When you talk about the little voice in the back of your head, what does that even mean?

There's often a running dialog or set of opinions inside of us that are in the background to our experience of life in the present. And this can make a huge difference to how we respond to life in the present, how we think about ourselves and how we think about the world around us. There's a lot more going on inside of than what we're taking in at the moment.

Am I ever going to escape the stuff that happened in the past? Am I ever going to get rid of the negativity? That little voice started to already come up, but then you just said that you can take steps to have some control over this. So there is good news here. We're not just at the whim of this, right?

No. If we pay attention to it, then we can have control over it. Like so many things in life, if we don't pay attention, we're not able to exert control. And here's the place for curiosity about, what do I think of myself? When I'm sitting quietly, what's running along in my mind? What's my self talk like? Do I have conclusions about myself that may be, in some cases or in many cases, unfair? So things that haven't gone well in the past. Am I running that forward? Or if the last three relationships didn't go well, there's a person running forward that, Oh, they'll never go well, or I'm not a person who's ever going to have that. These are the things that we can get into our minds that start impacting us very, very deeply that we can change if we go and look at it. So if a person says, Wow, there's such negativity running in my head that I'm never going to find someone. I'm never going to find someone. Here I am trying to find someone and trying to date and to find a good partner, and I'm doing this, but all the time, what's running along in me is, Oh, this will never work.

Maybe that links to a really bad experience a couple of years ago that is emotionally very powerful, and maybe I can acknowledge that and say it's emotionally powerful, but it's not determining anything. In fact, I don't want that running along in my head. How about I can be a good partner to someone, or I can find a better job? How about things that more accurately reflect me, as opposed to things that can automatically be going on in our minds that are quite negative, that we're we're unaware of? The key here is paying attention. It's curiosity and interest in ourselves and how we think of ourselves, and our place in the world around us, and our ability to navigate in the world around us, and looking at perhaps some of what may be negative, because Negative things are stronger. They're more what's called salient. We have a salience bias, which means our brains pay more attention to the negative, which is part of a survival instinct that we want to remember negative things because those memories may help us survive in the future. But then we start to weigh more heavily negative things across the board, and we can go and look at that and decide, what is really my opinion?

What do I really think? As opposed to something that is a reflex inside of me that may have a great deal of influence on my decisions and the outcomes of my strivings in the world.

Well, what was interesting about what you just said is you said this question, What do I really think? What that little voice is saying to you is that I think some of us are so used to hearing that negative voice that we don't realize that we could get to a point where we could think something different. You know what I mean?

Right. It's a way people talk about learned helplessness, and this has been a topic for a long, long, long time. And a lot of learned helplessness is often really that we're not paying paying attention to something. The number of times in the role of a therapist, I've been talking to someone or even in my own therapy, I've been on the other side of it, where either I'm inquisitive about the person or in this case, my own therapist would be inquisitive about me and what's going on inside of me and asking questions and then realizing, Oh, I have this conception that is going over and over again in my head, and I'm not even aware of it. I've never actually put words to it. It's going on inside of my mind. That's very, very different than putting words to that. So after a number of traumas, which I write about to some degree in the book, I started to have a feeling that I'm just cursed and things won't really go well, or if they go well in one way, they won't go well in another. That somehow there is a force watching over me and making sure that things don't all go well.

And that if something goes well, then negative things will happen, too, because I started to have a very, very different view of myself and how I was able to or not able to, or I was at the mercy of, maybe, the world around me. Because when some negative things happen, especially in sequence or even just one big thing or sometimes a bunch of small things that we might not even be aware of, it can change how we feel inside. Then this stream of negativity was making me, for example, my mood was lower, I felt I felt much less hopeful. I felt more beleager. There was more anger and frustration in me. And by putting words to that and then challenging that, do I really think that's true? Do I think that people are cursed? But I don't think that anyone else is. I don't think anyone else is cursed. But I am. You're the one person. Maybe now I should go revisit that. And this is the curiosity. If we start thinking about ourselves, we can change. Really, we can change everything because we can have so much greater control over what's going on inside of us, and it can match up with what we really and truly believe instead of running along inside of us in a negative way.

And we haven't even put words to it or decided if we actually believe it or not.

The stories in your book were so helpful because it allows, or at least it allowed me to see myself in your experience and then extrapolate similar things. Could you explain, for example, just one story and how it relates to what that little voice in your head started to say in terms of, I'm cursed. Bad things are always going to happen to me. It works out for everybody else, but not me.

