Pod Insights The School of Greatness 797 Jameela Jamil: Be Courageous by Being You About this episode LET'S PUT AN END TO SELF-HATE. Shame takes on many forms. We can feel shameful about our race, our gender, about aging, and so much more. Shame makes us stay small. What if instead of feeling shame about our insecurities, we celebrated every aspect of ourselves? What if we learned to think independently instead of listening to what the media says about us? To become the powerful confident person you are meant to be, you have to identify your shame and work hard to eliminate it. It won’t just disappear on its own. On today’s episode of The School of Greatness, I talk about shame with an actor who has made body positivity her mission: Jameela Jamil. Jameela Jamil is an actress, model, presenter, and body positivity activist. Following a breast cancer scare in 2016, Jamil moved to America to become a screenwriter. She is known for playing Tahani Al-Jamil on the hit TV show The Good Place. Jameela is a big proponent of therapy as a way to move past our shame. She says mental health should be a top priority for all of us despite the stigma around it. So get ready to learn how to stand up to the harmful messaging we receive from the media on Episode 797. Some Questions I Ask: How much did you shame yourself growing up? (6:30) Do men or women shame women more? (9:00) What was the biggest insecurity you’ve had? (16:00) Do you think you’d be able to make the impact you’re making if you weren’t on tv? (29:00) In This Episode You Will Learn: The difference between Brittish and American cultures (4:00) The types of shames that Jameela has “killed off” in herself (11:00) What led Jameela to come to America (24:00) How to combat inequality in the workplace (37:00) The wrong messages that men are taught by the media (42:00) Follow me on: Instagram @LewisHowes Twitter @LewisHowes Facebook @LewisHowes Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX
Transcript 12,335 words · 2 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Lewis Howes? This is episode number 797 with the inspirational Jamila Jamil.
0:08 Lewis Howes? Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.
0:33 Lewis Howes? Renee Brown said, courage starts with showing up and letting ourselves be seen. I am so excited to show up today with Jamila Jamil to talk about unlocking the real you and showing all of yourself. Now, for those that don't know who Jamila is, she's an actress, writer, DJ, model, and radio host, who currently stars opposite Kristen Bell and Ted Danson on the television show The Good Place, which is a mega hit. She first started in media as a presenter and was recruited by BBC Radio 1 to host her own show, where she made history as the first woman to host the network's show Official Chart. As a fashion model, she has been featured on the covers of Vogue and The Cut.
1:16 Lewis Howes? And Jamila is also a social activist and philanthropist, having founded Why Not People, an event and membership company focused on making live entertainment venues accessible and comfortable for disabled people. Most recently, she started the movement, which has been taking over the online world, an Instagram account, @i underscore way, for women to celebrate themselves, feel valuable, and fight toxic beauty standards. And in this interview, we talk about how she overcame feeling ashamed of her race and her body, how being injured for a very long time when she was younger helped shape her future and the lessons she learned.
1:57 Lewis Howes? During that injury, acknowledging privilege and using it as a key to open doors for others. The importance of mental health, therapy, and staying content, no matter what you have going on in your life. That and so much more. This is a powerful one. Make sure to share with your friends. LewisHowes.com/797. Let me know what you think. At Lewis Howes on Instagram. Tag me and tag Jamila Jamil as well and let her know that you're listening and the part you enjoyed the most. Be a hero for someone today, a friend, a family member, someone online that you admire. Send them this link so they can be inspired in their day as well. Send it out right now.
2:39 Lewis Howes? I am so excited about this interview. I hope you enjoy this one. I think it's an important conversation that everyone needs to hear. Make sure to share with your friends as you're listening. Tag me. Let me know what you're thinking. Tag Jamila as well. Without further ado, let me introduce to you to the inspiring Jamila Jamil.
2:58 Lewis Howes? Welcome everyone back to the School of Greatness Podcast. We've got Jamila Jamil in the house. Good to see you rocking and rolling. You're taking over the world right now. We met four, five years ago roughly through mutual friends. And you've taken off since then. You just moved to LA. You were a big radio star in the UK doing a radio show and hosting events and things like that. And you have an amazing story. I've learned more about you in the last couple of weeks since I've been preparing for this. But can you share about, you had a really interesting childhood and I read that you were bedridden for a year. You got in a car accident. You were bedridden for a year or recovering for a year. Is that true? You're 17. You told me before the interview, you taught yourself how to act by watching TV.
3:43 Speaker 01 Not intentionally. I just learned how to act and host and learned how to be around people from watching television. Everything I know is from TV.
3:51 Lewis Howes? Because you just did, you just got your first show a couple of years ago.
3:54 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm.
3:54 Lewis Howes? And you never acted before, right?
3:56 Speaker 01 No, I know.
3:57 Lewis Howes? It's crazy.
3:58 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's very strange. I've had a generally, I think, a truly bizarre trajectory after a very tricky beginning. And so I think I'm having to constantly adapt myself to my ever-changing surroundings.
4:10 Lewis Howes? Hmm.
4:11 Speaker 01 But I think I am an adaptable human being. I think we probably all are, but I don't, uh, can I swear?
4:17 Lewis Howes? Yeah, a little bit.
4:18 Speaker 01 Ah, I don't have to. Um, I don't really, uh, shame and fear are not things that I resonate with any longer. And I think that's been the key to my success.
4:29 Lewis Howes? How much did you shame yourself growing up?
4:32 Speaker 01 Oh, a lot. I mean, I'm Pakistani and a woman and from Britain. So I mean, that's the, I think, the holy trifecta, almost, of shame of different people, ways to shame themselves.
4:44 Lewis Howes? There's a lot of Pakistani women in, in London and UK, right?
4:46 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm.
4:47 Lewis Howes? Every time I go to London, it's very diverse. There's people from all over the world.
4:50 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm. But women get very shamed within that culture and you have very, uh, it's a very narrow parameter within which you're able to live freely, uh, without being judged and shamed.
4:59 Lewis Howes? Really?
4:59 Speaker 01 Uh, yes, of course.
5:00 Lewis Howes? How are they, how are they shamed in that culture, just so I'm aware?
5:03 Speaker 01 Well, I mean, I'm not trying to stereotype or bring any further negative connotation towards Muslim people. Um, I'm not a Muslim myself, uh, just because I don't practice any religion. I'm agnostic. But I, uh, am potentially actually atheist, but, um, it is definitely a culture that still controls women quite a lot. And, and in many parts of the less developed cities within the Muslim countries, women really don't, I mean, a lot of them aren't allowed to drive or read or go to school or leave the house unaccompanied. And so, you know, and we're shamed about sex and shamed about what we wear and shamed about how we behave. And so there's, uh, there's a lot of shame within that culture, a lot of shame within, in Britain.
5:43 Speaker 01 Shame is almost a badge of honor in Britain. The more you shame and flagellate yourself, uh, the better a person you are, yeah.
5:49 Lewis Howes? Really?
5:49 Speaker 01 They only respect the hustle. They do not respect the win. They actually genuinely disrespect the win. And as soon as you win, you are no longer a member of the society and you are pushed out as a leper, uh, who is.
6:00 Lewis Howes? So don't be successful.
6:02 Speaker 01 And no, don't be, uh, don't be ambitious, don't be too successful, don't get ahead of yourself, don't treat yourself. It's a very common thing within British culture to, if you compliment any woman on what she's wearing, any woman, uh, she will immediately tell you how cheap and old and shit the thing that she's wearing is.
6:18 Lewis Howes? Really?
6:19 Speaker 01 It's instant, it's, it's, uh.
6:20 Lewis Howes? Why are women not, I've been, I feel like I've been, I, I love to acknowledge people.
6:26 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm.
