On Purpose with Jay Shetty - People-Pleasers — If You're Afraid to Stand Up for Yourself, Do THIS to Speak Up Without the Fear of Losing the People You Love With Africa Brooke

Episode Date: July 2, 2025

What makes it hard for you to speak up? Do you ever say “yes” when you really want to say “no”? Today, Jay is joined by Africa Brooke, a globally recognized consultant, speaker, and writer specializing in self-censorship, integrity, and expression. Known for helping individuals and organizations navigate the complexities of honest communication in the digital age, Africa brings a deep, compassionate lens to today’s most pressing cultural dynamics. Together, she and Jay unpack the psychology of cancel culture, which she redefines as “collective sabotage”—a pattern driven by fear, shame, and the pressure to appear morally perfect. Africa challenges the idea of accountability, suggesting it’s often rooted in fear-based conformity, and highlights “self-censorship” as a hidden consequence of the current social climate. As the conversation unfolds, Africa opens up about a turning point in 2020—when she made a choice that didn’t align with her values just to gain social approval. That experience sparked her exploration of a “third perspective”, a path beyond binary thinking, where wisdom replaces performance and nuance replaces judgment. Jay and Africa discuss how social media pushes us to present a polished version of ourselves, and how fear can silence not just what we say, but who we really are. They break down the difference between performing out of fear and choosing your words with intention—reminding us that we’re not limited to staying silent or oversharing. Instead, encouraging us to speak from a place of self-awareness, integrity, and grounded confidence. In this interview, you'll learn: How to Speak Honestly Without the Fear of Judgment  How to Tell the Difference Between Self-Censorship and Intentionality  How to Navigate Conflict Without Abandoning Your Values How to Stop Performing for Social Media and Start Living Authentically How to Set Boundaries in a Respectful Way  How to Let Go of Binary Thinking and Find the Third Perspective Even when it’s uncomfortable, your voice matters, because it’s real. Give yourself permission to step out of fear, show up with grace, and make space for the kind of dialogue that moves us forward.  With Love and Gratitude, Jay Shetty What We Discuss: 00:00 Intro 01:36 How Cancel Culture Reflects Modern Day Tribalism 03:29 Is Expressing Your Truth Worth the Risk of Punishment? 06:03 Understanding the Fear of Self-Censorship vs. Careful Thinking 09:48 Letting Go of the Identity Others Expect From You 15:22 Finding Freedom in Honest Expression 18:32 How Empathy Begins With Letting Go of Judgement 21:50 Why We Struggle to Give Ourselves Grace 26:33 The Fear Behind Another Person’s Freedom to Speak 33:57 Do Your Values Match the Life You’re Actually Living? 40:34 You Don’t Have to Heal Everything at Once 45:17 How Negativity Bias Shapes Our Perception of the World 49:02 How Ego Blocks Curiosity in Everyday Moments 53:46 Why You’re Not Entitled to Silence Others 01:07:30 Blame and Shame Don’t Lead to Real Change 01:11:36 How to Truly Understand People You Disagree With 01:14:37 From Cancel Culture to Collective Sabotage 01:19:19 How Constant Apologies Undermine Your Voice 01:21:07 Why We Must Let Everyday Moments Breathe 01:25:15 Self-Expression Should Not Be a Performance for the Internet 01:29:33 Don’t Build an Audience That Won’t Let You Evolve 01:37:54 Are You Living a Truth You Never Chose? 01:42:51 Does One Narrative Define Your Whole Reality? 01:44:41 Is It Ever Justified to Cancel Someone? 01:48:00 How to Give Grace Without Losing Your Boundaries 01:52:43 Most of What Feels Urgent Today Won’t Matter Tomorrow 01:55:55 Africa on Final Five Episode Resources: Africa Brooke | Website Africa Brooke | Instagram Africa Brooke | LinkedIn Beyond the Self with Africa Brooke The Third Perspective: Brave Expression in the Age of IntoleranceSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart podcast. I have some memories I can fill you in. And that you're gonna fill me in. Yes, but then you forgot about it? I completely forgot about it. Listen to Are You a Charlotte? on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I collect my roommates' toenails and fingernails. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast,

Therapy Gecko. It's a show and fingernails. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take phone calls from anonymous strangers as a fake gecko therapist and try to learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's very interesting. Check it out for yourself by searching for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get

your podcasts. Hi, I'm Radhie Devlukya and I am the host of a really good cry podcast. And I had the opportunity to talk to Davy Brown. With women, any kind of thing where there might be this underlying edge of self-sacrifice as martyrdom, if you're never feeling, you're telling yourself a story and you're actually avoiding what you should be doing. You got to get in, you got to get your hands dirty. Listen to A Really Good Cry on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you're in a certain room with people that you know you're very

comfortable with, there are sides of you that you're going to be expressing versus not. We call it reading the room, understanding your environment, understanding your audience, understanding the timing of certain things, saying everything and saying nothing are not the only options. Instead of saying this on social media, could I tell a friend? We believe that if something is happening socially or there's a crisis, people need to take their stance online. Self-censoring is actually when you rush to say something because you want to keep the mob at bay.

If you repost this infographic, then we know you're a safe person so the mob doesn't attack you. So it's actually not about whether someone believes what they're saying. We are more interested in the performance of things. The number one health and wellness podcast. Jay Shetty. Jay Shetty. The one, the only Jay Shetty.

Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the place you come to become happier, healthier and more healed. I am so grateful for today's conversation because I'm so excited about it. As soon as I heard about this individual, read her book and got involved in all of her insights and all the great thoughts she had, I was absolutely fixated. This content is what I believe

is the most needed right now. This book, I believe, is the most needed right now. This is the one to add to your next book club, your next reading list. This has to be your next pick. I genuinely mean it. I was actually thinking about writing about this topic a couple of years back,

and I'd been having conversations about it. It was literally probably the number one conversation I was having with any friend, with any family member. And I then came across her work and was blown away. She had covered every theme practically, deeply, powerfully, boldly. I'm speaking about Afrika Brok and the book is called The Third Perspective, Brave Expression in the Age of Intolerance. Go and grab this book right now and welcome to On Purpose, Africa Brooke.

Africa, thank you for being here. Thank you. Oh, what an incredible introduction, Jay. Thank you. I mean it. Like I really mean it. I feel like the gamut of themes that you cover in this book are what's so deeply needed for hearts and minds in the world right now where we're living in an age of intolerance,

we're living in a society of divide, we're scared of having uncomfortable conversations, we don't know how to talk to someone who thinks differently from us. And whether this is religiously, politically, even if it comes down to career-wise, like I think we have created a world where we have silos and groups. And so, I want to start off, I want to dive into so many things with you. And I'll let you kind of share what you want to share before we dive in.

But if I had to start somewhere, my question would be, how did we get here? Even in writing this book, I had to lead with that question. Because it's one of the first questions that people ask me. And very specifically, what we're talking about, we're talking about the psychology of what we call cancel culture, which is important for me to actually name this very early in our conversation. And I invite people, just as I said those words, to be honest about how that felt in your body, because there are people that believe council culture is not real. It doesn't exist. It's simply people being held to account. And then there are some people that believe that it's a combination of public shaming,

doxing, the inability to disagree well, self-righteousness. All of these are the more shadowy things. But what I've really got to discover for myself in this three and a half years of writing this, but I would say the five years before it, it's not a new problem. And I don't know if you've found this where sometimes we think what we're experiencing in our timeline is something new. I think it's just a modern manifestation of tribalism. I think we've always had silos and echo chambers and divide and polarization. It just looked very differently 20 years ago, 30 years ago, 50

years ago. But I think just because something has existed for centuries, I think just because something might be primal, the biology of wanting to belong and what we're willing to do in order to belong. I don't think that means we need to normalize it not working. So I think there's a combination of things that I'll just kind of put forward to answer your question in a more direct way. It's not a new problem. So I can't say this is exactly when it started. It's ancient. It's tribalism.

We're just experiencing it in a very different way in modern day society. Yeah, no, that's really well put. You're so right. We always feel our problems are unique. Yeah, we do. And that no one has felt them before. And that what we're experiencing is the most extreme version of it. Yes.

Where does that come from? Where's that feeling of like what I'm going through has to be the worst, most, highest, deepest. The thing that you're pointing out, that question allows for me to actually have empathy for human beings and empathy for myself in realizing that all I know is my story. All I know is my experience. I am living in my body and my mind. I have no idea what anyone else is experiencing. So whether I feel grief or pain or arousal, joy,

it's a very solitary experience. So I think it's so easy to believe that we are the only ones experiencing these things. Even when someone says, I'm experiencing that too. I experience fear. I have a fear of being cancelled, of being ostracized, of whatever. We can only understand it intellectually, but we never fully understand it in an embodied way. And something that I would also say around this is that when it comes to this thing that we call cancel culture,

I truly believe that it's underpinned by self-censorship, which I'm sure we'll speak about in more detail. But self-censorship is essentially when you feel that you're going to be punished for expressing yourself honestly. Whether it's even in how you dress, let's say you're from a culture that's very conservative, but you've wanted to express yourself in a way that is deemed inappropriate, in a way that is deemed maybe men shouldn't wear this, women shouldn't wear this, whatever it is, you believe that you're going to be punished for your expression.

And I think the problem is that with technology, we see that level of fear just in a very different way. So again, these things have always existed, but social media amplifies these things just in a way that is very, very abnormal. I would say actually that's one of the things that I really got to see for myself, even before this book. That social media is making us behave and experience some of these things in a way we just never would. It's making us speak to each other in a way we never normally would.

Criticize in a way we wouldn't. Put forward this idea of moral perfection in a way we wouldn't. But it's also making us self-censor in a way we just wouldn't in our everyday lives. We even say things like, oh I'd never say this online. Yeah. Or I really can't say this on Instagram, but I'll say it here or this is the right room to talk about this.

We say things like that all the time. What is that line between self-censorship and then this idea of trying to be fully transparent and authentic. Like this idea that if you share everything, then you're authentic. And if you hide something, then where's self-censorship different to both of those? Because it's not either or. I write a line where I say, and I start to use this as a mantra of myself, saying everything and saying nothing are not your only options.

I think that's very important. Self-censorship is driven by fear. Again, you believe on some level, usually very unconscious, that you are going to be punished if you express what is true. If I am honest with you right now, you are going to ostracize me. You're going to abandon me. You're going to reject me. But now we're not just doing it to an individual level. You're doing it with strangers, faceless, nameless people. You're afraid that they're going to cast you out of the tribe, right? So it taps into a very primal fear, which is so normal. It's just

being expressed in a way that is not normal at all. Right? So self-censorship is driven by fear. Whereas I think the other side of that is, I call it social filtering. It's something that we do all the time. You and I, if we're meeting for the first time, there might be things that you just won't say or jokes that you just won't make because we don't know each other well enough just yet. If you're in a certain room with people that you know you're very comfortable with,

there are sides of you that you're going to be expressing versus not. That's reading the room. We call it reading the room. Understanding your environment, understanding your audience, understanding the timing of certain things. That is discernment-led. It's not led by fear. So I never want people to think that any of, not even just my work,

but this conversation is about saying everything. Because again, saying everything and saying nothing are not the only options. There is this beautiful gray where you get to say, actually, instead of saying this on social media, could I tell a friend? Instead of thinking that I have to prove my goodness on social media, which is a huge thing where we believe that if something is happening socially or there's a crisis, people need to take their stance online. But can I not take my stance or really think about what I feel offline?

Right? So it's discernment-led. Because another side of self-censoring is actually when you rush to say something because you want to keep the mob at bay, which we see absolutely all the time, this idea. And I think there's something quite religious about it. I always think of the story of, I believe it's the Passover in the Bible, where people have to put, is it blood outside of the door so that the angel of death doesn't take their firstborn son or something along those lines. I sort of see what people are demanding for people to do on social media in the same way that if you repost this infographic,

then we know you're a safe person so the mob doesn't attack you. So it's actually not about whether someone believes what they're saying. We are more interested in the performance of things. But again, if you're using discernment, you get to say, I know I feel very scared right now and people are demanding that I speak up, but I'm not going to do that because that's out of integrity. But maybe I can have a bit of a curiosity around why people need me to be educated on this and do it offline, have a bit of a curiosity around why people need me to be educated on this and do it offline, have a conversation online.

