October 14, 2025 • 60 mins
What if success without peace isn’t success at all? In this deeply human and powerful conversation, storyteller and creator Liz Hernandez joins Lex Borrero to explore grief as one of life’s greatest teachers.
Together, they unpack the emotional and psychological lessons of anticipatory grief, inner-child healing, identity reinvention, and the radical act of choosing peace over performance. This episode dives into the stages of grief, the difference between pain and suffering, and how acceptance transforms our stories. It’s a raw, vulnerable dialogue for anyone navigating loss, burnout, or a transition and searching for deeper meaning, compassion, and purpose.
You’ll learn how to:
- Recognize and process grief as an ongoing part of life
- Understand and identify anticipatory grief - Use gratitude journaling and affirmations to anchor your healing
- Reconnect with your inner child and rewrite your internal narratives
- Break free from destination addiction and performance-based self-worth
- Set healthy boundaries and honor your needs without guilt
- Redefine success as peace, not achievement
- Transform pain into empathy, compassion, and self-acceptance
🔗 Connect with Lex Borrero
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/lexborrero
TikTok – https://www.tiktok.com/@lexborrero16
🔗 Join the You vs You Community
https://linktr.ee/YOUVS.YOUPODCAST
#YouVsYou #DanielHabif #Perdón #Propósito #Fe #Identidad #CrecimientoPersonal #Mindset #LexBorrero
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Be on stage and you've got a smile for the camera,
like everything is fine. Watching the strongest woman I know deteriorate.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
How did you deal with that?
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Friend said to me, I wish I could take all
your pain away, and I said, I don't because I'm
Liz Hernandez. It's Liz Hernandez, Liz Hernandez who's a radio
starting Liz.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
I'm so happy with Liz.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
And it was having to redefine what success was for me.
Success was I'll be happy when I'll be happy when
I get the Grammy. Then you get the Grammy and
you say, okay, well then I'll be happy when I
have three Grammys. You never give yourself a chance.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
My life is coming to an end. Music and entertainment.
It's no longer something I want to do. And I'm
going to say goodbye.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Liz. Welcome to you, versus you.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
I'm excited to have this conversation with you. But I'll
be honest. You know, I've been shooting episodes the whole week.
Last night I started to feel really mentally and emotionally tied.
I was like, man, like, I don't know if I'm
all the way there to have another podcast, and then
(01:08):
I pulled up the document that they prepare with all
your information and all the links of every conversation, like
they do their great job, and I started to listen
to your story. I started to specifically the losing of
your mother, and I said, Oh, my god, the universe
works in such an amazing place that her experience dealing
(01:31):
with grief is something that might be just what I
need to hear. And I think it's going to be
a blessing to me and blessing to our audience. But
I'll give you where I'm at. So I'm at a
place in my career of full transition right where I've
(01:51):
started to accept them. My time in music and entertainment
as a full time life experience is it's no longer
something I want to do. As you know, because you've
been in this business as long as I have. There
is these ideas and stories we tell ourselves around the
(02:13):
value of success and hustle and time sacrifice, and in
many ways we sacrifice our own personal lives and all
these things that come into chaos. That was the catalyst
for what became you versus You, and part of that
internal work I've been experiencing with ayahuasca. Now, if you
would have told Legs even five years ago, I would
(02:36):
be like, I'm never doing that crap in my life.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
You are out of your mind.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
But I started to dissect and figure out that my
brain is very much a computer, and like a computer,
there's things that I can do by myself. Send an email,
I can, you know, write an Excel sheet. There's things
that I need help on, you know, there's things that
I need to call my tech department at the company
or and.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
I relate that to this.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
There's things where we are here for each other, we communicate,
there's community that allows you to kind of see that.
And the things that I could do by myself is
like reading a book, listening to this podcast another podcast
that are is really healthful. And then there's times we
need to take our computers to the genius bar. There's
times where we got to go to find a Google
engineer because the thing just won't work. And I was
feeling like I was at that stage where it's like, Okay,
(03:25):
I've done self work, but now I need some Google
engineer because I'm afraid of facing some of the things
that I have to face. First times I did it
wonderful clarity you versus you came out of that. I
was like the preacher of ayahuasca, everybody should do it.
Was doing all this thing this past weekend. I said,
(03:45):
I'm going to do it. First day I felt in
my joy, I was like, this is great. Third day,
about eight in the morning, I'm like, I'm going to
walk outside. I'm gonna go sit in the grass and
ground myself, which has worked for me in my past
experiences actually been a great place to clear my thoughts.
So I walked out, thinking I'm in the happiest place.
(04:06):
I take my shoes off, I ground, and then I
take my hands and I put them on the grass.
And the moment I do, I felt this level of gratitude,
but a level of gratitude when you're saying goodbye. So
it wasn't like, oh, thank you so much for everything.
It was like, thank you for the life you've given me,
(04:27):
and I'm sorry. That moment triggered this warm feeling that
put a thought of my mind of a disease, and
then it took my mind into feeling the loss of
life and saying, my life is coming to an end.
(04:49):
This disease is going to take my life and I'm
going to say goodbye. And it sat me into spain
for three and a half hours of just the most
outrageous crying, fear, trying to hold it together. And it
was like, and these justapositions of emotions while having the
(05:12):
image of saying goodbye to my daughter knowing that I
was not going to see her grow. I'm telling the
story which I don't normally say in the podcast, because
they left me in a place of grief, right, And
what the experience kept on saying, what the medicine kind
of put with the acceptance of being okay with grief
(05:34):
and every part of that emotion right of like letting.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Go sounds like the teacher of impermanence came to knock
on your door.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Oh I did. The interesting thing is that.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
If I would have known that it was going to
go there, I probably would have not done this whole week, right,
I probably would have not forced myself to emotionally carry
But I had everybody here and getting back the story
of like this is all way more important I have
to do. But when I started to read your story,
I said, oh my god, her experience what was just
for me a dream or moment of emotion that life
(06:08):
wanted to have me experience in this journey that I'm in.
You know, people say that ayahuasca is like the ego
death medicine. You lived it in real life as you
were losing your mom. How did you deal with that grief?
What has what have you learned from it? And how
(06:28):
have you settled with acceptance of that. I'll be honest,
I'm having a hard time with that right now. I'm
like in a place where I was just telling my partner,
I think I need to cry.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
It's like the moment that you're like.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Yeah, then you cry.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
I mean, that's sort of the beauty of being human
is that we're all given these emotions to feel while
we're here. When my mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, it
was attending a thousand funerals because every day I was
(07:04):
saying goodbye to a piece of her, and it was
very difficult watching the strongest woman I know deteriorate and
slowly die while still trying to hold on to who
she is. I was dancing with grief every single day,
and there was so much that I didn't know about grief.
(07:26):
I didn't know the stages of grief, yet the way
anger would show up. You know, looking back, I'm sort
of embarrassed for how I handled things, not you know what,
I shouldn't say that. Looking back, I can give myself
compassion for the way I may have embarrassed myself to
(07:46):
somebody else.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Looking at I love the reframing of that.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
That was amazing, you know, because at the time I
was at the so called peak of my television career.
I was at Access holl Hollywood for maybe a month
once and then my mom was diagnosed and I had
told my boss at the time, I'm going to leave.
I'm going to step away and just care for my mom.
And she was a mother and she said, I don't
(08:12):
think that's what your mom would want, and we're here
to support you. So I stayed on, and I had
all the pressure of being the newbie in television prime
time and also caring for my mother. Like I said,
in that incident, when something went awry, I imploded, which
I never never did. I was always professional, but it
(08:36):
wasn't me. It was grief and the anger was showing
up to protect me. Grief is just it is just
such a tremendous teacher. It really is we learned so
much about ourselves. I just recently lost my dog of
eleven and a half years, and a girlfriend said to me,
I wish I could take all your pain away, and
(08:57):
I said, I don't. I said, because this is what's
stretching me. And I am building my empathy muscle and
my compassion muscle, and I'm honoring the love that I
shared with my little al that was his name. And
now when I see other dog owners, I think, oh
(09:19):
my God, I send you love and I send you strength,
because one day you're going to have to feel what
I felt, and it is awful. But I have so
much compassion in a different way that I wouldn't have
had had I not gone through that same thing with
my mother. When I meet people that are caregivers or
that their parent is struggling with an illness, my empathy
(09:41):
is way different.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
You talked about the stages of grief. Elaborate on that little.
Speaker 4 (09:50):
You know.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
I feel that we are having serendipitous moments all the time.
But I really tapped into that when I started meditating,
and as life would have it, as my mother really
began to I don't even know the word lose herself
to the disease. I met the world's leading grief expert.
(10:16):
His name is David Kessler, and this man took me
under his wing and taught me the stages of grief,
and it shows up as anger as the would a
Kulda should us. You know, if only I had seen
the signs earlier, maybe my mother could have somehow beat
(10:39):
this disease. If I would have, you know, left access
Hollywood earlier, maybe she would have lived a longer life.
We do all this bargaining with death. I'd have to
look them up. There's five stages. I haven't revisited them
in a long time. But one of the ones that
was really helpful for me, because Alzheimer's is a really
(11:01):
long disease, is when my mom passed away. I remember
calling David the very next day and I said to him,
I feel okay, And David, does you know He kind
of not giggled, but kind of made one of those
He said, hold on to that because he knew what
was coming. I didn't know that I had been experiencing
(11:23):
for the last seven and a half years that my
mom was sick, what they call anticipatory grief. I had
been grieving my mother for seven years. Like I said,
it was tiny funerals. So when I would sit in
the car and cry for an hour, that was me
grieving her already. That was me grieving that knowing my
mom was going to die. So for seven years I
(11:45):
cried my eyes out. So when my mom passed, there
was a sense of peace I felt the next day
because I knew one she was free and wasn't suffering,
But there was just this sort of Oh, the amount
of pain I had felt on the actual day she
died was so intense that my I don't know if
(12:10):
it was my soul was just giving me a chance
to breathe. But also, like I said, I had been
grieving the entire time, so learning what anticipatory grief was
was huge.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
So I was thinking about it as I was listening
to one of your podcasts with David. I hadn't actually
talked about grief or mentioned the word grief in my life.
I've been blessed, and I lost my grandparents and things,
but I had never really been put that word in
(12:42):
my mind. And over the past week has come up
like twenty times everything Because I was speaking to the
spiritual leader and he said, you're.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
In grief, and you're in grief of it.
Speaker 4 (12:56):
Could have, should have, would have the idea of what
you thought of your life and which you thought of
the things that you are looking at and finding center
in acceptings because I remember as I was going through
that journey and I've unfortunately I've had kidney stones five times.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Which is for a guy, the worst pain.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
They say it's worth them like it's like comparable to
birth because it is this on you can't control the
way that your body feels like it's going to explode,
and it's a crazy pain. And I've never felt the
level of emotional pain I fell in those three hours.
And when I woke up from that, there was also
(13:41):
a moment of the power of accepting that of accepting
that we generally don't control anything.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
That's Another stage of grief is denial, is we want
to deny what's happening. We don't want to accept reality,
which just adds more pain onto our grief.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
I'm going through all these things.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
The thing about it is we're grieving all the time
and we don't even realize it. You know. One of
the beautiful lessons again that I learned from David is
when we lose a job. We're grieving the paycheck we
didn't get. We're grieving the people we used to work
with during the pandemic. We grieved the lives we used
to live, the being out in society, the being able
to go to the grocery store. That all of those
(14:26):
things we had to grieve collectively. There's always something that's changing.