6:27 Lewis Howes? I love to acknowledge them for the person they are and the, the humanity I see in them and the love and the.
6:31 Speaker 01 It's also very American to compliment people, which is lovely.
6:33 Lewis Howes? Is it?
6:34 Speaker 01 Yeah.
6:34 Lewis Howes? So British people don't compliment people?
6:36 Speaker 01 Oh, no, no, no. No, you have to self-deprecate, uh, until you explode.
6:41 Lewis Howes? But it's just like you're, it just shows you have a lack of self-worth when you can't receive the acknowledgement and just say, thank you, you know, or a simple like nod.
6:49 Speaker 01 But to us, it feels like a lack of conceit and I don't, I don't applaud this way of being, I think it's held us back tremendously. And sometimes I wonder where it comes from and I have a very far-fetched theory about it, which is that I wonder if because the Brits went to try to control, I mean, colonize and take over so many countries and then were slowly told to bugger off by all of those countries and now we have been left as this sort of tiny pathetic little island after having tried to be this empire. I think that's why we've had to extra self-deprecate in order to, I mean, almost like lie down on the floor so you can't really kick us. I think that in compensation for the loss of that empire that we strive towards, or they strive towards, because when Pakistani, they're from a country that they colonized
7:32 Speaker 01 and lost, I think that might be where it comes from perhaps, that just the self-flagellation is because of the shame of, of striving and failing.
7:39 Lewis Howes? Wow. Now, who do you think shames more to women? Men shaming women or women shaming women?
7:45 Speaker 01 Men shaming women and men pitting women against one another. And there is still, of course, an oppressive patriarchal institution that runs Hollywood, it runs media, it runs most of the big corporations in the world, uh, I mean, something in the ninety percents, I believe. And so it means that we are. We're being hazed from every angle, women, by different outlets and different ways and different forms. And so I think that unfortunately, this does come from male shame that has been ingested by women. And we've started to use it against ourselves. And so what I'm trying to do is empower women to stop, rather than wait for men to stop shaming us.
8:27 Speaker 01 I think it is more empowering to say, why don't we now try to take agency over our own sense of self and our own sense of shame? And kill it ourselves.
8:37 Lewis Howes? So kill it so it doesn't matter what someone says to you?
8:39 Speaker 01 Yeah, I just don't care. Like, I don't care now. I used to care so much about what people thought about the way that I looked. I was anorexic. I cared about the way that people perceived me. I was a very socially anxious person. And now I just, I don't feel that way. I don't mind getting up on stage in front of a hundred thousand people and talking. I'm not self-conscious. I try jobs that I'm fully in equipped for, and I often make an ass of myself publicly. I speak straight from my mind onto Twitter, which is a very public forum, and I don't ever edit myself. And I write blogs that are unedited, and I'm willing to go back on what I've said and apologize publicly. I don't feel shame anymore. I have murdered my shame.
9:19 Lewis Howes? How does someone murder their own shame?
9:20 Speaker 01 It's a very long process of like, sort of divide, like dividing all of your different types of shame up, especially if you're a woman, especially if you're a woman of color. There are so many different forms of shame that you are having to navigate through all of the time. And so you isolate each one and then you go after which of the different things in your life you need to eliminate in order to rid yourself of that.
9:39 Lewis Howes? Can you share some of, can you share some of the shames that you've murdered off? And kind of the process for eliminating each one and which one was the easiest, the shames and the hardest of the shames?
9:50 Speaker 01 I mean, they've gone anywhere from the way that I look, because I, growing up, I only saw thin, white women glorified as beautiful. So body image shame, of course, which, I mean, it's not hard to figure out where that came from. And that was pre-social media. Where it didn't come to find me. I had to go and seek it out. My god, I was born in the nineties, otherwise I would definitely be dead now. I don't know how teenagers are struggling. I don't know how they survive it. Yeah, I was, I was, no, I was born in the end of the eighties and I was a teenager in the nineties, yeah. So I think that had I not grown up then, if I'd grown up now in this current time where you are hunted almost by shaming brands. It really feels like that, that I don't know what I would do. I don't know how teenagers are.
10:31 Speaker 01 Coping at all, in fact, they're not, like, the numbers are the highest they've ever been of teenage cosmetic surgery, eating disorders, self-harm and uh and depression and anxiety.
10:43 Lewis Howes? Loneliness.
10:43 Speaker 01 I mean, the suicide rates in teenagers have just accelerated so fast that I I'm afraid of having children. Because I don't know what I'm bringing them into. It feels irresponsible currently to to not do everything in my power to clean up this dirty world before I bring a child into it.
11:01 Lewis Howes? Wow. So the body image.
11:03 Speaker 01 The body image.
11:04 Lewis Howes? Was the first.
11:04 Speaker 01 Uh, I felt shame about my race because I grew up in a time where there was no representation of my people. You have white people playing my people.
11:13 Lewis Howes? Really? Wow.
11:14 Speaker 01 Peter Sellers, uh, or like numerous other people, browning up, white people browning up and playing us. And always only portraying us as the terrorist who kills white people. Or as the stereotypical, embarrassing, socially inept, unattractive, unsexy, pathetic boon.
11:35 Lewis Howes? Right.
11:35 Speaker 01 Yes, always playing the fool. Uh, I never saw women who looked like me being seen as the the strong one. Or the object of desire. And that definitely harmed me and made me internalize a lot of self-hate about my.
11:48 Lewis Howes? Really?
11:49 Speaker 01 Race for a really long time. And that's what that does. Uh, that's what a lack of representation does.
11:53 Lewis Howes? You didn't have any role, positive role models.
11:55 Speaker 01 No, you, yeah. And so you naturally internalize that as there must be something wrong with me if nobody is ever glamorizing or glorifying that.
12:01 Lewis Howes? Right.
12:02 Speaker 01 Like, I'm never the hero, so there must be something wrong with me. There's no brown Barbie. There's no this, that and the other. I'm talking about when I was coming up.
12:07 Lewis Howes? Yeah, of course.
12:08 Speaker 01 And so I had huge shame around my culture and there's still so much shame around being brown. I mean, bleaching creams, like, fair and lovely and all these different things are still being sold en masse in countries where you have a lot of brown people, both within the within the brown and black community, like bleaching is still huge.
12:27 Speaker 01 It's still a thing, which is so bizarre, because you have now white people trying to make themselves look brown and exotic and of a different race, and yet you still have this self-hating aspect within darker-skinned cultures.
12:40 Lewis Howes? Why is that? If wider people want to be more exotic-looking?
12:44 Speaker 01 Well, it's always beige. No one ever wants to be, no, white people aren't looking to be very dark-skinned. So I think that's, you know, they're sort of like a soft caramel that everyone's going for. So I think those of us who have like natural melanin in our skin, it's also very different cultures. So over there, you're seen as like, it's seen as almost like kind of, I think one of the historical references of it is that if you are seen to be dark-skinned in my country, it means that you are working outside. And so it's a sign of poverty or low class.
13:11 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
13:11 Speaker 01 I can't speak to other cultures, yeah. And so, you know, I think that was part of the thinking in like glorifying wealth.
13:18 Lewis Howes? Right.
13:18 Speaker 01 And so, but then it kind of has now become a way of like thinking, I think within Japanese culture as well, there's a lot of like trying to achieve a Eurocentric appearance. And so that still is something that exists, and it is because of lack of representation. And so again, that's something that I'm trying to, I'm trying to be the change that I want to see in the world, the change that I didn't get to see. And it's cool that I don't airbrush myself, I don't use filters, I make sure that I am open about wanting to tan, and I'm very like anti-bleaching creams in order to try and look at Eurocentric. I've never changed my ethnic features. And I speak out a lot about this because I want to be proudly part of my ethnicity now, so that young Asian kids can see, South Asian kids can see me.
