The School of Greatness - Jameela Jamil: REVEALS the TRUTH about FAME, Cancel Culture & Learning to LOVE Yourself

Episode Date: September 13, 2023

Today we have a truly remarkable guest, Jameela Jamil, who is not only a talented actress but also a passionate advocate for self-love, body positivity, and mental health. Stay tuned for this powerful conversation on finding self-love and how to channel your own voice to be a force for positive change in the world!In 2018, Jameela launched a movement and allyship platform called I Weigh—a platform and community of change makers who come together to share ideas, experiences and ultimately mobilize activism; exploring social issues that stem from mental health to climate change to the representation of marginalized groups. http://iweighcommunity.com/In this episode you will learn,The key principles behind cultivating self-love and body positivity, as Jameela Jamil shares her personal journey and insights.Effective strategies for harnessing your own voice and using it as a powerful tool for promoting positive change in your life and the world.Valuable insights into the importance of mental health and how to prioritize it in your daily life, drawing inspiration from Jameela's advocacy.The role of authenticity in personal growth and learn how embracing your true self can lead to a more fulfilling and purpose-driven life.Real-life stories and experiences from Jameela Jamil that illustrate the transformative power of self-love and self-acceptance, inspiring you to embark on your own journey towards self-discovery and empowerment.For more information go to www.lewishowes.com/1499For more Greatness text PODCAST to [phone]More SOG episodes on Radical Self Love & Acceptance:Jason Derulo – https://link.chtbl.com/1460-podKaramo Brown – https://link.chtbl.com/1457-podPokimane – https://link.chtbl.com/1443-pod

My friend, I am such a big believer that your mindset is everything. It can really dictate if your life has meaning, has value, and you feel fulfilled, or if you feel exhausted, drained, and like you're never going to be enough. Our brand new book, The Greatness Mindset, just hit the New York Times bestseller back to back weeks. And I'm so excited to hear from so many of you who've bought the book, who've read it and finished it already, and are getting incredible results from the lessons in the book. If you haven't got a copy yet, you'll learn how to build a plan for greatness through powerful

exercises and toolkits designed to propel your life forward. This is the book I wish I had when I was 20, struggling, trying to figure out life. 10 years ago, at 30, trying to figure out transitions in my life and the book I'm glad I have today for myself. Make sure to get a copy at lewishouse.com slash 2023 mindset to get your copy today. Again lewishouse.com slash 2023 mindset to get a copy today. Also, the book is on Audible now so you can get it on audiobook as well. And don't forget to follow the show so you never miss an episode. We are all suffering under the same people, and we need to come together in this fight. Otherwise, nothing's going to change for

anyone, and people are just going to keep on dying. And if we don't believe in change, and if we do not move for actual change, then nothing's going to happen. We are not going to open or change anyone's mind and we are not going to secure our freedoms. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness.

Very excited about our guest. We have the inspiring Jamila Jamil in the house. Thank you so much for coming back. Very excited about this. You've given me a jolt of energy just seeing you. It's been a few years since I've seen you. We were talking about how I met you, I think, around eight to ten years ago. Uh-huh.

When both of us were kind of just starting in our own journeys. Yeah. You've exploded on TV and multiple podcasts and, you know, movies and all these different things. You continue to explode. As have you. In a positive way. But you've also gone through a number of different journeys. Since when I first met you,

when you just came off of a BBC radio show to now being a star on a TV show, hosting shows, hosting podcasts, to being all for advocacy in a number of ways and communicating in a certain way to talking about body shaming and mental health to now kind of transitioning into doing things in a different way.

And it's been interesting and inspiring and funny at times and unique to see how you've evolved, how you communicate, how you create content, the success you've made and everything. But when we were just talking off camera, you were talking about how there's some big transitions and changes that are happening, it sounds like. What is the biggest thing that has changed for you in the last few years? I think in the last few years, especially during the pandemic, I watched the way that, you know, I'm a liberal and I exist within social justice circles and I have been a loud member of those circles.

Can I swear on this? Sure. Yeah. Loud. Loud meaning what? Like on social media? Yeah. Loud, direct, forceful, sometimes with a pitchfork in hand, especially back in like 2018. direct, forceful, sometimes with a pitchfork in hand, especially back in like 2018. And I have noticed our community move towards a place that doesn't resonate with me at all. And I feel as though I have some sort of responsibility as to being a part of the wave that created this.

But it feels like Frankensteinstein where I had no idea what it was going to become I thought we were fighting for justice I thought we were boycotting the bad guy and that we were all in this together and what I have seen is both our groups picking each other apart not really dealing with much bigger issues because we're so busy holding each other to these outrageously unattainable standards of moral perfection but also it's become so punitive and for a group that that talks so much about inclusivity and diversity we don't have a lot of inclusion or diversity of thought anymore and that's just not what i want it's not I signed up for. And it's not my way of being like, this is me leaving the liberals. I than always striving for immediate perfection,

then nothing's going to happen. We are not going to open or change anyone's mind. And we are not going to secure our freedoms. And we are seeing in broad daylight more and more rights being taken away as we continue to ostracize the people that we most need to reach across to. And I have not always done the best job in reaching across to those people but for the past few years i have been imperfectly working towards you know chiseling down my very sharp tongue and trying to become more non-violent in my communication so that we can all come together because we're so much more in common than we have in differences. And most of our differences come from places of fear or come from places of completely different information we're receiving.

All of our opinions are just a product of the information that we receive. And we know now that social media algorithms are manipulating our feeds to see more of what we're already what we've even just looked on just out of curiosity has now become our full feed and so we're seeing two completely different versions of the same events of the same people of the same actions and then because we don't realize that we're seeing two opposing sides of each story we think the other group is stupid and it's so sad because most of us are facing the main things like the the problems with climate which i know some people don't believe in but it's getting hot as a rattle so something's happening yeah uh we We are seeing the housing crisis, the homelessness crisis, the healthcare crisis in this country, the food crisis,

the big sugar crisis. We have all of these terrible, we have this terrible minority of people who get to control the masses and who none of us come together and organise against and hold accountable because we're all so busy staring at and fighting each other. And that feels awfully convenient and quite scary because that means the actual bad guy who's got none of our best interests,

whether you are right, left, independent, whatever, we are all suffering under the same people and we need to come together in this fight. Otherwise, nothing's going to change for anyone and people are just going to keep on dying and getting sick and becoming unhappier and suicides are going to continue to anyone. And people are just going to keep on dying and getting sick and becoming unhappier. And suicides are going to continue to rise. This is not my paranoia.

We have hard statistics that prove that this country is falling apart. And I'm not like one to I don't like the rise in just on America because I've been around the world and I've seen that there's a lot of things that they do wrong and they're not perfect but there's also a lot of things that they do right a lot of freedoms that people have here but they don't have in many countries around the world a lot more opportunity here than there is anywhere so I don't think shitting on America is the right way forward I think it's just about identifying why is everyone so angry and so sad? And how do we figure out what we have in common here and come together and work this out as a nation? This is inspiring. You just gave me a coffee, so I'm on one. I didn't expect this incredibly inspiring opening dialogue, but that was amazing. And I'm curious, you just said there's a lot of people are angry. Why do you think you were so angry four or five years ago when you were marching with a pitchfork in certain areas and using a sharp tongue, like you mentioned, in certain ways and fighting in a certain style?