That's what life is is constant change. So we're constantly
in grief. Maybe it's micro grief, but it's still grief. Yeah,
it's like when you sell your house, right, Yes, you
grieve that this is where I created memories. This was
(14:46):
a part of me.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
I'm working on a documentary of Tommy Mottola, the big
music executive, And someone in the documentary said, sometimes you
think that it is themand.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
But it's actually the chair.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
And and while I was in the process, was really
interesting to hear because it's like, hmm, so are people
going to forget about me because I'm not in the
chair of CEO of so and so and the public figure
of this very successful company.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
And I think you're creating the old version of you
that you're trying to hold on to.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
One hundred percent.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Yeah, And that's and I get that because you know,
even with the idea of you versus you, it can
be very difficult because we want to hold on to
who we think we were. You know, whether that's it's
whatever is the priority for us, right, is it? Our
idea of success is it? Age? Is it? I'm more
(15:40):
valuable when I'm in a relationship, So I grieve that
part of myself. That's why I think it's so important
to get clear on what do you value for me?
You know, even thinking about when I left Access Hollywood,
Everyone's like, oh my god, how could you do that?
And it was having to redefine what success was for me.
(16:02):
Success was peace, not performance.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
You feel that way today about it?
Speaker 1 (16:09):
Yes, yeah, because I feel that it's already a part
of me. That's also what I look for externally. I
want people in my life who value peace more than
they value performance, whether that's needing to perform because they
care about what people think, whether that's performing that they're
(16:30):
healed when they're not, because we're always healing till the
day we die. Yeah, exactly, all we know is that
we don't know, and.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
So you know love that. I'm sorry, I love that, And.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
So you know, and you see people they they'll tell
you how much therapy they've done, how much this, and
then you don't see it applied to life, and I'm like, Okay,
that's performance, that's not real peace.
Speaker 5 (16:54):
As you were dealing with the grief, as you were
transitioning your career, that's like, I think it's this perfect
divine tim And I always say, like a million things
have to happen in divine order for two people to
connect them.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
So I'm so intrigued because I feel like I'm a.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
Student and I'm like I answer to ask you all
these questions and I'm like, teach me, call me.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
Well, all I know is that I don't know exactly, Yeah,
which I.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Love that, you know. I just feel like you just
got to speak from the heart because that's your truth.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
Yeah, as you were dealing with the grief, as you
were transitioning out as well of your job, was there
certain mental frameworks and mantras that you were following that
helped you on the daily journey.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
Absolutely. I've been gratitude journaling for about seventeen years and
that was instrumental in finding the silver lining in every situation.
I wasn't using it to gloss over the pain. But
you can hold grief and gratitude at the same time.
(17:57):
So it was like, yes, my mom is dying, but
my mom is also she was diagnosed at sixty five.
I've had my mom for sixty five years and I
was loved or I am loved. That's the gratitude, so
huge gratitude journaling has. It's pivotal in my life. There's
(18:18):
not one day that I would say, you have to
tie it to a reward, and I say, I'm never
going to skip my coffee. I love coffee, so I'm
never going to skip gratitude journaling. The two go hand
in hand. Like I said, when my mom was diagnosed,
I was only about a month or two at Access Hollywood.
So you know, you've got to go be on stage
and you've got a smile for the camera and you
(18:39):
got to interact like everything is fine, but no one
knows what's going on behind the scenes. So before I
walked out in my glam and spanks and six inch heels,
I would sit and write an affirmation ten times. I'd
write it out ten times to memorize it. And so
you know, there's a lot of downtime when you're filming,
and so when the cameras would say, you know, they
dy'll cut, and then I would repeat the affirmation like
(19:01):
a mantra, and they were pretty wordy. So I was like,
one day, I'm going to create my own affirmations, and
that's what I ended up doing. And so it's till
this day my gratitude journal. I say an affirmation every
day and I meditate. Those are my grounding tools.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
I love that, so so like you, I do gratitude
journal every day and I've been a big preacher of
it because when I did get into it one I
started to be able to look back sometimes in the day,
especially when I write the night version of it, was like, wow,
that actually happened today, Because sometimes we get so caught
(19:39):
up with life that I read this book called The
Uncharted Journey by Don Russenshill, and he says, you're so
worried and interested about the experience that you forget the moment.
And I felt like that about I would say the
majority of my career in life, it's like, okay, we
want to grab me, okay tomorrow, what's the next thing?
(20:00):
And you don't even like take a second to like
sit down drink a wine say oh my god, I
just want to grab me. My little self would be
thrilled right now.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
Destination addiction they call that I'll be happy when I'll
be happy when I get the Grammy. Then you get
the Grammy and you say, okay, well, then I'll be
happy when I have three Grammys. You never give yourself
a chance to actually be happy.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
That's a perfect segue to the conversation that I've been
having with extremely successful people on the show. The kind
of common struggle is when is it enough? Because we've
been programmed and told the story that it's it's never enough.
That you want more and you need more, and you,
(20:55):
you know, start going after everything and everything you're I
IF I, IF I, and everything is an external feeling.
Even I would say sometimes we could even put in
that pocket spirituality and religion and mantras and things that
we start doing almost like because it's an act. It's
like it's a hiding of the fact that it's like, Okay,
(21:17):
if I do this more often, if I go to
church more often, or if I buy more cars, or
if I like and in our business, what happens is
people achieve this kind of rocket style of success that.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
Doesn't happen in a lot of other businesses.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
That also comes with all this applause and all this
like celebrity status and all this like and your whole life.
You grow up thinking, oh, the moment i'm a major artist,
I'm going to be happy. Or the moment I'm a
major executive or I'm on television, I'm.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
Going to be happy.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
And then you reach everything you have, like the pinnacle
of what material success means.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
And you're like, oh shit, still the same person.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
I'm still the same person.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
I'm still dealing with little Lex and little Liz and
how I and you start going on this journey. And
what I've found in the conversation with most guests is
that that story has been thrilled. And even for myself,
I said, as I was going through my journey, it
was like, Okay, well at first, like I think most
of us try to do, is we try to make
(22:23):
these radical changes in our minds, like, oh I learned
that today, I'm going to apply it today and everything
in my life, you know, and I'm gonna like, all
of a sudden, I am a preacher of this, you know,
and like this because.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
We want that instant gratification. Were our society is built
that way. That's why we're over consumers. We think as
soon as I have this, I'm going to be happy.
Oh it didn't. It filled my happiness for five minutes.
Let me go buy something else, or let me sign
up for this class, or let me sign up, but
actually do the work. You have everything you need. There's
(22:54):
nothing that you actually need to purchase.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
Part of that that journey, at least for me in
accepting that and coming working on you versus knowing that
I'm actually okay, there's nothing in my life it's going
to change. It's going to change the inner peace. But
then again, because we try to be radical, it created
a moment where you start being tough on yourself and say, well,
(23:21):
change this and change that. And then I started to understand, well,
the gift God gave me is that I am an
idea guy who is really good at executing. And there's
a beautiful part of who I am that impacts people
and creates beautiful things.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
The question is what from where is that coming?
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Right?
Speaker 3 (23:39):
Is it a place from wholeness or a place of neediness, or.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
A place of pressure.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Or a place of pressure.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
Well, you know, you think about the little Russian dolls. Yeah,
you take them apart, there's always a little, tiny one,
the medium one, and then the big one. That's why
I always try to envision my healing is when I
take them out. There's the adult Liz, there's the adolescent Liz,
and there's little Liz, my inner child. And I've got
(24:06):
to now take my grown Liz and care for each
version of who I've been, so I can heal when
I was hurting my adolescence, and then hopefully when I
heal her her and I can go feel little liss right,
because ultimately that's what we're craving, and that's how we
(24:29):
show up in the world. You know. I think about
the pressure I still feel till this day to be productive,
and if I'm not productive, then I'm either not succeeding
or I'm lazy, or you know, you fill in the blanks.
And I think about what my little child feels. That's
a lot of pressure to put on her. What if
(24:50):
she's just okay as she is, and she's allowed to
rest and she's allowed to just feel loved just for
being her, then she can be creative.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
I love that because it's it's it's the practice of
being still right. One of the experiences as I've been
going and doing my own internal work was that understanding
of the idea that I have to be the driver
of the car, the idea that I have to be
the over controlling person in order to have safety. Once
(25:22):
you start erasing that story and reshaping and reframing that
story too, No, I am completely whole. I generally don't
control the outcome of anything, So the figuring out part
is not my job. The sitting still and learning how
to be still and not do, because even doing in
order to listen and then be courageous enough.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
To act, and also asking little lex why does he
feel like he needs to be in control, and letting
him know that he is safe.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
Right, And that's been a lot of the work. It's
that inner child, and that is all the work. And finally, yeah,
and finding those I for a long time in my career,
no matter how much success and how much money I
was accomplished, and I was like, I don't feel good enough.
In one of the sessions that I was doing with
my therapist but maybe four years ago, she said.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
To me, can you remember a time in your.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
Youth where you felt like that, but like a specific time.
I was like, okay, yes, in high school this thing happened.
Like okay, great, I'll go back a couple more years.
Can you figure out a time, think of a specific
moment and sit in that moment. I was like, okay,
(26:39):
let me go back and you're here. She's like, try
to go deeper than that. And then a moment came
to mind that I had completely erased for my conscious
of being in the car with my father.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
You had just remarried.
Speaker 3 (26:57):
I was I didn't kind of understand what was going
on non and being around with my friends playing soccer
and being like, hey, his wife, like she's really kind
of gotten fat and they were like huh oh, you
don't know, she's pregnant.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
Excuse me, excuse me, And the tears and the level
of that.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
I felt that moment in the car as I like
screened at my dad and I was like, wow, forty
years of my life I dealt with this feeling and
I had never identified it as that moment. And I
had to, you know, practically do therapy to go back
to that inner kid and say.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
Hey, Lex, what did that moment? What message did you receive.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
In that moment, I was being replaced that you weren't enough,
that I wasn't enough, and that ecuse me.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
Because again I had completely erased that from my conscious yeah,
and reliving it, which is, you know, part of what
I'm learning and I've always used it in business and
manifesting dreams, but I'm learning now how to apply it
to my emotional life is that there's a very big
difference between thinking and feeling. When I manifest something in business,
(28:23):
and I think most of us, as successful people do is.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
We feel it.
Speaker 3 (28:29):
We just imagine. You imagine yourself in the middle of
Access Hollywood and Housland, and I imagine myself like holding
a Grammy and doing like I imagine it. I felt it,
I smelt it. I know what the suit I was
gonna wear at the Grammy is.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
I just have that.
Speaker 3 (28:42):
And it was this level of attraction that gave my
mind it made them believe it, because your mind can't
help between truth or not. It's just believing what the
story you tell me. But in so many.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
Parts of our lives, the parts that affect.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
Us, Like that moment, I felt my mind believed the
story I told itself that you were not enough. But
it wasn't just that I believed it because I set
it out of my mouth.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
But I cried it. I felt like.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
That moment this weekend, I felt that pain as if
it actually happened. I mean I left out of there
generally in fear and went to the doctor and I
was like, yo, I need to scan me. I want
to make sure this wasn't like a prayer notion to
something happened, but because I felt it. And what I'm
(29:31):
learning about my own feeling, in my own experience is
that the more I sit with the actual feeling of
the thing and emotion I am trying to heal, the
clearer and the more peace I can settle into accepting
(29:51):
that moment for what it really was and not for
what I thought it was, and that fighting the pressure
and idea and the story that I've fed myself for
twenty three years of career.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
Do do do do do?