14:03 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
14:04 Speaker 01 And feel proud of who they are, hopefully.
14:07 Lewis Howes? What was the biggest insecurity you had that you've moved past or are working on still?
14:14 Speaker 01 No, well, weirdly, it's being a strong outspoken female.
14:19 Lewis Howes? That's an insecurity?
14:19 Speaker 01 Yeah. It's not an insecurity now, it's one that I've had to move past. But when you are bright... And if you are funny, that is something that hasn't really been liked or celebrated or really acknowledged in the world as a good thing for a woman.
14:35 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
14:35 Speaker 01 And I was actively told that I wasn't smart or funny uh by male writers back in the United Kingdom and I was really, my only value was in my appearance and I was just to stand there and look attractive while the boys did all of the funny things. And the writers' rooms were all predominantly male and I was just never really given a chance and having to and also dealing with a lot of masculine insecurity. I'm not saying all men do this. There are lots of secure, wonderful ally men who are great. I'm not all mending this, but there are also a lot of men who are very threatened by an intelligent woman and by a powerful woman and by a woman who's willing to speak out and not. And this fear of not being liked is so prevalent in female, in the female psyche because we're
15:18 Speaker 01 told that we must be likeable. We must not be seen as problematic in any way. We mustn't be difficult. We mustn't be bossy. We have all these extra fun words that are thrown at us and I think no longer being afraid of people thinking I'm unlikable or difficult has been something very, very exciting to embrace. I'm not here to be anyone's friend. Like, I'm here to educate people and wake people up and stop them from making all of the mistakes that I've made that lost me thirty years of my life.
15:44 Lewis Howes? Wow. You lost it thirty years?
15:46 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm. I wasn't so mentally ill for so long in my life. Not now. I don't consider myself mentally ill. I've done a lot of work to come out of it, but I had a rough childhood with no money and uh lots of emotional problems due to circumstances that I won't go too in, too far into because of a very, very difficult and traumatic childhood. And then I was deaf on and off until I was twelve. Uh I think they noticed I was deaf at about one and a half and so I would have to have, I had maybe seven operations until we were able to restore just half of my hearing back. I still only have partial hearing now and I'm thinking about getting a hearing device at the moment because it's, it gets worse as you get older. But I think that.
16:31 Speaker 01 Was a really difficult thing to overcome. And then I got bullied at school for my colour and for my size, because I was chubby. And because I went to an all-girls school and that can be brutal.
16:43 Lewis Howes? Hmm.
16:43 Speaker 01 And then I was hit by a car into another car. And hurt my back so badly that I couldn't walk for over a year and a half without crutches or a walking frame. And uh was pulled entirely out of like the social. Socializing and the social growth of being a teenager, learning how to acclimatize to other people. Uh I was just this little sort of like isolated weirdo who had no one come to visit me. No one spending time with me, yes. And so I spent sometimes sort of a whole week entirely on my own without any real human interaction other than my brother. Who himself was incredibly sick at the time, who would take me to the toilet, but other than that, I had no real interaction with anyone. So I would watch television from the second I woke up into the second I went to sleep.
17:27 Speaker 01 And watching television and daytime TV, so we're talking Dr Phil, Oprah, uh Maury.
17:35 Lewis Howes? Springer.
17:35 Speaker 01 Ricky, yeah Springer, like everything weirdly this is and then all of like NBC's shows like Friends and Frasier and. Uh yeah, Seinfeld, everything I watched and so those characters became my friends.
17:48 Lewis Howes? Hmm.
17:48 Speaker 01 And those people became how I learned social norms.
17:51 Lewis Howes? Hmm.
17:51 Speaker 01 And the TV shows uh that I was seeing, the daytime TV shows were helping me understand that my trauma. That I'd gone through up until then emotionally and psychologically. And so I genuinely, weirdly, I owe a lot to daytime TV because it helped me identify. The evils in my life and start planning how to get away from them.
18:10 Lewis Howes? Wow.
18:11 Speaker 01 So everything I know I own to a television.
18:15 Lewis Howes? I got you're on TV.
18:16 Speaker 01 And now I'm on TV. I'm full circle, yeah.
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19:06 Lewis Howes? Now, the Inner Circle is a group with thousands of entrepreneurs from around the world who are learning, who are getting coaching, who are being held accountable to their business goals and their dreams. Each month, we help you unlock more potential for your business and your growth. If you want to be a part of this incredible community, then I want you to join the Inner Circle today by going to lewishouse.com/innercircle. Again, check it out right now, lewishouse.com/innercircle. And now, let's get back to this here.
19:38 Lewis Howes? Do you feel like your character is empowering people watching you to break through certain norms or beliefs?
19:45 Speaker 01 Probably not my character, but I think the fact that as in Tahani, the character I play on the show. Yeah, I think it's just great to see a South Asian woman whose main storyline isn't about being a South Asian. It's just sort of, it's not really important to my character. And I think that's really brilliant. And I love that about Mike Schur, that he doesn't tokenize ethnicities. He just wants to show on screen what we see out in the world. And you see that within all of his work. Everything is very diverse and just very normal. And people respond to that because they can actually identify with it. We've seen, we have categorical proof of how much success you have when you include the people that we have disregarded for so long. Look at Black Panther, look at Crazy Rich Asians, look at Bridesmaids and The Good Place.
20:28 Speaker 01 Like all these hits are happening because people are denying.
20:35 Speaker 01 Most of the world of representation just means you're denying yourself a huge spending power because people can't relate to the stories anymore. So they've stopped going and they've stopped paying to see storylines that they can't relate to.
20:47 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
20:48 Speaker 01 Gone, like, it's just dumb.
20:50 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
20:51 Speaker 01 It doesn't make sense.
20:52 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
20:52 Speaker 01 It's like when you deny yourself, when you deny women their rights in certain countries in this world, and then you wonder how you're still a third world country. It's like, we've denied yourself half a workforce.
21:01 Lewis Howes? Right.
21:02 Speaker 01 Why are you giving yourself all this extra homework? Let the women work. And then you will no longer be a third world country because you will have a double the size of a workforce. Everybody wins. And so it's cool to be a part of a show that definitely it runs throughout all of it. I think there could still stand to be more disability representation and more LGBTQ plus IA. I don't know. I think, I think that's right.
21:26 Lewis Howes? I think, I think Glee did a great job with that.
21:28 Speaker 01 Yeah.
21:29 Lewis Howes? Five years ago, I remember this was, I remember, I watched this show all the time. It was kind of my guilty pleasure. That and Nashville, because I like singing shows.
21:36 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah.
21:37 Lewis Howes? Can't sing, so I'm like, I like what I can't do. And, you know, they had someone in a wheelchair. They had some, you know, people of all races and colors and.
21:46 Speaker 01 And look at the success.
21:47 Lewis Howes? Yeah, it was a huge hit.
21:48 Speaker 01 It was super cool.
21:49 Lewis Howes? It was very inclusive. Now, how did you get this role in the first place? Because you came here to be a screenwriter, isn't that right?
21:55 Speaker 01 I did.
21:56 Lewis Howes? So you're just like writing and then someone said audition for this or what?
22:00 Speaker 01 Well, if we go back 10 years, I was an English teacher who was approached by a producer in a pub who said that he thought I was like, we started a conversation, then he said he thought I was funny. And there was this huge national audition going for this big hosting job in the UK. And I was like, oh, no, thank you. I'm happy in my career.
22:15 Lewis Howes? Teaching high school English?
22:16 Speaker 01 I was teaching English as a foreign language and I was teaching high school English.
22:19 Lewis Howes? Okay.
