The One You Feed - Najwa Zebian on How to Build a Home for Your Soul

Episode Date: September 28, 2021

Najwa Zebian is an activist, author, speaker, and educator. Najwa recently launched a digital school, Soul Academy, and a podcast, Stories of the Soul.  Her work has been featured in the New York Times, Glamour, Elle, Huffington Post, and more. She’s well known for her TEDx Talk “Finding Home Through Poetry“In this episode, Eric and Najwa discuss her new book, Welcome Home: A Guide to Building a Home For Your Soul.But wait – there’s more! The episode is not quite over!! We continue the conversation and you can access this exclusive content right in your podcast player feed. Head over to our Patreon page and pledge to donate just $10 a month. It’s that simple and we’ll give you good stuff as a thank you!Enrollment for the Spiritual Habits Group Program is now open through October 12. Click here to learn more and signup!In This Interview, Najwa Zebian and I Discuss How to Build a Home for Your Soul and …Her book, Welcome Home: A Guide to Building a Home For Your Soul.Her search for the feeling of home within herselfLearning to see herself through her own eyes and not other’s eyesThe feeling of being loved needs to come from withinHow to balance being at home in yourself with your relationships with other peopleIdentifying your “guest list” who you’d welcome into your homeBeing at home in yourself allows for the best connections with othersBeing worthy of love is not based on pleasing others or working hard for itSelf-acceptance is about knowing who you are and not focusing on what other people thinkChanging the question from “why can’t I have that” to “why don’t I have that” The self-fulfilling prophecy of what you believe is what you will liveSelf-accountability and choosing your actionsForgiveness is not a one-step thing, but a constant process of choosing to let goThe activities of the blank canvas mirror and the unveiling mirrorFinding clarity and asking yourself “what’s next?”Choosing to speak to yourself kindlyNajwa Zebian Links:Najwa’s WebsiteTwitterInstagramSkillshare is an online learning community that helps you get better on your creative journey. They have thousands of inspiring classes for creative and curious people. Sign up via www.skillshare.com/feed and you’ll get a FREE one-month trial of Skillshare premium membership.If you enjoyed this conversation with Najwa Zebian, you might also enjoy these other episodes:Finding Grace with Eiman Al ZaabiIntimate Conversations with the Divine with Caroline MyssSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you think you're enlightened, go spend a week with your family. That's what the spiritual teacher Ram Dass said, and it strikes a chord with so many of us. Combine that with the inherently stressful holiday season, and it's no wonder that the last few months of the year are some of the most difficult for so many people. That's why we're opening the doors to the Spiritual Habits Group program once again, and I'm inviting you to join me. Whether you're looking to develop a consistent daily meditation practice, or implement mindfulness practices into

your life, or connect more deeply to what really matters, the Spiritual Habits Group Program will give you the tools you need to turn this wisdom into daily, sustainable, transformational practice. And you'll do so in a community where you belong and feel connected. Finish 2021 strong with the satisfaction of knowing you showed up as your best self with less stress, able to actually enjoy this time of year. Just go to oneyoufeed.net slash spiritual habits to join the program. Enrollment is open now through October 12th. That's oneyoufeed.net slash spiritual habits. Stop laying the blame on others and on life for betraying this unsigned contract that no one knows about but you and say those things to yourself on your own.

Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter.

It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer.

Go to reallyknowreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really No Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Nezha Zabian, an activist, author, speaker, and educator. Nezha recently launched a digital school, Soul Academy, and a podcast, Stories of the Soul. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, Glamour, Elle, Huffington Post, and more, and she's known for her much-viewed TEDx talk,

Finding Home Through Poetry. Today, Nezha and Eric discuss her new book, Welcome Home, a guide to building a home for your soul. Hi, Nezha. Welcome to the show building a home for your soul. going to start like we always do with a parable. In the parable, there is a grandmother who's talking with her grandson and she says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second and he looks up at his grandmother and says, grandmother, which one wins? And the grandmother says, the one you it for a second and he looks up at his grandmother and says, Grandmother, which one wins? And the grandmother says, the one you feed.

So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. I live my life in a way that there's a constant reminder that I have a choice in the way that my life goes. that I have a choice in the way that my life goes. Whereas before I made all these realizations about building a home within or building a home within other people, I had always felt that I was living my life in a way that I was following a path that someone else told me was the right path. And I genuinely believe that I couldn't be okay as a person unless I followed that path. So that immediately took choice away from me. And it took away the awareness that I had of myself in terms of, is this something I want to do? Is this something I like? Is this something I believe in? Choice was completely taken away. I didn't have that awareness of the good sides and the bad human that is me, that has wants

and needs and preferences and certain realities about this human that I need to come to terms with. Getting that kind of power was so different and new to me. You know, jump out of the victim mentality of, I've been made to believe that I have to follow a certain path to be a good person. To leave that kind of mentality and say, well, you know what? Maybe that was the case in the past. But now, I'm not going to say someone is forcing me to walk down a certain path. And I'm not going to say I'm perfect without that part of my life.

