On Purpose with Jay Shetty - Glennon Doyle ON: How To Stop Asking For Permission & Listening To Other People’s Opinions
Episode Date: April 27, 2020You can order my new book 8 RULES OF LOVE at 8rulesoflove.com or at a retail store near you. You can also get the chance to see me live on my first ever world tour. This is a 90 minute interactive sho...w where I will take you on a journey of finding, keeping and even letting go of love. Head to jayshettytour.com and find out if I'll be in a city near you. Thank you so much for all your support - I hope to see you soon.When Doyle announced her divorce four weeks before the release of her book detailing the rebuilding of said marriage, the author and activist knew it was a no turning back moment. Honesty with her husband, her kids, and ultimately, herself, charted a course for Glennon to tap into her most true and untamed self.You'll learn the journey that brought her to be fully present, and her powerful life-changing discoveries about relationships and living authentically.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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I'm Jay Shetty and on my podcast on purpose, I've had the honor to sit down with some of the most incredible hearts and minds on the planet.
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On this podcast, you get to hear the raw real-life stories behind their journeys and the tools they used, the books they read, and the people that made a difference in their lives so that they can make a difference in hours.
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I think that there's necessary pain, and it's like, I've just categorized it for myself.
Like, there's just pain that you're just, you know, losing people or losing dreams or,
you know, losing, losing. These are the things. They're just the price you pay for being an open-hearted human
being.
Hey everyone, welcome back to On The Purpose, the number one health podcast in the world.
Thanks to each and every single one of you that come every week to listen, to learn and
to grow.
I'm so grateful that our community at this time is stage strong, that it's been supporting
their loved ones and going above and beyond to support your communities, your towns, your
cities.
I know that all of you doing so much incredible work,
and I know that you've been taking a lot of joy
and a lot of resilience from our incredible guests
on on purpose.
And I am so excited to be talking to you today.
I can't believe it.
My new book, Eight Rules of Love is Out,
and I cannot wait to share with you.
I am so, so excited for you to read this book,
for you to listen to this book.
I read the audiobook.
If you haven't got it already,
make sure you go to eight rulesoflove.com.
It's dedicated to anyone who's trying to find,
keep, or let go of love.
So if you've got friends that are dating,
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Love rules.
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I can't wait to see you this year.
Now today is no different, and I have to say I'm personally very excited because I've
been following this individual for many many years
And it's a great honor that when I was able to reach out to an Instagram. It was very very organic
There was no booking involved or any of that like all the other guests
We never do that here. We want real relationships and real conversations and I DMed her and I was hoping that she would see the DM
And she responded immediately and we were able to make this happen. So today's guest is none other, the one and only Glenendoyle author activist founder of Together Rising
and the author of the number on New York Times bestseller Untamed,
which has been at the top of every bestseller list since its publication on March 10th
and is also Reese Witherspoon's book club selection.
She's also the author which I'm sure you'll know and if you don't you should go back and get those two.
The author of New York Times bestsellers Love Warrior, which was Oprah's book club selection and carry on warrior.
Now what I love about Glenn and most is our hearts are an activist and a thought leader and she's the founder of Together Rise It.
Right? She's raised over $25 million for women, families, and
children in crisis.
She lives in Florida, where she's joining with us on today,
with her wife and three children.
And today, I'm excited about learning more about how we can
all become untamed.
Welcome to the show and on purpose, Claire and Glenn.
Thank you for being here.
Yay.
Thank you for having me.
I'm so excited that this is finally happening.
I've been following you forever.
And I just love your heart.
And you have made the world have a bigger heart.
And I'm just really happy to be here.
Thank you.
Thank you.
And I'm really looking forward to meeting you in person.
I can't wait till all of this is passed.
And I can fly over there, or you're're in LA and we can sit together and speak more
But I'm glad that we're getting to connect to this time and so I wanted to start with that actually like how have you been
Managing quarantine with your children and you know your wife and if you learn something new at this time or have there been any
revelations? Yeah, I mean, one of the revelations is that this much family togetherness
cannot be God's plan for us.
It's against.
Wow, Satchae.
Wow.
I mean, I would answer that differently every day.
Some days I feel so hopeful and I have all these beautiful
ideas about how we're getting to know each other better
and some days I just, wow, I mean, I think it's a hard time, one, because of all of the real pain
and loss that is going on in the world. I mean, because of togetherizing, I'm reading people's stories,
nonstop every day, and it's just unbelievable what people are losing and
This new way of losing that's brand new where we are losing people and then we don't get to go to them
I mean, wow, that's a whole
Sort of just paradigm shifting experience and then on top of all of that real pain
I think it's an
interesting time because we're dealing with all of that while being stuck, right? Just we're not
used to this kind of stuckness. We're used to being able to distract ourselves with all of our
busyness and all of our, you know, the stuff we do so that we don't have to sit with what has always been true
Which is the level of leave of leave of nerve ul and no one's in control down here and at the end of the day We just have you know our hearts in each other
But I think we're all
It reminds me a lot of being early subriding
Of just having those moments where, you know,
I think of us like, snow globes,
we keep ourselves shaken up all the time.
I love that analogy, go and care.
But still, we don't have to see the thing in the middle,
you know, which is the truth of being human
and how fragile it all is.
And now it feels like this great settling
of the snow globe where we all are just stuck with ourselves
and our vulnerability and our people. We're stuck with our people right?
So all the little cracks, all the little truths about ourselves and our relationships that we can kind
of ignore with our busyness are just sitting there with us on the couch now, you know?
Which is so hard and also as, you know,
everything beautiful in my life has come from sobriety,
has come from letting the snow settle.
So I know that there can be great transformation
during this time, for sure,
but it doesn't make it any less painful.
Yeah, that's the interesting thing, right? When I'm hearing you speak and you're so right
that when you're stuck or when you're sitting and you're just observing and you're finally
able to hear and listen and be present with everything that, like you said, you've either
ignored, been distracted from, been too busy for,
but it's still uncomfortable, it's very uncomfortable, right?
Like, even though we know what you've done it before
and that's what I find interesting
what you just said, you know from your experience
that moments like this can be transformative and healing.
But that doesn't make it any more comfortable to go through.
Never.
And so how do you deal with that? How do you personally, and we were just speaking about
it just a few seconds before, how are you personally dealing with that? When you're like,
oh, this seems familiar, right? I've kind of, you know, I've kind of felt this before
I know what this feels like to sit with all my, you know, stuff, but at the same time, it's not like it's
become easier, like because I've done it before. So how do you process that mentally and
spiritually for yourself?
Well, you said process, that's what it is. It's like it's not the way that I experience
pain and the waiting that comes after it and then the rising that eventually comes, is always
the same. Like no matter how many times I can remind myself,
oh, this is this part.
This is where everything sucks and I hate it
and I feel uncomfortable.
It doesn't make it, I can know that it's an important part
of the process, but it doesn't change the experience
of it at all.
Okay, so it doesn't make it hurt any less.
I just try to remember what I know from the process and all of that for me comes from
sobriety.
I mean, the first time I ever, I got, I believe I can believe I was 10 years old, okay?
So I was just a super sensitive kid and I didn't have, I didn't have whatever skills or tools
that I needed to, to kind of manage that sensitivity.
So I just started numbing it right
away.
And I think one of those reasons, Jay, is as you know, and speak about all the time, is that
we just don't learn, you know, in our culture, in this culture, we learn that we're supposed
to be happy, right?
That happiness is the goal, that we're supposed to be happy all the time and we worship happiness.
And so when the normal feelings come that we all have of fear and doubt and jealousy and
pain and anger, well when I started feeling those things, I just thought something was wrong
with me.
Because nobody was talking about that, right? I was supposed to be happy, and especially as a girl, like
I was supposed to be smiling and me. So that's why I started numbing so early, and that
turned into alcoholism and all the things. And then I got sober when I was 25, and I
went to my first meeting, and it was completely freaking amazing.
I just remember thinking, oh here's where the honest people are.
Right?
Yeah.
And then I kept going and then on my, on what they don't tell you about sobriety is everybody
wants you to get sober when you're a drunk because you've ruined everyone's lives.