Whereas self-censorship is either not saying anything or pretending to be on board with what people want you to say. So I want people to remember it really simply. Self-censorship is driven by fear. Whereas if you're social filtering, you're using discernment. Even if you're a little bit afraid, you're still grounded in integrity on some level. I love how deeply you've thought about this

because you know, being able to categorize, simplify and dissect all of that requires a lot of structure and systems because the mind has always found it easier to just make it binary. It's always been easier. And if you look at the structure of society, it kind of goes that way. You have Coke, you have Pepsi, and then maybe you have RC Cola or whatever else.

Like, but it's two choices. There's like two big places. You have McDonald's and Burger King. You have Domino's and Pizza Hut. And yes, there's another one, but generally life has become divided by... There's only two teams. Like, everyone's going to hate me for saying this, but...

In London, Arsenal and Spurs, like the bigger teams, and then you've got West Ham and Fulham and all the rest of it, no offence. But you get the point, and I'm a United supporter, but... Sports, food, brands, like everything you look at, and then of course, politics, religion, this way, that way, whatever, it's just all binary and so we haven't really looked at life as a spectrum. We haven't looked at life as actually there's all of this gray. Actually there's all of this middle ground.

As you just said, there's a difference between authenticity, social filtering, censorship, self-censorship. There's all these differences and they're different grades and the mind can just go, oh, that's too much work. I don't want to do that. Absolutely. And you know what? I think this is where I come back to, because I really don't want to have this conversation from a place of kind of being holier than thou. Thinking that people just need to speak up. People just need to stop being afraid of council culture.

People just need to say what's on their minds, because I think it really disregards the biology of all of this. And when we talk about things being so binary, again, it's not just all of a sudden we're so binary. We're built in that way, because our brains, we're built for simplicity. Because now, when you see the extreme of that other side of binary, is the paradox of choice, where when you have too many options,

there's overwhelm. And you kind of see this in dating. You see this even with brands and clothing. There's way too much that it actually causes stress for a lot of people without even realizing that they... It leads you to indecision if you have too many decisions to make, and you see this with the political system, I think that's the most obvious one, right?

Regardless of where you are, even though they say you have all of these other options, it's mainly two, right? Whatever the two might be that are propped up. But I think we need to, and I know that in my work and a lot of what I speak about, it can be very inspiring and motivating, and it can really amp you up.

You're ready to undo self-censorship. But I'm also asking you, and what we're talking about, Jay, we're asking people to consider doing things that are very unnatural. Because to consider that third space and that nuance, it is not the default for humans. So we're asking people to kind of look at what your existing defaults are,

where you want to have good or bad, pro or anti-woke or anti-woke, to kind of simplify the whole thing, right? But the most beautiful thing you can do for yourself is to be in that discomfort of being like, okay, is there a third way? Is there a third option? That's where the third perspective comes from.

It's a line that I wrote in my journal in 2020, actually, when I was so entrenched in my own binary thinking and I had no idea. And I was writing something and I wrote the line, third perspective, that I'm looking for a third perspective because I was in like an internal desperation. I made myself sick with self-censorship and I really considered myself at the time and even now to be an outspoken person, to be someone that is confident in their thoughts, in their mind, someone who is open-minded,

transparent, etc. But my actions were showing me that I was prioritizing popularity. I was afraid of what the mob would do to me if I said, I don't agree with that, or I've changed my mind, or even I don't agree with that anymore. I did at a point in time, but I'm not that person. Or I understand what the so-called other side thinks. It doesn't mean I accept it, but I understand it.

But I didn't think I was allowed to even say that. And I think that's the thing that most people, and maybe even yourself, have experienced and are experiencing in real time, where we don't think we're allowed to change our minds. And ultimately, that's what we're talking about here. A third perspective means that you have to let go of a version of you that people might be used to. Right? And that's very uncomfortable, because it's easier to be the J and the Africa that people love and adore and people feel like there's a certainty to your thoughts and there's a

certainty to what you will say and what you will do and how you will behave and where they can place you. So when you do something or even ask a question that kind of deviates from that, it's really frightening because again, the binary mind, people need to make sense of you. No, Jay usually does this, but now he's doing this or he's not doing that. So I think again, my work, I always like to ground it in an understanding of the reality of being a human being. We're wired for binary, whether we like it or not, even me.

I still have my immediate reactions, but my job and a very exciting challenge that I have is to notice and then try and go into that third perspective to be like, oh, okay, we have our defaults, but is there something that we're not seeing? Yeah. Right? You said something like when you look to yourself and you realize that you too wanted the binary. I think every one of us, if we looked at ourselves, I agree with me too.

I think we'd find we do always slot into there are only two options all the time. And so you constantly have to ask yourself what's the third perspective. This isn't something that like one day you get to a point and from then you always see three perspectives. Because you're so wired on a human level. So I see that in myself that in any conversation, I can so switch into the righteous mind, binary options, cancel culture feeling, making big judgments about people over small points of information.

And these are all lacking the third perspective. And so if I don't have this habit or this practice every single day, if I'm not developing it every single day and constantly pushing myself, it's not that one day I just get to a point where I'm now the all-knowing and all-seeing. Yeah, yeah. All of this, and the subtitle is, Brave Expression in the Age of Intolerance. I never want people to think that brave expression or courage is some kind of point of arrival. And then you get there, and then you have Jay in Africa

on the other side with a certificate to give you to say, well done. That just isn't how it works. And for me, I think that's so exciting to know that in every single moment, every single interaction, especially your micro-interactions, you get to practice being braver. Because something I discovered is that I got to a point, maybe because I've been working at this for a while and understanding all of this stuff intellectually, putting it into

practice, but mainly in my work and my career and conversations that I have in the public. But I realized that my biggest work to do with brave expression and not self-censoring was in romantic relationships. Because again, I had got to a point of feeling so confident and comfortable that if we're talking about societal things or whatever it might be, okay, I can hold my own. I cannot self-censor. But in romantic relationships, all of that would unravel.

I would feel uncomfortable saying my needs. I would get very defensive immediately in conflict. Because all of this is about conflict avoidance. Are you willing to walk into conflict and to be with it in a healthy way? Or do you avoid it and put up your defenses and self-righteousness? So I was very humbled myself to realize that even to this day, that my romantic relationships is where I have to look out for my own self-censorship the most. So there's no arrival.

Yeah, wow! The thing that I love that you said there is that you said we're trying to avoid conflict. Yeah. And actually I think we're trying to avoid conflict even within ourselves. And that's why we don't want to ask the question, right? Like I know, and I've been thinking about this a lot lately because I can kind of get into a lot of dismantling identity. And what I mean by that is what most of us do subconsciously is we reaffirm the identity we've built for ourselves. So if we built an identity as a certain person, a certain career,

a certain ethnic background, whatever it may be, we've reaffirmed that by who we spend time with, what we read, what we eat and where we hang out. And I kind of do a lot of the opposite where I'm like constantly questioning thoughts, beliefs and values and whether they serve me and whether they're accurate. And I feel like I've gone quite deep that sometimes I can get to a point of like, I don't even know who I am anymore. Right.

And that can be very uncomfortable. And so I understand why people don't want to go there. Because it can be so dismantling. Where you've... It's almost like imagine you had a piece of furniture and you took out all the screws and pieces and you just placed it down. And you're starting again to go, what else can I build from this? And you don't have the manual and you don't have the IKEA guide and all the rest of it. Again, looking at them as extreme options, one option is I keep reaffirming who I am.

The other option is I dismantle myself so deeply that I don't have a clue who I am. Right. And it's like, well again, how do we exist in this space of, well I should know how to question parts of my values, upbringing, qualities, character, without dismantling myself, but also not continuing to just become who I am already walking on the path to become. Oh, that's so good. That's so good because it makes me think about another thing that I remember writing down. And there were a couple of these things. First one was around, you can be understanding without accepting.

Right? Because I think, and this ties in so perfectly with everything that you're saying, but even if I look at it from a societal perspective, sometimes we're afraid to kind of truly honor someone's worldview. Because we think, if I understand you, that means I'm accepting your worldview. But even a layer deeper than that, if I understand you, other people will think I'm accepting. Yes.

That seems to be, I think, one of the biggest things that I find to be the kind of point of conflict that we all have, that if I show empathy for someone from the other side, people will think I'm one of them. So we're dehumanizing each other, but in doing that, we're dehumanizing ourselves. And I don't think we even realize that, because that means someone else might be thinking that a few. Because whether we like it or not, we're all one. How we are with each other is how people will be with you.

So when I think about what you're talking about in terms of constructing identity, it brings up this, the second thing that I was exploring for myself, which is, can I still have my convictions and be open-minded? Right? Can I still have my convictions about my open minded? Right? Can I still have my convictions about my identity, but be open to changing it? Again, because that is the third perspective. It's not about one or the other. You don't have to be over attached to your identity

or to completely reject your identity. You get to play with all of the components. I like that idea of having your convictions and still being curious. Yes. Because that feels... And I love that idea of having your convictions and still being curious. Yes. Because that feels... And I love that point you made going back a couple where you made about understanding someone

doesn't mean accepting them. And if you're seen to understand someone, it doesn't mean you're accepting them. Absolutely. By others. Why is it important? Or how do we encourage people to recognize? Because I think we get so locked in our belief systems that I'm right,

that person is so wrong and we don't even give them the opportunity. And I think that's where the fear comes from for so many people is. I won't even be given the opportunity to be understood. I mean, even taking your romantic example, is there a part of you that has a fear? Because I like looking at it. I always say to people, it's like the micro experiences are literally just blown up on the macro experiences. It's not that different.

Like we think it is, like, oh, I'm different in love and I'm different. But like you just said, it was like, no, self-censorship is something I can do in love or I can do it online. And it's the same feeling. It may be a different fear or maybe... It was like, no, self-censorship is something I can do in love or I can do it online. Yes. And it's the same feeling. It may be a different fear, it may be... But there's a fear that I come across and that I see in people I talk to, which is I feel like I won't be given an opportunity to be understood

and I'll be judged immediately. So even if I try to share something in a very logical, rational, thoughtful, conscious, deeply honest way about whatever belief it is, whether it's one on one, whether it's one to many online, I feel like people are going to judge it immediately for whether it's sincere, genuine or not. And I know people who are listening and watching have probably written posts and edited, edited, edited every word, edited every word and then deleted it. Or got a text together to send to that person and written down all your emotions and feelings and then gone,

no, they're just going to think I'm being too needy. No, they're just going to think I'm being too this. Deleted it and or sent it and then felt, oh gosh, they're going to think I'm needy. They get a message back going, you're being too needy. Yeah. People don't make us feel we have the time to explain ourselves.

People don't make us feel that we have the space for them to understand us. And people make us feel that no matter what we say, they've already made their judgment. So then we just be quiet or we hide or we never express how we feel because it's safer and it's easier. Two questions. What is lost in that for us when we just hide? And second question.

How do we change that? Like how do we get to a point where we can start understanding each other and not accepting each other? I really want to thank you for allowing yourself to express that thought out loud. Because to me, these conversations is, Jay, especially the conversation you and I are having now. I wish you knew, and I'm getting goosebumps, how many people are scared to talk about this. Like it's a...

And the fears are not unfounded at all. We only just have to look online, offline, have conversations with people. When you speak to people in a very honest way like this, you see the relief being like, oh my God, people are willing to talk about... Like there's a very real fear. And the fact that you and I can sit here and have this conversation is such a beautiful thing, because I know how many people are so terrified.

And as you were speaking, I could feel just like almost sadness, but also joy in my chest because you're saying words that I think about all the time and that people share with me, thousands of people all the time and that people share with me, thousands of people, all the time. And the word grace comes to mind. And I'm going to also explore a thought in real time with you and just riff out loud. Which is what we're doing. Which is what we're doing. I think this all comes back to whether we like it or not to the self.

If you have an inability to show yourself grace for your own contradictions, I promise you, you will never be able to do it for someone else. We respond in that way to other people, expect other people to be reactionary, expect other people to match our worldview, scan for malicious intent in what people are saying. Why? Because we already do it to ourselves. Someone who shows themselves grace is able to honor other people's contradiction without thinking they have to become or that other people might be seeing. It's like self-surveillance, which then becomes surveilling

everyone and everything. I think that's what it is. The inability to be graceful with ourselves. that's what it is, the inability to be graceful with ourselves. Yes, I mean, you're spot on. I, that resonates so strongly and anyone who's watching, if you're listening, I literally sighed. Like, I was so relieving to hear that because I think that's kind of, you know, it's a journey I've been on and a journey that I've mentioned. And I said this to you earlier. This theme of yours has come up in podcasts in miniature moments.