Why were you so angry? And also, why do you think so many people are angry today? I think, first of all, women weren't really given the mic until about 2016, right? We, our problems were dismissed or laughed at, and we were treated appallingly in the most mainstream of arenas. And so in 2015, 2016, Me Too happened, and suddenly the mic was pointed at those of us who were willing to speak and was like what do you have to say now we didn't have any practice we hadn't been doing this we weren't all like orators you know what i mean like i was a billboard 100 dj radio dj so just

count down pop songs and now i was being asked for my opinion on huge social political infrastructures. And it felt incredibly callous to disregard that opportunity if I knew that I had the strength and at least some of the words to speak. But we were not, it's not even out of practice. This had never happened before. And so I think we were frustrated. We were impatient. We were exhausted. We were angry we

had all like generations of stored up anger not just for ourselves for our mothers our grandmothers and you know great grandmothers this has just gone on for so long and so it just all came out at once and it all came out in a place of rage and I think you see that with a lot of minorities who speak out when they start out start speaking out it's with so much aggression and passion because they've been waiting for such a long time to speak but it doesn't all come out in the most constructive way at first because we're only human and so we're fallible and we're not perfect at communicating ourselves we don't have training for this I was never taught how to speak on these massive issues I left school 16. I just knew that the one thing I had that a lot of my peers didn't have

is a complete disregard for other people to like me. You didn't care if people liked you. Didn't give a shit. Still don't give a shit. Not interested in being popular. I was so unpopular at school that it sort of set me up for a life of not being popular. And I'm amazed I have as many lovely,

wonderful friends as I have now. But outside of those friends, I have as many lovely wonderful friends as I have now but outside of those friends I have no interest in pleasing people or or making them like me or being popular or being approved of or even being believed really I have no interest I don't know these people and so it doesn't matter it doesn't matter what I think of them to it doesn't affect their lives it doesn't have to affect my life as to what they think of me. And so because I knew that I was, for some reason, neurologically separated from that, I had this kind of superpower to be able to take all the bullets that a lot of other people can't take. we are socialized especially as women especially as brown women

To be obedient and to be liked and for someone to want to marry us one day Correct and for whatever reason for whatever I'm missing socially whatever. I'm socially inept at whatever cues. I can't read or disregard It meant that I I just felt ready. I felt ready for the fight. I wasn't ready for the fight. You weren't ready. Because I didn't know what this was gonna become.

I didn't think anyone was gonna listen to me when I started speaking. I didn't think I was gonna go viral. This wasn't planned. I was advised by everyone not to say anything at all whatsoever, because it would hurt my career. And it certainly did at times. It did?

Yeah, of course. I'm fine now but it it just took off and by the time i first met you like not first met you and by the time i first came on this podcast it was i think it was like 2019 i was flying at a height at an altitude that i could barely breathe at right where i had been leveraged by the industry, put on this pedestal that I knew was a trap door and I was being hyperbolized and everyone was, you know, like world leaders were coming up to me or like getting my number and communicating and trying to get me across all their different causes. I was speaking

at the UN, I was on every single podcast, I was on every single magazine cover. Every panel. Time magazine named me as one of the 25 most influential people. I was on the cover of British Vogue alongside Greta Thunberg and Jane Fodder. I didn't know what the f*** was going on. And people were like, she's the feminist hero we need. And as soon as that came out, I was like, that's it. This is, that's the end.

Like, it's the, that moment you get that sickening feeling in your stomach before when you're at the top of the rollercoaster before you just go all the way down, you know, you're about to just plummet and I think the tension that I had when I would bump into you or when I was on your podcast when I was on any one's podcast because I had this defensiveness and knowing that this this was gonna podcast is because I had this defensiveness and knowing that this this was gonna blow up in my face really and I wasn't congratulating myself I was constantly saying from the beginning like I'm a feminist in progress I left school at 16 don't listen to me about everything I'm just figuring this out I want to be a vessel of learning publicly but the headlines would write so confidently about me that people mistook that for my confidence

as if i think i'm the feminist hero the world needs people put you on a pedestal as yeah and it's a chosen one always a trap door and it is a well-oiled system of specifically putting women on that kind of pedestal so high up that it's an unsurvivable fall a lot of the time and god do we love to watch a woman fall my god do we enjoy the like schadenfreude or however you pronounce that word like of of watching a woman who has been presented as being really full of herself and really like proud of herself and very opinionated watching her be humbled god love, I would love to understand the sociological or anthropological reasoning behind why as a society, women very much so included, live to watch the humbling of a woman. Other women.

Other women. Yeah. Why do women love to watch other women who are successful fall rather than watch them rise? I don't think it's all women. I just think it includes women. I love to watch a woman rise. I live for it. But I don't see other women as my competition. I see myself as completely unique.

I still think I'm a piece of shit, but I am a unique piece of shit. I am my own piece of shit. No one can be a piece of shit like me. And that's very comforting. But I don't see us in lanes lanes i just see us as individual like stars you know there's just infinite room for all of us i like that a lot of women competitive most women or i can't say for most women but i would say that most women have at some point in their formative years been it's been ingrained in them to see other women as competition really Really? Why? Yeah, for marriage, for the attention of the opposing gender,

or we've been taught that there's a finite amount of space in the workplace or a finite amount of space in the social circle. It's like, well, there can only be one. You see it when there's like one amazing female rapper and then another female rapper rises up and the public and the media are massively instrumental in trying to turn these two women against each other pit these two women against each other we don't do it with male rappers in the same way we maybe did at the very beginning

when there was more of a scarcity but we have so many extraordinary talented women who can do this same thing in very different ways and we insist on trying to get them to rip each other down so that we don't have to wow but it's because we've created a scarcity mindset that so many women have that there's not enough space and there is enough space. And it's so vital that we recognize this finally so that we stop being part of tearing each other down because the world is hard enough for us. We do not need to make it harder for each other. And it doesn't mean we can't criticize each other. I criticize women. I'm very open to being criticized myself.

It's just about making sure that when we're criticizing, we're doing it actually constructively and not from a place of, I need you to be lower than me for me to feel taller than you. When did you realize your approach? Because you mentioned once they put you on the cover of everything and once they said you're the you know the next this and the greatest that it sounds like you realize

oh it's it can only go down from here at some point or there's i knew it was like a ticking time bomb before everything started to go up and when you put someone on a pedestal what happens well i mean what happens is normally very powerful people within media start orchestrating that person's demise. Really? Yeah. And we saw it with Anne Hathaway, Jennifer Lawrence, Princess Diana, Meghan Markle, all these different people. It's like it's a well-orchestrated, a well-oiled machine of an orchestrated attack. They put them up there, though.

Yeah. And then they take them down. Yeah. Jennifer Lawrence, everyone was down. Yeah, with Jennifer Lawrence, everyone was like, oh, she's so relatable, she's so relatable. And then after a while, the same exact behavior was,

why is she trying to be so relatable all the time? This feels very forced. I think she faked falling over. Let's bring her down. She's a bit arrogant. She's gotten a bit ahead of herself. This was like a 22-year-old,

23-year-old woman just barely out of her teens. It was really mad to watch. Same thing with Anne Hathaway. She was just enjoying... Life. Life and enjoying having some success. And she, you know, had an Oscar speech

that seemed to turn people against her and make them feel completely comfortable, completely dehumanizing her. But anyway, listen, I think I'm slightly different to these women in that I've been poking the hornet's nest from straight out the gate. They weren't doing that from't doing that they were much more innocent bystanders than I was I made it very easy for everyone because because I have a loose opinion you made it easy

for everyone but also at the same time doesn't justify it but right but also at the same time people weren't as willing to communicate back because they didn't want to be looked at as aggressive or whatever maybe also what do you mean I think people well some people were willing to communicate back because they didn't want to be looked at as aggressive or whatever, maybe also. What do you mean? I think people were, well, some people were willing to like speak back, but then other people were like, okay, I can't say anything because then I'm going to get in trouble if they had a separate opinion from you. Right. No, people would debate with me and argue with me all the time. Yeah. Yeah. We just got into very toothy debates where both of us spoke to each other in a bad way.

Oh, really? Yeah. And my problem is the fact that I, listen, I don't believe in always being the bigger person. I believe sometimes in being the smaller person because I'm a very petty woman. Be the last one to say something. Yeah. I will fight you to death. Yeah.

But I regret, I regret returning the behavior of some of the people who treated me badly. I regret it immensely. Like I was spoken to in a very inhumane and disgusting way by certain men with big platforms. And I regret giving in to the calm desire to own them and humiliate them back publicly. Interesting. And it's a natural desire because it doesn't feel fair to let someone get away with that kind of behavior. Absolutely not.

But ultimately, when you resort to their same behavior and sometimes you use even fouler language, which I'm prone to do because I'm English, I'm very rude, all you do is you start to look as bad as then sometimes you use even fouler language which i'm prone to do because i'm english i'm very rude um all you do is you start to look as bad as then and you start to look as ungracious and ill-educated as they do and you look like you don't have a better answer and i did have a better answer i was just getting into a very like base part of myself just my little cave woman right inside you know over the head but but actually there were smarter and better ways to reason with those people because it wasn't

really about those people it was about the people who were watching this conversation between two large media figures and it's about how do i appeal to the people who follow that person it's not going to be by ridiculing him because they follow him. So if I ridicule him, they consider me ridiculing them. And I just, I wasn't ready. I didn't know any of this was coming. It's so hard to recognize this in the moment. It's so hard to zoom out.