Speaker 1 (30:03):
Do?
Speaker 2 (30:03):
Do?
Speaker 1 (30:03):
Do?
Speaker 2 (30:03):
Do do do?
Speaker 3 (30:04):
Instead of like, settle into that feeling, instead of trying too.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
That's the only god I feel it to heal it.
Speaker 2 (30:11):
You're just dropping bobs today.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
That's right, That's that's right from David Kestler. But you know,
I commend you on going back because you know a
lot of times too. And here's what I'm learning is
that we so badly because we're just curious human beings.
We want to know when was I hurt and who
hurt me? And I don't always think, at least for me,
that that's And I love that you found that moment.
(30:36):
But for a lot of people, they can't find that moment.
They've buried it, they know they've been hurt. And again,
I can only speak for myself. What I've learned recently
is that I know that there is a wound there.
I don't know when it happened or how it happened,
but I do know it's mine to heal. And one
of the things that I've recently had to come face
(30:58):
to face with is that my needs matter. And it
was put to the test. You know. I thought I
had really learned that, you know, through therapy and doing
the work, and I was like, oh, I've really got
to handle on this now my needs matter. Then my
dad calls me and he says me, huh, I want
(31:19):
to meet you on this day, and you know, are
you available. I go and I look at it and
I tell just tell him, yes, you know, he's my dad. Sure,
buppuh works?
Speaker 2 (31:26):
Fine.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
I go and I look at my calendar and I'm like,
that's the first Friday of Memorial Day and I'm seeing
Kendrick Lamar that night. But that's not a good enough
reason to tell my dad. No, I don't matter. My
needs don't matter. I don't want to disappoint the man
I love. And I was really I was having this
(31:52):
self awareness of oh, here's life giving me the assignment.
Are you willing to take what you've learned that your
needs matter and apply it to real life? And so
I had to call my dad and say, Papa, no, go.
It's like, hey, Dad, I said this day that you
(32:12):
want to meet, which we were going to beat all
the way out in Riverside from la Is like Memorial
Day weekend.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
No.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
And I explained that to him and he says, oh, yeah,
I didn't even think about that. Yeah, I don't want
to sit in traffic that day either, And you know,
told him I had already had plans and no worries.
Let's do it another day. And it was like this
wave of like, okay, okay, I matter, And it was
not as hard as I thought it was going to
be and you have to think that was just a
(32:40):
little assignment. But it was such a good test for
me because can you imagine when I really put and
I put. You know, I try to not have my
dad suffer from Superman syndrome. I try not to put
him on that pedestal. But we tend to do that
in relationships or with people we really respect. It becomes
(33:00):
harder to say to them, here's what I need because
we think you matter more than me or you're somebody,
so I shouldn't be able to say what is making
me comfortable too. And so because I had just that
little assignment with my father, I'm like, okay, I got
to I have to now pay attention to make sure
(33:23):
that I'm honoring my needs.
Speaker 3 (33:25):
Ishmael, my spiritual leader, always says lex no one needs
to save you stuff trying to be the savior, and
I was like.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
Oh, were you in my therapy? That's actually everything I
worked through during Christmas was my extreme need to save
because the wound was I couldn't save my mother, so
therefore I looked for people to save. And boy, that
(33:54):
is not a fun test because I do believe this
is all one big classroom for the soul. Yeah, and
that we're all given assignments.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
I agree.
Speaker 3 (34:05):
Is there a lesson that life has been trying to
teach you that you haven't seemed to get that you
keep failure or not fit, but you're in the process
all the time of repeating.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
The class Let's see. I feel like I just worked
through the I can't save anyone but myself phase, my
needs matter phase. I think right now I don't know
what life is going to hand me next. I definitely
was very aware of that of impermanence. You know, my
mom passed away November twenty nineteen with in what a
(34:40):
month later? Two months later January, Kobe died and that
felt like you felt like family. You lived here in
la he was a part of us. And then the
pandemic hit was another thing to grieve. Then I lost
a friend to cancer. It was like grief after grief
after grief after in It was just like, Okay, you know,
(35:02):
I learned a valuable lesson and you would think I
would learn this with my mother, but it felt like
sort of the natural rhythm of life. Well, she's my mother,
you know. Disease happens, even though it was extremely painful,
but Kobe was such a this doesn't happen to people
like him, And I thought, what a beautiful lesson of
(35:23):
impermanence for all of us. Because you can have all
the accolades, you can have the dream life, you can
have the Oscar, you can have NBA championships, all of it,
a beautiful family, and you're not guaranteed tomorrow. And we're
not taught that in our society. We're not taught about
impermanence and grief.
Speaker 3 (35:43):
That was definitely I think the lesson I'm learning. You know,
that separation between saying that all the time and feeling
and I really feel like I wouldn't have let go.
I would continue to play around the idea of all
this pressure that I have is put it on me
(36:04):
because I can handle it, and I need to deliver,
and I need to deliver. That moment really has made
me reconsider this idea that tomorrow is truly promised, and
then I say to myself, what do I actually want.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
To do today?
Speaker 1 (36:19):
Every single thing we have, material and emotional, and the
people we love is on borrowed time, and so we
can work work, work, work, work, work, and say I
don't have time for you. I don't have time to
enjoy the things I've worked for. It's a choice, and
(36:40):
it's part of the assignment. It's part of the lesson.
Speaker 2 (36:42):
You know.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
I talk about it in the show about Lesson because
one of the things that I've really started to implement
in my life is and I've started to see the
results of that in my life as well. We've been
taught to run away from the heart time, right, like,
and we've been taught to tell others it's okay, the
(37:06):
light at the end of the tunnel's coming, like this too,
show pass like this idea of you know, something my
mom and my dad always really taught me was just
like just fight through air, but like it's okay, it's
going to pass in the past. And like if it's hard,
like if someone makes you uncomfortable, cut them out of
your life. If someone like all these things about like
(37:27):
anything that feels hard, go. And so I became a
really great architect, right in the sense that I have
created a vision, I can draw it, I can take
it to be one hundred percent. But once you build
something as a business person, you then become a property manager,
which was for me the difference between being an entrepreneur
(37:50):
and becoming a CEO two very different.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
Like there's this.
Speaker 3 (37:54):
Level of excitement I'm building something. Wow, the world.
Speaker 2 (37:57):
Knows all the growth, all the growth, and at.
Speaker 3 (38:00):
Some point the gross stops and now you got to
maintain that. And historically in my life, that's when I
was like, I'm out. Whether it was in relationships, whether
it was in business, I was like, straining.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
It difficult and I have to feel the difficulty.
Speaker 3 (38:15):
And I was like, no, see, something is a lot worsetting.
I gotta go build another house. Sorry, I got to
call the way the way my phone works is I
got to go build a house. And I was doing
these bouncing aroundse bouncing arounds, bouncing the rounds. And when
I build the company and had to settle into this
idea of being the CEO of the company, when I
(38:35):
started to have to do the same thing in my life, thankfully,
right at the time, in perfect divine order, I started
learning about this idea of dancing in the fire, right,
dancing in the middle of the hardest times, and that
the lesson of life is in that the best hardest
parts of your life are mirrors in order for you
(38:56):
to sit like we were talking before we started filming,
in order to sit with yourself and start loving yourself,
start setting yourself, but also sit in the difference between
pain and suffering, which I heard you speak with.
Speaker 2 (39:07):
David as well.
Speaker 1 (39:08):
Yeah, well, you don't learn anything if you don't sit
with the pain. Like I told you, when my girlfriend
offered to take all the pain, she said, I wish
I could take all the pain away, and I said
I don't because then I skip over what I'm supposed
to learn. Shout out to David Kessler. He has this
great he said. When they studied grief, they studied buffaloes,
and when there's a storm coming, instead of running from
(39:31):
the storm, the buffaloes run towards it because they know
that if they run towards the storm, it'll minimize the
amount of time they have to suffer. Wow, we as
human beings, tend to run from the storm, So we
spent our whole lives running from the pain, always having
it behind us. Or if we just go through it
(39:52):
because it's the only way through it, then we would
be more at peace.
Speaker 3 (39:57):
Yeah, No, that's a the moment I learned that started applying,
I started to see the changes to the way my
mind started to perceive the situation and the difference between
there was pain. You go to the gymu and a
six pack, it's going to be painful.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
But the mental thing privilege.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
To feel, Like I always say, this is the human experience.
What a privilege it is to feel all of our feelings.
If you're happy all the time, you can't empathize with anyone.
You lead with ego, not empathy.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (40:44):
I was hearing David talk about that in the podcast
A Life Worth Living, and I love that because there's
another statement that we say and we've heard. It's like
a quotable and we love you know, as humans, we
love Instagram quotables.
Speaker 2 (40:57):
I mean like it's just like we love them. That's
a question. It was like exactly.
Speaker 3 (41:03):
But if you really sit for a second with that
and like, let us sink in life worth living and
you're just like all of it.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
This will makes this place.
Speaker 3 (41:14):
So amazing and it makes every single day of our
life so amazing. And the power of that, and that
leads me to not only what you've created, but we're
going to play this game.
Speaker 2 (41:27):
Talk to me about order Full.
Speaker 3 (41:30):
And why and the goal on it and what it
means in signifies in your life right now.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
Storytelling has been in my DNA. Started in radio, took
me to television, and I realized, while it was really
exciting working in entertainment, what drove me my passion was
connection with community through storytelling, because that's how I grew up.
(41:59):
When my mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, she began to
lose her language, and she held on to her final
phrases where I love you and thank you. And I
found that to be so fascinating because doctor Emoto, he's
a Japanese scientist who studied the power of words. So
(42:20):
the two most powerful words in our language is love
and gratitude, and the fact that my mom was holding
on to love and gratitude meant so much to me
because I was going to lose the affirmations. She would
(42:41):
fill my cup up with the I love yous, that
you look so nice today, that you're so smart, I'm
so proud of you, and I would need to reinforce
that in myself. I don't like to martyr my mom.
She wasn't perfect, and there was a lot of things
that I had to recondition myself to understand that, you know,
(43:05):
I think about who I am now as an adult
and how hard I can be on myself, and that
allows me to have a lot of compassion for my
mom because I think about how hard she was probably
on herself, given the wounds she had and the lack
of tools that she had, and that she was just
doing her best to raise me. And so here I
(43:28):
was in one avenue of my life where you know,
I'm all dolled up and talking about celebrity divorces and
what they ate for breakfast, and I thought about, here's
my mom losing her her words and her language. What
do I want my message out in the world to be?
Because I thought about what is the last conversation I'm
(43:50):
going to have with my mom and how powerful words are.
