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

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
If you're in a certain room with people that you know,
you're very comfortable with, there are sides of you that
you're going to be expressing versus not. We call it
reading the room, understanding your environment, understanding your audience, understanding
the timing of certain things. Saying everything and saying nothing
are not the only options. Instead of saying this on
social media, could I.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Tell a friend.

Speaker 1 (00:21):
We believe that if something is happening socially or there's
a crisis, people need to take their stance online. Self
centering is actually when you rush to say something because
you want to keep the mob at bay. If you
repost this infographic, then we know you're a safe person,
so the mob doesn't attack you. So it's actually not

(00:42):
about whether someone believes what they're saying.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
We are more interested in the performance of things.

Speaker 3 (00:48):
The number one health and Wellness podcast Jay Shedy Jay
Sheddy Only.

Speaker 4 (00:56):
Hey, everyone, welcome back to on Purpose, the place you
come to become. I'm happier, healthier, and more healed. I
am so grateful for today's conversation because I'm so excited
about it. As soon as I heard about this individual,
read her book and got involved in all of her
insights and all the great thoughts she had. I was

(01:17):
absolutely fixated. This content is what I believe is the
most needed right now. This book, I believe is the
most needed right now. This is the one to add
to your next book club, your next reading list. This
has to be your next pick. I genuinely mean it.
I was actually thinking about writing about this topic a
couple of years back, and I'd been having conversations about it.

(01:40):
It was literally probably the number one conversation I was
having with any friend, with any family member. And I
then came across her work and was blown away. She
had covered every theme practically, deeply, powerfully, boldly. I'm speaking
about Africa, Brook, and the book is called the Third
perspectivetive brave Expression in the Age of Intolerance. Go and

(02:04):
grab this book right now, and welcome to On Purpose Africa, Brook, Africa.
Thank you for being here.

Speaker 3 (02:10):
Thank you.

Speaker 2 (02:10):
Oh what an incredible introduction. Jay, Thank you.

Speaker 4 (02:13):
I mean it like I really mean it. I feel
like the gamut of themes that you cover in this
book are what's so deeply needed for hearts and minds
in the world right now where we're living in an
age of intolerance, We're living in a society of divide.
We're scared of having uncomfortable conversations. We don't know how

(02:37):
to talk to someone who thinks differently from us, and
whether this is religiously politically, even if it comes down
to career wise, like I think, we have created a
world where we have silos and groups, and so I
want to start off. I want to dive into so
many things with you, and I'll let you kind of
share what you want to share before we dive in.
But if I had to start somewhere, my question, how

(03:00):
did we get here?

Speaker 1 (03:01):
Even in writing this book, I had to lead with
that question because it's one of the first questions that
people ask me, and very specifically what we're talking about.
We're talking about the psychology of what we call cancel culture,
which is important for me to actually name this very
early in our conversation.

Speaker 2 (03:20):
And I invite.

Speaker 1 (03:21):
People, just as I said those words, to be honest
about how that felt in your body. Because there are
people that believe councel culture is not real, it doesn't exist,
it's simply people being held to account. And then there
are some people that believe that it's a combination of
public shaming doxing, the inability to disagree well, self righteousness,

(03:43):
all of these other more shadowy things. But what I've
really got to discover for myself in this three and
a half years of writing this, But I would say.

Speaker 2 (03:51):
The five years before it. It's not a new problem.

Speaker 1 (03:55):
And I don't know if you've found this where sometimes
we think what we're experiencing in our timeline is something new.
I think it's just a modern manifestation of tribalism. I
think we've always had silos and echo chambers and divide
and polarization. It just looked very differently twenty years ago,
thirty years ago, fifty years ago. But I think just

(04:17):
because something has existed for centuries, I think just because
something might be primal the biology of wanting to belong
and what we're willing to do in order to belong,
I don't think that means we need to normalize it
not working. So I think there's a combination of things
that I'll just kind of put forward to answer your
question in a more direct way. It's not a new problem,

(04:39):
so I can't say this is exactly when it started.

Speaker 2 (04:42):
It's ancient. It's tribalism.

Speaker 1 (04:44):
We're just experiencing it in a very different way in
modern day society.

Speaker 4 (04:49):
Yeah, I know that's really well, But you're so right.
We always feel our problems are unique. Yeah, we do
that no one has felting before, and that what we're
experiencing is the most extreme version. Yes, yes, where does
that come from? Where's that feeling of? Like what I'm
going through has to be the worst, most, highest, Yeah, deepest.

Speaker 1 (05:08):
The thing that you're pointing out that question allows for
me to actually have empathy for human beings and empathy
for myself in realizing that all I know is my story,
all I know is my experience. I am living in
my body and my mind. I have no idea what
anyone else is experiencing. So whether I feel grief or
pain or arousal joy, it's a very solitary experience. So

(05:32):
I think it's so easy to believe that we are
the only ones experiencing these things, even when someone says
I'm experiencing that too.

Speaker 2 (05:38):
I experience fear.

Speaker 1 (05:39):
I have a fear of being canceled, of being ostracized,
of whatever. We can only understand it intellectually, but we
never fully understand it in an embodied way. And something
that I would also say around this is that when
it comes to this thing that we call cancel culture,
I truly believe that it's underpinned by self censorship, which

(06:00):
I'm sure we'll speak about in more detail, but self
censorship is essentially when you feel that you're going to
be punished for expressing yourself honesty, whether it's even in
how you dress. Let's say you're from a culture that's
very conservative, but you've wanted to express yourself in a
way that is deemed inappropriate, in a way that is
deemed maybe men shouldn't wear this, women shouldn't wear this.

(06:22):
Whatever it is, you believe that you're going to be
punished for your expression. And I think the problem is
that with technology we see that level of fear just
in a very different way. So, again, these things have
always existed, but social media amplifies these things just in
a way that is very, very abnormal. I would say, actually,

(06:43):
that's one of the things that I really got to
see for myself even before this book, that social media
is making us behave and experience some of these things
in a way we just never would. It's making us
speak to each other in a way we never normally
would criticize in a way wouldn't put forward this idea
of moral perfection in a way we wouldn't. But it's

(07:05):
also making us self censor in a way we just
wouldn't in our everyday lives.

Speaker 4 (07:10):
We even say things like, oh, I'd never say this online, yeah,
or I really can't say this on Instagram, but I'll
say it here, or this is the right room to
talk about this, and we say things like that all
the time. What is that line between self censorship? Yeah,
and then this idea of trying to be fully transparent

(07:32):
and authentic, like this idea that if you share everything
then you're authentic and if you hide something then with
self censorship different to both of those, Yes, because it's
not either all.

Speaker 1 (07:43):
I write a line where I say, and I start
to use this as a matter of myself, saying everything
and saying nothing are not your only options. I think
that's very important. Self censorship is driven by fear. Again,
you believe, on some level, usually very unconscious, that you
are going to be punished if you express what is true.

(08:04):
If I am honest with you right now, you are
going to ostracize me, You're going to abandon me. You're
going to reject me. But now we're not just doing
it to an individual level. You're doing it with strangers,
faceless nameless people. You're afraid that they're going to cast
you out of the tribe. Right, So it taps into
a very primal fear, which is so normal. It's just

(08:24):
being expressed in a way that.

Speaker 2 (08:26):
Is not normal at all.

Speaker 1 (08:28):
Right, So self censorship is driven by fear, whereas I
think the other side of that is I call it
social filtering. It's something that we do all the time.
You and I, if we're meeting for the first time,
there might be things that you just won't say, or
jokes that you just won't make because we don't know
each other well.

Speaker 2 (08:44):
Enough just yet.

Speaker 1 (08:45):
If you're in a certain room with people that you know,
you're very comfortable with, there are sides of you that
you're going to be expressing versus not.

Speaker 2 (08:53):
That's reading the room. We call it reading the room.

Speaker 1 (08:56):
Understanding your environment, understanding your audience, understanding the time of
certain things.

Speaker 2 (09:01):
That is discernment led. It's not led by fear.

Speaker 1 (09:05):
So I never want people to think that any of
not even just my work. But this conversation is about
saying everything, because again, saying everything and saying nothing are
not the only options. There is this beautiful gray where
you get to say, actually, instead of saying this on
social media, could I tell a friend instead of thinking
that I have to prove my goodness on social media,

(09:27):
which is a huge thing where we believe that if
something is happening socially or there's a crisis, people need
to take their stance online. But can I not take
my stance or really think about what I feel offline? Right?
So it's discernment led because another side of self centering

(09:47):
is actually when you rush to say something because you
want to keep the mob at bay, which we see
absolutely all the time this idea, and I think there's
something quite religious about it. I always think of the
story of I believe it's the Passover in the Bible
where people have to put is it blood outside of
the door so that the angel of Death doesn't take

(10:10):
their firstborn son or something along those lines. I sort
of see what people are demanding for people to do
on social media in the same way that if you
repost this infographic, then we know you're a safe person,
so the mob doesn't attack you. So it's actually not
about whether someone believes what they're saying. We are more
interested in the performance of things. But again, if you're

(10:32):
using discernment, you get to say, I know, I feel
very scared right now, and people are demanding that I
speak up, but I'm not going to do that because
that's out of integrity.

Speaker 2 (10:41):
But maybe I can.

Speaker 1 (10:43):
Have a bit of a curiosity around why people need
me to be educated on this and do it offline,
have a conversation online, whereas self censorship is either not
saying anything or pretending to be on board with what
people want you to say. So I want people to
remember it really simply, self censorhi is driven by fear,
whereas if you're social filtering, you're using discernment. Even if

(11:04):
you're a little bit afraid, you're still grounded in integrity
on some level.

Speaker 4 (11:09):
I love how deeply you've thought about this, because you know,
being able to categorize, simplify, and dissect all of that
requires a lot of structure and systems. Because the mind
has always found it easier to just make it binary, right,
It's always been easier, and if you look at the
structure of society, it kind of goes that way. You

(11:31):
have coke, you have pepsi, then maybe you have RC
Cola or whatever else like, but it's two choices.

Speaker 3 (11:37):
There's like two big places.

Speaker 4 (11:38):
You have McDonald's and Burger King, you have Dominos and
Pizza Hut, and yes there's another one, but generally life
has become divided by there's only two teams. Like everyone's
gonna hate me for saying this, but in London, Arsenal
and Spurs like.

Speaker 3 (11:51):
The bigger teams, and then you've got west Ham.

Speaker 4 (11:53):
And Fulham and all the rest of it. No offense,
but you get the point. And I'm a United supporter,
but sports, food brands like everything you look at, and
then of course politics, religion, this way, that way, whatever.
It's just all binary and so we haven't really looked
at life as a spectrum. We haven't looked at life
as actually there's all of this gray. Actually there's all

(12:17):
of this middle ground. As you just said, there's a
difference between authenticity, social filtering, censorship, self censorship. There's all
these differences and there are different grades, and the mind
can just go, oh, that's too much work.

Speaker 3 (12:31):
I don't want to do.

Speaker 1 (12:31):
That absolutely, and you know what, I think, this is
where I come back to because I really don't want
to have this conversation from a place of kind of
being holier than thou, thinking that.

Speaker 2 (12:44):
People just need to speak up.

Speaker 1 (12:45):
People just need to stop being afraid of cancel culture,
People just need to say what's on their minds, because
I think it really disregards the biology of all of this.
And when we talk about things being so binary again,
it's not just all of a sudden we're so binary.
We're built in that way because our brains were built
for simplicity. Because now when you see the extreme of

(13:08):
that other side of binary is the paradox of choice,
where when you have too many options, there's overwhelm. And
you kind of see this in dating. You see this
even with brands and clothing. There's way too much that
it actually causes stress for a lot of people without
even realizing that they It leads you to indecision if
you have too many decisions to make, And you see

(13:29):
this with the political system. I think that's the most
obvious one, right, regardless of where you are, even though
they say you have all of these other options, it's
mainly two, right, whatever the two might be that are
propped up.

Speaker 2 (13:40):
But I think we need.

Speaker 1 (13:42):
To, and I know that in my work and a
lot of what I speak about, it can be very
inspiring and motivating and it can really amp you up.
You're ready to undo self censorship. But I'm also asking you,
and what we're talking about, Jay, we're asking people to
consider doing things that are very unknown because to consider
that third space and that nuance, it is not the

(14:05):
default for humans. So we're asking people to kind of
look at what your existing defaults are, where you want
to have good or bad pro or anti woke or
anti woke to kind of simplify the whole thing, right,
But the most beautiful thing you can do for yourself
is to be in that discomfort of being like, Okay,
is there a third way? Is there a third option?