No one tells you to. We were in such a culture of like, get him on both sides you know and the audience it became like the gladiator ring like twitter became like a gladiator ring and i i just didn't i didn't understand what i was participating in and the pandemic kind of brought a stillness i mean it brought mania online but it brought me a stillness to kind of step back and recognize that like this is the way that people are talking to each other now. And the lack of humanity with which we are treating each other in a time where we should have ultimate humanity because we're in a global crisis is terrifying. global crisis is terrifying and i don't want to be a part of of this divide because i can see what kind of horror we are leading up to with an election and regardless of who you support politically if you're watching this it doesn't change the fact that the time leading up to that

election and the time around that election are going to be societally fraught and people are going to be fighting and spitting each other in the streets it's going to become violent and scary that's not a society any of us want so we all have a social responsibility right now to look at that and go how do we all create a more peaceful time because the person with different opinions or political beliefs or political backgrounds is not necessarily always your enemy. They're just afraid. They've been, on whatever side, felt so much misinformation and so much bias and so much rhetoric to see you, whoever you are, as the enemy. They're just responding to a kind of fight or flight. We're not each other the enemy. They're just responding to a kind of fight or flight. We're not each other's enemy. There's obviously the odd outlier who's just evil and just wants to hurt other people.

But those are the loud, tiny minority of human beings. Most of us just want to be safe, fed. We want health care. We want our loved ones to be okay. And we don't want to be lonely. But we have never been lonelier. As a society, to be lonely. But we have never been lonelier. As a society, as a global society, people have never been lonelier. These are the scariest loneliness statistics. I think loneliness has now been classed as one of the biggest killers in the world. Like more so even than I think some things to do with like alcohol and cigarettes. Loneliness is a killer. So of course we're lonely because we don't feel like we can be our true selves we

don't feel like we can ask important questions we don't feel like we can speak openly uh we don't feel like we can be friends with people who have opposing opinions we don't feel like we can talk to colleagues who have opposing opinions we don't feel like we can talk to our grandmother who was raised in a completely different generation right like this is not at all what I wanted. I don't want this to be the world that my friends' children grow up in. And so I have a responsibility now to, and I've been doing this for a few years on my podcast, is encouraging my audience who probably followed me

for the fact that I'm this warrior princess. Right. Now you've got to persuade them differently. Encourage them towards grace. Interesting. Understanding. And not disposing of each other as fast as they are. I was telling you before we were talking about this,

this is inspiring me hearing you say this, because I'm all for justice, fairness, people being heard and communicating effectively and making sure that we're improving everywhere. I'm all for it. But it's sometimes when it's communicating in a way that is attacking, I'm like, I don't know if someone has ever screamed at me and I've been able to listen to them from football coaches to parents to ex-girlfriends. I don't know if I've ever been able to listen to them from football coaches to parents to ex-girlfriends. I don't know if I've ever been able to sit there calmly and say, I hear you. And I'm really, I'm willing to listen more and I want to make a change.

It's always like, I need to protect myself. I need to defend myself. You're crazy. Or whenever I was feeling in the time of something coming at me or feeling guilty, shamed, and not enough when I'm being yelled at from my perspective. And I just don't know how that's going to help people feel included in a conversation when they're getting yelled at or made wrong. I mean, from the very beginning of my advocacy, I always was against like the frivolity of cancel culture in that I always said that we can't demotivate people from improving by telling them they can never come back right that i was consistent on from the start i was never trying to cancel anyone i was just trying to tell people to stop doing what they were doing but i just did it with like incredibly bad language um but i never intended for anyone to have everything

taken away from them probably harvey weinstein who can go himself but um but everyone else who just said the wrong thing or thought the wrong thing or you know went against group think those are the people that are just like let's hear them out and I hope that they can come back better and stronger and they can atone and then we re-welcome them back otherwise how do you motivate anyone to change why would we right why would we like we're all like we haven't evolved that much in the last 2,000 years. We still can't tell the difference between a mean tweet and a saber-toothed tiger. We aren't these utopian moral beings who can just keep taking endless amounts of lashings with no hope of return and keep doing the work. The work is hard. It is. Whatever it is that makes you an embittered or angry or fearful person is probably some sort of trauma, right? I've been an a**hole before.

And that wasn't for no reason. That didn't come out of nowhere. I was abused. I didn't deal with my abuse. I took my abuse out on the wrong target. That's most of us. Yeah. And I think because I've also been a troll,

and I've been an a** an asshole and I've been a misogynist in the past, because I've watched my own transition, I have such belief in people because I'm such a not extraordinary person. So if I can change, I really believe in people. Wow. And I feel as though on the left and amongst liberals and in social justice, hope and belief in people is dying. Wow. Really? Yes.

What is the left? And that's why we disregard people and dispose of them because they're just like they're never going to change. And that comes from, by the way, just being disappointed again and again and again. I'm not blaming them for that. But that's not going to get us anywhere. And it's not true what is the point of activism which is the work of change if you don't think people or systems can actually change and they can't change with only ostracization and bullying and humiliation and yeah i mean that's a big part of what ostracization is what ostracization is like canceling has got so many

different iterations as to what it is for so many people people go well louis ck is not canceled he's still selling out madison square gardens uh clementine morrigan talks a lot about this like what cancel culture actually is which is like taking everything away from someone including the fact that their own friends and family and colleagues decide to distance themselves from that person they become completely it's like putting a person in kind of social solitary confinement, which is the cruelest thing you can do to someone. Much crueler than taking away their awards. It's a social contagion.

And I've never learned from being screamed at. I've never learned from being bullied or ostracized. I might be fear mongered into changing the way I act, but it doesn't change my heart. No. If anything, it might make you more upset and- Maybe it might. Yeah, if I get dehumanized.

I have no hope in the world. Yeah. Yeah. No one accepts me or is willing to listen to me, then screw the world. Yeah. We see that with a lot of people. It's like we see that with people who go into prison and come out more violent and more dangerous.

It's like you dehumanize people, then what is their motivation to become more humane like where are they supposed to be getting that from you can't just like withdraw withdraw withdraw and never deposit any grace never deposit any humanity and expect that person to change right and so you know i think i i myself have um been ostracized and, you know, like kind of after the top of the roller coaster, him crashing down in like 2020 with a bunch of just nonsense that was said about me. Like I knew that I was going to probably get cancelled

for something that I would say because I, you know, say the wrong thing sometimes and I allow space for my infallibility. What I didn't expect is that things that weren't true would be used to take me down oh that's how it always is well that's that's how it always is that's what tends to happen you're always like at least talk about the facts and bring me down with that but i was going after like big industries i was going after the diet industry and the diet industry funds the media industry and i was going after the media i was going after like huge figures of

the media so it was bound to be that it's like coordinated effort would just come at me all at once and it's not to say that I had not made mistakes it's not say I hadn't left myself open to criticism because I had and I welcome it but the things are so egregious that I was like wow you just can't kill it kill women anymore we used to be able to just kill them when they were annoying or a problem. So now you just have to kill their credibility. You have to kill their reputation. You have to overexpose them.

You have to make people irritated with them. Two people disagree with their tweet. You call it a backlash and a headline. Even though there's a multitude of people, the majority of people are agreeing with them. Being inside of that swirling media cancellation mess was fascinating because i was like this is how it works and after that i couldn't unsee it and then i started to look back at all these women who'd gone through the same thing and i was like

it did all happen at once out of nowhere and so now i feel very protective over those women but but also so what was the moment being screamed at by people didn't make me feel more empathetic right it didn't make me feel like i wanted to help more it made me want to disappear and kill myself interesting this is when this was 2020 really yeah i wanted to kill myself wow i had to be put on medications that i wouldn't kill myself it was very serious I had a six month nervous breakdown after that and I was like

why do I want to be responsible for making anyone else feel like this not that I'd ever tried because I was not pro-council budget but I definitely called people out publicly in ways that sometimes I still do when I'm working on it but because I want to find a balance

between holding very powerful people accountable, but also not just taking a on their talks. Right, right, not just attacking and screaming. I want to do it in a more intelligent and thoughtful and relatable way. But going through all of that, realizing that like, this is not how we teach anyone anything. And just the mess and seeing how many of the people that were uh enjoying my downfall were liberals or were my own or were the very people that i've been fighting for and were women they

were enjoying watching you fall yeah and participating in it participating on social media or social media behind the scenes with friends or? Because I think like, I think I probably wasn't adhering to the social contract because I am opinionated. I have an opinion on everything. So do most of us. I didn't understand. Hey, don't give your opinion all the time about everything. I just don't really chat it.