Okay.
So everyone's desperate for you to get sober as were all the people in my life. So everyone's desperate for you to get sober as we're all the people in my life.
But and so people talk about society like it's so great and then we get sober and it's terrible.
Okay, it's the worst. It's why we started drinking in the first place, right? It's like,
it's like, oh my god, I forgot how much it all hurts, you know?
And so I was in that stage, it feels like defrosting, like your painful process of getting
feeling back, you know?
And I went to my, that meeting and I finally stood up and spoke and I said, something like,
I'm Glennon, I've been so much for six days, and I feel awful. And everything hurts, and I just am afraid that there's some kind of secret to life that
everyone else has that I don't have, and I've never had it.
And I just feel like it's because I don't have that secret, it's just harder for me to
be human than it is for everyone else.
And that's all.
And I said, and this woman came and sat down next to me afterwards.
And she said, I just want to tell you something that someone told me in early surviving. And that is
this. The secret is that feeling all of your feelings is just really hard.
And it's not hard right now.
Life is not hard right now because you're doing it wrong.
Life is hard right now because you're finally doing it right.
Right, because you're feeling all of your feelings.
And the thing is that all feelings are for feeling.
Okay, Naja, I understand, especially to you, that much, that must sound very simple.
But it was mind-blowing to me.
No, it's huge. Even now, I have to remind, I don't think you ever, I mean, you may, but
I know that I don't think you ever get to a point where something that that simple is not profound every time you feel it.
We still have this default mode approach to feeling our feelings.
We still go, I don't want to feel that.
Right.
I find the time when you feel it the most is if you've got to have a tough conversation
with someone, you're all out of void it.
If you really want to say something to someone and you've been feeling it for a long time,
but you're not allowing yourself to feel it fully, I think we do it. We get lost in that
cycle again and again and again and I feel that you just feel it for less time. But hearing you say
that right now, despite its simplicity, it's still as profound every time because I think we're
just wired to constantly avoid any sort of negative feelings. Like you said, you mentioned jealousy there.
If you feel jealousy, you just go,
well, I can't be jealous.
That can't be a good thing.
I'm a terrible person.
Now I'm a terrible friend because I'm jealous
of my friend's life or whatever it is.
Whereas if you just, oh, wait, why am I jealous?
Then you feel that jealousy out.
Like, why is it?
Where is it coming from?
What is this jealousy?
Like all those questions, which I'd love to process with you as well to understand
Some of the stages of that process, but I'm with you. Sorry carry on. I'm with you
No, no, that's exactly it. I mean, I just remember thinking
All feelings are for feeling like I know that like I thought that happiness was for feeling and
then and being fear and anger and all those things were for
avoiding and numbing and denying and deflecting, right?
And so I just remember thinking, okay, I guess I'm going to try this.
I guess I'll try feeling all my wounds.
And Jay, I couldn't, I remember, I used to, I decided I could not, the one day of the time thing showed me crazy because days are very long.
Okay, like a day is too long for me.
So I started practicing feeling all my feelings within a song.
I would lay on my bed and play one song.
And I would say, okay, I okay I'm gonna let because music was too
feeling for me. I couldn't let my I would turn the music off. It was too it would
make me achy and so practice feeling just three minutes at a time. One song at
a time. And then that turned into full days and what I do know about pain is
that it's like you know when they talk about emotion, like emotions,
energy emotion is energy emotion in your body and when we let it flow, it does something.
It changes us. It changes. Like, the only reason that we're here has to be to become.
Like, we're just, we're here to keep becoming true and more beautiful versions of ourselves. And that energy of emotion is one of the things
that allows us to become. Right? So when we avoid it or we we easy button our way out of
it with all the things we use, it's like it's like we're jumping out of a cocoon right
before we would have become a butterfly.
Right?
Yes.
Just like we can transport ourselves out of the pain, but then we miss all the transformation.
And all of them are so specific, like envy, you just mentioned envy.
That's a big one for me because I am just listen.
I'm just envious, okay?
I mean, yeah, I always have that.
It's just what, it's one of those things
that is going to the least my least favorite things
about myself, right?
Like I actually used to say, Jay,
I just don't get jealous.
I'm not an envious person.
Like who?
Only envious people would say some students.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah, it's always the thing that we, in the bugger Gita, which is a book that I love and studied
very deeply in my time as a monk, it says that attachment and aversion are two sides
of the same coin.
Oh, of course.
So, anytime you hear someone deny something or someone obsessed with something, you know,
they're two sides of the same coin.
So yeah, no, absolutely. But thank you for being so open and sharing that because I think, again, you know, they're two sides at the same point. So yeah, no, absolutely.
But thank you for being so open and sharing that
because I think, again, it's easy to be like,
oh, I feel jealous feelings,
but to really come out and say,
hey, this is something I really don't like about myself.
You know, that requires a lot of courage
and that requires a lot of,
it requires a lot of, yeah, courage being the right word.
It requires bravery to be able to say that.
Thank you.
I think it just also requires the knowledge that we're just all human and that's okay.
It just starts to sound funny when people deny basic things about being human because
to me, it doesn't reveal maturity.
It reveals a lack of awareness of what a human being is.
I mean, yes.
So, and we can work with all of these things.
Like, if we have ME, which I got to believe everyone has
on some level.
100%.
Right?
If we can actually believe that all feelings are for feeling and that they're
instructive in some way. I mean, okay, I'll tell you this, when people, when I was drinking
all the time, someone handed me a book that was written by a woman and said, this is a beautiful
book you should read it. I would not read it. Jay, I didn't want to look at it.
I didn't want to see it.
I didn't, I didn't, I would find a million reasons that I didn't like that author
and I didn't like any, like, something about looking at words that a woman had written.
It felt like looking straight at the front.
It just hurt so much.
Okay, and I think I know that that is because
nothing burns quite like seeing someone else do the thing that you know in your heart,
you a braver, healthier version of yourself was born to do.
Yeah, absolutely. And that's partly why I think sometimes, at least I've noticed in myself, and this
is kind of how I spot envy and jealousy in myself, because sometimes I think you become
oblivious to it, because I sometimes disguise it in criticism or justification of why that
person has that thing. So I disguise my jealousy or envy, but I going, oh yeah, but you know, they had like rich parents or
You know, but like they just got really lucky or you know
Yeah, but their work's not really you know, whatever it is and you kind of disguise it and so it kind of hides there
And then you kind of feel like oh I'm not jealous. I just have good observational skills
And you know what I mean
Way too well what you mean and it makes me feel so good that you have some of
that in periods too.
Definitely.
It's like it's like admiration that's like holding its breath.
You know?
Oh my gosh.
It's like it could be a positive thing if we embrace it fully,
but for me, it's like my body becomes this machine
where it's like admiration goes in
and then, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom,
and like snark comes out.
Like, oh, I never liked her anyway, right?
But really what I learned was that if I could not do that,
if I could not, you know,
but hampatado my envy away,
that it's really pointing me towards something
that I was meant to do.
It's actually really, how uncomfortable,
but how pull emotion.
It's often, can guide us towards our purpose,
guide us to who we admire, you know?
Like the most freeing thing for me is when I see
something that someone has done and I love it. And I think it's awesome. For me, it's always something
that someone's written or something. My first experience was crunchy. I think I wish I would have
written that. It was a good way. And then I just, that's my major reaction. But if I can somehow either reach out to that person
and tell them how much I loved it,
or if I can't reach out to that person
because I don't know that person,
if I share it with other people,
the whole clenchiness goes away.
It's like back to abundance, back to abundance,
and it just feels,
yeah, that's cool. Yeah... Yeah, that's so beautiful. And you're so right, and those are all steps to the process.
Like, I don't think you ever get to a point where you don't feel that initial reaction.
I don't believe that... This is my belief I'd love to hear yours.
I don't believe that you ever get to a point where you don't have a
NVS negative ego-driven thought.
What I believe is that you entertain it for less time.
Yes.
And so, now, before previously, you would obsess over that for seven days.
And you would complain and you would criticize and you would compare and you talk about it with everyone negatively and you've got some...