(14:26):
That's where the third perspective comes from. It's a line
that I wrote in my journal in twenty twenty, actually,
when I was so entrenched in my own binary thinking
and I had no idea, and I was writing something,
and I wrote the line third perspective that I'm looking
for a third perspective because I was in like an
internal desperation. I made myself sick with self censorship, and

(14:51):
I really considered myself at the time and even now,
to be an outspoken person, to be someone that is
confident in their thoughts, in their mind, someone who is
open my mind, transparent, et cetera. But my actions were
showing me that I was prioritizing popularity. I was afraid
of what the mob would do to me if I
said I don't agree with that, or I've changed my mind,

(15:12):
or even I don't agree with that anymore. I did
at a point in time, but I'm not that person,
or I understand what the so called other side thinks.
It doesn't mean I accept it, but I understand it.
But I didn't think I was allowed to even say that.
And I think that's the thing that most people and
maybe even yourself have experienced and are experiencing in real time,

(15:35):
where we don't think we're allowed to change our minds,
and ultimately that's what we're talking about here. A third
perspective means that you have to let go of a
version of you that people might be used to right,
and that's very uncomfortable because it's easier to be the
Jay and the Africa that people love and adore, and
people feel like there's a certainty to your thoughts, and

(15:57):
there's a certainty to what you will say and what
you will do, and how you will behave and whether
they can place you. And so when you do something
or even ask a question that kind of deviates from that,
it's really frightening because again the binary mind, people need
to make sense of you. No, Jay usually does this,
but now he's doing this or he's.

Speaker 2 (16:16):
Not doing that.

Speaker 1 (16:17):
So I think, again, my work, I always like to
ground it in an understanding of the reality of being
a human being. We're wired for binary, whether we like
it or not. Even me, I still have my immediate reactions.
But my job and a very exciting challenge that I
have is to notice and then try and go into
that third perspective, to be like, oh, okay, we have

(16:39):
our defaults, but is there something that we're not seeing.

Speaker 3 (16:42):
Yeah, right, you.

Speaker 4 (16:43):
Said something like when you look to yourself and you
realize that you too wanted the binary.

Speaker 3 (16:48):
I think every one.

Speaker 4 (16:50):
Of us if we looked at ourselves, I agree with
me too, I think we'd find we do always slot
into there are only two options, all the time, all
the time, and so you constantly have to ask yourself,
what's the third perspective? This isn't something that like one
day you get to a point and from then you
always see three perspectives.

Speaker 3 (17:09):
Because you're so wired on a human level.

Speaker 4 (17:10):
So I see that in myself that in any conversation,
I can so switch into the righteous mind, binary options,
cancel culture, feeling, making big judgments about people over small
points of information, and these are all lacking the third perspective.
And so if I don't have this habit or this
practice every single day, if I'm not developing it every

(17:34):
single day and constantly pushing myself, it's not that one
day I just get to a point where I'm now
the all knowing.

Speaker 2 (17:41):
And all see yeah, all of this.

Speaker 1 (17:43):
And the subtitle is brave Expression in the Age of intolerance.
I never want people to think that brave expression or
courage is some kind of point of arrival. And then
you get there and then you have Jay in Africa
on the other side with a certificate to give you
to say well done.

Speaker 2 (18:00):
That just isn't how it works.

Speaker 1 (18:02):
And for me, I think that's so exciting to know
that in every single moment, every single interaction, especially your
micro interactions, you get to practice being braver. Because something
I discovered is that I got to a point maybe
because I've been working at this for a while and
understanding all of this stuff intellectually putting it into practice,

(18:24):
but mainly in my work and my career and conversations
that I have in the public. But I realized that
my biggest work to do with brave expression and not
self centering was in romantic relationships.

Speaker 2 (18:36):
Because again, I had.

Speaker 1 (18:37):
Got to a point of feeling so confident and comfortable
that if we're talking about societal things or whatever, it
might be, okay, I can hold my own I cannot
self censer, But in romantic relationships, all of that would unravel.
I would feel uncomfortable saying my needs. I would get
very defensive immediately in conflict, because all of this is

(18:59):
about conflict avoidance. Are you willing to walk into conflict
and to be with it in a healthy way or
do you avoid it and put up your defenses and
self righteousness. So I was very humbled myself to realize that,
even to this day, that my romantic relationships is where
I have to look out for my own self censorship
the most. So there's no arrival.

Speaker 4 (19:21):
Yeah, No, Well, the thing that I love that you
said there is that you said, we're trying to avoid conflict. Yeah,
And actually I think we're trying to avoid conflict even
within ourselves, and that's what we don't want to ask
the question, right, Like I know, and I've been thinking
about this a lot lately because I can kind of
get into a lot of dismantling identity. And what I

(19:42):
mean by that is what most of us do subconsciously
is we've reaffirmed the identity we've built for ourselves. So
if we built an identity as a certain person, a
certain career, a certain ethnic background, whatever it may be,
we've reaffirmed that by who we spend time with, what
we read, what we eat, where we hang out.

Speaker 3 (20:01):
And I kind of do.

Speaker 4 (20:01):
A lot of the opposite, where I'm like constantly questioning thoughts, beliefs,
and values and whether they serve me and whether they're accurate.
And I feel like I've gone quite deep that sometimes
I can get to a point of like I don't
even know who I am anymore, and that can be
very uncomfortable, And so I understand why people don't want
to go there, because it can be so dismantling where

(20:23):
it's almost like, imagine you had a piece of furniture
and you took out all the screws and pieces and
you just placed it down, and you're starting again to go,
what else can I build from this? And you don't
have the manual and you don't have the IA guide
and all the rest of it. Again, looking at them
as extreme options, one option is I keep reaffirming who
I am. The other option is I dismantle myself so

(20:45):
deeply that I don't have a clue who I am right,
And it's like, well, again, how do we exist in
this space of well, I should know how to question
parts of my values, upbringing qualities, character without dismantling myself,
but also not continuing to just become who I am
already walking on the path to become.

Speaker 2 (21:05):
Oh that's so good.

Speaker 1 (21:06):
That's so good because it makes me think about another
thing that I remember writing down. And there were a
couple of these things. First one was around you can
be understanding without accepting right because I think and this
ties in so perfectly with everything that you're saying. But
even if I look at it from a society or perspective,
sometimes we're afraid to kind of truly honest someone's wildview

(21:31):
because we think if I understand you, that means I'm
accepting your wildview. But even a layer deeper than that,
if I understand you, other people will think I'm accepting. Yes,
that seems to be I think one of the biggest
things that I find to be the kind of point
of conflict that we all have that if I show

(21:53):
empathy for someone from the other side, people will think
I'm one of them. So we're dehumanizing each other. But
in doing that, we're dehumanizing ourselves. And I don't think
we even realize that, because that means someone else might
be thinking that a few because whether we like it
or not, we're all one. How we are with each
other is how people will be with you. So when

(22:14):
I think about what you're talking about in terms of
constructing identity, it brings up this the second thing that
I was exploring for myself, which is can I still
have my convictions and be open minded?

Speaker 4 (22:27):
Right?

Speaker 1 (22:27):
Can I still have my convictions about my identity but
be open to changing it again? Because that is the
third perspective. It's not about one or the other. You
don't have to be over attached to your identity or
to completely reject your identity.

Speaker 2 (22:42):
You get to play with all of the components.

Speaker 4 (22:44):
I like that idea of having your convictions and still
being curious. Yes, because because that feels And I love
that point you made going back a couple where you
made about understanding someone doesn't mean accepting them, and if
you're seen to understand someone, it doesn't mean you're accepting.

Speaker 3 (23:00):
Them by others.

Speaker 4 (23:02):
Why is it important or how do we encourage people
to recognize Because I think we get so locked in
our belief systems that I'm right, that person is so wrong,
and we don't even give them the opportunity. And I
think that's where the fear comes from for so many people,
is I won't even be given the opportunity to be understood.

(23:25):
I mean, even taking your romantic example, is there a
part of you that has a fear? Because I like
looking at it. I always say to people's like the
micro experiences are literally just blown up on the macro experiences.
It's not that different like we think it is, like, oh,
I'm different in love and I'm different, But like you
just said, it was like, no, self censorship is something
I can do in love or I can do it online,

(23:48):
and it's the same feeling and may be a different
fear and maybe, but there's a fear that I come
across and that I see in people I talk to,
which is I feel like I won't be given an
opportunity to be understood and I'll be judged immediately. So
even if I try to share something in a very logical, rational, thoughtful, conscious,

(24:12):
deeply honest way about whatever belief it is, whether it's
one on one, whether it's one to many online, I
feel like people are going to judge it immediately for
whether it's sincere, genuine or not. And I know people
who are listening and watching have probably written posts and edited, edited,
edited every word, edited every word, and then deleted it

(24:33):
or got a text together to send to that person
and written down all your emotions and feelings and then gone, no,
they're just going to think I'm being too needy. No,
they're just going to think I'm being too this, deleted
it or sent it and then felt, oh gosh, they're
going to think I'm needy. They get a message back game,
You're being too needy. People don't make us feel we
have the time to explain ourselves. People don't make us

(24:57):
feel that we have the space for them to understand us,
and people may us feel that no matter what we say,
they've already made their judgment. So then we just be quiet,
or we hide, or we never express how we feel
because it's safer and it's easier. Two questions, what is

(25:17):
lost in that for us? Yeah, when we just hide?
And second question, how do we change that? Like, how
do we get to a point where we can start
understanding each other and not accepting each other?

Speaker 1 (25:28):
I really want to thank you for allowing yourself to
express that thought out loud, because to me, these conversations
is jay, especially the conversation you and I are having now.
I wish you knew and I'm getting goosebumps. How many
people are scared to talk about this like it's a
and the fears are not unfounded at all. We only

(25:49):
just have to look online, offline have conversations with people.
When you speak to people in a very honest way
like this, you see the relief being like, oh my god,
people are willing to talk about like there's there's a
very real fear, And the fact that you and I
can sit here and have this conversation is such a
It's such a beautiful thing because I know how many

(26:10):
people are so terrified, And as you were speaking, I
could feel just like a almost sadness but also joy
in my in my chest because you're saying words that
I think about all the time and that people share
with me, thousands of people all the time. And the
word grace comes to mind. And I'm going to also

(26:33):
explore a thought in real time with you and.

Speaker 2 (26:35):
Just cowards, which is what we do.

Speaker 1 (26:38):
I think this all comes back to whether we like
it or not, to this self. If you have an
inability to show yourself grace for your own contradictions, I
promise you you will never be able to do it
for someone else. We respond in that way to other people,
expect other people to be reactionary, expect other people to
match our worldview, scan for malicious intent in what people

(27:03):
are saying. Why because we already do it to ourselves.
Someone who shows themselves grace is able to honor other
people's contradiction without thinking they have to become or that
other people might be seeing. It's like self surveillance, which
then becomes surveiling everyone in everything. I think that's what

(27:23):
it is, the inability to be graceful with ourselves.

Speaker 3 (27:27):
Yeah, I mean, you're spot on.

Speaker 4 (27:29):
I that resonates so strongly and anyone who's watching, but
if you're listening, I literally side like they were so
relieving to hear that, because I think that's kind of
you know, it's a journey I've been on, and a
journey that I've mentioned, and I said this to you earlier.
This theme of yours has come up in podcasts in

(27:51):
miniature moments, and today I was excited because we're diving
right into just this. I think for me, what's been
really interesting is that I've lived so many paradoxical lives,
and it took me forever to give myself grace to
live as a paradox. It took me forever. I was
self critical, I was harsh on myself.

Speaker 1 (28:13):
I was.

Speaker 3 (28:15):
Disconnected for myself.

Speaker 4 (28:16):
There was a sense of ridiculing myself, pointing fingers at myself,
like there was a lot of that for many years,
and I started to realize how much more layered complex
and there was a third version of me. And so
you know, when I lived as a monk, it was
one of the best experiences of my life and I

(28:38):
would never change it. I would do it again, and
it was so special and if you would have asked me,
then I thought I was going to do that for
the rest of my life. And at one point when
I had to admit to myself then not only could
I not do that for the rest of my life,
but that it wasn't my path. That was the first
time I felt I really had to sit with giving
grace to myself because in my eyes, i'd failed. In

(29:01):
my eyes, I had let people down. In my eyes,
people would judge me for having failed, and I felt,
if I leave this, everyone's going to think I've completely
messed up and that I'm a failure and that I'm
really weak.

Speaker 3 (29:16):
In my eyes.

Speaker 4 (29:16):
And by the way, there were like ten people who
knew I was, so it wasn't It wasn't about a
scale thing. It was just a feeling of not only
am I letting myself down, Everyone's going to be let
down by my actions. And I think everyone can relate
to that, whether it's you had a breakup and you
thought you were going to marry that person and all
of a sudden you're thinking, gosh, everyone thought I was
going to marry that person too, and now they left me.

(29:38):
Maybe you've had that same experience because you had a
job and that job was going really well, and then
you lost your job, and all of a sudden, you're thinking, well,
everyone thinks I'm a failure because I got made redundant
or I got fired or whatever it is. Maybe you've
had that experience because you had a dream that you
told everyone you were going to chase and then it
didn't work out. And now so we've all had that

(29:58):
experience of feeling canceled by ourselves and others. In that moment,
I remember having to go deep and give myself permission
to say no, I can evolve, I can rebecome, and
I can keep the parts of that experience that were true,
but I can also let go of the parts of
the experience that are no longer and that doesn't take

(30:19):
away from that experience. Then I had to do it
again when I started. Then I worked in the corporate
world and started to become a creator after that, and
it was the same thing. Then it was like, okay,
now I'm actually going to share. And I remember the
start people being like, well, you're promoting yourself, Like this
isn't aligned with humility, and this isn't aligned with being
a grounded individual.

Speaker 3 (30:40):
How could you make a video.