And today I was excited because we're diving right into just this. I think for me, what's been really interesting is that I've lived so many paradoxical lives, and it took me forever to give myself grace to live as a paradox. It took me forever. I was self-critical. I was harsh on myself. I was disconnected from myself. There was a sense of ridiculing myself, pointing fingers at myself.

Like there was a lot of that for many years. And I started to realize how much more layered, complex, and there was a third version of me. And so, you know, when I lived as a monk, it was one of the best experiences of my life and I would never change it. I would do it again. And it was so special. And if you would have asked me then, I thought I was going to do

that for the rest of my life. And at one point when I had to admit to myself that not only could I not do that for the rest of my life, but that it wasn't my path, that was the first time I felt I really had to sit with giving grace to myself, because in my eyes, I'd failed. In my eyes, I had let people down. In my eyes, people would judge me for having failed. And I felt, if I leave this, everyone's going to think I've completely messed up

and that I'm a failure and that I'm really weak. In my eyes, and by the way, there were like 10 people who knew who I was. So it wasn't about a scale thing, it was just a feeling of not only am I letting myself down, everyone's going to be let down by my actions. And I think everyone can relate to that, whether it's you had a breakup and you thought you were going to marry that person and all of a sudden you're thinking,

gosh, everyone thought I was going to marry that person too and now they left me. Maybe you've had that same experience because you had a job and that job was going really well and then you lost your job and all of a sudden you're thinking, well, everyone thinks I'm a failure because I got made redundant or I got fired or whatever it is.

Maybe you've had that experience because you had a dream that you told everyone you were going to chase and then it didn't work out. And now, so we've all had that experience of feeling cancelled by ourselves and others. In that moment, I remember having to go deep and give myself permission to say, no, I can evolve, I can re-become, and I can keep the parts of that experience

that were true, but I can also let go of the parts of the experience that are no longer. And that doesn't take away from that experience. Then I had to do it again when I started, then I worked in the corporate world, I started to become a creator after that. And it was the same thing then. It was like, okay, now I'm actually going to share. And I remember the start people being like, well, you're promoting yourself.

Like this isn't aligned with humility. And this isn't aligned with being a grounded individual. How could you make a video with this? Because the binary, right? You were this, and by virtue of you being a monk and this, this, even if you've never said to people anything about your desires or the way you want to live, just by identity, you having that identity and that label attached to you,

means people can assign anything they want onto it and you have to perform and to be that forever. Absolutely. And some of that is my own doing and I take responsibility for that. Like some of that is definitely something I've created for myself. So it's not that I'm free of all responsibility and that I can only point the fingers outwards and be like, stop being mean, you know, whatever it is. Because there is a sense of like, well, no, that's a part of my identity that I decided

to share with you. And that was a choice that I made. Before we dive into the next moment, let's hear from our sponsors. What happens when we come face to face with death? My truck was blown up by a 20 pound anti-tank mine. My parachute did not deploy. I was kidnapped by a drug cartel.

I just remember everything getting dark. I'm dying. We step beyond the edge of what we know. To open our consciousness to something more than just what's in that Western box. And return. I clinically died. The heart stopped beating. Which I was dead for 11.5 minutes. My name is Dan Bush.

My mission is simple. To find, explore, and share these stories. I'm not a victim, I'm a survivor. You're strongest when you're the most vulnerable. To remind us what it means to be alive. Not just that I was the guy that cut his arm off, but I'm the guy who is smiling when he cut his arm off. Alive Again, a podcast about the fragility of life, the strength of the human spirit,

and what it means to truly live. Listen to Alive Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast,

Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples

of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend, and I found his pizzeria in our apartment. I collect my roommates toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head

and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind VoiceOver, the movement that exploded in 2024. VoiceOver is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended

it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover, to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times

where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that are being naked together. How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it.

Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And back to our episode. The reason why I was walking through that thought experiment is because this is the conversation. And I think again, the binary is, it's all your fault, you're all picking on me. I'm just doing a good job.

Or the binary is, I've really messed up and you're all right. And the third perspective is, well, actually there's some things I need to take accountability and responsibility for, but I hope you do too. Yes. Because we, no one's going to get far in a world where we don't give ourselves and others grace. But I think we, we think we hold ourselves to such a high standard that we then project that high standard onto others. And I think it's been said for years,

I don't know who said it, but the famous phrase of we judge other people by their actions, not their intentions. And we judge ourselves by our intentions, not our actions. That's exactly it. And it speaks to the projection of moral perfection. And the reason social media plays a role in this, and I want people to know that when I talk about social media, I'm not kind of bringing it back to that cliche conclusion where I think social media is the problem. I speak at it just from a very different point of view

to highlight that these things that are already primal within us, that have already existed within us, just get a different stage because of social media. And I think it's something to be curious about. But I find that because of that kind of shame we feel because we know we're not morally perfect because we know that behind closed doors, there are things that we agree with that other people would look down on us for, or the person that we used to be, that maybe we've been able to cover them up quite well

and no one else knows, but there's the shame that can still lie beneath. Whereas on social media, we get to create this morally perfect person who posts all of the right infographics, all of the right links, all of the right things. They always have the right opinion. They're somewhat of a 24-hour news cycle as well. So, when something is happening, they're up to date on everything. They're educated, right? All of

this. But a lot of the time, it's in direct contradiction to who we actually are. But we're so wedded to that morally perfect avatar that we expect other people to also have one of their own. So if someone shows a side of them that is a little bit unsavory or a little bit inappropriate or someone who doesn't agree with something and is willing to say it, I think we experience this kind of cognitive dissonance because a mirror has been held up. I find that sometimes it's almost like a, how dare you say what is on your mind when I can't?

A lot of the time, it's kind of this frustration that we have. How dare you be free when I am in a cage that I have constructed for myself? It's not the story for everyone, but I promise you, it's the common story if you were to look just a little bit deeper to say, why do I feel these reactions so strongly when someone doesn't match my worldview? What feels so threatening?

And sometimes it's someone's freedom of expression that feels threatening. And I think that's a good starting point to be honest about. Literally, like, again, I'm having just so many great thoughts and I'm glad that we're figuring this out in real time. I know, I know. I mean, you've had a lot more hours in this space and years, but hearing you say that, it sounds like there is a dual responsibility because there's a responsibility for us to be able to not censor ourselves, to be able to express ourselves, to be able to realize there's

more options, but so much of that rests on not feeling like someone's going to ostracize and judge us. Absolutely. And I wonder how do we start within ourselves, as you said, that's really where it starts. Yeah. You said a few moments ago that because people don't give themselves grace for their own contradictions, they can't have grace for other people's contradictions.

What is the process of giving ourselves grace for our contradictions? Because I think almost sometimes we don't even see them. Yeah. Like I think sometimes we're just so self-unaware and it's so funny. I consider myself to be quite a self-aware person. And just two weeks ago, I was sitting there and someone gave me some honest piece of feedback. And I sat with it for the rest of the day and I was like, I am so self-unaware. Like I'm so self-unaware.

And I thought about this weekend, I again got some good feedback from someone. And I was thinking, yeah, like, I don't even see how me acting that way could be perceived that way. But it is. And whether that's my intention or that's how it's perceived. Yes. But I'm so self-unaware, I'm just, I'm not conscious of that.

And so even as someone who considers themselves very self-aware, I would consider myself to be not that aware. And so I think a lot of us are so self-unaware where we don't even know we have a contradiction. We're like, nope, I've always signed up for the same thing. I've always voted the same. I've always felt the same. No, no, no, this is who I am.

It's like, wait a minute, like you just did something else last week to your partner or whatever, maybe. So where do we start when we have no space for grace for our contradictions because we don't even know what they are? I love that question so much. And I organized this book, but it's actually not even really about the book. I had to organize a lot of my own thoughts from my own journals and a lot of my work with clients because I'm a developmental coach and a researcher,

and I'm trained in Jungian psychology. So my fascination, Jay, is really understanding the shadow of humanity, which is essentially what we're talking about, in that if you are willing to integrate and understand your shadow, you will experience a more fulfilling life. You will find yourself being in more integrity.

So I organized the book in three parts, Awareness, Responsibility and Expression. And I see this as the journey of going from conforming, whether it's conforming to ideals and expectations of your past self, to a place of actual brave expression and courage. A lot of people want to rush to expression. What do I say? What do I do? Give me this strategy, Africa, or I've been cancelled.

What do I say? It's kind of... No. We have to start at awareness. What are you afraid of? If I express the truth, I believe that I will be punished. I believe that I'll be abandoned, rejected, whatever it might be. I truly believe that everyone has to start there, be honest about what you're afraid of.

When Jay tells me an opinion that I don't agree with and I'm very defensive and reactionary and I want to take him down, I'm afraid of something. What am I afraid of, right? Is it because his worldview feels like a threat to my sense of self? Is it, just be very honest. And then the second part where you're talking about contradiction falls into the responsibility aspect,

where I ask the question, what do you stand for? And I always use another sort of mantra that I wrote, which says, when you don't know what you stand for, you will always be at the mercy of the external world. And that's really important. I'll say that again. When you don't know what you stand for, you will always be at the mercy of the external world. So if you come across someone who's more intimidating, someone you believe has more status, has more power, someone who maybe you believe is better than you in some way, or a mob, or someone who says you need to speak up in this exact way

or use your platform, whatever it is, you will always be at the mercy of everything else. You will never consult yourself. You will always consult other people before you consult you. And to actually know what you stand for, you need to know what your values are, which I think is what we're talking about. And I think a really good place to spot your contradictions is to say,

okay, what do I value? People will usually say things like, I value honesty, integrity, transparency, kindness. And it feels so good to say, this is what I value. It feels amazing. But then I like to go a step deeper to say, the results you see in your life right now, right now in real time, in this moment in time,

they will actually show you what it is you actually value. The state of your relationships, the state of your bank account, the state of your how you behave online, whatever it might be, that will show you what you actually value. So, is that still congruent? The values that you said, and in the book I call it, we have our embodied values, which is how we actually live. And then we have our desired values, who we think we are.

I think I'm someone that values open-mindedness, but I promise you, in 2020, I was shown that I didn't value open-mindedness as much as I thought, which is when I started writing this book. I was shown that even though I was open-minded in some areas and I was courageous and blah, blah, blah, I was very fearful in others. I had moments where I chose popularity over truth. And that is just the reality of it. So my results at that time and my nervous system at that time

were showing me the truth of what I valued. So I think, and there's an exercise in here, many of them, but I think that's a good place to be able to see where contradiction actually is. What would you say you value versus what the results in your life are actually showing you? I value health, I value this. What do you watch most of the time?

What do you listen to? I value maybe ambition and being consistent. Okay. The results in your life, do they show you that you value that? Or do you value other things? So I think that's a good kind of objective way to be truthful. I agree. You know?

I agree. I think that's a great reflection exercise. Yeah. And I love how simple it is, how structured it is. And I really hope everyone takes time to do this. I mean, I think when I hear these things, I recognize how the biggest challenge with all of this is time. Yeah.

Because it all takes time to really sit there and look at what is the third perspective. Yeah. It takes time to ask yourself, what are my embodied values and what are my desired values and what's the difference? It takes time. It does. And I find that everyone is so time poor today

and that's why we're living in this society. Do you think we're time poor? I think we think we're time poor. We think we're time poor. Because I promise you, we will watch Love is Blind. And talk about it. The whole series in a day. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, it's true. And I was looking at studies recently because I was talking about how couples, there's a wonderful team member of mine who named one of my presentations. Her name's Annie and it's called, it's called I Miss You When You're Next to Me. It's something she says to her husband. And it's this idea of how we miss people when you're next to me. It's something she says to her husband. And it's this idea of how we miss people when we're next to them because we're not really with them,

because we're watching TV or whatever it may be. And I looked into all of these studies which talked about just how much television, again not television, how much we're watching streaming platforms every night with our partners, but we think we don't have enough time with them. And so, you your spot on, you know, there is a lot of, we have time. It's just that we're either too exhausted, we're either too overworked, we're overwhelmed, we're stressed that Love Island becomes the only escape to

let us feel like we're decompressing and letting go. But that's the time that we'd have to invest in. Let me ask what the third perspective is, let me figure out my values, let me do all these other things. And I think it becomes interesting because you're right, it's not time that's the challenge, it's space and energy.

And priorities. And priorities. Yeah, and I'll bring in that thread of empathy and compassion again, is that the world that we live in is so overwhelming. The average person is, I promise you, just trying to get by. That's the reality of it. The average person is just trying to figure out, how do I keep the four walls up?