22:20 Speaker 01 So in two separate schools I was working at the time. And I was like, oh, no, thank you. I think show business is a bit. Trivial and pathetic, uh, full of boring, strange people. I wasn't entirely wrong, uh, some of it, some of that is true, but, um, but. Then he said it was a thousand pounds a day and as a young English teacher, you don't like.
22:41 Lewis Howes? Thousand a day?
22:41 Speaker 01 Thousand pounds a month.
22:43 Lewis Howes? Right.
22:43 Speaker 01 And so I just went for the audition for the sort of why the not of it all. Um, I'd read this book by Danny Wallace called The Yes Man about a depressed man who decides to say yes to absolutely everything. In life and uh, and he documents how it changes his world. And I decided to say yes to everything. Going to that audition was kind of like part of that experiment. And so I owed Danny Wallace probably quite a lot of money uh, for writing that book. Cause that has led to every decision I've ever made. So I got the gig, a week later I was live on television. Not knowing myself, how I knew all of the cues, how I was able to read a teleprompter. It felt so natural to me and I had never done anything like that before and it was because of all of the television.
23:25 Speaker 01 The inhuman hours I'd put into studying television without realising it. I had almost via osmosis, uh, ingested the ability to perform on camera. It's so weird. And so that led to a radio career after I'd done that kind of for a couple of years. I decided I wanted to step away from the camera because I was tired of being reduced to nothing more than my aesthetic. So I moved on to the radio, uh, where I would be able to prove that I can actually be a broadcaster. And that went really well and I made history as the first woman to ever be given the official chart, which is our billboard one hundred, which has been on air for sixty years. And never been given to a woman, which is so weird and sad, but thanks. I did that for a couple of years that went really well and I really enjoyed it and I have huge respect and love for the BBC.
24:07 Speaker 01 But I was still restless. I still had more that I wanted to do and in the United Kingdom, especially even six years ago. I mean, still now there isn't much, but diversity is still such a problem and female, uh. Interesting roles and jobs for women are still few and far between. And you know, we still have a competition called Rear of the Year in England. Rear of the Year. Rear of the Year, yeah. And you know, you've got a woman like of all, women of all ages, sixteen to sixty, like showing off their bum. And these are broadcasters who've worked really hard to get to where they are, being reduced to their buttocks. Which, you know, maybe that's your vibe, that's cool, I'm not judging that, but that wasn't for me. And I didn't wanna have to become a reality TV star and go on like a dancing show. I didn't wanna do any of those things. For me personally, I wanted to be able to have the career that I deserved.
24:51 Speaker 01 And every time I'd come over to America, I'd turn on the television and you had curvaceous African American women in their fifties, hosting huge Good Morning shows, and you had people of all race and color and sexuality on these big mainstream shows. And so my heart was calling from America. And also I wanted to be a writer, and in England, you're very much so told to stick to your lane. It's like, either you're a host, or you're an actor, or you're a writer, or you're a DJ. You can't be a multi hyphenate, whereas in America, they see a, they hear multi hyphenate, and they just start seeing dollar signs everywhere. And I like that and respect that about America. I think that was great. That's fine. And you are an example of kind of building your own empire in all these different ways, which I think is hugely inspiring. Thank you.
25:35 Speaker 01 And so I, so I was toying with the idea of leaving, but I was also had that typical fear, which I think especially hits women of like, you're lucky to be in any room that you're in. There's only a room for one, and you are the chosen one, and if you give it up, someone else will take your spot, and then you are buggered. And so I had not been honoring that, that feeling of unrest in me and a lack of stimulation. And then I found, a doctor found a lump in my breasts, it was huge. And I had a week to find out whether it was cancer or not. I kinda get these every decade, I get a huge health scare that kicks me up the arse. So the car accident had been the one ten years ago, then this one was, you know, ten years later.
26:20 Speaker 01 And in that week, I made a list, a bucket list, a [BLEEP] list, if you will, you can bleep that out, of everything that I would do if it turned out not to be cancer, and the number one thing was move to California. And I had no plan, no visa, no agents, no nothing, and I'd. Lost all of my money trying to set up a, well, just try, I'd basically given a lot of my money away to charity. And so I really didn't have a lot going for me at this time, other than the profile that I built up in the United Kingdom. But a week later, I found out I did not have cancer. I had to have an operation and six weeks to that date, you can fly.
27:00 Speaker 01 So that was the day that I flew out on a one-way ticket to America with all of my bags and no idea what I was gonna do, nowhere to live.
27:06 Lewis Howes? This was what, a couple of years ago?
27:08 Speaker 01 Four years ago.
27:09 Lewis Howes? Four years ago.
27:09 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's around the time that we met.
27:11 Lewis Howes? Twenty fifteen, is that right?
27:12 Speaker 01 Yeah.
27:12 Lewis Howes? Okay.
27:12 Speaker 01 And I'd written this pilot that got sent to Three Arts by a friend, just to see if anyone would want to represent me. And they did, and they assigned to me as a writer and we started developing this project. And then this audition for The Good Place came up and I was kind of out of cash at this point. So sort of looking to host or do something, I didn't think it would be acting. But I was, you know, I was kind of pressured by my agents and managers to go for this audition.
27:36 Lewis Howes? I'll do radio, I'll do anything.
27:37 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so my, my agents and managers forced me to go to this audition for The Good Place, even though I was so certain that I couldn't act. Because I'd never tried before and didn't think I deserved to be in that position. But I went and Mike Schur is a very strange man and he gave me a complete novice the job.
27:56 Lewis Howes? Wow.
27:57 Speaker 01 So now I am an actor on The Good Place.
28:00 Lewis Howes? Amazing.
28:01 Speaker 01 And I've almost kind of completed all of my multi hyphens now, but I've added an extra slash.
28:08 Lewis Howes? Do you think you'd be able to make the impact you're making without being on TV?
28:11 Speaker 01 No.
28:12 Lewis Howes? Really?
28:13 Speaker 01 Yeah, and that's the gross sad thing about it, you know, and I think that when people don't acknowledge their privilege, it's really depressing. Like I have, my looks, even though ten years ago, my looks were considered not attractive because ethnicity was not in. And I used to be called a monkey on Twitter every single week. Now my looks are more in, so I therefore can say that I have whatever they would describe as sort of. I have a societally, conventionally attractive aesthetic. So I kind of, they call that pretty privilege, I believe, that's what that's referred to. I'm also slender, so I have slim privilege. I'm also wealthy now, so I have that privilege and I have a huge platform. So I am bursting with privilege, just because I have been through a lot and I've been subjected to a lot of racism and all these different things.
28:56 Speaker 01 It doesn't mean that I do not now have privilege and it's interesting because some people, not many people, most people support all of my activism. But some people say that I'm too privileged to speak out for the underprivileged and that it's in some way comes across as hypocrisy.
29:08 Lewis Howes? No matter how much you try to serve or help, you're always gonna be judged.
29:11 Speaker 01 No, yeah, but it's also like quite a clever way to, or a stupid way to silence everyone because we don't listen to the underprivileged. We don't listen to fat people, we don't listen to dark skinned people, we don't listen to disabled people or trans people, we don't listen to anyone. And so we kind of just step on them and push their voices out. And so, so you're either to, let's say with the attractive debate or the fat debate, like you won't listen to fat women. And you silence them and you say that they're bitter and jealous. So then a slim woman speaks out about fat phobia and you say she's too slim to speak out about it. No one is then able to speak out about it and so therefore we are all muzzled. And then the conversation never gets had, so I've broken through that and taken a lot of risks and lost a lot of money in doing this.
29:51 Lewis Howes? Probably lost a lot of friends too.
29:52 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, for sure, but I'm determined to use the key of my privilege to open the door for other people. And more people need to do that. It's, it's a shame that so many people with power and privilege, way more power and privilege and influence than I have congratulate me privately. But don't stand alongside me for fear of losing money or likability, yeah.