Whereas now, as you work on it, as you work on the process,
don't get obsessed or at least my thoughts, I don't get obsessed in trying to remove
that thought for all time.
That's just not realistic, but you will find yourself, oh, I only felt like that for seven
minutes and now I shared it and now I feel positive about it again, you know.
And so I just try not to, I try not to make
anything eternally present or eternally absent.
I just, you've made me, I've never said that before. I just thought of that right now.
I'm talking to you like I try not to make anything eternally present or
eternally absent because nothing can be that. Like I think we always go like I
never want to have this thought again. All right. Please want to feel this way. Right.
We say both of those things.
I always want to feel this way.
Or I never want to have this thought again.
The truth is neither of them are actually possible.
Yeah. That's right.
But what you can do, what I've learned, I guess that's what awareness is, right?
It's like, oh, here's that thing happening again.
And I actually think of myself. I'm like,
oh, look at you. You're such a sweet little idiot. Here you are again. You know, like, look at you.
Look at you again. Here's that part where, right? That's right. Think of here's that part where you feel
like there's not enough and you miss the boat and no one likes you. Here's that sweet go ahead for a minute and then we're going to move on to the next part.
What do you think it is about our childhood?
I've become really fascinated in the past.
I don't have children, you have children.
So you're able to observe their man, your life and parenting and that whole dynamic, which
I think is I observe at the moment at
least it's such a beautiful learning curve or a painful learning curve, but a learning curve
nevertheless.
What are your thoughts on how your childhood and not just yours, but everyone's frames
so many of those beliefs and values, how do you think your child would specifically what was it that led you to kind of creating that
smoke load kind of feeling? Because I've just got fascinated by how I feel like
all of me and my wife talk about it all the time, like how I think all of our
values and relationships and marriage are all framed from what we either saw
or didn't see in our parent. And so I'm fascinated by hearing that from
different people.
And I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.
Being a parent yourself.
Yeah, and it feels like such a trap sometimes,
because it's like, sometimes when I look at people,
I think in myself, I think, OK, people do one of two things,
right?
They look at the experience, their childhood,
and then they are obedient to it.
They take the values that they learned and they try to, whatever was a good girl or a good boy,
they try to obey their whole lives. That looks different in adulthood, but they agree.
They carry it in them forever. And then there's the other side, and that's kind of a cage, right, to just stay in the little
the kind of construct that you are to you.
Not creative, in other words, it's repetitive. But then there's the other side of people who
just rebel against it, right, who look at what was taught to them are the way they were raised and then they rail against it their whole lives, right?
This is just rebellion, which I have figured out because I've looked at my wife who didn't understand that, we figured that's out together,
but that's just as much of a cage.
Equally uncreative.
Because if you're living your life, if you're creating your existence in resistance to the man,
then you're still fully controlled by the man. You're being your rebellion, right?
Yes.
So the idea of how you look at what you are, you become aware of what you learned when you are a kid
and then you sort of take what you want and you create
your own thing that is neither rebellion nor an obedience is just, I mean for me.
That's powerful.
Right?
It's like, I don't have to do it though.
It's the same way I had the opposite of like fanatical religion versus atheism, fanatical
atheism.
It's like that.
Same thing. Yeah, yeah, no, that's such a great, great point.
Rebellion and obedience. I love that.
Sorry, Karen, I'm just like.
I didn't even talk about it a lot in terms of faith too,
because she was raised at Catholic and in her,
she was a gay kid in Catholicism,
and so she equated the church with God.
So when she rejected church,
she, in her little childhood heart, felt like, well, now this
is when I say goodbye to God.
God doesn't love me.
I'm not, I don't, I'm, God and I are not friends.
Okay.
Yeah.
And talk about something hard to get over your whole life, right?
I'm going to go to bed now.
So, so we laugh about it that Adi has spent her life furious at a God she doesn't believe it.
So even that kind of rebellion is like,
you're still controlled by it though.
Yeah.
Well, so I guess my story about childhood is I just,
I got so sick so early, you know,
at 10 that I spent most sick so early, you know, like 10,
that I spent most of my life,
I mean, until I didn't get so over till I was 26.
So I spent most of my formative years just in like,
doctors office, after doctors office,
and just, you know, diagnoses after diagnosis,
I was hospitalized in a, what was a mental hospital
in my senior year in high school.
And so my um whether it was from my family or my culture, I don't know where ever it came from
my narrative was you're crazy. I believed that like I could do all the things, I could act
a certain way to be see that but at at my root shame, believe about myself, was
you're crazy, right? That's... And that's a tough belief to hold.
Well, because you be in the pimp as impossible to trust yourself, right?
Yeah. Because how can a crazy person be trusted not to sabotage all of it?
Yeah.
So when you talk about raising kids and how that has, so I have a little one, my middle child,
who is, I have to believe a lot like I was as a kid.
She's just very, very sensitive.
She has big, freaking feelings all day, all the days, yet all the days. And so it's like parenting is interesting. First of all, because it's one thing that can require you to live an examined life, right? Because there's many things that can that can be the catalyst of this, but parenting is one because you want to teach your kids how to live a good life. So for some of us, the first time we have to
figure out, okay, what the hell do I think it's going to happen? Right? Right, a bunch of kids say,
so what do I do? How do I act? What does brave mean? What is love? And you're like, okay, cool,
what is love? Okay, so there's that.
It's a beautiful re-examining of everything and figuring out what you really love, what you really believe in and really want for people.
But also, it's a way to heal your ideas about yourself.
Hey, it's Debbie Brown.
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Big love.
Namaste.
I am Yamla, and on my podcast, The R-Spot, we're having inspirational, educational, and
sometimes difficult and challenging conversations about relationships.
They may not have the capacity to give you what you need,
and insisting means that you are abusing yourself now.
You human.
That means that you're crazy as hell,
just like the rest of us.
Ha, ha, ha, ha.
When a relationship breaks down,
I take copious notes, and want to share them with you.
Anybody with two eyes and a brain knows that too much Alfredo sauce is just no good for
you.
But if you're going to eat it, they're not going to stop you.
So he's going to continue to give you the Alfredo sauce and put it even on your grits
if you don't stop him!
Listen to the R-Spot on the iHeart Radio app Apple Podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Not too long ago, in the heart of the Amazon Rainforest, this explorer stumbled upon something that would change his life.
I saw it and I saw, oh wow, this is a very unusual situation.
It was cacao. The tree that gives us chocolate.
But this cacao was unlike anything experts had seen.
Poor tasted.
I've never wanted us to have a gun fight.
I mean, you saw this tax of cash in our office.
Chocolate sort of forms this vortex.
It sucks you in.
It's like I can be the queen of wild chocolate.
We're all lost. It was madness.
It was a game changer.
People quit their jobs.
They left their lives behind, so they could search
for more of this stuff.
I wanted to tell their stories, so I followed them deep
into the jungle, and it wasn't always pretty.
Basically, this like disgruntled guy and his family
surrounded the building armed with machetes.
And we've heard all sorts of things,
and you know, somebody got shot over this.
Sometimes I think, oh, all this for a damn bar of chocolate.
Listen to obsessions, wild chocolate, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcast.
So, so Tish, this little one, I'll just tell you a quick story about her.
Okay, so this is just to get to our point.
But a few years ago, she, her teacher called me from school and she said,
Glenn and we have a situation. I said, I'm sure we do.
Because I did that call before.
And she said, well, I was talking to the kids and I may have accidentally
mentioned that the polar bears were losing
their homes because the ice caps were melting.
She said, clenin, the other kids thought this was sad, but not too sad to like soldier
on Teresa's, but Tisha's still sitting on the floor asking question after where, where
is the polar bears mom?
Like where are the polar bears going to live now?
Where, what are the grownups doing about that? This, that question, you'll see.
Um, and Jay, she came home and I am telling you that our family's life revolved around polar bears
for three freaking months. Like I had put posters on the wall of polar bears. I had to sponsor four polar bears online.
We had to talk about polar bears,
a dinner and a carpool and it parties.
So, it's not necessarily that I just began to hate polar bears.
It just ruined the day that polar bears were ever born.