Speaker 1 (30:41):
Because the binary, right, you were this and by virtually
of you being a monk, and this even if you've
never said to people anything about your desires or the
way you want to live, just by identity, you having
that identity and that label attached to you means people
can assign anything they want onto it, and you have

(31:01):
to perform and to be that forever.

Speaker 4 (31:04):
Absolutely, And some of that is my own doing, and
I did responsibility for that, Like some of that is
definitely something I've created for myself.

Speaker 3 (31:13):
So it's not that.

Speaker 4 (31:14):
I'm free of all responsibility and that I can only
point the fingers outwards and stop being me. And because
there is a sense of like, well, no, that's a
part of my identity, I decided to share with you.
And that was a choice that I made before we
dive into the next moment. Let's hear from our sponsors
and back to our episode. The reason why I was

(31:34):
walking through that thought experiment is because this is the
conversation and I think, again, the binary is it's all
your fault, you're all picking on me, I'm just doing
a good job. Or the binary is I've really messed
up and you're all right, yeah. And the third perspective is, well, actually,
there's some things I need to take accountability and responsibility for,

(31:57):
but I hope you do too, because we no one's
going to get far in a world where we don't
give ourselves and others grace. But I think we think
we hold ourselves to such a high standard that we
then project that high standard onto others. And I think
it's been said for years. I don't know who said it,
but the famous phrase of we judge other people by

(32:19):
their actions, not their intentions, and we judge ourselves by
our intentions not our actions.

Speaker 1 (32:26):
That's exactly it. And it speaks to the projection of
moral perfection and the reason social media plays a role
in this. And I want people to know that when
I talk about social media, I'm not kind of bringing
it back to that cliche conclusion where I think social
media is the problem. I speak at it just from
a very different point of view, to highlight that these

(32:49):
things that are already primal within us, that have already
existed within us, just get a different stage because of
social media. And I think it's something to be curious about.
But I find that because of that kind of shame,
we feel because we know we're not morally perfect, because
we know that behind closed doors there are things that
we agree with that other people would look down on

(33:10):
us for, or the person that we used to be
that maybe we've been able to cover them up quite
well and no one else knows, but there's the shame
that can still lie beneath. Whereas on social media we
get to create this morally perfect person who posts all
of the right infographics, all of the right links, all
of the right things. They always have the right opinion.

(33:31):
They're somewhat offer twenty four hour news cycle as well,
so when something is happening, they're up to date on everything,
they're educated right all of this, but a lot of
the time it's in direct contradiction to who we actually are.
But we're so wedded to that morally perfect avatar that
we expect other people to also have one of their own.

(33:53):
So if someone shows a side of them that is
a little bit unsavory or a little bit inappropriate, or
someone who doesn't agree with something and is willing to
say it, I think we experience this kind of cognitive
dissonance because a mirror has been held up. I find
that sometimes it's almost like a how dare you say
what is on your mind? When I can't a lot

(34:16):
of the time. It's kind of this frustration that we have,
how dare you be free? When I am in a
cage that I have constructed for myself. It's not the
story for everyone, but I promise you it's the common
story if you were to look just a little bit
deeper to say, why do why do I feel these
reactions so strongly when someone doesn't match my worldview? What

(34:39):
feels so threatening? And sometimes it's someone's freedom of expression
that feels threatening. And I think that's a good starting
point to be honest about.

Speaker 4 (34:48):
Literally, Like again, I'm having just so many great thoughts,
and I'm glad that we're figuring this out. And I
know you've had a lot more hours in this place
and years, but hearing you say that, it sounds like
there is a dual responsibility, because there's a responsibility for
us to be able to not censor ourselves, to be

(35:09):
able to express ourselves, to be able to realize there's
more options. But so much of that rests on not
feeling like someone's going to ostracize and judge us absolute
And I wonder, how do we start within ourselves, as
you said, that's really where it starts. You said a

(35:31):
few moments ago that because people don't give themselves grace
for their own contradictions, they can't have grace for other
people's contradictions. What is the process of giving ourselves grace
for our contradictions? Because I think almost sometimes we don't
even see them, like I think sometimes we're just so
self unaware. And it's so funny. I consider myself to

(35:52):
be quite a self aware personally. Just two weeks ago,
I was sitting there and someone gave me some honest
piece of feedback and I sat with it for the
rest of the day, and I was like, I am
so self unaware, Like I'm so self unaware, and I
thought about this weekend, I again got some good feedback
from someone, and I was thinking, yeah, like, I don't

(36:13):
even see how me acting that way could be perceived
that way, but it is. And whether that's my intention
or that's how it's perceived, yes, but I'm so self unaware.
I'm just I'm not conscious of that. And so even
as someone who considers themselves very self aware, I would
consider myself to be not that aware. And so I
think a lot of us are so self unaware where

(36:35):
we don't even know we have a contradiction. We're like, no,
I've always signed up for the same thing, I've always
voted the same I've always felt.

Speaker 3 (36:41):
The same No, no, no, this is who I am.

Speaker 4 (36:43):
So wait a minute, like you just did something else
last week to your partner or whatever it maybe, Yeah,
So where do we start when we have no space
for grace for our contradictions because we don't even know
what they are.

Speaker 1 (36:54):
I love that question so much, and I organized this book,
but it's actually not even really about the I had
to organize a lot of my own thoughts from my
own journals and a lot of my work with clients
because I'm a developmental coach and a researcher and I'm
trained in union psychology. So my fascination Jay is really

(37:15):
understanding the shadow of humanity, which is essentially what we're
talking about in that if you are willing to integrate
and understand your shadow, you will experience a more fulfilling life.
You will find yourself being in more integrity. So I
organize the book in three parts, awareness, responsibility, and expression,
and I see this as the journey of going from conforming,

(37:38):
whether it's conforming to ideals and expectations of your past self,
to a place of actual, brave expression and courage. A
lot of people want to rush to expression. What do
I say, what do I do? Give me this strategy Africa?
Or I've been canceled?

Speaker 2 (37:53):
What do I say?

Speaker 1 (37:54):
It's kind of no. We have to start at awareness.
What are you afraid of? If I express the truth?
I believe that I will be punished. I believe that
I'll be abandoned, rejected, whatever it might be. I truly
believe that everyone has to start there. Be honest about
what you're afraid of. When Jay tells me an opinion
that I don't agree with, and I'm very defensive and reactionary,

(38:16):
and I want to take him down, I'm afraid of something.

Speaker 2 (38:19):
What am I afraid of? Right?

Speaker 1 (38:21):
Is it because his worldview feels like a threat to
my sense of self?

Speaker 2 (38:25):
Is it?

Speaker 1 (38:26):
Just be very honest. And then the second part where
you're talking about contradiction falls into the responsibility aspect, where
I ask the question what do you stand for? And
I always use another sort of mantra that I wrote,
which says, when you don't know what you stand for,
you will always be at the mercy of the external world.

(38:46):
And that's really important. I'll say that again. When you
don't know what you stand for, you will always be
at the mercy of the external world. So if you
come across someone who's more intimidating, someone you believe has
more status, more power, someone who maybe you believe is
better than you in some way, or a mob or
someone who says you need to speak up in this

(39:08):
exact way or use your platform, whatever it is, you
will always be at the mercy of everything else. You
will never consult yourself. You will always consult other people
before you consult you. And to actually know what you
stand for, you need to know what your values are,
which I think is what we're talking about. And I
think a really good place to spot your contradictions is

(39:29):
to say, okay, what do I value. People will usually
say things like I value honesty, integrity, transparency, kindness, And
it feels so good to say this is what I value.

Speaker 2 (39:41):
It feels amazing.

Speaker 1 (39:43):
But then I like to go a step deeper to say,
the results you see in your life right now, right now,
in real time, in this moment in time, they will
actually show you what it is you actually value the
state of your relationships, the state of your bank account,
the state of your how you behave online, whatever it
might be that will show you what you actually value.

(40:05):
So is that still congruent the values that you said?
And in the book I call it we have our
embodied values, which is how we actually live, and then
we have our desired values.

Speaker 2 (40:19):
Who we think we are.

Speaker 1 (40:20):
I think I'm someone that value is open mindedness. But
I promise you in twenty twenty, I was shown that
I didn't value open mindedness as much as I thought,
which is when I started writing this book. I was
shown that even though I was open minded in some
areas and I was courageous and I was very fearful
in others, I had moments where I chose popularity over truth.

Speaker 2 (40:44):
And that is just the reality of it.

Speaker 1 (40:46):
So my results at that time and my nervous system
at that time was showing me the truth of what
I valued. So I think, and there's an exercise in here,
many of them, but I think that's a good place
to be able to see where contradict actually is. What
would you say you value versus what the results in
your life are actually showing you. I value health, I

(41:07):
value this. What do you watch most of the time?
What do you listen to? I value maybe ambition and
being consistent. Okay, the results in your life do they
show you that you value that? Or do you value
other things? So I think that's a good kind of
objective way to be truthful.

Speaker 4 (41:25):
I agree, you know, I agree. I think that's a
great reflection exercise. And I love how simple it is,
how structured it is. And I really hope everyone takes
time to do this. I mean, I think when I
hear these things, I recognize how the biggest challenge with
all of this is time. Yeah, because it all takes
time to really sit there and look at what is
the third perspective? Takes time to ask yourself what are

(41:50):
my embodied values.

Speaker 3 (41:51):
And what are my desired values? And what's the difference.

Speaker 4 (41:53):
It takes time, does and I find that everyone is
so time poor today, and that's why we're living in
this society we are leaving in. I think we think
we're time books.

Speaker 2 (42:04):
Yeah, because I promise you we will watch Lover Is
Blind and talk about it the whole series of day.

Speaker 3 (42:12):
Yeah, No, it's true.

Speaker 4 (42:14):
And I mean I was looking at studies recently because
I was talking about how couples. There's a wonderful team
member of mine who named one of my presentations. Her
name's Annie, and it's called it's called I miss you
when You're next to me. It's something she says to
her husband, and it's this idea of how we miss
people when we're next to them because we're not really

(42:34):
with them because we're watching TV or whatever it may be.
And I looked into all of these studies which talked
about just how much television again not television, how much
we're watching streaming platforms. Yeah, every night with our partners,
but we think we don't have enough time with them.
And so it's your your spot on. You know, there
is a lot of we have time. It's just that

(42:54):
we either two exhausted, the two overworked. We're overwhelmed, we're
stressed that it becomes the only escape. Yes, to let
us feel like we're decompressing and letting go. But that's
the time that we'd have to invest in. Yeah, let
me ask God. The third perspective is let me figure
out my values, let me do all these other things.
And I think it becomes interesting because you're right, it's

(43:17):
not time that's the challenge. It's space and energy and
priority and priority.

Speaker 1 (43:22):
Yeah, and I'll bring in that thread of empathy and
compassion again, is that the world that we live in
is so overwhelming. The average person is, I promise you,
just trying to get by. That's the reality of it.
The average person is just trying to figure out how
do I keep the four walls up and how do

(43:44):
I find some level of escapism where I don't have
to think about how much I'm working and how much
everything costs and blah blah blah. There's a reality to
all of it. And I never dismissed that I am
not someone that thinks we all need to be on
this relentless quest for self improvement and what I I
just don't believe that. And at the same time, I
think maybe I can offer a little bit of relief

(44:06):
to say we don't have to do everything all at once.
I really don't think we need to do everything all
at once. I don't think that we have to look
at ourselves as some kind of project that needs fixing,
to be on a mission to undo self. It's just
it's not realistic. But I think what is realistic is
to look at some pain point in your life right now,
because there is one, and then to get curious about it,

(44:28):
even just a little bit. I think it's the bare minimum,
That's what I will say. I think it's absolutely the
bare minimum. If most of us can notice that there's
a problem where we're starting to feel, even in our
most intimate relationships, that there's sort of this walking on
eggshells feel and we can't quite name it. And where

(44:48):
there was a time on social media where you were
quite excited to just post about your day and your
dog and maybe your child or whatever. Now people are
terrified to even share something that is non controversial. And
the thing that you brought up earlier. I work with
a lot of entrepreneurs and people that are visible, and
they talk about kind of putting two hundred caveats on
everything and disclaimers and just again, because we want to

(45:11):
keep the mob at bay. It might might not be
an actual mob, it could be perceived, it could be real,
but there's a fear. There's a fear that is so palpable,
and we need to talk about it. We need to
be honest about it. So I don't think we need
to do everything all at once. But I think it's
just about being honest about areas in which you're finding
yourself repressing, not even just your speech, but your thoughts.

(45:33):
Because I think the most dangerous thing is when you
center yourself in your mind before you even anyone else
does it for you, you've done the job yourself. I
think that's a very dangerous place to be in. And
I call it in my book the mob in your mind,
because I think once you befriend the mob in your
mind and you to just see that it's a it's
just a bunch of toddlers trying to think, how do

(45:54):
we keep you safe? What do we have to do?
But you're you can see the shadows, so they look
like giant you know, but actually just befriend them and
understand them and see what are they trying to protect
you from? But we don't have to do everything all
at once, you know, And I think that should allow
for people to address that part that's like, Okay, this
is great, but like where do I even begin?

Speaker 3 (46:16):
Yeah you know, yeah for sure.