And how do I find some level of escapism where I don't have to think about how much I'm working and how much everything costs and blah, blah, blah. There's a reality to all of it and I never dismiss that. I am not someone that thinks we all need to be on this relentless quest for self-improvement and what I just don't believe that. And at the same time, I think maybe I can offer a little bit of relief to say we don't have to do everything all at once. I really don't think we need to do everything all at once.

I don't think that we have to look at ourselves as some kind of project that needs fixing to be on a mission to undo self-sufficiency. It's just, it's not realistic. But I think what is realistic is to look at some pain point in your life right now because there is one. And then to get curious about it, even just a little bit. I think it's the bare minimum. That's what I will say.

I think it's absolutely the bare minimum. If most of us can notice that there's a problem where we're starting to feel, even in our most intimate relationships, that there's sort of this walking on eggshells feel, and we can't quite name it, and where there was a time on social media where you were quite excited to just post about your day and your dog and maybe your child or whatever. Now people are terrified to even share something that is non-controversial.

And the thing that you brought up earlier, I work with a lot of entrepreneurs and people that are visible and they talk about kind of putting 200 caveats on everything and disclaimers and just again, because we want to keep the mob at bay. It might not be an actual mob. It could be perceived. It could be real. But there's a fear.

There's a fear that is so palpable and we need to talk about it. We need to be honest about it. So I don't think we need to do everything all at once. But I think it's just about being honest about areas in which you're finding yourself repressing. Not even just your speech, but your thoughts. Because I think the most dangerous thing is when you center yourself in your mind. Before you even, anyone else does it for you, you've done the job yourself. I think that's a very dangerous place to be in.

And I call it, in my book, the mob in your mind. Because I think once you befriend the mob in your mind and you just see that it's just a bunch of toddlers trying to think, how do we keep you safe? What do we have to do? But you can see the shadows, so they look like giants, you know. But actually just befriend them and understand them and see what are they trying to protect you from?

But we don't have to do everything all at once, you know. And I think that should allow for people to address that part that's like, okay, this is great, but like, where do I even begin? Yeah. You know. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. It's a really interesting thing you just said about the shadow and the size of the toddlers.

Yeah. It makes me remember like, I know a lot of us would feel that the 1% is so loud. And so the 1% of people that are trolling, negative, and even that word, it would be good to discuss that word, same as cancel culture. But I feel like that language around like the comment section, as we all know on YouTube, Instagram, wherever you are, TikTok, Twitter, like, it's almost like, it's so loud. So you could have, and I always look at this paradox again, where it's like, you could have a million likes on a post,

and a hundred thousand shares, and ten thousand negative comments. But because the comments are qualitative in some regard, your energy goes straight there. If you let social media teach you about the world, it will have you believing that everyone in the world is irrational, crazy, and just not a good person. That's only the 1% because they're loud. But that's not everyone.

Like, I don't meet... I meet more reasonable people on a daily basis that I don't know, than unreasonable people. And I'm hoping most people would say that. Maybe not. But at least our belief system is, oh my gosh, everyone in the world is absolutely against me. The mob in my mind is really loud.

So how do we reconcile that kind of proportionality and ratio of our belief system. Because we give more weight and value to the mob than we do to humanity. Yes. Because, does that make sense? It does. It makes total sense and it's again, it brings me back to where we sort of started with this around the underpinning biology of so many of the things that we're speaking about. Whether we like it or not, we do as human beings have a negativity bias.

And it's for survival. You need to look out for danger. But again, now it just manifests in a different way. But also, that just speaks to the kind of personal understanding and personal responsibility, if you will, aspect of things. Of being like, okay, I have a negativity bias, so it's my job to either seek out positive things or to notice when I'm being more drawn to it.

But I think, especially in a post-pandemic world where our offline lives and our online lives are pretty much one in the same, our algorithms play into the fact that we have a negativity bias. So that is all that's going to be propelled. I mean, you see it everywhere. The news as well. The news picks out specific stories that tap into that negativity bias,

because it keeps us watching. So I think there's kind of like a need to understand our primal inclination, but to also understand how big media works. So I think it's a little bit of the two, because I don't think it's as simple as just reducing all of this to personal responsibility. I think that's a part of it, but it's not the full picture. It's why I really love the work of people like Jonathan Haidt. It's why I love people like Johan Hari, because they are, I feel like they do a very good job at addressing those sort of two components.

The primal biological aspect of things, but being like, actually we also need to be very honest about the platforms that are taking a lot of our time and tapping into those biological things. So I think for me, it's a little bit of that. Just awareness. It's like what you were saying before. Yeah. Knowing that if you have this sort of thing within you

where you think you're self-aware enough, always know there's a little bit further you can go. Yeah, I find that to be the block that... At least I find it. I'd love to hear what people think. I find it to be the block. And we least I find it, and I'd love to hear what people think. I find it to be the block, and we mentioned this when we were just hanging out earlier. So when Africa walked in, me and her were talking about

what kind of experience we like when we do interviews and we meet new people and we go on podcasts and things. And I was talking about the kind of experience I like to create for guests and what kind of mood I like to set and why I what kind of mood I like to set and why I do things the way I do. And when I was doing that, I felt a creeping in feeling of ego and pride. And I was like, oh yeah, yeah, I know exactly what I'm doing.

And then there was that inside of me. And then my ego-less mind started to get involved in the conversation and third perspective. I was like, wait a minute, this is the exact reason we're having this conversation with Africa is to get rid of the righteous mind, like this belief system that one is better or worse. But we really get into the space, really in a nuanced way. And through all my monk training, I got really good at knowing even the tiniest moments

when the ego was kind of coming to the forefront because that was such a big part of the training we had. And even then it's so hard to calm down and connect with the ego and, you know, create harmony with it. But I find that the biggest challenge is the people that do say what they feel and do express boldly believe that they are fully right. And those of us that stay quiet, we also believe that we're fully right. So there's this belief of like,

oh, if you're joining cancel culture and I'm not, then I'm right. I'm actually doing the right thing. And the person who's diving into cancel culture is going, of course I'm doing the right thing. So the belief is how can we even try to understand someone because we already think what we're doing is right. If what I think I'm doing is right from the get-go,

I have no need or space to understand you because you're already wrong. And so that to me is at the root of why there's no space to understand, why there's no space to reflect, why there's no space to listen to you. Because I already feel I'm better in a really subconscious way, whether I'm not talking or whether I'm talking. There's no like beautifully neat answer to any of this, which I think is also one of the best parts of it, because it's

an ever evolving conversation. But I think bringing it to that sort of beautiful landing of finding opportunities where you can notice your righteous mind coming into play. That moment where we want to exercise superiority. And I tend to find, again, if I bring the element off online, because again, this is where most of this is happening. If you're just walking down the street and you're not meeting people that are just shouting at you.

When you walk down the street, people are saying, use your platform, speak up. They're not saying that to me either. But when you go online, it just feels like a very different world because we've created a very, very different world. A world which needs more values like grace and true understanding and knowing we can be open-minded and still have our convictions and to not hold them so tightly. But I think it is about looking for where you are exercising superiority.

And I think some of us, and I had to do this, need to be very honest about the fact that when you feel so out of control in your life in other areas, you are more likely to try and gain control when you're online. I think that's a very big one. People that feel so powerless elsewhere, but now they're in this place where people don't have the context of your life. People don't know the insecurities that you have. People don't know what you've done in the past. You get to curate the image of who you are. And again, we'll lead with moral perfection because a lot of the time we want to make up for things that we don't think

we actually have. But I think that self-inquiry is so, it's really uncomfortable. It can even be a little bit excruciating, but it's so liberating because you free yourself from this sort of, it's not even enough to just call it intolerant because it's not that. I think it's a version of you that is so deeply unfulfilled

and needs to maintain control and power and has so much fear around being rejected and abandoned. So you feel that you need to overcompensate with a lot of these things. But I think it comes back to the righteous mind. You have to be able to spot your need to exercise superiority. It's such an interesting thing. You made me remember an experience I had back at school when I used to be part of my... I'm just going to sound super geeky, but yeah, I was part of my debate team at school.

Oh, that's good. And I really enjoyed it because it was such a great learning experience. So I remember one presentation, I was probably like, I don't know, 14 years old or something like that. Yeah. Like a young teenager, maybe 15. And we had this debate set up, I can't remember the motion. And I made a point that completely destroyed the other person's argument and the whole, all my friends and everyone in the audience went crazy.

And I was just like, Oh, you showed him. Like, you know, it was like this big like kind of moment. I was feeling myself and thinking I was amazing. And I talked to my teacher afterwards who asked to see me after the presentation and I'd won the debate. And he said to me, he goes, Jay, did you win the debate today? And I was like, yeah, like, no, he said to me, how did it go for you today? I was like, well, we won, like, it was great.

And he was like, no, you didn't win. And I was like, what do you mean? Like, didn't you just see everyone applaud and like go, you know, go crazy? And he said, no, he said, you won the crowd, but you lost the debate. And I was like, what do you mean? And he said, well, he said, a good debate is where you have a deep understanding of the other person's space and place and insight. It's not that what you're saying proves them wrong.

It's that you understand their arguments so deeply that you're able to dismantle it on its own. It's not about yours being better. It's about you actually being to understand it so deeply that you're able to show that parts of it don't add up. And it was a really nuanced, profound point for me because I just thought if you win the crowd, then of course you win. And I think that's the society we live in today where it's like,

if someone wins over the crowd, even if they're completely wrong, we're okay with it. Right? Even if someone acts completely immorally or we don't even know the truth, we don't know what happened behind closed doors, if they win the crowd, like, if someone wins it on social media and they're in a legal case or whatever it is, and on social media it all goes well,

even if we have no idea what that person's moral character is, we're with them. And you see this on shows, you see this everywhere. And again, I'm not saying we should judge them, I'm just saying we all believe if you win the crowd, you won. And so we've lost the ability to actually say, well no, do I deeply understand? Can I actually get context of this person?

Yes. That just landed so, so strongly for me. Thank you for sharing that anecdote on the debate, because it's actually right about this and speak about it a lot, because it's a big part of my story, my experience. But a lot of what you're saying directly parallels what I experienced in 2020. As I've said at many points throughout this conversation and kind of referenced to that point in time,

didn't get very specific, 2020 is when there was a big conversation around race relations after the killing of George Floyd in the US. And it ignited really important conversations that have transformed the way we speak about race, the way we interact with each other, the way we have started to just notice our conscious and unconscious biases. But I, again, at that time had already been doing the work that I do in understanding

self-sabotage, self-censorship, how do we have brave conversations, etc. But this is all identity, right? Even as I'm saying it right now, it's, I had been studying, I've been learning, I've been whatever, but there were aspects of what I was doing and grounded in that was just from the neck up, but hadn't been actually embodied. And I got to learn that in 2020, because I was one of the people for a very short time, but a very intense time, demanding that people speak up about what was happening in the States. And again, I use that language very specific because I'm not taking in the context of where

people are in the wild. What if Africa, someone doesn't have any idea of what has actually happened? What if it's someone from India or Kenya or Zimbabwe or, and I'm expecting them to speak up, speaking up, meaning you have to do it online, it has to be a performance, you have to post something that is going to make me feel like, okay, you've done this the right way. So, it's all ego. Because who am I as an individual person in West London, in my house, expecting the world? When you actually look at and speak about these things in this way, you realize just how it's not only self-righteous,

but entitlement is a part of it as well. That's the right word. Right? I am entitled to your opinion. And there's just so… There was just so much at play for me that was really humbling. So I was one of the people specifically on the Tuesday where people were being told to post a black square.

I think most people listening to this will understand. And it was so out of character. But I think I have to even do a self-correction in real time to say will understand. And it was so out of character. But I think I have to even do a self-correction in real time to say actually no. It was a demonstration of what my character actually was. I thought that it would be out of character for me to do something like that, but it was in character in a way. But I was pretty much just demanding that people speak up about race in the way that I wanted them to and you could look at it and say, yeah, you were inviting people to do something that was right and very important, but I was doing it in an extremely intolerant way.

In a way that was pretty much not giving people an option to speak up in a different way. There was no sort of third perspective. There was no nuance. There was no consideration of maybe Africa people are speaking offline and I have a feeling so many people listening to this will remember that time and maybe the way they participated or what they experienced because I've had so many enlightening conversations in the past four years about that time period and I was applauded, Jay, so loudly for it because I was essentially shaming those that were not speaking up,

those that were not saying anything. And again, I would have never expected myself to behave in this way, but guess what I did? And when I looked into it a little bit deeper over time, I realized that I was speaking in that way because I was afraid of what people would say to me if I didn't say anything. So it was almost like a performance. Again, that idea of keeping the mob at bay, so behaving in a way that you think will appease them,

but then behaving in that way got me applauded. So the thing about the crowd, instantly, also because of the time period, everyone is pretty much online, we're on lockdown in most parts of the world. So the digital space was just a very different place to be and things would sort of just spread like wildfire. So all of a sudden I'm having thousands and thousands of people applauding me and cheering me on, telling me that I'm doing the right thing. And then I have this man who sends me a message.