I think one of the most powerful stories, at least in the way that it impacted me, was the person... I wrote about a person who had what is called... It's called Cotard's syndrome. It's a feeling that one has already died when one is still alive. So this isn't a metaphor. They're going through, they go to the grocery store, they do all sorts of things in a normal way, but they believe that they are dead, that they have perished, but their body is still moving along in the world around them. It's quite rare, but it's certainly not unheard of. The gentleman that I took care of was sure that he was dead. He thought it was funny that I would put the stethoscope up and listen to the heart of a dead man, or that I would come and spend time with him, and that it was just the same as if he were in the morgue, but that part of it hadn't happened yet. When you look at the history of a person like that, this was a person who was very affable. He had a good sense of humor, and it was fun to be around, but he had been around no people for so long.

He had lived in loneliness and isolation without any real human connection. The dialog in his mind had gone from, say, bad to worse to almost unimaginable to, Well, I'll be okay even though I don't have anyone in my life. I don't have any friends. I don't have a partner, but I'll find one, to, I won't find one, to, That's not for you, to, You don't get to have any people in your life. And this was running along over and over for many, many years of loneliness and isolation that got to the point of feeling so little human connection that the man was sure that he'd actually died already. Wow. It's a strong, strong example, but it shows where the dialog that we're having with ourselves or what we're telling ourselves can do to us over So if it can make us believe that we're dead, what impact can it have on a person who says, I'll never get a better job. I'll never find a partner. I'll never have a better relationship with my kids. If we can make ourselves believe that we're dead from the distress that's going on, we can do almost anything to ourselves that limits our horizons, limits our health and our happiness.

What I'm processing right now is the connection between between the little voice and the story that you keep telling to yourself and how that then becomes the actions that you take or not. And so as you started to tell that story about a person who is lonely, and there's a lot of loneliness in the world right now. The story, if you were paying attention, started to shift from, I'm lonely, to, I'm not going to, to, I'm always going to be like this. If you are telling yourself that you're never going to find friends, you're not going to feel motivated to leave the house. You're truly convincing yourself. In a more pedestrian example that we can all relate to is if you've ever fallen off the wagon with your own health and you start to feel like, Oh, my gosh, I'm never going to get back in shape again, or I don't have the willpower to eat healthy, all of that little voice is instrumental in you not taking the actions that would change that situation. Is that why this is so imperative that we pay attention to, one of the reasons?

Yes. I believe in 25 years of doing what I do for a living, just taking care of people and being a psychiatrist, being a therapist, I have seen over and over and over again that what we're telling ourselves in here is far more deterministic than any external That's the factor. So someone who wants to go back to the gym and wants to be in better shape, wants to lose weight again, or whatever it is that that person is trying to achieve, we could say, Well, they should carve out the time for it, or they should... What? Jims are close, and they should make that a priority, and how can they change your scheduling? We can look at that in so many ways. But if what's running over and over inside is, Oh, you'll never succeed, or you'll get in shape, but then you'll lose it again, and you'll just feel worse about yourself. It's so much more deterministic than the external factors, often without us being aware of the tremendous impact of what is going on inside of us. This is where we often carry along. I'll imagine sometimes a person who could be living life so much better.

They have everything inside of them. They have everything they need for life to be so much better. But I'll imagine it's almost as if they're dragging around the weights of the past and they're taking them from the past and projecting them into the future. We can all do this. One might argue, to some extent, all of us, or at least the vast majority of us, do this to some extent. But we often do this to an extent that is actually deterministic about what happens next in our lives. This is where repetition makes such a difference that often, if something doesn't go right, we try again, but we try again in the same way. People will come in just to take the relationship example. This happens a lot and it would happen a lot when I saw... I was seeing a lot of new patients all the time for many, many years. People would come in and say, I know you can't help me. I know I'm only here because someone thought I should go or because I'm just desperate, but I know you can't help me. Then they would tell me about repetition. There's no way I'm going to have a good job.