I've never understood my position. I've never understood. Like fame happened so fast for me. Both times it happened in like England and the US that you can't grasp it you're just in your house I'm not a Jonas brother who's going out and like people are

chasing me down the street I just feel like me I still live with my flatmates who I've known since I was 18 you know so I couldn't understand that I'm

I couldn't really understand that my position has changed stop just chatting to everyone as if you can because everything you say becomes a headline I just just didn't realize and then by the time i did it was too late wow and it is what it is but now i've overcome the trauma of that and now i i feel very grateful for it because it has given me a clarity that and the pandemic and watching the horror of the way that everyone behaved on all

political sides has given me real motivation to now spend the rest of my life working on bringing people back together wow that's inspiring i'm laughing because i just wasn't sure where you were at in your life personally but to hear this really inspires me and what sounds to me and what I'm hearing you say is for many years you were calling people out on out and in out and in you were you were you were speaking out about certain people and now what I'm hearing is what I'm hearing you say is you're trying to call people up to something greater of what's possible for them in a more thoughtful, inclusive way. Calling people up and calling people together.

Yes. It's like we are struggling with so much bigger than the stuff that we're fighting about right now. It is happening imminently. The healthcare crisis is imminent. The homelessness crisis is here. It is happening imminently. The healthcare crisis is imminent. The homelessness crisis is here. It's arrived. We're fighting about things that might happen 10, 20 years from now. And we need to be talking about what's happening now, what's happening, what's going wrong with the water in this country, the hormones in the food, big ship, like all these different things

that are killing people now. I just want us to, I just want us to come together. You are aware of and involved in so many different causes and things around society. And there are probably a lot of people watching or listening who are angry about something in the world, whether it's in their own community or around healthcare or around fairness, equality, reproductive rights, whatever it might be, financial inequality, all these different things. A lot of people are angry about something. And what I see is a lot of people

who are angry about that thing want it to change now, like you talked about, like it's got to change now, which is really hard for big things to change overnight. But how can people who are upset, frustrated, worn out, exhausted, and feel like it's just so unfair, certain elements of whatever system they're frustrated with, how can they, if you can only share one message with them on how to really be effective on making a change and the thing that matters to them most, what would you say to those individuals? Well, first thing you need to do is identify that that's a cultural pattern in our generation, right? We want a thousand channels. We want a

thousand shows to be able to stream at the same time. We want to be able to have 600 different people on a menu that we can swipe through who we're going to go on a date with tonight. We have Amazon Prime. It delivers today. We have, you know what I mean? We don't do slow weight loss or weight gain anymore. It's like, where are the shortcuts? It's a generation taught to look for shortcuts, to look for a quick fix, to look for instant gratification. And so recognizing that as a cultural phenomenon that's never existed before because pre-technology we didn't have access to it, I'm sure the inclination was always there. It's never good for you. We have too much content, we are overstimulated, we're spending too much time on screens, we're

seeing mental health issues. We have too many dating options, too many apps apps people are lonelier than they've ever been they're having less sex than they've ever had the birth rate i guess is declining like all kinds of things are going wrong from having too many options too much convenience right we are seeing people's health decline because of fast food and so when we look at people losing weight with these extreme measures, be it pills, injections, like very, very severe diets that are unsustainable, 5% of which work, 95% of which fail. Those aren't good for people. They can lead to eating disorders or heart problems, all kinds of different health issues if you're taking substances to speed up your weight loss i was talking in um i was talking in the senate like not long ago about the fact that in in muscle build products that are predominantly uh targeting boys in a lot of them they're finding viagra and heavy metals all those quick fix quick fix quick fix There's no such thing as a quick fix. Nothing that has ever been done at speed can ever work. It always causes mess, chaos and harm. So while I understand

wanting anything fast, patience and discipline are two things that are no longer encouraged in our society. We don't even allow for human beings to grow and change anymore. We expect them to instantly be updated with all of the perfect opinions that are constantly changing all of the time. So we have to take a step back and look at the fact that we are a sick society. Wow.

Mentally, physically, socially. And so once we're realistic about the fact that the quick fix doesn't work, I think we're able to return to, okay, what does incremental change look like? The only kind of change that ever lasts, incremental change. It's kind of slow change. It's slow change. It's slow bit by bit by bit by bit. And that allows you to have time to be careful. It allows you to have time to consider. It allows you to have time to change your mind.

Strategize, test it out, see how this feels. My rise to fame way too fast. I had no idea what the fuck was going on. I felt like I was in the middle of a tornado. I didn't have time to look at myself or look at the way that I was coming across or look at the impact to the people that I most wanted to reach.

I didn't want to reach the people who already agree with me. And now those are the only people that are probably listening to my podcast that I mean to be for. I didn't want to reach the people who already agree with me. And now those are the only people that are probably listening to my podcast that I mean to be for everyone. But I couldn't see it. It's too fast. Nothing fast ever works.

Wow. Nothing good comes from it. So what does incremental change look like? Incremental change looks like starting to educate yourself. It involves listening to people's opinions who are opposed to you which you're not supposed to do i'm not just shutting them out you're not even supposed to follow anyone that has a different opinion or who did something wrong because then

you'll be judged for following those people follow those people to look and see read their stuff watch their content develop critical thinking skills as to why you disagree with them. Research. Learn. When you have a family member who says something that you find egregious that you disagree with, whatever political side you're on, learn how to debate. Don't just run away and shame them and make them wrong. Give them the facts. Learn how to convince each other again, not just shut each other down and dispose of each other.

how to convince each other again, not just shut each other down and dispose of each other. Change the circle you're in. If we can all just focus on the circle we're in and stop fighting with celebrities who we way over deified anyway, and stop fighting with our great grandfather who isn't- Did something in the war back in the day. Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. Let's just work on our inner circle and try to make an influence there. Change the way that we interact with others because that will change the way that person goes on

to interact with someone else. And open up our scope of who we are. Yeah. Willing to just listen to. Because I sometimes wonder if the reason that both sides are so afraid to listen to each other is because they're worried they might be convinced. Or they're worried they might find out they were wrong. Ooh, and then I like that.

And whether or not that's true, that's not a good place to move from as a human being. Your beliefs are shaken. It shakes your identity. Yeah, and this is just it, right? So I was talking to this psychologist in DM on Instagram in which she said that identity and opinion have become completely interlinked. She sees that a lot with the people who come into her office. Explain that more. So it means that like, you know, back in our day, we grew up not knowing anyone else's political ideology or what their parents represented or what their beliefs were about almost anything.

We used to just have polite meals. And then, you you know what i mean like arguments about like more trivial things it was a simpler time it wasn't necessarily a great time but it was a simpler time and we were able to acknowledge that if someone had an opinion we don't like that's just their opinion that we don't like and we had friends who might have been deemed problematic or different but we kind of accepted that well that's just like a part of them I don't like, but I can see the rest of the individual. Now we can't see the rest of the individual anymore. The bit that we don't like tarnishes everything about them

and erases their history of anything they did that was good. That's what I like. It's scary. It's scary. Like, we see this all the time with public figures. It's like someone can do so many great things and then they make one mistake and then we disregard everything they've ever done and we want to get rid of them

without thinking like, oh, a lot of people might suffer if we completely get rid of that person because they're actually quite helpful. We used to be able to see when someone was more helpful than harmful and see that we can just work on the bit that's harmful. But now we just throw everyone away.

And so I think that is something that concerns me. And so when it comes to the identity and opinion, is that identity and opinion is no longer a separate thing. Because of social media, identity and opinion have kind of like woven together. And now they kind of exist as one. So before when someone would say, oh, I disagree with your opinion,

it just meant I disagree with your opinion. But now it means- We can still be friends. I disagree with you fundamentally. I disagree with who you are and who you've become. And I'm defining you as this person. I'm freezing you in stone as this person forever. How long do you think this will go on for until people wake up and say, oh, I was doing this to other people and now it's actually coming back to hurt me. It depends on how many of us with public figures work to raise awareness and raise the alarm about this. Wow. You know, not many people in Hollywood are talking the way you're talking right now. It's because you're still congratulated by isolating and demonizing.