Like I would have been perfect had I not been, you know, indoctrinated into believing that I have to follow a certain path. So coming to terms with that, like I'm not a perfect person. I actually have sides of me that I don't necessarily like very much or like to admit that I have. And I know this is a very long answer to your question, but it's important for me to preface it by saying like, if you don't know that you have both sides, you're living outside of yourself. So to get to a point where you're like, oh, there are certain things about me that I need to learn about. There are great things in my own eyes, not necessarily just through the eyes of others. And there are bad things in my own eyes, not necessarily just in the eyes of others. To get to that level of awareness,

that's when you start saying, okay, what are the good things about me? And what are the bad things about me? And so for example, with myself, if I hear negative voices in my head, anytime during the day, like say I hear someone succeeded in some way. And the first thing that comes to me is, I'm not enough because I didn't get to do that. And so that that's the side of me that I choose to listen to, but not feed. Because if I were to feed that side, then I'm going to behave in a way that gives that side power. And at the end of the day, it's me who's in power. It's the choice that I have that's in power. So when I hear those words, I wanted this reaction to be genuine, because if I had crafted an answer for you, it would have been perfect and beautiful and

everything. But I was like, I want it to come from my heart. So for me to get to a point in my life where I'm like, I will live my life based on where I choose to put my energy and attention. It took a long time to even give myself permission to focus on myself and on the fact that I have a choice. And I feel like that's probably where most people feel stuck. They're still living based on that path that they're following, that they've been made to believe is right. So before you get to a point where you can say, the side of me that I feed is the one that wins. You have to know who that me is. I love that idea of listening to the bad wolf, but not feeding him. Yeah, really great idea. So I'd like to turn our attention to the overall theme of your book,

which you hit on a little bit in that answer, which is this idea of coming home to ourselves. And you talked a lot in your answer about knowing who we are. And the book to me was really about learning to see ourselves from the inside, what's actually going on inside of us, what we want, what matters to us, and learning to not put so much stock in what's outside, what we're told we should be, who likes us, who doesn't like us, you know, all the ways we measure ourselves. And the book is sort of about building a home that we can live in. Say a little bit more about that. Yeah. So I had this really powerful realization that I had spent my whole life realization that I had spent my whole life building homes and other people. And that came to me on stage. I was giving my very first TEDx talk. It was right after I self-published

my first book. Didn't really think much of the kind of work that I was doing and its influence or anything. It was just a moment where I said, just be vulnerable and say what your heart needs to say. And I knew that I wanted to talk about this search that I've had my whole life, the search for the feeling of home. And I internalized the lack of feeling of home in other people to mean that I didn't deserve home. And so in that moment when I said those words, maybe I'm building my home in the wrong place. And I talked about this like this in Welcome Home. it wasn't like a light bulb. It was like a lightning bolt. That realization that maybe the answer isn't in searching for home and other people. Maybe the answer is in seeing myself as my own home. And once I could feel that, it was so liberating because now I was no longer defining my worthiness of being welcomed. And I'm not talking in the literal sense of being welcomed into someone's house, but

being welcomed into someone's life, being loved, being valued, being validated. I'm no longer seeking that outside of me. I'm no longer seeing someone else's rejection of me or inability to see me or hear me or love me or listen to me or give me the kind of love that I deserve. I'm no longer seeing that as an indication that I don't deserve any of that because I'm not seeing myself through their eyes. I'm seeing myself through my eyes. I am the one who gets to decide how much love I deserve. I am the one who gets to decide to see myself and hear myself and love myself and value myself. Once I take that power back, I'm no longer a walking stranger in the world or like, you know, how a tree extends its roots to wherever there is water. I'm not doing that anymore. I am self-fulfilling. I will no longer walk in the world as a desperate person seeking shelter in other people's lives because I am my shelter. Wherever