So, one day, I was putting her to bed and she said,
Mom, I said, what?
Honey, she said, it's the polar bears.
And I was like, oh, hell no, right?
And she said, mommy, it's just,
it's just that it's the polar bears now,
but nobody cares.
So soon it'll be us.
Oh, wow.
And Jay, she fell asleep and I was like, oh my god. Oh, you're not dead, wow. And Jay, she fell asleep and I was like, oh my god.
Oh, I didn't know that said.
So I just remember that my thinking, oh, I get it.
She's not crazy to be heartbroken about the polar bears.
The rest of us are crazy not to be heartbroken about the polar bears, right?
And I started thinking about this little sensitive kid, you know, in most cultures,
like as you know, in most cultures, deeply feeling people are identified early.
They are, you know, seen to be a little eccentric, but also crucial to the tribe's survival,
right?
These are the shaman and women and the medicine men, women and the monks and the clergy and the poets and the artists. But it's just, and then the reason
they're critical is because they can see things that other people can't see. And they
are willing to feel things that other people are not willing to feel. Right? Think in
our culture, we are so how bent on speed and productivity that we just, it's easier just to
dismiss people like that and call them broken. Yeah, right?
Rather than thinking, oh, they're actually responding appropriate to broken
world. They're the canaries in the coal mine. They're the ones
stacking on the, the Titanic going iceberg, iceberg.
Right?
Well, it was like we just want to keep dancing.
So anyway, what I figured out is watching Tish is not in a million years what I ever call this child broken.
I will never call her crazy.
Right?
Which made me rethink everything I've ever believed about myself, right? I wasn't
crazy. I wasn't broken. I was just a highly sensitive person without the skills that I needed
and tools that I needed to kind of manage that sensitivity, right? So, for me, and I'm still exactly the same. Like, I'm still, you know, the sensitivity that, you know, I had
dual depression and anxiety.
It's all tied together.
Mm-hmm.
And the parts of my life that, that, um, the sensitivity that makes life hard,
it's also the sensitivity that makes me really good artist.
Yes, yes.
It's all same, same.
That's what parenthood has done for me.
It's helped me, besides, it's just incredibly difficult sometimes.
But it's also helped me revise my old stories about myself.
Yeah, yeah.
No, I mean, thank you for sharing that story, too, of Tisch, because I think that that will
resonate with, and you know, that will read it, but it will resonate with so many people
listening and watching right now, because I think people will judge themselves for being
sensitive souls, people judge themselves for being empaths or people judge other people
who are that way.
Oh, yeah, she cries about everything, or, you know, he's always gonna, and the truth is you're so right
that actually that person's just more in touch
with their true selves.
And they're allowing themselves to feel
they just don't have the tools to do that in a
effective way, whatever effective means for them.
And what I find so interesting about what you're sharing and intriguing for me is,
I feel like the words that are used from the wisdom books that I love and the way it's portrayed,
it's all about purifying and engaging the parts of ourselves that we don't like, or don't like,
because then you can transform them into love.
It's not about negating or deflecting or you know putting under the carpet or you know under
rug or whatever it may be like it's not hiding it and the words purifying and engaging like when
you can what you've just done is talk about how you can engage it into art, right? Engaging that same. And you talk a lot about rewriting your story
from anxiety to fire.
And I love that.
I think that that is such a powerful.
I'd love for you to tell us about how that came about
and how you were able to actually rewire your approach
because I think that's where so many people are struck.
We keep going, I'm an anxious person.
I'm a sensitive person.
And it's all negative and it's not being engaged.
It's not being purified.
How were you able to rewrite that story into fire?
Well, I mean, some of it's just defining words right for me.
I mean, I'm a words person.
And so the word sensitive, for me, I mean,
I actually have zero negative connotation to the word
sensitive.
I mean, to me, the opposite of sensitive is not great.
It's insensitive.
So like, that's not a badge of honor.
Like, you're so sensitive.
Thank you.
I am able to sense.
Right?
And I'm willing to sense, and so much good comes of it, right?
Yeah. And the anxiety thing, Jay, that's, I don't know. I'm willing to sense and so much good comes of it, right?
And the anxiety thing, Jay, that's, I don't know, I, I can explain to you
what it feels like for me, which I do tend to worry a lot. I sometimes tend to fall into the lie that everyone's success and health
is completely dependent on my commitment to worrying about them.
But I am actually worrying all of us into peace, which is complete crap.
Okay. The way it manifests in me is, I find it being depressed and anxious at the same time.
It's like being eore and tigger, like all at the same time. It's like being you're and tigger, like all at the same time. Very tricky
existence. It's like always being a little bit too low or too
high. But really being able to be landed where life is,
right? Which is like right here, right now. That's the
challenge for me is like, okay, not too low, not too high.
We're just gonna stay right here in the moment, right?
That's the trick.
I mean, it manifests in funny ways for me.
Jay, I am the sweatiest person who has ever sweated.
Like, I just, look at me.
I can't wear sleeves.
Literally, cannot wear sleeves.
I have 30 black tank tops and 30 white tank tops,
and that's all I can wear.
Because I have decided that I care the most amount
and that my care about everything is shown in sweat.
Okay, I don't know.
So, but what I will say is that just like the sensitivity
that can lead me towards depression makes me good artist, that fire is what makes me a relentless activist. I'm really good. I'm really good at carrying the most amount, telling stories in a way that make other people care the most amount, getting people to trust me so that they will share
resources with me that I can then give to people who are
doing an amazing work in the world.
And so, you know, that fire that leads me to be fearful and
sweaty is also the exact same fire that leads me to world
healing work.
And I really think, I don't know what you would
say about this, but because I know this is kind of a story that I feel like it's true,
which is that, you know, most of my, I'm an artist and an activist, so most of my friends
are artists and activists, so most of my friends have depression and anxiety. It feels like a lot of people who have deep creativity or deep fire tend towards some mental
differences, tend towards huge world healing work.
So it's one of those like you take the, I'll take all of it.
I don't want to like not have any of it because for me, it was like of those, like, you take the, I'll take all of it. I don't wanna like, not have any of it
because for me, it was like what I decided to get sober.
And I remember looking at the,
I decided to get sober at the moment
that I found that I was pregnant.
I'm a little bit of a chase who's not 18.
Actually, I think he's seven.
I don't know.
He's eight. He's waiting.
There's somewhere between like,
they're walking but not in college.
Okay, that's a part of that.
And I have this knowing of like,
oh, I see if I want something as beautiful as motherhood
that I'm going to have to have all the brutal of being human.
It's both all the time. All or nothing.
Yeah absolutely no use for it. And I think and I agree with you because I find like
there's two there's two kind of like roots to purpose or or parts to purpose and one of them is
passion and the other one's pain. So so sometimes it's like you're following your passion and what you're excited about.
So some artists are doing that, but for a lot of artists it's like,
I want to heal this pain in the world and I want to heal this pain in myself.
And so then that's my path towards purpose.
And I think you're right that I think so many people, especially art and writers and singers and
musicians and poets,
especially that kind of artistry, it's because of healing a pain in their life or in someone
else's that they experience, that guides them that way.
I just, you remind them in a movie that I just saw that I keep going on about.
I don't know if you've seen saving this to banks.
No, but I will tonight.
So it's the story of, so it's Tom Hanks is in it.
It's Emma Thompson and Tom Hanks.
It's, you know, incredible cast.
But it's a story of how Walt Disney acquires the rights for Mary Poppins.
And I don't know if you're a fan of Mary Poppins.
That's a lovely name.
So then you will love this movie because you get to understand the backstory of Mary Poppins
and what it was inspired by.
But anyway, I'm not going to give away anymore.
But from what we're talking about,
what you're saying is so, when you watch that movie,
you'll be like, this is exactly what I'm talking about.
You start seeing the parallels of someone's art
being a representation of their own experience
of something, right?
And so, I'm with you on that,
and I definitely see that, I guess the point then is does someone
become boring or uncreative if they heal that inside of you?
That's kind of like my question.
Because I go, does that mean that someone forever?
It's kind of like saying how people wrote better love songs before they were in relationships. Oh, totally.