My last four jobs, and then they'll tell me about the last four jobs or I'll never have I have a good relationship. Let me tell you about my last five relationships. The jobs, the relationships are not different. They're the same. It's the same thing that has happened multiple times. I found myself saying to someone who'll tell me they'll never have a good relationship, and I cannot help them because the last seven have been so bad. Then sometimes I'll say, If you can tell me how they've been bad in seven different ways, then I I'd have to agree with you. But that's not what you're going to tell me. You're going to tell me something that's seven variations of the same thing, of the same story. That can provide us with so much help. If you realize I haven't done something that's failed seven times. I've done one thing that hasn't gone the way I wanted it to. Now, the fact that I've done it multiple times just tells me, Hey, I need to look at that. How can I do that differently? Now we can open up a world of change because we learn from the past.

The past is good information, but it no longer seems as if it's fate that's projecting into our future. This is the benefit of exploration, whether it's in therapy or it's reflecting about ourselves. It's much better done if we're writing or we're talking with someone of, Hey, what's going on inside of me? And how do I understand that? But understand it so I can use it to my advantage, so that it's not then controlling me and making my foregone conclusions to my next 15 decisions.

I am so happy you're here. Can you talk a little bit about that tenor and the content of the nudge versus that just almost like you're behind enemy lines beating yourself down?

Well, the positive voices just need an ally because the negative voices have so much of an advantage. And it is that human evolution, anthropological bias towards the negative. So the negative tends to get louder over time. It tends to feed and foster itself more than the positive. So the positive requires nurturing. Just in the way, I think people who are very, very good at gardening recognize that the weeds grow faster than the flowers. So we need to be very, very attentive to nurturing the good things and to what are the negative things and where do they come from? So I'm very, very curious, where did those negative voices come from? And then we look at those and explore them. And if we're taking care of ourselves, then people just feel a sense of humility. This comes with feeling good, with recognizing, well, that there's a lot out there in the world that is difficult and it can be scary and that I cannot control. But I am taking care of myself. I did that hard thing of leaving that relationship. We're shifting that job to feel proud of ourselves. Humility, I think, is more a feeling state.

Then when a person is in that feeling state, we approach the world through the lens of gratitude, and gratitude being very, very active, where I can feel a sense that I'm grateful even for myself, that I've strived to get myself to a certain place. And if something doesn't go well, I don't want to beat myself up. For that. How do I make myself the best that I can be instead of beating up on myself? And we can bring that to others, this sense of humility and then active gratitude, where we start to become unshackled from the past. I'm grateful that I'm here and doing the best I can. If it starts at home and I'm fair with myself, am I more likely to be fair with you? That's how what you said about our relationships with our kids goes to all relationships and settings and people in our lives, including ourselves. If we take care of ourselves, all that complexity on lower levels can reduce down to things that are actually much more simple. Good mental health is consistent with simplicity. It's just hard to get there. We see that people get to the same places, like people who get happier as they grow older.

It's an interesting demographic of people. One would think, why would anyone get happier? We accumulate aches and pains, and we worry about our mortality. But people do get happier when they're taking good care of themselves. We see these common factors of a sense of humility, approaching the world through the lens of gratitude, a sense of being self-aware and being at one's best and prioritizing self-care. This is how people grow old healthily. And because those things are so common, we can learn from them and we can strive towards them amidst all the complexity in our own minds in our own lives.

I absolutely want to jump to, how do we do this? But I want to first address something, which is for so many people, the idea of turning inward And going toward those thoughts, particularly the ones that are scary or negative or intrusive, or that are tied to very traumatic experiences that we'd rather try to forget or ignore. It's like staring at a dark tunnel. And I'd love to have you speak to the why. What is in it for somebody who... I think about my mom, for example, and she literally just says, I'm sure I have trauma. I'm sure I have anxiety. Why the hell would I want to go talk to a therapist? What am I going to do? Find out I don't like my life? It's okay. And there is so much resistance to looking inside and going, quote, there. So Dr. Conti, what if you're scared about opening up a can of worms or revisiting the things that you tried to forget?

Well, this is very, very natural. In fact, this is the default, is to become ashamed of what it is that we don't want to look at, to become afraid of what it is that we don't want to look at. So then we hide from it and it grows. I find it remarkable that it's often the case that the answers to our problems are there in front of us. Imagine that the answers are inside of a room, but outside the room is there's scary goblins and go. So there's a bunch of things that make us, oh, wait, maybe I'm too afraid to go in. But it's not anything that's going to hurt us. It's fear-inducing decoration around what it is that can change our lives for the better because things that are traumatic to us, including they could be dramatic things or they can be just feeling inadequate or not feeling so good about myself because of my health or my job or my relationship status or whatever it may be. Then that creates, Oh, no, I can't go and look at that. Then it gets some special status. It's where we're not looking at it.