That's why I went so, you know, that's why I popped off about the Met Gala. Cause I was like, hang on, hang on. This is an industry. And this is an audience that, that really makes a big deal of not being able to separate an art from an artist. Well, they have been in the last four or five years, right? Yeah. The last seven years of particular is like, we can't separate the art from the artists. We're going to demonize and ostracize whoever we can and whoever we want to and whoever we're just going to completely separate ourselves from, and we're going to drop them and we're going to do this or the other. And what happened at the Met Gala?

And the Met Gala is they threw a party for a bigot who was so cruel about fat people, who people claim to care about now, so cruel about immigrants, so awful about the me too movement and you've got me too feminists and media that pushed the me too movement celebrating this man at the highest honor the biggest party of the year and then you got everyone online who loves cancelling people and who loves digging up people's tweets from when they were 12 applauding it doesn't matter what he said he's an icon what are we doing pick one how can we expect anyone to take us seriously if we are this hypocritical and this wishy-washy we've got to be consistent i'm

fine to separate the art from the artist because the longer i'm in this industry the more i realize that they're all terrible yeah so yeah like the greats thes. They've all got something. They've all done something. Sometime. Hugely inappropriate. Or awful, or they were horrible. So the only way you can enjoy art is almost to separate the art from the artist. And the longer you're around,

the more you start to realize that, and the more that comes out after they've died. It is what it is. So what is it? Are we separating the art from the artist? Or are we not? We have to decide. I hate hypocrisy.

Because it means that all the other things that we're doing that are good can't be taken seriously. We open ourselves up for ridicule. The word that I keep hearing you talk about or insinuating is grace. Right, yeah. And it sounds like you've had grace for yourself through what you went through and your rise to fame a couple of times, plus the roller coaster when you were on top, when people were coming at you in 2020 and dealing with all that. You had grace for yourself.

You had grace for your body image. You had grace for your health, your stress. You've had grace for others now in certain ways. And what I'm hearing you say is we just need had grace for others now in certain ways. And what I'm hearing you say is we just need more grace in general for ourselves and others. No, we don't just need more grace. We still need more order.

We still need stopping. And accountability. And more accountability. And more self-accountability. More, like less hypocrisy. And more like organizing for what the actual end goal is here. What are the big things we're fighting for? Let's stop like focusing in what the actual end goal is here what are the big things we're

fighting for let's stop like focusing in on the minutiae let's work on the big things that hurt everyone in our society and let's work together on that let's organize and then on top of that in order to be able to do that you need more grace doesn't mean you can't criticize each other right it doesn't mean you can't get pissed off with one another doesn't mean you can't criticize each other right it doesn't mean you can't get pissed off with one another doesn't mean you can't fight it just means that the fight has to end at some point there has to be a road back we have to allow for a space for atonement and we have to recognize that there is a part of us that enjoys watching other people fail and do something wrong and make mistakes because then we don't have to think about all the terrible

mistakes and terrible thoughts that we've made yeah and all the mistakes we've made it's like oh good everyone's looking at them so no one's looking at me right Right, right, right. And so the reason dog piles happen mostly, it's not because everyone cares that much about that thing. We can see that the thing that we want to say has been said a thousand times. But we want to loudly, from a tribal perspective, from a tribal place rather, we want to loudly exclaim our disapproval so that we announce which tribe we're on.

We want to say, I'm with the bigger crowd, so don't include me in any of that. We want to be safe. We want to be in the tribe. We don't want to be left on our own to be eaten alive. And what I feel very sad about is that more and more, when someone gets into trouble for something that isn't like egregious physical violence right the kind of thing where they've really destroyed someone's life where that person might never recover we just leave them for dead when i got piled onto i got left for dead and racists and bigots and misogynists

were all able to come for me. And no one from my side stepped in. How is that? And then as soon as I overcame it, everyone came back. Why is that? Everyone came back and it was like it never happened. And they were like,

oh, I'm so glad you came back through that thing. And I got Marvel. And then I was back on the cover of Vogue and I was having a great time. And all of a sudden, all my friends came rushing, not my like real friends. They never left me. Celebrity friends. But all these people, all my friends came rushing not my like real friends they never

left me celebrity friends but all these all these people all these media figures were suddenly all over me wanting to be in pictures again and i was like isn't that interesting yeah and so you know sometimes i now get into trouble for trying to show public grace to someone in a moment of their disgrace and i understand why i get in trouble for that. But this is, it might be my mistake, but I'm not afraid of mistakes. I believe in my heart right now that love and extending a tiny bit of grace or hope to someone is the best way

for them to come back from that thing and do better. And that seeing someone go from doing something bad to doing something better is much more healthy and helpful for our society than just watching them disappear. 100%. Seeing change. Seeing change. My audience love watching me change. They love that I used to be a misogynist and I, you know, I'm growing less and less problematic as time goes on.

But they enjoy the fact that they're watching me become not only a better person, but happier, happier, healthier, allowing myself to fail, like getting rid of the shackles of the perfection that women are held up to, the standards of perfection that women are held up to. I've never felt more at peace. I've never felt more love. I've never felt more connected. I've never been more open to a fist bump. I'm English, but I'll take it. But I've never felt more connected to the world. And I think a large part of our loneliness as a society

is coming from the fact that we are starting to, we're being trained and encouraged by social media and media and algorithms to look at each other as enemies we are not each other's enemies there are people far more powerful whose names we don't know deliberately who are controlling all of this and making us stare at each other rather than looking for them and i want to go after them so expect now that i've said that to be another huge random media scandal this is powerful i'm curious where do you think you'd be if you didn't have the uh you know the attacks of everyone coming at you in 2020 where do you think you'd be right now without that experience that sadness that loneliness that loss of oh i thought these people were my friends and then they left and then they came back and i think i'd be in a fairly similar place really i really

do i think when it comes to noticing and fighting for um the way that we elevate women just to drag them down i think that's what that taught me. Because you experienced it. And I think I might be less inclined to reach out to someone in a moment of disgrace. That would be something that would be different. I think I would be the way everyone else is, which is all, I don't want to catch it. I don't want to be nice to them or like anything or keep following them in case anyone drags me into this. I want to be in the tribe. But what you do is you leave someone so isolated

that then they feel hopeless and, you know... Bad things happen. Yeah, people have died. I know people have died. I almost died. I almost truly died. I can't believe I'm still here. Wow.

And had I not lived with my best friends and my boyfriend and not had the kindness of the people, you know, around me and medication that I'm no longer on but i need it in that moment i'd i'd be dead for sure it isn't i understand that people look at public figures as like well you've got this money and this power and definitely true yes it's not the same as when it happens to someone who works in a shop or a school which does happen it doesn't just happen to that's the other thing we think this stuff just happens to famous people what happens is it bleeds into our culture and it permeates our culture happens to people who we never hear about it happens to people in schools in you know uh in their workplace and they get

ostracized and they lose their job and they have no other means they've got no way to they can't even afford a therapist to all of it The kids are watching and they're learning but I think other than that I think I would be at the same place and it comes to division because The the pandemic shifted something in our society globally and the loss of women's rights and The hatred that we're seeing now we're not seeing people disagree with each other's opinions. We're seeing real Visceral hatred or hatred. Yeah, and we're seeing mockery of each other that I don't think is very helpful that I totally participated in before

You know just a few years ago if some man was incredibly degrading to me on Twitter I would call him an incel I look back and I'm like an incel and it's oh yeah you know when someone's involuntary celibate without really thinking about like yes he shouldn't have degraded me and yes he should never have spoken to me in that sexist and disgusting way but my calling him an incel just lowers me to his level and is actually perpetuating a really cruel unkind message about men who feel lonely. So then I suck. Right. And so I stopped doing that a few years ago.

Like I'm- That's good. But I, you know, it's not like I'm not like- Right, right, right. But it's just- It's good you're aware of it and you're acknowledging it and you're, you know- But this like slap down, down smack down own the libs own the republicans you know even liberals these videos they make when they go out into

these country these parts of the country where they've where a lot of these people they're not from the same metropolitan cities we are they're not exposed to the same news or algorithms that we are they are largely ignored by both coasts until suddenly someone's got a microphone and they want to go and interview some 70 year old Republican man who's a farmer and ask him his opinions on these very new topics of discussion. And he might give an ill-informed or outdated answer.

