On Purpose with Jay Shetty - Zachary Levi ON: Accepting Yourself with Radical Love & How to Know When You're Running From Your Fears

Episode Date: July 18, 2022

Do you want to meditate daily with me? Go to go.calm.com/onpurpose to get 40% off a Calm Premium Membership. Experience the Daily Jay. Only on CalmJay Shetty talks to Zachary Levi about radical love. We all grew up with some form of trauma. Some have come to terms with it and managed to move on, find new beginnings, and live better lives. Some are still struggling because their past is entangled with their present and is now limiting them mentally, socially, and emotionally. Talking to someone about these unpleasant feelings is the first step to healing. But taking the first step, for some, remains to be a difficult move.Zachary Levi is one of the most versatile actors in Hollywood with critically acclaimed roles in TV, Film, and on Broadway. HIs career catapulted as the lead and fan favorite, Chuck Bartowski, in the hit NBC series, Chuck.  Zachary demonstrated his range as a Tony Award Nominee for Best Actor in a Musical in She Loves Me. His impressive vocals landed him a leading role in the Disney Academy Award nominated (Best Original Song) animated musical, Tangled.Want to be a Jay Shetty Certified Life Coach? Get the Digital Guide and Workbook from Jay Shetty https://jayshettypurpose.com/fb-getting-started-as-a-life-coach-podcast/What We Discuss:00:00 Intro03:24 What does radical love look like?14:31 How trauma affects our mindset and perspective23:08 Running away from what you’re trying to survive from30:00 Heal yourself by talking about the problemEpisode ResourcesZachary Levi | InstagramZachary Levi | TwitterRadical Love: Learning to Accept Yourself and OthersSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What do a flirtatious gambling double agent in World War II? An opera singer who burned down an honorary to kidnap her lover, and a pirate queen who walked free with all of her spoils, haven't comment. They're all real women who were left out of your history books. You can hear these stories and more on the Womanica podcast. Check it out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. Regardless of the progress you've made in life, I believe we could all benefit from wisdom on handling common problems, making life seem more manageable, now more than ever.

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Listen to the one you feed on the I Heart Radio app Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Danny Shapiro, host of Family Secrets. It's hard to believe we're entering our eighth season, and yet we're constantly discovering new secrets. The variety of them continues to be astonishing. I can't wait to share ten incredible stories with you, stories of tenacity, resilience, and the profoundly necessary excavation of long-held family secrets. Listen to season eight of Family Secrets on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The majority of the way that you talk to yourself

is the way your parents talk to you. So if you don't first recognize that, you're gonna have a really hard time understanding how to get out of whatever you're in. Now, if you had great parents that were super patient and loving and kind and empathetic and didn't jump at you but held firm boundaries and all that stuff, there's chances

to answer, you have a really good, healthy self-talk. And good on you, but help firm boundaries and all that stuff. There's chances, kids, are you have a really good, healthy self-talk and good on you. Me, not so much. Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast in the world. Thanks to each and every one of you that come back every week to listen, learn, and grow.

Now, I'm super grateful when we get to have a guest on twice. There's not been many, many people that have done that on purpose where great at finding a diversity of guests, but there are some people that just blow your mind. You love them. I know that the community responds incredibly well to them. And on top of all of that, I love our opportunity to get to sit down with them and talk about what they're up to, what's been on their mind,

what they've been studying, reflecting, thinking about. Now, today's guest is someone who came on a couple of years ago and blew our minds. His name and someone that you all know is called Zachary Levi, one of the most versatile actors in Hollywood with critically acclaimed roles in TV, film and on Broadway. Zach's career catapulted as the lead and fan favorite Chuck in the hit NBC series, and Zach demonstrated his range as a Tony Award nominee for Best Actor in a musical in She Loves

Me. His impressive vocals landed him a leading role in the Disney Academy Award nominated best original song and the list goes on and on I recently saw him in American underdog, which I absolutely loved Shazam was the reason he was on last time, but right now what Zack's done is that he has created and written his first ever book and today we're gonna get to dive into it We're gonna have it in the caption so you can order it right away. You're going to find it in the links. I'm so excited to talk to my dear friend and awesome human being about his new book, Radical Love. Learning to accept yourself and others, something we all need to do.

Thank you so much for being on purpose. It's so great to be with you. So happy to be back. So happy to see your face, even if it's virtually, like I said, I really, I want to hug your neck and see in person, but this will do for now. Yeah, thank you, man. No, I appreciate you, man. And I meant it.

Like last time you came on, there was just this beautiful energy in the room. I remember you were like sweating buckets as well. Well, it was warm. The studio was pretty warm. That studio was too, it was our old studio. We're in studio 3.0 now. This is the new studio.

