health. You have to be in charge of your own psyche. And for you, that means I can't read CNN and Fox 24-7 on the phone. Like the space, it's beaming to my phone from space into my face. Like what I call the space to face pipeline. Like it's too much. And now I will just read the newspaper with my Cheerios. And that's what I will do. That's right. And I think that's what I will do. That's right. That's right. And I think

that's fantastic. Because being in my mid forties, I need Cheerios because on the box, it says it helps with cholesterol. So like I'm all in with my newspaper. Newspaper and my Cheerios. Yeah. It's so true. You do. You have to be involved. You have to be in charge of your own mental health. And you have to know, again, we weren't created for this consumption. So every single one of us has to do something, whether it be buy a newspaper, whether it be not using your phone as your alarm. I actually did something that changed a lot for me. Three years ago, I started leaving my phone in the kitchen and I bought something called an alarm clock.

For those that don't know that, it's a clock. It's just a clock. All it does is it beeps and I don't pick it up when it beeps and I don't know that, it's a clock. It's just a clock. All it does is it beeps and I don't pick it up when it beeps and I don't like push buttons and start reading it. It just wakes me up. So, you know, little things like that, that we can do because technology is going to continue to advance. I'm not saying burn the phones, throw the laptops away. No. But what I'm saying is like, you be in charge of them. Don't let them be in charge of you. And know your own capacity. If you're an empath and you absorb every single piece of negative information and it ruins your day, then you're going to need to be really careful. Some other

people, and thank goodness those people work in the FBI and the CIA, some other people can handle it. You know what I mean? Other people can be like, well, I'm going to compartmentalize that piece of news. But not everybody can do that. And so don't think that you need to have FBI level intelligence about every news story that exists. It doesn't hinge on you. I love it. It's not on you.

It's actually unnecessary. I mean, it really is. Like, we don't need you to know this, okay? That's right. You know? None of this is on you. We actually don't need you to have an opinion on everything either. Oh, my gosh.

Thank you. There are some things that we just don't need to have an opinion about. You know, people will DM me constantly like, well, because here's the thing. In my space, I do give my opinions, right? Like, I'm like an opinion guy, and I give my opinions with grace, but it doesn't matter every day. There's five new things that I'm supposed to have an opinion about. And I'm here to tell people, you don't have to have an opinion on everything. You really don't. You're not obligated. No. You're not obligated to form an opinion on the new Nike releases. Like the shoes are what they are.

Congratulations on your shoes. I don't actually, these don't apply to me. I'm not an NBA player. I don't need an opinion on this. And we truly have reached decision fatigue. Many of us have reached decision fatigue because we feel like we have to form well-educated opinions on every single thing that has ever happened in the history of the known universe. Yes. Yes. And guess what? All of these things that people are asking for opinions for, maybe we feel pressured. They're actually all important. We're not saying, we're not saying that the issues aren't important. We're just saying that you don't have to have an opinion on every important issue. So I speak about race all the time. Somebody sent me a question like, what do you think about blackface in the emoji something? And I was like, what are

you talking about? And they explained it to me. And I said, well, you know what? I think about it. I'm not thinking about it. That's actually going to be it. Like, I'm not going to research it. It's not affecting me right now. I'm sure it's affecting other people. And I'm sure it's very important. But Carlos is making a decision to not have an opinion on that. And they were like, Oh, that's cool. Thanks. You know, but that's it. Not everyone is supposed to do everything. Everyone should do something, but not everyone can do that. Nobody can do everything. And so as soon as we get attached to this idea that it's your job to do everything yeah that is when we start getting into this like analysis paralysis i'm like i can't i can't possibly keep up with every every military coup around the world and every shooting that

happens in the united states and every single piece of negative information. Like I can't possibly keep it up. You can't. You cannot. And so do you have passions for a reason? Yes. Those passions are given to you for a reason. Yes. And care about those things. Absolutely. It doesn't mean callously ignore other people who care about different things, but care about the things that you were given a passion for, because that is where you can affect the most change. And don't expect other people to care about the things you care about. Like that's the other thing is that when we're so passionate about something, of course, we've got this like God given, you know, just, you know, just heartbeat for things inside of us. And then sometimes let's be honest, like we see someone

else and they're not talking about it, but they're, they care about something else. Sometimes we want them to really care about what we care about. Understand that not everybody needs to care about what you care about. Right. It's not everybody's responsibility. Like you, you talk a lot, you care a lot about racial justice issues and you care a lot about the death penalty. Yep. Yep. No, like that is something that you have a passion for is about the death penalty. Other people have a passion for curing pediatric cancer. Yes. And it doesn't mean that you Carlos are like screw pediatric cancer. I hate it. That's not what it means. It just means that you have passions that you will pursue.

