Episode 587: Kier Gaines: Self-Awareness, Distress Tolerance, and the Mental Skills That Build Resilience

What if the thing keeping you stuck is not a lack of motivation, but the stories you keep telling yourself about why you cannot move? We spend a lot of time thinking about what we want to change, who we want to become, and what would finally make us feel better. But intentions alone do not create change. The way you talk to yourself, the discomfort you avoid, the boundaries you do not practice, the labels you attach to yourself and other people, and the actions you take when nobody is motivating you, all shape what happens next. Kier Gaines argues that real growth starts when you become willing to confront the parts of yourself you would rather explain away. Self-awareness gives you something practical to work with. You can learn to tolerate discomfort instead of immediately escaping it, practice saying no before the stakes are high, question whether "protecting your peace" has become avoidance, and stop waiting for the perfect mood or moment to start. You can also become more intentional about how social media, constant convenience, comparison, and endless options are influencing the way you think, connect, and make decisions. Kier Gaines is a licensed therapist, keynote speaker, and popular content creator who has inspired millions of people to become more proactive about their mental health. His work has been recognized by Oprah and Viola Davis, and he has been invited to speak at the White House, NASA, Amazon Movie Studios, and more. He is also a contributor to Men's Health, host of the podcast (L)Earned The Hard Way, and author of It All Starts When You Do, out September 1, 2026. What's Discussed: (08:25) Why people can fall in love with the fantasy of a goal while avoiding the work required to achieve it, and why action is what turns an idea into evidence. (27:13) Where AI can be useful for journaling and reflection, and what gets lost when it replaces the silence, emotional attunement, and human connection of therapy. (31:48) How phones, algorithms, convenience, and the disappearance of "third spaces" may be contributing to loneliness and weakening face-to-face connection. (37:41) Why "protecting your peace" can become well-dressed avoidance, and how avoiding every uncomfortable interaction can lower your tolerance for normal stress. (40:10) How practicing small, low-stakes "no's" can make it easier to set boundaries when the consequences feel bigger. (45:55) Why feeling overwhelmed does not automatically mean you are incapable, and how lack of support, financial pressure, and overloaded systems can push people past their limit. (52:44) Why mental health language is being overused online, from calling every difficult person a narcissist to oversimplifying anxious and avoidant attachment. (57:46) How having more options can create more dissatisfaction, especially in dating, and why endless swiping can make it harder to commit to what is in front of you. (1:05:14) Why affirmations without awareness and action are just words, and how toxic positivity can become another way to avoid what actually needs attention. (1:14:08) How depression can show up as irritation, isolation, or loss of joy instead of obvious sadness, and why high-functioning people can miss the signs in themselves. Thank You to Our Sponsors! Kion: Visit getkion.com/habits https://getkion.com/habits for 20% off Magic Mind: Head over to magicmind.com/jen http://www.magicmind.com/jen and use code JEN at checkout. Momentous: Ready to try supplements that actually do what they claim? Head to livemomentous.com http://livemomentous.com and use code JEN for 35% off your first subscription. Therasage: Visit therasage.com http://therasage.com and use code JEN to get 15% off your order. Your skin Prolon: Prolon is offering listeners 30% off sitewide plus a $40 bonus gift when you subscribe to their 5-Day Program! Just visit prolonlife.com/JENNIFERCOHEN https://prolonlife.com/JENNIFERCOHEN and use code JENNIFERCOHEN to claim your discount and your bonus gift. Tru Niagen®: For supplements that are rigorously tested, third-party verified, and actually deliver what's on the label, head to truniagen.com http://truniagen.com Find more from Jen Cohen: Website: jennifercohen.com https://jennifercohen.comInstagram: @therealjencohen http://instagram.com/therealjencohen Books: jennifercohen.com/books https://jennifercohen.com/books Speaking: jennifercohen.com/speaking-engagements https://jennifercohen.com/speaking-engagements Find more from Kier Gaines Podcast: learnedthehardwaypod.com https://learnedthehardwaypod.com/ Instagram: @kiergaines https://www.instagram.com/kiergaines/ Facebook: Kier Gaines https://www.facebook.com/kiergaines/ YouTube: @learnedthehardwaypod https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7n1eXDlzhVbgJK4h_LUtew LinkedIn: Kier Gaines https://www.linkedin.com/in/kier-gaines-6b46912b2/ Book: It All Starts When You Do https://www.amazon.it/All-Starts-When-You-Self-Healing/dp/0316587427

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits and Hustle. Crush it.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  What if protecting your peace is actually making you less resilient? We've gotten very good at avoiding discomfort and waiting till we feel ready. But that can be keeping us really stuck. Today on Habits and Hustle, I'm sitting down with Kier Gaines to talk about self-awareness and why your actions have to match your intentions and how learning to tolerate discomfort can make you stronger. Kier is a licensed therapist, keynote speaker, and a popular content creator, and the author of the new book, It All Starts When You Do. His work has reached millions, and this conversation is packed with practical ways to get more honest with yourself and start creating real change. So let's dive in.

• 0:54Speaker 01

  Guys, welcome to another episode of Habits and Hustle, and you guys are gonna love the next guest I have. And I know I sometimes say that, but I'm always very authentic when I say that and genuine. This time, it's that times 100. His name is Kier Gaines. He's a licensed therapist. He is a wonderful content creator and a keynote speaker. He gave us some of the most extraordinary advice that I've seen on social media.

• 1:18Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:19Speaker 01

  No, it's true. Just he's very insightful, just very heartfelt. I am so happy to have you on this podcast.

• 1:27Speaker 02

  I'm happy to be here.

• 1:28Speaker 01

  Thank you for being here.

• 1:29Speaker 02

  For sure.

• 1:30Speaker 01

  And oh my God, I don't even know where to begin because I have a million questions and I can't see like I told you. So I'm gonna try to like, if you see me like squinting at a question, don't take it personally.

• 1:41Speaker 02

  I can't. We are Kendra Spears in visual impairment, so.

• 1:45Speaker 01

  I refuse to wear glasses.

• 1:47Speaker 02

  No, fellow, I refuse to. I have to book the appointment, then have the guy do the thing where he changes the lenses. And it's too, I have too much stuff going on.

• 1:55Speaker 01

  I know. I also think it's like a thing where I don't want to believe that I'm getting old. So I just think, because mine's much more of an old age thing. It's like a reading glasses thing.

• 2:05Speaker 02

  When you kind of got a like.

• 2:06Speaker 01

  Like I'm like, I can't see, I'm squinting. So that's why I'm giving you the heads up. So if I'm looking down a lot, because it's like I used to be able to look and look right back up. This time I might have to like really squint.

• 2:16Speaker 02

  Be unabashed in your poor vision is fine. You're in good company.

• 2:19Speaker 01

  Thank you so much. Okay, so on this podcast, to keep us focused and like really alert, we take these little performance shots by Magic Mind. This one has caffeine though. Are you okay with that?

• 2:30Speaker 02

  Okay with that. I don't know how I live without it.

• 2:33Speaker 01

  Good, good. Okay, so how we do this is we, well, you did the first part. You shake it. We do the whole like, you know, cheers and then, and then we just ring come. It's pretty simple. And then you gotta tell me after the podcast if you were like super like focused and on point. Are you ready?

• 2:48Speaker 02

  Okay, cheers to more clarity and.

• 2:51Speaker 01

  More clarity and more alertness.

• 2:52Speaker 02

  More alertness.

• 2:54Speaker 01

  I've had like five. Am I allowed to have more?

• 2:58Speaker 01

  I'm actually kind of scared. I literally have had like so many today. It's good though, right?

• 3:04Speaker 02

  Oh, it's ashwagandha in it?

• 3:06Speaker 01

  Yes, ashwagandha, lion's mane, turmeric. It's really, really good ingredients. You want to have mine too? It's really, really good. These are really, these are really, really, and I'm not just saying this because they're a sponsor. I love them.

• 3:18Speaker 02

  And this is called what? Magic Mind?

• 3:19Speaker 01

  Magic Mind. So your mind will be just magic, mental performance.

• 3:22Speaker 02

  How long does it take to kick in? I'm feeling like I know more already.

• 3:25Speaker 01

  Maybe like, maybe seven, 10 minutes?

• 3:29Speaker 02

  All right.

• 3:29Speaker 01

  I don't know. It goes, I mean, I would imagine even maybe sooner for some people. I don't know.

• 3:34Speaker 02

  Oh, that has a really good aftertaste.

• 3:35Speaker 01

  Yes, I know. Listen, we don't screw around here at Habits and Hustle. We're the real, we're the real deal.

• 3:41Speaker 02

  Subtly sweet. I'm really selling this thing now.

• 3:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, really, you are. You're great.

• 3:46Speaker 02

  That's my habit and my hustle.

• 3:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. I love it. Okay, so listen, where do we begin with you? I read your book. I've seen, I like deep dive. Actually, funnily enough, what happened was when I found you on Instagram. You know, I watched so many of your videos at once, you know, like it just kind of keeps on going, that now like all I see on my Instagram is you because the algorithm like picked you up so many times.

• 4:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:13Speaker 01

  And then I did something on Instagram and then this is how like, this is very serendipitous. But when I read your book, the first page I opened to was actually something that I talk about a lot, which I really wanted to start with because it was, like I said, very synergistic. And it was the chapter three when he says, do your actions match your intentions? Because I'm all about action, like not what you say, not what you plan, but what you actually do.

• 4:42Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 4:42Speaker 01

  Right? So with your business, like with your being a therapist, do you, is this something that you see a lot? Is it, what's your, what, tell me more about when you wrote this, what you, what, why, like why?

• 4:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, so the book is kind of this dope amalgamation of what I've seen in therapy, what I've learned in my trainers and what I actually experience in my everyday life. This isn't just me just giving people random thoughts and random instruction and telling everyone these things from an ivory tower. I'm in the boat with you. I don't have anything completely figured out, but I've dedicated my life to experimenting, trying and not being too afraid to fail. The difference is, of course, I could figure out your life in three seconds. Mine, however, I struggle with mightily.

• 5:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:29Speaker 02

  But yeah, actions matching intentions. I think it's one thing to say what you want to do, to envision it, to plan it, to have this grand idea of it materializing and what that would feel like. But we fall in love with the idea of things so much more quickly and thoroughly than we fall in love with the reality of them. You can think, you know, I want to build this wonderful company. And you're thinking about what it's going to feel like to have employees and walk in the meeting and maybe look like a boss in your heels and your pants suit and feel important and entitled and have everyone look up to you and you don't think about being in a hotel room while your children are asleep and you're in the bathroom with your laptop on the toilet, cracking away at 2:00 a.m.

• 6:14Speaker 02

  You don't think about taking a business meeting on the beach. You don't think about all the times you fail. You don't think about pushing through and trying to persevere when you're tired and you don't feel encouraged and you don't feel motivated. That's because fantasy can be whatever, whatever you imagine it, but reality can only be what it is. So actions are where the rubber meets the road. And if you're not taking action, you're not really getting evidence, you're not experimenting, you're not doing the work to figure out how will I make this thing come to fruition? It's just a really well-dressed idea in your mind. And yeah, I see it in therapy all the time. See it in my everyday life all the time.

• 6:57Speaker 01

  You start the book with all these, with the whole idea of uncomfortable truths.

• 7:03Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 7:03Speaker 01

  Right? Like what are they?

• 7:05Speaker 02

  Wow, you've really read it. I saw that. Yeah.

• 7:06Speaker 01

  I did really read it. I know. You see that? Because I think, because so many things, like I said, I saw you on social media and what you said actually really resonated. I have a whole thing to be honest, because I find there's a lot of people on social who, you know, spew out a lot of information, that rhetoric, because it's trendy or it sounds good and all these things. What I liked about your stuff, what it really kind of, why it resonated was it was sometimes a little bit counterintuitive to what you always see, which is what I like. You talk about toxic positivity, all these things that are in your book, what we're going to talk about, that I always think and talk about with my friends or on this show. But it's not like very mainstream, right?

• 7:50Speaker 01

  But the way you do it and the way you speak about it, number one, it lands, it's very, it's very digestible. And it's done with a lot of heart, which is why I liked this so much and why I wanted to have you on the show. This uncomfortable truth thing is something that really resonated too, because I think that we are so stuck so much in what we want to be versus who we really are and not having the self-awareness to really kind of know who we are.

• 8:17Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 8:18Speaker 01

  And you're all about like self-awareness and uncomfortable truths. So I wanted you to talk about that. And I want to also hear what made you, like what brought you to this? Is it, did you kind of use yourself as an example that you had to kind of go through? Because you were a trainer, if I'm not mistaken, personal trainer?

• 8:35Speaker 02

  I was a personal trainer at one point. Yeah, that's right.

• 8:37Speaker 01

  And then you evolved and moved into this other area of your life. So I guess maybe we should start with the origin of how you became you and then get into this all.

• 8:47Speaker 02

  That is, the origin of how I became me is a ridiculous story of trying and failing.

• 8:55Speaker 02

  And doing something different and then repeating that cycle, trying feeling, doing something different and it continues on. You know, I started off not doing either of those things. I started off working in residential property management, leasing apartments to wealthy kids who would turn in their parents' pay stubs in order to qualify for an apartment and they would make so much more money than I've ever seen in my life that it just had me questioning my existence. Like, am I, am I doing something wrong? Like, I've never seen this many zeros at the end of a paycheck before.

• 9:28Speaker 01

  What were they doing?

• 9:29Speaker 02

  Everything. You know, parents had giant military contracts or parents were entrepreneurs in the tech space or just making a ton of money. And here I am hustling at sixteen, seventeen dollars an hour to barely pay my rent in my rent controlled apartment. And after a while, I actually got fired from that. I didn't get fired. I didn't get fired. I got um laid off from that job and I promised myself that was my last time making rich people richer. So I ended up working in a community at this organization that did job and attitudinal training for folks who furthest from opportunity. Just been released from jail after fifteen years. Come on in our program. We'll, we'll help you find a job. The government took your kids away. Come on in our program. You'll find a job. Substance

• 10:13Speaker 02

  use treatment program for five years. No problem. Come on in. We'll give you a job. We'll, we'll train you and help you find a job. And then that matriculated into education, which matriculated into special education and me having youth programs and building economic self sustainability for children with disabilities. And then I realized I'm, I'm really good at connecting people to feelings. And then I became a therapist. So I say all of that to say that such a large portion of my life has been dedicated to helping people see the potential in themselves and turn it into something meaningful.

• 10:46Speaker 01

  Wait, you just said something. You said you were, you were, uh, so you were helping people. So was that, were you already doing that kind of naturally before you even became a therapist? Like you were just that guy that people went to if they had a problem, they had an issue that they wanted to talk something through? Like, because what I said to Kier before we started the podcast was, you know, I'm a big believer that like some people, like this type of thing especially, like you're either good at it or you're not. I don't, I don't care how many degrees or not degrees you have. Like, you, you either can like, you're, either you're a compassionate, empathetic and, and very like insightful human being who can relate to people or you can't. I don't care if you have like a Harvard MBA or a Harvard doctorate. It doesn't matter.

• 11:29Speaker 02

  That's right. That's right.

• 11:30Speaker 01

  And so were you already good at that before you even, because even a trainer, by the way, because I was a trainer too, years ago.

• 11:36Speaker 02

  A word.

• 11:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, a hundred, that was how I started my whole business. That like, you are kind of like, it's like a bartender. Like you be, you are basically someone's therapist.

• 11:45Speaker 02

  Very much in a lot of different ways. I, I don't think that's something people know unless you actually worked in a business.

• 11:51Speaker 01

  But, but my whole business was based around people just wanting to talk to me.

• 11:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:56Speaker 01

  Not working at the, you know, people, I would have to say, okay, do your squat. Do your lung.

• 12:00Speaker 02

  Finish your set. And we'll talk after this. Same. And then that, and to your point, I think in that you identify the parts of you that people resonate with the most. And you can either see that as a great quality that you have, or you can lean into it and see where that opportunity takes you, where's the room for expansion. And that's what I did. I, I think that being a trainer and being a therapist aren't that different. They're not that different. It's just you, you, where you're working the physical on one side and you're really pushing and challenging people to improve their, their physical condition. On the mental health side, you're cha, you're challenging people to improve the intangible things you can't see. You know, you could see, you could see your thighs getting more

• 12:42Speaker 02

  toned. You know, you can see your, your forearms getting stronger and that back becoming more defined. You can't see someone responding better to a family member who has a disruptive and corrosive personality. You know, things that we work on in therapy, you can't see the change in that the same way. But yeah, there's a lot of similarity between those two fields. I think this is, to answer your question, I think it's a part of who I've always been. I don't think I've always accepted that this is who I've always been. But I'm now at the point where I feel very thankful to have answered the call when I heard it ring. Because I could have ignored it and said, ah, maybe therapy's for someone else. I can't see myself healing. And I've never seen anyone that looks like me or talks like

• 13:25Speaker 02

  me or thinks like me in the therapy space and completely brushed it off and went somewhere else. Maybe chased the money, maybe stayed in education. Who knows where I would have been. But I'm, I'm glad I paid attention to that signal and I didn't just walk past it.

• 13:38Speaker 01

  Why did you pay attention?