They have the power to literally heal us or completely
devastate us. It was just out of necessity. I was like,
I'm going to get on YouTube and talk about the
power of one word at a time, and maybe I'll
just talk about what it means to me, how I'm
misusing it, how it's playing out in my life. And
(44:11):
then word aful turned into this confessional and sort of
diary and place I felt connected. It was a really
vulnerable place for me to be in not only creating
the series but also sharing my mother's diagnosis because my
mother was a very private woman. But I also knew
(44:33):
that it could become a bridge to help my community
feel you know, if someone else was feeling scared, confused,
hurt that their parent was going through this too, I
could give it a voice, I could give it resources,
and I could give it a safe space. And that
(44:53):
was really my introduction to Maria Shriver and David Kessler
and so who then became voices for the wordful community
as well. So Wordiful is words are powerful, mush together
and that series turned into live events, and I remember
the first time standing in front of an audience of
about three hundred and fifty people and seeing me sharing
(45:17):
my story and how it impacted them and their emotion
impacting me. I was opening up about what I had
been through and my experiences, and I could see that
people felt less alone, and the emotions that it invoked
in them made me feel less alone. And then women
(45:37):
started staying behind and wanting to share their stories, and
that was it. That's when I knew I was like
the power of storytelling. We just all want to know
that we matter and that we're seen. And you know,
I really pride myself on this brand not being We
want to be seen, we don't want to be sold to,
and that to me is one of the pillars of
(45:59):
what makes this community so special.
Speaker 2 (46:03):
I love that, you know.
Speaker 3 (46:04):
I always say, sometimes the best example someone could have
is the person that's right in front of you and
the story and what that does to help you see
things like, as I was saying at the beginning today,
you've been the perfect mirror, the perfect like divine order
of the universe, saying, you know, like, and that's a
(46:25):
beautiful thing, because sometimes we're not grateful for those moments
because we see them as just like, Okay, something I'm experiencing.
But again, like when you really think about how many
things had to happen.
Speaker 1 (46:37):
That's because of our lives, you know. But you have
to give yourself credits because you're open and you're awake
to receive because some people might not see that and
they're not ready to receive it yet, you know. And
there is something so powerful about having the opportunity to
share our stories and to feel like someone is really
(46:59):
listening to us. You know. I used to say when
we'd get together for these smaller groups with wonderful women,
Having a room full of people share their stories, that
is the thing that makes us feel the least alone
because it's oh they're going through that. Oh they they've
been through what I've been through. Because when we're home
(47:19):
alone and we're just ruminating in our house, we create
this narrative like I'm the only one going through this,
the only one. I'm so embarrassed and these insecurities and
this struggle and this heartbreak. But when you're in a
room full of people and everyone is sharing and you're
hearing different voices, there is a lot of power in that.
Speaker 3 (47:38):
Yeah, well that takes me to well. One like I was,
we were sharing your gratitude journal, which I really appreciate
this because I so funny. Another honest story. Yes, I
used to write online all the time, and then I
started to go through an experience in a relationship I
was in where I felt like my journal was not safe.
Speaker 2 (48:01):
Okay, So I was like I would hide it under
my clothes and like shove it in there.
Speaker 3 (48:05):
And then I found the app and I started doing
it in the app as consistent as doing it.
Speaker 2 (48:10):
But I love to.
Speaker 3 (48:12):
Write, like, when I read a book, I like to
get the actual physical book because I am a highlighted
and king. Okay, I like highlight and come back and
read it again and again. And so actually, this is beautiful.
And like I was telling you this, the color evoked
some emotion in my life because at the beginning of
my dreams, this color was meaningful to how I saw
(48:34):
the world and creativity. I always used to say, I
painted my childhood room this color.
Speaker 2 (48:40):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (48:41):
When I first got to La, I never forget the
time when we me and my business partner we got here.
Speaker 2 (48:47):
We had this idea about.
Speaker 3 (48:48):
LA that it was going to be this great place
where we're going to make our dreams, which happened, and
then we're faced with the reality of apartments in La
don't have air conditioning and don't got fridges, and we
were like, I remember, after the first day of looking
at real estate that we can actually afford, we were like,
I think we got to go back to Miami. I
got fridge and air conditioning inclusive of the price.
Speaker 2 (49:11):
What is going on here?
Speaker 3 (49:11):
But when we finally like, we put our money together
and we found our first apartment and we didn't actually
have money to paint. We wanted to paint the living room.
I wanted to paint the whole living room like the
main wall red. And we didn't have money, so we
bought a little pint of paint and we painted one wall.
Speaker 2 (49:32):
And in that wall.
Speaker 3 (49:35):
Twenty one years ago, we wrote the name of our
company and didn't use that name of that company until
five years ago, and we wrote exactly how we wanted
it to be, Like we had this idea about how
digital media would work before there was Hulu and anything,
and it was like five or four different business ideas
(49:59):
were ridden in that journal that when we moved out
and we started to have music success and he moved
at his own place and then kind of took it
down and we actually never looked back. And about a
year ago we started to look at the things we've
done and we're like, oh my god, do you remember
we had that in that wall? Do you remember we
(50:21):
had that? And remember that and that?
Speaker 6 (50:23):
And we were like, dude, were were genius wall, you know,
but it was all in that so I well, it
just shows you the power of manifestation too, of the set,
the intention, release it, and we don't know when it's
going to show up.
Speaker 1 (50:39):
But if you believe in it enough, I would love
for you to just open to a random page and
see what set the intention. What affirmation do you need
right now?
Speaker 3 (50:49):
Okay, comfort, I am safe, loved and at peace. My
gentle thoughts and compassionate words bring me the comfort that
I need.
Speaker 1 (51:05):
There it is said you were in your feelings this
you know there I want to say too. There's a
huge difference between gratitude journaling on a tablet or in
your phone versus writing it. It is so powerful, and
there's tons of research that backs us up. There's something
(51:25):
about the connection of our hand and our body to
our mind that makes it that much more powerful. And
it's not just about giving gratitude for what has happened.
You can also give gratitude for what's to come. It's
one of my favorites.
Speaker 2 (51:42):
I love that. And then you brought me this.
Speaker 3 (51:45):
Wonderful the game no room for small talk, and it's
again Sara divis about it. So every time I get
together with friends, yes, I always say, we don't actually
know each other, so we really ask the right questions.
And so I have these moments where I just always
(52:06):
ask these questions, what are you afraid of and and
start sparking these conversations of friends that I've known fifteen years.
I was like, oh my god, I didn't know that.
I didn't know that this has happened to you. And
so I love this. Yeah, and we're gonna play it.
Speaker 1 (52:21):
Yes, I have a girlfriend and we joke because as
soon as she sits down on my couch, we don't
know how to do small talk. We go straight in
into the deep, into the house your heart today? What
let me tell you about this pain I'm feeling. We
don't know how to say. So you know, how was
your dea at work? Now it's we die?
Speaker 2 (52:41):
Have you watch that TV?
Speaker 1 (52:42):
No?
Speaker 2 (52:42):
No, straight to the.
Speaker 1 (52:44):
Death, skip the small talk, we go straight to the heart. Yeah,
which I love.
Speaker 2 (52:48):
I love that. That's again great mirror. All right, So
walking through playing the game, so.
Speaker 1 (52:56):
Okay, yeah, you can move then I set it up
for you.
Speaker 3 (52:59):
Yes, okay, So we have acceptance, emotions, understand intimacy, memories, and.
Speaker 1 (53:05):
Quality and by the way, they all change after so
many of the game plan.
Speaker 3 (53:10):
Yes, oh that's amazing. We're each picking one.
Speaker 6 (53:13):
Yeah, you.
Speaker 1 (53:15):
Got yellow res easy one. Okay, name three attractive qualities
in another person.
Speaker 3 (53:25):
The way they view the world, themselves and others is
highly important.
Speaker 2 (53:34):
Two being attractive to me.
Speaker 3 (53:37):
I would say, those are the three things you know
that that I would feel defined an attraction for me
in every level of my core, which is how I
have to feel things to feel entice enough to move.
Speaker 2 (53:55):
Yeah, I would say those three. Ooh, accept this name.
Speaker 3 (54:05):
One thing you would not change.
Speaker 2 (54:06):
About yourself.
Speaker 1 (54:11):
My willingness to learn. I wouldn't change that about myself
because just having figured out that my words can change
my life, that grief can change my life. Willing to
dig deep and understand why, the constant why and staying
curious that has led me down so many beautiful paths
(54:35):
that I just want to I want to learn more.
Speaker 2 (54:38):
I can relate. I love that when we're out. Yeah,
I'm enjoying this. I can figure out to cut understand.
Speaker 1 (54:49):
Is there something you struggle to understand about yourself?
Speaker 2 (54:57):
But never mind.
Speaker 1 (55:00):
I am down on the couch.
Speaker 3 (55:03):
Oh my god, I think for such a long time
I've hidden behind the ideas of what I'm supposed to be.
That I'm in the journey of understanding who I really am.
Speaker 1 (55:18):
The unconditioning. I relate to that so much.
Speaker 2 (55:23):
This is the way you.
Speaker 5 (55:28):
Go deeper.
Speaker 1 (55:29):
But for times sake, you know, I would say, tell
me more emotions.
Speaker 2 (55:34):
All right, here you go. What was the last thing
that made you cry?
Speaker 1 (55:38):
Oh? I know this one. I lost my dog about
a little bit of a month, probably been about a
month and a half. I still cry every day. Yeah,
I I had this Oh it's gonna make me cry now.
I had this realization yesterday as I was cutting strawberries
and when the knife would hit the cutting board, my
(56:01):
little French bulldog he would run over and to him
that signal, those are for me. My mom's cutting strawberries
for me. And I would only give him so many,
because you know, you don't want to spoil your dog
or you don't want to teach them bad habits. And
I would always do the command like sit, and then
I'd give it to him. And the other day, when
(56:24):
I was cutting strawberries and he wasn't there, I was thinking,
I wish I could give him all the strawberries. And
I realized that's so important because all we want to
All he left behind was love, right, And so that's
all I want to leave behind is love of making
(56:44):
people feel loved. Yeah, So now today you can say
new day.
Speaker 5 (56:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (56:50):
I cry for him every day. Yeah, And that is
the grief. One thing that I again loved about been
mentoring me was as long as we love, we're going
to grief. And so the tears are a testament to
the deep, deep love. Yeah, I don't run from it.
Speaker 2 (57:12):
I've learned so.
Speaker 3 (57:13):
Much from your courage. You know, in our business, you're
accustomed to experiencing someone having to act a certain way
when you're in space and perform. And I loved our
space of intimacy because I think we we've been able
(57:35):
to connect and be But I just honor you for
that courage that you have to face these moments of
loss and grief and to also have this beautiful sense
of self that you have that I has been a
great mirror.
Speaker 2 (57:51):
And listen to me today.
Speaker 3 (57:52):
I promise you that I can tell you that you've
filled my cup today.
Speaker 2 (57:58):
I'm so grateful in every sense to the word and
the show.
Speaker 3 (58:02):
We always have an exercise that I think is so
fitting because it's almost like it was perfectly it was
almost written by you and copied by me. But the
power of words and what that does to our internal
what that does to our minds So the exercise is
(58:22):
Liszt's one word or one phrase that your internal part
I've still here today, that will change how you perceived
the rest of the day, the rest of the week,
the rest of your time.
Speaker 1 (58:37):
Gratitude, constantly staying gratitude. I'm grateful for this moment with you.
I'm grateful to share my story. I'm grateful for the grief,
as painful as it is, because it's just a constant
reminder that I was able to place my love somewhere
(58:57):
and that I received love, love, love, that I received love,
and just having breath in my lungs. You know that's
to me, It's just constant gratitude, love.
Speaker 3 (59:14):
That thank you so much for being on you versus you.