It's like before you're on the path to finding whatever it is, you're more interesting than when you found it.
And it sounds like so.
So what does your take on that with artists and your own transformation, your own healing,
your own genetic? How do you, like, yeah, how do you, how do you, how do you, how do you, how do you first? So many different ways of thinking about this.
I mean, first of all, one of my, I'm hearing my friend Liz in my
head right now, because Liz Gilbert is one of my best friends.
And she said that all of this is just horse crap, that all of
this suffering, are you have to be suffering to be an artist?
Like that, that, that is just an old story of not true.
So and I, I trust Liz.
Okay.
Yeah.
There's that side too. I don't know. I can tell you this, that I
have never felt freer in my life. I will always deal with mental differences. I will always
just kind of like feel like I'm always walking around the edge of the black hole. I'm just on the edge.
And that's okay.
I'm good on the edge.
Right?
I have accepted it.
I believe that I will stay.
I will not jump.
I will stay on the edge forever.
And it's okay with me that the whole ground is not solid for me.
Okay.
There's beauty on the edge for sure.
But I don't worship self-right anymore.
Yeah.
When I, what do you mean by that?
Tell us what that means because I think
that's such a powerful statement
and there's so much locked in there.
Like what does it mean to worship self-right?
Because I think we're not aware that,
and sorry, I just wanna,
that I'm gonna find out because I think it's such a powerful statement.
Well, I mean, as someone who grew up in a Christian tradition,
as someone who grew up as a woman, that's a double whammy of,
you earned your worthiness through suffering, right?
I remember when I was deciding whether or not to stay in a broken marriage,
or to follow this unbelievable, expansive, wide love that I have come
with Abby.
I decided that I was going to save my marriage because I was too afraid of hurting everybody.
And I was having a conversation with a friend and I said, you know what, it's fine.
I'm just going to shut this part of myself down.
I'm just going to stay. It's going to be hard, but I've always
been able to learn from him.
And she said, do you might also be
able to learn from Joy?
And I was like, oh my god.
I decided at that point, at 42 years old, that I was going to experiment with that, that I was going to try to see if it's possible that we live in this beautiful universe that would yes allow us to learn from instead. Absolutely. Right. And it's kind of like that. Like, what you just said makes so much sense. Like,
the reason we have to suffer in pain is because we don't learn enjoy, right? Like, that's,
that's exactly it. Because I always feel like pain makes us pay attention.
Yes. It's one of, and I've seen this in just being around children at least.
It's like, your child just has to shout louder if you don't give your presence and attention
earlier.
And our bodies do that, our minds do that.
It's almost like what you were saying right at the beginning with the snow globe.
It's like, because we're shaking the snow globe, we're so distracted.
It's like, only when you're still,
can you actually hear what your body's trying to tell you?
And then all of a sudden, you're like,
oh, I thought this egg in my bag.
That's right.
That's right.
Like, I didn't realize that.
I've been on like seven flights this month
and, you know, I was running around
and I was doing this and I was carrying people, whatever.
And I didn't notice it, but now that I've just stopped
for a second.
And I feel like pain is just the signal, right?
It's just a signal to be like,
you're along gets louder when you don't go and turn it off. It's that and I feel so many of us,
you're so right and it comes from not learning and joy not being complacent and joy but
sometimes I feel that it's such a pressure for people with people, oh my god, now I have to
learn and joy like it's like, can I not just enjoy it and experience it?
Yeah, I get that too.
I mean, first of all, if you can just be
and enjoy and experience it, you should.
I have to also learn to make some freaking later.
Right?
I'm jealous of all the people who just get to be in the joy.
But what I would say is that I am still myself with all my weirdness
and things issues, but I'm happier than I've ever been. I'm freer than I've ever been,
and I've never been a better writer than I am now. I've never been clearer. I've never been more
confident in my writing. I've never been more effective in activism.
So I think that some of that I must suffer to create
is probably not true.
And I just, I think that there's necessary pain.
And it's like, I've just categorized it for myself.
Like there's just pain that you just, you know,
losing people or losing dreams or, you know, losing,
losing, these are the things that are just,
they're just the price you pay for being an open-hearted
human being, right?
They're taking risks.
Like that kind of loss is just the price of love, right?
And that is I'm willing, forever I'm willing to have that pain.
But there's this other pain that is optional.
And it's like the pain that comes from not even trying
for those things, right?
It's like, I see it in people. It's like the pain in someone's
eyes who knows that she could do something that she's not doing or the pain in someone's
eyes who's not bringing her full self to her relationship so she's slowly dying because
she's not telling the truth. That kind of pain that comes from abandoning yourself
is what I'm not going to do anymore and worship that.
Does that make so much sense?
Yeah, I'll take the first time, right?
Yeah, no, that's right.
So well said.
Literally, I have to stop and just take a moment.
Anyone is listening or watching right now.
I hope you're feeling the energy that I'm feeling and I don't have a glenon feeling.
If I'm feeling it, I'm going to say, I am in love feeling the energy that I'm feeling and I don't have glad I'm feeling it, but I'm feeling I'm going to say I am in love with this
conversation right now because you're inspiring so much thought through
everything you share like I am deeply reflecting on everything you're
saying and it is giving me so many revelations right now and I mean that in the
most honest and genuine way. So when I'm hearing you say that, what I'm hearing
about it from a giving point of view and what you just said about,
you feel like you're the best writer,
you're best ability to give right now
and you're saying,
what I find is that we express well in three areas
that are coming to my mind right now as well.
One is the suffering.
So what you said before,
when you went through the suffering
and you were able to tell that story,
that was helpful and that was powerful.
The musicians we spoke about.
The second is the survivor. It's like when you survive some, you tell that story, that was helpful and that was powerful. The musicians we spoke about. The second is the survivor.
It's like, when you survive some,
you tell that survival story.
You're like, okay, now I got through it.
I'm gonna help people.
And then I kind of feel like you're at that level
in the way that I see you,
how can people in the world is that you're a server, right?
Because of your big heart and your sensitive soul,
that's just trying to serve and give and expand yourself in abundance to serve as many people as possible and you're serving millions
of people across the world. I feel like that's when you, well I would love to check
this with Elizabeth Gilbert too, but I guess that's what's giving you the highest
sense of expression and creativity is being of service.
And it's like, it's like those are all the levels.
Like we start as sufferers, then we become survivors
when we survive our suffering,
but then eventually we rise to being servers in society.
And then you see the real joy.
And I think that's what, at least I know
the traditions I studied would suggest
that those who are living in service having been through
that would find the ultimate expression and creativity because they'd be doing it for more than themselves.
So I don't know what you think about that.
It's coming to my mind, so I'm sharing it.
It's blowing my mind a little bit because yes, that is correct.
But even specifically, when you said serving, serving,
when, you know, several weeks ago,
or I don't even know Jay, maybe it was too early to go,
whenever the court began.
So yes, I was like, I have no idea.
I have no idea.
We were, I was so focused on the book Jay,
I thought it was the most important thing in the world.
And, you know, this is like the story that is in my heart since I was 10 years old.
I was like, my whole team had been working on it for so long.
It was so important, so important.
And then I started the tour and two days into the tour, the Corona happened, all the
things.
You canceled the tour early.
And I remember coming home and the whole team just, you know, all these people were
working so hard on this. And they what are we gonna do and they said the only thing I
can think to do is that the world's about to be in a lot of pain and we're just
gonna switch to service. We are out of promotion mode, we are switch to service,
we're just gonna show up and the great thing about this Jay is I think that when I came to life was then. Like, you know, we go through creative
cycles, right? And the, the, the, the, the guy that we're leading up to promoting something is so like,
using, right? It's like, it's like, it's like, can become an artist, so you make the thing.
And then you've made the thing.
But then you have to go be a commercial about the thing.
But you made the thing.
I didn't mean the thing.
But I remember saying to my editor,
do paint terms have to go out and paint about their paintings?
Yeah.
I don't understand why I have to say words about the
words that I wrote. So it's just a little confusing. And then the switch to service mode. And we meant
a lot of things by that. Like I meant just freaking focus on together rising. Just the stories.