• 13:40Speaker 02

  It, it felt like something meaningful. I think at that time in my life, I was used to leaning into things that had profound meaning. My mom passed away when I was eighteen and there's something about losing a parent that takes the blinders off of life. You, you realize how finite your time on this earth is. And I don't think that there is a better gift to give yourself or to give the greater community than to donate your special talents to improving the lives or the livelihoods or even just the personal ideologies of people that are just this close to a meaningful change. You're just, you're this close. Most people are closer to where they think they need to be than they believe

• 14:25Speaker 02

  they are. It's just a matter of perspective shifting. It's a matter of challenging your automatic thoughts and beliefs away from shame, blame and guilt. And it just felt good and it felt right.

• 14:36Speaker 01

  The sha, the shame, blame and guilt are doozy. Those ones, they're killers.

• 14:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, every time. Every time. Every time.

• 14:43Speaker 01

  Killers. It's hard, like, that's the hardest. I mean, how do you, how does somebody who has any shame, blame, guilt, like that, how do you even overcome that in a real way?

• 14:55Speaker 02

  Well, the first thing is you have to know when it's happening to you without trying to sugarcoat it and make it out to be something that's more palatable. And I think the second thing is you have to realize where it comes from. In the book, I talk about how most people use the word self-talk.

• 15:09Speaker 01

  Self-talk.

• 15:10Speaker 02

  I don't just say self-talk. I use the term self-messaging.

• 15:13Speaker 01

  They saw that.

• 15:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's not just talk. It's not just words. Sometimes they're impulses. Sometimes they're flashes and memories. Sometimes they're just automatic thoughts that wash over you and you don't know where they come from or why they're there, but you can feel them in a, in a, in a really real way. But your self-messaging, my gracious, it's so important to the way that you move about the world and it really influences the things that you believe about yourself. It's one thing to have, you know, to blame yourself for things that you've done in your past, but there's a distinction between blaming yourself for something and beating yourself up for something that you can't change. Shame, there's a difference

• 15:54Speaker 02

  between feeling bad about something and allowing your environment or maybe your religious upbringing or maybe even your, your narrow lived experience and perspective to make you feel worse about who you naturally are. So it's a lot of those, you can walk, step away from that for one, calling it out. Two, not sugarcoating what it is. And three, understanding when it's happening to you, why it's happening to you and what it looks like.

• 16:22Speaker 01

  So I guess what we should do is go back a little bit because it's easier to call out your shame, your blaming or your guilt, once you have the ability to acknowledge what your uncomfortable truth is.

• 16:35Speaker 02

  Oh, for sure. Absolutely.

• 16:36Speaker 01

  And then becoming self-aware enough to call those things out, right? Because it's really hard to get from zero to sixty. Sometimes you need to get to like ten, twenty, thirty.

• 16:47Speaker 02

  That's right. Incremental change, for sure. Yeah.

• 16:49Speaker 01

  So then let's start with the uncomfortable truth then, right? Like, because I'm sure when you saw, when did you stop seeing patients? Because I know you're doing this so rigorously and you can't, like, you wouldn't be here right now if you were seeing patients right now, right? So.

• 17:03Speaker 02

  No, I, I wouldn't be able to. I've recently had to pause. I'm not going to say stop. I'm going to say pause.

• 17:09Speaker 01

  Okay, I like that.

• 17:10Speaker 02

  Just because I'm all over the country speaking and I think one of the most unfortunate things that you can do as a therapist is not give the people in front of you the time they deserve to get the healing that they seek.

• 17:20Speaker 01

  Right.

• 17:21Speaker 02

  And I just, I wasn't available the same way. So I have, I have clients still on a back roster that, you know, I'll see when I can, but for the most part of my practice, I had to pause it.

• 17:31Speaker 01

  When did that happen? What year?

• 17:32Speaker 02

  Um, this, this year.

• 17:34Speaker 01

  This year?

• 17:34Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 17:35Speaker 01

  It just happened now?

• 17:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, it just happened.

• 17:36Speaker 01

  Okay, just happened recently. Okay. So, so what, how, what's the first step? So if someone comes to see you, what do they, like, what's the, what's the process? Because finding a good therapist is like.

• 17:48Speaker 02

  Oh, my goodness.

• 17:49Speaker 01

  It's, it's literally.

• 17:50Speaker 02

  Dating is hard.

• 17:51Speaker 01

  It's, oh, it's worse. I mean, I, I find, you can find way more men or women than you can therapists. It's really hard.

• 17:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is. Very challenging.

• 17:59Speaker 01

  Why is it so hard?

• 18:00Speaker 02

  Because being a therapist, it's not like finding a doctor. If, if I have, if I have a pain in my chest and I'm trying to find a cardi, cardiologist, I don't give a damn about their bedside manner. It make me feel better.

• 18:11Speaker 01

  Right.

• 18:11Speaker 02

  You don't have to be the nicest person as long as you're effective.

• 18:14Speaker 01

  Unless you're really good. Exactly. As long as you're good at what you're supposed to do.

• 18:17Speaker 02

  That's it.

• 18:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:18Speaker 02

  That's what matters. With therapy is different because I am trusting you with something that I probably never told anybody else before. It's tender, it's sensitive, it's time sensitive, and it is the obstacle in between where I am and where I feel like I absolutely have to be to be whole. And personality means a lot when you're in a room with somebody and you're sitting across from them and you're bearing your soul. And sometimes you could have a brilliant personality as a therapist, but it could just still be not a good match.

• 18:45Speaker 01

  Right.

• 18:46Speaker 02

  So you have to find somebody who's skilled enough, who is your type of personable. You know, they have to be written in a font that you can read. You understand what I'm saying?

• 18:57Speaker 01

  These days with my reading problem, yeah, it'd be hard.

• 19:00Speaker 02

  That was an explicit example, but you know what I mean? They have to be able to practice therapy in a way that you not only find palatable, but you find helpful. They have to be a person that you feel like you can trust. They have to be able to build trust. And one of my friends, I talk about this in a book, uh, my homie Frank, who's a therapist too. He said, I don't care how skilled you are in all the therapeutic modalities. You can know motivational interviewing and C P T and C B T and all these things. If you can't get in a room and feel your way around a person, you'll never be an effective clinician. So there's just a lot more barriers to being good, being effective and being the right fit than it is for any other service that you'll probably be looking for.

• 19:41Speaker 01

  Right. And then the, cause I find also like you, I, I would always feel, I never found one, by the way, to this day.

• 19:48Speaker 02

  Really?

• 19:49Speaker 01

  I swear, cause I never like to feel like I'm just another number, right? And then when, and when they're looking over your shoulder to see the clock behind you for your 50 minute time allotment. I'm like, I don't want to have that conversation with them. I don't want to spill my guts out to somebody who I, who I'm just another, you know, paycheck to, right?

• 20:07Speaker 02

  That makes sense.

• 20:08Speaker 01

  So then I just, or and or I don't, I don't think they're that smart. So like, there's a lot of things that go on into play, right?

• 20:15Speaker 02

  Those are just two factors that you named, just two.

• 20:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, just two.

• 20:18Speaker 02

  What if the person has R B F and when they're listening to you, they have a face that doesn't feel warm and inviting?

• 20:23Speaker 01

  They're not gonna see me again.

• 20:25Speaker 02

  And they don't even, they're not even cognizant that their face is like the entire time.

• 20:29Speaker 01

  Or, or more for me, if everyone, this is a perfect example, like I feel for personally for me, I want to feel like they actually genuinely care.

• 20:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:37Speaker 01

  And a lot of times they don't get that you're another, they're, they're waiting to eat their lunch. They're like, okay, this person's out of here. I can then eat my lunch and then I have three more clients and then I can go home. I don't want to feel that way.

• 20:47Speaker 02

  No, I, I don't think that's unreasonable. As a therapist, I see both sides because to me, even though it's a highly lauded job, it's just a job to me.

• 20:56Speaker 01

  Right.

• 20:56Speaker 02

  It's a job.

• 20:57Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 20:58Speaker 02

  Clock in, I do my job and I go home.

• 21:00Speaker 01

  Right.

• 21:00Speaker 02

  And I think that there.

• 21:02Speaker 01

  At least you're honest.

• 21:03Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Yeah. It doesn't mean I don't care. It doesn't mean I don't empathize, but when we're in that session together, you have all of me. You have all of my attention. I'm not on my phone. I'm not looking at the clock. Very hard. It happens.

• 21:15Speaker 01

  Really?

• 21:15Speaker 02

  So yeah, I've heard people, listen, when you're a therapist, you don't just do your work, you're undoing the work of other therapists who were not effective. So that's one of the first things I ask when people sit in front of me. Have you ever been to therapy before? Yeah. Tell me about it. What did you learn? What did you uncover? What did you stumble upon? And people have horror stories.

• 21:34Speaker 01

  Like what? Their, their therapist is actually on the phone when they're talking to them?

• 21:38Speaker 02

  Or like there'll be, um, we do a lot of virtual now. Sometimes the therapist will have the phone off.

• 21:44Speaker 01

  Oh my god, off the screen. Oh, that's horrible.

• 21:48Speaker 02

  It is, you know, but you know, it's a job. And if your kid, if your kid is in school and a nurse just called and said, hey, I think little Johnny has a concussion.

• 21:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're picking up that you're.

• 21:58Speaker 02

  You're going to check your phone.

• 21:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 22:00Speaker 02

  You see how the yin and the yang is just.

• 22:02Speaker 01

  So true.

• 22:03Speaker 02

  Mm hmm, mm hmm.

• 22:05Speaker 01

  So I went to see this one therapist, it's completely on tangent here, like years and years ago. I went to see her a lot, not because we were, we ended up not even talking about like anything important. Like we were just like shooting the shit because she liked me and I liked her. So we just became very friendly, but she didn't help me at all. Like I got nothing out of that whole situation at all, like, and then you don't want to tell the person stuff because you don't want them to judge you.

• 22:28Speaker 02

  Which is another barrier, yeah.

• 22:30Speaker 01

  Right? I think that happens all the time.

• 22:32Speaker 02

  Oh, absolutely. Sometimes people come in and I can tell that you're lying to me or I can tell that you're withholding the entire truth.

• 22:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. So this is what I say, like, hey, at any point during our sessions, if you feel like the truth is a little bit too much to bear in the moment, you can always come back and say, hey, remember the other day when we were talking about that thing? Yeah, that's not really what happened. Let me explain it to you now. I will not judge you and you will not be penalized from it. The only thing that it will do is allow me to better help you. And that frees people, doesn't stop you from lying to me.

• 23:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, no.

• 23:01Speaker 02

  But it gives you a little bit more latitude to think about the way that you lied and come back with the truth that's going to allow us to sit together and co-problem solve.

• 23:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, I love that. The issue, other issue, I mean, I didn't think we're going to be talking about this, but why not? Right? The fact is that therapy has become the barrier, it's become so expensive for most people.

• 23:23Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 23:24Speaker 01

  So I, I think it's very unfair because mental health is a real thing, especially now more than ever.

• 23:29Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 23:29Speaker 01

  With social media and all the other things happening, that like the, the prices are so extra, especially in L A. I don't know where they, how much they are in D C, but it's so extraordinarily expensive and all the good therapists aren't on insurance.

• 23:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, insurance is a nightmare to deal with as a therapist.

• 23:45Speaker 01

  It's a nightmare to deal with.

• 23:46Speaker 02

  Nightmare to deal with.

• 23:47Speaker 01

  So what are people supposed to do? Right?

• 23:50Speaker 02

  Good question.

• 23:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. What, what are people supposed to do? I'm being totally serious.

• 23:55Speaker 02

  If we had universal healthcare or something like that.

• 23:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:57Speaker 02

  But, um.

• 23:58Speaker 01

  A I, people are using Claude and Chat G P T to like talk through their problems. That's what I do.

• 24:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's in there. I understand the impulse to do that.

• 24:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:10Speaker 02

  I don't vilify the impulse to do that, but you have to be very careful because Chat G P T, while it can give you some really good insight, it's kind of programmed to kiss your ass a little bit.

• 24:23Speaker 01

  If, not if you say to it, be brutally honest. If you, if you prompt it properly, I know.

• 24:30Speaker 02

  No, that's true. My biggest problem with A I when it comes to therapy and just therapeutic services is the, the pausing and the reflecting. It sometimes fills a profound need to fill space with words when sometimes silence is medicine. If I see you begin to cry, I will pause and I will allow that silence to be another person in the room. Because there's so much we can learn from just sitting in silence together. Chat G P T ain't gonna do that. Chat G P T is gonna say, hmm, ah, I see. Well, sometimes crying is an emotion, you know, and begin to not feel because these systems don't feel.

• 25:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 25:10Speaker 02

  It begins to process and not process in a way that we process our feelings, but process in a way that takes ideas and puts them in a way that, that's very understandable for you. So I think that A I can be a brilliant, uh, companion when it comes to journaling. I think it's brilliant to bounce ideas off of, but if and when it replaces your therapist, which is another human and another human interaction touch point, um, I think we lose something really special. That's a part of the therapeutic alliance. It's not just the questions I ask you or the training that I have. It's also the human, the human connection.

• 25:51Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 25:52Speaker 02

  That we miss.

• 25:54Speaker 01

  But when we don't have any other options.

• 25:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:56Speaker 01

  Right? Like, yeah, if you're in a very certain socioeconomic place, like L A is like just full of a ton of rich people, right?

• 26:03Speaker 02

  It's very odd how many rich people live here. L A and Dallas, the wealth is kind of obscene.

• 26:08Speaker 01

  It's absurd. And so there's like, there's, it's not, it's, it's like a pseudo reality, right? People are going to see a therapist twice a week. It's like they talk about it like they're going to Starbucks. I'm doing my Pilates and I'm going to my therapy, then I'm doing this, I'm doing that. It's like not real life, right?

• 26:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:23Speaker 01

  And at like four hundred, five hundred dollars a pop every time. Yes. So, and, and because people know they can get it here, the therapists, they keep on raising the prices. So that's what I'm saying. I think there's a lot of people who actually do need therapy, who are not receiving it because they can't afford it.

• 26:42Speaker 02

  You know what I would love to see? Therapy is also, it's hard for therapists because we're licensed specifically to the state. Like if you say, care, I love you as a therapist, I would love to hire you. You can't because you don't live in D C.

• 26:54Speaker 01

  Why? On Zoom, I could do it.

• 26:56Speaker 02

  Not supposed to.

• 26:57Speaker 01

  Really?

• 26:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:58Speaker 01

  You know that most of my friends who are in L A, they have therapists, they don't live in L A anymore. They live in Utah.

• 27:05Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 27:05Speaker 01

  They're cheaper. They live in New York. Some of them live in, they live in New Jersey. They live in Michigan. Cause like, it's just, that's what they're doing. They're doing Zooms.

• 27:14Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 27:15Speaker 01

  And who's going to stop you?

• 27:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I think.

• 27:17Speaker 01

  Is the mental health police gonna knock on your door?

• 27:19Speaker 02

  No, no, mental health police won't knock on your door, I assure you, but I think it does speak to how challenging licensing can be. I think that it needs to be challenging in a way that unqualified people shouldn't be able to get licenses. But when qualified people are unable to meet the needs of a population

• 27:39Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 27:39Speaker 02

  that is clamoring for the help, I think that that brings the entire system into question. You should be able to see anybody who's qualified and who serves a population that deals with the things that you deal with.

• 27:53Speaker 01

  A hundred percent. Now let me ask you a question back to this. Like, why do you think, or what do you think has kind of besides social media or what part of social media has sprung on, I, I feel like mental health in general, anxiety, depression, all the isolation, loneliness is at an all time high.

• 28:13Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 28:14Speaker 01

  Right?

• 28:14Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 28:15Speaker 01

  Why do you think this is beyond just Instagram?

• 28:20Speaker 02

  It's, well, I know that there's data to support it. We don't even have to guess. But one of the things that stick out, sticks out most to me, you kind of mentioned it already, is that we, we don't have third spaces as much as we used to, where we gather in person. We communicate, you, me and you texting each other, are we communicating? Like, yeah, but it's not the same.

• 28:40Speaker 01

  Right.

• 28:41Speaker 02

  As if we're at a coffee shop face to face and we're catching up. And I think that the human to human connection is something that we just, this type of mammal that we are, we need desperately and we've replaced that with convenience.

• 28:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, everything we've replaced, we don't even go to eat, we just postmate it or DoorDash it. But if we all know this to be true, right? Cause that's what we're, everyone's just seeing it as, as a, as a real hard truth, right? People aren't socializing, they're not dating anymore. Do you see that people aren't dating?

• 29:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:12Speaker 01

  Like they, but people, and people are so lonely, but the, the next step is to change it. Are people changing it or are they still stagnant and not doing anything about it?

• 29:22Speaker 02

  I think it's a little bit of both. I just read something that said Gen Z is starting to go back to flip phones.

• 29:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I thought, yeah, that's true.

• 29:29Speaker 02

  Social media as much. I think that at some point it will change, but it's, it's bright and shiny. You gotta realize your cell phone isn't just a cell phone. It's a military grade weapon against your, your brain, your neurochemistry.

• 29:42Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 29:42Speaker 02

  It's designed specifically to feel a certain way in your hand. The glass is smooth and gives you a certain response. If, it feels good when you go on Instagram and the algorithm finds things that you like and it force feeds it to you. It's, the brain does not like to be inconvenienced at all. The brain will find the shortest path between point A and point B. I got the entire world in my hand. Why on earth would I go anywhere else? My friends and I, we know this, all of us live in different places across the country, but we'll hop on the PlayStation and we'll talk while we play the game. Where we used to just meet and be outside and talk in a parking lot for hours. Are we still getting the touchpoints where we get to talk to each other?