Speaker 4 (46:18):
Yeah it's a really interesting thing you just said about
the shadow and the size of the target. Yeah, yeah,
it makes me remember, like I know a lot of
us would feel that the one percent is so loud,
and so the one percent of people that are trolling
negative and even that word, it would be good to

(46:38):
discuss that word, same as cancel culture. But I feel
like that language around like the comment section, as we
all know on YouTube, Instagram, wherever you are TikTok, Twitter,
like it's almost like it's so loud, so you could
have and I always look at this paradox again where
it's like you could have a million likes on a
post and one hundred thousand shit and ten thousand negative comments,

(47:03):
but because the comments are qualitative in some regard, your
energy goes straight there. If you let social media teach
you about the world, it will have you believing that
everyone in the world is irrational, crazy, and just not
a good person. That's only the one percent because they're loud.
But that's not everyone. I meet more reasonable people on

(47:27):
a daily basis that I don't know than unreasonable people,
and I'm hoping most people would say that. Maybe not,
but at least our belief system is, oh my gosh,
everyone in the world is absolutely against me. The mob,
in my mind, is really loud. So how do we
reconcile that kind of proportionality and ratio of our belief

(47:49):
system because we give more weight and value to the
mob than we do to humanity. Because doesn't make sense.

Speaker 1 (47:57):
It does, it makes toastal sense. And it's again it
brings me back to where we sort of started with
this around the underpinning biology of so many of the
things that we're speaking about. Whether we like it or not,
we do, as human beings have a negativity bias, and
it's for survival, you need to look out for danger.

(48:17):
But again, now it just manifests in a different way.
But also that just speaks to the kind of personal
understanding and personal responsibility, if you will, aspect of things
and being like, Okay, I have a negativity bias, so
it's my job to either seek out positive things or
to notice when I'm being more drawn to it. But
I think, especially in a post pandemic world where our

(48:40):
offline lives and our online lives are pretty much one
and the same, our algorithms play into the fact that
we have a negativity bias. So that is all that's
going to be propelled. I mean, you see it everywhere
the news as well. The news picks out specific stories
that happ into that negativity bias because it keeps us watching.

(49:04):
So I think there's kind of like a need to
understand our primal inclination, but to also understand how big
media works. So I think it's a little bit of
the two, because I don't think it's as simple as
just reducing all of this to personal responsibility. I think
that's a part of it, but it's not the full picture.

(49:24):
It's why I really love the work of people like
Jonathan Height, It's why I love people like Johann Hari
because they are I feel like they do a very
good job at addressing those sort of two components the
primal biological aspect of things, but being like, actually, we
also need to be very honest about the platforms that
are taking a lot of our time and tapping into

(49:46):
those biological things. So I think for me, it's a
little bit of that just awareness. It's like what you
were saying before, knowing that if you have this sort
of thing within you where you think your self aware enough,
always know this a little bit further, you can go.

Speaker 4 (50:02):
Yeah. I find that to be the block that at
least I find it, and I'd love to telling what
people think I find it to be the block. And
we mentioned this when we were just hanging out earlier.
So when Africa walked in, me and her were talking
about what kind of experience we like when we do
interviews and we meet new people and we go on
podcasts and things. And I was talking about the kind

(50:23):
of experience I like to create for guests and what
kind of mood I like to set and why I
do things the way I do. And when I was
doing that, I felt a creeping in feeling of ego
and pride and I was like, oh, yeah, yeah, I
know exactly what I'm doing, and there was that inside
of me, and then my ego less mind started to

(50:44):
get involved in the conversation and third perspective, I was like,
wait a minute, this is the exact reason we're having
this conversation with Africa is to get rid of the
righteous mind, like this belief system that one.

Speaker 3 (50:55):
Is better or worse.

Speaker 4 (50:57):
But we really get into the space really in a
nuanced and through all my Monk training, I got really
good at knowing even the tiniest moments when the ego
was kind of coming to the forefront, because that was
such a big part of the training we had, and
even then it's so hard to calm down and connect
with the ego and you know, create harmony with it.

(51:20):
But I find that the biggest challenge is the people
that do say what they feel and do express boldly
believe that they are fully right. And those of us
that stay quiet, we also believe that we're fully right.
So there's this belief of like, oh, if you're joining
cancel culture and I'm not, then I'm right. I'm actually

(51:40):
doing the right thing, and the person who's diving into
cancel culture is going, of course, I'm doing the right thing.
So the belief is, how can we even try to
understand someone because we already think what we're doing is right.
If what I think I'm doing is right from the
get go, I have no need or space to understand
you because you're already wrong. And so that to me

(52:04):
is the at the root of why there's no space
to understand, why there's no space to reflect, why there's
no space to listen to you, because I already feel
I'm better in a really subconscious way, whether I'm not
talking or whether I'm talking.

Speaker 1 (52:21):
There's no like beautifully neat answer to any of this,
which I think is also one of the best parts
of it, because it's an ever evolving conversation. But I
think bringing it to that sort of beautiful landing of
finding opportunities where you can notice your righteous mind coming
into play, that moment where we want to exercise superiority,

(52:45):
and I tend to find again if I bring the
element of online, because again, this is where most of
this is happening. If you're just walking down the street
and you're not meeting people that are just shouting at you.
When you walk down the street, people are saying use
your platform. They're not saying that to me either, But
when you go online, it just feels like a very
different world because we've created a very very different world,

(53:08):
a world which needs more values like grace and true
understanding and being knowing what can be open minded and
still have our convictions and to not hold them so tightly.
But I think it is about looking for where you
are exercising superiority. And I think some of us and
I had to do this, need to be very honest

(53:29):
about the fact that when you feel so out of
control in your life in other areas, you are more
likely to try and gain control when you're online. I
think that's a very big one. People that feel so
powerless elsewhere, but now they're in this place where people
don't have the context of your life. People don't know

(53:51):
the insecurities that you have, people don't know what you've
done in the past. You get to curate the image
of who you are. And again we'll lead with moral
perfect because a lot of the time we want to
make up for things that we don't think we actually have.
But I think it's that self inquiry is so it's
really uncomfortable. It can even be a little bit excruciating,

(54:14):
but it's so liberating because you free yourself from this
sort of It's not even enough to just call it intolerant,
because it's not that. I think it's a version of
you that is so deeply unfulfilled and needs to maintain
control and power, and has so much fear around being
rejected and abandoned. So you feel that you need to

(54:36):
overcompensate with a lot of these things. But I think
it comes back to the righteous mind. You have to
be able to spot your need to exercise superiority.

Speaker 3 (54:47):
It's such an interesting thing. I was.

Speaker 4 (54:48):
You made me remember a experience I had back at
school when I used to be part of my It's gonna.

Speaker 3 (54:55):
Sound super geeky, but yeah, I was part of my
debate team.

Speaker 2 (54:57):
Yeah that's cool and oh that's good.

Speaker 4 (55:00):
And I really enjoyed it because it was such a
great learning experience. So I remember one presentation. I was
probably like, I don't know, fourteen years old or something
like that, like a young teenager and maybe fifteen, and
we had this debate set up.

Speaker 3 (55:15):
I can't remember the motion, and.

Speaker 4 (55:18):
I made a point that completely destroyed the other person's
argument and the whole all my friends and everyone in
the audience went crazy, and I was just like, oh,
you showed him, like you know, it was like this big,
like kind of moment. I was feeling myself and thinking
I was amazing. And I talked to my teacher afterwards,
who asked to see me after the presentation and I'd

(55:41):
won the debate yeah, And he said to me, he goes, Jay,
did you win the debate today? And I was like yeah,
like you know, he said to me, how did it
go for you today? I was like, well, we won,
like it was great, and he was like, no, you
didn't win, And I was like, what do you mean? Like,
didn't you just see everyone and applaud and like, go,
you know, crow crazy? And he said no, he said

(56:04):
you won the crowd, but you lost the debate.

Speaker 3 (56:07):
And I was like, what do you mean.

Speaker 4 (56:10):
And he said, well, he said, a good debate is
where you have a deep understanding of the other person's
space and place and insight. It's not that what you're
saying proves them wrong. It's that you understand their argument
so deeply that you're able to dismantle it on its own.

(56:32):
It's not about yours being better. It's about you actually
being to understand it so deeply that you're able to.

Speaker 3 (56:38):
Show that parts of it don't add up.

Speaker 4 (56:42):
And it was a really nuanced, profound point for me,
because I just thought, if you win the crowd, then
of course you win. And I think that's what the
society we live in today, where it's like, if someone
wins over the crowd, even if they're completely wrong, we're
okay with it, right, even if someone acts completely and
more or we don't even know the truth, we don't
know what happened behind closed doors if they win the crowd,

(57:04):
Like if someone wins it on social media and they're
in a legal case or whatever it is, and on
social media all goes well, even if we have no
idea what that person's moral character is, we we're with them,
and you see this on shows, you see this everywhere.

Speaker 3 (57:19):
And again I'm not saying we should judge them.

Speaker 4 (57:21):
I'm just saying we all believe if you win the crowd,
you want, and so we've lost the ability to actually say, well, no,
do I deeply understand Can I actually get context of this?

Speaker 1 (57:31):
Yes? That just landed so so strongly for me. Thank
you for sharing that anecdote on the debate because it's
actually right about this and speak about it a lot
because it's a big part of my story in my experience.

Speaker 2 (57:45):
But a lot of what you're.

Speaker 1 (57:47):
Saying directly parallels what I experienced in twenty twenty. As
I've said at many points throughout this conversation and kind
of reference to that point in time didn't get very specific.
Twenty twenty is when there was a big conversation around
race relations after the killing of George Floyd in the US,

(58:09):
and it ignited really important conversations that have transformed the
way we speak about race, the way we interact with
each other, the way we have started to just notice
our conscious and unconscious biases. But I, again at that time,
had already been doing the work that I do and
understanding self sabotage, self censorship, how do we have brave conversations,

(58:32):
et cetera. But this is all identity right even as
I'm saying it right now, it's I had been studying,
I've been learning, I've been whatever.

Speaker 2 (58:40):
But there were aspects of what.

Speaker 1 (58:42):
I was doing and grounded in that was just from
the neck up but hadn't been actually embodied. And I
got to learn that in twenty twenty because I was
one of the people for a very short time but
a very intense time, demanding that people speak up about
what was happening in the state. And again I use
that language very specific because I'm not taking in the

(59:04):
context of where people are in the world. What if
Africa someone doesn't have any idea of what has actually happened.
What if it's someone from India or Kenya or Zimbabwe
or and I'm expecting them to speak up. Speaking up
meaning you have to do it online. It has to
be a performance. You have to post something that is

(59:25):
going to make me feel like, Okay, you've done this.

Speaker 2 (59:27):
The right way. So it's all ego, because who.

Speaker 1 (59:30):
Am I as a individual person in West London in
my house expecting the world. When you actually look at
and speak about these things in this way, you realized
just how it's not only self righteous, but entitlement is
a part of it as well. Right, That's why I
am entitled to your opinion. And there's just so there

(59:52):
was just so much a play for me that was
really humbling. So I was one of the people specifically
on the Tuesday where people were being told to post
a black square. I think most people listening to this
will understand and it was so out of character, but
I think I have to even do a self correction
in real time say, actually know, it was a demonstration

(01:00:14):
of what my character actually was. I thought that it
would be out of character for me to do something
like that, but it was in character in a way.
But I was pretty much just demanding that people speak
up about race and the way that I wanted them to.
And you could look at it and say, yeah, you
were inviting people to do something that was right and
very important, but I was doing it in an extremely

(01:00:35):
intolerant way, in a way that was pretty much not
giving people an option to speak up in a different way.
There was no sort of third perspective, There was no nuance,
There was no consideration of maybe Africa people are speaking offline.
And I have a feeling so many people listening to
this will remember that time and maybe the way they
participated or what they experienced, because I've had so many

(01:00:59):
in life conversations in the past four years about that
time period, and I was applauded Jay so loudly for
it because I was essentially shaming those that were not
speaking up, those that were not saying anything. And again,
I would have never expected myself to behave in this way,
but guess what I did. And when I looked into
it a little bit deeper over time, I realized that

(01:01:22):
I was speaking in that way because I was afraid
of what people would say to me if I didn't
say anything.

Speaker 2 (01:01:32):
So it was almost like a performance.

Speaker 1 (01:01:34):
Again, that idea of keeping the mob at bay, so
behaving in a way that you think will appease them,
but then behaving in that way got me applauded. So
the thing about the crowd instantly, Also, because of the
time period, everyone is pretty much online, we're on lockdown,
in most parts of the world, so the digital space
was just a very different place to be, and things

(01:01:56):
would sort of just spread like wildfire. So all of
a sudden, I'm having thousands and thousands of people applauding
me and cheering me on, telling me that I'm doing
the right thing. And then I have this man who
sends me a message. He sends me a DM and
he says, Africa, I've been following your work for a while.
I really respect what you do when you've helped me

(01:02:16):
a lot, But I just wanted to ask you, do
you think that this is the right way to bring
people together? Because again, I'm saying that I want unity,
I'm saying that I want open conversations. I'm saying that
I want tolerance, but my actions are in complete contradiction.