It's off over here where it gets to grow and fester, which is why what's called for, it's exactly the opposite. People will say, I can't go talk about that because I'll start crying and I'll never stop. Nobody starts crying and then never stops. Or I'll just curl up in a fetal position. I'll never get up. That never happens either. It's fear of that that keeps us from shining the light around in our own minds and shining the light in the places that we need to go. It's actually quite remarkable. Trauma isn't a thing. It doesn't have a mind. It's not plotting against us. So why would I go look at the thing that scares me, that makes me feel bad? It's so it doesn't scare you anymore. So you don't feel bad about it anymore. But it's the reflexive shame and the reflexive fear that lead us to say, I'll look anywhere, but not there. But not there is the only place that we need to look. It's always that way.

So are you You're saying that we can't just not think about something or forget about something or shove it down and it's just, I'm not going to go there. It's not going to affect me. That just doesn't work, is what you're saying?

Absolutely not. No more so than, I mean, imagine that a toilet is overflowing in a house or in a building. And you say, I don't like that. That doesn't sound good. That's stressful. Oh, my gosh. You know what? I'm just going to pretend that's not happening. I'm going to go do something else. That doesn't work. That problem Which may at the beginning be mild, even though it's daunting. There's some water on the floor. If that problem keeps going and going, that problem can turn into a disaster. So yes, the examples of what's inside of us are far, far more powerful. I think that's an obvious example, so it's a good one to attach to. But the same is true. But the stakes are much, much higher when it's about what's going on inside of us. So we do need We need to look at our past. Another example that can be used is if we're not looking at our past, we're carrying the weights of the past around with us. If I'm moving forward and I don't want to look back, well, maybe I'm carrying 20 pounds of weight from this thing that happens. There's another 30 attached to me from that.

There's 5 pound weight from three or four other things that happen. Now I'm trudging forward and I'm carrying all of that with me. It's not that if I don't look back, it's not there, just like the toilet's still overflowing, even if I want to pretend it isn't and I just want to go out of the house and do something else. It's all there. It's by looking at it that we can gain control over it and say, I am not going to drag around that 30 on weight from that terrible thing that happened when I was younger. I'm not going to drag that weight around just because people bullied me or people told me that I wasn't worthwhile or because this really bad thing happened or because I was hurt or I was assaulted or Whatever the thing may be, I don't want to lug that around and drag it around for the rest of my life. And by going back and looking at it, I can cut the rope to it so that I leave it behind me. And it is also so that we do not drag around with us the weights of the past and say, Why am I not going anywhere?

Well, look at what you're dragging behind you. And if you don't go and look at that, then you will continue to not feel like you're moving into the future as you wish to be and continue to be baffled about it. If I don't know I'm dragging the weights, but I'm frustrated I'm not moving into the future, well, what's going to come of that? Then I decide, Well, what's wrong with me? I really can't do it. I'm a loser. You see how it fosters more of the negative self-taught. We need to look at the weights that we're dragging around with. We need to look at the traumas and the distress that's inside. It's exactly what we need to do. The thought of, why would I need to do that? I need to avoid That's the hijacking of those survival mechanisms. If we let that win the day, we can stay fixed and rooted forever. But it absolutely does not have to be that way. Many people change. I mean, it's not pie in the sky where I'm picking out three or four examples where people change. No, awful things come of the trauma we carry with us, like the man who was alive and pleasant and funny, who was sure that he was clinically, medically dead.

But wonderful things can come of looking at ourselves and making changes where there are countless stories of change, where people look at what's going on inside of them. And guess what? The eighth relationship did go well because the eighth was different than the prior seven. That person did get a better job. They have a better relationship with their parents or their children or their friends. We do change, but we have to understand how to do it, and then we have to actually do it.

I have so much I want to say to you. First of all, I just think you're amazing. So thank you. Thank you. You have a real gift in your ability to go so deep and yet be very visual so that for those of us who do not have a degree in neuroscience, but have a lot of weight that we're carrying around, I just had this huge wake up moment where visually I could connect the dots between the weight that you are carrying around from the things in your past that you have not processed or you carry shame around, which is why you won't face it. If you won't face it, that right there is evidence that it's weighing you down.

Yes.