• 30:24Speaker 02

  Yes, of course, but it is not the same. And you, if convenience is right there to grab, you know, I'd much rather just grab some fast food on the way home. I, actually I pose this as a question, what do you think is, even though, take the health aside, we know what it does to your health. What are you gonna do? Are you gonna go grab some fast food on the way home? Are you gonna go to your garden? Are you gonna pick the stuff that you, are you gonna pick the peppers and pick the onions and pick the tomatoes? Then are you gonna get the dough and you're gonna make the dough and then you're gonna send it through the processor to make noodles? And then are you gonna cook your spaghetti that way? Are you gonna go butcher the cow and grind the beef?

• 31:01Speaker 01

  No, but I will, I will say this, I won't do that, but what I will do is I don't, I'm like, it's, it's an, I don't have any of those apps on my phone. I don't have a Postmate, Uber Eats, all those things.

• 31:12Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 31:12Speaker 01

  I refuse.

• 31:13Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 31:14Speaker 01

  And I, or those Instacarts, if I wanna buy groceries, I go to the grocery store. If I wanna eat something or goes, I'll go, I'll go to the grocery store or I'll go to a restaurant.

• 31:24Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 31:24Speaker 01

  I don't order in food on purpose because it's a slippery slope. You know, you, the, everything is like, you know, everything's a gateway drug to something else. You start with, you start with weed and then you end up, you know, basically with, on heroin three years later. You know what I mean? And storing coke in a bathroom. So I feel like certain things, you know, don't even open up that gateway drug to me. So not the drugs, that's not my, my weakness, but I know that if this, once something becomes convenient, then you'll do it again and again and again and again, like we talked about. So don't, like.

• 31:58Speaker 02

  I think that's the thing is not participating in, in the first place. I'm actually on this crusade now where I say, I'll be, my content will be on social media in two years, but I will not. I do not think that the human brain was designed to read the thoughts, views and opinions of that many people who I would never share community with in real life. And it's doing something to my mind now. I, I'm starting to dislike people because I read so many ridiculously stupid takes and harmful ideas and half chewed philosophies every single day. And the killer is I didn't ask to see any of it, unsolicited, unprompted. These things are just in my face.

• 32:39Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 32:40Speaker 02

  And it's hard for me to see that and think that it doesn't change your, your neurochemistry, that it doesn't change the wiring of your brain over time.

• 32:47Speaker 01

  It's a hundred percent true. That's why I don't want my children on social. They're eleven, thirteen and I refuse to have them on.

• 32:53Speaker 02

  You have an eleven and a thirteen year old? Yeah, that's when social media starts to get really dangerous.

• 32:56Speaker 01

  And it gets really dangerous.

• 32:57Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 32:58Speaker 01

  And like, I've just seen like, just in general, you know, you think that like all these, all these pseudo doctors and pseudo, you know, experts are giving people all sorts of pseudo advice.

• 33:10Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 33:11Speaker 01

  And it's super like, a lot of it's like bullshit.

• 33:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:14Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? Just bullshit. And, you know, people don't know that they're not discerning enough to know what, what's right, what's not right. And it, it also just, I feel like there should be, the pendulum is slightly swinging the other way where people are kind of like we said, noticing that social connection is very important still and we should try to do it. But once convenience, like you said, kicks in, laziness starts, like, you know, why should I go? Why, I don't wanna go to that birthday party. Like, we're not showing up even as humans.

• 33:43Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 33:44Speaker 01

  To our friends' birthday parties, cause we just don't wanna. We're like so used to just like phoning it in, literally phoning it in.

• 33:50Speaker 02

  And if I don't have to, why should I?

• 33:52Speaker 01

  And if I don't have, exactly. I, I, I want, what's that thing, like all these, these taglines on social, like my peace is more important.

• 34:00Speaker 02

  Oh, all the, I call that, um.

• 34:02Speaker 01

  What do you call it?

• 34:03Speaker 02

  It's, it's well dressed avoidance.

• 34:06Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 34:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm, I'm gonna protect my peace.

• 34:09Speaker 01

  I'm gonna protect my.

• 34:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:11Speaker 01

  I can't with that.

• 34:12Speaker 02

  And now you have no distress tolerance. So every minor inconvenience becomes an attack.

• 34:17Speaker 01

  Every minor inconvenience becomes an attack. Or you use past trauma as an excuse for not showing up.

• 34:25Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 34:25Speaker 01

  And everything's a trauma too. God forbid, it's just something that bad that happened.

• 34:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, everything's a traumatic experience. Everyone who disagrees with you is an enemy. But you know, I think that is an artifact of having the things that you deeply believe spewed at you on this little device that has everything that you could ever need all in one place. You don't get a chance to see people with differing ideologies and take their ideology, listen to it and realize that you don't have to agree with it. It doesn't compete with the way that you see the world. It lives alongside the way that you see the world. You don't have to respond to everything. You don't have to feel strongly about everything. In the book, I talk about self-love and, and one of the things that counter self-love is what about neutrality?

• 35:13Speaker 02

  A lack of self-love? You don't have to love everything. You don't have to hate everything. Neutrality is a thing.

• 35:18Speaker 01

  A hundred, thank you for saying that. Why does everything have to be, I love it or hate it? Like, why do you care? I think the best thing to be is unbothered. Right?

• 35:26Speaker 02

  As long as it's authentically unbothered.

• 35:28Speaker 01

  Authentically.

• 35:29Speaker 02

  Not you say, I don't care and then you go cry in the car because you care deeply.

• 35:32Speaker 01

  I, well, that's, cause you talk about this, that's a big thing in the book. So let's, I wanna, I actually have that as my note in my little book here, but yes, but I'm saying learn to be unbothered.

• 35:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:42Speaker 01

  Like that could be a skill in itself.

• 35:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, I say the term practice, practice being unbothered.

• 35:47Speaker 01

  Practice? How do you practice being unbothered?

• 35:49Speaker 02

  Well, unbothered, I'm a person who's naturally bothered by things. So unbothered, unbothered doesn't show up for me. I just, I'm not afraid to admit that I'm bothered by things because I don't think that that tells a larger story about me. It doesn't say that I'm weak. It doesn't say that I over-practiced compassion. It doesn't say that I'm unable to deal with adversity. It says that there are things that I fundamentally disagree with that I'm asked to participate in or have a strong feeling toward that I, and I don't necessarily want to and it bothers me. It does something to me. It rubs the Labrador against the grain with the fur. You know what I'm saying? So, but how do you practice being unbothered?

• 36:30Speaker 02

  I think a better example for me is, I could tell you, I talk about it in the book, how to practice saying no. Cause people always talk about saying no, which is really hard for people. You're not gonna be able to say no to everything. Doesn't mean you're weak. It means you're human. People who on the internet who say they say no to everything, where's my camera? This is my camera. They're lying.

• 36:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:47Speaker 02

  They're lying to you because you'll never know that they're lying.

• 36:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 36:50Speaker 02

  Um, but when it's inconsequential, do it at moments when it's inconsequential. You practice it in moments when it's inconsequential so that when the stakes are higher, you know what it feels like for you to experience the discomfort of no. You know what it's like to experience people being disappointed in the answer that you have and knowing that you'll survive afterward. You could be disappointed in me and that's okay. That's okay.

• 37:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:14Speaker 02

  So if I'm in the mall, someone says, hey, you wanna try this perfume? No. You wanna try this cologne? No. Would you like a free sample? No. Knock on the door. Hi, sir, I'm selling solar today. No. No excuse, no long soliloquy. Oh, I would typically, but if I had, no, I practice saying no. My kids, daddy, can we? No. No. Why? The answer is no right now. It may change, but right now it's no.

• 37:39Speaker 01

  I love that because that goes to the guilt part, right? Cause then you.

• 37:42Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 37:42Speaker 01

  Cause then you, people feel guilty, so they say yes.

• 37:45Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 37:46Speaker 01

  And so if you practice saying no to the small things, it'll be easier to say no to the big things.

• 37:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, and then you won't over-practice saying no and build this callus because you said yes so many times and you develop this self frustration from saying yes when you didn't have the, oh, hey, I think the drink is kicking in.

• 38:04Speaker 01

  Oh, good.

• 38:06Speaker 01

  Good, there you go. I'm happy to hear that.

• 38:08Speaker 02

  My brain is saying words without a lot of effort.

• 38:12Speaker 02

  You know, you, you don't allow this, you don't allow the narrative building to tell the story of what happens after no. You understand that love and acceptance and community can still be accessible to you if you don't participate in everything. I have a really good friend, uh, who is an amazing person and will come to the gathering bringing a bunch of stuff. I mean, like stuff you've never heard of, like, yeah, I found these, these chocolate filled churros. That's not a joke. They were really chocolate filled churros and they were amazing. But like, I found, I found this specialty like pizza that's also, what do you call them?

• 38:55Speaker 02

  What's the, what's the tacos that you dip, uh, a barilla?

• 38:59Speaker 01

  A what?

• 38:59Speaker 02

  Barilla, barilla tacos? You know what I'm talking about?

• 39:01Speaker 01

  No.

• 39:02Speaker 02

  You've never seen it? It's like tacos you dip in the consomme?

• 39:04Speaker 01

  No.

• 39:04Speaker 02

  Oh, my gosh.

• 39:05Speaker 01

  Are they good?

• 39:06Speaker 02

  What? What?

• 39:08Speaker 01

  Really? Okay, I'm gonna put that on my list.

• 39:09Speaker 02

  Somebody gotta get that to you stat.

• 39:10Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 39:11Speaker 02

  Especially here in L.A. They are tremendous.

• 39:13Speaker 01

  Really?

• 39:13Speaker 02

  Oh, my gosh.

• 39:13Speaker 01

  Okay, I'm gonna try that.

• 39:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, Barilla Tacos, but he'll bring the stuff and I pulled him to the side one day and said, hey, bro, like, you know, we love you for you. You don't have to bring anything. And I think it's, that's a hard thing to accept. You know, the fact that I'm, I'm enough just in, in just myself. I can just bring me and be okay. You have to practice those things. You have to practice that self-understanding, but there's so many, that's conditioning. Life has taught you, environment has taught you, family has taught you that you need to do more. You need to over-practice in order to not only get but maintain community. And that's the narrative that gets added on to the reality and it's not true, but you have to test it to realize that the reality is not as scary as the story that your brain creates.

• 39:56Speaker 01

  It's never as bad as what our brain says, but

• 39:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, almost never.

• 39:59Speaker 01

  But you did say something and we talked about it a little bit now. I wanted to ask you more about it. Is that we can react, not because something happened right now in the moment, but we're reacting to something that happened in the past.

• 40:10Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 40:10Speaker 01

  And we're not aware of it.

• 40:11Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 40:12Speaker 01

  Now, does that go under the self-awareness thing or the uncomfortable truth part or both?

• 40:16Speaker 02

  Both, both.

• 40:18Speaker 01

  Explain what you mean when you say uncomfortable truth.

• 40:20Speaker 02

  Sure. So, the uncomfortable truth is a reality that you either have to dress up differently or you have to self-orient it in a really specific way so that you don't have to confront it. One of the uncomfortable truths that I talk about in the book is, I'm, I can't change. That's an uncomfortable truth. I can't change. And my question when people say they can't change, I always say, change what and to what extent? Because change isn't always a complete one-eighty. Change is also just one degree. It's just one small thing. People think that in order to change, it has to be this explosion of difference.

• 40:59Speaker 02

  No, no, no, no. Change can just be one small thing that you alter and decide to do differently. This time, even if you don't consistently do it every single time. This time, you decide to alter it just a little bit. And you're not too afraid, you're not so afraid of failure that you refuse to do it. But it's an uncomfortable truth because if I do change and if I do challenge these deeply held beliefs, oh, well, now I have to question all of my deeply held beliefs. And what if the things that hold me together aren't as true as I thought they are? Or as I thought they were? What does that say about me? What does that say about my reality? What else isn't true? Wait, is my entire moral constellation built on a house of cards?

• 41:42Speaker 02

  We talk about healing as if it's this fun adventure to go on and it's this roller coaster. You just whee all the way down. But healing can also be terrifying because of what it reveals. And I think that's scary for people. And I think the uncomfortable truth is scary to confront. So, we just, you know, we throw a little salt, wrap it in bacon and, and we call it something else.

• 42:04Speaker 01

  What's one of the most, uh, popular uncomfortable truths?

• 42:08Speaker 02

  Right now? I'm overwhelmed. Uh, no, I'm, I'm overwhelmed or overstimulated. It's very popular. Men didn't develop language of being overstimulated or overwhelmed until recently. And sometimes people who say that they're overwhelmed, internalize that as a statement of self that says, I can't manage all the things that I'm dealing with. I'm, I'm too weak and too incapable. I can't do it. It's some type of indictment on their capabilities. No, overwhelmed isn't an indictment on your capabilities. Sometimes overwhelm is just a failure of systems. The systems that are supposed to prop you up have failed you one by one. Maybe you don't have the support. A lot of us are raising kids without traditional grandmas and granddads and aunties and uncles in this

• 42:53Speaker 02

  community that has extra hands that you need when you're raising a child. Overwhelmed, sometimes a lot of us, we need money and we take on two, three jobs and we're afraid to say no to any financial opportunity.

• 43:05Speaker 01

  Right, or we can't say no.

• 43:06Speaker 02

  We can't afford to say no because therapy's five hundred dollars a pop, right?

• 43:09Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly. Right? So, what do people do in that situation?

• 43:14Speaker 02

  Struggle mightily. They struggle mightily. I think, once you can take a half step back from trying to move around the idea that, oh, I'm not overwhelmed. You know, and I'm not overwhelmed. It's just, you know, it's, it'll get done. I'll, I'll take care of it. No, and once you can step further away from that and closer towards, hey, I'm overwhelmed right now. I have reached my limit. I cannot do anymore. It is not an indictment on me. It's just a snap, a snapshot of where I am in the moment. You can open yourself up to receiving help, receiving aid or receiving assistance. How many times has something been hard for you and someone asked, can I help you? Like, no, I got it. No, I'll do it. Don't worry. I, no, I'll, I'll take care of it.

• 43:57Speaker 01

  A lot.

• 43:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 43:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, and that's, that's

• 44:00Speaker 01

  Because your shame, it goes back to the shame or the blame or the guilt. It's like this, it's the same taglines, no matter who you are.

• 44:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, there are things about the human experience that transcend race and gender and culture and everything. They are just intrinsic parts of the human experience that we struggle with. But there is no, no one's born with any type of instruction manual on how to do these things. And look, even when we find something to be effective, and I talk about this in the book, we can outgrow the tools that we've learned to perfect. And doing more of the thing that isn't working doesn't make it more effective. It just makes you more tired.

• 44:42Speaker 01

  Yes, one hundred percent. But it's also like, I guess, it's all but, I guess, it starts with the self-awareness to know at least what you don't know.

• 44:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, and be okay with it.

• 44:52Speaker 01

  And I feel a lot of people struggle with true self-awareness.

• 44:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, oh, yeah. I mean, I've struggled with self-awareness for such a large portion of my life.

• 45:00Speaker 01

  It, it, so why? Is it because it's just hard to see certain things or are we blind spots or what's the reasoning behind it?

• 45:07Speaker 02

  The way I explain it in the book is it's hard. If you were to just wake up inside of a car, you, you don't know how you got there. It's an unfamiliar car. What kind of car are you inside of?

• 45:17Speaker 01

  Are you asking me?

• 45:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, if you just wake up inside a car in the driver's seat, what kind of car are you inside of? Like, do you, can you tell just from the driver's seat?

• 45:24Speaker 01

  Depends. If it says, it could be a logo on the, on the steering wheel.

• 45:28Speaker 02

  So, now you know who the make, you know the make of the car.

• 45:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:31Speaker 02

  Might not know the model.

• 45:33Speaker 01

  No.

• 45:33Speaker 02

  Might not be able to tell. You can tell what color it is. You can't tell what color the rims are. It's, it's hard to tell what's going on at the party from the dance floor. When you are experiencing life, it is hard to tell what's going on because you are trying to survive the moment most of the time.

• 45:49Speaker 01

  That's the thing. It's, a lot of it's survival, right?

• 45:51Speaker 02

  Oh, absolutely.

• 45:52Speaker 01

  It's like, people are like, oh, you should just do this and this and this, but I'm too busy surviving over here.

• 45:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm, I'm trying to make sure I can make it through this moment.

• 45:59Speaker 01

  Yes, I can't do all those things because I can barely even survive this moment.

• 46:03Speaker 02

  That's right. And that's where the self-awareness piece kicks in. Because while you're trying to survive the moment, there are a myriad of things in what I call your blind self.

• 46:12Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 46:13Speaker 02

  There's the open self, things you know about yourself and other people know about you. There is a hidden self, things that you know about you, but other people don't know. You keep those tucked away.

• 46:22Speaker 01

  Where are the, say it again, where are the, it's the open self?

• 46:24Speaker 02

  Open self, things you know about you and other people know about you. Hidden self, things you know about you, but other people don't. There's the unknown self, things you don't know about yourself and no one else knows about you. There are things that have yet to be discovered. And then there's the blind self, and that's where we do a lot of work in therapy. Things that you don't necessarily see in yourself, but other people notice about you. And that happens a lot. There are things in your character, in your ambition, in your motivation, in your moral architecture, that are going to be obvious to the people around you, but not necessarily to you. You, you don't see it.

• 46:59Speaker 01

  Does it matter?

• 47:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, it matters.

• 47:01Speaker 01

  Okay, why?

• 47:02Speaker 02

  Let's say you're a parent and

• 47:05Speaker 01

  Hmm, okay.

• 47:06Speaker 02

  But she already sees where it's going, you know?