(01:02:36):
So someone that had a bit of an understanding of
who I am and what I supposedly stand for is saying, hey,
do you think that this is the approach to take?
Instead of responding to him and even sitting with it
for a while to kind of be curious about where
he was coming from, I immediately shamed him, and I
did it publicly. It wasn't extreme in any way, but

(01:02:59):
I screenshot the DM that he had sent me and
I posted it onto my main feed on Instagram. I
guess it was sort of a thing of trying to
supposedly share someone else's intolerance, which I was perceiving as
you're being intolerant to my express again my self, right,
my opinion masses, you know. And I would also have

(01:03:20):
to be very honest with myself about the fact that
I believed that as a black woman, even though he
was a mixed race man, that I had more of
a right to behave and to speak in this way
than he did. So this is where the sort of
identity hierarchy things come in. Where I used a very
important part of my identity to shut down conversation, which

(01:03:43):
is also something we need to be very honest, happened
so much where I had the inability to actually engage
critically and to feel what I call the initial out
of being like, oh, that doesn't feel so good. But
let me be curious about this and just stay let
me humanize this person and realize that it took a

(01:04:03):
lot for him to say to even open with I
love what you do. You've done a lot for me,
and to pose a just a really important question. Actually
there was none of that. I made it all about
me and used my identity to shut down the conversation
because I didn't have a response for it.

Speaker 2 (01:04:23):
So I posted this.

Speaker 1 (01:04:25):
Thing and again immediately started getting even more applause. And
I remember the feeling that I got it was it
was sort of it was a very teared feeling. There
was kind of like an excitement, like an exhilaration, because
again it's the crowd. Think of that moment where people
you've just said something and it's like you've just shut

(01:04:46):
everything down. You're being seen by your peers in a
different way. You've just won the debate, right, It's that
feeling of winning. What it does to you somatically, it's
like a It's like an arousal of senses. It's so
you see how if you don't even pause just for
a moment, you will want to experience that forever. Yes,

(01:05:08):
you will do whatever it takes to experience that. And
that's what I had for a moment, that kind of
exhilaration of being like oh okay.

Speaker 2 (01:05:18):
And then about twenty.

Speaker 1 (01:05:21):
Minutes to half an hour later, I started feeling sick,
like actually sick. That feeling sort of moved from being
like an excitement, which usually happens in the chest and
you can sort of feel it in your upper body,
to kind of just dropping down to the pit of
my stomach. Why, Because it was a huge integrity breach.
I was experiencing this applause and whatever, but the means,

(01:05:44):
the path that I had to take to get it
was not an integrity And I'm so grateful that I
experienced that, because for some people, they will never pay
attention to the integrity breach.

Speaker 2 (01:05:55):
Most people won't even.

Speaker 1 (01:05:56):
Really feel it because that sort of sense of power,
and honestly, power could just be ten likes when you've
never received ten likes before. It could be anything. It's
not about scale. It's just about what it makes you feel.
You're getting a level of recognition and applause that you
just haven't had before, you know. And I remember feeling

(01:06:17):
just looking at what I'd shared, looking at that message
again and just feeling quite literally sick. And I deleted
it and I didn't post anything maybe for a couple
of days, and I sent a message to that man
and I apologized. I apologized to him for it, and

(01:06:39):
he was like, oh, that's no big deal. But that's
when my own unraveling started. That's when I started journaling,
and that's when that idea of the third perspective came through,
because I experienced a level of cognitive dissonance I haven't
experienced only at the time I've experienced. That is when
I finally realized, after seven relapses that I had to
get sober, and nothing new had sort of happened. It

(01:07:02):
was just like a big sort of you dissociate and
you see yourself and you have a decision you need
to make. And that's what I had in twenty twenty,
and that's what moved me from looking at self sabotage
from like an interpersonal lens to trying to understand it

(01:07:24):
on a societal lens, because what I had experienced there
is what we kind of call cancel culture, but I
prefer to call it collective sabotage. So I coined the
term collective sabotage because I think it's less politicized and
I think it's a more accurate definition of what this
actually is. We think we're doing the right thing, but
we have no idea what we're doing. We're saying we

(01:07:47):
want tolerance, but we're leading with intolerance. We're saying we
want progressiveness, but we're being extremely regressive, you know, in
our approaches. And I got to see that in my
and I could have taken the path of doubling down,
which is what you tend to see a lot of
the time, where people get applauded for a certain thing

(01:08:07):
and then that just becomes and they become sort of
like a caricature of themselves. That was not what I
needed to do. I needed to go to the path
of being like, what theck have I just done, you know,
and owning up to that publicly. And that's the process
that I started to actually share that experience publicly and

(01:08:28):
every other thing that I'd experienced that was in line
with that.

Speaker 3 (01:08:32):
Thank you so much for sharing that.

Speaker 4 (01:08:33):
Yeah, so powerful to kind of dive into such a
specific moment in time, Yes, that kind of embodies and
encapsulates this whole message, and to see it play out
like that, and for you to have that level of
intricure self awareness, which is what it takes to kind
of question and reflect and pick apart and dissect your

(01:08:56):
own self and how you've done that.

Speaker 3 (01:08:58):
That takes so much.

Speaker 4 (01:08:59):
Courage and vulnerability and even the way you shared it.
I'm sitting there listening to you, going, that's what it takes.

Speaker 3 (01:09:06):
That's what it takes. That's what it takes.

Speaker 4 (01:09:08):
Before we dive into the next moment, let's hear from
our sponsors and back to our episode. It shocks me
still to this day that we think that blame and
shame and guilt are good ways of changing people ourselves
including Yeah, it's like shame, guilt and blame are rarely

(01:09:32):
good techniques or approaches to creating change within ourselves or others.
When was the last time you changed your partner because
you blame them for something? When was the last time
you got through to your child because you shamed them
for something? When was the last time you made yourself
eat better, work out more, or live better because you

(01:09:53):
guilted yourself into it? Maybe you did for a couple
of days.

Speaker 2 (01:09:56):
It's not sustainable, sustainable completely. You're so right.

Speaker 1 (01:10:00):
They're just such ineffective strategies. I was speaking to my
siblings about this the other day and we were talking
about we were speaking with a group of friends actually,
and we're all African, we're all African in this setting,
and we were laughing about being hit as children because
it was just the normal, exactly exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:10:20):
You kind of laugh about it.

Speaker 1 (01:10:21):
Everyone got beats, everyone whatever, and we were saying, but
it didn't work, and it didn't even really work for
our parents either. But it's like, we do this thing
because it's always been done, and because you become afraid,
it looks like it works, which reminds me of kind
of pretty much what we're talking about. Because someone is

(01:10:44):
afraid and they apologize from that place of fear, we
believe that it's worked. We don't actually care to know
whether they've actually embodied that apology. Are they truly taking accountability,
do they even think they need to take accountability for it?

Speaker 2 (01:10:58):
Or is it to keep that entire and external mob
at bay? You know?

Speaker 1 (01:11:02):
But I think, even though it sounds very idealistic, I
think grace is truly the antidote of so much of this.
But I don't think it's about immediately grace for others.
It's grace with the self, and grace with the self
is projected onto others, whether we like it or not.
Because another thing that I wrote in my journals was

(01:11:25):
a question to myself around that time, in twenty twenty
and I was saying, can you truly be fulfilled in
life and still participate in councel culture?

Speaker 3 (01:11:34):
Wow?

Speaker 1 (01:11:35):
Can you truly be fulfilled in life and still participate
in cancel culture? Because if we're having this conversation of binary,
I realized that maybe an answer could be, yeah, you
can still be fulfilled and maybe dip in and out
of But I.

Speaker 2 (01:11:53):
Don't I for this. I don't believe it's possible.

Speaker 1 (01:11:56):
I don't believe that you can truly be whole within yourself,
because to be whole is to accept your shadow is
to integrate the messy, gross parts of you that you
would rather just so glad to keep bryd closed doors.
But you have you have to meet them, You have
to be with them. You have to understand that they'll
other times, your your shadowy self will come out to

(01:12:16):
play a little bit more, But then you have a
conversation and then it's a constant dance. Sometimes you might
need the shadowy parts of yourself in different ways. But
I truly don't believe. This is where I'm more than
happy to be convicted in in that you can't be
truly fulfilled in who you are as a person and
participate in the dehumanization of anyone in anything.

Speaker 4 (01:12:39):
No, that's super intense and powerful at the same time,
because there's a there's a sense of what I'm getting
from listening to you, that when we see other people's shadows,
we're so deeply reminded of our own that we have
to project this belief that theirs exist bigger than ours,

(01:13:00):
or there's a feeling of if someone shows their shadows,
it gives me the excuse to continue to show mine,
and so your imperfection allows me to continue to be
imperfect and not grow.

Speaker 2 (01:13:12):
Yeah, it's both.

Speaker 3 (01:13:13):
Yeah, it's both. It's both. It's both and.

Speaker 1 (01:13:15):
Oh wow, I've never heard anyone put it in that way. Yeah,
oh this is good.

Speaker 2 (01:13:22):
Oh wow.

Speaker 1 (01:13:23):
I'll give an example of the last one you've just said,
like almost like if you show your shadow, it's a
permission slip for me to keep showing.

Speaker 2 (01:13:32):
Mine without ever questioning it, yes or ever.

Speaker 1 (01:13:35):
Yeah. Yeah, Sometimes people that are uncomfortable with my work, which,
by the way, you can tell me, I think it's
fairly non controversial. I think my what am I really saying.
I'm saying that we need to be willing to understand
different viewpoints without feeling like we have to take them
as a part of ourselves. I'm saying that we are
braver than we realize. We need to push back against

(01:13:56):
this culture that says we need to be constantly monitoring
what we're saying and self editing. I just don't believe
we need to be doing that. But there are some
people who will say, well, Africa, do you think some
really dangerous people could come across your work? And they
will use it as an excuse to say really hateful things,
to say really etcetera things, whatever the thing might be.

(01:14:18):
And then I always come back to why do we
always have to see? Why is that the default response?

Speaker 2 (01:14:26):
Right?

Speaker 1 (01:14:26):
Why do we always have to go to those extremes?
Are you an extreme person who's resonating with my work?
Why do you believe that you can be nuanced but
other people can't be? Why do you believe that you
can take what you need from what I say but
other people can't. It's that thing that you were saying
before around how we believe that our approach is the

(01:14:48):
best way only I can decipher this work? But what
if someone dangerous comes It's like we need to grace.
It comes back to grace again. Can you have the
grace to believe that other people are actually more rational
than you've been made to believe. Yeah, and we see
in our everyday lives. You were so right when you
were saying, for the average person, when they walk out

(01:15:08):
into the world, it's rare for them to experience something
that is so it's rare because the norm is actually
just normal people just going about their day. But in
the same way you do.

Speaker 2 (01:15:19):
So, why do you think that you are the exception? Right?

Speaker 1 (01:15:24):
And again these are questions and things that I say
to myself Africa. Why do you get to the exception
of someone that can encounter something supposedly dangerous and say,
I don't resonate with this, but this is fine. Trust
give other people the grace and the good faith that
they are able.

Speaker 2 (01:15:41):
To do the same.

Speaker 4 (01:15:43):
Totally, totally, I meet more kind, reasonable, thoughtful, yes, genuine,
sincere people on a daily basis than I do.

Speaker 3 (01:15:52):
The opposite.

Speaker 4 (01:15:53):
Yes, but the opposite feels so loud online and so
activated online and so amplified online that you can very
well believe that kind people don't exist. And I can
honestly say that as we're talking about this, I want
to understand from you why collective sabotage is the right

(01:16:15):
terminology that you coined for cancel culture. And I want
to dive into this. I've been waiting to get into
it because I've really been wanting to honor each thing
we're discussing and not as run through because it's sparking
so many thoughts and there's a.

Speaker 3 (01:16:28):
There's a sense of.

Speaker 4 (01:16:30):
Cancel culture holds people accountable, It holds people responsible, It
helps people own up to their mistakes or not even
own up. It helps people, it helps justice be served.
How could that possibly collective sabotage? How could that possibly
be a bad thing?

Speaker 1 (01:16:49):
Even if we just look at the word let's start
with the word cancel and just try to think of
the sort of synonyms we can think of. To cancel is,
to delete, is to eject, and then you can go
even further, is to reject. When something is canceled, it's ended.
It doesn't exist anymore. So I think that's it's a

(01:17:13):
type of contradiction that doesn't really work for me, in
the sense that justice and deletion and ejection, they just
don't work together. Is the kind of contradiction that actually
causes chaos. So for me, the reason why I think
it's important to really understand the importance of language when
it comes to these issues is because we have a

(01:17:35):
definition issue we just do. I think a lot of
the time, if we were both clear on the definition
that we're working with, we would come to kind of
similar conclusions, maybe different ideas about how to get there,
but we'll be like, Okay, that's fair enough. I don't
know any reasonable person who wouldn't want people that have
done harm to be held accountable, to be truly held accountable.

(01:17:58):
I don't know anyone that does a truly want progress,
not some kind of utopian, idealistic type, but progress that
is grounded in the reality that works for most people.
But if I think it means accountability and someone else
thinks it's public shaming, we're working with very different definitions,
but we're not even curious enough to know what it

(01:18:20):
actually What is your definition of cancel culture? Because mine
is this, and you're like, oh, okay, so to me,
cancel culture not only has definition issues, but it's been.