That studio was not well ventilated. Sat was very passionate. I didn't know how to stop him to offer him anything because he was so in tune and aligned. And I was like, I guess we just have to like sweat together. Anyway, for you to write a book, I mean, you could have written many things. You could have written a full autobiography.

You could have written about your experiences, which you do, of course, in the book in a deep way. But you chose to write a book that isn't your name, that isn't how you view your career, it's about life. And you call it radical love. Can you explain to me what radical love looks like is? Because I think love is one of the most underdefined misunderstood words in the world already. And radical love is taking us in a different direction.

Radical love, what does that mean? In some ways, it's not a great title, because I think us in a different direction. Radical love, what does that mean? In some ways, it's not a great title because I think it's a little redundant. I think that love itself is radical. And when we are practicing actual true, deep, empathetic, love, it is a radical concept. In fact, I think what most people would point to,

oh yeah, it's like when I have warm feelings about someone or have warm feelings about myself, I love myself if I have warm feelings about myself or about other people. We've all been kind of programmed with these very romanticized ideas of love and marriage and relationships. I don't think that has anything really to do with the warm fuzzies. I think that it is a recognition of the divinity, the miracle that is another human being, regardless of who that human being is. To love who loves you is that's that's that's patty cake. That's that's that's that's that child's play. To love is to love those who hate you, that you even have these feelings of disagreement or anger with or whatever, to love your enemy, to pray for your persecutor. That is love.

And that's the kind of love that's to me radical love. Again, I say radical because it's radical compared to what most other people's ideas of love is, but really, it's just love. That's actually what love is. It's being able to look at whoever is across the aisle of a different political spectrum, a different sex, race, faith, country to country, people group to people group.

We are so divided. I mean, the United States is a really sad example of how much division, I mean, we're just straight down the middle on almost every, you know, hot topic. We cannot look across the aisle and say, I completely disagree with you. I, in fact, I think that what you're standing for can be very problematic in this world. And yet, I still love you.

I still think that the reason why you think the things that you think is not because you're evil. It's not because you're somehow this broken, bad person. It's because you are a product of your environment in the same way that I am a product of my environment. In order to embrace and love myself, I have to first accept that I am a product of the parenting that I received. It's not my fault that I struggle with the things that I struggle with. In order to forgive ourselves, which we all need to do, we have to recognize that we're doing the best

that we can with the tools that we have been afforded to us at that point in our lives. And that is the reality, that is the truth. So until we can come to that place as individuals with ourselves, with other individuals, you know, just in our own lives, and then collectively as a people group, we're just gonna keep fighting and fighting

and going over this horrible vicious cycle all the way to the bottom. If we want a better future, we need to be working on more than just saving the environment. Obviously, we want the world to survive, but what good is a world to live in if we all hate each other in that future? That is not a future that any of us want to be living in. So that to me is kind of, you know, what radical love I think stands for. It's to radically accept, radically forgive, and radically love whomever is across the aisle. And that is, I understand a very difficult concept for a lot of people to wrap their head around because we look at someone doing a bad thing and our initial gut instinct is bad, evil bad evil wrong monster.

We point the fingers and point the fingers and point the fingers. Now are the actions that this person are doing are those sometimes monstrous villainous evil absolutely, but there's still a five year old child in them that came into this world and had nothing but optimism, nothing but potential, nothing but openness, nothing but love. And then the way that the world ultimately misfigured them in their heart, in their mind, in their psyche, that is what we have to be paying more attention to and recognizing. And then applying an empathy to this person. It is not excusing the evil act. It is instead trying to apply love to those who are doing the evil act because only then

Can we redeem those people? I mean, and this is happening on a regular basis people go to prisons all the time There are groups of people that see murderers on death row and yet They can still see the human being in them. They say listen I what you did was wrong and you're on death row because of what you did But I am not going to give up on you and the redemption of who you can be in your soul because I see that X, Y, or Z. I saw that you were raised in this type of an environment. You were abused as a child. Your father beat you and put cigarettes out on you.

You watched your father or mother or cousin kill someone else. You saw that as a sign of survival. You didn't have enough money to buy food for your family. So you started to steal. And then in order to steal, you needed to protect yourself, you thought, and so you carried a gun. And then somebody tried to stop you from stealing, and you went and shot them.

And now you're a murderer. Now, none of that excuses the murder. But all of it explains why that murder ended up happening. And if we can do that, and this is where I think Christ was really trying to get to the heart of it, he's like, hey, there's none righteous, not one. There's not one person on this planet

that can actually stand above everyone else and cast the stones. He is who is without sin, cast the first stone. Everyone's like dropping the stone, like, oh, that's not me, that's not you, that's not anybody, you know? And yes, we could probably sit here and hash's like dropping us and like, that's not me, that's not you, that's not anybody. And yes, we could probably sit here and hash up like, well, what's a more egregious sin?