• 47:09Speaker 01

  Go ahead, though. I like it.

• 47:10Speaker 02

  Every, every, so, so many women have dated the guy whose mom is still cutting his waffles.

• 47:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:14Speaker 02

  You know, at, at twenty-five years old. And, and her, and she sees herself as being loving and helpful and she's not wrong. But what's in her blind self is she's also being enabling and she's being growth prohibitive. Because she won't allow him to fail. Why? Because if he fails, then that means that I fail. And as long as that lives in your blind self, there's going to be a piece of your self-awareness that will evade you. And it's so hard to hear that because when someone tells you that, you're not prepared to hear that truth. Your self-awareness is never even, it's not even a blip on your radar. Well, now it feels like an attack. And now I have open license to refute what you're saying. Ah, you're just jealous.

• 47:58Speaker 02

  Ah, you're just saying that because you don't understand. Ah, you just hate me. You can't take that helpful criticism and do something useful with it. So that's why self-awareness is so important. Because it allows you to see something in yourself. Gain a curiosity about it. Become introspective. And at some point, when you get really brave, it allows you to take feedback from other people. And help minimize that blind self. So there are less things about your character, about your personality, about your moral compass, all those things. There are less things that other people know about you that you don't.

• 48:31Speaker 01

  Do you have any blind spots?

• 48:33Speaker 02

  I'm sure.

• 48:35Speaker 02

  I'm married, so I get reminded about my blind spots all the time. Absolutely.

• 48:39Speaker 01

  So can, what kind of personality, though, has having struggles with this? Are there certain personalities? Like when they say like a narcissist. Are they, is it hard for them to see blind spots, even if you point them out? Or?

• 48:53Speaker 02

  I mean, yeah, naturally. People use narcissist, narcissist all the time and narcissistic personality disorder.

• 49:00Speaker 01

  By the way, I was gonna say, it's a very overused term.

• 49:01Speaker 02

  Oh, my goodness. I'm so surprised people don't know about histrionic. That's, that's another personality disorder that I think a lot of people have.

• 49:08Speaker 01

  Maybe that's next up on the list. Maybe because, you know, kale was a big deal and then cauliflower became the thing, you know?

• 49:14Speaker 02

  Avocado was before that.

• 49:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? There's always these like fads and trends, you know, like protecting your peace and all the things. Maybe that's up next. What's called histrionic? What's that?

• 49:24Speaker 02

  Histrionic personality disorder, it, it's another personality disorder. That is, it affects the way, therapists don't kill me if I don't, I don't get this right. But histrionic personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder have a lot of things in common. Especially when you talk about the self-awareness piece, how you see yourself, how you see yourself as being like the center of attention in a room. How you can re-center yourself in the lives, experiences, and stories of people that have nothing to do with you. How you may refute overwhelming evidence that there are things about your personality that are negatively affecting other people. As a therapist, myself, it's very hard. We have this Bible called the DSM.

• 50:07Speaker 02

  And even, even me, it's hard for me to tell the difference between narcissistic personality disorder and histrionic. It's, it's really difficult.

• 50:15Speaker 01

  But I do find that like when anything goes wrong with somebody. Like it could be a boyfriend, a husband, a girlfriend, a boss. It's always because they're quote unquote narcissists.

• 50:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:25Speaker 01

  It can never just be the fact that like they just didn't like you, or that it didn't work out, or they're just an asshole.

• 50:32Speaker 02

  I must say, sometimes people are just assholes.

• 50:33Speaker 01

  Why could they just be an asshole? Not everyone's a narcissist, right? Not everyone has a mental disorder.

• 50:38Speaker 02

  No, no, no, not everyone. But we over-pathologize. Everything has a pathology to it now. People don't just do things. You do things because there's this greater illness that you were, that you're stricken with.

• 50:50Speaker 01

  I think because people, this is where the self-aware, and people don't want to just accept things for what it is. They need to have a huge, long, lofty explanation. Like these attachment theories, like this person's a.

• 51:00Speaker 02

  Oh, the attachment stuff kills me, man. People get that so wrong.

• 51:04Speaker 01

  Like he's, what is it? The, uh, he's a.

• 51:06Speaker 02

  Avoidant, anxious, avoidant. It's so funny because online, we always kill avoidance. People like, oh, avoidance, avoidance, avoidance. It's like, man, people with anxious attachments don't always realize. They think avoidance don't do enough, and they don't stop to realize that perhaps they're doing too much.

• 51:23Speaker 01

  The avoidance.

• 51:24Speaker 02

  The, the anxious. They don't realize that sometimes they are doing too much.

• 51:29Speaker 01

  Right, to, to, to get that avoidance to avoid.

• 51:32Speaker 02

  To get that avoidance to stay sometimes, or to see them.

• 51:35Speaker 01

  I'm saying to avoid, like they're, they're avoiding you because you're too much.

• 51:39Speaker 02

  They're, they're avoiding you also because avoidance is their native language. I'm actually avoidant in a lot of parts of my life. I avoid, avoid, um, attachment.

• 51:48Speaker 01

  There's a couple of different kinds. There's, there's like two different kinds of avoidance. Which one are you? There's like a, oh god, I just had an avoidant, I don't know, I just had like a ther, uh, an attachment person on here.

• 52:01Speaker 02

  And I just, I just did a training for this not too long ago. My avoidance comes from, I think my avoidant come, personality, or my avoidant traits come from the fact that I lost my mom at a young age. So I think my brain started to leave a trail of breadcrumbs. That says, hey, if you don't attach yourself to people, when they leave or when they die, it won't hurt as much. Which is not true. And I use the evidence of that to get me out of that thinking. But I still have a loving marriage. I'm still a supportive and loving father and husband and friend and cousin. It, it's not a diagnosis on my entire life.

• 52:44Speaker 02

  It just perfectly describes some of.

• 52:51Speaker 01

  How long have you been married? Five years?

• 52:52Speaker 02

  Seven, yeah, seven, seven. Yeah, and my wife, shout out to No Amy, my wife is, my marriage is the least complicated and problematic thing in my life.

• 53:02Speaker 01

  Thank god, yeah, you're lucky.

• 53:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, we're both very lucky to have each other.

• 53:06Speaker 01

  Exactly, it should be that way. But I feel like these are all things that people hang their hats on, right? So sometimes is too much information or too, like, too much knowledge also not great?

• 53:19Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 53:20Speaker 01

  Like, the, the people I know who are the happiest are the dumbest, most ignorant, stupid people I know, right? Like, like honestly, so, okay, great, so now I know all the reasons why I do what I do, why you do what you do, and I'm miserable, wonderful. You know what I mean? Like, well, this person's like just basically bopping around happy as could be.

• 53:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:40Speaker 01

  Just being a dum-dum.

• 53:41Speaker 02

  Ignorance is bliss sometimes.

• 53:43Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 53:44Speaker 02

  You know, and listen, there is overwhelming evidence that suggests that with more options, we think that life becomes easier.

• 53:52Speaker 01

  Oh, it's worse.

• 53:53Speaker 02

  But with more options comes a greater chance that we make the wrong decision.

• 53:57Speaker 01

  How, by the way, this is why I like you. This is exact, I'm a big believer in that. You know, when you go to Costco, okay, not Costco's bad example. But when you go to like a little mom pa shop and you just need to get bread and milk, you'll buy the bread and milk that they have.

• 54:12Speaker 02

  Whatever's available, you snatch it and you eat it.

• 54:14Speaker 01

  And I'll eat it and I'll be fine.

• 54:15Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 54:16Speaker 01

  Go to a huge Whole Foods, I'm looking around, I'm wasting two hours there, and I'm so overwhelmed with all the different milks. The cashew, the oat, the almond, the this one, the lactose free, the, I'm so overwhelmed, I end up with nothing. I leave the store and I'm like, I don't know what to get, I'm not hungry anymore.

• 54:31Speaker 02

  And that's a tremendous motif for social media.

• 54:34Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 54:36Speaker 02

  Too many options.

• 54:37Speaker 01

  Too many options.

• 54:38Speaker 02

  Tremendous motif for dating.

• 54:39Speaker 01

  That's why when you, you swipe and swipe and swipe, you swipe all the way to the left, you're alone.

• 54:46Speaker 02

  You're funny, I didn't realize that. Yeah, and, and you have all of these options and it increases the likelihood of profound dissatisfaction. And you see so many people that you don't see anybody anymore.

• 54:59Speaker 01

  No, I'm telling you, it's like the hottest girls, the hottest guys are all lonely and by themselves. While the, the person that was be, you know, mediocre or below is happily married, they have their kids, they're living life blissfully.

• 55:13Speaker 02

  Quasimodo had love in his life.

• 55:15Speaker 01

  Right, having the best time of their lives, having the barbecue, having the picnic. While the hottie is by herself crying herself to sleep because nobody, she's got nobody to date.

• 55:24Speaker 02

  And it's so funny because now we live in a world where she can turn on TikTok. And she can be reinforced the idea that partnership is, and there's evidence that partnership is profoundly unfair to women. Like, let's, let's not gloss that over. But she could be fair the narrative that partnership is this corrosive, destructive force that she should avoid at all costs.

• 55:45Speaker 01

  Right.

• 55:45Speaker 02

  And the more she watches that, the more she believes it. And the more she believes it, the more she seeks it. And the more she seeks it, the more that information will be reinforced to her. So now you, you get a bias of the things that you already want to believe are true in a way. The confirmation bias is real.

• 56:03Speaker 01

  The other true part, just to add to that, what happens is you get a false sense of, uh, like validation.

• 56:10Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 56:10Speaker 01

  From a bunch of strangers. So that feeds your ego enough, so you don't even have to go seek a relationship in real time. Because you got that hit that, oh, I am wonderful, I am hot, because you have a bunch of random strangers calling you hot on, on social.

• 56:23Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 56:24Speaker 01

  Or asking you out, or like saying whatever, that whatever they're saying. So there's like such a, it's such a disconnect in what's happening in life, right?

• 56:33Speaker 02

  It is, and I think the thing that brings that home for me is this, this idea of celebrity. And I don't get to talk about this a lot. You know, my social media following, we jumped from in five years, from what, 10,000 across all social media platforms to a little bit under 3 million.

• 56:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:49Speaker 02

  My Instagram at one time has 72 million people visited in one month. I can't go anywhere anymore and not have people know who I am.

• 56:58Speaker 01

  People recognize you now?

• 56:59Speaker 02

  What?

• 57:00Speaker 01

  Always?

• 57:01Speaker 02

  I was in line at the airport and the line was too long. I'm not gonna say which airport because I don't want anybody to get in trouble. And the person, the TSA agent said, hey. And they opened up a special line for me to go in.

• 57:12Speaker 01

  No way.

• 57:12Speaker 02

  My flight was closed and they reopened it just for me. It's the privileges are ridiculous, but it is unnatural to have that many people tell you how smart and funny and good and talented you are. It's unnatural. You walk in a room and all of a sudden, everything I say is funny now? I wasn't this funny six years ago. I wasn't this interesting six years ago. Now, everybody wants to take pictures with you and, oh, my God, let me FaceTime my mom. And they FaceTime their mom and their mom like, oh, my God, we love you so much. That is unnatural. It's unnatural. To me, I, my wife says, thank God, I can't see it because she thinks I'd be a butthole. If I could, I'm just not, I don't feel that self-important.

• 57:53Speaker 02

  I, it just, it doesn't, I'm thankful for it, but it just doesn't, it doesn't do it for me.

• 57:58Speaker 01

  Well, this is where the trap becomes a trap, right? Because then people start believing their own hype.

• 58:03Speaker 02

  Oh, my goodness.

• 58:04Speaker 01

  And they'll leave their wife or they'll leave their husband or they'll leave whatever. And then think that whatever's out there, the grass is greener.

• 58:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, the grass is never greener, it's just a different shade of green.

• 58:14Speaker 01

  I was gonna say, the grass is green where you water it.

• 58:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:17Speaker 01

  You know?

• 58:17Speaker 02

  That's one of my favorite sayings.

• 58:19Speaker 01

  Right, it's true.

• 58:20Speaker 02

  Nah, my, my, when I leave here, I'm going to call my wife and I'm going to see how hair day is going at home. Because everyone is washing their hair today at my house.

• 58:29Speaker 01

  I love that.

• 58:30Speaker 02

  And when I wake up tomorrow, I'm gonna, I'm gonna call my wife. It's because it's, I, I don't care about any other grass. This is the grass that I chose. I was born into a family, I had no decision in that. I was just born into my family. Love a lot of them. Some of them, we're working on our relationship. We're working on it.

• 58:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:51Speaker 02

  But I love, I love a lot of them. My wife is the family that I chose. I chose her. And we made a conscious decision to have these kids. And it's me investing my time and my energy into that, there's nothing that can make me deviate from that.

• 59:06Speaker 01

  Do you think it's because you had a good head on your shoulders before you got, uh, well-known? Like, if you're somebody who doesn't have a good head on their shoulders and someone who is, who has a low self-esteem or no self-confidence, and then this happens to them. You are lucky because obviously you had enough intact up here.

• 59:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:24Speaker 01

  That you didn't let the outside, external interfere.

• 59:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it's, I think it's that. I also grew up a very well-loved child with a lot of hugs and kisses.

• 59:33Speaker 01

  Well, I'm telling you, I'm saying you came into this thing already a full human being. But if you were in a full human being.

• 59:39Speaker 02

  Oh, it'll be, it'll, I would abuse the power like many other people have.

• 59:43Speaker 01

  A hundred percent, like, how, that's what I'm saying, like, that's, you're lucky that way.

• 59:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I feel, I feel very fortunate. You know, I think someone who has always been looked over or overlooked or, um, subjugated or made to feel less than, and then they assume the power of celebrity. It's like taking a kid who just learned to drive yesterday and giving them a Lamborghini. They're gonna crash it into a wall at three hundred miles per hour.

• 1:00:11Speaker 01

  A hundred percent.

• 1:00:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:14Speaker 01

  A hundred percent. But so what is, because now we're living in a time where this is the culture that we have, right? Anyone can become famous in two seconds on social.

• 1:00:23Speaker 02

  For any reason or no reason at all.

• 1:00:25Speaker 01

  I, like, thankfully, you have something to say of substance. A lot of people don't.

• 1:00:30Speaker 02

  Oh, I see.

• 1:00:30Speaker 01

  You know? And it's bad out there. So what, so that's the thing, like, so then you have a whole new generation of people. That's their world. Do you know this kid, what's his name, Clavicular? Have you seen this?

• 1:00:42Speaker 02

  I've seen a few interviews, yeah. He does the looks maxing thing, right?

• 1:00:45Speaker 01

  Looks maxing thing, right.

• 1:00:46Speaker 02

  He's an interesting fellow.

• 1:00:48Speaker 01

  He, by the way, he's not stupid.

• 1:00:50Speaker 02

  No, I, I've never thought he was stupid.

• 1:00:52Speaker 01

  He's, he's, he's really smart and he has a whole, you know, trail of peak stupid kids who are following him. But he's the smart one. Because he's, he's, but like, this is what we're, but you have, sometimes you're, you're, you're crazy like a fox, right? That's very dangerous also with social.

• 1:01:15Speaker 01

  Let me share my daily routine game changer with you. It's the Momentous three. I've been using their protein, their creatine and omega three combo for months now. And the results are undeniable. These nutrients are key for long-term health and performance. But hard to get enough of through diet alone. The Creapure Creatine boosts both physical and your mental performance. The grass-fed whey tastes great with no weird aftertaste. And their omega three is a must for recovery. Since adding these, my energy, my recovery and my overall well-being has really improved. So if you want better performance, this is the way to go.

• 1:01:57Speaker 01

  Visit livemomentous.com and use my code Jen for thirty-five percent off your first subscription. That's livemomentous.com code Jen for thirty-five percent off your first subscription. Trust me, you'll be happy you did.

• 1:02:24Speaker 01

  Let's talk about this, this toxic positivity, because this is the thing on social, I think, that's actually very dangerous. People doing all of these manifest, um, what do you, uh, what do you call those?

• 1:02:33Speaker 02

  Affirmations.

• 1:02:34Speaker 01

  Affirmations, I'm beautiful, I'm wonderful, I'm great. If you don't really believe that and you're just saying these things, it doesn't make a difference, it's not true.

• 1:02:41Speaker 02

  No, they're just words.

• 1:02:42Speaker 01

  They're just words. Can you talk about why you wrote about that and what you meant by that and what you see?

• 1:02:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it was, it was really built on, um, originally, I, I didn't see value in affirmations at all. And so I became a therapist when I, when I started to see what they really did.

• 1:03:03Speaker 01

  Oh, you like them?

• 1:03:04Speaker 02

  I think they're useful for people, not so much for me.

• 1:03:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, they work for some folks, it's not for me, but that doesn't mean that it's useless because it doesn't work for me.

• 1:03:11Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:03:12Speaker 02

  I don't think affirmations are useless. I think that affirmations are just words if they're not followed up with an understanding and awareness and action. Understanding, awareness and action. Understanding that these words are supposed to supplement what I'm actually doing in my life to change the things that I don't like. The awareness to know that repeating these things to myself in the mirror does not make them true. It doesn't make it true just because I say it. It makes it true when I become the person that I think that I am and I, and I do the things to reaffirm that I am the person that I say that I am. And the action, where the rubber meets the road. What am I actually doing in my life to change these things?