He sends me a DM and he says, Africa, I've been following your work for a while. I really respect what you do and you've helped me a lot. But I just wanted to ask you, do you think that this is the right way to bring people together? Because again, I'm saying that I want unity. I'm saying that I want unity. I'm saying that I want open conversations. I'm saying that I want tolerance, but my actions are in complete contradiction.

So someone that had a bit of an understanding of who I am and what I supposedly stand for is saying, hey, do you think that this is the approach to take? Instead of responding to him and even sitting with it for a while to kind of be curious about where he was coming from, I immediately shamed him and I did it publicly. It wasn't extreme in any way,

but I screenshotted the DM that he had sent me and I posted it onto my main feed on Instagram. I guess it was sort of a thing of trying to supposedly share someone else's intolerance, which I was perceiving as your being intolerant to my... Again, my self-right, my opinion masses, you know. And I would also have to be very honest with myself about the fact that I believed that as a black woman, even though he was a mixed race man, that I had more of a right to behave and to speak in this way than he did.

So this is where the sort of identity hierarchy things come in, where I used a very important part of my identity to shut down conversation, which is also something we need to be very honest, happened so much, where I had the inability to actually engage critically and to feel what I call the initial out, being like, oh, that doesn't feel so good, but let me be curious about this and just stay. Let me humanize this person and realize that it took a lot for him to say, to even open with, I love what you do, you've done a lot for me.

And to pose a, just a really important question actually. There was none of that. I made it all about me and used my identity to shut down the conversation because I didn't have a response for it. So I posted this thing and again immediately started getting even more applause. And I remember the feeling that I got. It was sort of a very tiered feeling. There was kind of like an excitement, like an exhilaration, because again it's the crowd. Think of that moment where people, you've just said something and it's like you've just shut everything down. You're being seen by your peers in a different way.

You've just won the debate, right? It's that feeling of winning. What it does to you semantically, it's like an arousal of senses. It's so, you see how if you don't even pause just for a moment, you will want to experience that forever. You will do whatever it takes to experience that. And that's what I had for a moment, that kind of exhilaration of being like,

oh, okay. And then about 20 minutes to half an hour later, I started feeling sick. Like actually sick. That feeling sort of moved from being like an excitement, which usually happens in the chest, and you can sort of feel it in your upper body, to kind of just dropping down to the pit of my stomach. Why? Because it was a huge integrity breach. I was experiencing this applause and whatever,

but the means, the path that I had to take to get it, was not in integrity. And I'm so grateful that I had to take to get it was not in integrity. And I'm so grateful that I experienced that. Because for some people, they will never pay attention to the integrity breach. Most people won't even really feel it. Because that sort of sense of power… And honestly, power could just be 10 likes when you've never received 10 likes before. It could be anything.

It's not about scale. It's just about what it makes you feel. You're getting a level of recognition and applause that you just haven't had before, you know. And I remember feeling, just looking at what I'd shared, looking at that message again and just feeling quite literally sick. And I deleted it and I didn't post anything maybe for a couple of days and I sent a message to that man and I apologized. I apologized to him for it and he was like oh that's no big deal but that's when my own unraveling started. That's when I started journaling and that's when that idea for the third perspective came through because I experienced a level of cognitive dissonance I haven't experienced.

Only at the time I've experienced that is when I finally realized after seven relapses that I had to get sober. And nothing new had sort of happened. It was just like a big sort of you dissociate and you see yourself and you have a decision you need to make. And that's what I had in 2020. And that's what moved me from looking at self-sabotage from like an interpersonal lens to trying to understand it on a societal lens.

Because what I had experienced there is what we kind of call council culture, but I prefer to call it collective sabotage. So I coined the term collective sabotage because I think it's less politicized. And I think it's a more accurate definition of what this actually is. We think we're doing the right thing, but we have no idea what we're doing. We're saying we want tolerance, but we're leading with intolerance. We're saying we want progressiveness, but we're being extremely regressive, you know, in our approaches.

And I got to see that in myself. And I could have taken the path of doubling down, which is what you tend to see a lot of the time, where people get applauded for a certain thing, and then that just becomes. And they become sort of like a caricature of themselves. That was not what I needed to do. I needed to go to the path of being like,

what the f*** have I just done? And owning up to that publicly. And that's the process that I started to actually share that experience publicly. And every other thing that I'd experienced that was in line with that. Thank you so much for sharing that. I mean, it's so powerful to kind of dive into such a specific moment in time that kind of embodies and encapsulates this whole message. And to see it play out like that and for you to have that level of intricate self-awareness,

which is what it takes to kind of question and reflect and pick apart and dissect your own self. And how you've done that, that takes so much courage and vulnerability. And even the way you shared it, I'm sitting there listening to you going, that's what it takes, that's what it takes, that's what it takes. Before we dive into the next moment, let's hear from our sponsors. Hi, I'm Kristin Davis, host of the podcast Are You a Charlotte? What we have all been waiting for. Sarah Jessica Parker is here and she is sharing stories from the very beginning.

Like the time she forgot we filmed the pilot episode. I remember some things about shooting the pilot. Right. I have some memories I can fill you in. And that you're going to fill me in. Yes. But then you forgot about it in the very long time they took to pick us up.

I completely forgot about it. And she reveals what she thought when she read the script for Sex and the City the very first time. He said he wrote this like I was in his head in some way, which I found really interesting. And does she think Carrie is too good for Mr. Big? She had inexplicable feelings.

Got it. It is the human being that can't explain to her friends why somebody that might be beneath her is dictating the hunt. You can't miss this. Listen to Are You a Charlotte on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This week on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Hamler, Maren Morris is here. You came out of a marriage, you came out of quote unquote country music, and you had a huge growth spurt from what I can tell. I realized I was expanding and growing at a really fast pace. And yes, you could throw motherhood

and the postpartum thing, learning about myself. There were a lot of like identity crises going on, but I realized like I can't look back and slow down for people. I want to set my own pace and I will sacrifice my comfort to move at the pace that I have worked really hard to move at. Literally everything that could change in your life happened in like five years for me and you know, it was a slow burn. Listen to Dear Chelsea on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Made for This Mountain is a podcast that exists to empower listeners to rise above their struggles, break free from the chains of trauma, and silence the negative voices that have kept them small. Through raw conversations, real stories, and actionable guidance, you can learn to face the mountain that is in front of you. You will never be able to change or grow through the thing that you refuse to identify. The thing that you refuse to say, hey, this is my mountain. This is the struggle. This is the thing that's in front of me. You can't make that mountain move without actually diving into it.

May is Mental Health Awareness Month, a time to conquer the things that once felt impossible and step boldly into the best version of yourself to awaken the unstoppable strength that's inside of us all. So tune into the podcast, focus on your emotional wellbeing and climb your personal mountain. Because it's impossible for you to be the most authentic you. It's impossible for you to love you fully. If all you're doing is living to please people, your mountain is that. Listen to Made for This Mountain on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your

podcasts. And back to our episode. It shocks me still to this day that we think that blame and shame and guilt are good ways of changing people. I know. Ourselves included. Yeah. It's like shame, guilt, and blame are rarely good techniques or approaches

to creating change within ourselves or others. When was the last time you changed your partner because you blamed them for something? When was the last time you got through to your child because you shamed them for something? When was the last time you made yourself eat better, work out more or live better because you guilted yourself into it? Maybe you did for a couple of days. It's not sustainable though. It's completely, you're so right.

They're just such ineffective strategies. I was speaking to my siblings about this the other day, and we were talking about, we were speaking with a group of friends actually, and we're all African. We were all African in this setting. And we were laughing with a group of friends actually, and we're all African. We were all African in this setting and we were laughing about being hit as children. Because it was just the normal. Normal in Indian families. Exactly. Exactly. You kind of laugh about it. Everyone got beats, everyone, whatever. And we were saying, but it didn't work. And it didn't even really work for our parents either. But it's like we do this thing

because it's always been done. And because you become afraid, it looks like it works. Which reminds me of kind of pretty much what we're talking about. Because someone is afraid and they apologize from that place of fear, we believe that it's worked. We don't actually care to know whether they've actually embodied that apology. Are they truly taking accountability? Do they even think they need to take accountability for it? Or is it to keep that internal and external mob at bay, you know? But I think even though it sounds very idealistic,

I think grace is truly the antidote of so much of this. But I don't think it's about immediately grace for others. It's grace with the self. And grace with the self is projected onto others, whether we like it or not. Because another thing that I wrote in my journals was a question to myself around that time in 2020, and I was saying,

can you truly be fulfilled in life and still participate in council culture? Wow. Can you truly be fulfilled in life and still participate in council culture? Because if we're having this conversation of binary, I realized that maybe an answer could be, yeah, you can still be fulfilled and maybe dip in and out of... But for this, I don't believe it's possible. Why?

I don't believe that you can truly be whole within yourself, because to be whole is to accept your shadow. It's to integrate the messy, gross parts of you that you would rather just keep behind closed doors. But you have to meet them. You have to be with them. You have to understand that they'll… Other times, your shadowy self will come out to play a little bit more,

but then you have a conversation and then it's a constant dance. Sometimes you might need the shadowy parts of yourself in different ways, but I truly don't believe this is where I'm more than happy to be convicted in. In that you can't be truly fulfilled in who you are as a person and participate in the dehumanization of anyone and anything. No. That's super intense and powerful at the same time because there's a sense of what I'm getting from listening to you

that when we see other people's shadows, we're so deeply reminded of our own that we have to project this belief that theirs exists bigger than ours. Or there's a feeling of, if someone shows their shadows, it gives me the excuse to continue to show mine. And so your imperfection allows me to continue to be imperfect and not grow. Yeah. It's both.

Yeah, it's both. It's both. It's both. And... Oh wow. I've never heard anyone put it in that way. Yeah. Oh, this is good.

Oh wow. I'll give an example of the last one you've just said. Like almost like if you show your shadow, it's a permission slip for me to keep showing mine without ever questioning it. Yes. Or ever, yeah, yeah. Sometimes people that are uncomfortable with my work, which by the way, you can tell me, I think it's fairly non-controversial. I think my work, what am I really saying?

I'm saying that we need to be willing to understand different viewpoints without feeling like we have to take them as a part of ourselves. I'm saying that we are braver than we realize. We need to push back against this culture that says we need to be constantly monitoring what we're saying and self-editing. I just don't believe we need to be doing that. But there are some people who will say, well, Africa, do you think some really dangerous people could come across your work and they will use it as an excuse to say really hateful things,

to say really et cetera things, whatever the thing might be? And then I always come back to, why do we always have to see, why is that the default response, right? Why do we always have to go to those extremes? Are you an extreme person who's resonating with my work? Why do you believe that you can be nuanced, but other people can't be? Why do you believe that you can take what you need from what I say, but other people can't?

It's that thing that you were saying before around how we believe that our approach is the best way. Only I can decipher this work, but what if someone dangerous comes across? It's like we need to grace. It comes back to grace again. Can you have the grace to believe that other people are actually more rational than you've been made to believe? Yeah. And we see in our everyday lives, you were so right when you were saying,

for the average person, when they walk out into the world, it's rare for them to experience something that is so, it's rare. Because the norm is actually just normal people just going about their day, but in the same way you do. So why do you think that you are the exception? Right? And again, these are questions and things that I say to myself, Africa, why do you get to be the exception of someone that can encounter something supposedly dangerous and say, I don't resonate with this, but this is fine. Trust, give other people the grace and the good faith that they are able to do the same.

Totally, totally. I meet more kind, reasonable, thoughtful, genuine, sincere people on a daily basis. Then I do the opposite, but the opposite feels so loud online and so activated online and so amplified online that you can very well believe that kind people don't exist. And I can honestly say that as we're talking about this, I want to understand from you why collective sabotage is the right terminology that you coined for cancel culture. And I want to dive into this. I've been waiting to get into it because I've really been wanting to honor each thing we're discussing and not run through because it's sparking so many thoughts. And there's a sense of cancel culture holds people accountable.