And that little voice that is following you around saying, You're not good enough. It's never going to work out. You're not important. See, I'm right, and pointing out that that is tied to the weight. And it's a way in which the weight creeps from your subconscious at the bottom of that iceberg all the way up and is chirping to your conscious mind. That's the thread that connects to that weight. And I can give an example, Dr. Conti, from my own life, and I offer it only in the hopes that maybe one more story about the different layers of this would help somebody access a break through as they listen. And so I remember a couple of years ago, there was this very normal moment where I woke up, I was on vacation, and I was in this amazing place that I love to rent in the summer by the beach, and I had slept in. And I woke up and I rolled over, and my husband Chris was gone. And I looked at the clock, and it was 8:30 in the morning. I immediately thought, Oh, God, I did something wrong. Someone's going to be mad at me.

I slept in. Uh-oh. I rolled out of bed. I ran downstairs, and he wasn't there. The kids weren't there. The dogs were gone. And now that voice is going, You're in trouble. It's your fault. Chris is going to be mad at you. You didn't get up early. You didn't help with the dogs. Just this just beat down in the most normal circumstance in my life. And I noticed it, and That's what you're talking about going in. Like, oh, well, that's weird. Why would I be trashing myself for sleeping in on a vacation? Why would I be making up a story that someone's mad at me? Where does this connect? This is the little voice coming from the dark-ass, scary tunnel connected to all the weight I've dragged around to the thing I don't want to process. And so, thankfully, I had a conversation with my therapist, Anne, a week later. And here's where we connected this. She started asking, Well, when else have you had an experience where you thought someone's mad at me, that you're in trouble? Like the first thing, and we were doing EMDR, and I could trace it all the way back to being in the fourth grade and a very traumatic moment that I've shared about in my work, where I had woken up in the middle of the night at a big family gathering, and there was an older kid on top of me.

And in the range of sexual abuse experiences that people could have, this would be down at the one on a scale of zero to 10 in terms of how scary and awful, but still traumatizing. And the next morning, when I woke up, I hid under the covers until all the kids left. And in my body had this experience that I had done something wrong and someone was going to be mad at me. Yes. And even though I had processed that trauma in therapy, I didn't realize that that singular experience, and then probably a million other experiences of waking up and telling myself that story, somebody's mad at you. You've done something wrong, led to me, Dr. Conti, from that morning in fourth grade, all the way up to being a grown-ass 50-year-old woman with multiple Ivy League degrees and tons of research under my belt and therapy and EMDR and MDMA, all of this stuff, had not connected the little voice in my head that has beaten me up for years and decades saying, someone's mad at you to that singular moment. And I will tell you, going backward and digging into that again, even though I thought, I thought I Had it all figured out.

It was one of those massive weights that I was dragging around in my life that was tied to that voice, someone's mad at you. And it wasn't until I saw that thread that I was able to do what you're talking about, which is I had a choice in that moment because I could see, wow, This is why I do this to myself, and I don't have to do this to myself. Because Chris wasn't mad at me. He didn't give a shit that I slept in. He was happy that I did. He was happily walking the dogs. He didn't even want me. As you have been so eloquently explaining to all of us, that that little voice is tied to something deeper, and figuring it out is the access to a level of freedom in your life and agency to create a different way of living that is hard to describe in terms of how liberating it is.

It's an extremely powerful example, and thank you for sharing it. I'm sorry, of course, that you went through that, but relieved that you were able to identify it. And hopefully, I think definitely to at least some significant degree, maybe completely take the power out of it by bringing yourself to bear. I think there's so many aspects of that story that really can't capture this concept. So if you think about it, it's from the beginning, you were young, right? So you're in fourth grade. You woke up with something happening to you. Clearly, it's hard, but the brain can do it anyway to make you responsible for it. You weren't even awake. Correct. Yet somehow, this is how humans work. Your brain takes in a sense of shame and a sense of being at fault. And in part, shame is a reflex to trauma, that it generates shame in us. So unless we look at that, wait a second, is this shame appropriate? Because sometimes we can do things we might feel a little ashamed of, and then we feel the shame, and it can alter our behavior. So to assess, does this make any sense? But of course, you don't get to do that as a child.