• 1:03:57Speaker 02

  That's the performance piece, not performance in, in a way that you're putting on an inauthentic show, but, but, but performance in a way where you're, you are putting the things in motion that you say. If I say money falls to me easily, money falls to me easily. And my account is at negative thirty thousand dollars. And I do not know what I want to do in life in order to get more money and I don't feel purpose. And I feel empty and the money is just to make me feel better and look better, but not be better. Then what is this affirmation supported by?

• 1:04:33Speaker 01

  Hmm, so if you are working towards a particular goal that you can make money on and you say the affirmation, then it's not, it's, it's, it's, it's a good, it's a good affirmation.

• 1:04:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:45Speaker 01

  If you're just saying it, that's more of like, what, like, like you're like, it's more of a vis, you're talking more like visualization stuff without any action behind it.

• 1:04:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, which is good if it wants to, if you need to be encouraged.

• 1:04:57Speaker 01

  Right, right, right, right.

• 1:04:58Speaker 02

  But encouragement isn't really a sustainable thing to lean on.

• 1:05:02Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:05:02Speaker 02

  Because.

• 1:05:03Speaker 01

  Encouragement, no.

• 1:05:03Speaker 02

  No, encouragement, encouragement and motivation and inspiration, they're all fantastic. Do not rely on them to get to where you need to go. Because if you don't have them, you still need to move forward. But you, that's a vehicle with no gas in it. You won't know how to put one foot in front of the other without these profound positive feelings propelling you forward. So, yeah, it's, it's not that I don't believe in affirmations, but you have the affirmation of what else?

• 1:05:30Speaker 01

  Exactly, what else has lead, what, so when you taught, what made you write it, like, what, when you think about toxic positivity, besides what you just said, what else is about it that you kind of see?

• 1:05:44Speaker 02

  Uh, I see avoidance. I see avoidance. The way that I described toxic positivity in the book is saying if, if you were, if there's a recipe that you cook, you made dinner for yourself and it asked for just a pinch of salt and instead of a pinch, you put a cup of salt in. Right, and it's overly salty. You tasting it and saying, oh, this is too salty. And deciding to put a cup of sugar on top of it doesn't make it less salty, it just makes it disgusting. All right? Putting, add in an overwhelming amount of the inverse of what gives you discomfort or distress doesn't take away, it might distract you from the discomfort or the distress, but it doesn't take away from the reason that you're feeling discomfort and distress. You know what I'm saying?

• 1:06:29Speaker 02

  If you, toxic positivity goes around the issue that needs to be handled. It doesn't go straight through it. It doesn't grab it, it doesn't hold it, it doesn't take accountability for why it's there. It doesn't get curious, it doesn't research it. It doesn't recognize why this is something that maybe isn't helpful for me to believe. You just blow past it. And I think that there's something developmentally disingenuous about feeling a negative experience and grabbing from the outside world, what you believe is the inverse of that experience. And whether you believe it or not, just applying it to your life blindly.

• 1:07:11Speaker 02

  Because sometimes negative experiences, there's a thing called distress tolerance. I don't know if we talked about it here or not, I can't remember. But distress tolerance is your ability to withstand stressful situations and moments. And when we don't practice sitting in those moments that don't feel good and really examining why they exist. What, what feelings am I, am I feeling right now? When we just, when, when, when we are in such a rush to feel better immediately, we don't get the message. We don't see that that negative feeling was a signal to call our attention to something that is, is deeply in need of healing with us. Nope, we just blow past it. I just wanna feel better, not be better, not do better, but just feel better.

• 1:07:51Speaker 02

  And I think you cheat yourself out of the opportunity for some realistic self-healing when you do that.

• 1:08:00Speaker 01

  That's really good, I like that a lot. Why did you name the book, It All Starts When You Do? Because it all starts from us, right?

• 1:08:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, it's, it works when you work it. It, it's not, I think sometimes just on the heels of talking about motivation and things like that, I think we wait for.

• 1:08:17Speaker 02

  People come into therapy all the time and they're just waiting. They're waiting to start. They're waiting until, you know, I'm waiting until the perfect time. I'm waiting until my kids get older. I'm waiting until my spouse finally decides to listen to me. I'm waiting, I'm waiting, I'm waiting, I'm waiting. But it's not gonna happen while you're waiting. It's going to start, but it's going to start when you do. And there will never be a perfect time, cuz that doesn't exist. The only time that you know that you'll have is the moment that's in front of you right now. That's it. And it's really a call to action, not necessarily calling you out, but calling you in. Saying, hey, you can do it afraid. You can do it ugly. You can do it imperfectly, but you have to start.

• 1:09:01Speaker 02

  And starting is nobody's job but yours. So how are we gonna regain control of this thing?

• 1:09:07Speaker 01

  How do you get people to start? Cuz starting is the hardest part.

• 1:09:11Speaker 02

  Oh, absolutely, absolutely. It depends on who the person is and why it's hard for them to start. Sometimes people just need a little inertia. They just, they just need a little bit of a push to get going. Sometimes people need a complete reframe. They need to see things differently in order to get started. Sometimes people need to understand what their needs are. You know, some people who feel lonely don't, may not know the difference between solitude and isolation. You know, you may not know the difference between what's inconvenient and, and, and what's catastrophic.

• 1:09:49Speaker 01

  Solitude and isolation, that is, there's, right, it's all about a reframe and how, and your perspective.

• 1:09:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, and what you're actually doing and what the motivation is. If the motivation is avoidance is one thing. If the motivation is clarity, it's another thing. That's the difference between solitude and isolation. Are you choosing solitude because this is your decision consciously? Or because you don't have community, you've been relegated to solitude? Because that changes it too. So different people need different things to start. And it's not a one side. One thing I hate about self-help books is it does this one, one-size-fits-all, unitard approach to just say, hey, here's what you need to do in your life. I'm not, therapists don't tell you what to do. Therapists chew away at the problem. They help you chew away at the problem until you isolate what the real issue is and you can attack it.

• 1:10:38Speaker 02

  But you have to trust the process. You have to be open and willing to interrogate the things you think, feel, and believe.

• 1:10:46Speaker 01

  You talk about depression. I'm sure that, you know, it's like you, you said that you were clinically, you have depression?

• 1:10:52Speaker 02

  I do, yeah.

• 1:10:52Speaker 01

  You, like, so do you feel it, like, right now, are you depressed?

• 1:10:56Speaker 02

  Right now?

• 1:10:56Speaker 01

  Right this moment?

• 1:10:57Speaker 02

  No, no.

• 1:10:59Speaker 01

  What, because if you're clinically depressed, you said, like, are you on any medication? Or do you do lifestyle changes? Or how does, cuz I think that people may be depressed sometimes, not even know they're depressed.

• 1:11:10Speaker 02

  So let me rephrase it. Am I depressed right now?

• 1:11:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:13Speaker 02

  Yes, I'll be dealing with depression for the rest of my life. Do I feel depressed right now? No, absolutely not. But I'm using my tools. Depression isn't something I'm gonna wake up and be over one day. It's something that I have to consciously steer the ship around. And look, sometimes I scrape my ship up against an iceberg. It's not always possible for me to avoid depression. But what's important is for me to know what it looks like in different stages of my life. I just turned forty and depression looks way different than it did ten years ago.

• 1:11:45Speaker 02

  She's like, it's going to change again. But that's okay, because I'm open to being flexible and understanding and not being in, one of the, another uncomfortable truth is I'm not over something that happened to me. I'm okay withholding the fact that depression is something that is a co-host to the Cure Game Show. You know, it's gonna be a roommate in my life for the rest of my life.

• 1:12:08Speaker 01

  When you say that, what do you mean? Cuz I, I, I listened to an episode that you did on depression on your, on your podcast. And I found a few things very interesting. I found one part is that I think a lot of times people don't even know that they're depressed.

• 1:12:21Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:12:22Speaker 01

  They can be very functional and social.

• 1:12:25Speaker 02

  A lot of people are high-functioning depressed.

• 1:12:27Speaker 01

  High function, right? Is there a difference between being clinically depressed and, I guess, circumstantially depressed?

• 1:12:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:35Speaker 01

  Right, what kind of depressed are you? Were you clinically, like, what's, how did you, have you been struggling for a long time? Is that why you had the tools? Like, I'd like to understand this, cuz I think that probably a lot of people have symptoms of one thing and think it's one other thing. Right, how do people know?

• 1:12:53Speaker 02

  Well, I got evaluated. I got evaluated. I got formally evaluated and diagnosed.

• 1:12:58Speaker 01

  Okay, you personally, okay. Okay, so how do other people know? Like, did you have the, I guess this is my first question. Did you have the common symptoms? Like, oh, you didn't wanna get out of bed? Were you get, like, like, what, cuz it's like very, I think a lot of times people just like put something in a bucket without maybe knowing all the facts.

• 1:13:19Speaker 02

  A hundred percent.

• 1:13:20Speaker 01

  You know?

• 1:13:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, no, I didn't have all the classic symptoms.

• 1:13:25Speaker 01

  That's where I was looking for, classic symptoms.

• 1:13:27Speaker 02

  One of the ones, my depression wasn't textbook. I, sometimes I will have moments when it's hard for me to get out of bed. The key way that I know when my depression is really affecting me is when I don't have, I can't find joy.

• 1:13:43Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:13:43Speaker 02

  And it's not that I don't have joy in my life. It's that my brain can't read it. Yeah, but I, me getting out of bed is, is not really a thing. Me not having interest in the things that I once enjoyed isn't always a thing. I don't gain weight. I don't lose sleep. I don't lose weight. But it does start to affect other parts of my life. I may self-isolate a little bit. But this is the thing, it's easy to say, oh, I'm just isolating because I've been on a podcast tour and I've been talking in forty different cities in the last six months and I'm just tired of people. Oh, me, I'm not self-important. Do you know how tired I get of hearing my own voice and seeing my own face on phone screens? I am sick of me. Do you understand?

• 1:14:27Speaker 02

  So then, like, it's also, you have to look at the circumstances around why you feel the way you feel. And my depression now at forty isn't sadness anymore. It comes off as irritation. Then my daughter chewing gum in my ear would just piss me off in this really particular way. Or my wife would ask me to do something. I'm like, oh, my God, I just got off the road. I've been in thirty cities. You know, it's, it's irritation. It doesn't look like sadness as much as it used to.

• 1:14:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:54Speaker 02

  So some of the classic symptoms I had, yeah, but a lot of symptoms, no. It was, it was something completely different. And that's why it's so important to get a diagnosis. Mine was from a nurse practitioner.

• 1:15:05Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:15:06Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm, yeah. Sat in front of a nurse practitioner. She gave me an inventory. We did a couple of different, we did a couple of different tests. And she came out, she said, yeah. And she showed me, this was before I was a therapist. She says, so this is the normal range for people? And this is where you are. And mine was elevated. And then my anxiety was also elevated. This thing, we have a GAD. It's a scale to tell how bad your anxiety is. And mine was as bad as it could be. Cuz with depression and anxiety, it's smoke and fire. Where you see one, you typically gotta look out for the other.

• 1:15:38Speaker 01

  I heard this, but they, they go hand in hand.

• 1:15:40Speaker 02

  Oh, man, they're really good buddies, yeah.

• 1:15:42Speaker 01

  So a lot of people I know are like, I've got so much anxiety. Does that mean that typically there's depression like right behind it? And they just don't, they're just not diagnosed with it properly?

• 1:15:50Speaker 02

  Could be, could be, it depends. That's why it's so important to get evaluated, so that you can have a professional tell you what they see. It's, we, technology's a beautiful thing. And we have so many instruments that allow us to see where we are in our own bodies and in our own minds. In real time, like, this stuff is at our disposal. I could guess, I could, I could guess. I could try to figure it out for myself. But I needed another voice and another mind in the room to see what I was going through and give me some feedback. All of which, by the way, lived in my blind self. I, I didn't see it. You know, you can make an excuse for anything. Oh, I'm just that. Oh, I'm just tired. Oh, I just didn't sleep well last night.

• 1:16:30Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:16:31Speaker 02

  No, it was something bigger going on underneath the surface that I was unaware of.

• 1:16:35Speaker 01

  And so what do you do to counter it?

• 1:16:38Speaker 02

  Now, um, sometimes I can't. Sometimes it comes and it washes over me and I have to completely recalibrate what my self-expectations are when my depression is at its peak. I, I'm compromised. Neurochemically, I'm compromised. It is a mood disorder. My mood is compromised. And I have to operate with that understanding. And I go from trying to do the, I try, I go from trying to do the best to just doing the best that I can. What a win is when my depression is on ten is a different thing than what a win would be considered if my depression is at a two. But what I do now, I try to spend more time with friends. Me, I, I try to work less.

• 1:17:19Speaker 02

  When I work a lot and I don't have time for myself, I don't have free time, my depression starts to rise. I try to spend a lot of alone time with my wife. Um, I don't, not an over-dependence on her company to make me feel better. No, not at all. She's, she's not my mom. But she is a good friend, a trusted advisor, and someone whose, whose company I enjoy. We mutually enjoy each other's company. And there's something about being married and having kids, where the having kids part just takes away from the partnership part. I try to spend more time with myself. I try to spend more time in nature. I try to spend more time not distracted by my phone. Try to get a good amount of sunlight. I try to get a good amount of darkness, which is just as important as the sunlight.

• 1:18:03Speaker 02

  I try to go to sleep on purpose and have good sleep hygiene. Yeah, mm-hmm. Darkness, be in a dark room.

• 1:18:10Speaker 01

  It helps.

• 1:18:10Speaker 02

  Oh, for me, oh, absolutely, absolutely.

• 1:18:13Speaker 01

  I hear sunlight, but I've never heard darkness.

• 1:18:15Speaker 02

  Yep, sunlight and darkness. I try to, I see my therapist, I'm gonna try to be on top of my vitamins.

• 1:18:22Speaker 01

  What do you take?

• 1:18:23Speaker 02

  Right now, I take a men's multivitamin, I take a little bit of extra iron, a little bit of extra vitamin D, cod liver oil pills, try to make sure I have a balanced diet, that matters a lot. And I try to make sure that I'm aware of how the depression is starting to creep into other areas of my life, how well I'm taking care of myself, how excited I am or motivated I am about my future, how I lean into the things that are significant for me. So a lot of it's not just doing things to prevent it, it's not always preventative, sometimes it's management.

• 1:19:01Speaker 01

  Management, yeah.

• 1:19:02Speaker 02

  But it's already there and learn how to cope and learn how to adapt and learn how to not beat myself up for an internal circumstance that I have no control over.

• 1:19:11Speaker 01

  Did your depression get worse or better when you became a content creator?

• 1:19:15Speaker 02

  That is a great question. Content creators are a sad bunch. I would say worse. I would say worse because creating content was my favorite thing in the world until I did it for a living and my family's survival depended on it. And now, I'll say I don't, I don't enjoy creating content. But creating content allows me to do things that I do enjoy, you know, I can go.

• 1:19:36Speaker 01

  It's the hamster wheel.

• 1:19:37Speaker 02

  It is, it is, and the more I create content and the longer that I'm here, the more I'm able to create or control what terms I create content on. I can employ better systems, I can hire more people so that I can just do the things that I love. Cause scaling a business is a nasty, nasty, nasty, nasty effort. If you do not know, even if you know what you're doing, even if you know what you're doing, but when you can put, again, systems in place that's better support you, you can focus on the things that you genuinely enjoy.

• 1:20:10Speaker 01

  Well, because people think that you just put a camera on and you go blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and you drop it. It's like a, it is a thankless job in a lot of ways, it's very time consuming.

• 1:20:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20:20Speaker 01

  It's a lot of stress.

• 1:20:22Speaker 02

  It's a lot of admin work.

• 1:20:23Speaker 01

  It's a lot of admin stuff that people like behind, like a lot of stuff that people don't even think of. Takes a lot of people, a lot of team, and like, you're right, like, it's a lot of pressure. Cause if you're doing things for brands and doing things for numbers, cause you're only as good as your last piece of content, right?

• 1:20:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's very, what have you done for me lately?

• 1:20:42Speaker 01

  What have you done, exactly, what have you done for me lately, as in like 12 hours ago, right? Cause you gotta start, you know, like that's, I mean, usually in a normal business, it's like, okay, you have some breathing room. Okay, I did something, I did something that did well, give me a month, you know? It's like, oh, actually I did something that did well, I have about 30 minutes to think of something else.

• 1:21:01Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:21:01Speaker 01

  It's like that monster that constantly needs feeding.

• 1:21:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, you have to feed the beast and it's, it's just not good for the mental because.

• 1:21:08Speaker 01

  It's terrible, that's why I'm asking you.

• 1:21:09Speaker 02

  You can't really sit on your wins for too long. You get a win and then you're like, alright, what's next?

• 1:21:14Speaker 01

  What's next?

• 1:21:15Speaker 02

  Different, and you're trying to always outdo yourself.

• 1:21:17Speaker 01

  Right, ex- exactly, and then it becomes, even if you say it's not competitive, you're not necessarily competing because you're trying to let, you're just like, oh, that person did a really good thing. How do I do something that's unique and different that also, cause like, y- your business and your finances now rely on it.

• 1:21:35Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:21:35Speaker 01

  You know, it's just the, the way it is, and if you're not performing, guess what, your, your money goes down.

• 1:21:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:21:42Speaker 01

  You're finding, is this what it is, I'm being honest, I'm being straight with you. It's not, and so for someone who has any type of like mood disorder or me- or a mental health issue, it, it wreaks havoc on you, it's a hamster wheel, and I know because so many people I work with, a lot of my friends are doing this, and it's like, people think because you smile on a camera and you got, you're like really sharp for 30 seconds or a minute and a half, that that's your life, but it's not.