It holds people responsible. It helps people own up to their mistakes or not even own up. It helps people, it helps justice be served. How could that possibly be collective sabotage? How could that possibly be a bad thing? Even if we just look at the word, let's start with the word cancel. And just try to think of the sort of synonyms we can think of. To cancel is to delete, it's to eject, and then you can go even further, it's to reject.

When something is cancelled, it's ended. It doesn't exist anymore. So I think that's a, it's a type of contradiction that doesn't really work for me in the sense that justice and deletion and ejection, they just don't work together. It's the kind of contradiction that actually causes chaos. So for me, the reason why I think it's important to really understand the importance of language when it comes to these issues is because we have a definition issue. We just do.

I think a lot of the time, if we were both clear on the definition that we're working with, we would come to kind of similar conclusions, maybe different ideas about how to get there, but we'd be like, okay, that's fair enough. I don't know any reasonable person who wouldn't want people that have done harm to be held accountable. To be truly held accountable. I don't know anyone that doesn't truly want progress. Not some kind of utopian idealistic type, but progress that is grounded in the reality that works for most people. But if I think it means accountability and someone else thinks it's public shaming,

we're working with very different definitions, but we're not even curious enough to know, actually, what is your definition of cancel culture? Because mine is this. And you're like, oh, okay, no, no, no. So to me, cancel culture not only has definition issues, but it's been so heavily politicized. To the point where if I say, I have written a book that also takes a look at the psychology of cancel culture,

some people will think, oh my God, that God someone is talking about this. Or some people will think, oh, you're using the term that the right wing uses. Right? So it's so politicized already. So we can't even enter the conversation in good faith because there's already suspicion or people are thinking I'm speaking for them or people thinking I'm alienating them. I'm really serious about the work that I do

because I truly believe that this conversation is not just a nice to have. It's something that is causing relational fractures. Relationships are breaking because of this. People are ending long-term relationships because of kind of insignificant political differences. There's so many things happening that would have never happened 10 years ago, and it's not because of progress. It's because of a fear that has been embedded into cultures and into people's homes and beds. So I think it's a very important conversation to have.

So I think the language aspect of it is very important. So as someone that has really been doing my best to understand the workings of self-sabotage, when your behaviour and what you say you want is in direct contradiction and it causes chaos in your life, when you have an inability to hold good in your life, so you do something to pull the plug. I realized that what we're experiencing just on a wider scale is individuals who are in

their own state of self-sabotage. And then we come together as a collective and what do we do? We sabotage because it's all we know. So I think collective sabotage to me is not politicized, but it's just much more accurate to the reality of what's happening. Whereas cancel culture feels nice and fun to say, but I think it doesn't really mean anything because we don't have a agreed upon definition of what it actually is.

I fully agree with you. I don't think anyone's ever thought to define it or step back and look at it. And it just feels like, yeah, we'll jump on the bag mag and like, this present's cancelled. They're like, oh, weren't they cancelled? Oh, isn't it over for them? Right. And it's like, I always look at that and I think about even...

Even some of the criticism that the England football team took in the Euros. Yes, yes. And a lot of them came out and were just like, guys, we're trying to win and it affects our mental health, especially young players. And it was so interesting. We live in a society that says mental health is the most important thing. But then if we perceive what someone has done is wrong, we're happy to destroy their mental health.

Instantly. Instantly. Yeah, yeah. And I go back to that, perceive what they've done is wrong. Yeah. Because some of it, you know, obviously there's illegal activity. There's things that are just, you know, that need... And again, that's common sense.

We still get to use... I love what you're saying because it's something that I also find though, that people are now needing to find themselves doing in conversation, is to cushion everything and saying, but I don't mean this, these are just... Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, because I found myself having to do that. Then I'm like, no, Africa, because that kind of feeds into that thing of being like... Interesting.

But I'm not saying this, I think there's a time and place, but I think this culture has created a thing where we're overly apologetic for the... and just cushioning just in case, which can actually remove a level of conviction and assertiveness that is really important. And also putting the responsibility onto the listener to say actually, but that is common sense, you know. So I find that we always have to do this sort of dance where we give, like a disclaimer to say, I'm not saying this,

but also look out for where we're doing it because we already know. Yes. That there's going to be people... Well, what about this? For sure, for sure. Right? where we're doing it because we already know. Yeah. There's going to be people... Well, what about this? For sure, for sure, for sure. I saw the best version of it. It's funny you say that.

So there was this video that went viral a few years ago. I think it was made by maybe... Maybe it was an HR company. I can't remember the company, but they made this video a few years ago. And the concept of the video was there were interviewers interviewing interviewees for a potential job. So let's say you are applying for this job and I was interviewing you.

So I was asking you interview questions like, give me an example of when you've been proactive and how would you deal with pressure, et cetera. And then some of the questions became, how would you deal with pressure 24 hours a day? And then the questions went on to say things like the asset that you're assisting requires constant attention. How would you deal with that? So they started asking all these questions and the interviewees were quite like frazzled by some of those questions.

They seemed extreme. They were like, that sounds hard. Like that's really tough. That's difficult. And then the interviewer had said, we were interviewing for the job of mother. And it was a happy Mother's Day video. To honor mothers and just how hard they work.

And it was this beautiful celebration of like, what a mum's job profile would look like. And just making people aware. And the whole video was just happy mother today. Like, that was the point of it. Beautiful video. Millions and millions of views, shares, etc. And the top comment on that video was,

what about dads? And it was really interesting, you know? And I looked at that and I was like, oh, fascinating. Like, and it was Mother's Day when it was made and posted. And again, I was thinking, I was like, I understand that. Like, I do understand dads are important. Dads are valuable. There are some people who don't have moms,

who have been raised by their dads. I do think that men are involved and are doing incredible things at home. And I get it. If I was a dad, I'd probably feel that way too. But it's a Mother's Day. And it's a Happy Mother's Day video. Like, can we let that breathe? Can we let that have its space and not have to make it about us?

So that gives me an example of what you just said. I think. Yeah. No, no, it does. Even just those words. Can we let that breathe? Can we just let that sit? Can what I'm saying right now just be what I'm saying right now? I ended up writing kind of like an extensive section on this

towards the end of the book about looking out for preemptive apologies. Because I noticed I had started to do that in my work, where I was always anticipating the rejection. If I'm just to name it plainly to that primal thing. I was already anticipating the rejection, the abandonment, the sort of suspicion from other people, or that I haven't done enough, or I haven't said enough, I haven't prioritized enough people,

even speaking from my subjective experience, I'd find myself, and again, we got here because we're talking about kind of how important language is, I found myself sort of being like, but I'm not saying this, but in talking about this, I'm not the... Then I was like, no, I can't keep doing... That's not the way normal people speak. Because we've started to speak kind of like Twitter threads and infographics and disclaimers, because you put disclaimers if you're writing something.

But in conversation, that is not how you have normal conversation. It's fear, because I was afraid. I was afraid that I'll be called out and said... And then I said, you know what? I really do trust myself. I trust them that I'm already being so mindful with what I'm saying. I refuse to live in such a fear where I'm overly monitoring and saying, but I don't mean, no, you get to use common sense.

I'll leave that part to you. You get to use common sense. We're all autonomous adults, you know. And that really changed so much for me. So I think something else that you can do without needing to go on this big, okay, now I'm doing the work, is sort of just looking at your language. Where do you have sort of preemptive apologies of saying, maybe sharing your story and anecdote, then saying,

but I don't mean this and of course I don't, where is your mind going to cover the extremes? Because you already believe that people will go to the extremes. And if they do, can you sit with that disc... Can you let that breathe? Right? So good, yeah. And that's the thing, what you're hitting like really strongly there

is that's what we're doing. We're constantly comparing common sense to the extreme. Right? That's why your point about not apologizing is so important. Because most of us live in a common sense. Like I would honestly say that if anyone listens to my podcast regularly or has read my books, I feel knows that Jay has good intentions.

Absolutely. Is a good person who cares, who wants to do good in the world, because you hear me and know me deeply enough. And so for those individuals, I actually don't need to clarify at all, because for the people who are deeply involved in my work and embedded and the millions of people that do that,

I feel like you know me and you know who I am. If I have to caveat everything for someone who may come across a 30 second clip of me or edited piece about me or whatever it may be, if I'm speaking only to those people, now I'm going to constantly speak in disclaimers, caveats and everything else because I'm now catering for the 1%. I'm not catering for the majority of people

who are living with common sense, who are not living in extremes, who are not judging every word I say and analyzing everything, but we're all scared of that clip being made of us, where something's taken out of context. And what does it mean when it's out of context? It's been used in an extreme way. Because in context, it was not extreme. And it's only extreme when it's out of context. And I feel like, of course, the ironic part of all of this

is a lot of platforms have built their platform by being extreme. I really want anyone watching or listening to know that this still applies to them whether or not they have a platform or not. For sure, yeah. But that's the most interesting thing with all of this in that everything has sort of changed. In that everyone is now seen as a platform. That's the part of this that makes it most interesting for me.

In that every single person, not even just when you're online, by the way, but even when you're offline, you feel like you have to be a representative for someone or something or some kind of stance or opinion. So even though you might not be getting actual clips of you being put online, it's almost like you're looking out for where the snapshot someone might take from a conversation, someone you've just met. So I think it's again, that thing where it's dehumanizing when you think of all of this, because human beings make mistakes.

We stumble on our words, might say something wrong, and then you might kind of correct yourself or whatever might be, and then you might sort of like, it's human, you know. But we're dehumanizing ourselves and thinking that we have to be these machines that say things in the right way. And when you say something, you have to neatly put a disclaimer on it. Not even just in a conversation like this, a public one, but private ones too. And I actually care more about that side of things, because I think the personal becomes the public.

It really does. Now more than ever. So something that I always say and would like for everyone to remember is that your interpersonal relationships are the best training ground for everything we're talking about. It's not about a public performance. I'm not trying to tell you how to be better on social media. I think that's completely irrelevant. I think who you are in your personal life then becomes who you are on social media, whether you like it or not.

And I hope that can also offer relief because it's not about teaching you how to deal with people in comment sections. It's allowing for you to be grounded enough in who you are as a person and to know what your priorities are, that when you see things in comment sections, you remember that these are strangers. That if we walk past each other right now, I wouldn't even know that it's you. So therefore, you don't get to have that power over me. You really don't.

You get to remove the charge. But I think if enough of us give ourselves that grace that we were speaking about, I don't think it's a utopian yearning for me to think that we would start to see our social online interactions look differently. I think they just would. Yes. Because it wouldn't feel normal for you to leave a comment about someone's body or their what. Because to you, you would, why would I even say that? You know, I think I find myself coming back to grace in everything we're speaking about.

I got really lucky. I was the mediator in my family growing up. Okay. Since I was like 10 years old. Okay. And so I early on had to listen to everyone and make sense of it in order to help everyone. And so I've just done that for so long that I don't know any other way. I don't actually know how not to show grace or not to give someone space to understand because I've had to do it for so long. And I saw it to be the most valuable way to create a sense of understanding of nuance,

understanding of the layered nature of our world, understanding the complexity I have within. And so it was really fascinating for me because as I started to give myself permission to be all of myself, and I knew at the beginning of my journey that if I, I could have easily played into the caricature of what a personal growth self-help individual should look like, should do and should act like. And I chose very clearly, I was like, I'm purposefully not going to dress spiritual. Because that to me is not what I learned. Like it wasn't about what I wore.

It's not about my hairstyle or it wasn't about the length of my beard. Like all of those things were not the definition of practicing wisdom or learning the path or following a path. And I was like, also as a kid who grew up in London, I like streetwear. Yeah. And even though I became a monk and gave that all up at one point, when I came back to reality, I was like, that's still a part of me. I'm still a kid who grew up in North London. And so I'm going to let that breathe.

And at the same time, I love meditating every day and I do that for two hours a day. I'm going to let that breathe. And at the same time, I love meditating every day. And I do that for two hours a day. I'm going to let that breathe. And at the same time, I don't care to drink anymore. And so I'm going to let that breathe. And oh, I actually still love football. Like it's still the first love of my life. And I love watching football. I'm going to let that breathe.

And oh, you know what? I actually do like certain comforts and things. Okay, I'm going to let that breathe. And yes, I gave them all up at one point. And what I found was really interesting is the more genuinely transparent and authentic I was about giving myself permission, the majority of people saw that and loved that and I felt so much support and love, but then the 1% feels triggered by that and then you start questioning whether you should curate your whole life

for that 1% because this is also our professional life, not just our personal life. Yeah. And I've constantly gone more and more to say, you know what, I'm just in a place in my life where I just want to let it breathe. I'm not going to stifle, curate, perfectly present because I don't want to be 30 years older and look back and go, gosh, I just don't know who I am anymore. Absolutely.