Everyone's going to need, everyone's going to need and we every day without any need for perfection or shininess,
or like just, hi, here I am, here we are, with hold space for each other.
And all of that worry has gone away, and it's kind of because it's felt pure,
but I'm just going to start showing up every day without any need for perfection or shininess, And here we are, the told space for each other. And all of that worry has gone away
and it's kind of because it's felt pure faith.
So that I must be what you're talking about.
I love that.
No, that's amazing.
And then I'm gonna do it for you.
So anyone who's listening and watching right now,
I want you to go and get the book.
We're not finished yet,
but I'm taking a quick commercial break to promote
because I cannot tell you, I mean, I'd love to all your books, but
this one's super special because, and I'm about to ask a question about it, but
I just can't tell you enough right now how I also think that this book is of service.
In the sense that this book, even though you didn't write it for this right now,
it is so useful right now. And I think anyone and everyone who picks it up,
because half of the things we're all dealing with, like you said, you wrote it for,
you know, the 10 year old, you know, the story, since you were 10, and it's like,
but hey, that's the part of us that's struggling right now. It's the part of us at 10 that was never trained to deal with anxiety.
It was the part of us at 10 that was always fearful.
It was the part of us at 10 that doesn't know how
to deal with transition and change.
It is that same child inside of us
that is feeling the most affected right now.
Wow.
And I feel like that's the child you're talking to.
Like that's the person you're talking to.
And so I'm doing it for you.
I'm gonna say everyone, we're gonna put the link
afterwards everywhere.
So make sure you go and grab a copy of this book
and order it because it is gonna be a beautiful
companion and guide right now.
And this is something I really wanna talk to about.
And I love the title, but I wanted to talk to you
about the difference between tamed and untamed language.
And what are some of those questions
that are helpful in the process being untamed?
Because I think the biggest challenge
and you know this in your talk was,
we don't even know that we're tamed.
Like we don't even know that we're in a prison.
We don't even know that we're caged.
I'm Jay Shetty, and on my podcast on purpose,
I've had the honor to sit down
with some of the most incredible hearts and minds
on the planet.
Oh, pro, everything that has happened to you I've had the honor to sit down with some of the most incredible hearts and minds on the planet. Oprog.
Everything that has happened to you can also be a strength builder for you if you allow it.
Kobe Bryant.
The results don't really matter.
It's the figuring out that matters.
Kevin Haw.
It's not about us as a generation at this point.
It's about us trying our best to create change.
Lurin's Hamilton. That's for me been taking that moment for yourself each day,
being kind to yourself because I think for a long time I wasn't kind to myself.
And many, many more.
If you're attached to knowing, you don't have a capacity to learn.
On this podcast, you get to hear the raw real-life stories behind their journeys
and the tools they used, the books they read, and the people that made a difference in their lives so that they can make a difference in hours.
Listen to on purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get
your podcasts. Join the journey soon. I'm Dr. Romani and I am back with season two of my podcast
Navigating Narcissism. Narcissists are everywhere, and their toxic behavior in words
can cause serious harm to your mental health.
In our first season, we heard from Eileen Charlotte,
who was loved by the Tinder Swindler.
The worst part is that he can only be guilty
for stealing the money from me,
but he cannot be guilty for the mental part he did. And that's even
way worse than the money he took. But I am here to help. As a licensed psychologist and survivor
of narcissistic abuse myself, I know how to identify the narcissist in your life. Each week you will
hear stories from survivors who have navigated through toxic relationships, gaslighting, love
bombing, and the process of their healing from these relationships.
Listen to navigating narcissism on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts.
I'm Mungeshia Tikular, and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life.
In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're gonna get secondhand astrology.
And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention.
Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it.
So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you,
it got weird fast.
Tantric curses, major league baseball teams,
canceled marriages, K-pop!
But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet
and curious show about astrology,
my whole world came crashing down.
Situation doesn't look good, There is risk too far.
And my whole view on astrology, it changed.
Whether you're a skeptic or a believer,
I think your ideas are going to change too.
Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
And so tell us about that language that helps us understand the difference
really and tamed it on tamed language.
Okay. Well, um, so tamed language would be like when a
when a woman says to me, I am dying in my marriage, but I can't
leave because, you know, good mothers don't break their children's hearts
because I can't because, you know, women should be grateful. Like, so words like can't
should good and bad, right and wrong. Like, these are all, I remember figuring this out when I was
trying to decide what to do in my marriage, my first marriage.
I was married to a good man who's one of my best friends and we are all parenting together,
but we were struggling man.
Like we were just, I was in a broken marriage to a good man and that is a difficult place
to be, as you're supposed to be grateful and it's also supposed to be good enough, right?
And then we went through some infidelity things. And afterwards I was trying to figure out what to do.
And I remember going to the internet for advice about what to do with my one-wild and precious life
as a guru does, right? Yes, we check with the tools and the bots too.
And I remember reading all these articles. I've always been in this interesting
Van Diagram, which is like in the faith in the religious world, right? And also
squarely in the feminist world. This is a strange, a diagram to be.
Very much so. And I remember like reading all of these articles right from from feminist thought leaders and Christian thought leaders
Each of them had exact opposite ideas about what the good thing to do what the right thing to do
What a woman should do and this is when I realized oh those words are not pure
These are you know good. What's good and bad? What's right and wrong, what you should go on and choose to.
Those are all like, they're like the sheep dogs that keep the herd in order, right?
They are not pure in any way. They're culturally constructed ideas, right?
So one thing I love to do with people when they tell me all the things they can't do or should do, like going back to the marriage, the marriage example. So I might say to her, okay, we're going to get all the
camp and should right now. Can you tell me a story about the truest, most beautiful marriage you can
imagine? Okay. Jay, there is something about, it's like when you ask what you should do or you're
supposed to do or what the good or the right thing is, it's like the mind
activates, right? All of our cultural, all of our fear, all of our excuses, all of
our whatever. And there's something about what's the
trueest, most beautiful story where it bypasses all of that and it's like
the heart opens and it's just like a story comes out.
You know, it's like everybody's born, there's a purity to it.
It's like everybody has a blueprint inside of them for what they were meant.
Because I don't believe that there's one way to have a family or one way to have a lover,
one way to have a marriage or one way to have a lover, one way to have a marriage or one way to be a parent.
I think that the norms are made by somebody and we can all make up.
Agreed.
Right.
Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
So there's something about what is the trueest, most beautiful life?
What is the trueest, most beautiful marriage?
What is the trueest, most beautiful job? What is the most beautiful marriage? What is the most beautiful job you can
imagine? That kind of just quiets all the camps and is less scary. And you start to realize,
you know, I almost didn't follow the love of my life. Like I get sweaty just thinking about it, but I almost abandoned myself again
because Jay, I was tamed to believe that a good mother does not hurt her children.
Right? And one day I was braiding my little girl's hair and I remember looking at her and thinking,
oh, I am staying in this marriage for her. But what I want this marriage for her.
And if I wouldn't want this marriage for her, then why am I modeling bad love and calling that good mothering?
Yeah, wow. Wow. Which is, it was one of the first experiences
in realizing how tame I was,
because I know why I was doing that,
because I was tamed, which just means socially conditioned,
okay, it just means socially programmed, obviously,
but to believe that a good mother is a martyr.
That good mother in, Jay,
is slowly dying and burying your dream and your ambition and your
emotions, just burying yourself and calling that up. This is what a burden for all.
What a burden. What a legacy to pass down to our kids, to teach them that love means to slowly disappear. Instead of, of course, love requires the beloved and the lover not to disappear, but to emerge
fully. It has to be one of the best definitions of that, which requires us to emerge fully.
And so that's when I realized, oh, that's my teaming. Like, I'm spending my whole life trying to be good,
but because I'm defaulting to the cultural definitions
of good, I'm passing down terrible legacies to my kids.
Not living truly to myself, or I'm engaged
and I'm caging my children.
Yeah, cool, wow.
Right, because if I teach them that the ultimate love is martyrdom,
that is what they will try to be one day.
Mm-hmm.
Right?
Because they are show them what only live as fully as we give ourselves permission to live.