And then the way we laugh and it goes viral and everyone loves it and we just on them what message does that send what does that say to everyone watching that says we think you're idiots you're less than you're less than they think we're idiots we are all everyone right now being idiots because we're, we're fighting the wrong target. When none of us are smarter or better than each other, we're all just informed differently. And the faster we can all work to explain that to people, the faster we will bring people together into a much healthier and happier society. And that's where I want my work to, everything I'm doing is now towards mental health. I was just going to mention that because

with your, with your show, your podcast, I weigh, which is a great show that I've been on. And I think I've seen the evolution of it, which is inspiring to see that it's focused more on mental health now. And I think something you said, which is self-accountability, self-control, mental health, and enter your own healing are the things that I think when we work on those things, everything gets better. Because then you can interpret things better. You can pause. You can give people grace. You can give yourself grace. You can, as opposed to just, I'm angry, I'm lashing out because I'm hurt.

And I'm afraid. Yes. Everyone feels afraid all the time. It's really bad for your nervous system. It's neurologically terrible. We've had doctors on my podcast come on and explain that mistakes are the most effective way for somebody to learn. That's how neurologically your brain is more likely to implement and keep information.

We've made people afraid of the six. We've made people afraid of the syncs. We've made people afraid of everything. And people feel so afraid of and isolated and judged by each other. It's not good. And so what I weigh has been more focusing on is me reaching across to people who are less and less like me and wanting to engage in civil discourse. It's inspiring. And wanting to expose new ideas that are away from groupthink

and just challenge them sometimes, but respectfully. Yeah, of course. Or sometimes have my mind opened. What's the thing that's opened your mind the most from someone that maybe you said, I don't think I'm going to learn much from this person, but I'm curious to see what they have to say. And maybe I'd be open. Who shocked you or what idea opened you up?

I think the thing that has probably taken me by surprise the most has been neurologists. In that it's not that I went in with any kind of preemptive decision of what I was going to hear. But I had no idea how much neurology, how much brain science actually informs our personality and informs our behavior and informs our anxiety and informs our depression. I had no idea about the way that we are wired and how much that could do and how, how, what we eat and what we drink and how much we sleep. I always thought, yeah, yeah, I get it. I get it. Exercise. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I hate exercise. Yeah. Don't drink alcohol. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, yeah, yeah, I get it i get it exercise yeah yeah i hate exercise yeah don't drink alcohol yeah yeah it's like yeah yeah i get it it's completely transformed my life i've been listening to these people i've been learning about glucose and i've been learning about daily exercise and i'm mortified to admit

that it's made me happier than i've ever been i'm mortified because you were like screw this stuff i hate sweating i think it's disgusting. Wow. But I've been exercising, you know, a little bit every single day. I've been bringing my audience along for the ride because obviously we were kind of a very clear anti-diet culture space. It was, you know, where a lot of eating disorder recovery is. Sure, sure. You know, where a lot of people who've had eating disorders come to, you know, what we've created as a safe haven for eating disorders.

And so exercise is a really tricky conversation for most people. Yeah. Because there's so much shame around exercise. It's not a healthy version. It's more of an extreme version. It's all for the external. It's all for the vanity. But when you know the power of your brain and how helpful it is for that,

which helps you heal calm feel differently it changes everything but our focus is you know look at the exercise attire that men and women are expected to wear especially women with the bra and like the the light colored leggings and that's fine everyone should just do themselves sure not everyone not everyone feels comfortable exercise i don't want to bend over and see what i look like bending over in a mirror i had an eating disorder for 20 years i have body dysmorphia that's going to make me not want to go again the next day because i'm going to go into a place of judgment and you know we also again we want instant results instant results it takes a long time it takes a long time not that long not as long as you think but it takes like

six months it's not to see three week out yeah exactly it's like six months to see. It's not three week abs, six pack. It's like six months minimum. I remember when I was 24, I walked into my friend who's a personal trainer who then went on to train me for Marvel, Al Jackson. I walked into his gym when I was 24. I was like, how long would it take me to get an up? Like Nicole Scherzinger. And he looked at my and he was like,

about three months. And I was like, nah, nevermind. I walked out. about three months and i was like no never mind i walked out even three months is amazing it's not that long amazing yeah you're probably lying it was probably gonna be a he's gonna sneak me into a six but but still i heard that and i was like well there's not two weeks i have time for that oh my god classic classic of our generation but when you think about the neurological benefits of exercise and the fact that within 10 to 15 minutes, you have endorphins, you have happy chemicals going through your brain that are de-stressing you, making it more likely for you to be able to sleep that night,

de-stressing you, you immediately feel better than you felt beforehand. And then if you keep that up every day, within a week or two, your life starts to genuinely feel differently. And so I've been trying to bring my audience along with me on this journey doing that. It's called Move For Your Mind. How dare you? How dare you exercise? How dare you enjoy it? But I found a way that is like in baggy clothes, eating sugary snacks so we can divorce the idea of calories out, calories in. We're going against all of exercise culture and all of diet culture because exercise culture and diet culture are just married now.

all of exercise culture and all of diet culture because exercise culture and diet culture are just married now um and so we are we've kind of created this slightly anarchist rebellious like exercise don't work out but make sure you're moving yeah yes but you can look ridiculous i look ridiculous i have no that's great like swag you know i don't know if that's the right don't work out for instagram yeah don't work out for instagram work out for yourself see that but like dance in your kitchen. Do things that are free. Lift water bottles. Lift your dog.

Lift your child. You know, go for a walk every day. Do simple things. Buy a $300 walking machine, which might be expensive for some people. Some people it might be affordable. So if you're a woman and you're afraid of walking at night, I walk on that and I watch my favorite TV shows and then I get my half an hour a day and then I feel amazing and I have a great night's sleep. I sound smug and disgusting. I hate myself. I promised myself I would never be this person. Or a healthy person. An exercising person,

but we're trying to find unpretentious, fun and welcoming ways for people at any size or with any disability or any stage of pregnancy to join us and not feel ostracized. That's cool. Because we still, I mean, whenever there's a plus size line for exercise workout, the world goes mad. It's like, what did you want them to wear when they were exercising? You want these people to exercise and work out and be healthy. What do you want them to be, naked in the gym?

The gyms are not a very friendly space. So it's just about finding an alternative way to democratize exercise and bring it back to the people it was ours it got industrialized like a matter of decades ago and turned into this exclusive club where you have a uniform why didn't you uniform yeah unless you're playing a professional sport honestly well you have this uniform that's getting sexier and sexier and sexier every year for both for all the genders and and it's becoming more and moreier and sexier every year for both, for all agendas. And it's becoming more and more about just becoming a billboard for other people.

No one's thinking about the inside. It's all very punitive. It's so punitive. Like, no pain, no gain is the stupidest slogan of our generation. One off. Right. Well, it's also with men. It's like you just see men just shirtless everywhere who are just shredded and probably on steroids or human growth hormone.

And so they're just like so ripped that you're just like, most men are like, I could never get to that point. Yeah, but that. Get to happy. Right, exactly. That person might be struggling with an eating disorder or some sort of body dysmorphia or ulcer exit. Right.