But they're all sin at the end of the day. They're all things that we're all falling short of treating each other as the divine miracle that we are. And people ask me, what about people who don't believe in spiritual plane or God or whatever? You know, how do you explain to them that they're a miracle? Very easily. We are a mathematical improbability, this planet, that it even exists, that we are a perfect distance away from the sun, so that we don't freeze and we don't boil, that we have a moon

that is the perfect distance away from us, allows all of our, literally the systems, like gravity, to even, you know, the tides to go in and out. And that we have been as human beings, we've been searching the universe. Ever since we had the capability, we have been searching the universe trying to find life anywhere else, and we can't find it, and we haven't found it. Now, even if there is other life in the universe,

we're still a miracle that this place exists. It's still a mathematical miracle. So even if you don't believe in God, even if you have no spiritual proclivity or, you know, whatever, you can still count yourself as a miracle. And if we can do that, and we can start seeing each other as miracles, and we can see that every blade of grass,

every squirrel, every dog, every tree, every everything, anything that possesses actual life, we can create everything else. We can make more computers, we dog, every tree, everything, anything that possesses actual life, we can create everything else. We can make more computers, we can make more phones, we can make more whatever we need to make. And yes, we can also create more life. We do that on a regular basis. But each one of those lives is unique.

Every single one of us comes with a uniqueness that making another Audi doesn't necessarily come with a uniqueness, you know. We are a miracle. That is what I'm trying to drive to people and this, well, one of the things I'm trying to drive to people in the book because I really think that if we can wrap our heads around that, if we can change our perspective and we can start seeing each other even the evil, you know, even the bad, even the monsters, even all these people and say, okay, yes, they are doing bad

But they started they they were Initially they had all of the promise and let's have a little empathy with that. Let's have a little grace Let's have a little more patience. Let's hold them accountable And I think that's one of the big disconnects that people have they were they're afraid that if we Start to give people even a little bit of grace. Well now we're condoning their behavior. No, no, no You can you can love and not like. That's another thing I try to get to in the book. Loving is not just this warm feeling.

It's not just like times a hundred. Like is to like to love is to just accept the divinity, accept the miracle that is across from you. Anyway, there's a rant for you. That is, there is so much to unpack. The first thing was this difference in responsibility and fault. And when it comes to accepting ourselves, I think the reason why we struggle to accept ourselves

is because we think that means I have to think it's my fault. And when it becomes my fault, now I become depressed by that idea. It's disempowering. It brings me down. Whereas as Zach said, when you actually go, well, it's not my fault, but it is my responsibility. That's empowering. It gives you a sense of choice and direction and design. Like you said, our choices today are impacted by the decisions that were made for us when we couldn't make choices or when we didn't have the choice.

And so that's the part that's not our fault. But now as we get wiser and older and more mature and more experienced, we now can take that responsibility. So I thought that was a really clear concept. The second thing that I wanted to unpack from what you said, which is really special, was the difference between excluding and explaining. So you were talking about how someone's actions don't exclude them for what's coming for them. But really we need to seek the explanation. We need to understand

how they got there. It's the context, the complexity. It's one of the reasons why I really appreciate it. It's the why. It's the why. It's the why. It's one of the reasons why I appreciated I really appreciate it. It's the why. It's the why. It's one of the reasons why I appreciated the movie The Joker, because to me, looking at a very fictional character, of course, but you start to recognize that even this villain that we have hated or disliked for so many years has a backstory. And often we tell our heroes' back stories and origin stories, but we don't tell the villains

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That's netsuite.com forward slash J. I'm Dr. Romani and I am back with season two of my podcast Navigating Narcissism. Narcissists are everywhere and their toxic behavior and words can cause serious harm to your mental health. In our first season, we heard from Eileen Charlotte, who was loved by the Tinder swindler. The worst part is that he can only be guilty

for stealing the money from me, but he cannot be guilty for the mental part he did. And that's even way worse than the money he took. But I am here to help. As a licensed psychologist and survivor of narcissistic abuse myself, I know how to identify the narcissists in your life. Each week you will hear stories from survivors who have navigated through toxic relationships, gaslighting, love bombing, and the process of their healing from these relationships. Listen to navigating narcissism on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I am Mi'amla, and on my podcast, the R-Spot, we're having inspirational, educational, and sometimes difficult and challenging conversations about relationships. They may not have the capacity to give you what you need, and insisting means that you are abusing yourself now. You human! That means that you're crazy as hell just like the rest of us When a relationship breaks down I take copious notes and I want to share them with you

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neuroscientist and an author at Stanford University and I've spent my career exploring the three-pound universe in our heads. On my new podcast I'm going to explore the relationship between our brains and our experiences by tackling unusual questions so we can better understand our lives and our realities. Like, does time really run in slow motion when you're in a car accident? Or can we create new senses for humans? Or what does dreaming have to do with the rotation of the planet?