Yeah.
So what I have come to believe about motherhood, because I really think untaming is really just, it's just digging up all of those roots that have been planted beneath us and examining them
and replanting our own, right?
Which is motherhood for me now,
it's just, it has nothing to do with martyrdom
and everything to do with doing a model.
Yeah.
Right, not settling for anything that is less true
and beautiful than the relationship
that I would want for my babies.
Mm-hmm. We can say whatever we want, that is less true and beautiful than the relationship that I would want for my babies.
We can say whatever we want, but they will be what we allow ourselves to be.
Yeah. So that's, I mean, that's, it's like the language is a cage.
Right? We have to ask ourselves, what do we believe is good?
And why do we believe that?
Who taught us that? And who benefits from us believing that?
Yeah.
And whether it even sits with us,
whether it resonates with our hearts,
or whether it connects with us,
and you're so right, like,
we don't even know where that taming comes from
half the time, or why we live that way.
And hearing you say that,
I mean, I love the way you describe it.
I get the part where you're like,
taming social conditioning, but it's like the way you express it
is so, so powerful in the book and right now,
because that's the part, right?
Like I think everyone with a bit of common sense will say,
yeah, actually, I have a lot of like conditioning
from my childhood or conditioning from school
or education or society
but when you explain it in a marriage situation and this is the thing it's like is it a job?
Is it a marriage? What part of it in our lives are we still living in that way?
Where it's where we're seeing life as a sacrifice as as for your children or for whatever it's like
I'll stay in this because it's better for them.
And like you said, like just not wanting it for them,
you know, how can you want it for yourself?
Tell me about how tough that is to translate
that realization up here and here,
actually not up here, up here,
up here, big down here because you said,
it's not a mental block, it's of the heart and emotion.
How hard is it to transition that from really feeling
that in your heart to then actually having that conversation
with your partner, to having that actually go through
with it?
Tell us about that because I think sometimes,
and both are important because it's only when it's really
strong here, can you even let it out?
And so for a lot of us, the first step is just,
have you really understood it for yourself?
Exactly.
Right?
That part takes like, in my, that takes about 12 years.
Yeah.
And that takes a long freaking time to admit to yourself that you have a longing, that you
have a discontent, that you have, because once you admit that like you could imagine more
for yourself, then it's
scary because you might have to do something about it.
And that something requires all kinds of making other people uncomfortable.
And like you were talking about in the beginning, having hard conversations.
And for God's sake, it's not all about divorcing your husband and marry a woman, which I highly
recommend.
But it's also about just seeing
hard things. Like I have so many friends who, you know, don't have the marriage they want
right now, but they don't want to marriage with somebody else. They want, they just want
to have, be able to say the hard thing so that you can create a true more beautiful marriage with
the same person. You know, if those conversations share so hard, I mean, when I finally really
and truly looked at myself in the mirror and realized this is real, you are in love with Abby,
this is the first time you've been in love with your like, at that point, it didn't at all feel like a decision about whether or not to be in love with Abby. At that
point, it felt so serious that it was like, this is where I decide whether or not I trust myself.
Whether or not I abandoned myself. As soon as I could, I talked to Craig about it. So,
one of the wild things about Abbyionized story is that we completely
dismantled our lives to be with each other before we had ever been alone together. So this
was all over the period of many months after we had only spent a couple hours together at an
event, right, in public, to tell them of through letters to each other. So I told Craig first,
love through letters to each other. So I told crank first, we had been through so much together with that we worked so hard to heal after the infidelity in my marriage. And I thought we were working so hard
so that we could be happily ever after together, but I think now in retrospect we were working so hard that we could heart without hating each other.
Like, we really forgave each other.
Thank God that's why we're able to co-parent now.
Then I had to tell the kids, which was the hardest conversation I've ever had in my life,
and was, I just don't even have any, like, shining wisdom about that.
It was totally freaking brutal.
I just, but I do remember saying,
we have taught you to be true to yourself,
even when it's hard and scary,
and even when it disappoints other people.
And I'm about to do that to you right now.
And it was as hard as it always is
for kids to go through divorce.
They're dead as freaking the most loving dad in the world.
I mean, so that was hard.
But you know, it was the hardest one.
Oh, and I had to like come by the way, Jay, I had to come,
this, I announced to the world that I was getting divorced
four weeks before my book about the redemption of my marriage.
You came out.
But I had to, because my sobriety is the only thing that matters to me.
So my only rule for myself is that I have to be matching my outsides to my insides.
I don't care if I'm doing the right thing. I don't care if I'm screwing up. All I care about is
that I'm not living in shame because shame is what takes me out. And if I'm hiding anything that I know in shame and I can't do that.
So I just told all the things.
But the hardest one was telling my mom.
It's so funny, Jack.
I feel like people can be the most bad, untamed people until they got to call their mom.
Jack, sorry to have you.
Oh my God.
I was so terrified and
it was the most important process of my life.
Walking through this with my parents and away from my parents,
because what happened, Jay,
is that my mom was scared to death.
And she brought me a lot of her fear. My mom is my best friend and I have always trusted that my mom knows best for me. Okay?
That was one of my taming, my taming. Yes. My job to please my parents and that my parents
know it's best for me.
Okay.
And so when I told my mom she was very afraid and she brought a lot of that fear to me and
I could hear it in every question, you know, she would power the kids parent, how are
the kids friends going to act?
How's the world going to treat you?
And Jay, I felt myself getting so defensive and anxious every time we talked, which is
when I figured out that it's not the cruel criticism of people who hate us that shakes
us.
It's the loving concern of people who love us.
Right?
It's so true.
So true.
So true. And so one day we were on the phone and she was just spinning and she was just
worrying and calling that love, right?
And I heard her say, your dad and I are coming to visit.
We're going to fly down and visit.
And I heard myself say, no, you can't come.
He said, Mom, you are still afraid.
And my kids are not afraid. We taught them that
love in any form is to be celebrated and that it is always best just to be yourself and let
the world catch up. So they're not carrying the fear you carry. But if you come here and
bring it, they will see it in your eyes and they will help you carry it because they love
and trust you. So I have to tell you this hard thing which is that your fear is not our problem. And it's my duty as their mother to make sure it never becomes
their problem. So go deal with your problem. And when you are able to come here to this island
of our family with nothing but celebration and respect, we will lower the job bridge for you,
but not one second sooner.
And that is the moment I became an adult.
That's a tough conversation.
That's an extremely tough conversation.
But it was, but it was the moment where I realized
that we become responsible.
It goes back to the beginning of your conversation.
It questiones me that we become responsible adults when we start being obedient children. Right? When we
realize that the best way to honor our parents is to trust fully that the people they raised.
Yeah. And I could take responsibility for our lives, not live them in a repeated pattern of pain.
So that why?
So that when we're 16, you can say, I would have had a good life, but my mom would let me.
Exactly. That's literally it. That's literally it. That's exactly it.
And everyone has their own version of that story.
What is your mom or your dad or your school or your teacher or your boss or whoever it is
And
You're asking for permission from right and the amazing thing is is when you stop asking for permission and you live your life
People either come around or they stop coming around either way lovely. Yes. Yeah
Yeah, it's it's it's
It's a risk worth taking to have that conversation and then also hope that you keep the door open enough that there is a chance to mend it like there
is a chance for that to allow that person back into your life. I think that's what we all want,
what we all want is just and I think that's a challenge. We all want people to instantly love our diseased.
The moment we make them.
We like, you know, we want like,
as soon as I tell this person,
and that's why we only tell them about our good decisions,
or our good decision,
again, going back to what you said,
good and bad.
There is none.
It's socially constructed.
But we go, oh yeah, if I've got a,
if I'm really proud of one of my decisions,
I'm going to tell them, if I'm somewhat ashamed, and first of all, why am I ashamed
of this? But it's that shame and guilt that stops us from wanting to say that to them.
Yeah, absolutely.
And what you said there, I love that question that you asked, that you were like, well,
what is the most truest form of marriage? Like, what is the most, you know, that story
version is you were saying, not what's the right to marriage or the best marriage, but what is the truest, most, you know,
authentic form of marriage or love or relationship?