• 1:22:09Speaker 02

  It's not, it's not, it's not, and sometimes you can.

• 1:22:13Speaker 01

  I'm just being honest.

• 1:22:14Speaker 02

  You can know, and I appreciate the honesty, I think people need to hear that. I think honest and honesty and authenticity are rare commodities, especially in the social media space. But I was at a Harvard University Creator Summit for mental health creators, and they shared some terrifying data about how many creators self-reported poor mental health outcomes. Like in the last couple of years, and it's getting progressively worse.

• 1:22:38Speaker 01

  Like, give me some numbers.

• 1:22:40Speaker 02

  I don't remember what the numbers were, but I remember seeing them and I was like, oh my goodness. I, it's, I knew that a lot of creators were having issues, but I didn't think that it was that bad or that profound. But it's a, it's a business where, you know, especially if you rely on your looks, there, there's a more handsome guy who's just as clever and creative and probably more charismatic. He's coming, and once he's prominent, people will forget about you.

• 1:23:08Speaker 01

  One hundred, it's worse than being an actor or an actress.

• 1:23:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:23:11Speaker 01

  Right, because there, there's always somebody just down the street that just like had a video that hit, and now they're the hot thing.

• 1:23:18Speaker 02

  Everybody's focused on that person, and when your livelihood is built on a reputation that requires you to be public facing and people forward, and the calls stop coming, you got people that you need to pay, you got bills that you need to pay, nothing stops because you've stopped making money. And you want to talk about some poor mental health outcomes? Poor mental out, health outcomes and lack of financial resources go hand in hand.

• 1:23:50Speaker 01

  One hundred percent, and this is a business where it looks very shy- shiny and bright until it doesn't, until it's not anymore.

• 1:23:58Speaker 02

  It's, you peek behind the curtain and you realize that it's being held up with like painter's tape.

• 1:24:03Speaker 01

  Exactly, duct tape maybe.

• 1:24:05Speaker 02

  And, and grandma's prayers.

• 1:24:07Speaker 01

  Oh, one hundred percent, I see so many people, just from the podcast, and like, I always say, it's like, it's interesting, like, so much of everything is like smoke and mirrors, like never, ever, I, I guess, I find, people always just like, oh, I wish I could be that person, I wish I can do that, and then you peek behind the count, you know, the, the curtain, you're like, oh my god, like.

• 1:24:28Speaker 02

  It's never what you think it is.

• 1:24:29Speaker 01

  It's never what you think it is.

• 1:24:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's.

• 1:24:31Speaker 01

  Never be envious or jealous of anybody.

• 1:24:34Speaker 02

  No, it's a, it's a frivolous, it's a frivolous endeavor, man. And then you get to meet people who you admire for a long time, and that, that is disappointing.

• 1:24:45Speaker 01

  Super.

• 1:24:46Speaker 02

  You meet them and you realize that, oh, this is it.

• 1:24:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:52Speaker 02

  Oh, I thought, I thought this transmission had another gear in it, nope, just one gear.

• 1:24:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, just one gear, it happens all the time.

• 1:24:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, profoundly disappointing, but it's also profoundly eye-opening.

• 1:25:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:05Speaker 02

  And it helps put your life into perspective where you realize, one, perfection isn't a thing, and two, you know, perfection isn't a prerequisite to happiness or joy or self-satisfaction.

• 1:25:17Speaker 01

  No, what would you say the prerequisite for happiness is?

• 1:25:22Speaker 02

  I think that there are a lot of them. I think that contentment is the first thing, learning to be content. Even if things aren't ideal, learning to be content with who you are, what you are, where you are, and why you are. You don't have to be in love with it, you don't have to feel, have negative feelings toward it, but I'm okay with it. This exists in a way that I can live with. Like, right back to that point, we were talking about neutrality. I'm content with it, yeah, I'm content. I think that that is a superhighway to joy, because if you can be content with what you have,

• 1:26:03Speaker 02

  I think it keeps your eyes off of the next thing, and it allows you to do the hardest thing in the world, and that's remain present, be in the present moment, not obsessed with the past, not fixated on the future, but just existing in the time that's under your feet.

• 1:26:20Speaker 01

  Tell me another one.

• 1:26:22Speaker 02

  A prerequisite to happiness? Not allowing comparison to make you feel worse about yourself.

• 1:26:29Speaker 01

  Oh, that's like, where they say comparison is like the thief of all joy.

• 1:26:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, they say that, I don't necessarily agree with that, I think, because comparison can sometimes just be a really good waypoint indicator. I compare myself to people all the time, and it's not to make me feel bad. I compare myself to people because I don't know where I am on the scale of development. So I look at what other people are doing, it's like, oh, you're doing that a lot more effectively than me. And instead of me seeing people doing that and allowing the chasm between where they are and where I am to make me feel worse about myself, I allow that to inspire me or ignite me or bring to my awareness something that I never thought about before. Um, so I think comparison can be the thief of joy if you allow the space in between the two of you to make you feel worse about yourself.

• 1:27:14Speaker 01

  I like the word chasm, that's a good word, you've got a good vocabulary.

• 1:27:17Speaker 02

  Thank you, thank you, I like to read books and stuff.

• 1:27:19Speaker 01

  Do you, what you, what are you, what are you reading right now?

• 1:27:21Speaker 02

  Well, I read my book front to back five times, which if you write in a book, I'm gonna tell you, you have to read your book front to back several times and you will get, you will start to question yourself.

• 1:27:32Speaker 01

  Right, a hundred percent. And also though, it's good to read your book because if people ask you questions, you're like, what did you, what, I don't remember, I don't know what I wrote. Did you write this book?

• 1:27:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:27:43Speaker 01

  Good, most people don't write their books, that's why I'm asking.

• 1:27:45Speaker 02

  Oh, really?

• 1:27:46Speaker 01

  Like, I've asked people questions and they don't even, they're like, I'm like, it's in your book, and they're like, oh, yeah, and then they talk about it.

• 1:27:52Speaker 02

  Oh, no, no, no, no, it's in, it's in my, when I first.

• 1:27:56Speaker 01

  It's Hachette, right?

• 1:27:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, Hachette.

• 1:27:58Speaker 01

  That was my, that was my publisher.

• 1:28:00Speaker 02

  Oh, really?

• 1:28:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:28:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, Little Brown Spark is my imprint, shout out to LBS, man, I love Little Brown Spark, they've been tremendous partners in this whole thing.

• 1:28:07Speaker 01

  Oh, I don't know them.

• 1:28:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, they, they want an imprint of Hachette, Hachette has so many.

• 1:28:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, they have so many, it's hard to know.

• 1:28:12Speaker 02

  You ever been in their office in New York?

• 1:28:15Speaker 01

  I don't think I, I don't think so. Was it nice?

• 1:28:17Speaker 02

  It is gorgeous.

• 1:28:18Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:28:19Speaker 02

  Oh, my gosh.

• 1:28:20Speaker 01

  For a publishing house? Because most publishing houses don't even really exist really anymore.

• 1:28:25Speaker 02

  Oh, my gosh. Their office is beautiful. And Little Brown Spark Post, uh, they're also the imprint for one of my favorite authors, Malcolm Gladwell.

• 1:28:33Speaker 01

  I love him.

• 1:28:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:28:35Speaker 01

  I love him so much.

• 1:28:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, they packaged up all his books and gave it to me.

• 1:28:38Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 1:28:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I had them all already, but I'll always take more Gladwell. Yeah, he's brilliant.

• 1:28:44Speaker 01

  He's, I love his, he's one of the pioneers, I think, in all of this stuff. Like, The Tipping Point was probably the first book I wrote.

• 1:28:50Speaker 02

  Love Tipping Point and Outliers.

• 1:28:51Speaker 01

  Outliers, exactly. He's, he's great.

• 1:28:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, outliers make me feel better about where I am in life. I didn't realize that success sometimes is a probability game.

• 1:29:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:02Speaker 02

  You were born at the right time, in the right place, with the right set of circumstances.

• 1:29:05Speaker 01

  I, I, by the way, that's why I, I, I love how he, I love that book too, for that exact reason. Because so many, it's, it, a lot of it is, I guess, kind of luck.

• 1:29:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:29:16Speaker 01

  Again, the day, it is luck.

• 1:29:17Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 1:29:18Speaker 01

  And when people say it's not luck, like, I always have this conversation with people, like, a lot of times, like, it's, you got lucky. Like, you can say you're skilled and you're talented and all the great, wonderful things, but, by the way, you're also in the right place at the right time. You got, you have the right parents, you had the right circumstance, the right situation.

• 1:29:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:29:35Speaker 01

  Because I've, I, I know I'm smarter and better than half the people who became billionaires, but luck played a big part of it.

• 1:29:41Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 1:29:42Speaker 01

  Who was born before them, where they were, the situ, like, it's just being honest.

• 1:29:47Speaker 02

  Honesty is hard, though.

• 1:29:48Speaker 01

  Why, why is honesty so hard for people?

• 1:29:51Speaker 02

  Because the thing that is the honest truth, it's, it's not always ideal or convenient. It, it's not the story that you wish for it to be.

• 1:30:01Speaker 01

  It's not, honesty is hard for the, for the person being, to be honest with yourself, but also honesty is hard for people to hear, for them, like, me being honest with you can be very diff, like, sometimes people have to sm, blow smoke up someone's butt because they can't take the honesty.

• 1:30:16Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:30:16Speaker 01

  And people like them because they blow smoke up their butt, even though they know it's not true.

• 1:30:20Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm. So now, it's a, it's a machine that powers itself.

• 1:30:24Speaker 01

  Exactly. It's a machine that powers itself because people don't want to know the truth.

• 1:30:28Speaker 02

  No, I need to know the truth.

• 1:30:29Speaker 01

  I like to know the truth, too.

• 1:30:30Speaker 02

  I tell people all the time, cut it, give it to me straight. I don't, I don't appreciate all of the, um, all right, so, I didn't want to tell you this, and sit down if you're ready, like, hey, is this for you or is this for me at this point?

• 1:30:44Speaker 01

  A hundred percent.

• 1:30:45Speaker 02

  Because that song and dance doesn't do anything for me. Tell it to me straight so I can know what the problem is and I can do something about it.

• 1:30:51Speaker 01

  But why is it so hard for people to accept the truth?

• 1:30:54Speaker 02

  Because it hurts. The truth is painful sometimes. If you spend your whole life trying to avoid something that you're not ready to confront, and then it gets smashed into your face at a thousand miles per hour, that's painful.

• 1:31:07Speaker 01

  But then you can actually deal with it.

• 1:31:08Speaker 02

  If you have the capacity to do so, which a lot of people don't.

• 1:31:12Speaker 01

  Like, what's the number one thing people ask you about?

• 1:31:14Speaker 02

  In therapy?

• 1:31:16Speaker 01

  Or, yeah, in therapy, in real, in real life and online.

• 1:31:20Speaker 02

  I would say online and in real life, people usually ask me either about parenthood or partnership, what they're doing wrong, or how to motivate a person to change their behavior into something else. How do I get my husband to do less of this? How do I get my wife to see that I'm doing this? How do I get my son to stop doing this? That, I, I get that all the time. It's, it's almost never about people, more so about changed behavior and the people that they love.

• 1:31:49Speaker 01

  I was gonna say, so what is your answer to those people? Because all of that is like other related. It's like, how do I get that X, Y, Z person to do this or not do that?

• 1:31:59Speaker 02

  Well, the first thing that we learn in therapy is that we can't control other people. We can only control ourselves. So a lot of times, the answer isn't convenient or fun or what they want to hear. You can't. Now, let's talk about how you're gonna cope with that. Let's talk about how you're gonna adapt and overcome.

• 1:32:17Speaker 01

  Because that's all you, it's true, though, right? Because you can't, all you can do, and we see, this is what you always hear also. It's like, you can't control anybody else, but you can only control how you act or behave.

• 1:32:28Speaker 02

  That's it.

• 1:32:28Speaker 01

  Or how you.

• 1:32:29Speaker 02

  Yep. Are you gonna react or are you gonna respond? Are you aware of whether you're reacting or responding right now? Why is this so important to you? If this thing doesn't change, does it change the way you feel about yourself? What is your connection to personal failure in this situation? Now, that's something that's helpful. That's something that you can, you can do something very useful with. But you can't, no set of behaviors, no set of, no, no magical words that you can ever say, no sentiments that you can espouse will change the heart of someone who doesn't wish to have their heart changed.

• 1:33:08Speaker 01

  Exactly. And that's why I think the most important tool for happiness or peace, actually, is to be able to have emotional regulation.

• 1:33:17Speaker 02

  Oh, that's a good one. Yeah, yeah. Learn how to regulate your own emotions.

• 1:33:22Speaker 01

  Because if you cannot regulate your emotions, you're gonna be constantly upset,

• 1:33:27Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:33:28Speaker 01

  disturbed,

• 1:33:29Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:33:30Speaker 01

  and imbalanced.

• 1:33:31Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm. You won't know how to manage disappointment.

• 1:33:34Speaker 01

  You can't manage disappointment because you're dysregulated, based on how that person's treating me or saying, what would say it, like, outside, external forces are constantly coming in. And if you can't regulate how you respond, you're fucked.

• 1:33:50Speaker 02

  Yeah. And it's, and you'll stay in that cycle and be unable to help yourself and not realize that those are your circumstances. And you'll be able to distract yourself by asking me, what can I do to help my wife or help my son or help my? You'll ignore your internal universe because you'll be so focused on other people, to the elimination of understanding what's going on with you.

• 1:34:14Speaker 01

  So to me, the best thing that a therapist can teach me or anybody, not me, anybody, is how to regulate your emotions. Because that will cover the gamut for so many other things.

• 1:34:27Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm. We have this thing in my office, it's called a feelings wheel, and I talk about it in the book too, about, um, your, your feelings, basically, like, um, uh, primary, secondary, tertiary emotions. And what is, when you sit on that emotion for long enough, what does it reveal to you? And sometimes it's another emotion. You know, you thought that you were angry, but you're angry because you feel disappointed. And you, you feel disappointed because you feel hopeless. Oh, so it's not that you feel angry, it's that you feel hopeless. You're trying to solve for angry, or really, which we need to solve for hopeless first. So it's also understanding the broad range of emotions that you feel

• 1:35:08Speaker 02

  and not allowing guilt, shame, and blame to make you feel like you need to disguise that emotion or rebrand it some way to make it more palatable.

• 1:35:23Speaker 01

  Let's take a quick break because I want to talk about something I ignored in my own house for way too long, my air, and how Air Doctor fixed it. I track pretty much everything, sleep, recovery, performance. And for a while, my recovery numbers were all over the place, even though nothing about my training had changed. Turns out, the variable wasn't my workouts, it was the air in my house. Once I started using Air Doctor, I noticed better sleep, more consistent recovery, and fewer allergy flare-ups. And with kids at home breathing the same air, clean air is just not an option. And I'm not willing to leave anything to chance. Air Doctor uses three-stage filtration to capture particles up to a hundred times smaller

• 1:36:07Speaker 01

  than standard purifiers. Things like dust, pollen, mold spores, pet dander, bacteria, viruses, odors, and even wildfire smoke. It automatically adjusts based on air quality, tells you when the filter needs changing, and it's incredibly quiet. Basically, I turn it on and forget about it, which is exactly how I like my products. Ninety-eight percent of Air Doctor customers say that their home air feels cleaner, safer, and healthier. And it recently won Newsweek's Reader's Choice Award for Best Air Purifier. So go to airdoctorpro.com and use promo code HUSTLE

• 1:36:48Speaker 01

  to get up to $300 off select Air Doctor models, plus a free three-year warranty. Every Air Doctor also comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee. That's Air Doctor Pro, promo code HUSTLE.

• 1:37:10Speaker 01

  You also talk about this Venn diagram, right? Your self-identity versus who you want to be.

• 1:37:15Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Actual self versus ideal self.

• 1:37:17Speaker 01

  Actual self.

• 1:37:18Speaker 02

  See, I really wrote my book.

• 1:37:19Speaker 01

  I know, I love that. And I actually read your book.

• 1:37:21Speaker 02

  I'm really impressed by that, by the way.

• 1:37:23Speaker 01

  Thank you. Because I, listen, I'm a big believer if I want to be able to show someone, like, respect is very big with me. Like, if you're gonna come on my show and give me your time, I'm gonna be respectful enough to read the thing that we're talking about.

• 1:37:36Speaker 02

  I appreciate you.

• 1:37:37Speaker 01

  Because I've been on many people's podcasts or did many interviews with my life. When I went to that person and they didn't know what the book I was, who I was.

• 1:37:45Speaker 02

  They didn't know, yeah, you can always tell when they don't know who you are.

• 1:37:48Speaker 01

  It's embarrassing, but I'm embarrassed for them.

• 1:37:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure.

• 1:37:52Speaker 01

  I'm like, are you that much of a fucking idiot that you wouldn't even take two seconds? Because, number one, then you're just wasting everybody's time because the interview is gonna be terrible.

• 1:38:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:38:01Speaker 01

  Because everything is on the surface and silly. Because if you don't know what you don't know, how are you gonna have a conversation?

• 1:38:06Speaker 02

  Can't go deep.

• 1:38:07Speaker 01

  Can't go in deep, you can't even go like second layer.

• 1:38:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:38:10Speaker 01

  You can't, deep is like, forget about it. So then like, it's a waste of everybody's time. So I always made a vow, like, I'm never, I'm gonna do the same to, like, how I want to be treated, I'm gonna treat somebody. So I would never let someone sit here for an hour with me pretending that I read the book.