I go, I feel home. I feel loved. I feel heard and seen because it stems from within me, not from an external source. So as you may have noticed in Welcome Home, I use several strategies that are practical to take this super figurative analogy of building a home within to say, this is how you actually do it in your day-to-day life. You know, when it comes to self-love, for example, one of the strategies that I use is, you know, imagine that there's a protective power bubble around you. So as you're walking in the world, whether you're in the workplace or among friends or among family, and you feel judgment from them towards you or they say something that is meant to make you feel less of yourself or like something's wrong with you or you've done something wrong

or whatever you imagine a protective bubble of self-love around you that says i see that i hear it but i get to choose let's tie it back to the beginning of our interview. I get to choose whether I feed it. Because if I say no, it doesn't affect me. Because if the way that someone is trying to make me feel does not align with the way I feel about myself, how they feel about me genuinely doesn't matter. But if I base how I feel about myself on how someone else feels about me, then I'm always going to be seeking comfort and safety and love and whatever it is that feels like home inside of them. Right. That makes a ton of sense to me. I want to go into a little nuance on it. So a question about that, it's more a matter of extent versus intent, is more and more we see studies showing

that we are really wired up as interrelational social creatures. And so how do we balance that knowledge that interrelation and connection is part of what it means to be human with what you're saying, which is I don't put all of my identity, all of my power out there. You know, for me, that's been the dance that I've had to go through, right? The dance has been originally, I'm like, everybody, if you like me, don't like me, all that. It just rains on me and crushes me. And then I move into a phase of where I'm more insular. It's all within me. And then I venture back, you know, I find it sort of this dance. And I'm just kind of curious how you think about that. That's a beautiful question. And I believe every single interview I've done about Welcome Home, I've gotten this question, every single interview I've done about welcome home, I've gotten this question, but in a different way. How do you balance being home with yourself with wanting relationships with other people?

Because, you know, people usually think when I talk about building a home within that I'm telling you, you don't need anybody be alone. That's not what I'm saying at all. What I'm saying is, once you're at home with yourself, as in you are the chooser, you are the chooser of what your identity is or what identities you choose to carry. You are the chooser of what do I accept and what do I not accept in my life. Once you're able to do that, the people who fall short of that in your life do not deserve to be welcomed into this home of yours as if they get a permanent residence in your life, right? So I talk about this in the compassion room. So I've divided welcome home in a way,

as you've already read, that, you know, there are different rooms in your home. First, we start with the road to home. You know, what do I need to do to get to a point where I can build that home? Then let's build a strong foundation of self-acceptance and self-awareness because that's very important. You can't build a home within without knowing who you are and fully, very important. You can't build a home within without knowing who you are and fully, genuinely, radically accepting who you are. Then the rooms of self-love and forgiveness and compassion and surrender and clarity. So in the compassion room, I talk about, you know, compassion is empathy plus a willingness to help. And when we think of compassion, we usually think of compassion towards others. But what about self-compass, we usually think of compassion towards others.

But what about self-compassion? So one of the questions I ask in that room is, if you were to make a guest list for a dinner that you're making at your house, your actual house, who would you invite? Like the closest people to you, the people who genuinely walk in your life or live in your life or treat you in a way that shows both empathy and a willingness to help, a genuine willingness to help, who are those people? I guarantee you that the people who you're trying so hard to prove your worthiness of love to will not be on that list because they are not showing genuine empathy and a genuine willingness to help. They are showing probably judgment, projection of their own emotions on you, but who are the people who you identify as these people genuinely care about me? And then I ask, are you on that list? Do you offer yourself

what you so easily offer to others? Because if you are the type of person who, when you invite people for dinner, you're like, as long as they eat, I'm happy. You're not putting yourself as they eat, I'm happy. You're not putting yourself in your life as a priority to love and be compassionate towards and be forgiving towards. And so I give you these examples of how if you are at home with yourself, that is the best thing you can do to connect with the best people for you. That's the healthiest thing you can do to show up as someone who knows who they are and who offers the best side of themselves as well. And there's one really powerful question that I always ask people. Think of, you know, everyone around you that you're trying to convince to love you in some way that, you know, the people who you're

always on edge, you're like, Oh, you know, I need to do this. I need to please this person in this way. I need to say this. I, if I don't do this, then I'm in trouble. Like think of those people and genuinely tell me, do you show up in the interactions that you have with those people as yourself? Or do you say, this is the version of a person that that person would love. So I'm going to change myself into that version so that that person can love me. But are they loving you? Or are they loving the version of yourself that you created with the intention of being loved by them? You are not receiving that love. The version of yourself that has parts of it hidden, that's the version that's being loved. You're not fully and wholly being loved. So stop seeking the answer to how worthy you are of love

from those who make you work hard to prove that worthiness. And get yourself to a point where you're able to say, I'm worthy of love. I don't need to constantly work so hard to just get that validation that I'm enough as I am. And I'm not saying this from an arrogant point of view, like you deserve everything no matter what. No, I'm not saying that. But usually the people who come to this kind of work are the empaths who have spent their whole life doing, giving, you know, just extending themselves and giving their energy and attention and time and everything in hopes that the exchange for that will be reciprocation of all of that, you know? And if you are that kind of person and you're listening to this, slow down. Your worthiness of love is not based on pleasing someone. It's not based on anyone else in this world saying that you deserve something, whatever it is.