So join me weekly to uncover how your brain steers your behavior, your perception, and your reality. Listen to Intercosmos with David Eagleman on the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And there's a lot to be gained from that because yes, nothing is excluded. Everyone should be held accountable. People should not be allowed to get away with things. But we might be able to reduce this happening in the future if we were to learn how these people are made.

And talking about your Audi example, it actually does align because if you and I got an Audi on the same day and it was the same model But you treated yours badly and I treated mine well In 10 years time you're gonna see the exact same difference and that uniqueness is gonna be made by how it's treated So I just wanted to unpack that for everyone because I think you shared such a breadth of insight there And I just wanted to pick it a few of those things. I love that you brought up the Joker, because that movie, I was so grateful that it was made

because it, to me, was one of the most important movies I had ever seen that dealt with mental health. I was like, how, it took a DC, and I love that it's DC too, because that's my family, but it took DC making this movie about this villain to really highlight the incredibly powerful effects of trauma, like real, horrible trauma,

and what that does to a human being, there's that saying every villain is the hero of their own story's that saying every villain is the hero of their own story, right? Or everyone is the hero of their own story, including villains. And one of the coolest things about being an actor is that it's very much based on empathy.

You know, the whole idea is that you are looking at something that is outside of you, a character, a person, and you're trying to understand them so that you can bring them to life in an honest way. Now, if you're playing a, quote unquote, bad guy, well, guess what? Bad guys don't think they're bad guys. Bad guys think that they're doing the right thing, whatever that is. Now, it might be super twisted.

It might come from all the wrong places, but their logic has brought them to there because of whatever trauma they've experienced prior to that. There are not a lot of people doing bad in the world that are sitting around twisting their proverbial mustache and being like, oh, I can't wait to do these bad things. No, it's very hard for us to wrap our head around, but that is the truth. In order to understand why people are doing what they're doing, which is what we, like you're saying, we have to get to the bottom of it. It does not excuse. It explains. Excusing, explaining,

and to explain builds empathy. It helps us to understand why people do what they do, and therefore helps us to hopefully condition them away from doing those things if we can find them early enough. Instead of, you know, let's say you meet somebody and you know that they're about to, or thinking about doing this horrible thing. Now, the knee jerk reaction is, oh my God, they're a monster, I can't believe it, I can't, no, no, no, no, no, as opposed to, oh, you are hurting inside.

Let's sit down, let me be a conduit of love in your life so that you don't feel the necessity to go do these, you know, what if people saw that and said, oh man, you know what, I think this guy might be very close to going and doing something really bad. And why? Oh, because, well, look how he's treated at school, look how he's treated at home, look how he's treated online.

They're constantly online and they're finding themselves rejected even by strangers on the internet. They go on Instagram and they're constantly comparing themselves to the beautiful, perfect lives of everyone there. Comparison is not just the thief of joy. Comparison is literally destroying people's mental health. We have got to be able to get in there, hopefully early, before the bad things happen, but then afterwards, also, we have got to be willing to allow ourselves to be angry, to be frustrated, to be sad, to be all of the things, but then

still not allow ourselves to be the dehumanizer. The more we dehumanize all those that are struggling in doing bad things in the world, the more we dehumanize ourselves. We are all cut from the same miraculous cloth. Some of us are just in conditioning that makes them very troubled and doing very horrible things. But again, there are people that go to prisons now that are going and seeing the human being even in the murderer and saying, I refuse to believe that you are a monster. Instead, I will hold you

accountable. We will all hold you accountable because that was not what you should have done. But I will still try to do my best to see the human in you because before you leave this earth, you should feel that. You should know that. And I think that if we do that, we infuse that kind of love. There'll be less and less and less and less and less of this that we ever need to deal with because people will ultimately be more healed and more whole. And that's why I think that if we can get to everyone, they're, if we can heal every head, every heart and every mind in this world,

all of our other problems go away. These are the source of all of the rest of the issues, of all the murder, of all the rape, of all the theft, of all the wars, of all of the greed, the amount of greed that is killing this world right now, all of the CEOs and leaders of industry that all value profit over people, that all value money over what that money is ultimately doing to this world, to the planet, to the animals and the life in it.

And we all just kind of rationalize it. We all say, yeah, but you know, I mean, everybody needs to make money. So I guess I don't know. No, those people, the reason why we all do this is because we are all still afraid that if we don't have enough, we are not enough. And that is one of the greatest lies and the CEOs that get to the top of these companies,

though if we can get to them instead of what so many people want to do, which is dehumanize and vilify them and say, you're the 1% and you don't care. Maybe all that is somewhat true on some level, but guess what? They're still also a child of God. They are also still a divine miraculous life. And I guarantee that if we want to actually help them to change their ways, pointing fingers and yelling at them is not the way to do it. If we want to actually change their hearts, we've got to, we've got to lead with love.