• 1:38:25Speaker 02

  No, I really appreciate that.

• 1:38:26Speaker 01

  And I sat up till like 2:25 last night because I wanted to make sure I got every word. And I listened to podcasts, I've listened to your podcast with Mel Robbins, I've listened to your Breakfast Club, I listened to your own pod, that own podcast.

• 1:38:39Speaker 02

  Oh, my goodness.

• 1:38:40Speaker 01

  Yes, it's respect will get you far in life.

• 1:38:43Speaker 02

  See, are you, are people podcasters, are you listening to this? This is how you do it. This is how it's done.

• 1:38:49Speaker 01

  I bet you, I bet you of all your podcasting tours, I would bet you 50% or more did not read your book.

• 1:38:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, I could, yeah, absolutely. And I can tell, and I don't hold it against people.

• 1:38:59Speaker 01

  I do. I'm kidding.

• 1:39:02Speaker 02

  No, I don't hold it against people. But I just really make sure that I share profound appreciation for the folks that did.

• 1:39:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:39:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:39:11Speaker 01

  So what was I saying? Oh, yeah, self, because also, by the way, I really do like yourself. There's been times I've had real dogs on here where I was like, oh, my God, how am I gonna read this thing? It's so bad.

• 1:39:20Speaker 02

  Yo, there are some terrible, and maybe I shouldn't say this, but I'm gonna say this.

• 1:39:25Speaker 01

  Say it.

• 1:39:25Speaker 02

  There's some terrible books out there.

• 1:39:27Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:39:28Speaker 02

  I've, I've cracked the book open, I read it, and it was, it was awful.

• 1:39:33Speaker 01

  Awful.

• 1:39:34Speaker 02

  Awful. It's, and, and I try to give it, like, okay, I'm gonna give it three more pages, and I'm gonna give it four more pages. And after chapter three, if the book is still awful, now I'm upset because I wasted my time.

• 1:39:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was gonna say, because it is a waste of time. But very few books, though, are that, I mean, I don't know, a lot of books are not great. And a lot of them are always very, they're all the same of the same. It's the same message you re-packaged 7,000 times. Because I get a million pitches for this, you know, for this podcast, right? Everyone has, everyone has a podcast, everyone's an expert, everyone's a specialist. Every, most of it's all beige and vanilla. I don't, I can't tell who, the book's the same, the title's almost the same, the, the author's the same.

• 1:40:18Speaker 02

  I wanted my title to be different, my original title, and forgive me if you heard this on another podcast, but, but, you know what the original title was?

• 1:40:26Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:40:26Speaker 02

  Do yourself a favor and let that shit go.

• 1:40:29Speaker 01

  Oh, that's a good title. What, what's wrong with that?

• 1:40:31Speaker 02

  It's, I, I don't, it doesn't tell you what the book is about.

• 1:40:34Speaker 01

  What if you said, let that shit go? That would be a good title.

• 1:40:37Speaker 02

  No, I think it was to let that shit go, the publisher wouldn't fill it.

• 1:40:40Speaker 01

  Hachette maybe was not doing it.

• 1:40:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:40:42Speaker 01

  But you know the book that's one of the bestsellers of all time is The Art of Not Giving a Fuck?

• 1:40:47Speaker 02

  The Solo Art of Not Giving a Fuck, yeah.

• 1:40:48Speaker 01

  And like that whole series, they just put like a couple asterisks in the word fuck and they were good to go.

• 1:40:54Speaker 02

  You know, I think, I'm a huge fan, as an entrepreneur, of allowing the people that you hired who were experts to be experts. And when they said, oh, we don't know if that's a good idea, I was like, all right, let's figure something else out.

• 1:41:07Speaker 01

  Really? I'm a big believer in gut instinct.

• 1:41:10Speaker 02

  Sometimes, my instinct has been wrong. And while I trust my instinct, I've never written a book before.

• 1:41:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:16Speaker 02

  I've never bought a book to market, and I don't always know the nuance. So I don't wanna delve into the instinct of something that I don't have any lived experience traversing.

• 1:41:27Speaker 01

  Very good point.

• 1:41:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:41:28Speaker 01

  That's a good point, I like that. Because you're right, what do you know?

• 1:41:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, what the, what the fuck do I know? I ask for something all the time.

• 1:41:36Speaker 01

  No, but I will say what, I'll tell you what I think you know. This is what I really believe, is that you are good at what you do, right? You know how to capture people's attention and word things, you're a wordsmith, right? Because it's how you word something that makes something like have virility, viralness, right?

• 1:41:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure.

• 1:41:54Speaker 01

  So like, at the end of the day, you know how to like wheel people in. Someone sitting at a publishing house who doesn't, who's not a creator or a content machine, right? They don't know, right? Like, you, like, you, it's your audience, you know what your audience is gonna like, you know, kind of like, kind of like vibe with. That's how I would see it.

• 1:42:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, you know, when, when I, when it came to this book, you know, even when we were pitching it, we did. I pitched it to maybe 10 or 11 different publishers, and we did those interviews in two or three days.

• 1:42:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know, exactly, yeah.

• 1:42:31Speaker 02

  It's, it's crazy work, like, it's ridiculous.

• 1:42:33Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:42:34Speaker 02

  But when I met with Hachette, when I met with Little Brown Spark, they actually sent me a note afterward. And the note was like, Kira, it was great to meet you. We really believe in this work that you're about to bring to the world, and we don't know what decision we're gonna, you're gonna make. But we believe that it's gonna be incredibly impactful. And I was like, well, oh, damn.

• 1:42:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm siding with you.

• 1:43:00Speaker 02

  I mean, I side with them also because they, I think we just had a similar view of what this thing could ultimately be. But to feel wanted and desired by a publisher.

• 1:43:14Speaker 01

  Chosen.

• 1:43:15Speaker 02

  And to be chosen in that way, because everybody said yes. Nobody told me no, we didn't get any no's, everyone said yes, but that yes felt different.

• 1:43:25Speaker 01

  Do you know, you're not Jewish, obviously, but I am, so.

• 1:43:29Speaker 02

  What makes it obvious?

• 1:43:35Speaker 01

  I was gonna say, you know, there's like a big thing with the rabbinical in, in the Jewish law.

• 1:43:41Speaker 02

  What's rabbinical mean?

• 1:43:42Speaker 01

  Rabbi, I think rabbis, the people, I, I heard this from a very famous rabbi.

• 1:43:46Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:43:47Speaker 01

  God, it was Rabbi Shmuley. He's very, he's, he's like Madonna's rabbi, it was like a long, long time ago. But his words were really powerful, and it's a true, a truism in life, is that he says, at the end of the day, everyone's core need is to be chosen. So if you feel chosen, you gotta make somebody feel chosen. If you're marrying someone, you're gonna make that person, like, feeling chosen is above all the most, like, the most basic and most fundamental need. And the truth is, if I, whenever I think about that in life, with anything, personal, professional, whatever, it always does come down to that.

• 1:44:23Speaker 01

  Like, that's the most wonderful feeling if someone chooses you, or makes you feel special, or puts you, you know, kind of like positions you to be, you know, unique or special in some way. So when you said that about the note, it's like, subconsciously or consciously, whatever, the fact that they went that extra mile to tell you that is probably why, that's, you know, that's why.

• 1:44:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I think you're, you're Rabbi, is he your Rabbi or A Rabbi?

• 1:44:50Speaker 01

  He's A Rabbi, he's also, I know, he's a, he's a very well-known Rabbi.

• 1:44:54Speaker 02

  I think Rabbi was on to something there.

• 1:44:56Speaker 01

  Rabbi Shmuley?

• 1:44:57Speaker 02

  Right, that's a really cool name, by the way. Uh, I think Rabbi Shmuley was on to something there, being chosen. Also, I think there's something about feeling exceptional that just really jives with something in our brains. Even from a religious standpoint, there are, there is a lot of, there are a lot of motifs about being chosen, or feeling chosen, or listening to someone who was specially chosen. Um, it's just a reoccurring theme in a lot of the things that we believe. So, yeah, I, I think he's on to something. Also, I had, um, I've had, I had gefilte fish for the first time.

• 1:45:34Speaker 01

  When, today?

• 1:45:35Speaker 02

  No, years ago.

• 1:45:36Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 1:45:37Speaker 02

  I had the same, in the same six-month span of time, I had gefilte fish, latkes, latkes are underrated.

• 1:45:44Speaker 01

  Who underwrites them? They're delicious.

• 1:45:45Speaker 02

  People who've never had them before.

• 1:45:46Speaker 01

  They're fried potatoes.

• 1:45:47Speaker 02

  Potato pancakes.

• 1:45:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like a french fry that's delicious.

• 1:45:50Speaker 02

  It's so good. And what's the other one? It's a soup that has chicken in it.

• 1:45:54Speaker 01

  Oh, matzo ball soup. You never had that until recently?

• 1:45:57Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:45:58Speaker 01

  What made you have all these Jewish foods?

• 1:46:00Speaker 02

  I had, I had a Jewish coworker, and she was like.

• 1:46:03Speaker 01

  Oh, was she religious? Why was she bringing all this Jewish food around?

• 1:46:06Speaker 02

  But, no, so she wasn't religious, she was just culturally.

• 1:46:09Speaker 01

  But, so where were you? Were you at like a work meeting and she like ordered from a deli?

• 1:46:13Speaker 02

  No, it was just she and I working together. She's like, hey, I'm making this stuff and you gotta try it. And I was like, okay.

• 1:46:18Speaker 01

  Did you go to like a Shabbat dinner?

• 1:46:19Speaker 02

  No, she just brought it to the office.

• 1:46:21Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:46:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:46:22Speaker 01

  How many people do you have working for you now?

• 1:46:25Speaker 02

  Well, no, this was when I worked in a place.

• 1:46:27Speaker 01

  Oh, you worked in an office space?

• 1:46:28Speaker 02

  How many people work for me now? It's just a ridiculous, it's a ridiculous number. I don't remember. The last time we counted, it was like 30 something.

• 1:46:36Speaker 01

  30?

• 1:46:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's like 30 something.

• 1:46:38Speaker 01

  How, doing what? Tell me.

• 1:46:39Speaker 02

  Just different agents and managers and.

• 1:46:42Speaker 01

  Wait, wait, wait, wait, how do you, okay, wait, wait, wait. You have, does that, who helps you with your actual online stuff? Do you have like a social media manager who posts? You do all the social?

• 1:46:51Speaker 02

  I do all the socials.

• 1:46:52Speaker 01

  Because you walked in with that stick of some kind, you're gonna have to show me.

• 1:46:57Speaker 02

  You walk in with a stick and you just make things happen.

• 1:47:00Speaker 01

  Like Moses.

• 1:47:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't even use, I just started using an editor maybe about a year ago.

• 1:47:07Speaker 01

  How many, how many pieces of content are you doing a day?

• 1:47:12Speaker 02

  Not as many as you would think. I've started being more smart about it. So my speaking events, I'll bring my stick and I'll record it, or I'll hire a videographer and I'll turn that into content.

• 1:47:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:47:23Speaker 02

  Or, um, I, I maybe film content twice a week, and then that, two times a week, I'll have two posts. But then my podcast, Learn the Hard Way, is another two posts a week. And then, I, like, when this comes out, we'll have content.

• 1:47:38Speaker 01

  Five clips, at least.

• 1:47:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, and that will be content. And then I have threads that I type and I turn that into content. So it's not like I'm recording every single day, which has saved my mental health because I cannot.

• 1:47:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a lot of content.

• 1:47:52Speaker 02

  It's ridiculous.

• 1:47:52Speaker 01

  What do you, do you believe in this whole, I have to post four times a day stuff, like?

• 1:47:57Speaker 02

  They keep changing the algorithm, I don't know what's going on anymore.

• 1:47:59Speaker 01

  I mean, that's the thing, they're constantly changing this algorithm.

• 1:48:02Speaker 02

  I can't keep up anymore, so I quit. You got it, I quit. I'll do what I can do, if it works, it works, if it doesn't, it doesn't.

• 1:48:07Speaker 01

  That's all you can do. So then go back to the 30, who's the 30 people?

• 1:48:11Speaker 02

  Different, different agents, I have a speaking agent, I have a literary agent, I have a. Um, I have another agent that I'm forgetting right now. Um, my speaking agent has a team of a whole bunch of people. Then I have a manager who's my general agent and she has a team. I have an executive assistant. My wife is my COO and my business partner. She doesn't really work for me. We work together.

• 1:48:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:48:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. I have an editor who edits maybe about thirty percent of my content. The rest I do myself. I have a cameraman that I utilize.

• 1:48:41Speaker 01

  Were you good at all this stuff before? Like, how did you end up, end up becoming a content guy? Like, you were a therapist, you were a trainer, and then you became a therapist? But then how did the therapist become the, the, the content?

• 1:48:52Speaker 02

  The content creator?

• 1:48:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:53Speaker 02

  I didn't start off as doing mental health content. I started off as being a family content creator on Instagram and YouTube. And my content blew up just from viral videos, back when videos used to go viral.

• 1:49:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49:05Speaker 02

  Nothing really goes viral anymore. Trends go viral, but individual videos not as much.

• 1:49:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I hear you with that.

• 1:49:11Speaker 02

  I made a, a, a content piece. I was holding my daughter. It was at the end of a YouTube vlog video. And I, and I just, I was talking to the camera. And I just had a moment when I was talking about therapy and I was just, I wasn't a therapist yet. I just entered, uh, I just started grad school to become a therapist. I just had a baby. I just proposed to my girlfriend at the time, who was not my wife of seven years. And I was talking about therapy and I was like, hey, you know, men, y'all will see me here. And I'll be hugged up and loved, loved up on the way me and you think it's easy. And I was like, it's not. It's a tremendous amount of work. And if you, if you, don't go and see somebody about all the things you've been through, you'll have all of this and you'll never be happy. Yo, it took off.

• 1:49:55Speaker 02

  I mean, hundreds of millions of views. That's when we got managed by DBA. We got.

• 1:50:00Speaker 01

  How many, how many views did you get?

• 1:50:03Speaker 02

  I can't count. It was tens of millions. I wouldn't be surprised if over, not just on my account, but it got reposted. Viola Davis reposted it. Jill Scott reposted it. Then Oprah called me and it's like, I want to have you on a special show celebrating fathers. And then that happened and she sent us to Hawaii on a family trip. It's a crazy story. We had a whole, I made a video about my daughter. She was in a pink hoodie and she tried ketchup for the first time. And I had her dip and taste the ketchup and she did a little dance after. That goes to show you where social media was, like eight years ago.

• 1:50:35Speaker 01

  Wait, this, how many years ago did you say that you did that video?

• 1:50:38Speaker 02

  Uh, with me holding my daughter?

• 1:50:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, and said that whole thing about.

• 1:50:41Speaker 02

  It was during COVID.

• 1:50:43Speaker 01

  I remember that video.

• 1:50:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:50:45Speaker 01

  I didn't realize that was you.

• 1:50:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was me. I was shirtless, I had a hat on.

• 1:50:50Speaker 01

  I totally remember that.

• 1:50:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was me. Yep, and once I got managed, my team was like, hey, family content is cool, but since you're about to become a therapist, you want to try mental health? I said, no, I don't want to tell people what to do. And then my manager Christina Richardson, shout out to Christina, uh, from DBA. She was like, yeah, let's, let's, let's try it out a little bit. And I was all Jon Snow from Game of Thrones, the reluctant king. Like, mm, no, I don't want to do that. There's too many people giving advice. And then I tried it and people resonated with it so deeply, I just started to lean into it. I know, it's crazy.

• 1:51:24Speaker 01

  So that one video probably got what, like a hundred, not a hundred million, would it be that?

• 1:51:28Speaker 02

  On my page, it had to be, it was ridiculous. It had to be like twenty-five, fifty million or something like, it was ridiculous on my page. But then all the other reposts, it had to be in a hundred, it had to be, I wouldn't be surprised if it hit a hundred million.

• 1:51:42Speaker 01

  But what I don't get is, I've had posts that had shares of like fifty thousand shares or eighty thousand.

• 1:51:49Speaker 02

  A lot of shares.

• 1:51:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oprah's not calling me. You know what I mean? Like, why do you think that? Is it because it had that sweet, you're a man, father, like that stuff? You'd like, for whatever reason, that hits hard.

• 1:52:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it's, it's.

• 1:52:09Speaker 01

  Masculinity is a big, was a, is a big thing, like.

• 1:52:11Speaker 02

  I just think it hit on a lot of topics.

• 1:52:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:52:15Speaker 02

  That maybe aren't spoken about openly as much. It came from a young black dude. It came at a time, this was right after the George Floyd murder. So people were in a place to just hear that perspective in a different way. Remember, we just talked about this, outliers.

• 1:52:32Speaker 01

  I was gonna say this.

• 1:52:33Speaker 02

  It lined up.

• 1:52:34Speaker 01

  This is a video that kind of like did that for you.

• 1:52:36Speaker 02

  Oh, absolutely. It catapulted us into the national spotlight. And people didn't know that I was studying to be a therapist. Nobody knew that. I don't even think I took my exam yet at that time.

• 1:52:45Speaker 01

  And you, what was that, so the last, the line that you, when you left, like on, on that one, you're like, so if you're, what was your point? Like the, the, what was the premise of the video? So if you are someone that work on the relationship, what was your thing?

• 1:52:57Speaker 02

  I was just talking to men.

• 1:52:58Speaker 01

  I know, you said men.