So the next morning, you feel ashamed as if you'd really done something wrong, whereas actually the opposite. Something has happened to you around which you deserve some support and some processing and some care and concern. It stays in you. You learn a lesson then. The lessons of trauma that we learn as children, they may be false, but they're lessons nonetheless. You learn that you may do things wrong. You're not even aware that they're wrong until you've done something wrong and that you should feel ashamed about those things. This is the lesson. And unless we unlearnt it, unless we look at it and make ourselves unlearnt it, we don't automatically unlearnt it. So all of the life experience since then, all of the achievements and education, personal, professional achievements, all of that that's been the case in your life didn't make that lesson go away. No. Your brain didn't reboot and go back and look at it and say, Hey, does that make sense? Probably because it's tied to survival, that the reflex of shame tells you, Hey, you better remember that. It doesn't know that, Wait, wait, this is one that's not your fault. You didn't do anything to be ashamed about.

But it links it in like the high negative salience. It makes us remember things so that it stays with you until you have that aha moment and you realize, Wait, this is still in me, and it predisposes me to have this reflexive shame. And what did I do wrong all these years later? I think it's extremely powerful because What is the one, the genesis of it, how long it stays with you, impervious to all the other things that happen in your life. But what is it not impervious to? You going and looking at it, and you really shining a light on it and deciding What is this? What does it mean and what does it not mean?

That's powerful. How can we turn inward and start to hear this little voice and then do the deeper work to follow that thread to what the weight may be that you can process from your past to free yourself.

I think the starting place is always just a curiosity about ourselves. And a lot of times, just as a person doesn't want to go look at the trauma, why do I want to go look at that thing that makes me nervous? That works very strongly against our curiosity velocity about ourselves. If we are free to be curious about ourselves, it's not dangerous or threatening to be curious about ourselves. There's so much that we can learn. Just an example can be, what does myself talk like? What do I say to myself in quiet moments? What do I say to myself if I do something wrong? What do I say to myself if I drop something? What do I say to myself if I approach a new social situation or a new challenge? We become curious about what We can become curious about what is going on inside of us. And now we start to put words to things. And sometimes we can do that. We can do it sometimes just by thinking. But what we think and go over and over again, sometimes in our mind, without being super productive. It's not always like that. But when we put it outside of us, it's different, which is why if we're talking to someone, that can make a difference.

A trusted other about, Hey, I was thinking about, I'm saying this to myself over and I realized it's been going on in me for years. Can we say that to someone else? Or can we write it? Writing it down, journaling can make a big difference in that way. And the talking to another person can involve a therapist. I think if someone is having, of course, thoughts that they don't want to be alive anymore or thoughts that start to be quite severe, then that person should get help because we want to understand and make sure that we're maintaining safety. So there is a place where professional help is important and is needed. In many situations, say it's not to that level of severity where it's needed for safety, but it can dramatically help us inquire with ourselves. There's another person who's trained to help us introspect, to help us inquire about ourselves, which is why I go to therapy. I don't miss therapy unless there's no choice about it. I'm out of town. I just simply have no two ways because even I can help other people do this as a trained therapist, I can't do it for myself.

So when people think, I can do some of it for myself. I can introspect, I can think about myself talk, I can write, but I can't do for myself what someone outside of me can do because I lack the impartial perspective of self. I'm impacted by what's going on inside of me as I'm trying to think about what's going on inside of me. So thinking, writing, or the therapy process can help us understand ourselves so much better. And the change rides on the back of understanding. We're trying to polish the hood instead of looking underneath at the engine. I believe that we are capable of understanding ourselves so much better than we do. Now, the world collaborates with the shame in us and the fear that says, Oh, just look the other way. And it's really the opposite of what leads us to health, which is part of why you and I are talking about it today, a part of why it's so important.

Well, and it's also why I want to take a highlighter and make sure that as you were listening to Dr. Conti, you had two, maybe three super important takeaways from what he just said. Number one, that just thinking about this can sometimes lead to you spinning in circles. And so there's an enormous benefit to you getting those thoughts out of your mind and onto paper or speak them out into the world. The second thing that you said is if you can have access to therapy, that's a fantastic thing because just like the example that I gave earlier when I was saying our daughter was telling herself, I'm never going to find anybody, and I'm not this, and why does everybody, and I'm not good-looking, and I'm not that, and I'm not the other thing. That when you're outside and you're objective, you have this perspective that the person that's living with this little voice doesn't have. And so there's something beautiful about speaking it out of your mouth so that you can now analyze with somebody else. But you also said something, and you wrote about this in your book, and I think it's super important, that just talking about it with a friend or a loved one and having somebody that you feel safe with, that you can share your experiences with, that it normalizes it.