And it came with who we had on the show. Like we had podcasts with guests that I remember when my comment section was Sunshine Land, because it was just this small, beautiful place where it hadn't yet scaled enough, but it also hadn't... We weren't doing things maybe that pushed the boundary or pushed the end below. And as soon as we started to do that, you start to see the conflict, you start to see the disconnect. I guess the point I'm making is an interview didn't have to be me saying,

I agree and accept what this person is saying, unless I actually say I agree. Yes. Maybe it was for me to understand someone's experience. Maybe it was for me to understand someone's story, going back to your language of the difference. So when did an interview become an acceptance of someone's beliefs? Isn't the point of an interview to understand someone's perspectives?

And so I started to see, you know, judgment of what guests we had or whatever. Like, you know, I remember again, this is the 1%. I want to say to the majority of people, but it's so interesting how you start seeing it and it was like, I would see every time we had a celebrity clip, that'd be the 1% of comments that go, Jay, why are you only interviewing celebrities? I'm like, wait a minute, if you look at the 52 guests we had this year, I promise you there's not 52 celebrities in the world. And if you look at the guests, you'll probably find two to three guests a month

that are not celebrities. And by the way, the celebrity conversations are also human conversations. They're humanized human conversations. They're still about mental health, wellbeing, personal experience. And so it's so interesting to me that you start having to explain everything. And then I got to a point where I was like, no, those who know me, know me. And those who don't, I truly wish them well and I hope they do expose themselves to more of my work because I think they will if they look beyond one episode or one page of a book or one clip for 30 seconds.

And I hope that you do that and I hope that I can connect with you one day. But I'm not going to try and cater and curate myself for the 1% because I don't want to live that way. And I trust that the common sense and the lack of extremes is where the majority of the world lives and that's where we all want to live together. I love that. I love that so much because it speaks to exactly what I had to do and what I encourage anyone who's even visible in some sense, especially online, to pay attention to where you might be creating an audience that will never allow you to change. Because that's what I noticed for myself in 2020.

So after that thing happened and I was getting applauded for it, and there were people that dropped off, people that were like, this is so out of integrity compared to what you have said and who you are as a person, and I completely understand that now. People that could see the intolerance for what it was, maybe some dropped off silently, some might have said something, but the majority was the crowd and the applause and it triggering that sort of elation and power and arousal,

whatever it might be. But once I changed my mind and sort of walked back that behavior and saw it for what it was, I had a lot of people drop off. People that didn't appreciate the nuance and the grade that I was bringing forward. There were many more, but again, it's that seemingly 1%, or at least the minority. Minority, yeah, yeah. Right? There were people that thought that I needed to speak and think a specific way because I am black, because I'm left-leaning, because I'm progressive, because I'm XYZ. Whatever the identity markers are, there's an expectation for all of those things, you

know? So when I did change my mind and started exploring a lot of the themes that I explore today, there were a lot of people that were very uncomfortable with that. Similar to what you're saying about everything is fine when you're sort of abiding by what is expected, but when you deviate from that norm, there's a lot of teething issues and a lot of friction and a lot of, you know, creating space for new people to find you, whatever it might be. But a lot of people felt uncomfortable. But what I loved, Jay, is that a lot stayed.

There were many that felt uncomfortable, but they stayed. There were very few that sort of declared their departure, which is always lovely when people announce that they're unfollowing. She's always lovely when people announce that they're unfollowing. But I love that actually there were so many people that even in the discomfort, they stayed and they listened and they got what they needed. And that's where, again, I really choose to focus on the people that didn't allow the cognitive dissonance to sort of make them reject and cancel and discard and devalue everything they had got from you for however many years or however many episodes, people that chose to be like,

okay, I don't quite like this, I don't get it, but I'm going to stay. Yeah. You know? And I think to me, that's the most beautiful part of all of this. You get to be uncomfortable, you maybe get to have a little strap, but you stay. You stay and you find out why you feel that uncomfortable and you repair because it's conflict. You need to repair.

It doesn't mean you accept. It doesn't mean we go to those extremes. Well, what if it's... No. We're talking about the common sense, everyday interactions of discomfort and a worldview that kind of pushes back against your own. You get to stay and you get to repair, if not with the other person, with yourself. Yeah.

So, so beautiful and fully agree. But first, here's a quick word from the brands that support the show. Hi, I'm Radhie Devlukya and and I am the host of a Really Good Cry podcast. And I had the opportunity to talk to Davy Brown. Davy Brown is one of the most sought after wellness educators, and through her signature blend of advanced meditation, breathwork, metaphysical physiology, spiritual psychology, and holistic trauma-informed facilitation,

Davy has touched the lives of countless students, including renowned artists, athletes, and executives of global corporations. But anything can be used as a tool of avoidance. With women, any kind of thing where there might be this underlying edge of self-sacrifice as martyrdom. If you're never filling, you're telling yourself a story and you're actually avoiding what you should be doing. Your life at the end of it is still gonna be a sum of your experiences.

And so you gotta get in, you gotta get your hands dirty. Listen to a really good cry on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding, but the price has gone up, so now I only buy one. The demand curve in action,

and that's just one of the things we'll be covering on everybody's business from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Max Chafkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives.

With guests like Businessweek editor, Brad Stone, sports reporter, Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert, Amanda Mull, we'll take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to everybody's business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, Keith. Shout out to my thick thighs. We'll save lives, clearly. Save lives. I'm a strong believer that there has to be at least one thick thigh in every relationship. Like, it's personally why I don't really go for guys who have the same body type as me, because it's like playing a xylophone when you're cuddling, you know? Bone on bone hurts.

Wait a second. Evie, that was the hottest thing you've ever said, can we please ignore that? It's the realest. That was not the hottest thing you've ever said, trust me. For me, as the thickums one, yes it was. Okay, okay, touche. Thank you very much.

You know, queers love to date people who look exactly like them, you know, everybody's looking for that twindrome, but I need somebody to balance me out, you know, I'll be there like weird massage chair in the back with all my knuckles and elbows and they'll be like my memory foam bed. You know, we balance. Honestly, the bigger the build, the better. I want to feel petite. Please. I love a man with thighs. I love a man with arms. A little belly. I've been super into the little like, beauty boys right now with a little belly.

You put that little belly out. Hey! That's what you're supposed to have. Hi-key! Listen to Hi-key on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. Thank you to our sponsors. Now let's dive back in.

That's what makes me believe the work is happening. Yes. When we can sit in the discomfort. And when we can look beyond also unsaid cliches. Like I remember, I've never been a proponent of the old cliche of money doesn't buy happiness. I've never written about it in books. I've never spoken about it.

I'm never like, hey, you should never achieve something. Like that's not who I am. that's not even my thought process. But sometimes the background of monk, people assume that's what you believe. Right. And it's so funny, I've never said it, but it's an assumption. I've never said it, it doesn't exist.

Wow! I've never said that because I actually believe that people need to change their relationship with money. They need to be more abundant with it. That's not just money, it's just one thing. But whatever else it may be. I don't believe a simple life and an ambitious life are incongruent. I don't believe that a minimalist life and extravagance are incongruent.

I don't believe those. I actually believe that the paradox is where the magic is. I actually believe that... I was saying to someone yesterday, you need the perfect amount of anxiety and the perfect amount of inspiration to win. You can't have a life just of inspiration and you can't have a life just of anxiety.

And so even in those, the paradox is where you win because you need a bit of pressure and then you need a bit of purpose and you need both. If you just had purpose, it wouldn't work. It needs both. And so similarly, I think we draw from these old cliches and these old traditions and old belief systems and project them into the new world. And I feel like that limits us from allowing ourselves to grow and others to grow because we do the same to ourselves where it's like, no, no, no, but you've always been

a simple person and this really hit me when I heard this statement of like how in the Bible it says the common quote that's always given is money is the root of all evil. But actually the original quote is that love of money is the root of all evil. Oh wow. And that is such root of all evil. Oh wow. And that is such a... The context. The context. Wow.

It's such a different way of looking at it. And I was like, wow, like we have propagated, and forget the difference, we have broadcasted and propagated false information as correct, and not even false, incomplete information is a better word. Incomplete information. And it's been broadcasted and that's what we've all lived by. And all of a sudden, when you zoom out and look at context, you're like, wait a minute, that's actually a totally different theme.

But we've all built our entire mindset on an incomplete version of the truth. If that isn't a representation of so much of what we see today. And immediately I thought in bringing it back to the personal, it makes me want to get curious about where in my life am I living according to an incorrect truth or even a truth that I didn't choose. Um, yeah, that's so, yeah, a truth that I didn't actually choose because I often think about how many absolutes we have on our identity that maybe you didn't even choose.

Maybe they were chosen for you by a parent, chosen for you by an audience. Because I'm this, I shouldn't speak about that, because I've been writing about this, I can't pivot into so many of these things that we decide are actual fact, even things that we think we don't like. I don't really like this much. I don't really like hiking.

Have you been hiking? You know, it's some things that are kind of seemingly obvious, but when you pause, you think, oh my, when did I decide that? Or who decided that for me? That I'm supposed to have this opinion because of my identity. I'm supposed to wear this. I think in the beginning when I was talking about expression, I might have spoken about kind of what you might wear because I find I like to bring all of this kind of to the everyday. Even what you adorn your body with, it can show you what you believe

you should do and you shouldn't do. What you're allowed to do and what you can't because of your age, because of who you are, the colors, or this is too bright. It'll be, who told you? Why? You know, there's so many little moments where you get to say, where am I kind of being, not even just out of integrity, but censoring my expression, not even just what I say. I think we tend to think self-censorship is just about what you're saying. It's actually who you're being. It could be in your body language. When you walk into a room and you kind of just slouch a little,

you make yourself invisible. Whereas if you were to just put your shoulders back, even just a little bit, even just your chin up, just a little, it communicates just a very different thing, but there's a different vulnerability to it because it's visibility. It's actually being assertive in your body. Right? And that's vulnerable too. It's so f***ing hard.

Yeah. Whereas people see that as confidence or arrogance, so it's not seen as vulnerability because we've created these outer shells of what qualities look like. We've created these external avatars and embodiments of what humility should look like or what arrogance looks like or what good character looks like. And it's like, but rarely is it that obvious? Like rarely can you, you can't see someone's heart.

Like you can't see someone's soul. You're not seeing someone's genuineness or sincerity through a snapshot of their life. I always think about this example of if you were running late to the movie theater and you walked into maybe even the wrong screen, you might think that the hero is the villain and the villain is the hero. How do you know? I remember there was this... I think it actually was... Yeah, and it's like how do you know who the character is? Because of one snapshot of their life.

And I think cancel culture and so much of it is based on this idea of here's a snapshot of this person. I'm not going to give you the full story and the full picture. It reminds me of when I was doing this training and there was a photo. It was just about that. It was about context, essentially. Where there's a photo of a woman on the floor and a man sort of standing up with his hand there, and immediately you think that he has pushed her onto the floor.

But then they widen the photo and you sort of see that she had tripped and she had fallen and he was actually helping her up. And it reminds me of see that she had tripped and she had fallen and he was actually helping her up. And reminds me of exactly that. You know, we see an image or a moment and we create an entire story or we see a subtle expression on our partner's face and we create a story about what they mean. They're upset with us or maybe they don't want to do something. Yeah, without even asking. Without even asking.

And that's where the, I think that's the third perspective is so much of our perspectives are built from one narrative. Yes. I think that's the point that our understanding is about people, beliefs, what's happening in the world are all generally built from one narrative. Yes. So what I always ask people to do is reflect on like, what would it feel like if you were judged on your worst moment? Hmm. What would it feel like if you were judged on your worst moment?

What would it feel like if you were judged on your worst day? And what would it feel like if you could never ever come back from that? Because you'd be canceled for it. And what did help you become accountable? What has helped you become responsible? Yes. What has helped you have behavior change? Because we also want to take that into account.

What has it been in the past that has really encouraged you to go, you know what, I'm going to be better. I'm going to change. I'm sure it wasn't you being told by your family member, never come back to the house. I'm sure it wasn't someone saying to you like, don't ever come back here and you're not wanted here. Reflect on that.

And then also reflect on just that negative negativity bias is so strong. And I want to ask you two questions. Not that I think we haven't answered or maybe we have, but I think they're important to ask because I see them being what people are thinking about. So two questions. The first is when is it okay to cancel someone? And second question, is there anyone who doesn't deserve grace? I will answer that from my carbon definition of cancellation, which is exile, deletion.