Speaker 2 (01:18:30):
So heavily politicized to.

Speaker 1 (01:18:33):
The point where if I say I have written a
book that also takes a look at the psychology of
cancel culture, some people will think, oh, my god, that
god someone is talking about this, or some people will think, oh,
you're using the term that the right wing uses. Right,
So it's so politicized already, So we can't even enter
the conversation in good faith because there's already suspicion or

(01:18:54):
people I'm thinking I'm speaking for them, or people thinking
I'm alienating them. I'm really serious about the work that
I do because I truly believe that this conversation is
not just a nice to have. It's something that is
causing relational fractures. Relationships are breaking because of this. People
are ending long term relationships because of kind of insignificant

(01:19:17):
political differences. There's so many things happening that would have
never happened ten years ago. And it's not because of progress.
It's because of a fear that has been embedded into
cultures and into people's homes and beds. So I think
it's a very important conversation to have. So I think
the language aspect of it is very important. So as

(01:19:38):
someone that has really been doing my best to understand
the workings of self sabotage, when your behavior and what
you say you want is in direct contradiction and it
causes chaos in your life when you have an inability
to hold good in your life, so you do something
to pull the plug. I realize that what we're experiencing,
just on a wider scale is individuals who a in

(01:20:00):
their own state of self sabotage, and then we come
together as a collective and what do we do. We
sabotage because it's all we know. So I think collective
sabotage to me is not politicized, but it's just much
more accurate to the reality of what's happening. Whereas cancel
culture feels nice and fun to say, but I think
it doesn't really It doesn't really mean anything because we

(01:20:22):
don't have an agreed upon definition of what it actually is.

Speaker 3 (01:20:26):
I fully agree with you. I don't think anyone's ever
thought to define it.

Speaker 4 (01:20:29):
I can look at it and it just feels like, yeah,
we'll jump on the bagmag and like this person's canceled.

Speaker 3 (01:20:34):
Oh when they canceled, Oh, isn't it over for them?

Speaker 2 (01:20:37):
Right?

Speaker 4 (01:20:37):
And it's like I always look at that and I
think about even some of the criticism that the England
football team took in the europe and a lot of
them came out and we're just like guys, we're trying
to win, and it affects our mental health, especially young players.

Speaker 3 (01:20:53):
And it was so interesting.

Speaker 4 (01:20:54):
We live in a society that says mental health is
the most important thing, but then if we perceive what
someone has done is wrong, we're happy to destroy their
mental instant instantly. And I go back to that perceive
what they've done is wrong because some of it, you know,
obviously there's illegal activity, there's there's things that are just
you know that.

Speaker 1 (01:21:14):
That again, that's common sense we still get to use.
I love what you're saying because it's something that I
also find though that people are now needing to find
themselves doing in conversation is to cushion everything and saying
but I don't mean this. Because I found myself having
to do that, then I'm like, no, Africa, because that

(01:21:35):
kind of feeds into that thing of being like, but
I'm not saying this. I think there's a time and place,
but I think this culture has created a thing where
we're overly apologetic and just cushioning just in case, which
can actually remove a level of conviction and assertiveness that
is really important, and also putting the responsibility onto the

(01:21:55):
listener to say, actually, but that is common sense, you know.
So I find that we always have to do this
sort of dance where we give like a disclaimant to say,
I'm not saying this, but also look out for where
we're doing it, because we already know.

Speaker 2 (01:22:09):
Yes, going to people, Well what about for sure? For sure?

Speaker 3 (01:22:14):
For sure?

Speaker 4 (01:22:14):
I saw the best version of its funny you say that.
So there was this video that went viral a few
years ago. I think it was made by maybe maybe
it was an HR company or I can't remember the company,
but they made this videos a few years ago, and
the concept of the video was there were interviewers interviewing
interviewees for a potential job. So let's say you were

(01:22:37):
applying for this job and I was interviewing you. So
I was asking you interview questions like give me an
example of when you've been proactive, and how would you
deal with pressure, et cetera. And then some of the
questions became how would you deal with pressure twenty four
hours a day? And then the questions went on to
say things like the asset that you're assisting requires constant attention,

(01:22:59):
how would you deal with that? So they started asking
all these questions, and the interviewees were quite like frazzled
by some of those questions. They seemed extreme. They were
like that sounds hard, Like that's really tough, that's difficult.
And then the interviewer had said, we were interviewing for
the job of mother and it was a happy Mother's
Day video.

Speaker 3 (01:23:17):
To honor mother's and just how hard they work.

Speaker 4 (01:23:21):
And it was this beautiful celebration of like what a
mom's job profile would look like and just making people away.
And the whole video was just happy mother today, Like
that was the point of it. Beautiful video, millions and
millions of views, shares, et cetera. And the top comment
on that video was what about dads? And it was
really interesting. And I looked at that and I was like, oh, fascinating.

(01:23:42):
And it was Mother's Day when it was made and posted,
and again I was thinking. I was like, I understand that,
Like I do understand, dads are important, dads are valuable.
There are some people who don't have mums who have
been raised by their dads. I do think that men
are involved and are doing incredible things at home, and
and I get it if I was a dad I'd
probably feel that way too, but it's a Mother's Day

(01:24:04):
and it's a.

Speaker 3 (01:24:04):
Happy Wednesday video, Like can we let that breathe?

Speaker 4 (01:24:07):
Can we let that have its space and not have
to make it about us?

Speaker 3 (01:24:11):
So that gives me.

Speaker 1 (01:24:13):
Yeah, no, no, it does, even just those words, can
we let that breathe? Can we just let that sit?
Can what I'm saying right now just be what I'm
saying right now. I ended up writing kind of like
a like an extensive section on this towards the end
of the book about looking out for preemptive apologies, because

(01:24:34):
I noticed I had started to do that in my work,
where I was always anticipating the rejection. If I'm just
to name it plainly, to that primal thing, I was
already anticipating the rejection, the abandonment, the sort of suspicion
from other people, or that I haven't done enough or
haven't said enough, I haven't prioritized enough people. Even speaking

(01:24:55):
from my subjective experience, I'd find myself and again we
got here, because we're talking about kind of how important
language is. I found myself sort of being like, but
I'm not saying this, but in talking about this, I'm
not that I was like, no, I can't keep doing
That's not the way normal people speak, because we've started

(01:25:16):
to speak kind of like Twitter threads and infographics and disclaimers,
because you put disclaimers if you're writing something, but in conversation,
that is not how you have normal conversations.

Speaker 2 (01:25:26):
It's fear because I was afraid.

Speaker 1 (01:25:28):
I was afraid that I'll be called out and said
and then I said, you know what, I really do
trust myself. I trust them that I'm already being so
mindful with what I'm saying. I refuse to live in
such a fear where I'm overly monitoring and saying but
I don't mean no.

Speaker 2 (01:25:44):
You get to use common sense. I'll leave that part
to you.

Speaker 1 (01:25:47):
You get to use common sense where all autonomous adults,
you know, And that really changed so much for me.
So I think something else that you can do without
needing to go on this big okay, now I'm doing
the work, is sort of just looking at your language.
Where do you have sort of preemptive apologies of saying
maybe sharing your story and anecdote, then saying but I

(01:26:08):
don't mean this, and of course I don't. Where is
your mind going to cover the extremes because you already
believe that people will go to the extremes and if
they do, can you sit with that discompany?

Speaker 2 (01:26:18):
Can you let that breathe for right?

Speaker 3 (01:26:20):
So good? Yeah?

Speaker 4 (01:26:21):
And that's the thing what you're hitting like really strongly
there is that's what we're doing. We're constantly comparing common
sense to the extreme.

Speaker 3 (01:26:31):
Ah.

Speaker 4 (01:26:32):
Right, That's why your point about not apologizing is so
important because most of us live in a common sense.
Like I would honestly say that if anyone listens to
my podcast regularly or has read my books, I feel
knows that Jay has good intentions, is a good person
who cares, who wants to do good in the world,

(01:26:53):
because you hear me and know me deeply enough. And
so for those individuals, I actually don't need to clarify
all because for the people who are deeply involved in
my work and embedded and the millions of people that
do that, I feel like you know me and you
know who I am. If I have to caveat everything
for someone who may come across a thirty second clip

(01:27:13):
of me or an edited piece about me, or whatever
it may be, if I'm speaking only to those people, now,
I'm going to constantly speak in disclaimers, caveats, apps, and
everything else because I'm now catering for the one percent.
I'm not catering for the majority of people who are
living with common sense, who are not living in extremes,
who are not judging every word I say and analyzing everything.

(01:27:35):
But we're all scared of that clip being made of
us where something's taken out of context, and what does
it mean when it's out of context It's been used
in an extreme way because in context it was not extreme,
and it's only extreme when it's out of context. And
I feel like, of course, the ironic part of all
of this is a lot of platforms are built their

(01:27:55):
platform by being extreme.

Speaker 1 (01:27:57):
I really want anyone watching or listening to know that
this still applies to them, whether or not they have
a platform or not. But that's the most interesting thing
with all of this in that everything has sort of
changed in that everyone is now seen as a platform.
That's the part of this that makes it most interesting
for me, in that every single person, not even just

(01:28:21):
when you're online, by the way, but even when you're offline,
you feel like you have to be a representative for
someone or something or some kind of stance or opinion.
So even though you might not be getting actual clips
of you being put online, it's almost like you're looking
up for where the snapshot someone might take from a

(01:28:41):
conversation someone you've just met. So I think it's again
that thing where it's dehumanizing when you think of all
of this, because human beings make mistakes, We stumble on
our words, might say something wrong, and then you might
kind of correct yourself or whatever it might be, and
then you might sort of like it's human, you know,
But we're dehumanizing ourselves and thinking that we have to
be these machines that say things in the right way,

(01:29:04):
and when you say something, you have to neatly put
a disclaimer on it, not even just in a conversation
like there's a public one, but private ones too. And
I actually care more about that side of things because
I think the personal becomes the public. It really does
now more than ever. So something that I always say
and would like for everyone to remember is that your

(01:29:25):
interpersonal relationships are the best training ground for everything we're
talking about. It's not about a public performance. I'm not
trying to tell you how to be better on social media.
I think that that's completely relevant. I think who you
are in your personal life then becomes who you are
on social media, whether you like it or not. And
I hope that can also offer relief because it's not

(01:29:48):
about teaching you how to deal with people in comment sections.
It's allowing for you to be grounded enough and who
you are as a person, and to know what your
priorities are. That when you see things and common sections,
you remember that these are strangers that if we walk
past each other right now, I wouldn't even know that
it's you. So therefore, you don't get to have that
power over me. You really don't you get to remove

(01:30:12):
the charge. But I think if enough of us give
ourselves that grace that we were speaking about, I don't
think it's a utopian yearning for me to think that
we would start to see our social online interactions look differently.
I think they just would, yes, because it wouldn't feel
normal for you to leave a comment about someone's body
or their what because to you, you would Why would

(01:30:32):
I even say that? You know? I think I find
myself coming back to grace and everything we're speaking about.

Speaker 3 (01:30:40):
I got really lucky.

Speaker 4 (01:30:41):
I was the mediator in my family growing up, okay,
since I was like ten years old, okay, and so
I early on had to listen to everyone and make
sense of it in order to help everyone. Yeah, and
so I've just done that for so long that I
don't know any other way. I don't actually know how

(01:31:05):
not to show grace or not to give someone space
to understand it, because I've had to do it for
so long, and I saw it to be the most
valuable way to create a sense of understanding, of nuance,
understanding of the layer nature of our world, understanding the
complexity I have within. And so it was really fascinating
for me because as I started to give myself permission

(01:31:28):
to be all of myself, and I knew at the
beginning of my journey that if I could have easily
played into the caricature of what a personal growth self
help individual should look like, should do and should act like,
and I chose very clearly. I was like, I'm purposefully

(01:31:52):
not going to dress spiritual because I love that to me,
is not what I learned. It wasn't about what I wore,
or it's not about my hairstyle, or it wasn't about
the length of my beard. Like all of those things
were not the definition of practicing wisdom or learning the
path or following a path. And I was like, also,

(01:32:15):
as a kid who grew up in London, I liked streetwear,
and even though I became a monk and gave that
all up, at one point when I came back to reality,
I was like, that's still a part of me. I'm
still a kid who grew up in North London, and
so I'm going to let that breathe. And at the
same time, I love meditating every day and I do
that for two hours a day. I'm going to let
that breathe. And at the same time, I don't care

(01:32:36):
to drink anymore, and so I'm going to let that breathe.
And oh, I actually still love football, like it's still
the first love of my life, and I love watching football.
I'm going to let that breathe. And oh, you know what,
I actually do like certain comforts and things. Okay, I'm
going to let that breathe. And yes, I gave them
all up at one point. And what I found was
really interesting is the more genuinely transparent and authentic I

(01:32:59):
was about giving myself permission. The majority of people saw
that and loved that, and I felt so much support
and love. But then the one percent feels triggered by that,
and then you start questioning whether you should curate your
whole life for that one percent, because this is also
our professional.

Speaker 3 (01:33:15):
Life, not just our personal life.

Speaker 4 (01:33:17):
And I've constantly gone more and more to say, you
know what, I'm just in a place in my life
where i just want to let it breathe. I'm not
going to stifle curate perfectly present because.