We've got to go to the Jeff Bezos of the world. Isn't this this hard? Because I really have big problems with people like, you know, like it's like, dude, you have all the money in the world. Why, where's all the altruism? Why can't we give back? Like, you can't take it with you. You know, one of my favorite quotes, you don't see a you haul in the back of a horse. Your grave is it, that's all, you know?

Now, some of these people I think they think, well, I'll be remembered as one of the richest people in the world. No, you won't. Not a hundred years from now. Not 200 years from now. Not a thousand years from now. There are emperors that were ruling over massive empires

that commanded millions and millions of lives that could literally kill a person in front of God and everyone and do it, Scott Frey. Nothing would happen to them at all. Do you know all of their names? Cause I don't. I don't know all of these people. Nobody does. They're all forgotten.

They're all forgotten in the annals of history. Fair few of them ever get written down. And if they are written down, it's a little footnote. It's like, oh yeah, and that person existed. But nothing of really any value, they're not looked at. It's like, oh, yeah, and that person existed. But nothing of really any value. They're not looked at as like, oh, these were the great people of the world. They're not. If they're even remembered at all. So if we can get to the ultra, you know, the ultra wealthy of the world, these leaders of industry and say, hey, hey, listen, there's nothing wrong with going and taking

care of yourself, you and yours and making money, fine, go do it. But don't do it at the expense of other people's lives. Don't do it at the expense of your entire workforce. Don't do it at the expense of the environment. Don't do it at the expense of this miracle of a world that we have. But we can't do that to hate. We can't hate our way to a better future. We can only love our way there. That is the bottom line. And so, and that, and it takes this radical love. bottom line. And so and that and it takes this radical love. We struggle as human beings to allow two things to exist at one time. So the idea, as you said, is you can love someone but not like what they do, that's allowing to opposite separate ideas to

exist at the same time. Or the idea that I disagree with this person, but I have to connect with them and communicate with them in a way that will help them shift. And I may have to be more patient, it may take longer, but guess what, if it takes me longer, it will probably last longer as well. If you shout at someone, they may change their behavior right now, but they'll go back to doing what they were doing a few moments later, just like you do with a child. Like, if you shouted a child, and it may stop playing the video game or whatever it is, because it's scared.

But then a few moments later, it's still once played a video game where as if a child is engaged with and connected with and communicated with and educated and what may be a better use to its time, it just starts to transform and that requires love and it requires empathy and it requires patience. And I think because we've never received that ourselves, we find it so hard to go out there and give it to others. I mean, in the first section of your book, the first chapter you call it, stop running. When we bring this back, because we've talked a lot about like the most big, extreme global macro issues of how this idea

cascades across the world. But when we look at it, as you said at the start, like it starts from us. And so what do you think, Zach? What are we running from? And what are we running towards? Or are we just running nowhere? In my case, and I think this is the case probably for a lot of people, but in my case, it was

running from the pain. And I didn't even know it. That's part of the tricky thing about this. You can give somebody advice that absolutely applies to their life. But if they don't recognize that they're doing that thing, they think, no, I'm good. I mean, for so long in my life, I had been given certain pieces of advice. Like, maybe do this or maybe do that. But in my mind, I was cool.

I was like, I get that for somebody else, but for me, I'm okay. I didn't realize until I had this massive breakdown that I had been running away from so much of what I had been trying to survive. And I do think that's pretty applicable to most people. You know, as a child, your ego is essential. It is your survival suit. It is your life raft. It is the thing that protects you from all of the trauma that you experience. I mean, it's a thing that, you know, particularly,

like I'm not particularly, but using, again, an extreme example, there are people that are able to disassociate from themselves when they are sexually abused as children. Because how else is a child supposed to process that? So many of these cases, the ego steps in. The ego is there to protect the psyche, and it says, you're not here right now. You're good. You're not here right now. You're somewhere else. This isn't really you.

And then that child learns how to now disassociate. Well, that was great for then, but that becomes a massive problem later on in life. If you don't ultimately heal from that, if you don't learn that that's what you're doing and heal from that. So the ego ultimately is this incredible gift but that becomes an incredible hindrance. It becomes an incredible weight on us. In the book I talk about,

it's almost like this exoskeleton or this suit of armor. It's this incredible thing. You're walking around and people are swinging clubs and things at you and the armor's taking all the hits. But the armor is getting dented and chinked and cut up. And, you know, so you end up walking around by the time you're 35 years old,

if you're still depending on this suit of armor, you don't realize how malformed you are. You think you're walking smooth and straight, but you're really with a limp and you're doing this all because you're stuck in this contorted armor. And that armor is only supposed to service up to that point. And then we can argue a debate about, some people like to use wording like death to the ego

or kill the ego and other people are like, no, befriend the ego or whatever that is. However you wanna word it, I think at the end of the day it's something that we all need to realize as a beautiful necessity in our lives as we are children particularly. And then eventually it does not serve us in a positive way that it once did.