They should have passions that they pursue. And they're both important. Yes, they're both. And then if you go even a step closer in, I think, I love this, Sharon, because pediatric cancer, some people are fighting against breast cancer. Let's just stick with cancer. Some people are colon cancer. Guess what? Colon cancer and breast cancer, it's still cancer. Some people are fighting against breast cancer. Let's just stick with cancer. Some people are colon cancer. Guess what? Colon cancer and breast cancer, it's still cancer, but it's different kinds. You know, I say that because sometimes with the death penalty, for me, you know, I get pushed back against people that are, well, if you care about the

life of an adult, what about the life of this? And I'm like, guess what? My heartbeat is for inmates on death row and their lives. That doesn't mean that I don't care about other kinds of life. It just means that that's really what I'm going to talk about. And so just remember that the closer, even that your passion gets with somebody else, still, there shouldn't be an expectation that their passion should match up with yours. Do you do what's in your, you know, and stop looking for looking at other people and thinking that they're this or that, because they're not you guess what? They're not you because there's only one you and you were made to do what you were made to do. So yeah. Just like you would not want them to tell you what you need to care about.

You know, like, I don't want you to call me and be like, listen, you have got to start caring about my lawn. That's what I'm passionate about. You know, like that's an unreasonable expectation. Your lawn can be important to you and I will care about other things. Yes. I'm into it. Tell me before we go, I want to hear from you. If you were going to tell your teenagers how they could change the world, what advice would you give them? If I could tell my teenagers how they can change the world. Risk every single week. Find something to risk in order to rescue it. I promise if you do that every single week, you're going to want to start doing it every single week, find something to risk in order to rescue. And I promise if you do that

every single week, you're going to want to start doing it every single day. And then, and then, I mean, here we are, we're talking about changing the world. You're going to be changing the world every day. You're not going to, we're not looking for like, Hey, in 10 years, I'm gonna change the world. No, you can change someone's world today just by risking in order to see rescue happen to them. It doesn't have to be huge. It can be tiny, little things, small little things. Yes, I like to say this all the time, that all of us doing something small creates so much more change

than four of us trying to Hercules the entire world ourselves. All of us doing one small thing a day, so much more change than just like a couple people that you see on the news who are like, I invented a machine that cleans the ocean. You know what I mean? Where you're like, well, I don't know how to do that. So nevermind. Like we need somebody to invent a machine to clean the ocean. That's great. But all the rest of us can still be doing something small every day. Absolutely.

Every day. So, you know, forget that I said every week. Every day risk. You know, like do something every single day. Just something small. Just something small risks. Then those things will become less risky and you can take bigger risks. I'd love to see that. Yeah.

You become more comfortable. Yes. More comfortable with what they refer to in therapy as distress tolerance. Oh, wow. I love that. So that's, what's been happening to me. I just learned today that my distress tolerance has continued to grow. Yes. You can build distress tolerance and that is a coping skill they teach you in therapy. I definitely have done that because I could not have existed three years ago reading the DMs that I'm getting today. So I have some distress tolerance in my DMs. Yes. Yes. You're getting better at it. You're flexing that muscle. All the FBI agents of the world have incredibly

high levels of distress tolerance. Wow. Wow. And some people don't naturally have a lot of it, but they can build it over time. Yeah. I love it. I love it. Build it, guys. Tell everybody where they can find you and tell everybody about your books. Yeah. Yeah. You can find me at Loswhit, L-O-S-W-H-I-T on Instagram. I'm on Twitter, but I always tell people that like Twitter Carlos is like a little sharper, a little rougher around the edges. So like, if you want to feel good and you want like group hugs every day, follow me on Instagram. If you want to like, you know, see me a little bit feistier, go to Twitter. And then if you go to Carlos Whitaker with two Ts.com,

all my books are there. I've written three books, moment maker, how to create, receive and rescue moments. We talked a little bit about rescuing here, kill the spider, which we talked a little bit about that as well. How to, again, stop cleaning the cobwebs, kill the spider, and then enter wild. And that's really my story on overcoming anxiety, my mental health issues. And so those are the three books. And then I got another one coming out. Well, thank you so much for making time for me today. You're welcome. Thank you so much for listening to the Sharon Says So podcast. I am truly grateful for you.

And I'm wondering if you could do me a quick favor. Would you be willing to follow or subscribe to this podcast or maybe leave me a rating or a review? Or if you're feeling extra generous, would you share this episode on your Instagram stories or with a friend? All of those things help podcasters out so much. I cannot wait to have another mind-blown moment with you next episode. Thanks again for listening to the Sharon Says So podcast.