I'm excited that it's the start of a new friendship
and I look forward to sharing a lot more conversations
and thoughts and ideas as we could both go down
this beautiful journey of a life worth living.
Speaker 1 (59:30):
Yeah. Well, like I said, I love to learn and
I have a billion more questions we have.
Speaker 2 (59:36):
The playing.
Speaker 1 (59:39):
No, You're a real pleasure, and thank you for being
a beautiful spirit and soul and for sharing your space
with me. Deeply grateful, love it, thank you, thank.
Speaker 3 (59:49):
You, You versus You as a production of Neon sixteen
and Entertained Studios in partnership with the Iheartmichael Tuda podcast Network.
For more podcasts, listen to the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Be on stage and you've got a smile for the camera,
like everything is fine. Watching the strongest woman I know deteriorate.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
How did you deal with that?
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Friend said to me, I wish I could take all
your pain away, and I said, I don't because I'm
Liz Hernandez. It's Liz Hernandez, Liz Hernandez who's a radio
starting Liz.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
I'm so happy with Liz.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
And it was having to redefine what success was for me.
Success was I'll be happy when I'll be happy when
I get the Grammy. Then you get the Grammy and
you say, okay, well then I'll be happy when I
have three Grammys. You never give yourself a chance.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
My life is coming to an end. Music and entertainment.
It's no longer something I want to do. And I'm
going to say goodbye.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Liz. Welcome to you, versus you.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
I'm excited to have this conversation with you. But I'll
be honest. You know, I've been shooting episodes the whole week.
Last night I started to feel really mentally and emotionally tied.
I was like, man, like, I don't know if I'm
all the way there to have another podcast, and then
(01:08):
I pulled up the document that they prepare with all
your information and all the links of every conversation, like
they do their great job, and I started to listen
to your story. I started to specifically the losing of
your mother, and I said, Oh, my god, the universe
works in such an amazing place that her experience dealing
(01:31):
with grief is something that might be just what I
need to hear. And I think it's going to be
a blessing to me and blessing to our audience. But
I'll give you where I'm at. So I'm at a
place in my career of full transition right where I've
(01:51):
started to accept them. My time in music and entertainment
as a full time life experience is it's no longer
something I want to do. As you know, because you've
been in this business as long as I have. There
is these ideas and stories we tell ourselves around the
(02:13):
value of success and hustle and time sacrifice, and in
many ways we sacrifice our own personal lives and all
these things that come into chaos. That was the catalyst
for what became you versus You, and part of that
internal work I've been experiencing with ayahuasca. Now, if you
would have told Legs even five years ago, I would
(02:36):
be like, I'm never doing that crap in my life.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
You are out of your mind.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
But I started to dissect and figure out that my
brain is very much a computer, and like a computer,
there's things that I can do by myself. Send an email,
I can, you know, write an Excel sheet. There's things
that I need help on, you know, there's things that
I need to call my tech department at the company
or and.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
I relate that to this.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
There's things where we are here for each other, we communicate,
there's community that allows you to kind of see that.
And the things that I could do by myself is
like reading a book, listening to this podcast another podcast
that are is really healthful. And then there's times we
need to take our computers to the genius bar. There's
times where we got to go to find a Google
engineer because the thing just won't work. And I was
feeling like I was at that stage where it's like, Okay,
(03:25):
I've done self work, but now I need some Google
engineer because I'm afraid of facing some of the things
that I have to face. First times I did it
wonderful clarity you versus you came out of that. I
was like the preacher of ayahuasca, everybody should do it.
Was doing all this thing this past weekend. I said,
(03:45):
I'm going to do it. First day I felt in
my joy, I was like, this is great. Third day,
about eight in the morning, I'm like, I'm going to
walk outside. I'm gonna go sit in the grass and
ground myself, which has worked for me in my past
experiences actually been a great place to clear my thoughts.
So I walked out, thinking I'm in the happiest place.
(04:06):
I take my shoes off, I ground, and then I
take my hands and I put them on the grass.
And the moment I do, I felt this level of gratitude,
but a level of gratitude when you're saying goodbye. So
it wasn't like, oh, thank you so much for everything.
It was like, thank you for the life you've given me,
(04:27):
and I'm sorry. That moment triggered this warm feeling that
put a thought of my mind of a disease, and
then it took my mind into feeling the loss of
life and saying, my life is coming to an end.
(04:49):
This disease is going to take my life and I'm
going to say goodbye. And it sat me into spain
for three and a half hours of just the most
outrageous crying, fear, trying to hold it together. And it
was like, and these justapositions of emotions while having the
(05:12):
image of saying goodbye to my daughter knowing that I
was not going to see her grow. I'm telling the
story which I don't normally say in the podcast, because
they left me in a place of grief, right, And
what the experience kept on saying, what the medicine kind
of put with the acceptance of being okay with grief
(05:34):
and every part of that emotion right of like letting.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Go sounds like the teacher of impermanence came to knock
on your door.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Oh I did. The interesting thing is that.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
If I would have known that it was going to
go there, I probably would have not done this whole week, right,
I probably would have not forced myself to emotionally carry
But I had everybody here and getting back the story
of like this is all way more important I have
to do. But when I started to read your story,
I said, oh my god, her experience what was just
for me a dream or moment of emotion that life
(06:08):
wanted to have me experience in this journey that I'm in.
You know, people say that ayahuasca is like the ego
death medicine. You lived it in real life as you
were losing your mom. How did you deal with that grief?
What has what have you learned from it? And how
(06:28):
have you settled with acceptance of that. I'll be honest,
I'm having a hard time with that right now. I'm
like in a place where I was just telling my partner,
I think I need to cry.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
It's like the moment that you're like.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Yeah, then you cry.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
I mean, that's sort of the beauty of being human
is that we're all given these emotions to feel while
we're here. When my mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, it
was attending a thousand funerals because every day I was
(07:04):
saying goodbye to a piece of her, and it was
very difficult watching the strongest woman I know deteriorate and
slowly die while still trying to hold on to who
she is. I was dancing with grief every single day,
and there was so much that I didn't know about grief.
(07:26):
I didn't know the stages of grief, yet the way
anger would show up. You know, looking back, I'm sort
of embarrassed for how I handled things, not you know what,
I shouldn't say that. Looking back, I can give myself
compassion for the way I may have embarrassed myself to
(07:46):
somebody else.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Looking at I love the reframing of that.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
That was amazing, you know, because at the time I
was at the so called peak of my television career.
I was at Access holl Hollywood for maybe a month
once and then my mom was diagnosed and I had
told my boss at the time, I'm going to leave.
I'm going to step away and just care for my mom.
And she was a mother and she said, I don't
(08:12):
think that's what your mom would want, and we're here
to support you. So I stayed on, and I had
all the pressure of being the newbie in television prime
time and also caring for my mother. Like I said,
in that incident, when something went awry, I imploded, which
I never never did. I was always professional, but it
(08:36):
wasn't me. It was grief and the anger was showing
up to protect me. Grief is just it is just
such a tremendous teacher. It really is we learned so
much about ourselves. I just recently lost my dog of
eleven and a half years, and a girlfriend said to me,
I wish I could take all your pain away, and
(08:57):
I said, I don't. I said, because this is what's
stretching me. And I am building my empathy muscle and
my compassion muscle, and I'm honoring the love that I
shared with my little al that was his name. And
now when I see other dog owners, I think, oh
(09:19):
my God, I send you love and I send you strength,
because one day you're going to have to feel what
I felt, and it is awful. But I have so
much compassion in a different way that I wouldn't have
had had I not gone through that same thing with
my mother. When I meet people that are caregivers or
that their parent is struggling with an illness, my empathy
(09:41):
is way different.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
You talked about the stages of grief. Elaborate on that little.
Speaker 4 (09:50):
You know.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
I feel that we are having serendipitous moments all the time.
But I really tapped into that when I started meditating,
and as life would have it, as my mother really
began to I don't even know the word lose herself
to the disease. I met the world's leading grief expert.
(10:16):
His name is David Kessler, and this man took me
under his wing and taught me the stages of grief,
and it shows up as anger as the would a
Kulda should us. You know, if only I had seen
the signs earlier, maybe my mother could have somehow beat
(10:39):
this disease. If I would have, you know, left access
Hollywood earlier, maybe she would have lived a longer life.
We do all this bargaining with death. I'd have to
look them up. There's five stages. I haven't revisited them
in a long time. But one of the ones that
was really helpful for me, because Alzheimer's is a really
(11:01):
long disease, is when my mom passed away. I remember
calling David the very next day and I said to him,
I feel okay, And David, does you know He kind
of not giggled, but kind of made one of those
He said, hold on to that because he knew what
was coming. I didn't know that I had been experiencing
(11:23):
for the last seven and a half years that my
mom was sick, what they call anticipatory grief. I had
been grieving my mother for seven years. Like I said,
it was tiny funerals. So when I would sit in
the car and cry for an hour, that was me
grieving her already. That was me grieving that knowing my
mom was going to die. So for seven years I
(11:45):
cried my eyes out. So when my mom passed, there
was a sense of peace I felt the next day
because I knew one she was free and wasn't suffering,
But there was just this sort of Oh, the amount
of pain I had felt on the actual day she
died was so intense that my I don't know if
(12:10):
it was my soul was just giving me a chance
to breathe. But also, like I said, I had been
grieving the entire time, so learning what anticipatory grief was
was huge.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
So I was thinking about it as I was listening
to one of your podcasts with David. I hadn't actually
talked about grief or mentioned the word grief in my life.
I've been blessed, and I lost my grandparents and things,
but I had never really been put that word in
(12:42):
my mind. And over the past week has come up
like twenty times everything Because I was speaking to the
spiritual leader and he said, you're.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
In grief, and you're in grief of it.
Speaker 4 (12:56):
Could have, should have, would have the idea of what
you thought of your life and which you thought of
the things that you are looking at and finding center
in acceptings because I remember as I was going through
that journey and I've unfortunately I've had kidney stones five times.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Which is for a guy, the worst pain.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
They say it's worth them like it's like comparable to
birth because it is this on you can't control the
way that your body feels like it's going to explode,
and it's a crazy pain. And I've never felt the
level of emotional pain I fell in those three hours.
And when I woke up from that, there was also
(13:41):
a moment of the power of accepting that of accepting
that we generally don't control anything.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
That's Another stage of grief is denial, is we want
to deny what's happening. We don't want to accept reality,
which just adds more pain onto our grief.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
I'm going through all these things.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
The thing about it is we're grieving all the time
and we don't even realize it. You know. One of
the beautiful lessons again that I learned from David is
when we lose a job. We're grieving the paycheck we
didn't get. We're grieving the people we used to work
with during the pandemic. We grieved the lives we used
to live, the being out in society, the being able
to go to the grocery store. That all of those
(14:26):
things we had to grieve collectively. There's always something that's changing.
That's what life is is constant change. So we're constantly
in grief. Maybe it's micro grief, but it's still grief. Yeah,
it's like when you sell your house, right, Yes, you
grieve that this is where I created memories. This was
(14:46):
a part of me.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
I'm working on a documentary of Tommy Mottola, the big
music executive, And someone in the documentary said, sometimes you
think that it is themand.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
But it's actually the chair.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
And and while I was in the process, was really
interesting to hear because it's like, hmm, so are people
going to forget about me because I'm not in the
chair of CEO of so and so and the public figure
of this very successful company.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
And I think you're creating the old version of you
that you're trying to hold on to.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
One hundred percent.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Yeah, And that's and I get that because you know,
even with the idea of you versus you, it can
be very difficult because we want to hold on to
who we think we were. You know, whether that's it's
whatever is the priority for us, right, is it? Our
idea of success is it? Age? Is it? I'm more
(15:40):
valuable when I'm in a relationship, So I grieve that
part of myself. That's why I think it's so important
to get clear on what do you value for me?