And ultimately being grateful for it, but allowing it to not be the armor that we need anymore, because we are doing the work on healing ourselves and enlightening ourselves so that when things do come at us, we're able to evade, we're able to, you know, judo them by us, we're not just hitting, they're not hitting us anymore, because we're not more mature in our thought process and in our feet. Not too long ago in the heart of the Amazon Rainforest this explorer stumbled upon something that would change his life. I saw it and I saw oh wow this is a very unusual situation. It was cacao. The tree that gives us chocolate but this cacao was unlike anything experts had seen or tasted. I've never wanted us to have

a gun bite. I mean you saw the stacks of cash in our office. Chocolate sort of forms this vortex. It sucks you in. It's like I can be the queen of wild chocolate. We're all lost. It was madness. It was a game changer. People quit their jobs. They left their lives behind,

so they could search for more of this stuff. I wanted to tell their stories, so I followed them deep into the jungle, and it wasn't always pretty. Basically, this like disgruntled guy and his family surrounded the building armed with machetes. And we've heard all sorts of things that you know somebody got shot over this. Sometimes I think all these for a damn bar of chocolate. Listen to obsessions while chocolate on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

The therapy for Black Girls podcast is the destination for all things mental health, personal development, and all of the small decisions we can make to become the best possible versions of ourselves. Here we have the conversations that help black women dig a little deeper into the most impactful relationships in our lives. Those with our parents, our partners, our children, our friends, and most importantly ourselves. We chat about things like what to do with a friendship ends, how to know when it's time to break up with your therapist, and how to end the cycle of perfectionism. I'm your host, Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, a licensed psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia,

and I can't wait for you to join the conversation every Wednesday. Listen to the therapy for Black Girls podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Take good care. How's that New Year's resolution coming along? You know, the one you made about paying off your pesky credit card debt and finally starting to save a retirement? Well, you're not alone if you

haven't made progress yet, roughly four in five New Year's resolutions fail within the first month or two. But that doesn't have to be the case for you and your goals. Our podcast, How to Money, can help. That's right, we're two best buds who've been at it for more than five years now, and we want to see you achieve your money goals. And it's our goal to provide the information and encouragement you need to do it. We keep the show fresh by answering list our questions, interviewing experts, and focusing on the relevant financial news that you need to know about. Our show is Choc Full of the Personal Finance Knowledge that you need with guidance three times a week.

And we talk about debt payoff. If, let's say you've had a particularly spend-thrift holiday season, we also talk about building up your savings, intelligent investing, and growing your income, no matter where you are on your financial journey, how do monies got your back? Millions of listeners have trusted us

to help them achieve their financial goals. Ensure that your resolution turns it to ongoing progress. Listen to how to money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Feelings. I was constantly running because I was constantly trying to survive. As a child, I didn't realize just how traumatic it was. To me, you know, like, if you're growing up in chaos, you just kind of assume that's normal. The standard is what it is. If you don't grow up in chaos, you assume that's normal. Now, I thought when I would go to normal, you know,

friends, homes, and things, I just assumed, well, people are putting on airs or they're putting on appearances, but when I'm not here, it gets crazy, like it gets crazy at my house. Not realizing that I was really in a massive, massive survival mode. I mean, my sympathetic nervous system, even to this day, I mean, it's crazy at my house. Not realizing that I was really in a massive, massive survival mode. I mean, my sympathetic nervous system, even to this day,

I mean, it's something that I have to work on very constantly because we wanna be in our parasympathetic. We wanna be in a relaxed, rest and digest in a mode most of the time. We don't want to be in this, again, incredible gift that our bodies were given, which is the sympathetic, which is the sympathetic, which is to survive, which is to run away from the saber tooth tiger, which is to not be killed by a trampling

elephant or go running and running after an antelope to go hunt it and bring it back to your cat. These are all things that our bodies evolutionarily have these beautiful, amazing gifts, but they're constantly activated now almost more than ever because survival is no longer running away from the beast or chasing the thing to hunt or getting out of the elements. We all have a roof, not all of us, but a lot of the world, more than ever before in human history, have some kind of a roof over their head, some kind of clothes on their back, some kind of food in their stomach, and survival has now become money, because money can pay for all of those things. And so our pursuit, all of our collective pursuit

for more of this is keeping us all engaged in this survival mode, and I was running from all of that trying to survive, and then running to, where do I find my worth, where do I find my running to where do I find my worth? Where do I find my identity? Where do I find these other things that ultimately give me this purpose and this worth? And how do I survive now in this other world? So that's what I ran from and that's what I ran to.