And the first thing that came to my mind
when you asked that question was,
I was like, honestly, just stood out as like a big thing.
And I think the truth is, we all say we want
honest relationships, but we don't afford
ourselves to hear honestly or speak honestly enough.
So if you ask anyone, you know, man or woman or, you know, any situation in any partnership,
the response would be, I would want my partner to be honest.
I think that would be up there in the top five things that you'd want in your partner.
But if your partner honestly tells you, I don't think we should be together anymore.
I don't want to hear that? No one wants
to do that. And so it's like well then we don't really want honesty and again we don't want
honesty because we're not scared of sharing it either. So we're not giving it or receiving it well
and so it becomes such an invisible value or an invisible quality because it's it sounds good
and feels like it should feel good, but actually it really hurts.
It really hurts.
It really hurts.
I mean, one thing I do know is that at our deepest self,
even though we're afraid,
we don't want to be with someone
who doesn't want to be with us.
So I feel that even though it needs to come
with all kinds of love,
that honesty has to always be the right thing, even when it's the hard thing.
Like Craig will tell you now that it was excruciating when I told him that I was sleeping.
But we have realized at this point that like the truth of the way that things work is that there's no such thing as one way of liberation.
Yeah.
The truth of the way that things work is that there's no such thing as one way liberation. Yeah.
That if one person is not, doesn't belong there, then you don't belong there either, right?
Yes.
Yeah.
And I mean, and I also believe that in terms of what we were talking about with the families,
like, our people, we want them to be so excited about our decisions right away.
And, and Jade, that, when you said that, I'm like, that resonates with me. we want them to be so excited about our decisions right away. And enjoy that.
And you said that I'm like, that resonates with me.
Like if I tell you something, I need you to be excited now.
No.
And if you're not, it's a betrayal.
You're a bit tripped.
So that is for sure.
But what I think people really, in most relationships
that are even semi-healthy, the other person
really just wants us to be okay.
My mom, all of that fear that she had, it was right next to love, right?
Like she just really wanted me to be okay.
Right?
Yeah.
And to be okay, she wanted the babies to be okay, she wants everyone to be okay.
And the thing that I realized is that the only way
that we can prove to other people that we are okay
is to just go about being okay.
Yeah.
Right, we can't justify our okayness,
or, for example, our okayness.
Oh, it's so good, so good, yeah.
Just, here's my role, okay.
And here's why it's okay.
And here's why I get to do this,
and I'm a grown woman, and my girl, okay, and here's why it's okay. And here's why I get to do this, and I'm a grown woman, and my daughter, but like really, over time,
my mom realized, oh my God, my little girl is more okay
than she's ever been in her life.
And one of the reasons I know that
is because she's not justifying it to anybody anymore.
Oh wow.
And I've been lucky enough that we were, she did come to us with no fear in her hands anymore.
And at this point, I can say with all honesty that Abby's her favorite of all of her daughters.
And the thing she said to Abby when Abby told her that Abby was going to propose is my mom said, Abby, I have not seen my daughter this
alive since she was 10 years old.
Wow.
Which is so wild to me, Jay, because tennis was wild.
I disappeared.
Right?
I mean, I still did boost bump switch.
What does that mean?
Like, what does it mean that I disappeared when I was 10 and something about returning
to myself before the two that my mom could see me alive again.
That's incredible.
That statement is so powerful, especially because UC
10 is so formative as a chain.
Yes, yeah.
Yeah, I don't know if it's 10, but it's like eight to 12.
Yeah, yeah, right.
Well, that's when we start to really get it,
when we start to really internalize these ideas of like,
oh, this is how I'm a good girl.
This is how I'm a good Christian.
This is how I'm a, I'm a Doyle. I'm a American. I'm a internalized these ideas of like, oh, this is how I'm a good girl, this is how I'm a good Christian, this is how I'm a,
I'm a Doyle, I'm a American, I'm a whatever it is.
And when our key just starts to form.
Yeah, yeah.
Wow, Claire, you're incredible.
I mean, it's this conversation has been genuinely,
and I am, and I mean this from the sincerest place
in my heart, has been so
revelatory for me, just from all I'm doing, and I really recommend anyone who's been listening
or watching this episode, go back and listen to it again, and every time you know, it gives
a keep piece of advice, ask that question to yourself, because that's what I'm doing.
When I'm listening to you, I'm putting myself in your shoes, I'm walking through that
phase, I'm asking the questions that you're sharing, and reflecting on my life and where those,
and just from listening to you,
and having this conversation with you,
I've gained so much clarity,
and kind of like feel like a lot of openings have been made,
just from listening to you speak,
and having this conversation with you.
So I want everyone to have that experience
who's listening right now.
And I just, I genuinely wanna say, I really believe that anyone who reads your work right
now is going to get the best writing they possibly can in this creative expression of just
getting, if you know, and I think all of us know it, the deepest core of ourselves that
our inner child has been neglected, we walked away from who we truly were, we
disconnected, we've got lost, we've been conditioned, whatever you want to call it, we've been
tamed. And if you feel that you need to do some of that work and you want to guide in a companion,
then please go ahead and grab this book. It will gently but powerfully guide you through the steps that you need to take. And I love that balance you have done. I'm hearing you speak. It's gently, but powerfully guide you through the steps that you need to take.
And I love that balance you have.
I'm hearing you speak.
It's gentle.
You're very loving.
But at the same time, it's powerful.
And it's got a lot of strength to it.
So thank you for doing what you do.
I mean, this is amazing.
So I'm going to end with two segments that we do at the end of every interview.
It's called Fill in the Blanks and then the final five. So this is kind of like a rapid fire, quick fire. And I'm going to ask you
to answer the next few questions in one word to one like five words maximum. So fill in the blanks
is I read out a sentence and you fill in the end of the sentence. So if you want to be a great writer.
If you want to be a great writer. Right.
Good. The secret to connecting with your community is.
Truth telling.
Being untamed doesn't mean.
Danger.
What impresses me the most about humans is their ability to.
Correct. What impresses me the most about humans is their ability to. Forgiveness.
I always say no to.
I love it, great, I love it.
Art is never.
Fake.
Sobriety starts with.
Stillness. I knew I was in starts with stillness.
I knew I was in love with Abby when
I saw her
Oh beautiful, I love it. Okay, these are your final five. It's the same. You were brilliant. By the way, I don't think anyone's ever done that that well
Like that's amazing. We've been having this long conversation
But okay, so these are your final five. Same thing. One word, maximum five words ideally
You're the only one who's ever followed it. So I'm very impressed right now. Okay, what have you been chasing previously
in life that you no longer pursue? Perfection. Beautiful. What's one thing you once felt
shame and guilt over that you are now proud of? Alcoholism, recovery. Absolutely, great question. What was your biggest
lesson from the last 12 months? Surrender. The one thing, the one quality that you
want to give your children that you'd wish for them to aspire to develop and
create. Correct. Beautiful. And your fifth and final question, if you could create a law
that everyone else in the world had to follow, what would it be? Be kind and be brave.
It's beautiful. I love it. I'm going to I wanted to share a
passes from your book that I think would help people. So I'm just going to share this from untamed. It says, my emotions, my intuition, my imagination, my courage, those are the
keys to freedom. Those are who we are. Will we be brave enough to unlock ourselves? Will
we be brave enough to set ourselves free? We will finally step out of our cages and say to ourselves, to our
people and to the world here. Thank you, Glen. For such an incredible conversation, you've
made my week. This is by far one of my favorite conversations I've ever had on the podcast.
I do not say it every time. And that's not because I don't have incredible guests I do, but
this was just, it just felt, I don't know, there's something really special, there's something really excited to me and
person and give you a big hug when we can.
I can't wait, I've been wondering why we haven't met before and it feels like it was because we needed to have this conversation at this time.
Yeah, for sure, but no, I hope that was useful for you.
And I hope it was a good use of your time.
I know that your time's so valuable and precious.
So I really genuinely appreciate it.
And yeah, thank you.
I got so much personally from that conversation.
And I know my audience will absolutely love it.
Me too.
It was my favorite part of the week.
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