You know, we don't know what everyone's story is. Just focus on being happier in an hour than you are right now yeah feeling autonomous so so many of us don't feel autonomous in the world because there's so much chaos and we're doom scrolling and we're looking at how the world is falling apart and our kids are changing faster than we were at their age and everyone feels so like oh my god it feels like i'm in quicksand all of the time it's like it's a quick way to immediately feel like okay my feet are back on the ground and it's just temporary but then you do it again absolutely and so that's a big part of what we're doing over at iway is exercise culture but also neurology and learning that that's cool you can really make fundamental quick changes that it

doesn't just have to be medication i'm pro medication and it doesn't just having to be access to the best therapy which no one can afford en masse there are so many ways you can rewire your own brain and i think these people people like caroline leaf are fantastic and important and they're about no longer succumbing just a big farmer but giving the power back to the people to have autonomy in their own recovery. It's empowering. That's inspiring. So what I'm hearing you say is that

when you started to talk to neurologists or brain scientists, you started to learn these ideas just make you happier and healthier overall. And so you started mortifying yourself by doing these things. Yeah. And you started to see results. Sometimes on Instagram Live, yeah. And yeah and you started to see results yeah i'm happier than i've ever been

i'm way nicer than i used to be you see it yeah exactly i could feel the energy right away when you walked in here i go something is shifted within you yeah now that you're bad before i said it was just like no but you had a defensive you were at a more of an aggressive energy right yeah i was defensive and i think there's nothing wrong with a little bit of female aggression but i do think that what i had was more of a defensive energy because that's what it was again i was flying so high and everyone was congratulating me so much that i was like i was just waiting for the shoe shop and also everyone every podcast i went on someone was trying to trap me or you know and so i didn't know what you were

going to be like like i didn't know what i was going to be like i, you know, and so I didn't know what you were gonna be like. Like I didn't know what anyone was gonna be like. I hope we didn't think I was trying to trap you. No, no, no, great, I had you on my podcast. We had a great time. It's just, I just didn't know who to trust. I knew that the other shoe was gonna drop at any moment. Interesting. And I just didn't know when it was gonna happen

and I had this anxiety. And I think also because everything was happening so fast and because I had that anxiety, I think that also accounts for some of my worse, like my poorer decisions with things that i said publicly subjects i weighed into why am i talking about global conflict what do i know about global conflict but i felt pressured to because people are like your silence on this is deafening and so you're like i don't want to think i don't care i want to know i care about their country but i don't know anything about

that's one of the biggest things when people say i can't believe we're not supporting this or this or this or this and you're not saying something means you don't support it about that's one of the biggest things when people say I can't believe we're not supporting this or this or this or this And you not saying something means you don't support it. Yeah, I'm like, maybe I just don't know what to say Yeah, and you know because I know this the one thing about eating disorders I'm expected to know everything about everything and my bad for trying to Jump in when I didn't know because I only ever created more mess and some reason the media like I can and it can make A headline so I like and I don't know because I only ever created more mess and for some reason the media like I can and it can make a headline so like it like and I don't know why like but they they they know that I'm divisive they know I'm controversial they know that I'm outspoken yeah they they and

then they further polarize me by making the headline as egregious as possible and violent as possible so as Jamila Jamil slams and often I've just had a really thoughtful thing with like a love heart not always right right right sometimes yeah Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What did it feel like to you when, you know, you had people that were maybe seemed like friends or acquaintances, but when you were going through your stuff in the media and people, you know, went against you or just stopped talking to you for a period of time, how did they make you feel? And how is your relationship with certain people like that once they started to come back around they'll never be back on the inside ever

and i think it can be helpful in moments like that as heartbreaking as they are because it was heartbreaking yeah i know the feeling you felt very like you feel very betrayed and you also like judge your own sense of judgment you question yourself yourself, which is never a nice. It's a shaky feeling when you when you can't trust your gut instinct. But truly, it's also an extraordinary magnifying glass of clarity that I'm so grateful for because I have this extraordinary pool of people now left who I know have got my back, who don't care, who don't look at the internet, who challenge me when I'm wrong with grace and love. And they maintain the most fundamental quality that I think we all need, which is to have the benefit of the doubt. A hundred percent. It's the benefit of the doubt is going to carry us to a better society. Yes, it is.

We have lost the benefit of the doubt, especially for women. to a better society. Yes, it is. We have lost the benefit of the doubt, especially for women. We have reserved quite a lot of it for men. But even then, we assume people's worst intentions and that's not the world that I grew up in.

Yeah, and if we're modeling this to our kids, what do we expect them to do? Have great values and, you know, be open to conversation? Yeah, but what's a great value? The values that are correct keep changing. So what's a great value the values that are correct keep changing so what's a great what's a great value what does inclusion look like what does diversity of friendship groups look like debate is the is the foundation of democracy we've stopped that disagreement rather

is the foundation we've stopped debating yeah we just said no i'm not gonna listen to you yeah i was gonna yell at you and not listen. Yeah. Yeah, I just, like I said, I've done it before. Got me nowhere. Didn't make me feel good. Made me feel really lonely and sad. And alienated me from people.

And I don't want to be alienated from people. Yeah. I want to. You want to be friends. You want to be with the people. I want us to be together. Yeah, I don't want to have children. But this work is my way of making the world easier for my friends who are having children.

If I can make it a safer world for their kids, then that makes up for the fact that I refuse to be called mother. Really, I'll tell you what, I'm inspired by just the journey you're on. I'm inspired that you got to experience so much in the last six, seven years. You got to experience a rise of fame quickly. And you did some things that you were proud of, but also things you weren't proud of. And you learned from them. You know, I'm glad you got to experience people for you and then against you. Because you learned from them. And I feel like

you're a better person because of that. And you have more perspective now. And at the end of the day, you've got a lot of grace for yourself and grace for others. And it sounds to me like you want people to come together. You want people to be open-minded. You also want people to be accountable for their actions. And you want people to focus on their mental health and their optimizing of their own mental health, optimizing their own physical body and their spiritual health so they can have more peace and grace for themselves and others. That's what I'm hearing. Yeah. We talk about mental health so much now in society and it's a big part of the zeitgeist, but I still think we're talking about it from not quite the right angle. We're still talking

about it as though like, this would be a good thing to have on an individual basis wouldn't it be nice if you had if you could make your mortgage payments and look after your kids and take them to all the practices and do all of this for everyone but then also not want to kill yourself it's definitely still seen as a surplus whereas actually it should be the foundation of everything that we are going to i can't believe mental health is not free in this country i cannot believe it's not free in every single country it is in many countries but this should this is how we increase our gdp people can work healthier yeah people can be healthier they will be in the hospital less if they are happier because stress and loneliness and all these different things are huge factors as to what uh destroys people's health and immune systems it would

change the amount of people having to go in psychiatric care it would change the amount of homelessness there is it would change the way that we treat each other as a society it would change everything that's where the money should go all the money should go there if we could all as a world put the money instead of in the military only into mental health. If we could take some of those trillions and put it towards making the people and the children happier and having children have access to mental health, we wouldn't need so much military. There wouldn't be so much war. We wouldn't need the police as often as we do.

We wouldn't need as many drugs or as many different things that we have now to try and like numb the pain and help people escape from the pain. I agree. We would have been sewn to our phones and a lot of people who make a lot of money

from us doing that know that. They don't make the move to improve our mental health and so we have to do it ourselves and people like us have to tell people. I'm loving this message.

I'm inspired by this message. I think it's the most important thing in the world and it's still treated as like a luxury rather than a fundamental. And it should be the same as brushing your teeth or, you know, getting out in the sun or whatever. Sure, sure. As opposed to eating good food.

So I'm like... We didn't know what we were going to talk about today. I keep them inspired by this because, you know, I just love seeing the journey. I didn't know this is where you're at fully. So for you coming in, I was just like, wow, this is really inspiring. I have a couple final questions for you that I think, well, I know I asked you the first time on the show.

And so I'm really fascinated to hear what the response is to them. And if it's the same or if it's changed since the last time. I don't remember what I said, so you'll get all this done. Yeah, we'll link that back up so people can see the last one also. But I'll ask that in a second. But I want people to check out your shows.

You got I Weigh, you got Bad Dates, which is hilarious. You're on social media, Jamila Jamil, on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, everywhere. IWeighCommunity.com. How else can we follow or support you with what you're up to right now i think just join me at iway or join me on my social media join the mental health movement i think that we really have an opportunity to change the future of marketing and mental health and include more people listen to iway it's a great

podcast on neurology and mental health that offers you the autonomy to take it into your own hands listen to bad dates if you want to feel better about your own romantic life it is the most disgusting and filthy and funny uh podcast with extraordinary comedians who give way too much information about their personal lives and sex lives uh and again it's the much-needed escapism i'm able to provide information and the sad stuff and then the escapism so i hope people listen to it and the sad stuff and then the escapism. So I hope people listen to it because it is just an amazing vacation for your mind. That's great.

It's purely simple. And we need comedy. Yeah. Comedy is one of the best medicines, you know? 100% saved my life. Yeah, that's great. Okay, so both those shows, Bad Dates, I Weigh, I'm inspired.