Take that energy back that you're putting out to say, please tell me I deserve this. Please validate me. You are in desperate need of saying that to yourself. It's the most powerful thing to stop and slow down and look at yourself in the mirror and say, you deserve this. You deserve love without working hard for it. You deserve respect without working hard for it. If you make a mistake, because many people are like, well, maybe I behaved in a way that, you know, granted that person permission to treat me in a certain way. Okay, apologize for your mistakes, but you never apologize for who you are. You never apologize for who you are. When you're in a state of being at home with yourself, the people in your life who demand you to break pieces of yourself because they can't handle the whole you,

those people will not exist in your life. You know, I say in Welcome Home, you might invite those people into your home once a year, twice a year, but they aren't the people that you regularly invite into your home. So they are not the people, practically speaking, that you give much of your energy to. When you're at home with yourself, you surround yourself with people who, again, don't demand of you to shrink or change yourself. That goes back to the question that you asked me. You balance being at home with yourself with connection by understanding that to have the best connections in your life that you could possibly have, you start with being at home with yourself, knowing your value, knowing what you have to offer,

knowing what you deserve, knowing your boundaries, and the people who surround you will be extensions of this home that you have within, and they will feel also like home. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really Know Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth.

Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us tonight. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir.

Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really, No Really. Yeah, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really? No, really. Yeah, really. No, really. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really? No, really. And you can find it on the iHeartRadio app on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I want to read something that you wrote because I think this speaks to the heart of a lot of what you say. And you said the current culture would have you believe that accepting yourself as you

are means not caring about what people think of you. And don't get me wrong, part of self-acceptance is not caring about what the world thinks. But do you see where the flaw is in that definition? It puts the focus on the world, not on you. What our culture calls self-acceptance should instead be called indifference to what others think. I just love that. Thank you. When I wrote that, like I was trying to figure out these answers as I was writing about them. The process of writing Welcome Home was absolutely therapeutic. But yeah, self-acceptance. The message that social media, the way that the world currently functions, wants you to believe is, I accept myself. It means I can do whatever I want and I don't care about

what people think. And it's just like, you are focusing what self-acceptance means on everything but yourself. It's like you're not investing the time to learn that self of yours. And instead you're saying, I must accept myself because I don't care what other people think. And it's just like, no, you accept yourself by knowing who you are, by taking the time to understand that once you get to a point where you have self-acceptance and self-awareness at the foundation of what makes you this person roaming around in the world, this person roaming around in the world, what the world thinks of you doesn't even come to mind when you're trying to prove that you've accepted yourself. Because it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter to you. I'll give you an example from my own life. So when I took the hijab off, you know, I remember people being like, how are you okay with all this negativity that's being projected at you on social

media? Like there are people judging you for no longer covering your hair and your body. And they're saying all these things about you. How is it not affecting you? It's because I was the one who made that decision for myself out of full awareness of the reasons why I was doing this, and out of full acceptance that I, as the person leading this path of mine, I am the one who makes those choices. Not based on what anybody thinks. I make them for myself. So you see, I didn't, in that moment, say,

I accept myself because I don't care what people think. No, I'm not focusing on what they think. I did this for myself because I genuinely believe this is the right thing for me. So because I didn't base that decision in any way, whether it's positive or negative, based on what people think or not think, based on what they deem as socially and culturally and religiously acceptable or not. I made it based on me. So I accept myself without saying it's because I don't care what the world thinks about me. But a natural, beautiful product of me accepting myself and accepting the responsibility that I have over my own life

is that I don't care what people think. So I just hope that whoever is hearing this can have a change in perspective that when you see people posting on social media and showing this lifestyle of I don't care what others think, please dig deeper into that and think like, is that really how a person shows that they accept themselves? Or is it through just living their life as they want and accepting themselves? You don't need to say, I don't care what people think. Right. And you can, to some extent, not care what people think and still not like yourself. Absolutely. You know, that's an absolutely possible thing to do.