And ultimately, all of that is really unhealthy because you need to be able to just sit with yourself and recognize that nothing gives you worth or value outside of the fact that you are, that you are here. The fact that you are alive means that you are a miracle. If that alone, if we could get people to the point of recognizing that holy crap, that should be enough, hopefully, to be able to say, I love myself. I can't believe what a lucky thing that I got. I'm here. I'm in this existence. That will hopefully help us to stop running from things and sit and be present.

I think the challenge I see that people have is you addressing this book and that's why I really appreciate what you've done with this book. Like Zach talks about like how to get help, how to be open, how to share your story, right? Like the book is a systematic approach in the journey that we're talking about in this very macro way today because the book lays out the steps that you have to take. So if anyone's listening to us right now and going like, that's what I want to do. That's what I want to figure out. The book actually walks you through that journey. And Zach, I want to ask you this question because I feel like that journey, as you said

at the beginning, to radical love, often feels so far away because we haven't been trained that way. We haven't experienced that. We didn't see that. We didn't have access to that growing up. What's the first step? If radical love is the step, what's the first step in that journey that people could take today

tomorrow, this year, in their life, that makes them feel like they're on that journey because what we both also know is that if you try and imitate radical love, or if you try and pretend to practice radical love, that can actually be detrimental to yourself and others because it's just, it's not real, right? So I want to hear that about that from you. Inauthentic anything is the opposite of the thing.

So if we're trying to put on love, if it's not authentic, it's not love. Particularly love. There are actually some other things that you could do a proxy version of that you can maybe you're not totally screwing things up. But if you are, if you think you're providing love, if you're loving, you think you're loving yourself, I mean like my own journey. I thought I was loving myself, but that was inauthentic love because I was still berating myself. I unbeknownst to me, I was still, all myself talk was the same talk that I got from my parents. My parents, the majority of the way that you talk to yourself, is the way your parents talk to you. So if you don't first recognize that, you're going to have a really hard time understanding

how to get out of whatever you're in. Now, if you had great parents that were super patient and loving and kind and empathetic and didn't, you know, jump at you, but held firm boundaries and, you know, all that stuff, there's chances to, so are you have a really good, healthy self-talk and good on you. Me, not so much. I had, I didn't, I didn't know that and then I figured it out and I still work on it, but it's a thing that, you know, now that I'm aware of the traps that I fall into, now I'm able to go, oh, Zach, you're doing it again.

You're doing that thing and you know, this is how you end up winding yourself back down. But going back to your question, what is the first step? The first step has got to be recognizing that you have a problem, right? Like that is, that's the age old, that's the added. You know, the first step in fixing a problem is recognizing that you have a problem.

Now, that can be very difficult for people. You can't force people to do that. That's gotta be something that comes because they recognize the necessity. Now, in my case, I had a complete mental breakdown. And so I knew, I don't know what else to do. Clearly, I have a problem if I don't want to live anymore. So I have got to go try and figure that out.

Now, that was step one, step two. Now, by the way, not everybody has to come to that dire of a conclusion. Hopefully, nobody does. Hopefully, we're able to recognize these things far earlier in life. Beyond that, the step is, you got to talk. You got to talk about it. You got to start with one of your closest friends or closest friends start with your family

if they're the closest to you. Get some of it out, say, I am struggling. I don't know what I'm struggling with. I'm embarrassed, whatever. Guess what? There's no reason to be embarrassed. There's no reason to be scared. Because everybody, everyone without fail.

There is not one person on this earth that hasn't dealt with. Even the best parents and people Still deal with some form of stress anxiety depression you name it. There is something there So everyone can relate to this ultimately. We're all afraid. It's getting better Which is great. It's getting less stigmatized as the more we do things like this and talk about it But everyone still has these reservations and fears because nobody wants to feel like they're broken Nobody wants to feel like everybody else is good But I'm somehow struggling and I don't know how and we all feel like we're uniquely broken

We feel like well clearly no one has felt the way that I feel no one has gone through this exact thing And I am here to say that is also a lie because the world is really really old and there have been Billions and billions of people who have lived on this earth. And even if they lived in a completely different time, guess what? They have still struggled with the exact same problems, slightly different details, exact same problems. So talking about it, getting it out, you have got to acknowledge that there's a problem, talk about that, but immediately as soon as you can go to a professional, don't have your friends and family, don't allow them to be this kind of end all

of where you get your advice and your wisdom. Because as try as they might, they all have bias. They all have agenda, even bias and agenda that they're unaware of. Not even bias and general like, well, I'm gonna take advantage of this. Like, hey, I have a certain idea of who I think you ought to be.