It makes you don't feel that sense of relief, and that can be helpful to somebody if you can't afford to go to a therapist. And so don't do this on your own, because talking to a friend or a loved one about the little voice in your head and how you see the dots starting to connect can provide you the insight and self-awareness that you really deserve.

Yes. Yes, absolutely.

Is there anything else that you would add to that?

Well, I think we can get perspectives from outside of us. Imagine in the example where you're citing your daughter saying, no one wants to talk to me, or I'm not good enough, or attractive enough. And let's imagine if a person feels that way, we can very rapidly start making self-fulfilling prophecy without being aware of it. So someone who feels that way is often diffident. Their head is down. They're behaving in ways that may make them much, much less approachable. Then no one does approach them, and then they find confirmatory evidence that they're not good enough, and then they're looking down more next time, they're more avoided next time. And this can get people into places that can at times, be hard to get out or get out of or to understand, because we're often not aware of how what's going on inside of here affects how we present ourselves in the world around us. That person who keeps having a negative experience with a boss over and over and over again may not realize that they're inadvertently fostering exactly that. They're behaving in certain ways that are diffident, that are avoidant, and And then there's a repetition.

So we can look across life situations, but we're not necessarily the best at observing ourselves of, How am I in the world? And how many times have I heard a person say, No one wants to talk me, or I'm not good enough, or I'm not attractive enough, or this or that. And then when you get a little bit more information, oh, since that breakup two months ago, every time they go out, they're like this. And their friends see that, but maybe people haven't talked about it. And a lot of times that's the case where people around someone haven't talked to someone about something that's very clearly evident. And if we start being more curious about ourselves, talking to trusted people around us, it's remarkable how much we can learn about ourselves. Someone who will tell me that they feel very ashamed of themselves. They've done something terrible, but they have been assaulted. The example that you gave, which happened throughout life, and you would say, Well, what might you say to another person? Or there's another person coming in who was sleeping when they were assaulted, can you stay around and tell them just how awful they are?

It's a way of getting out of ourselves because we make ourselves special in ways that are not good for us. So don't make yourself special in ways that are not good. If anyone else would be off the hook for something, or gosh, we would have sympathy and compassion, we want to bolster that person. Why am I the exception? We can look at ourselves through a fair and equitable lens if we come at it that way. That's the basic premise behind it, but that's part of the premise of inquiry in therapy. Also what it is like if we're just talking to someone trusted around us is, I don't want to go tell someone, Here's my story of why I'm so bad. But like, Here's a story of how I can really think that, and that can go over and over again in my head. If I'm curious about it, boy, that conversation is likely to go well because I'll learn from me while I'm talking. If I'm talking to you, boy, I'll probably learn from you, too. I'll open up also for you to talk to me. Maybe then you talk to me about yourself, and that's good for you.

There are ways that we can, through trusted communication and communication in the service of understanding and helping, we can be so much help to one another in ways that we just often aren't. Often not because we don't want to be, but because the opportunities aren't there for it. Nobody raises something. It's just not talked about. It doesn't have to be like that.

When you start to identify that little voice and the weight that it's tied to, how do you train your mind to to something else?

There's a lot of answers to that, potential answers, depending upon the person, their underlying mental health, what that thing is, how pervasive it may or may not be, in their lives. Is it reflection? Is it writing? Is it a therapy process? There's a lot of answers to that, and often the answers also include behavioral change. If I think I'm You're a loser because I'm not healthy enough. Some aspect of that is behavioral change is realizing I can get myself out of bed 20 minutes earlier and go for a walk around the block. I can do that. Then getting myself to do that, which then bolsters me. There's behavioral change, and there's what goes on inside. But I think an important thing, an extremely important thing to say about the question you asked is that when something has been with us for a long time, it doesn't change overnight because we are also creatures of habit. I give this example a lot that if you and I just chose a word and we decided, let's choose a word and say it a thousand times, then you'll be thinking about it this evening. I'll be thinking about it this evening, too.