I want to pivot to a question that you write early in the book that I think is such a powerful question. And it is, let's change the question from why can't I have that to why don't I have that? Say a little bit more about that. I do coaching work with people. That is a classic. that. Say a little bit more about that. I do coaching work with people. That is a classic. That will be in the coaching question classics, right? Because it is such a fundamental reframing. So this is the chapter in Welcome Home. This is the story that actually sold the book. And I cried as I wrote it, and I cry every time I about it you know I tear up all the time because that was the change in that question and understanding where that question came from like why can't I have that was a very painful experience to go through to come to terms with, and a beautiful release of pain that I had held

within for so long. So the question of why can't I have that in my own life stemmed from my childhood, where, you know, I can tell you is from my earliest experiences, I remember experiencing on the inside this feeling of something's missing. And I would see it when I would see families together or when I would see my friends being close to each other, having fun. And I remember feeling that on the inside, like that's what I want and I don't have it. But when I was around eight or nine years old and I was at my aunt's house and it was the night before a big celebration that we have, it's kind of like Christmas and you know you get gifts and everything and it was the night before and my aunt asked all of her kids to go downstairs because it was family time and the really sad part is that the moment she said that, I fully understood I'm not part of that.

I need to stay because that's how it had been in past experiences. When it's family time, I'm not included because I'm not part of the family. So they went downstairs, opened their gifts, and I could hear them laugh and just be so happy. And I remember exactly where I was sitting and how I was feeling and listening to everything. I could see my surroundings right now. And just listening to all of that, I remember as a child feeling that question. Why can't I have that? Why can't I have that? And that isn't the presence or it's nothing materialistic. It's the love. It's feeling like I'm part of something, like I'm important to someone. Like,

why can't I have that? And the sad part about realizing this, you know, two or three years ago is I carried that question with me into every experience in my life where I got rejected in some way or I wasn't included in some way. In everything, in work, in family, in relationships, in friendships, I always went to that question, why can't I have that? And as I was thinking about the concept of building a home within, I said, I genuinely don't believe that I can have it. I genuinely don't believe that that is achievable. So let me change the question. Because I refuse to live my life. I've lived almost 30 years of my life believing I can't have that. I refuse to live the rest of my life believing that I can't have that. I choose to live my life believing that that is out there and that I can have it. What do I need to do to go from not having it to having it so it's not why

can't I have that it's why don't I have that so what do I need to do to have that once the possibility is there you can work towards it you know we say this to ourselves in so many different ways. Oh, why does everybody walk away? Why does no one ever feel sad about me not being in their life? Like we say it to ourselves in so many ways that inherently implies that that whatever it is, is just impossible for us. Everyone else will have it, but we can't because our life up to this point has proven to us that we can't have it. And once you tell yourself, well, you know what? I didn't have it in the past, but I can, so I can work towards it. It's such a monumental shift in the way that you live your life.

Because if you're going out there firmly believing you'll never find people who will love you and value you as you are. Or that you will never find a career where you feel like you are being valued. Or that you can never have family dynamics that are healthy. And it's like a self-fulfilling prophecy. That's what you're going to live because that's what you believe. You will shut yourself off from every experience that shows a possibility. And you'll be attracted to all the familiar patterns in your life that show that cannot be achieved.

It's like running a race with no finish line because you're scared if you stop running that you're not getting anywhere, that you're doing something wrong. But as you're running, you're like, but what am I running for? It's like you're constantly breaking yourself down and depleting yourself while firmly believing there is no finish line i'm never going to get what i'm running for you know it really is powerful the other way it's powerful too i think can be slightly more mundane ways but is you know why can't i have that do i don't i have that and i all of a sudden i go okay well in order to have that it would need to be this and this and this and this. We oftentimes then go, oh, I don't want

to do all that. So fine. That's why it's not that I can't have it. It's that I'm choosing not to have it because I don't want to do all those different things. And again, this is less about self-love and more about things we want to accomplish in the world. But there's been plenty of things that I have realized like, oh, in order to do that, here's what I have to do. And then I go, oh, well, all right. In that case, I guess, you know. Yes. Then it moves from feeling like I'm not worthy to a choice like you've talked about.

It moves to a choice. The choice is I'm choosing not to extend myself in that way. Absolutely. And I also think that that's a place where you get responsibility, where you say, instead of falling victim to this will never happen. This hasn't happened yet this whatever you say, Oh, you know what, I know what I need to do to make this happen. But you know, the responsibility falls on me whether this happens or not. And if you choose not to do it, then you're like, that was fully my choice. I understand the consequences of it, you know.

So it's also self-accountability as well. But self-accountability is so much more beautiful than victimhood, is so much more beautiful than victimhood, than feeling stuck, than feeling like this thing that will never happen, that you firmly believe will never happen is controlling your life in some way or like stomping on you in some way. Yes. All of a sudden it's, yeah, it's a sense of responsibility. And you know what? So many times I know there is a great opportunity out there. And I tell myself, you know what? The amount of time and energy that this requires of me right now is just not something that I am willing to put into it. So instead of saying, oh, you know, I can't have that because it's just too far away and, you know, I don't deserve something like that.