30:13 Lewis Howes? Followers or whatever.
30:14 Speaker 01 Yeah, and in particular, women don't wanna be seen as difficult or outspoken in this industry and we need to be, we have to be. And yes, you do lose money and yes, you do piss people off and you do incur some negativity, but it's worth it for what you are doing to change in the world. Like, New York Congress are now taking a certain diet tea brand and making it, they're trying to make it illegal for minors to be able to buy these diet products because of my campaigning. And they've specifically shouted me out, the fit teas and the black tummy teas and all these different things that I have exposed as having, basically just being laxatives, the glorified laxatives that are being sold to very young people that make you poo a lot for one day and that's why you have a flat stomach and then you don't poo again for many days afterwards.
30:55 Lewis Howes? Really?
30:55 Speaker 01 Yeah. I used to do all of this stuff. I was a teenager who had an eating disorder and anything a celebrity would recommend that they attributed falsely to how they kept their physique, because I didn't know that everyone here has an eating disorder, um, I would buy. You know, I remember even just like Oprah used to be big in the game of recommending weight loss stuff. And if Oprah was like, I drink oolong tea to lose sixty pounds, then I was drinking ten cups of oolong tea a day that I didn't know was like the most caffeine you can ingest. And so I was there just shaking and having palpitations and unable to sleep for months at a time. Um, we're not given any information when we're young about these things and we don't, we don't know what we're taking. We also don't know the lies behind it, like, you know, the
31:35 Speaker 01 Kardashian family or all the celebrities and the influencers out there who have trainers and, you know, often nutritionists and chefs and plastic surgeons and beauticians and Photoshop to achieve the aesthetic that we see on screen. And then they attribute it to some dodgy powder that isn't FDA regulated and approved.
31:54 Lewis Howes? Right.
31:54 Speaker 01 And so kids believe that and they buy it because they're gullible, because they're innocent. And women, grown women and grown adults and grown men are buying this stuff that they think will make them look like the sort of superhero aesthetic we see on Instagram. And I'm just basically pulling down the trousers and lifting up the skirts of this industry to show everyone that it's all bullshit. And I try to walk the walk. I make sure that no one's ever allowed to Photoshop me. I, I am very open about my lifestyle and I'm very, very, very conscious to make sure that I always tell the truth about what I'm seeing around me.
32:30 Lewis Howes? Wow. And you started this account, was it a year ago, I think, I weigh?
32:34 Speaker 01 I weigh, yeah. I kept on seeing pictures of women, famous women who-
32:37 Lewis Howes? Like Kardashian?
32:38 Speaker 01 Kardashians, Selena Gomez, Taylor Swift, all these people who are worth like tens of millions, sometimes a billion. And their weight would be written across their bodies on Instagram. And-
32:47 Lewis Howes? Their weight, what do you mean?
32:48 Speaker 01 Their weight, as in they're like in kilograms or pounds, like their weight. So like fifty, fifty-three kilograms would just be written across each of their bodies with their height.
32:55 Lewis Howes? Really?
32:55 Speaker 01 So that you could compare your weight to their weight. And we do this with all female celebrities. My false weight is somewhere on the internet. Like, I've never given anyone consent to do that. It's also not my real weight. I think I weighed more than that when I was born, uh, whatever number is written across my body. But we do this to terrify women into uh, losing weight. And then they have to go and buy all these quick fix weight loss products in order to do that. And they panic about it and think about it all day, which-
33:24 Speaker 01 I feel like it's almost either deliberate or non-deliberate, but I think it might be more deliberate. Brilliant tactic to slow women down is if we're always being neurotic about our appearance and worrying about time and worrying about gravity and wrinkles and all these different things that are coming to us all. We celebrate wrinkles in men and we think that gray hair and wrinkles in men are sexy and dignified and we shoot men in high def on magazines and we don't airbrush them and whatnot on screen. We always show the older man with the much younger woman, like we really value an older man, but an older woman has to be sort of airbrushed to the point where she looks like an emoji on the front cover of magazines and we even do that on screen. They spend millions making someone, making a woman look younger even though she's playing opposite an appropriately aged man.
34:07 Speaker 01 So if you haze people with this much misinformation about what is completely natural and you shame them about it all the time, then what happens is that they spend time that they could be spending on growing their business, their mind, their mental health, their family, their social circle. They're not growing anything because they're consumed with this sort of evil, pointless, nonsense thought pattern, a self-hatred. And it wastes time and it wastes a lot of my time and now that I don't really like spend a lot of time, I sort of look in the mirror once in the morning, put on a bit of makeup if I feel like it and then I get out of the house and I'm not worrying about it or thinking about it all day. I consider every inch that my thighs and my arms grow to be a little act of resistance against an industry that taught me that I have to be thin and I have to take up as
34:52 Speaker 01 little space as possible in order to be deemed valuable.
34:55 Lewis Howes? What are the biggest lies that we're told right now? The toxic lies that just aren't true?
35:02 Speaker 01 Oh, I mean, where do we start? There could be an encyclopedia of lies. Almost everything we're being told is lies because we're being sort of fed constant fear about one another and for those who are privileged, we're kind of, the people at the top are kind of teaching them that equality would be oppression for them. And so privileged people are afraid of extending their privilege to other people and sharing their privilege with other people because they're thinking only about what will be taken away from them rather than what other people have been denied all of this time. And we don't, we're not taught to share, we're taught to fear sharing. And we're taught greed is a good and fair, right thing. And we demonize people who don't have privilege and say it was their fault.
35:43 Speaker 01 And I think part of that comes from, there's a woman called Your Fat Friend on Twitter, who once told me that she thinks that our fear, I'll just use this as an example. She said, our fear of obesity, and the reason that we're so fat phobic and so rude about fat people is that it's our own fear of becoming fat ourselves that makes us blame and shame them and be like, you caused this, this is all your fault. You're lazy and stupid and uneducated and greedy. And we demonize them because then it makes us feel separate from them, be like, that could never happen to me, there's something wrong with them. And we do the same thing with poor people, we do it with a lot of marginalized people. And so fear, we fear women, we fear monger women about the way that they look. We fear monger women about what their value is in this world.
36:26 Speaker 01 We fear monger women about asking for more money or asking their male colleagues what they earn. I always ask my male colleagues what they earn, because I think it's insane that that's a taboo conversation.
36:36 Lewis Howes? Hmm.
36:37 Speaker 01 Why is it weird to ask someone else what they earn? Why is that a rude question?
36:40 Lewis Howes? I ask it all the time.
36:41 Speaker 01 Yeah, I love asking people what they earn, especially men, so I know that I'm getting what is fair.
36:46 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
36:47 Speaker 01 I can compete intellectually with my peers, with my male peers, and I know that now. And so there's no reason that I should be paid less, I'm bringing enough people to the table, I have a higher social media following than a lot of people, and that is purely for intellectual property, I'm not putting thirst traps on my Instagram or Twitter, which is fine, a fine thing to do, but that's not personally how I operate my social media. And so I believe that we all deserve to be equal, and I think making that subject taboo has been a brilliant way of making sure that everyone's in the dark about inequality.
37:16 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
37:16 Speaker 01 It's also weird to not be able to ask a woman how old she is. It's not weird to ask a man how old he is.
37:21 Lewis Howes? So someone asks you how old you are.
37:22 Speaker 01 Yeah, I'm thirty-three.
37:23 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
37:24 Speaker 01 I love getting older.
37:25 Lewis Howes? But guys feel like they can't ask.
37:27 Speaker 01 I know, because it's been.
37:28 Lewis Howes? Oh, how dare you.
37:29 Speaker 01 No, I know, but isn't that so interesting?