Speaker 3 (01:33:31):
I don't want to.

Speaker 4 (01:33:33):
Be thirty years older and look back and go, gosh,
I just don't know who I am anymore. And it
came with who we had on the show, like we
had podcasts with guests that I remember when my comment
section was Sunshine Land, because it was just this small,
beautiful place where it hadn't yet scaled enough, but it

(01:33:53):
also hadn't We weren't doing things maybe that pushed the
boundary or pushed the envelope. And as soon as we
started to do that, you start to see the conflict,
you start to see the disconnect. I guess the point
I'm making is an interview didn't have to be me
saying I agree and accept what this person is saying,
unless I actually say I agree, yes, Maybe it was

(01:34:15):
for me to understand someone's experience, maybe for me to
understand someone's story. Going back to your language of the difference,
So when did an interview become an acceptance of someone's beliefs?
Isn't the point of an interview to understand someone's perspectives?
And so I started to see, you know, judgment of
what guests we had or whatever, like you know, I
remember again, this is the one percent, I want to

(01:34:35):
say to the majority of people. But it's so interesting
how you start seeing it and it so it was
like I would see every time we had a celebrity clip,
that'd be the one percent of comments that go, Jay,
why are you only interviewing celebrities.

Speaker 3 (01:34:47):
I'm like, wait a minute.

Speaker 4 (01:34:47):
If you look at the fifty two guests we had
this year, I promise you there's not fifty two celebrities
in the world. And if you look at the guests,
you'll probably find two to three guests a month that
are not celebrities. And by the way, the celebrity conversations
are also human conversations.

Speaker 3 (01:35:01):
They humanized human conversations.

Speaker 4 (01:35:03):
They're still about mental health, wellbeing, personal experience, and so
it's so interesting to me that you start having to
explain everything. And then I got to a point where
I was like, no, those who know me know me yes,
and those who don't, I truly wish them well, and
I hope they do expose themselves to more of my work,
because I think they will if they look beyond one

(01:35:24):
episode or one page of a book or one clip
thirty seconds. And I hope that you do that, and
I hope that I can connect with you one day.
But I'm not going to try and cater and curate
myself for the one percent, because I don't want to
live that way. And I trust that the common sense
and the lack of extremes is where the majority of
the world lives, and that's where we all want to live.

Speaker 2 (01:35:45):
To me, I love that.

Speaker 1 (01:35:46):
I love that so much because it speaks to exactly
what I had to do and what I encourage anyone
who's even visible in some sense, especially online, to pay
attention to where you might be creating an audience that
will never allow you to change, because that's what I
noticed for myself in twenty twenty. So, after that thing

(01:36:07):
happened and I was getting applauded for it, and there
were people that dropped off, people that were like, this
is so out of integrity compared to what you have
said and who you are as a person. And I
completely understand that now, people that could see the intolerance
for what it was. Maybe some dropped off silently, some
might have said something, but the majority was the crowd

(01:36:28):
and the applause and it triggering that sort of elation
and power and arousal, whatever it might be. But once
I changed my mind and sort of walked back that
behavior and saw it for what it was, I had
a lot of people drop off, people that didn't appreciate

(01:36:48):
the new ones and the grade that I was bringing forward.
There were many more, but again it's that it's that
seemingly one percent, or at least the minority, right. There
were people that thought that I need to speak and
think a specific way because I am black, because I'm
left leaning, because I'm progressive, because I'm X, y Z,
whatever the identity markers are. There's an expectation for all

(01:37:10):
of those things, you know. So when I did change
my mind and started exploring a lot of the themes
that I explore today, there were a lot of people
that were very uncomfortable with that. Similar to what you're
saying about everything is fine when you're sort of abiding
by what is expected, but when you deviate from that norm,
there's a lot of teething issues and a lot of
friction and a lot of you know, creating space for

(01:37:33):
new people to find you, whatever it might be. But
a lot of people felt uncomfortable. But what I loved
today is that a lot stayed. There were many that
felt uncomfortable, but they stayed. There were very few that
sort of declared their departure. She's always lovely when people
announced that they're unfollowing, But I love that. Actually, there

(01:37:57):
were so many people that, even in the discomfort, they
day and they listened and they got what they needed.
And that's where, again, I really choose to focus get
on the people that didn't allow the cognitive dissonance to
sort of make them reject and cancel and discard and
devalue everything they had got from you for however many

(01:38:18):
years or however many episodes. People that chose to be like, Okay,
I don't quite like this, I don't get it, but
I'm going to stay. Yeah, you know, And I think
to me, that's the most beautiful part of all of this.
You get to be uncomfortable, you maybe get to have
a little.

Speaker 2 (01:38:31):
Strap, but you stay.

Speaker 1 (01:38:34):
You stay and you find out why you feel that uncomfortable,
and you repair because it's conflict.

Speaker 2 (01:38:40):
You need to repair.

Speaker 1 (01:38:42):
It doesn't mean you accept, doesn't mean we go to
those extremes. Well what if it's no, We're talking about
the common sense, everyday interactions of discomfort and a wild
view that kind of pushes back against your own. You
get to stay and you get to repair, if not
with the other person, with yourself.

Speaker 4 (01:39:00):
Yeah, so so beautiful and fully agreed. But first, here's
a quick word from the brands that support the show.
All right, thank you to our sponsors. Now let's dive
back in. That's what makes me believe the work is happening. Yeah,
when we can sit in the discomfort and when we
can look beyond. Also, unsaid cliches like I remember, I've

(01:39:23):
I've never been a proponent of the old cliche of
money doesn't buy happiness. I've never written about in books,
I've never spoken about it. I'm never like, hey, you
should never achieve something like That's not who I am,
that's not even my thought process, but sometimes the background
a monk. People assume that's what you believe, and it's

(01:39:45):
so funny. I've never said it, but it's an assumption.
I've never said it. It doesn't exist like I've never
said that, because I actually believe that people need to
change their relationship with money. They need to be more
abundant with it. And that's not just money, it's just
one thing, but whatever else it may be. I don't
leave a simple life and an ambitious life are incongruent.

(01:40:05):
I don't believe that a minimalist life and extravagance are incongruence.

Speaker 3 (01:40:12):
I don't believe those.

Speaker 4 (01:40:14):
I actually believe that the paradox is where the magic is.
I actually believe that I was saying to someone yesterday,
you need the perfect amount of anxiety and the perfect
amount of inspiration to win. You can't have a life
just of inspiration, and you can't have a life just
of anxiety. And so even in those the paradox is
where you win because you need a bit of pressure

(01:40:35):
and then you need a bit of purpose, and you
need both. If you just had purpose, it wouldn't work.
It needs both. And so similarly, I think we draw
from these old cliches and these old traditions and old
belief systems and project them into the new world. And
I feel like that limits us from allowing ourselves to

(01:40:57):
grow and others to grow, because we do the same
to ourselves. Where it's like no, no, no, But you've
always been a simple person. And this really hit me
when I heard this, this statement of like how in
the Bible it says the common quote that's always given
is money is the root of all evil, but actually
the original quote is that love of money is the
root of all evil. Oh wow, And that is such

(01:41:18):
a the context, the context. Wow, it's such a different
way of looking at it. And I was like, wow, Like,
we have propagated, not and forget the difference. We have
broadcast and and propagated false information as correct and not
even false. Incomplete information is a better word, incomplete information,

(01:41:40):
and it's been broadcasted, and that's what we've all lived by.
And all of a sudden, when you zoom out and
look at context, you're like, wait a minute, that's actually
a totally different theme. But we've all built our entire
mindset on an incomplete version of the truth.

Speaker 1 (01:41:53):
If that isn't a representation of so much of what
we see today? And immediately I thought, in bringing it
back to the personal, it makes me want to get
curious about where in my life am I living according
to an incorrect truth, or even a truth that I
didn't choose. Yeah, that's so Yeah, a truth that I

(01:42:16):
didn't actually choose. Because I often think about how many
absolutes we have on our identity that maybe you didn't
even choose. Maybe they were chosen for you by a parent,
chosen for you by an audience. Because I'm this, I
shouldn't speak about that, because I've been writing about this.
I can't pivot into so many of these things that
we decide to actual fact, even things that we think

(01:42:38):
we don't like.

Speaker 2 (01:42:39):
I don't really like this much. I don't really like hiking.
Have you been hiking?

Speaker 1 (01:42:44):
You know? It's some things that are kind of seemingly obvious,
but when you pause, you think, oh my, when did
I decide that?

Speaker 2 (01:42:51):
Or who decided that for me?

Speaker 1 (01:42:54):
That I'm supposed to have this opinion because of my identity,
I'm supposed to wear this. Beginning, when I was talking
about expression, I might have spoken about kind of what
you might wear because I find I like to bring
all of this kind of to the every day, even
what you adorn your body with. It can show you
what you believe you should do and you shouldn't do,

(01:43:17):
what you're allowed to do, and what you can't because
of your age, because of who you are. The colors,
Oh this is too bright, It'll be who told you?

Speaker 2 (01:43:24):
Why?

Speaker 1 (01:43:25):
You know? There's so many little moments where you get
to say, where am I kind of being, not even
just out of integrity, but censoring my expression, not even
just what I say. I think we tend to think
self cenship is just about what you're saying, it's actually
who you're being.

Speaker 2 (01:43:41):
It could be in your body language.

Speaker 1 (01:43:42):
When you walk into a room and you kind of
just slouch a little bit, you make yourself invisible, whereas
if you were to just put your shoulders back, even
just a little bit, even just your chin up just
so it communicates just a very different thing. But there's
a different vulnerability to it because it's visibility. It's actually
being a certain in your body.

Speaker 3 (01:44:01):
Right, and that's vulnerable too.

Speaker 4 (01:44:03):
It's so fu Yeah, whereas people see that as confidence
or arrogance, it's not seen as vulnerability. Because we've created
these outer shells of what qualities look like. We've created
these external avatars and embodiments of what humility should look like,
or what arrogance looks like, or what good character looks like.

(01:44:26):
And it's like, but rarely is it that obvious? Like,
rarely can you You can't see someone's heart, Like you
can't see someone's soul. You're not seeing someone's genuineness or
sincerity through a snapshot of their life. I always think
about this example of if you were running relate to
the movie theater and you walked into maybe even the

(01:44:48):
wrong screen, you might think that the hero is the villain,
and the villain is the how do you know? I
remember there was this, I think it actually was Yeah,
And it's like, how how do you know who the
character is?

Speaker 1 (01:45:01):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (01:45:02):
Because of one snapshot of their life? And I think
cancel culture and so much of it is based on
this idea of here's a snapshot of this person. I'm
not going to give you the full story in the
full picture.

Speaker 1 (01:45:13):
It reminds me of when I was doing this training
and there was a photo. It was it was just
about that. It was about context essentially, where there's a
photo of a woman on the floor and a man
sort of standing up with his hand there, and immediately
you think that he has pushed her onto the floor.
But then they widened the photo and you sort of
see that she had tripped and she had fallen and

(01:45:34):
he was actually helping her up. And reminds me of
exactly that. You know, we see an image or a
moment and we create an entire story, or we see
a subtle expression on our partner's face and we create
a story about what they mean. They're upset with us,
or maybe they don't want to do something. We're like, yeah,
without even asking.

Speaker 4 (01:45:55):
That's and that's where the I think that's the perspective
is so much of our perspectives built from one narrative.
I think that's the point that our understanding is about
people beliefs, what's happening in the world are all generally
built from one narrative. Yes, So what I always ask
people to do is reflect on, like, what would it
feel like if you were judged on your worst moment,

(01:46:18):
What would it feel like if you had judged on
your worst day, And what would it feel like if
you could never ever come back from that? Because you'd
be canceled for it. And what did help you become accountable?
What has helped you become responsible? What has helped you
have behavior change, because we also want to take that

(01:46:38):
into account. What has it been in the past that
is really encourage you to go, you know what, I'm
going to be better, I'm going to change. I'm sure
it wasn't you being told by your family member never
come back to the house. Yes, I'm sure it wasn't
someone saying to you like, don't ever come back here
and you're not wanted here. Reflect on that and then
also reflect on just that negative negativity bias is so strong.

(01:47:01):
And I will to ask you two questions, not that
I think we have an answered or maybe we have,
but I think they're important to ask because I see
them being what people are thinking about. So two questions.
The first is when is it okay to cancel someone?
And second question, is there anyone who doesn't deserve grace?

Speaker 1 (01:47:22):
I will answer that from my current definition of cancelation,
which is exile deletion. It implies that there is no rehabilitation.
It also presupposes that people cannot change. Ever, so by
virtue of those things and me actually believing that it's
possible to transform me believing that rehabilitation is very important

(01:47:47):
because it's the only way people can actually integrate that
shadow that we're punishing them for. So I don't believe.
I don't believe that to be true at all. However,
I think we can address the harm that has been caused,
and I think we have to give the person, whether
we like it or not, the grace. And grace does
not mean acceptance of what has been done. It just doesn't.