You say, no, I'm choosing not to go for it. Like that's so much more like you know what you're doing as opposed to just life is happening to you. Let's make a quick tour through some of the other rooms in the house. We've sort of briefly hit the foundation, you know, self-acceptance, self-awareness. We've hit self-love a little bit. Again, there's so much more. We're scraping the surface of lots of things in your book, lots of practices. So let's talk about the room of forgiveness. Why is this an important room to have in our home? Forgiveness room was one of the hardest ones for me to write.

I went to a coffee shop and I started writing it and I just thought to myself, nope, you're not fully making that deep dive that you know you need to make. Because I wanted to talk about my journey with forgiveness, forgiving others and forgiving myself. And I just remember thinking, power I have over my own path, with all that the world has given me, do I have the right to say I'm still not fully healed from something? Do I have the right to say that person hurt me so much and I still have so much work to do to forgive. Like, was I not supposed to forgive everything before in order for me to move forward with my life? Because somehow that made me feel like maybe part of... I'm Jason Alexander.

And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you

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Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really, No Really. Yeah really. No, really. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really? No, really. And you can find it on the iHeartRadio app on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. The success that I achieved was, you know, to forgive or having something to forgive

or still having work to do with my own self-forgiveness. And I realized that I had tucked that away for a while saying, I'm fine without thinking of those experiences. I can live my life without them. And so that's when the powerful realization came to me that, you know, forgiveness is about letting go. It's not about fully closing the chapter on an experience and saying, I'm fully okay with it. I have come to terms with it. I've made peace with it. Now I can forget about it. Sometimes you have to forgive

someone every single day. And sometimes you have to forgive someone every single day. And sometimes you have to forgive them every five years, every 10 years. Forgiveness is not a one step thing that happens overnight. And that's it. Forgiveness is a constant process of choosing to no longer define yourself by what someone did to you, to no longer define yourself by what they did to you, told you about yourself. So the forgiveness room is all about redefining forgiveness as letting go and moving on and moving on with the understanding that that whatever it was that happened, you don't tuck it away. Because every time you think back to it, you think less of yourself for having gone through that. Yes, you know, such a big thing.

Yep. Yep. It comes with full understanding. I apologize for interrupting. I feel like once I start going, it's hard for me. We. Well, yeah, we're both that way. Go ahead. No, you can say what you were going to say. Well, I was just going to emphasize that point you made that that stood out to me in that chapter so much, which is one of the pillars of that chapter, which is that having someone or something to forgive is not shameful. And that, you know, I think we carry a lot of shame about the things that happen to us,

you know, and realizing that it's our responsibility to deal with, with the impact of that, because nobody else will, it's inside us, we got to do it. But there's nothing wrong with this, because it happened to us. Exactly. I would say that when you think of self forgiveness, when you think of self-forgiveness, that's at the heart of it. To say, I can look back at that experience and be compassionate towards the self that was sitting there and having that pain, you know, happen to me at the time and say, for example, if you are judging yourself for an experience of abuse that you went through, and you say, how could I have let that happen? I really knew at the time that I could say no, but I chose not to say no. And how could I, you know, there's so much judgment. There's an element

of like, I believe that that is harder than forgiving the person, by the way, judging ourselves for allowing something to happen. And it's just walking in with compassion and saying, and I'm getting goosebumps as I'm saying this, you are not asking for abuse. You are asking for love. You are not asking to be given pain. You are asking for connection, for understanding, for we're giving this person another chance to show you the best side of them that they could show you. Your intention going in wasn't to be hurt. It wasn't to be given something to later forgive. This is one of the most powerful strategies in Welcome Home. I say when you hear someone tell a story and walk in their shoes, well,

I say when you hear someone tell a story and walk in their shoes, well, walk in your own shoes. That's one of the strategies in Welcome Home. Walk in your own shoes. Go back to that person that you were when that pain was happening. And be compassionate towards yourself in that moment. Be understanding towards yourself in that moment. Be loving and caring and see the person that you were back then. If you knew everything that you know right now, based on going through that experience, you probably wouldn't have gone through it. But don't judge that version of you in the

past from the eyes of the person who knows everything that they know right now because you went through all of that. And at the very end of the forgiveness chapter, I wrote a poem like three days and I sat and wrote it down in literally two minutes. Like it just spilt out. And the poem, I don't have it fully memorized. It's long, but it's like, I wish I could go back to the exact moment before the moment I met you. And I go back and I say, I wish I could go back to every moment before every moment I said yes, when I should have said no. Every moment before every moment that I sought validation through your eyes before I saw it. And I list all those things. And then I say, And I list all those things and then I say, but I'm so grateful that I can't go back to every moment before every moment that, you know, I broke down to rise from the ashes as a phoenix that, you know, even I can't ignore that I've become this person. You have to stop wishing the pain that pushed you to a point where you have something to forgive. You have to stop wishing it away because in a way you're wishing the lessons