37:31 Lewis Howes? Why am I not allowed to know how old you are?
37:32 Speaker 01 I'm not blaming men for that fear, I'm saying that why have we made that a weird thing? Why is surviving a really long time something to be ashamed of? How absurd is that? Why is looking like you laughed or lived, why is that something to be embarrassed of? It's brilliant, there's nothing sadder than someone who dies looking young.
37:54 Speaker 01 What a sad like waste of a life. I don't wanna see a young person dead. I wanna see someone old.
38:01 Lewis Howes? Wrinkled and shriveled and used up.
38:04 Speaker 01 I'm gonna be gnarled when I'm older. I'm gonna be wrinkled, it's gonna be all over my face. I'm gonna look like a giant testicle. And that's fine with me because I'm gonna be a testicle that lived without worrying and laughed and loved and didn't spend too much of my life thinking about these things that are fundamentally unimportant.
38:22 Lewis Howes? Hmm, amen to that. Love that. For the women out there, or the men out there, who feel like they don't value themselves. They've got all these insecurities, they've been brainwashed through family or social norms or media, whatever it may be.
38:38 Speaker 01 And competition porn.
38:39 Lewis Howes? Competition, everything, competition porn, yeah. How am I ever gonna be able to perform like that, yeah. How does someone, how did you start to let go of that and value yourself? Your self-worth? And what would you recommend to someone listening who's really struggling with that?
38:53 Speaker 01 Oh, therapy. Jesus Christ, therapy. It's so ridiculous that again, that has become a taboo thing. That's a very clever way to control all of us. If we're not mentally well and as strong and sound as possible, then how can we ever exceed? And how can we ever be successful? Because if we are happy and content and successful, or doesn't even, and success can be in any way. Like me, like being a happy person can be a form of success. But if we are, if we are weakened and we are suffering, then we are more likely to be uncontent. And if we are, uncontent is content. Which one is it? Not content.
39:26 Lewis Howes? Not content.
39:27 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, not content. And so if we aren't content, then we are more likely to consume. So a world that operates, consume anything, cars, products. Media. Media and clothes and all of these different things. Consumerism relies upon our unhappiness. And so therefore, it's very clever to then make it something to be ashamed of, having therapy. Whereas therapy is just going and talking to someone about your secrets that isn't gonna hold, that that person isn't gonna hold those secrets against you later down the line. They're not gonna take them personally. You just have an outlet to vent at someone. It's the best thing in the world and we should all be doing it. And it's not a sign that there is anything wrong with you. It is the surest sign that there will not be anything wrong with you going forward.
40:10 Lewis Howes? But you won't bottle something up.
40:11 Speaker 01 Yeah.
40:11 Lewis Howes? And explode on people later.
40:12 Speaker 01 Yeah, and it comes out either in your health, yeah, and you know.
40:15 Lewis Howes? Or addiction or whatever.
40:16 Speaker 01 A lot of people say that depression is repressed rage and I really believe that for myself. I had so much rage bottled up in me because of how hard my life has been up until, you know, the last couple of years, really. And that came out as depression and I really believe that a lot of my repression came out in that hard lump in my breast that I had to have removed. I really believe that there is a struggle, yeah. Yeah, that's what I looked at that as. And you know, you look at the links between someone's uh, lifestyle, the cancer they have, and that's not to blame the person also. There can be many things and hereditary things that, you know, cause cancer, but there is a huge link between certain cancers and someone's state of mind. And so it's really important just to get all of this toxicity out of you. That's the only elimination diet worth doing is a psychological one.
40:56 Lewis Howes? Yeah. What advice do you have to men about moving forward from where we are now to having a more peaceful living environment for decades and centuries to come? What can men do to?
41:10 Speaker 01 Well, there's things that men can do for women, but there's also things that men can do for themselves. Men are also subjected to so much toxicity and so much shame. And, you know, they are taught that they cannot be sensitive and they cannot be soft. Cause soft is associated with weakness for some reason, even though soft, being soft can often lead to great strength and mental health and clarity. So I think men need to acknowledge all the ways in which they're being constantly fed misinformation from the minute they're born. You know, all the like the masculine toys and then all the, the hero movies and then all of the princes and all of the responsibility they feel and the fact that they always expect to be to chase the woman. The woman is not supposed to chase them. And so then, and they, they're taught bad things from porn.
41:49 Speaker 01 Not all porn, but most porn. Isn't, is it the best in educating men about sex and how to approach a woman? We don't see great examples of sensitivity or being careful or consent or any of these different things within film and media. So men are just sort of sold these lies about what they are supposed to be. And I think actually, once you see it, you can't unsee it. And you look at all the signaling and the messaging for you as a young man or as an old man, whatever. As a man in this world, you have to look at all the things you're being told and then register how those things actually make you feel. Male suicide is the highest it's ever been. Male impotence is the highest it's ever been. Like something's wrong. There's something, there's something going on, yeah, here that we need to identify and I have a lot of sympathy towards men.
42:34 Speaker 01 I don't deny that they haven't, you know, they haven't been hugely problematic and part of this. I mean, the oppression of women comes from that direction. But I also register that a lot of men grow up indoctrinated into this society that teaches men to be unhelpful to women.
42:51 Lewis Howes? Yeah. Just like women aren't allowed to be a certain way, men aren't allowed to be a certain way.
42:55 Speaker 01 And I think men are sort of like taught to fear women's strength. I think that maybe there's a perhaps an insecurity on like a sort of deep, almost cellular level that makes these men afraid, makes some men afraid, especially in certain countries more than others, that that they're really only, they're redundant beyond their seed. And I think that's a really sad way to look at our relationship because because women are now able to, we make the person in our body, we then feed the person with our body. Now we can, uh, now we can go out and we can work. We don't have to like fight saber-toothed tigers in order to go and get food. We have postmates, you know, postmates really made men redundant. So many different ways in which we can, we are liberated that
43:37 Speaker 01 men seem to have not been taught the value of the companionship between the genders.
43:42 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
43:42 Speaker 01 And, and the joy of, of our differences and, and also how sex is lovely with a man if you are straight. And so is spending a day and listening to a man's experiences and thoughts. Like, I love all of them and I'm definitely not a feminist who hates men. I also don't know how feminist that is because feminism is just supposed to be a quality of the social and economic, you know, equality of the sexes. And I don't think that's a good way to go about things. It's not helpful. Uh, I really love and value the men in my life and I would think my life would be worse without them. Uh, and I wish that more men, uh, in a deep sense of the world, around the world could understand that that there's something so wonderful to be had in that dynamic that goes so far beyond your seed.
44:25 Lewis Howes? Yeah. It's interesting if men only knew, like I just started seeing someone recently and I asked her, I said, What's what's something you've enjoyed about our time together the most? You know, we've done lots of different activities and experiences and had fun and you know, it's been amazing. I was like, what's a moment you've enjoyed the most that you appreciate the most? And she said, the moment you really opened up and like, I cried one time and she was like, when you cried with me, it was like, you just showed me who you really are, really are, and it made me love you more.
44:54 Speaker 01 Makes someone feel safe.
44:55 Lewis Howes? Yeah, and I was like, if men knew that showing emotion, not like you have to cry every day or anything like, but showing emotion when emotion is had, it is such a powerful thing.
45:05 Speaker 01 Well, it speaks to sincerity.
45:06 Lewis Howes? Absolutely.