You know, even thinking about when I left Access Hollywood,
Everyone's like, oh my god, how could you do that?
And it was having to redefine what success was for me.
(16:02):
Success was peace, not performance.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
You feel that way today about it?
Speaker 1 (16:09):
Yes, yeah, because I feel that it's already a part
of me. That's also what I look for externally. I
want people in my life who value peace more than
they value performance, whether that's needing to perform because they
care about what people think, whether that's performing that they're
(16:30):
healed when they're not, because we're always healing till the
day we die. Yeah, exactly, all we know is that
we don't know, and.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
So you know love that. I'm sorry, I love that, And.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
So you know, and you see people they they'll tell
you how much therapy they've done, how much this, and
then you don't see it applied to life, and I'm like, Okay,
that's performance, that's not real peace.
Speaker 5 (16:54):
As you were dealing with the grief, as you were
transitioning your career, that's like, I think it's this perfect
divine tim And I always say, like a million things
have to happen in divine order for two people to
connect them.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
So I'm so intrigued because I feel like I'm a.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
Student and I'm like I answer to ask you all
these questions and I'm like, teach me, call me.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
Well, all I know is that I don't know exactly, Yeah,
which I.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Love that, you know. I just feel like you just
got to speak from the heart because that's your truth.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
Yeah, as you were dealing with the grief, as you
were transitioning out as well of your job, was there
certain mental frameworks and mantras that you were following that
helped you on the daily journey.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
Absolutely. I've been gratitude journaling for about seventeen years and
that was instrumental in finding the silver lining in every situation.
I wasn't using it to gloss over the pain. But
you can hold grief and gratitude at the same time.
(17:57):
So it was like, yes, my mom is dying, but
my mom is also she was diagnosed at sixty five.
I've had my mom for sixty five years and I
was loved or I am loved. That's the gratitude, so
huge gratitude journaling has. It's pivotal in my life. There's
(18:18):
not one day that I would say, you have to
tie it to a reward, and I say, I'm never
going to skip my coffee. I love coffee, so I'm
never going to skip gratitude journaling. The two go hand
in hand. Like I said, when my mom was diagnosed,
I was only about a month or two at Access Hollywood.
So you know, you've got to go be on stage
and you've got a smile for the camera and you
(18:39):
got to interact like everything is fine, but no one
knows what's going on behind the scenes. So before I
walked out in my glam and spanks and six inch heels,
I would sit and write an affirmation ten times. I'd
write it out ten times to memorize it. And so
you know, there's a lot of downtime when you're filming,
and so when the cameras would say, you know, they
dy'll cut, and then I would repeat the affirmation like
(19:01):
a mantra, and they were pretty wordy. So I was like,
one day, I'm going to create my own affirmations, and
that's what I ended up doing. And so it's till
this day my gratitude journal. I say an affirmation every
day and I meditate. Those are my grounding tools.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
I love that, so so like you, I do gratitude
journal every day and I've been a big preacher of
it because when I did get into it one I
started to be able to look back sometimes in the day,
especially when I write the night version of it, was like, wow,
that actually happened today, Because sometimes we get so caught
(19:39):
up with life that I read this book called The
Uncharted Journey by Don Russenshill, and he says, you're so
worried and interested about the experience that you forget the moment.
And I felt like that about I would say the
majority of my career in life, it's like, okay, we
want to grab me, okay tomorrow, what's the next thing?
(20:00):
And you don't even like take a second to like
sit down drink a wine say oh my god, I
just want to grab me. My little self would be
thrilled right now.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
Destination addiction they call that I'll be happy when I'll
be happy when I get the Grammy. Then you get
the Grammy and you say, okay, well, then I'll be
happy when I have three Grammys. You never give yourself
a chance to actually be happy.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
That's a perfect segue to the conversation that I've been
having with extremely successful people on the show. The kind
of common struggle is when is it enough? Because we've
been programmed and told the story that it's it's never enough.
That you want more and you need more, and you,
(20:55):
you know, start going after everything and everything you're I
IF I, IF I, and everything is an external feeling.
Even I would say sometimes we could even put in
that pocket spirituality and religion and mantras and things that
we start doing almost like because it's an act. It's
like it's a hiding of the fact that it's like, Okay,
(21:17):
if I do this more often, if I go to
church more often, or if I buy more cars, or
if I like and in our business, what happens is
people achieve this kind of rocket style of success that.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
Doesn't happen in a lot of other businesses.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
That also comes with all this applause and all this
like celebrity status and all this like and your whole life.
You grow up thinking, oh, the moment i'm a major artist,
I'm going to be happy. Or the moment I'm a
major executive or I'm on television, I'm.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
Going to be happy.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
And then you reach everything you have, like the pinnacle
of what material success means.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
And you're like, oh shit, still the same person.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
I'm still the same person.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
I'm still dealing with little Lex and little Liz and
how I and you start going on this journey. And
what I've found in the conversation with most guests is
that that story has been thrilled. And even for myself,
I said, as I was going through my journey, it
was like, Okay, well at first, like I think most
of us try to do, is we try to make
(22:23):
these radical changes in our minds, like, oh I learned
that today, I'm going to apply it today and everything
in my life, you know, and I'm gonna like, all
of a sudden, I am a preacher of this, you know,
and like this because.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
We want that instant gratification. Were our society is built
that way. That's why we're over consumers. We think as
soon as I have this, I'm going to be happy.
Oh it didn't. It filled my happiness for five minutes.
Let me go buy something else, or let me sign
up for this class, or let me sign up, but
actually do the work. You have everything you need. There's
(22:54):
nothing that you actually need to purchase.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
Part of that that journey, at least for me in
accepting that and coming working on you versus knowing that
I'm actually okay, there's nothing in my life it's going
to change. It's going to change the inner peace. But
then again, because we try to be radical, it created
a moment where you start being tough on yourself and say, well,
(23:21):
change this and change that. And then I started to understand, well,
the gift God gave me is that I am an
idea guy who is really good at executing. And there's
a beautiful part of who I am that impacts people
and creates beautiful things.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
The question is what from where is that coming?
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Right?
Speaker 3 (23:39):
Is it a place from wholeness or a place of neediness, or.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
A place of pressure.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Or a place of pressure.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
Well, you know, you think about the little Russian dolls. Yeah,
you take them apart, there's always a little, tiny one,
the medium one, and then the big one. That's why
I always try to envision my healing is when I
take them out. There's the adult Liz, there's the adolescent Liz,
and there's little Liz, my inner child. And I've got
(24:06):
to now take my grown Liz and care for each
version of who I've been, so I can heal when
I was hurting my adolescence, and then hopefully when I
heal her her and I can go feel little liss right,
because ultimately that's what we're craving, and that's how we
(24:29):
show up in the world. You know. I think about
the pressure I still feel till this day to be productive,
and if I'm not productive, then I'm either not succeeding
or I'm lazy, or you know, you fill in the blanks.
And I think about what my little child feels. That's
a lot of pressure to put on her. What if
(24:50):
she's just okay as she is, and she's allowed to
rest and she's allowed to just feel loved just for
being her, then she can be creative.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
I love that because it's it's it's the practice of
being still right. One of the experiences as I've been
going and doing my own internal work was that understanding
of the idea that I have to be the driver
of the car, the idea that I have to be
the over controlling person in order to have safety. Once
(25:22):
you start erasing that story and reshaping and reframing that
story too, No, I am completely whole. I generally don't
control the outcome of anything, So the figuring out part
is not my job. The sitting still and learning how
to be still and not do, because even doing in
order to listen and then be courageous enough.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
To act, and also asking little lex why does he
feel like he needs to be in control, and letting
him know that he is safe.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
Right, And that's been a lot of the work. It's
that inner child, and that is all the work. And finally, yeah,
and finding those I for a long time in my career,
no matter how much success and how much money I
was accomplished, and I was like, I don't feel good enough.
In one of the sessions that I was doing with
my therapist but maybe four years ago, she said.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
To me, can you remember a time in your.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
Youth where you felt like that, but like a specific time.
I was like, okay, yes, in high school this thing happened.
Like okay, great, I'll go back a couple more years.
Can you figure out a time, think of a specific
moment and sit in that moment. I was like, okay,
(26:39):
let me go back and you're here. She's like, try
to go deeper than that. And then a moment came
to mind that I had completely erased for my conscious
of being in the car with my father.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
You had just remarried.
Speaker 3 (26:57):
I was I didn't kind of understand what was going
on non and being around with my friends playing soccer
and being like, hey, his wife, like she's really kind
of gotten fat and they were like huh oh, you
don't know, she's pregnant.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
Excuse me, excuse me, And the tears and the level
of that.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
I felt that moment in the car as I like
screened at my dad and I was like, wow, forty
years of my life I dealt with this feeling and
I had never identified it as that moment. And I
had to, you know, practically do therapy to go back
to that inner kid and say.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
Hey, Lex, what did that moment? What message did you receive.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
In that moment, I was being replaced that you weren't enough,
that I wasn't enough, and that ecuse me.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
Because again I had completely erased that from my conscious yeah,
and reliving it, which is, you know, part of what
I'm learning and I've always used it in business and
manifesting dreams, but I'm learning now how to apply it
to my emotional life is that there's a very big
difference between thinking and feeling. When I manifest something in business,
(28:23):
and I think most of us, as successful people do is.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
We feel it.
Speaker 3 (28:29):
We just imagine. You imagine yourself in the middle of
Access Hollywood and Housland, and I imagine myself like holding
a Grammy and doing like I imagine it. I felt it,
I smelt it. I know what the suit I was
gonna wear at the Grammy is.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
I just have that.
Speaker 3 (28:42):
And it was this level of attraction that gave my
mind it made them believe it, because your mind can't
help between truth or not. It's just believing what the
story you tell me. But in so many.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
Parts of our lives, the parts that affect.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
Us, Like that moment, I felt my mind believed the
story I told itself that you were not enough. But
it wasn't just that I believed it because I set
it out of my mouth.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
But I cried it. I felt like.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
That moment this weekend, I felt that pain as if
it actually happened. I mean I left out of there
generally in fear and went to the doctor and I
was like, yo, I need to scan me. I want
to make sure this wasn't like a prayer notion to
something happened, but because I felt it. And what I'm
(29:31):
learning about my own feeling, in my own experience is
that the more I sit with the actual feeling of
the thing and emotion I am trying to heal, the
clearer and the more peace I can settle into accepting
(29:51):
that moment for what it really was and not for
what I thought it was, and that fighting the pressure
and idea and the story that I've fed myself for
twenty three years of career.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
Do do do do do?
Speaker 1 (30:03):
Do?
Speaker 2 (30:03):
Do?
Speaker 1 (30:03):
Do?
Speaker 2 (30:03):
Do do do?
Speaker 3 (30:04):
Instead of like, settle into that feeling, instead of trying too.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
That's the only god I feel it to heal it.