I want to hear these final few questions. Before I ask the final two questions, I want to acknowledge you, Jamila, for, again, the journey, transformation. It's really more, not a transformation, more the awareness that you have about yourself and who you've been, where you're at now,

and where you're going. And I really just love that you have that awareness for you, that you've been on a healing journey, that you're able to see things from a different perspective. And for me, that's really inspiring. I think it's inspiring when I can do that and anyone can do that so i'm inspired by the journey you're on and it's it's really cool to see you right now in this space because most

importantly you're happy and you're healthy yeah and that's for me really inspired to see you in a space like that it also speaking of cancel culture goes to show that like when people criticize you some good can come from it even if i didn't always make a public notes apology statement about everything, I was listening. I was listening when people pulled me out. And so I make this tweak sometimes privately because sometimes it's easier to make change privately. We need to become aware that it's OK to have a learning journey privately. You do not have to share every single thing. I'm not going to have a pap smear on live IG.

I need to look after my brain privately with space and mess. You don't need an opinion from every person on everything you do. No, and everyone doesn't have to be privy to every single thing about all of our lives. It's a very big misconception about how we're supposed to conduct ourselves because of how much some people choose to share on social media but I'm listening and I'm changing but also the people who spoke to me constructively were the ones who got in and the people who almost pushed me over the edge and killed me or made me so angry that I didn't want to fight for anyone and give up were the people

who abused me I didn't need to be sent death threats or rape threats or threats that i'm going to be ostracized or that people are going to boycott me or call for me to be fired i didn't need that to change the people who spoke to me kindly and with peace and with the best of intention who had the who believed in need to change are the ones who changed me so criticism can be fantastic i am a product of that criticism, but from love. Conscious criticism. Those are the people that help me. The other people did nothing but cause me stress and almost make me give up on everything, including my own life.

You keep inspiring me with this message. So I'm grateful that you're sharing it. And if you guys are inspired, make sure to leave a comment below of the part of this conversation. This is a drinking game now for how many times lewis has said inspired i don't know why this is really inspiring you can ask you can ask you can ask you know my team i'm i haven't said that to anyone in this way everyone inspiring inspiring in certain ways but not like this okay but you can ask them afterwards you know yeah but i mean now everyone's inspiring but the way and how you view things differently is inspiring when you were completely it's the fact that you've got the before and after more extreme in another way yeah we love a before and after in our generation and so like this is my before and i just wasn't expected yet so i think that's what's

inspiring because you're in a peaceful place which which I'm really excited about for you personally. So I'm acknowledging for that. And I want you to hear that acknowledgement. Just tell me one more time that you find me inspiring. Yeah, exactly. I do find you inspiring. But I acknowledge you for the journey. I think it's really cool. And I think the thing that is inspiring about it is for people that were in that state of mind that you were in now that are still angry and upset and screaming and fighting. And maybe it's justified in their anger, but it's not going to get across with what to make the change they want in the best way possible. But also we don't value humility. We value self-flagellation, eternal self-flagellation, but-flagellation but we don't actually value true humility and when someone shows it we normally on them we normally make fun of them

being like see i knew you'd done that thing wrong i'm gonna use this opportunity to make you feel even worse it's like that's not the way that's not how we treat children, I hope. And we're all just children. We're just children who are bigger. We've got jobs and bills and stress, but we're all just massive kids. Whenever I'm at one of my boyfriend's concerts, I don't watch him, I watch the audience because he's an amazing musician. He's doing this thing that is incredible.

He's not just, you know, pressing a button and all the music plays. He's actually playing like three instruments at the same time and singing and people are watching him and they're enjoying what he's doing the songs mean something to him and they're all looking at him and they're not thinking about themselves or their lives or anything else they're just focusing on one thing and this is with any show i'm just giving an example of what i've seen and they look like babies they look like innocent babies and you

can see their humanity like I urge anyone at any concert or any cinema to look around for a second and and see people's inner child when all the defenses aren't up and all the like arbitrary obligations that we get when we're 18 suddenly come along look for the inner child in everyone I do that with everyone even the people I argue with. I look for that, and I don't mean that in a condescending way. Sure. But we all just want the same shit we wanted when we were babies. We were lonely, we are hungry, we are tired,

we're disgruntled, we're not getting what we need. And before we used to cry and we used to talk about it, but now we're not allowed to. But we still feel all those feelings. So how do we look after the child in all of us, I think? Preach it. I like this. I swear I haven't taken like ayahuasca.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I know I'm speaking like someone who's taken ayahuasca. I haven't taken it. I haven't taken any psilocybin. There you go. Wow, that's the first person in hollywood who said that i'm afraid i was like i'm already crazy i don't need that my message every morning this uh the okay these last two questions this is called the three truths i asked you this before you may not remember it that's okay but it's called the three truths so it's a hypothetical

question imagine you get to live as long as you want uh but it's your last Three Truths. So it's a hypothetical question. Imagine you get to live as long as you want, but it's your last day on earth, far in the future. You get to experience, accomplish, not accomplish, all the things you want to do. And you live a beautiful life. But it's the last day. And for whatever reason on this last day, you have to take everything that you've ever said with you.

All the content, all the TV shows, all this interview, the tweets, whatever you create in the future, it's all gone for whatever reason. And all you get to leave behind to the world are these three final truths, three lessons that you've learned or that you think you will learn for the rest of your time that you would leave behind that you think are important for people what would be those three truths for you cuddles are the most important thing on earth i really mean that they are truly the most important thing on our physical affection some sort form of physical touch is the most important thing in the world try and access it wherever you can even if you have to pay for it whatever you need to do they have cuddle cafes in japan really recommend highly recommend yeah

but uh cuddles are the most important thing in the world um never trust a fart it was deep and meaningful i hope you can see that i'm a deep philosophical guy but it's true and i've learned that one the hard way never never trust okay and that shame never achieves anything productive love it final question what's your definition of greatness now for me personally greatness would just it's something to do with making people laugh being able to give people the gift of laughter whether it's at my expense or in something that i'm making, even the people who love to hate me. I'm like, you're welcome.

Like, it brings me, like, there are some people who really enjoy making fun of me or hating me and they're having a good time and they're bonding over it. Yeah. And I love that for them. Okay. But giving people the gift of laughter to me is the most connected I can feel to a human being

uh almost more than sex like it is just the most like our souls are intertwined in that moment we're on the exact same wavelength and laughter has been the the main thing that saved my life more than any medicine or operation or anything laughter laughter has been the key to my survival. And so if I'm lucky enough to get to keep doing that forever, or even for another few years, I'd be thrilled. I've had my fair share. I'm ready to go. I don't have to get to do this any longer,

but that to me is greatness, is being remembered the way that I remember. Not even remember, but as I leave this world I want god I hope he knew this when he left but I hope Robin Williams remembered at the very end how much joy he brought how much he made us laugh because I like I have pictures of him in my house you know and as like a kind of almost like a shrine to that man because of how many of my darkest moments were alleviated because of him. And, and I, I, I pray that he thought about that even for a fleeting second towards the end of his life. Cause it's so.

Did you ever get to meet him? I never got to meet him. No. I had one moment. I had one moment with him. Wow. Well, I mean, I didn't speak to him, but I was on a plane that he was on

and he was in the front seat. I was walking on the plane. And right before I even got on the plane, I felt an energy of like crossing on to like, I'm entering the plane and I could like hear something. I was like, that sounds interesting. Sounds familiar. And I saw him talking to the person sitting next to him

in first class right there. He's going from New York to LA. And he was on. He was like telling some joke and like people were just like in it, right? And luckily people were stopped putting their bags up. And so I was just kind of standing there for like 60 seconds watching like this close from him and just seeing him do his magic. And I was like, wow, that's a pretty funny

guy. And, uh, unfortunately, you know, that was the only time I met him, but it was, I didn't meet him, but I saw him and I got to experience it. But I was just like, man, this guy brought so much joy and laughter to so many people around the world. And, uh, so I love that definition of greatness for you. And, uh, I'm so I'm so grateful you came back on and you shared. And thank you again for making me laugh as well as inspiring me because I had to throw that in one more time. Thanks for being here. I appreciate you. I hope today's episode inspired you on your journey towards greatness.

Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a rundown of today's show with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me as well as ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcast. If you enjoyed this, please share it with a friend over on social media or text a friend. Leave us a review over on Apple Podcast and let me know what you learned over on our social media channels at Lewis Howes. I really love hearing the feedback from you, and it helps us continue to make the show better. And if you want more inspiration from our world-class guests and content

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