45:07 Speaker 01 And and when someone is bravado and machismo and all these different like fronts up, we can sense that and we don't like it. And those of us who think we like it have often been conditioned by Hollywood to think that that is and by literature to think that that is a real man. So what I was trying to say about men is basically just like, identify what you think actually defines your masculinity and investigate each of those things and see which of those actually rings true with you and which of those things actually oppress you. Cause they will be a huge key in unlocking the real you and the real you is likely without all of these, these sort of hyper-normalized bullshit traits, would probably be someone who is able to relate more to women. And to start to look at women as a great,
45:51 Speaker 01 of great value in your life, who can be great allies and great friends and nurturers and sounding boards and we have great ideas and we are intelligent. Not all of us, but not all men either. And and to to find power and solace and and love in the opposite gender.
46:10 Lewis Howes? Yeah, yeah.
46:11 Speaker 01 I think that's what they could do and then support us and speak to other men that you see treating women badly.
46:15 Lewis Howes? Absolutely.
46:16 Speaker 01 Make sure that you aren't just not being part of the problem, make sure that you're actively tackling the problem with us. Otherwise, you are part of the problem. If you watch and let something happen, you are, you become complicit in the crime. So it's very important to take what you know and what you're learning to educate your sons, your brothers, your friends.
46:32 Lewis Howes? This is called the three truths. I ask everyone this at the end. So imagine it is. Your last day, a hundred, two hundred, three hundred years away. You've extended your life as far as you want it to be.
46:42 Speaker 01 Okay.
46:43 Lewis Howes? But you're fully used up. You're that testicle at the end of the day. It was wrinkly and you've given it all.
46:49 Speaker 01 And that drained ballsack, gone. And the hanging.
46:52 Lewis Howes? No juice left. You're just like.
46:55 Speaker 01 I'm seedless.
46:56 Lewis Howes? Squeezed it all out, yes. And it's your last day and you've accomplished or gone after everything you want.
47:01 Speaker 01 Mm hmm.
47:02 Lewis Howes? Right? You've created everything, everything that you want to achieve. The dreams, they've come true.
47:07 Speaker 01 Mm hmm.
47:09 Lewis Howes? But for whatever reason, you can't, you can't leave any of it behind. You gotta take it with you when you leave.
47:13 Speaker 01 Right.
47:14 Lewis Howes? Okay? So no one has access to your information anymore.
47:16 Speaker 01 Mm hmm.
47:17 Lewis Howes? And you get to leave behind on a piece of paper or digital or whatever it may be at the time.
47:24 Speaker 01 An Instagram post.
47:24 Lewis Howes? Yeah, an Instagram post. If that's around.
47:26 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah.
47:27 Lewis Howes? Three things you know to be true about all of your lessons from your life that you would then share with the world. Three lessons that you would leave behind. And this is all you could leave behind, these three truths. What would you say are yours?
47:42 Speaker 01 Do everything in your power to ensure your mental health.
47:45 Lewis Howes? Mm hmm.
47:46 Speaker 01 That is the number one, that is your number one priority in this world. Because with that mental health, you will be able to not only empower yourself, but you will be more valuable to other people because you will be stronger.
47:56 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
47:57 Speaker 01 I think that's my number one piece of advice to anyone in this world.
48:03 Speaker 01 Do not allow shame and guilt to be weaponized against you. These are non, these are non-things that have been, that are almost man-made, that have been created to keep you in submission. And you must banish those things immediately in order to live happily. Um, and make sure to be affectionate.
48:29 Speaker 01 His physical affection to me is is the number one favorite part of my life. All of the money, all of the success, all of the attention, fame and celebrity that I get to enjoy. None of it means anything more than waking up in the morning and having a coffee and a cuddle with my boyfriend.
48:47 Lewis Howes? Hmm.
48:48 Speaker 01 And that is that is truly like of everything that I achieve, I love the activism, I'm very proud of everything I've achieved. But truly like the relationship that I've worked really hard to build with a loved one and with my friends and being affectionate. I think affection is something that we are so starved of in this generation because of this online dating. Even if we're getting a bang, a sex from someone, people are just meeting up and having sex. And they're not really holding each other in the morning and there's no intimacy. I've got amazing friends who are going years now without having their hands held or their arms held and they're without being embraced by other people. We started to fear intimacy.
49:24 Lewis Howes? Why do we fear it?
49:25 Speaker 01 We fear it because we've stopped, because it's become foreign to us. Because everything's so digital and everything's so desensitized and we're so desensitized and dehumanized because of our these apps. And because of these phones and these computers, we're all sort of like we're the most connected we've ever been. But we're the most disconnected we've ever been because we've stopped engaging physically. And so, uh, physical affection is something that you really must actively seek out in your life. And these things kind of all fall under the umbrella of your mental health and strength. But if I could have a fourth, not that I'm allowed one, but gratitude, really, really, truly. I know that sounds like a very LA thing to say, but if you are, if you are grateful and you are content, then you have beat the system.
50:01 Lewis Howes? You have.
50:03 Speaker 01 And you will prevail.
50:05 Lewis Howes? It's hard to be angry and grateful at the same time.
50:07 Speaker 01 Exactly. But if you are, if you are grateful and content, then they haven't managed to control you.
50:13 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
50:14 Speaker 01 And you are no longer, yeah, and you are no longer a sort of a pawn in the game of consumerism.
50:20 Lewis Howes? Yeah, a pawn, not a porn.
50:22 Speaker 01 No.
50:22 Lewis Howes? For those who couldn't understand the accent. So it's imagine it's your last day still, we're still in the theme.
50:29 Speaker 01 Ballsack on legs.
50:30 Lewis Howes? Ballsack on legs, yes, no hair, all of everything.
50:35 Lewis Howes? And imagine.
50:36 Speaker 01 No disrespect to ballsacks, by the way, man, they're all great. I love them all.
50:40 Lewis Howes? Imagine, um.
50:43 Lewis Howes? The greatest regret that you don't want to have. Imagine it's that day and you didn't do something, or you didn't go after something, or you didn't say something, or you didn't let go of something that you wish you would have done. What would that regret be that you never want to have?
50:59 Speaker 01 I hope this doesn't come across as hugely conceited, but I can't even fathom one of those because there's nothing that I have yet to look back on. But you mean what I can't imagine.
51:09 Lewis Howes? Now moving forward that you don't do, like with everything that you know now. Let's say, oh, I didn't go after that, making that movie. I don't know. Or I didn't continue the activism because I got scared. Or I didn't do this and I regret.
51:23 Speaker 01 So what would I be most ashamed? I can't even.
51:25 Lewis Howes? Moving forward.
51:26 Speaker 01 Is there anything I don't want to regret? If I don't manage to kill shame en masse, then I will really regret that because I believe I have the tools, the platform and the ability to do that. Can't think of it. I can't fathom it because I'm so aggressively in beast mode at the moment.
51:46 Lewis Howes? Yeah, you're in it.
51:47 Speaker 01 I hopefully will. I hopefully will not have something that I look back on and regret. But I think actually, no. You know what? I'm wrong. I'm wrong and I'm stupid. I will regret if I spend all of my life just working. Because currently I just work 24 hours a day and I don't have a social life. And it's very exciting what I get to do and very stimulating. But I also, I'm not taking care of myself appropriately. And so if I achieve all of this success and I save all of these other people and I make all of this money and this empire that I'm trying to build, but I didn't also take the time out to enjoy my life and stop and look around. I think I will really regret that. And so I have that in the back of my mind all of the time, the concept of balance. Because that'll be sad. I don't want kids who are just proud of me. I want kids who, if I choose to have children
52:32 Speaker 01 and if I choose to stay with one person, I want that person to have remembered my love, not just my achievements.
52:38 Lewis Howes? Yeah, I like that answer.
52:41 Speaker 01 Thanks.
52:41 Lewis Howes? And I've got two final questions. If we could go back to the 17 year old who was, had no interaction with people for weeks at a time, only watched TV, wasn't sure if you were to walk, wasn't sure if people were to like you or talk to you, insecure, all these things. What would you say to yourself now, back then? If you know everything now?