It implies that there is no rehabilitation. It also presupposes that people cannot change ever. So by virtue of those things and me actually believing that it's possible to transform, me believing that rehabilitation is very important because it's the only way people can actually integrate that shadow that we're punishing them for. So I don't believe that to be true at all. However, I think we can address the harm that has been caused. And I think we have to give the person, whether we like it or not, the grace. And grace does not mean acceptance of what has been done. It just doesn't. Grace means I'm going to humanize you so I can understand.

And in understanding, I'm able to give a solution or give myself a solution and peace that is actually sustainable instead of believing that you have to be punished for the rest of your life. Again, that snapshot in time. And I know that what I'm saying is very difficult because it can be applied to so many things, but I encourage you to use common sense. I encourage you to use discernment. And I also think it's okay to have your convictions where you to use common sense. I encourage you to use discernment. And I also think it's okay to have your convictions where you can't be moved. Say, you know what? I could be understanding around this, but I'm going to choose to stay in this conviction.

I think we get to do that when it comes to things like abuse, when it comes to human rights, when it comes to things that are just so disturbing and unfathomable, I have to make peace with the fact that people will deal with it how they wish to. But I'm speaking to that middle that exists for so many of us. And I believe that grace, even if we're so uncomfortable, is the only way you can understand. And that doesn't mean you accept. So I think that kind of... Answers both.

It answers both in different ways. Yeah. I fully agree with you and I'm glad I asked it because I always wanted to get that kind of like the encapsulated thought process almost of the belief system. And it's good to hear it that way because I agree with you. I think that humans have amazing ability to transform and given the opportunity. I also think that so much of the culture today writes people off over very little information, inaccurate, incomplete information,

or misrepresented information. Like it's not even as clear. And also in not understanding what someone was even trying to say in the first place. And so it's coming from such an uneducated guess often. And like you said, going back to where we started, it's what we do to ourselves. It's what we do to all of it. We beat ourselves up.

If you didn't beat yourself up so much or shame yourself, often in unconscious ways by the way, because I think so many people, again, we have so many beliefs about who we are, what we stand for, et cetera, but our actions, especially our default actions and default responses will show us what we're really working with underneath. But a lot of us do live in shame. A lot of us are very embarrassed about some of the things that we have done

and said, the people that we were in the past. A lot of us have faced with our contradictions. We don't know what to do with them because we have, we live according to labels, you know, whether it's ethnic labels, political labels, identity-based labels. So you believe that because I'm this label, I shouldn't think in this way, I shouldn't speak in this way. Why do I kind of like this person?

So you're always grappling with so many things, but what do you do? You just shove them down and just hope that no one, you being no one, the first no one, no one ever discovers them, finds them. But they have to express themselves somehow and that creates more shame. So I think because we're working with so much shame and we're not willing to do kind of the self-inquiry because it's not that comfortable. We just don't have the capacity to be graceful with anyone. We just don't. Whereas when you look at even just one area of your own gross stuff,

the kind of stuff that you're like, you know, you know what you're doing. When you spot it in someone else, you're able to be a little bit more understanding. You can go the way of being of rejecting it because you're not ready to face yours, but if you can face yours, you'll be willing to kind of dance in the graze a little bit more. Yeah, or you just wouldn't participate. You might not say or do anything, but you would not participate in the sort of cancellation and take down of that individual in the same way. You would think there may be other methods for accountability and personal responsibility,

but it just wouldn't be in line with dehumanization. It just wouldn't be. And I think, you know, we get there, Africa, because I think sometimes people feel they've been so forgiving. They've been so graceful. They've given so much grace and it's been so exploited, that now they're so scared of giving that. But was that grace or did you just not have boundaries? Because there is a difference.

You get to be graceful and still have boundaries. You get to say again, you get to say I understand, but I will not accept. Some of us think grace is being passive or fawning. Yes. But that's not grace. Grace is still very strong. It's convicted.

Grace says, no, this doesn't work for me. I don't agree with that. But your heart is open. Yes, that's exactly right. So grace is not having no boundaries. Yeah. Oh, that's good. Yeah, exactly.

Now we have to define these things because I think these words have such, again, they have their own connotations and baggage. And I think grace feels like this all-merciful, all-encompassing feeling of just, no matter what you do, I'm right. Just take, just what, yeah. That godly grace. And this, again, it comes back to the extreme conversation,

where we're not talking about grace in extremes. We're talking about grace in a very practical, robust. And even the idea, even though I'm not a religious person, something I love about religion is that so many of them share the same threads. It's like one big tapestry with all the same threads. And from my understanding, even a loving God has boundaries. The Ten Commandments exist. There are sort of principles in which are the guiding systems.

And to me, those principles are put forward in a very graceful way, but they're still very boundary. Yes. You know, there are lines. There's still a level of needing self-discipline and control and not just a chaos, you know. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. There are so many amazing chapters in this book.

I want to name a few chapters of my favorite that when you get the book, I want you to dive into deeply. Of course, read the book in order, but some of your favorites. Chapter 8, be quick to listen, slow to speak. Beautifully put. Again, Africa's a magician with words. So, number 9, I love this because we talked about it, but not in this language.

Honest conflict or dishonest harmony? And I know that I'd rather live in honest conflict than dishonest harmony. Yes. Did you want to say something to that? No, no, no, no, no. I'm just giving people that. If you want to, please do. No, no, no, this is perfect. This one is probably one of my favorite chapters as well that's in there. You owe the internet nothing, chapter 4, really important one to read with the aids that we're living in.

And chapter 11, a great one to look forward to, one before the end, which is, brave expression, a price worth paying. And I can honestly say that in trying to bravely express myself, the freedom and liberation that I have felt internally is priceless, despite the minority experience of the external, the internal feeling. And I always ask myself, how will I feel about this at the time of death?

I always ask myself that because that's the price worth paying for. Because at that point, I'm not going to think about comments, and I'm not going to think about DMs, and I'm not going to think about followers. I don't think any of us are. I don't think any of us in that moment are going to go, oh, well, I wish more people agreed with me, or knew who I was, or knew what I stood for.

I don't think that's going to be what's going through my mind. It's going to be, did I serve? Did I live? Did I allow myself to be? And did I become all of who I felt like becoming in order to help and improve the lives of others and share everything I had to share? Those are going to be the questions I ask. So why not make those the questions now? Because I will only answer those questions if I ask them now. I will only find the answers for the rest of my life. But if I wait till the time of death to ask them, I'll have no time to answer them.

You're going to make me cry. That was beautiful. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not really much more to add to that, to be honest, because I was just receiving everything you're saying, and I feel it so deeply. And it's just a reminder that a lot of the things that we think really matter, that we really just doubled down on, won't even matter, not even just at the time of death, but next week, you wouldn't even be able to remember the specific disagreement

you were having in a comment section with someone or the way you were applauding someone's downfall, you know, it's not going to be, it's not going to add anything, it just takes. It takes and it takes and it takes and it takes. And you will, you will always feel that in that sense of being unfulfilled, which comes back to the thing I was saying about if you are truly fulfilled in who you are as a person, you just would not participate in it. And if you did, it would feel like a huge integrity breach. It would immediately, it would.

So powerful. Africa, I hope that this is the first of many conversations for us. Yes. I have deeply enjoyed it online and offline. I hope so. We end every episode of On Purpose with a final five, Yes. I have deeply enjoyed it online and offline. I hope so. We end every episode of On Purpose with a final five, which each question has to be answered in one word to one sentence maximum.

Sometimes I go off-piste, but Afrika Brok, these are your final five. So the first question is, what is the best advice you've ever heard or received? There is no such thing as failure, only feedback. Love that. Second question. What is the worst piece of advice you've ever heard or received? Be yourself. That's great.

Because the biggest teachers that I've spoken to say, which one? Which I love. Yeah, that's great. Question number three. How would you define your current purpose? Mind and tongue liberation. Yeah, yeah. That's my soul work for the meantime.

Supporting people with mind and tongue liberation. And sometimes we feel that liberation is saying what we want when we want how we want. Yeah, no, no, no. So go on. As we've spoken about, it's about being so discerning, even when you're not using your tongue, knowing what you could say, but holding it. I think there's such a skill to not just communication,

there's such a skill to being human. And I just find it so cool that we can realize something is working or not working, and do more of it or less of it. And kind of play every interaction again. I think the beauty of this is testing it out in the micro-interactions. From the moment I leave the building, from the moment we finish and I say goodbye, can I maintain a little bit more eye contact, even though eye contact can feel a little bit uneasy?

Can I stand up straight with my shoulders just a little bit more eye contact even though eye contact can feel a little bit uneasy? Can I stand up straight with my shoulders just a little bit more? There's so many things you can do and I think the mob in the mind is… It's really important for us to befriend it and to understand it because then it decides what roles of the tongue and what stays. So my mission and my purpose is supporting myself and people with mind and tongue liberation. I love that. Great answer. What's something that you used to value that you no longer value? Escaping. And I did it specifically through alcohol and other drugs before I got sober.

I valued it a lot because I thought that was the only place outside of my conscious mind where I could feel safe. So I placed so much value into it, but now I value clarity. It's beautiful. Yeah. And fifth and final question, we asked this to everyone who's ever been on the show. If you could create one law that everyone in the world had to follow, what would it be? It would be that if you find yourself outside and you're in a space with other people,

you have to greet one person at least once a day, a stranger. To just say hello or to sort of recognize someone. Because I think something really beautiful happens when you sort of say hello with a stranger. Whether you actually say hi or it's just like an acknowledgement. I think everyone has to do it at least once a day. That's beautiful. Yeah. That's great.

I love that. Afrika Brook everyone. The book is called The Third Perspective, Brave Expression in the Age of Intolerance. Go grab your copy now. And Afrika, thank you so much for being here with me. So excited to deepen our friendship and get to know you better as well. And all the best with everything you're doing to bring the third perspective to everyone in the world. I'm so grateful for the work genuinely

and I loved every moment of this conversation. Thank you so much. Thank you. This has been so special. I feel so inspired, so excited, but also just so grateful because again, I've said it a couple of times, but this conversation and the different parts we've taken

are really scary for a lot of people. And some people, they might think, well, what is there to be scared about? But we have created a culture of fear and a culture of intolerance. But I'm so hopeful. I know that a lot of this stuff was spoken about. It's a bit dreary. It's a bit... But I am so, so hopeful about us as human beings and the fact that we can have this conversation.

It's just so exciting and I think we get to laugh about it. It's serious, but it's really, I mean, it's also, again, at the point of death, a lot of these things will not matter. I think we have to fight for our joy and I think one of the ways we do that is through conversations like this. So I'm just so grateful. I can't wait for many of them. I mean, we were already chastening away before we pressed record and I'm just so grateful. I can't wait for many of them. I mean, we were already chassing away before we pressed record and I'm just so, so excited. Thank you for your support. It's priceless to me. So thank you. Thank you. Hey everyone, if you love that conversation, go and check out my episode with the world's

leading therapist, Lori Gottlieb, where she answers the biggest questions that people ask in therapy when it comes to love, relationships, heartbreak and dating. If you're trying to figure out that space right now you won't want to miss this conversation. If it's a romantic relationship hold hands. It's really hard to argue, it actually calms your nervous systems. Just hold hands as you're having the conversation. It's so lovely. What happens when we come face to face with death? My truck was blown up by a 20 pound anti-tank mine.

My parachute did not deploy. I was kidnapped by a drug cartel. When we step beyond the edge of what we know... I clinically died. The heart stopped beating. Which I was dead for 11.5 minutes. ...in return... It's a miracle I was dead for 11.5 minutes. In Return. It's a miracle I was brought back.

Alive Again. A podcast about the strength of the human spirit. Listen to Alive Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hi-Key. Looking for your next obsession? Listen to Hi-Key, a new weekly podcast hosted by Ben O'Keefe, Ryan Mitchell, and Evie Audley. We got a lot of things to get into. We're going to gush about the random stuff we can't stop thinking about. I am high-key going to lose my mind over all things Cowboy Carter. I know.

Girl, the way she about to yank my bank account. Correct. And one thing I really love about this is that she's celebrating her daughter. Oh, I know. Listen to High-Key on the iHeart radio Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Made for This Mountain podcast exists to empower listeners to rise above their inner struggles and face the mountain in front of them. So during Mental Health Awareness Month,

tune into the podcast, focus on your emotional well-being, and then climb that mountain. You will never be able to change or grow through the thing that you refuse to identify. The thing that you refuse to say, hey, this is my mountain. This is the struggle. Listen to Made for This Mountain on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.