• 1:52:59Speaker 02

  Go to therapy and have someone help you deal with the challenges that you've gone through in life. Or you'll have all this and you'll never be happy. It's not instant oatmeal.

• 1:53:10Speaker 01

  I totally remember that. And I can't even believe, I only remember it because you're saying it and you're sitting here.

• 1:53:16Speaker 02

  That's crazy.

• 1:53:16Speaker 01

  And I wouldn't even connected the dots. Cause you see a video, like, to me, it's like, you see these videos. I don't remember that, like, if, if I watch a video right now and I close my phone and start talking to you.

• 1:53:26Speaker 02

  Oh, you won't remember it, no.

• 1:53:27Speaker 01

  Like, if you ask me now, like, what did, what video did you see of me yesterday? And I watched all these videos of you, I don't remember what.

• 1:53:33Speaker 02

  Oh, gun to my head, if you ask me the last video I saw on social media, I'm, I'm done for.

• 1:53:37Speaker 01

  No, I think I saw a video of you like in an airport maybe, but I, I don't know what you were talking about or what the hell you were saying.

• 1:53:42Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, I just recently did a video in the airport. It was about, um, people being, being overly conscious of people watching you. Because I used to make content, but I was so scared to do it in public. And I was like, look, I'm in the airport and I was in Charlotte's airport. If you've been to Charlotte's airport, it is an unassumingly massive airport. It is huge. And I was filming in the middle of the airport and if you look in the background, not one person had their eyes on me.

• 1:54:05Speaker 01

  No one cares.

• 1:54:06Speaker 02

  No one cares.

• 1:54:06Speaker 01

  Nobody ca, but this is the thing in life, nobody cares.

• 1:54:09Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:54:09Speaker 01

  About anything.

• 1:54:10Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:54:10Speaker 01

  People are so concerned about what, what, what, you know? People are so concerned what other people think. They're so busy, like, especially in today's time, they're focusing on themselves. They're not paying attention to you. You could, I, I went to the gym the other, like, a couple of weeks ago. There was a crazy person, I'm not joking, like, literally a crazy girl. She was doing like massive choreography in the main part of the gym, like, in like a leotard. And like listening to music and she was doing backflips and, she was obviously, she wasn't doing it to dance. She was obviously a very, she was, who knows what she was doing?

• 1:54:41Speaker 02

  She had something going on.

• 1:54:41Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:54:42Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:54:42Speaker 01

  Not one person, I, I think people were like this and they looked away. No one cares because they're too busy with their, listening to their music on their phones. You could be, you could be like a person from an insane asylum, people don't care. You could be.

• 1:54:55Speaker 02

  No one cares and that is the gift and the curse of this reality. The good thing is, nobody cares. But the bad thing is, nobody cares.

• 1:55:04Speaker 01

  Nobody cares.

• 1:55:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it's a double-edged sword. I choose to use that to my advantage and not overthink what people may think or feel about me when I'm, you know, wrapped up in my own lived experience. It's tremendously liberating.

• 1:55:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:55:20Speaker 02

  To not be consumed with the what if of other people's thoughts, views and opinions.

• 1:55:26Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:55:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:55:27Speaker 01

  I just have one more question about your video, Myra. Like, so you did that video, all these people call you, then what? The next day you have to do another video? I don't understand how you became.

• 1:55:37Speaker 02

  I can't even tell you what happened the next day. Because I never saw this coming. I went to sleep. What's crazy is I can't believe I'm sharing this story. I actually got a free bike from a neighbor. Uh, financially, I was still working in education, you know?

• 1:55:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:55:49Speaker 02

  I was, I was, I mean, I was doing well. I was making like a hundred thousand dollars a year. It was a great job working for state education, working in Spade. And, um, I mean, it's much better than I ever thought I'd do financially. And I went to sleep, oh, no, a guy gave me a free bike and some guy at the gas station backed up and ran over my bike. And I was so upset that I almost got into a physical altercation with this guy. And the only reason I didn't punch this guy in the face is because I looked inside the van, his son was right there. And I didn't want that man's son to watch him hit the ground from getting a fist in his face. But the guy ran over my bike and said, man, I'm not paying for anything. Pretty much said, F you and drove off. And I was so upset, I had to carry my broken bike back home from the gas station because I was filling it up.

• 1:56:35Speaker 02

  I was filling the tire up. And I told my wife and, you know, she was like, it's, it's okay, everything will be fine. And I was so upset and I was just, I was so mad, I just fell asleep that night. And I woke up the next morning to my wife saying, yo, Jill Scott just reposted your video. She's like, babe, Viola Davis just reposted your video and the followers just went boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. And we ended up on Ellen and it was, it was crazy. It was a whirlwind. So that whole thing was birthed out of a situation that's so counterintuitive to what you think it would be. If you all, if you all are just on audio, her mouth is open right now.

• 1:57:11Speaker 01

  I, I, I love, because I love this story because it's completely organic. And some, you were really upset about something that you thought like that was gonna like, it basically ruined your, like you, you really wanted that, like.

• 1:57:25Speaker 02

  It was a six hundred dollar bike.

• 1:57:26Speaker 01

  You love that bike. That just says to me that like, you never know what can happen down the road or around the corner.

• 1:57:33Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 1:57:33Speaker 01

  You could be so down and out and then something out of the blue just turned your whole life around.

• 1:57:40Speaker 02

  Tomorrow gives you an opportunity to completely rewrite the narrative that exists today.

• 1:57:44Speaker 01

  So how many followers did you get just from that one video?

• 1:57:48Speaker 02

  It was, oh, hundreds of thousands, hundreds of thousands. I think right now I have about one point six million.

• 1:57:54Speaker 01

  On Insta, yeah.

• 1:57:55Speaker 02

  On Instagram, yeah.

• 1:57:56Speaker 01

  But that was, you started this six years ago.

• 1:57:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:57:59Speaker 01

  So it grew from, like, how many did you get from that video, like?

• 1:58:02Speaker 02

  It's, it's no telling, maybe, maybe.

• 1:58:06Speaker 02

  Maybe two hundred, three hundred thousand.

• 1:58:08Speaker 01

  But how did it keep on going is what I'm like to me.

• 1:58:10Speaker 02

  I just kept making more content.

• 1:58:12Speaker 01

  But listen, a lot of people make content, but it's never, it never hits.

• 1:58:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, lucky.

• 1:58:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was gonna say, you're lucky. Exactly.

• 1:58:20Speaker 02

  I'm, I'm lucky. I, I, I'm, I'm lucky management came in and kinda gave me a bird's eye view of what they saw and say like, look, you know, my, my manager when I first met her said, we're gonna turn you into the male Oprah. And I laughed in that woman's face. I thought she was being ridiculous. I don't know if I'll ever get there. I don't know if I wanna get there. Uh, because I find fame to be a very strange thing. Um, and I'm very satisfied where I am. If my career never grows from this, I'm so content and I'm so happy. I, I'll, I'll be fine. I don't think that's gonna be the case for me at all. But yeah, it's, it's all, all these things that came my way were just further confirmation. You know what? I'll tell you the tru- the truth of what really

• 1:59:05Speaker 02

  pressed me forward. It's these DMs that I get. I get so many DMs that if you were to send me a message right now and I hit refresh, I wouldn't be able to find it anymore. And I get DMs from men that have been in prison for a long time, who are still in prison, who wish they were to their fatherhood differently. I get DMs from women who see my videos with my daughters and say, man, I'd never envisioned what fatherhood could look like from that perspective, which is incredibly heartwarming. I get DMs from young men, sometimes from other countries, who don't really have a positive male influence to see online because red pill content is very attractive to a lot of young men and affirms a lot of their realities, but it also,

• 1:59:49Speaker 02

  along with the candy, it feeds them a little bit of poison too. And then it wraps that poison in more poison and they overdose on it without knowing. Just giving people hope and having people see things differently. Allow me to keep going and it's, it's really what fuels me. So many people are this close to a breakthrough and for something that I think that just rattled off in my kitchen while washing dishes to help your marriage or help your perspective or give you a more profound understanding of what you're dealing with in life that you can't admit to yourself. That what, what better thing to hold than that reality? So I feel, I feel tremendously honored to be in this position.

• 2:00:27Speaker 01

  There was a video, I, you know what was the one I liked the most? I told us to uh, Demetria that you, uh, you know from my team. I saw one of you doing your wife's braids or something.

• 2:00:38Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, I was taking out her hair.

• 2:00:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't even know that means take it. You were like picking out her hair.

• 2:00:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:00:44Speaker 01

  You know chimpanzees do that to each other as a sign of love. Do you know that?

• 2:00:47Speaker 02

  Mm-mm.

• 2:00:48Speaker 01

  They like help each other taking out like little things from their hair. It's like a, it's like a very loving type of thing.

• 2:00:54Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 2:00:55Speaker 01

  You don't see in your real life. And you did that with your wife. She was sitting on the floor and you were sitting behind her and you were like doing her braid or something. I'm like, I've never seen a guy ever do that. Like I.

• 2:01:05Speaker 02

  It's so crazy because I do that all the time. I've been doing that for her since we've known each other. It's just a good, it's a good opportunity for she and I to connect. And it also helps her. Like she's a mom. She's also.

• 2:01:18Speaker 01

  It helps so much. Yes.

• 2:01:19Speaker 02

  Yes, well, let's thank her to do. So it's like, it's like, it depends. It's like tracks. It's like, uh, like weave. It's so.

• 2:01:27Speaker 01

  Like extensions.

• 2:01:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, don't listen. I don't know. I don't know enough about hair. Don't, don't get me lying and mislabeling. But it's, I know, I know it's very expensive.

• 2:01:36Speaker 01

  Sorry, because I don't have it, but I know that I saw that you did that. I was like, wow, that's amazing.

• 2:01:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, you gotta cut it out with a very small pair of scissors.

• 2:01:42Speaker 01

  And you did that?

• 2:01:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, do it all the time.

• 2:01:45Speaker 01

  Like how long did it take?

• 2:01:46Speaker 02

  I'm good now. So it takes me like thirty five minutes. She's taking out her braids right now and I help undo the braids too. I do the girls. I don't do the girls hair, but I, I.

• 2:01:54Speaker 01

  You have, no, I saw that. I said, I'm like, he was, I'm like, he's, he seems such a nice guy. He was helping his wife with her hair.

• 2:02:00Speaker 02

  Oh yeah. I mean, listen, man, in the house, you gotta get shit done.

• 2:02:03Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:02:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:02:04Speaker 01

  I love that. Okay. I guess.

• 2:02:06Speaker 02

  I hate doing it by the way.

• 2:02:07Speaker 01

  Well, who, I mean.

• 2:02:07Speaker 02

  But I don't mind. I, I love helping her.

• 2:02:10Speaker 01

  Right. But you're doing it to help her. Of course. I'm not, I'm not saying that's your like number one pastime in the world.

• 2:02:15Speaker 02

  It's not, it's not my passion, but you know.

• 2:02:17Speaker 01

  It's not your hobby.

• 2:02:18Speaker 02

  No, you get in where you fit in.

• 2:02:20Speaker 01

  Exactly. Okay. So wait, so the book is called, you guys, It All Starts When You Do, by Kier Gaines. It is wonderful. He's wonderful. And you need to pick it up, but you don't need to, listen, he's got it. You're probably gonna have a New York Times bestseller anyway.

• 2:02:35Speaker 02

  Every podcast that I'm on keeps saying that and it's, um, thank you for that. I appreciate the vote of confidence. Right now we're like top ten in every category and we don't even, by the time you hear this podcast, the book is probably dropped. Big surprise, you know, we, everyone pre-filmed.

• 2:02:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Shocker. I know. Exactly.

• 2:02:54Speaker 02

  But right now we're a few weeks out from the debut and, um, I think we're number one, we're the number one emotional self-help new release on Amazon. And we're like number four, number one, two, three or four in every category.

• 2:03:08Speaker 01

  Do they know how many you sold pre?

• 2:03:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, they give me the numbers. They give me as close as they can get to the numbers. I try not to focus on it though.

• 2:03:16Speaker 01

  Do you do, are you doing a lot of like, um, speaking gigs around it?

• 2:03:20Speaker 02

  Hmm. No, most, I'm doing a lot of podcasts right now. The speaking gigs are starting to pick up because people see me on like Mel Robbins or all these different places. People will see me here and they say, oh, I think I want this guy to come and speak at this event.

• 2:03:35Speaker 01

  You should do a lot of those speaking things.

• 2:03:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:03:38Speaker 01

  You're doing, how many podcasts have you done already?

• 2:03:40Speaker 02

  Oh my gosh, I can't count. Yeah, I can't count. And they're all dropping around the same time. So if you're sick of my face, I regret to inform you.

• 2:03:48Speaker 01

  I know.

• 2:03:48Speaker 02

  That you're going to be sicker.

• 2:03:50Speaker 01

  They should be like spread out.

• 2:03:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, hey, that's not my thing to do.

• 2:03:53Speaker 01

  I know exactly.

• 2:03:54Speaker 02

  That's why I have thirty people on my team. So I don't have to worry about those things.

• 2:03:57Speaker 01

  My God, I think Barack Obama. It's like crazy.

• 2:04:00Speaker 02

  Who I recently met, which is a crazy story.

• 2:04:02Speaker 01

  How did you meet him? Really?

• 2:04:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't know if I could tell the story or not. Yeah, I, I met him. I met him at a golf course. I met him playing golf.

• 2:04:10Speaker 01

  Why is that? Like, that's not like.

• 2:04:12Speaker 02

  I don't know. I never know what's okay to say and what's not.

• 2:04:15Speaker 01

  Why? You read it, but he plays golf. Woo. It's like he was doing crack in the bathroom.

• 2:04:19Speaker 02

  No, no, Barack Obama would not do a thing like that, but, um.

• 2:04:24Speaker 01

  What'd you mean? Like you were on it?

• 2:04:25Speaker 02

  Martha's Vineyard.

• 2:04:26Speaker 01

  Okay. And, and what happened? He was on a golf course and so were you?

• 2:04:30Speaker 02

  Yeah. And my mentor introduced me to him.

• 2:04:32Speaker 01

  Who's your mentor?

• 2:04:33Speaker 02

  Uh, he's this brilliant man named Damon Martin. Uh, he's from Boston. He, he has this, this great company called Will Withall. Um, and he just casually introduces me to a former president.

• 2:04:45Speaker 01

  Casually? What do you mean casually?

• 2:04:46Speaker 02

  It's like, hey, hey, Kier, I want you to meet, uh, Barack, Barack. This is Kier. Kier's one of the leading voices in mental health. And I'm like, oh, hi, like, hey, how you doing? And he just like takes off his golf gloves. Like, hey, hey, good to meet you.

• 2:05:00Speaker 01

  Are you serious?

• 2:05:01Speaker 02

  Dead serious.

• 2:05:02Speaker 01

  And he just walked away?

• 2:05:03Speaker 02

  No, we were all in the same place. We were, he golfs way better than me. So he, he went far ahead of us.

• 2:05:10Speaker 01

  Did you speak to him at all? Is it just more like, hey, how you doing?

• 2:05:13Speaker 02

  No, talked a little bit, but he was, he was, he is, he's, he's nice with golf. He was on the putting green and I suck at golf. I'm horrible. Like very bad. And I was just more impressed by the game. And I thought in my mind, I was like, man, what if I beat Barack Obama in golf? Not a snowflake's chance in hell.

• 2:05:31Speaker 01

  Why? He's that good?

• 2:05:32Speaker 02

  He's, he's that much better than me.

• 2:05:33Speaker 01

  Who else was there besides you and Barack?

• 2:05:35Speaker 02

  I don't know if I can say.

• 2:05:36Speaker 01

  Tell me.

• 2:05:37Speaker 02

  I don't know if I can say.

• 2:05:38Speaker 01

  But why? It's, it's not like they're doing crack. It's like, they're playing golf.

• 2:05:42Speaker 02

  What is this obsession with crack? No, it's just, it's one of those things where, um, it was like, I found myself in a space and if I say too many names, I'm afraid I won't be invited back.

• 2:05:53Speaker 01

  Okay, fine. I won't. You, you can tell me after.

• 2:05:56Speaker 02

  I'll tell you off camera.

• 2:05:56Speaker 01

  Okay, fine. Good. Okay, you guys, maybe, well, we know Barack's gonna have a copy of this. Obama.

• 2:06:01Speaker 02

  I sure hope so.

• 2:06:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, right? You should send him one for free.

• 2:06:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, like I know where he is.

• 2:06:06Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, exactly. Uh, but your friend does at the golf course.

• 2:06:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And my friend will definitely be getting the copy.

• 2:06:12Speaker 01

  I love that. Well, like I said, you are, uh, like this is gonna be smash success, I'm sure.

• 2:06:19Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 2:06:20Speaker 01

  You're welcome. And everyone go, go pick up a copy, follow him online if you don't already. If you don't, you're missing a lot of fun and also insightful, wonderful content.

• 2:06:32Speaker 02

  You are such a good spokesperson for me. You, you're really gifted at the complimentary words. Um, I'm loving all of it.

• 2:06:39Speaker 01

  Really?

• 2:06:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, I sincerely appreciate that.

• 2:06:41Speaker 01

  No, thank you so much. Anytime. It's true. That's why maybe you feel it's actual, genuine. Um, okay, everyone, by the way, uh, don't forget to subscribe if you haven't because I always forget to say that and, um, let me know if you have any particular people you'd like me to invite on this podcast and have a wonderful day or night, depending on where you're listening or uh, what time. And goodbye.