Speaker 2 (30:11):
You're just dropping bobs today.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
That's right, That's that's right from David Kestler. But you know,
I commend you on going back because you know a
lot of times too. And here's what I'm learning is
that we so badly because we're just curious human beings.
We want to know when was I hurt and who
hurt me? And I don't always think, at least for me,
that that's And I love that you found that moment.
(30:36):
But for a lot of people, they can't find that moment.
They've buried it, they know they've been hurt. And again,
I can only speak for myself. What I've learned recently
is that I know that there is a wound there.
I don't know when it happened or how it happened,
but I do know it's mine to heal. And one
of the things that I've recently had to come face
(30:58):
to face with is that my needs matter. And it
was put to the test. You know. I thought I
had really learned that, you know, through therapy and doing
the work, and I was like, oh, I've really got
to handle on this now my needs matter. Then my
dad calls me and he says me, huh, I want
(31:19):
to meet you on this day, and you know, are
you available. I go and I look at it and
I tell just tell him, yes, you know, he's my dad. Sure,
buppuh works?
Speaker 2 (31:26):
Fine.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
I go and I look at my calendar and I'm like,
that's the first Friday of Memorial Day and I'm seeing
Kendrick Lamar that night. But that's not a good enough
reason to tell my dad. No, I don't matter. My
needs don't matter. I don't want to disappoint the man
I love. And I was really I was having this
(31:52):
self awareness of oh, here's life giving me the assignment.
Are you willing to take what you've learned that your
needs matter and apply it to real life? And so
I had to call my dad and say, Papa, no, go.
It's like, hey, Dad, I said this day that you
(32:12):
want to meet, which we were going to beat all
the way out in Riverside from la Is like Memorial
Day weekend.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
No.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
And I explained that to him and he says, oh, yeah,
I didn't even think about that. Yeah, I don't want
to sit in traffic that day either, And you know,
told him I had already had plans and no worries.
Let's do it another day. And it was like this
wave of like, okay, okay, I matter, And it was
not as hard as I thought it was going to
be and you have to think that was just a
(32:40):
little assignment. But it was such a good test for
me because can you imagine when I really put and
I put. You know, I try to not have my
dad suffer from Superman syndrome. I try not to put
him on that pedestal. But we tend to do that
in relationships or with people we really respect. It becomes
(33:00):
harder to say to them, here's what I need because
we think you matter more than me or you're somebody,
so I shouldn't be able to say what is making
me comfortable too. And so because I had just that
little assignment with my father, I'm like, okay, I got
to I have to now pay attention to make sure
(33:23):
that I'm honoring my needs.
Speaker 3 (33:25):
Ishmael, my spiritual leader, always says lex no one needs
to save you stuff trying to be the savior, and
I was like.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
Oh, were you in my therapy? That's actually everything I
worked through during Christmas was my extreme need to save
because the wound was I couldn't save my mother, so
therefore I looked for people to save. And boy, that
(33:54):
is not a fun test because I do believe this
is all one big classroom for the soul. Yeah, and
that we're all given assignments.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
I agree.
Speaker 3 (34:05):
Is there a lesson that life has been trying to
teach you that you haven't seemed to get that you
keep failure or not fit, but you're in the process
all the time of repeating.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
The class Let's see. I feel like I just worked
through the I can't save anyone but myself phase, my
needs matter phase. I think right now I don't know
what life is going to hand me next. I definitely
was very aware of that of impermanence. You know, my
mom passed away November twenty nineteen with in what a
(34:40):
month later? Two months later January, Kobe died and that
felt like you felt like family. You lived here in
la he was a part of us. And then the
pandemic hit was another thing to grieve. Then I lost
a friend to cancer. It was like grief after grief
after grief after in It was just like, Okay, you know,
(35:02):
I learned a valuable lesson and you would think I
would learn this with my mother, but it felt like
sort of the natural rhythm of life. Well, she's my mother,
you know. Disease happens, even though it was extremely painful,
but Kobe was such a this doesn't happen to people
like him, And I thought, what a beautiful lesson of
(35:23):
impermanence for all of us. Because you can have all
the accolades, you can have the dream life, you can
have the Oscar, you can have NBA championships, all of it,
a beautiful family, and you're not guaranteed tomorrow. And we're
not taught that in our society. We're not taught about
impermanence and grief.
Speaker 3 (35:43):
That was definitely I think the lesson I'm learning. You know,
that separation between saying that all the time and feeling
and I really feel like I wouldn't have let go.
I would continue to play around the idea of all
this pressure that I have is put it on me
(36:04):
because I can handle it, and I need to deliver,
and I need to deliver. That moment really has made
me reconsider this idea that tomorrow is truly promised, and
then I say to myself, what do I actually want.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
To do today?
Speaker 1 (36:19):
Every single thing we have, material and emotional, and the
people we love is on borrowed time, and so we
can work work, work, work, work, work, and say I
don't have time for you. I don't have time to
enjoy the things I've worked for. It's a choice, and
(36:40):
it's part of the assignment. It's part of the lesson.
Speaker 2 (36:42):
You know.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
I talk about it in the show about Lesson because
one of the things that I've really started to implement
in my life is and I've started to see the
results of that in my life as well. We've been
taught to run away from the heart time, right, like,
and we've been taught to tell others it's okay, the
(37:06):
light at the end of the tunnel's coming, like this too,
show pass like this idea of you know, something my
mom and my dad always really taught me was just
like just fight through air, but like it's okay, it's
going to pass in the past. And like if it's hard,
like if someone makes you uncomfortable, cut them out of
your life. If someone like all these things about like
(37:27):
anything that feels hard, go. And so I became a
really great architect, right in the sense that I have
created a vision, I can draw it, I can take
it to be one hundred percent. But once you build
something as a business person, you then become a property manager,
which was for me the difference between being an entrepreneur
(37:50):
and becoming a CEO two very different.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
Like there's this.
Speaker 3 (37:54):
Level of excitement I'm building something. Wow, the world.
Speaker 2 (37:57):
Knows all the growth, all the growth, and at.
Speaker 3 (38:00):
Some point the gross stops and now you got to
maintain that. And historically in my life, that's when I
was like, I'm out. Whether it was in relationships, whether
it was in business, I was like, straining.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
It difficult and I have to feel the difficulty.
Speaker 3 (38:15):
And I was like, no, see, something is a lot worsetting.
I gotta go build another house. Sorry, I got to
call the way the way my phone works is I
got to go build a house. And I was doing
these bouncing aroundse bouncing arounds, bouncing the rounds. And when
I build the company and had to settle into this
idea of being the CEO of the company, when I
(38:35):
started to have to do the same thing in my life, thankfully,
right at the time, in perfect divine order, I started
learning about this idea of dancing in the fire, right,
dancing in the middle of the hardest times, and that
the lesson of life is in that the best hardest
parts of your life are mirrors in order for you
(38:56):
to sit like we were talking before we started filming,
in order to sit with yourself and start loving yourself,
start setting yourself, but also sit in the difference between
pain and suffering, which I heard you speak with.
Speaker 2 (39:07):
David as well.
Speaker 1 (39:08):
Yeah, well, you don't learn anything if you don't sit
with the pain. Like I told you, when my girlfriend
offered to take all the pain, she said, I wish
I could take all the pain away, and I said
I don't because then I skip over what I'm supposed
to learn. Shout out to David Kessler. He has this
great he said. When they studied grief, they studied buffaloes,
and when there's a storm coming, instead of running from
(39:31):
the storm, the buffaloes run towards it because they know
that if they run towards the storm, it'll minimize the
amount of time they have to suffer. Wow, we as
human beings, tend to run from the storm, So we
spent our whole lives running from the pain, always having
it behind us. Or if we just go through it
(39:52):
because it's the only way through it, then we would
be more at peace.
Speaker 3 (39:57):
Yeah, No, that's a the moment I learned that started applying,
I started to see the changes to the way my
mind started to perceive the situation and the difference between
there was pain. You go to the gymu and a
six pack, it's going to be painful.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
But the mental thing privilege.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
To feel, Like I always say, this is the human experience.
What a privilege it is to feel all of our feelings.
If you're happy all the time, you can't empathize with anyone.
You lead with ego, not empathy.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (40:44):
I was hearing David talk about that in the podcast
A Life Worth Living, and I love that because there's
another statement that we say and we've heard. It's like
a quotable and we love you know, as humans, we
love Instagram quotables.
Speaker 2 (40:57):
I mean like it's just like we love them. That's
a question. It was like exactly.
Speaker 3 (41:03):
But if you really sit for a second with that
and like, let us sink in life worth living and
you're just like all of it.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
This will makes this place.
Speaker 3 (41:14):
So amazing and it makes every single day of our
life so amazing. And the power of that, and that
leads me to not only what you've created, but we're
going to play this game.
Speaker 2 (41:27):
Talk to me about order Full.
Speaker 3 (41:30):
And why and the goal on it and what it
means in signifies in your life right now.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
Storytelling has been in my DNA. Started in radio, took
me to television, and I realized, while it was really
exciting working in entertainment, what drove me my passion was
connection with community through storytelling, because that's how I grew up.
(41:59):
When my mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, she began to
lose her language, and she held on to her final
phrases where I love you and thank you. And I
found that to be so fascinating because doctor Emoto, he's
a Japanese scientist who studied the power of words. So
(42:20):
the two most powerful words in our language is love
and gratitude, and the fact that my mom was holding
on to love and gratitude meant so much to me
because I was going to lose the affirmations. She would
(42:41):
fill my cup up with the I love yous, that
you look so nice today, that you're so smart, I'm
so proud of you, and I would need to reinforce
that in myself. I don't like to martyr my mom.
She wasn't perfect, and there was a lot of things
that I had to recondition myself to understand that, you know,
(43:05):
I think about who I am now as an adult
and how hard I can be on myself, and that
allows me to have a lot of compassion for my
mom because I think about how hard she was probably
on herself, given the wounds she had and the lack
of tools that she had, and that she was just
doing her best to raise me. And so here I
(43:28):
was in one avenue of my life where you know,
I'm all dolled up and talking about celebrity divorces and
what they ate for breakfast, and I thought about, here's
my mom losing her her words and her language. What
do I want my message out in the world to be?
Because I thought about what is the last conversation I'm
(43:50):
going to have with my mom and how powerful words are.
They have the power to literally heal us or completely
devastate us. It was just out of necessity. I was like,
I'm going to get on YouTube and talk about the
power of one word at a time, and maybe I'll
just talk about what it means to me, how I'm
misusing it, how it's playing out in my life. And
(44:11):
then word aful turned into this confessional and sort of
diary and place I felt connected. It was a really
vulnerable place for me to be in not only creating
the series but also sharing my mother's diagnosis because my
mother was a very private woman. But I also knew
(44:33):
that it could become a bridge to help my community
feel you know, if someone else was feeling scared, confused,
hurt that their parent was going through this too, I
could give it a voice, I could give it resources,
and I could give it a safe space. And that
(44:53):
was really my introduction to Maria Shriver and David Kessler
and so who then became voices for the wordful community
as well. So Wordiful is words are powerful, mush together
and that series turned into live events, and I remember
the first time standing in front of an audience of
about three hundred and fifty people and seeing me sharing
(45:17):
my story and how it impacted them and their emotion
impacting me. I was opening up about what I had
been through and my experiences, and I could see that
people felt less alone, and the emotions that it invoked
in them made me feel less alone. And then women
(45:37):
started staying behind and wanting to share their stories, and
that was it. That's when I knew I was like
the power of storytelling. We just all want to know
that we matter and that we're seen. And you know,
I really pride myself on this brand not being We
want to be seen, we don't want to be sold to,
and that to me is one of the pillars of
(45:59):
what makes this community so special.