and the strength. And there is an element of saying, if I went through that, there must be something wrong with me. Reminds me of that phrase, I don't know who said it, but you've got to give up hope for a better past. Yeah. And the sort of work that is in your book, the sort of inner work, when you do that sort of inner work, my experience is that you start to see those moments that were difficult, that were painful, you start to see that they were the seeds of transformation. That only happens as you do the inner work. It doesn't mean you look back necessarily and you're like oh i'm glad that happened it's not that but it's an understanding that through that i've become who i am and if you do the inner work and you suddenly accept yourself and love yourself as you are

then my experience is regret for me sort of vanishes in that moment because I'm like, oh, I'm who I want to be. Okay, great. So all that took me to get here. And so it allows me to accept, but that only comes from doing the sort of deep inner work that your book talks about. At the end of the day, if there's anything I want any person who reads Welcome Home to walk away with, it's the moment you catch yourself seeking any kind of relief through anything outside of you or anyone outside of you. For example, saying, well, if that didn't happen in the past, I wouldn't be where I am right now. Like you are abandoning yourself when you do that because you're saying the relief is in something that happened in the past having not happened in the past or the relief is in this person seeing that

they hurt me and apologizing or the relief is anytime you find yourself finding your healing in a place where it does not exist remember to come come back to yourself. And remember that it is a lot harder to discover who you are than it is to say, I wish that never happened. Because again, the power is outside of you. And you say, well, I can't erase what happened. So I'm going to continue living in my life, my life in a way that's a response to that and say, well, that happened to me, so I have the right to be upset and angry. You are not living your life that way. It is the you that something happened to that's living life. something happen to that's living life. So always bring the question back to yourself in a moment where it's so interesting that you and I are doing this interview today because there's a page in Welcome Home where I describe going through an experience where I'm waiting for a text message

and I'm waiting for that like relief of getting a text message and or a call and then I talk about this inner dialogue that I had like, what is a text message going to tell me about myself? What is a call going to tell me about myself? What is someone saying something to me going to tell me about myself? Why is there so much relief in that? Why is this person betraying the love that I gave them by not reciprocating it to me the way that I believe it needs to be reciprocated? And then I had this massive realization. He is not betraying you. You are betraying you because you are abandoning yourself to seek shelter in someone else. You're seeking relief outside of you. Do you really need a text

message, a call, an email, a job, any kind of indication that you're enough? Do you really need any of that for you to be able to tell yourself that you deserve it all? No, you don't. So stop laying the blame on others and on life for betraying this unsigned contract that no one knows about but you. And say those things to yourself on your own. You know, it is so much harder to say that to ourselves. home 99% of them are the self-love contract that I signed at the end of the self-love chapter had me in tears for days. Every message I'm getting is about someone realizing that they are in desperate need of themselves, no one else and nothing else. That's beautiful. We're nearing the end of our time and I want to hit what was

one of my favorite chapters, although I love them all, which is the clarity chapter. Yes. You know, say the purpose of the clarity room is to get to see yourself clearly, you will remove the layers that stand in the way of you seeing yourself. And I'm a big fan of clarity, because I've become so aware of and so convinced of all the filters that we see the world through and we see ourselves through. And so any sort of ability to get a little bit more clarity, I feel like every bit of that is a little bit more freedom. And you've got some wonderful exercises in that chapter. I'm wondering if you could share maybe what a couple of your key takeaways or key exercises or whatever you want to share

about that chapter. Yes, I actually have welcome home right here. The first thing that came to mind when you were asking me about those strategies is the blank canvas mirror, because that, my goodness, if you take the time to actually do this activity, it's life-changing. And I'm not just saying it because I wrote about it. I'm saying it because I know the kind of power it has. You live your life in a way that reflects everything that you've been taught to believe was right and wrong. Everything you've been taught to believe you had to do and you didn't have to do. Everything that you've been taught to believe that if you do this, something must be wrong with you. And if you do this, you're a great person. You have acquired

identities and identified with certain identities based on all of that. So imagine that you have a blank canvas and write out exactly what your life looks like right now, how you live your life, what you believe, how you dress, everything. Write it all out and then go to each one of those and ask yourself, if I were to choose this for myself, would I choose it? That's one of the most powerful things you can do. Because going back to the beginning of our interview, when I told you like, the real work is in getting to a place where you understand that you get to choose how to live your life. And most of us don't live our life by choice. We convince ourselves that we choose. What we're doing is we are saying, I choose to do what someone else has told me is the right thing to do.