So I'm gonna give you advice when it comes to directing you in that way. Whereas a disinterested, unbiased, unagented third party. I mean, I guess the only bias or agenda they would have a professional therapist is that they get paid to do it. So I suppose you could say that. But outside of that, I mean, and they should

because it's a service, it's a job. And by the way, it's one of the most valuable. So it's so worth the money, although I do think all of that needs to be worked out too. That really I'm hoping that we can keep pushing toward getting mental health services and information and education to people on much more reduced rates, if not entirely free.

I wish that there were clinics, the people could just walk into right off the street and be like, hey, I'm struggling. I need to talk to somebody. I need somebody to just kind of like help click this back into reality. What a beautiful world that will be. But until that day, very worth whatever,

the money I believe, investment in yourself. So that's the first step. I really truly believe. You got to acknowledge it, you got to talk about it. And then within that, now you have someone who is guiding you to the various other steps because the other steps, though some of them are kind of universal, some of them are not. Not every, not every person needs to do X and not every person needs to do Y. And even the people that need to do both don't necessarily have to do them

or should do them in that order. You know, it all depends on what your particular personal journey has been in your life with your traumas, how they came about, how they're manifesting in your life right now, how you happen to be struggling or not struggling with them or don't think you're struggling with them. You know, all of that can really,

you know, with a licensed professional, somebody really understands these things. It was studied this stuff. They can guide you through the rest. But so that's what I would tell anybody out there. Do yourself the service and the favor go love yourself first and foremost by investing in a therapist and being able to talk about and just get out what it is you need to talk about. I love that. Zach, I mean, I'm sure everyone can hear your passion, your drive, the amount of like, and it was the same last time, like even last time, I remember there was this one clip we had and you just went empathy, empathy, empathy, empathy, empathy, empathy. And you said empathy like 30 times.

And even today, I've heard you say radical love, you know, it's the message you're asking us to do is hard but necessary. It's challenging but real. It's pushing us because that's the only way we get to our true ourselves. And you can see that in you that it's a plea, like you're almost pleading with us to say, please do this, you know, it's not even, it's not a direction, it's not preaching, it's not pushing, it's pleading. And I just wanna say thank you to you for your energy,

for the time to put this book together, for just your ability to speak the truth so emphatically and you know, with so much, with so much, not confidence, that's actually an understanding, but with depth, right? There's a real depth behind these thoughts. And I appreciate you, man. I really do, because it's so much harder to talk about the things that you're choosing to talk about, then the software version of a lot of these ideas.

So I appreciate you. I'm grateful for you. I'm grateful for you. I'm recommending to everyone. Please, please, please, go and grab a copy of the book, Radical Love, Learning to Accept Yourself and Others. Like I said, today, Zag's taken us on a journey of really understanding the concepts and ideas as these big principles, but the book really goes into his journey, his story, the Experiences he went to to be on the brink of that position of breaking down and falling apart and then guides you through the step-to-step Journey, whether it's overcoming your ego, whether it's loving yourself. So please do go and grab a copy of radical love. Zach, I'm grateful. I can't wait to catch up with you,

hang out with you, I miss you. And I'm wishing you all the best for the book tour. I hope it goes exceptionally well. And I'm really excited to reconnect, man. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, bless you. Love and appreciate you so much.

And I hope that I get to see you and your wonderful wife in LA or wherever we get to connect somewhere in the world. Absolutely. Thank you, man. Have a wonderful evening. Thank you for doing this at your time. I'm sure it's pretty late there, too.

Nah, I'm good. Totally worth it. Great seeing you. Thank you. Our 20s are often seen as this golden decade. Our time to be carefree, make mistakes, and figure out our lives. But what can psychology teach us about this time? I'm Jermis Beg, the host of the psychology of your 20s. Each week we take a deep dive into a unique aspect of our 20s. from career anxiety, mental health, heartbreak, money and much more to explore the science behind our experiences.

The psychology of your 20s hosted by me, Gemma Speg, listen now on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jay Shetty and on my podcast on purpose, I've had the honor to sit down with some of the most incredible hearts and minds on the planet. Oprah, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Hart, Louis Hamilton, and many, many more. On this podcast, you get to hear the raw real-life stories behind their journeys and the tools they used, the books they read, and the people that made a difference in their lives so that they can make a difference in hours.

Listen to on purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Join the journey soon. When my daughter ran off to hop trains, I was terrified I'd never see her again, so I followed her into the train yard. This is what it sounds like inside the box car. And into the city of the rails. There I found a surprising world,

so brutal and beautiful that it changed me. But the rails do that to everyone. There is another world out there. And if you want to play with the devil, you're gonna find them there in the rail yard. Undenail Morton, come with me to find out what waits for us in the City of the Rails. Listen to City of the Rails on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your

podcasts. Or, cityoftherails.com.