Speaker 2 (46:03):
I love that, you know.
Speaker 3 (46:04):
I always say, sometimes the best example someone could have
is the person that's right in front of you and
the story and what that does to help you see
things like, as I was saying at the beginning today,
you've been the perfect mirror, the perfect like divine order
of the universe, saying, you know, like, and that's a
(46:25):
beautiful thing, because sometimes we're not grateful for those moments
because we see them as just like, Okay, something I'm experiencing.
But again, like when you really think about how many
things had to happen.
Speaker 1 (46:37):
That's because of our lives, you know. But you have
to give yourself credits because you're open and you're awake
to receive because some people might not see that and
they're not ready to receive it yet, you know. And
there is something so powerful about having the opportunity to
share our stories and to feel like someone is really
(46:59):
listening to us. You know. I used to say when
we'd get together for these smaller groups with wonderful women,
Having a room full of people share their stories, that
is the thing that makes us feel the least alone
because it's oh they're going through that. Oh they they've
been through what I've been through. Because when we're home
(47:19):
alone and we're just ruminating in our house, we create
this narrative like I'm the only one going through this,
the only one. I'm so embarrassed and these insecurities and
this struggle and this heartbreak. But when you're in a
room full of people and everyone is sharing and you're
hearing different voices, there is a lot of power in that.
Speaker 3 (47:38):
Yeah, well that takes me to well. One like I was,
we were sharing your gratitude journal, which I really appreciate
this because I so funny. Another honest story. Yes, I
used to write online all the time, and then I
started to go through an experience in a relationship I
was in where I felt like my journal was not safe.
Speaker 2 (48:01):
Okay, So I was like I would hide it under
my clothes and like shove it in there.
Speaker 3 (48:05):
And then I found the app and I started doing
it in the app as consistent as doing it.
Speaker 2 (48:10):
But I love to.
Speaker 3 (48:12):
Write, like, when I read a book, I like to
get the actual physical book because I am a highlighted
and king. Okay, I like highlight and come back and
read it again and again. And so actually, this is beautiful.
And like I was telling you this, the color evoked
some emotion in my life because at the beginning of
my dreams, this color was meaningful to how I saw
(48:34):
the world and creativity. I always used to say, I
painted my childhood room this color.
Speaker 2 (48:40):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (48:41):
When I first got to La, I never forget the
time when we me and my business partner we got here.
Speaker 2 (48:47):
We had this idea about.
Speaker 3 (48:48):
LA that it was going to be this great place
where we're going to make our dreams, which happened, and
then we're faced with the reality of apartments in La
don't have air conditioning and don't got fridges, and we
were like, I remember, after the first day of looking
at real estate that we can actually afford, we were like,
I think we got to go back to Miami. I
got fridge and air conditioning inclusive of the price.
Speaker 2 (49:11):
What is going on here?
Speaker 3 (49:11):
But when we finally like, we put our money together
and we found our first apartment and we didn't actually
have money to paint. We wanted to paint the living room.
I wanted to paint the whole living room like the
main wall red. And we didn't have money, so we
bought a little pint of paint and we painted one wall.
Speaker 2 (49:32):
And in that wall.
Speaker 3 (49:35):
Twenty one years ago, we wrote the name of our
company and didn't use that name of that company until
five years ago, and we wrote exactly how we wanted
it to be, Like we had this idea about how
digital media would work before there was Hulu and anything,
and it was like five or four different business ideas
(49:59):
were ridden in that journal that when we moved out
and we started to have music success and he moved
at his own place and then kind of took it
down and we actually never looked back. And about a
year ago we started to look at the things we've
done and we're like, oh my god, do you remember
we had that in that wall? Do you remember we
(50:21):
had that? And remember that and that?
Speaker 6 (50:23):
And we were like, dude, were were genius wall, you know,
but it was all in that so I well, it
just shows you the power of manifestation too, of the set,
the intention, release it, and we don't know when it's
going to show up.
Speaker 1 (50:39):
But if you believe in it enough, I would love
for you to just open to a random page and
see what set the intention. What affirmation do you need
right now?
Speaker 3 (50:49):
Okay, comfort, I am safe, loved and at peace. My
gentle thoughts and compassionate words bring me the comfort that
I need.
Speaker 1 (51:05):
There it is said you were in your feelings this
you know there I want to say too. There's a
huge difference between gratitude journaling on a tablet or in
your phone versus writing it. It is so powerful, and
there's tons of research that backs us up. There's something
(51:25):
about the connection of our hand and our body to
our mind that makes it that much more powerful. And
it's not just about giving gratitude for what has happened.
You can also give gratitude for what's to come. It's
one of my favorites.
Speaker 2 (51:42):
I love that. And then you brought me this.
Speaker 3 (51:45):
Wonderful the game no room for small talk, and it's
again Sara divis about it. So every time I get
together with friends, yes, I always say, we don't actually
know each other, so we really ask the right questions.
And so I have these moments where I just always
(52:06):
ask these questions, what are you afraid of and and
start sparking these conversations of friends that I've known fifteen years.
I was like, oh my god, I didn't know that.
I didn't know that this has happened to you. And
so I love this. Yeah, and we're gonna play it.
Speaker 1 (52:21):
Yes, I have a girlfriend and we joke because as
soon as she sits down on my couch, we don't
know how to do small talk. We go straight in
into the deep, into the house your heart today? What
let me tell you about this pain I'm feeling. We
don't know how to say. So you know, how was
your dea at work? Now it's we die?
Speaker 2 (52:41):
Have you watch that TV?
Speaker 1 (52:42):
No?
Speaker 2 (52:42):
No, straight to the.
Speaker 1 (52:44):
Death, skip the small talk, we go straight to the heart. Yeah,
which I love.
Speaker 2 (52:48):
I love that. That's again great mirror. All right, So
walking through playing the game, so.
Speaker 1 (52:56):
Okay, yeah, you can move then I set it up
for you.
Speaker 3 (52:59):
Yes, okay, So we have acceptance, emotions, understand intimacy, memories, and.
Speaker 1 (53:05):
Quality and by the way, they all change after so
many of the game plan.
Speaker 3 (53:10):
Yes, oh that's amazing. We're each picking one.
Speaker 6 (53:13):
Yeah, you.
Speaker 1 (53:15):
Got yellow res easy one. Okay, name three attractive qualities
in another person.
Speaker 3 (53:25):
The way they view the world, themselves and others is
highly important.
Speaker 2 (53:34):
Two being attractive to me.
Speaker 3 (53:37):
I would say, those are the three things you know
that that I would feel defined an attraction for me
in every level of my core, which is how I
have to feel things to feel entice enough to move.
Speaker 2 (53:55):
Yeah, I would say those three. Ooh, accept this name.
Speaker 3 (54:05):
One thing you would not change.
Speaker 2 (54:06):
About yourself.
Speaker 1 (54:11):
My willingness to learn. I wouldn't change that about myself
because just having figured out that my words can change
my life, that grief can change my life. Willing to
dig deep and understand why, the constant why and staying
curious that has led me down so many beautiful paths
(54:35):
that I just want to I want to learn more.
Speaker 2 (54:38):
I can relate. I love that when we're out. Yeah,
I'm enjoying this. I can figure out to cut understand.
Speaker 1 (54:49):
Is there something you struggle to understand about yourself?
Speaker 2 (54:57):
But never mind.
Speaker 1 (55:00):
I am down on the couch.
Speaker 3 (55:03):
Oh my god, I think for such a long time
I've hidden behind the ideas of what I'm supposed to be.
That I'm in the journey of understanding who I really am.
Speaker 1 (55:18):
The unconditioning. I relate to that so much.
Speaker 2 (55:23):
This is the way you.
Speaker 5 (55:28):
Go deeper.
Speaker 1 (55:29):
But for times sake, you know, I would say, tell
me more emotions.
Speaker 2 (55:34):
All right, here you go. What was the last thing
that made you cry?
Speaker 1 (55:38):
Oh? I know this one. I lost my dog about
a little bit of a month, probably been about a
month and a half. I still cry every day. Yeah,
I I had this Oh it's gonna make me cry now.
I had this realization yesterday as I was cutting strawberries
and when the knife would hit the cutting board, my
(56:01):
little French bulldog he would run over and to him
that signal, those are for me. My mom's cutting strawberries
for me. And I would only give him so many,
because you know, you don't want to spoil your dog
or you don't want to teach them bad habits. And
I would always do the command like sit, and then
I'd give it to him. And the other day, when
(56:24):
I was cutting strawberries and he wasn't there, I was thinking,
I wish I could give him all the strawberries. And
I realized that's so important because all we want to
All he left behind was love, right, And so that's
all I want to leave behind is love of making
(56:44):
people feel loved. Yeah, So now today you can say
new day.
Speaker 5 (56:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (56:50):
I cry for him every day. Yeah, And that is
the grief. One thing that I again loved about been
mentoring me was as long as we love, we're going
to grief. And so the tears are a testament to
the deep, deep love. Yeah, I don't run from it.
Speaker 2 (57:12):
I've learned so.
Speaker 3 (57:13):
Much from your courage. You know, in our business, you're
accustomed to experiencing someone having to act a certain way
when you're in space and perform. And I loved our
space of intimacy because I think we we've been able
(57:35):
to connect and be But I just honor you for
that courage that you have to face these moments of
loss and grief and to also have this beautiful sense
of self that you have that I has been a
great mirror.
Speaker 2 (57:51):
And listen to me today.
Speaker 3 (57:52):
I promise you that I can tell you that you've
filled my cup today.
Speaker 2 (57:58):
I'm so grateful in every sense to the word and
the show.
Speaker 3 (58:02):
We always have an exercise that I think is so
fitting because it's almost like it was perfectly it was
almost written by you and copied by me. But the
power of words and what that does to our internal
what that does to our minds So the exercise is
(58:22):
Liszt's one word or one phrase that your internal part
I've still here today, that will change how you perceived
the rest of the day, the rest of the week,
the rest of your time.
Speaker 1 (58:37):
Gratitude, constantly staying gratitude. I'm grateful for this moment with you.
I'm grateful to share my story. I'm grateful for the grief,
as painful as it is, because it's just a constant
reminder that I was able to place my love somewhere
(58:57):
and that I received love, love, love, that I received love,
and just having breath in my lungs. You know that's
to me, It's just constant gratitude, love.
Speaker 3 (59:14):
That thank you so much for being on you versus you.
I'm excited that it's the start of a new friendship
and I look forward to sharing a lot more conversations
and thoughts and ideas as we could both go down
this beautiful journey of a life worth living.
Speaker 1 (59:30):
Yeah. Well, like I said, I love to learn and
I have a billion more questions we have.
Speaker 2 (59:36):
The playing.
Speaker 1 (59:39):
No, You're a real pleasure, and thank you for being
a beautiful spirit and soul and for sharing your space
with me. Deeply grateful, love it, thank you, thank.
Speaker 3 (59:49):
You, You versus You as a production of Neon sixteen
and Entertained Studios in partnership with the Iheartmichael Tuda podcast Network.
For more podcasts, listen to the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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