(01:48:09):
Grace means I'm going to humanize you so I can understand,
and in understanding, I'm able to give a solution or
give myself a solution and peace that is actually sustainable
instead of believing that you have to be punished for
the rest of your life. Again that snapshot in time.
And I know that what I'm saying is very difficult

(01:48:30):
because it can be applied to so many things. But
I encourage you to use common sense. I encourage you
to use discernment, and I also think it's okay to
have your convictions where you can't be moved. Say, you
know what, I could be understanding around this, but I'm
going to choose to stay in this conviction. I think
we get to do that when it comes to things
like abuse, when it comes to human rights, when it

(01:48:51):
comes to things that are just so disturbing and unfathomable,
I have to make peace with the fact that people
will deal with it how they wish to, speaking to
that middle that exists for so many of us, and
I believe that grace, even if we're so uncomfortable, is
the only way you can understand, and that doesn't mean
you accept. So I think that kind of it unswers

(01:49:12):
both in different ways.

Speaker 4 (01:49:13):
Yeah, yeah, I fully agree with you, and I'm glad
I asked it because I was wanting to get that
kind of like, yeah, the encapsulated thought process almost of
the belief system, and it's good to hear it that
way because I agree with you. I think that humans
have amazing ability to transform and given the opportunity. I

(01:49:34):
also think that so much of the culture today writes
people off over very little information, inaccurate, incomplete information, or
misrepresented information, like it's not even as clear, and also
in not understanding what you what someone was even trying
to say in the first place, and so it's coming

(01:49:56):
from such an uneducated Yes, yes, often and like you said,
going back to where we started, it's what we do
to ourselves.

Speaker 2 (01:50:05):
It's what we do to all of it.

Speaker 1 (01:50:08):
If you didn't beat yourself up so much or shame
yourself often in unconscious ways. By the way, because I
think so many people again, we have so many beliefs
about who we are, what we stand for, et cetera.
But our actions, especially our default actions and default responses,
will show us what we're really working with underneath.

Speaker 2 (01:50:27):
But a lot of us do live in shame.

Speaker 1 (01:50:30):
A lot of us are very embarrassed about some of
the things that we have done and said the people
that we were in the past. A lot of us
have faced with our contradictions. We don't know what to
do with them because we have we live according to labels,
you know, whether it's ethnic labels, political labels, identity based labels.
So you believe that because I'm this label, I shouldn't

(01:50:51):
think in this way, I shouldn't speak in this way.
Why do I kind of like this person? So you're
you're always grappling with so many things, But what do
you do? You just shove them down and just hope
that no one you being no one the first, no one,
no one ever discovers them finds them, but they have
to express themselves somehow, and that creates more shame. So

(01:51:11):
I think because we're working with so much shame when
we're not willing to do kind of the self inquiry
because it's not that comfortable, we just don't have the
capacity to be graceful with anyone else.

Speaker 2 (01:51:24):
We just don't.

Speaker 1 (01:51:25):
Whereas when you look at even just one area of
your own gross stuff, the kind of stuff that you're like,
when you spot it in someone else, you're able to
be a little bit more understanding. You can go the
way of being off rejecting it because you're not ready
to face yours. But if you can face yours, you'll
be willing to kind of dance and the grays a

(01:51:46):
little bit more. Yeah, Or you just wouldn't participate. You
might not say or do anything, but you would not
participate in the sort of cancelation and takedown of that
individual in the same way you would think there may
be other methods for accountability and personal responsibility, but it
just wouldn't be in line with dehumanization.

Speaker 2 (01:52:08):
It just wouldn't be.

Speaker 4 (01:52:09):
And I think, you know, we get there, Africa, because
I think sometimes people feel they've been so forgiving, they've.

Speaker 3 (01:52:14):
Been so graceful.

Speaker 4 (01:52:15):
Yes, they've given so much grace and it's been so exploited.
Yes that now they're so scared of giving that.

Speaker 1 (01:52:23):
But was that grace or did you just not have boundaries?
Because there is a difference. You get to be graceful
and still have boundaries. You get to say again, you
get to say I understand, but I will not accept.
Some of us think grace is being passive or fawning. Yes,
but that's not that's not grace. Grace is still very strong,
it's convicted. Grace says no, this doesn't work for me.

(01:52:45):
I don't agree with that. But your heart is open.
So grace is not having no boundaries.

Speaker 3 (01:52:52):
Yeah, exactly. Now we have to define these things.

Speaker 4 (01:52:55):
Yes, these words have such Again, they have their own
connotations and bagging. And I think grace feels like this,
all merciful, all encompassing feeling of just no matter what
you do, say that godly grace. And this again it
comes back to the extreme conversation where we're not talking

(01:53:16):
about grace and extremes.

Speaker 3 (01:53:17):
Yeah, we're talking about grace.

Speaker 1 (01:53:19):
And and even that idea, even though I'm not a
religious person. Something I love about religion is that so
many of them share the same threads. It's like one
big tapestry with all the same threads. And from my understanding,
even a loving God has boundaries. The Ten Commandments exist,
there are sort of principles in which are the guiding systems,

(01:53:41):
and to me, those principles are put forward in a
very graceful way. But there's still very boundary, you know,
there are lines, there's still a level of needing self
discipline and control and not just a chaos, you.

Speaker 4 (01:53:54):
Know, absolutely absolutely. There are so many amazing chapters in
this book. I want to name a few chapters of
my favorite that when you get the book, I want
you to dive into deeply. Of course, read the book
in order, but some of your favorites. Chapter eight be
quick to listen, slow to speak, beautifully put again Africa's
magician with words.

Speaker 3 (01:54:13):
So number nine.

Speaker 4 (01:54:14):
I love this because we talked about it, but not
in this language. Honest conflict or dishonest harmony, And I
know that I'd rather live in honest conflict than dishonest harmony.

Speaker 3 (01:54:25):
Did you want to say something to that?

Speaker 4 (01:54:26):
No, no, no, no, no, I'm just giving people that if
you want to please this perct This one is probably
one of my favorite chapters as well. That's in there
You Owe the Internet Nothing. Chapter four really important one
to read with the aids that we're living in and
chapter eleven a great one to look forward to one
before the end, which is brave expression a price worth paying.

(01:54:50):
And I can honestly say that in trying to bravely
express myself, the freedom and liberation that I have felt
internally is priceless. Despite the minority experience of the external
the internal feeling, and I always ask myself, how will
I feel about this at the time of death. I

(01:55:10):
always ask myself that because that's the price worth paying
for because at that point, I'm not going to think
about comments, and I'm not going to think about DMS,
and I'm not going to think about followers. I don't
think any of us are. I don't think any of
us in that moment are going to go, oh well,
I wish more people agreed with me or knew who
I was, or knew what I stood for. I don't

(01:55:31):
think that's going to be what's going through my mind.
It's going to be did I serve? Did I live?
Did I allow myself to be and did I become
all of who I felt like becoming in order to
help and improve the lives of others and share everything
I had to share. Those are going to be the
questions I ask, So why not make those the questions now?

(01:55:51):
Because I will only answer those questions if I ask
them now. Yeah, I will only find the answers for
the rest of my life. But if I wait till
the time of death to ask, I'll have no time
to answer them.

Speaker 2 (01:56:03):
You're going to make me cry. That was beautiful.

Speaker 1 (01:56:08):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, not really much more to add to that,
to be honest, because I was just receiving everything you're saying,
and I feel it so deeply. And it's just a
reminder that a lot of the things that we think
really matter, that we really just doubled down on, won't
even matter, not even just had the time of death,

(01:56:29):
but next week, you wouldn't even be able to remember
the specific disagreement you were having in a comment section
with someone, or the way you were applauding someone's downfall.
You know, it's not going to be it's not going
to add anything. It just takes. It takes, and it takes,
and it takes, and it takes, and you will you
will always feel that in that sense of being unfulfilled,

(01:56:52):
which comes back to the thing I was saying about.
If you are truly fulfilled and who you are as
a person, you just would not participate in it. And
if you did, it would feel like a huge integrity breach.
It would immediately.

Speaker 2 (01:57:07):
It would so powerful.

Speaker 4 (01:57:09):
Africa, I hope that this is the first of many
conversations for us. Yes, I have deeply enjoyed it online
and offline, I hope. So we end every episode of
On Purpose with a final five, which each question has
to be answered in one word to one sentence maximum.
Sometimes I go off piece, but Africa broke. These are
your final five. So the first question is what is

(01:57:31):
the best advice you've ever heard or received?

Speaker 2 (01:57:34):
There is no such thing as failure, only feedback.

Speaker 3 (01:57:37):
I love that second question, what is the worst piece
of advice you've ever heard or received?

Speaker 2 (01:57:43):
Be yourself?

Speaker 1 (01:57:47):
That's great because the biggest teachers that I've spoken to
say which one, which I love?

Speaker 3 (01:57:51):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:57:52):
Yeah, that's great.

Speaker 4 (01:57:53):
That's question number three. How would you define your current purpose.

Speaker 2 (01:57:59):
Mind and tongue liberation?

Speaker 1 (01:58:02):
Yeah? Yeah, that's that's my that's my soul work in
the meantime, supporting people with mind and tongue liberation.

Speaker 4 (01:58:09):
And sometimes we feel that liberation is saying what we
want when we want help.

Speaker 3 (01:58:15):
Yeah, no, no, no, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:58:16):
As we've spoken about, it's about being so discerning, even
when you're not using your tongue, knowing what you could say,
but holding it. I think there's such a skill to
not just communication, there's such a skill to being human.
And I just I just find it so cool that
we can realize something is working or not working and

(01:58:38):
do more of it or less of it and kind
of play every interaction. Again, I think the beauty of
this is testing it out in the micro interactions, from
the moment I leave the building, from the moment we
finish and I say goodbye. Can I maintain a little
bit more eye contact, even though eye contact can feel
a little bit uneasy. Can I stand up straight with
my shoulders just a little bit more. There's so many

(01:59:01):
things you can do, And I think the mob in
the mind is it's really important for us to befriended
and to understand it, because then it decides what rolls
off the tongue and what stays. So my mission, and
my purpose is supporting myself and people with mind and
tongue liberation.

Speaker 4 (01:59:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:59:19):
I love that great answer.

Speaker 4 (01:59:21):
What's something that you used to value that you no
longer value?

Speaker 1 (01:59:25):
Escaping and I did it specifically through alcohol and other
drugs before I got sober. I've valued it a lot
because I thought that was the only place outside of
my conscious mind where I could feel safe. So I
place so much value into it. But now I value clarity.

Speaker 3 (01:59:43):
It's beautiful.

Speaker 4 (01:59:45):
In fifth and final question, we asked this to everyone
who's ever been on the show. If you could create
one law that everyone in the world had to follow,
what would it be.

Speaker 1 (01:59:53):
It would be that if you find yourself outside and
you're in a space with other people, you have to
eat one person at least once a day, a stranger
to just say hello or to sort of recognize someone.
Because I think something really beautiful happens when you sort
of say hello with a stranger, whether you actually say hi,
it's just like an acknowledgement. I think everyone has to

(02:00:16):
do it at least once a day.

Speaker 2 (02:00:17):
Yeah, that's great.

Speaker 3 (02:00:19):
I love that Africa broke everyone.

Speaker 4 (02:00:20):
In the book is called the third perspective brave expression
in the Age of Intolerance. Go grab your copy now,
and Africa, thank you so much for being here with me.
So excited to deepen our friendship and get to know
you better as well, and all the best with everything
you're doing to bring the third perspective to everyone in
the world, and so grateful for the work. Genuinely, and

(02:00:40):
I loved every moment of this conversation.

Speaker 1 (02:00:42):
Thank you so much, Thank you. This has been so special.
I feel so inspired, so excited, but also just so
grateful because again I've said it a couple of times,
but this conversation and the different paths we've taken are
really scary for a lot of people. And some people
they might think, well, what is there to be scared about?

(02:01:02):
But we have created a culture of fear and a
culture of intolerance. But I'm so hopeful. I know that
a lot of this stuff was spoken about. It's a
bit dreary, it's a bit but I am so so
hopeful about us as human beings and the fact that
we can have this conversation.

Speaker 2 (02:01:17):
It's just so exciting and I think we get to
laugh about it.

Speaker 1 (02:01:20):
It's serious, but it's really I mean, it's also again
at the point of death, A lot of these things
will not matter. I think we have to fight for
our joy and I think one of the ways we
do that is through conversations like this. So I'm just
so grateful. I can't wait for many of them. I mean,
we were already chatting away before we press record, and
I'm just so so excited. Thank you for your support.

(02:01:43):
It's priceless to me, So thank you.

Speaker 3 (02:01:45):
Thank you. Hey everyone.

Speaker 4 (02:01:47):
If you love that conversation, go and check out my
episode with the world's leading therapist, Lorie Gottlieb, where she
answers the biggest questions that people ask in therapy when
it comes to love, religlationships, heartbreak, and dating. If you're
trying to figure out that space right now, you won't
want to miss this conversation.

Speaker 3 (02:02:07):
If it's a romantic relationship, hold hands.

Speaker 2 (02:02:10):
It's really hard to argue. It actually calms your nervous systems.

Speaker 3 (02:02:14):
Just hold hands as you're having the conversation.

Speaker 2 (02:02:17):
It's so lovely.

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

Episode Transcript

Host

Jay Shetty

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}People-Pleasers — If You're Afraid to Stand Up for Yourself, Do THIS to Speak Up Without the Fear of Losing the People You Love With Africa Brooke