That must mean I am right. Not as in I am right, like I'm right, as in like that there's nothing wrong with me. So that's one of the activities in the clarity room that I get people to do. And then I say, okay, so erase all of it. And what would your life look like if you chose everything in it? I guarantee you, whoever does this activity, probably 90% of your life is not being lived the way that you would choose to live it. But that opens your eyes to the level of shame or judgment

or lack of genuine belief that you have the power over your life that's standing in the way of you saying, you know what? I don't want to do that. I don't believe that. I don't want to live by that. Because so many people, they know what they're not okay with in their life, okay with in their life, but they feel trapped. They can't not do it because, well, what are they going to think of me? What is this person going to, what if I displease? No, I can't do that. So, and that's like a different kind of prison to know that you are not fully happy with the way that you're doing something in your life or living part of your life but telling yourself but I can't change it because if I do then I lose the love or respect or whatever it is from that person and that person and that person and if I lose that

I can't live with myself so that's one of the most powerful strategies in that room. And the other one is the unveiling mirror. So I did talk about unveiling in the clarity room. And one of the practically unveiling stories in my life was when I took the hijab off and everything. But the way I refer to it in that room is when you unveil the layers around your true self. So I say, if you were to look in the mirror and look at yourself, and this is more in a figurative kind of way, if you were to look at the mirror and try to see yourself, if you haven't taken a hard look at yourself your whole life or in a long time, so say you got married and you got lost in that marriage because now it's all based on how that other person sees you or whatever, there is a blur that's standing in the way.

It's like a mirror that hasn't been cleaned in years and you're trying to look at yourself through it. You will not be able to and that blur is made of all that everyone believes about you, all the words that you heard about yourself. So when you look at yourself, you're not seeing yourself. You are seeing all of those messages that the world around you and you yourself in the way that you've lived and reacted and behaved based on those things have spoken to yourself. So in order for you to be able to fully see yourself, you need to clean that blur. And cleaning that blur requires, hmm, is this thing that I see in front of me, did it stem from me, like actually from my authentic self? Or did it stem from what someone told me

about myself? And you begin to erase everything that didn't genuinely stem from you. And then you're able to see yourself. You're beautiful and you're not so beautiful self. You start to just genuinely see who you are. The two sides that we talked about at the beginning of the interview. You see everything. And once you do, through your own eyes, that's where your choice is important. That's where saying, how do I practically, like now that I know who I am, what's next? Now that I'm clear on who I am as a person and how I would like to be living my life, what identities I choose to identify with and all that, what do I do? I say, do it through action. So if you have spent your life, you know, seeking

love in places outside of you, like wanting other people to love you, well, in any moment where you find yourself doing that, like genuinely stop yourself. That's how you live your life based on this clear image of yourself that you've gotten. It's not just like, I'm going to build a home within and I am my own home. Okay. But show yourself through action that you are your own home, that the person that you've come to terms with that this is actually who I am is way more important in terms of making decisions for yourself that have to do with your worthiness and whether you're not good enough or good enough or whatever. Your voice when it comes to that is a lot more powerful than others. So choose how to speak to yourself. Because if you speak to yourself in a negative voice, that affects you. That's more powerful than someone else speaking to you badly. So it's like, it's the sense of responsibility once you recognize that you have more power over your

life than others, not only to shut out or draw boundaries with the people around you who speak to you negatively or whatever, but also with yourself as well. So in a way, once you have that clarity on yourself, you understand how amazing it can be and you understand how detrimental it can be. I feel like this has come full circle because this is how we started the interview. So like you can be your biggest ally, the best friend that you can have, and you can be the reason that your life goes to detriment because you are the most powerful one in this life of yours. Well, I think that is a beautiful place to wrap up. You and I are going to continue in the post-show conversation. I want to ask you a little bit about determining authentic self

because that word is used in a lot of different ways. So I want to explore that with you. And we may wander into another room or two, we might wander into the surrender room, we might even head out to the dream garden. But listeners, if you'd like access to the post show conversation, ad free episodes, a show I do called teaching song and a poem each week and the joy of supporting something you care about, you can go to oneufeed.net slash join. Nezha, thank you so much for coming on. This has been a really fun and meaningful conversation for me. Thank you for having me. And I thoroughly enjoyed discussing everything. This is like, this is what I would do regardless. So it feels extremely

natural. So I really enjoyed this. Thank you. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community with this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members-only benefits. It's our way of saying thank you for your support. Now, we are so grateful for the members of our community. We wouldn't be able to do what we do without their support, and we don't take a single dollar for granted. To learn more, make a donation at any level, and become a member of the One You Feed community, go to oneyoufeed.net slash join. The One You Feed podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting the show.