53:04 Speaker 01 I would say.
53:05 Lewis Howes? If you walked into the room at seventeen.
53:07 Speaker 01 Yeah.
53:07 Lewis Howes? Those weeks where no one came around except for to take you to the bathroom. What would you sit by the bed and say to that person?
53:13 Speaker 01 That if you turn all of this trauma that's happened to you into something good and you help other people, then it will have been for something. So get up and get better and go out there and help people. I think that's truly how, I think, teaching people to not look at themselves just as victims. They can acknowledge their victimhood, but imploring them to take that struggle and turn it into gold of some sort, be that emotional or financial gold. I think can be very, very empowering. And so to not look at it, to look at it, to try to see the benefit of it. And those years of mine, those first twenty years of my life that was so difficult and such a hell, sort of dumpster fire of psychological trauma and damage.
53:55 Speaker 01 I would look at those years as the reason that I am now an empathetic, emotionally intelligent and driven, generous person. And I would not be this person. I would be a complacent, emptier person without all of that struggle. So I am grateful for it. I would do it all, I'd walk in front of that car again. I think it was one of the best things that ever happened to me. And they have contributed to my superpower, in my opinion.
54:19 Lewis Howes? Wow.
54:20 Speaker 01 I think trauma is something that can, it can hurt you, but it can also like really, truly chisel you into something interesting and strong.
54:28 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
54:28 Speaker 01 And durable.
54:31 Lewis Howes? I love that.
54:32 Speaker 01 Thanks.
54:32 Lewis Howes? Good answer to her. I'm sure she would appreciate that. Well, I want to acknowledge you for the courage you have to constantly do the things that are unpopular.
54:41 Speaker 01 Thanks.
54:41 Lewis Howes? And to constantly do things that maybe pull you away from friends or family or people you've known for a long time that are saying, why are you doing this? Why are you trying to?
54:50 Speaker 01 Yeah, no one understands why I'm doing this.
54:52 Lewis Howes? Make a fuss, why don't you just go work?
54:53 Speaker 01 Get off your soapbox and go make millions selling fake gummies.
54:57 Lewis Howes? Exactly.
54:58 Speaker 01 Don't do anything.
54:58 Lewis Howes? Exactly. So I mean, I really acknowledge you for showing up and taking the leap across the world to come to a new place when you didn't have anything. You keep stepping into new opportunities where you're not skilled at necessarily, where you don't have the experience or the confidence necessarily. And you're taking the leap and you're constantly using the platform for good, which I really acknowledge because you could be doing it just to make money and be famous and things like that, but you're doing it to serve people. And I think that's a great quality to have.
55:27 Speaker 01 Thank you. I am also still ignorant and problematic and stupid in many ways.
55:30 Lewis Howes? This is the Brit in you.
55:31 Speaker 01 But.
55:32 Lewis Howes? This is the Brit in you. You gotta receive.
55:33 Speaker 01 But.
55:34 Lewis Howes? You gotta receive. Don't go back to the British ways.
55:36 Speaker 01 I just wanna make sure that we don't like just saint me up too hard.
55:39 Lewis Howes? Oh, that you're not perfect. Oh.
55:40 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
55:41 Lewis Howes? I can understand.
55:41 Speaker 01 Just be real for a second.
55:42 Lewis Howes? No, I get it.
55:43 Speaker 01 But that doesn't discourage me from knowing that I can do better.
55:46 Lewis Howes? Of course. We're all learning and growing.
55:48 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah.
55:48 Lewis Howes? I'm ignorant in my ways.
55:49 Speaker 01 Don't worry. I'm more yank in that way. I respect the win and the hustle.
55:52 Lewis Howes? That was good. How can we support you moving forward? We can follow you on Instagram.
55:57 Speaker 01 On at I underscore Wei, W E I G H, which is the platform I built to empower people to measure themselves and value themselves via their attributes, their contributions to society, the things that they mean to people, how they make people feel, the things that they have overcome, the things that they are still currently struggling with. It's an incredible platform that is at 650,000 followers already with no social media team. I don't know what an algorithm even is because I am old and for this generation. But it just happens so organically, which is so cool. So follow us there. You can follow me on my Instagram and my Twitter if you would like to see a radically inclusive feminist in progress who is very willing to learn so publicly and embarrass myself so frequently.
56:42 Speaker 01 But you can come to my space and feel like it's okay to have ignorance as long as you're willing to try to do better. We're turning our way into.
56:50 Lewis Howes? Twitter and Instagram.
56:50 Speaker 01 It's at Jamila Jamil.
56:52 Lewis Howes? On both.
56:52 Speaker 01 And I think I'm at Jamila Jamil Official on Instagram because a little boy in Sri Lanka decided to steal my name on Instagram, which is fine. And I will be putting a book out next year. I am on The Good Place this year, which is a wonderful comedy about moral philosophy.
57:09 Lewis Howes? Amazing.
57:09 Speaker 01 And I will be turning our way into a business. So if you. Want to come and work with us. You can always find me on my social media. Uh, we are looking for people who are true allies to all people.
57:23 Lewis Howes? Mm hmm. So I weigh, they can create a post as well. They can see an example on our way and then share and tag I weigh.
57:29 Speaker 01 Absolutely.
57:30 Lewis Howes? You guys reshare some of those sometimes I see. I'm gonna do one of those too now I'm inspired.
57:33 Speaker 01 Thank you, I would love that. Thank you, we really, I really want more men involved in my activism and in my uh, in what I say about feminism and stuff. Like I, I really believe in the potential of our future as a, as a
57:48 Lewis Howes? Humanity?
57:48 Speaker 01 A humanity and as an allyship.
57:50 Lewis Howes? Yeah, of course. This is the final question. It's what's your definition of greatness?
57:55 Speaker 01 My definition of greatness is happiness. That to me is the, is the hardest thing to achieve in this world. More and more so with every single year and everything else that comes in our way of it. Happiness to me is the greatest uh, sign of success. And it's very rare to find successful, happy people. So if I manage to achieve both, then I will be truly the great success that I hope to be.
58:16 Lewis Howes? Yeah. Thank you, appreciate it.
58:18 Speaker 01 Thank you so much.
58:19 Lewis Howes? Appreciate it.
58:25 Lewis Howes? There you have it, my friends. I hope you enjoyed this interview. Such a powerful message. Make sure to follow her over on Instagram, Jamila Jamil and also the I underscore way account on Instagram, which is all about uh, how women to celebrate themselves, feel valuable and fight toxic beauty standards. Make sure to check this out, super inspiring. Would love to hear your thoughts on this. Share with a friend, LewisHowes.com slash seven nine seven. Or you can just text them a link from this podcast app where you're listening and be a hero and a friend for someone today by spreading the message of this podcast and the message of greatness. You can really impact people's lives when you share valuable resources with them,
59:08 Lewis Howes? such as this or a book or a video that inspires you to help people improve their lives. That's our mission here at the School of Greatness is to impact people's lives, to improve, to grow, to find peace, to find love, to find harmony. And I hope you got a piece of that today with this interview. And as Brene Brown said in the beginning, courage starts with showing up and letting ourselves be seen.
59:36 Lewis Howes? What part of your life have you lacked the ability to show up? What part have you been closing off, hiding, projecting, and not revealing your true self? Are you hiding in things that you're ashamed of? Are you hiding back on what you're guilty of? Are you hiding your gifts and talents to other people around you and to the world? How are you hiding? Courage starts with showing up and letting ourselves be seen. Let yourself be seen today with a friend, with family, with your friends online, friends in real life. You deserve it, and they deserve to see you. I love you very much. You know what time it is. It's time to go out there. And do something great.
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