If we'd say it 5,000 times, it'll be on our minds in two days. We have to understand that these negative pathways, they will atrophy. They can and will atrophy over time, but they don't go away all at once. Because we live in a world that often wants rapid gratification and a medical system that is like, no matter what's going on with you in many scenarios, you get 10 sessions of a certain therapy and everyone's supposed to be better afterwards. This drive towards rapid gratification and these expectations that we're just supposed to be able to change things, I think also come from how the mental health systems that allegedly are treating us and often don't do a good job of it approach us, create a sense of disappointment of, Why am I still thinking that after I've already been through three weeks of therapy about it? Well, the answer might be because you've been thinking about it for seven months or seven years, or in some cases, seven decades. We have to have a framing that's realistic because it may be that a 20% change in the frequency of saying that negative thing to oneself over a couple months might be an amazing achievement.

That achievement is leading towards that thing going away. But we get so impatient, and we don't have a framing of, what should this require of me? How long should this take? What are these neuronal mechanisms that are forces of habit that guide so much of what goes on inside of us that can be changed, but not rapidly? I think, again, understanding is of such importance and having rational expectations. I very often will want people to understand we can change this. But it's going to take us, I'm not sure, I might say, it's probably going to be in the 4-6 month range. We can really I get our arms around this and I want and hope that things can start improving a couple of weeks down the road. But it's a several month process. Let the person know that because so often there's just a reflex that says, Hey, somebody threw a medicine at you. That medicine is supposed to make you better, right? Let alone if it's a couple of therapy sessions and that's supposed to make a person better. We need a rational framing for what's going on inside of us and to plot out how do we actually get to change.

Well, I think that's good news. I do think it's the news. Yeah, because Because if you have a level of patience that you bring to this process, you're giving it room to work. I will share personally that even just identifying the fact that this was a reflexive habit of mine to tell myself someone's mad at me, even just identifying it like, Oh, there it is Oh, interesting. Oh, wow. There it is again. How could the person in front of me in the line at the coffee shop be mad at me? I haven't said anything outstanding. You know what I'm saying? Like, just, Oh, there it is again. And so the process alone of starting to see this is rewarding in and of itself.

I think I want to highlight when we talk about having the courage to look at ourselves and how hard it is. You When you think about the example that you gave, you could have felt bad about feeling bad. Why am I feeling this way? I wake up and no one's here, I feel this way. Or am I saying feeling bad things about them? That my husband would feel that way about me? Think There are how many ways you could just feel bad about that and have shut it down. It takes courage and curiosity to not do that. I just think that part is so important to emphasize, and that we can start doing that. We can start Feeling better, doing better, emboldening ourselves, just by doing small, nice things for ourselves and for other people. It may sound trite, but it is not. To a good hand, say if you're in that line to the coffee shop and somebody to drop something, to pick it up for them or to give them a smile, or do something nicer for ourselves, because we often self-punish. If I don't feel bad about myself, I'll just walk that distance in the rain instead of putting an umbrella up.

We do a lot of these things to ourselves where we could just in the moment, just be nicer to ourselves, more considerate to ourselves and to others. That starts empowering and emboldening us to do that, to see there's enough good in me that I can give somebody a smile, I can give somebody a smile. I can give somebody a helping hand, or I can even be a little nicer to myself. It may sound small or trite, but I promise that it is not. It's often that that gets the ball rolling towards something maybe more difficult, like looking at something that I know is on my mind a I've been scared to look at. I think we can start in simple ways, simple goodness to self and others.

That example of putting an umbrella up was so poignant because I think of how many times I've had an umbrella and I've just been like, No, it's okay. I carry the umbrella, I walk a couple of blocks, I pop my collar, I start to hunch down, and I take the drops. And that moment where you stop and put up the umbrella, it is important. I keep thinking about this visual of the raindrops being like the negative beat down. Yeah, I like that. The act of popping up the umbrella as a way to just have yourself not have to hear it.

Yeah. I really do love that because sometimes we'll say, I'm the hell with it. But the idea, I get the umbrella out, but to hell with it. No, no. That's actually to hell with me. So we want to stop and think like, well, if I'm thinking to hell with it, what am I really thinking? To hell with me, I'm not worth getting the umbrella out. And it's awareness like, no, I'm going to stop and I'm going to do that. I'm not going to say, the hell with it, to help with me. I'm going to make some protection. You make a little bit more pleasantness or anything positive for myself. And I love that way. Then the umbrella is shielding us from the negativity because we've had the wherewithal inside of ourselves to do something small but meaningful for ourselves. Yeah, I think that's a powerful way to move that example forward. I like that.

It's beautiful. Dr. Conti, you are a gift. Today, we are going to get right into it. We're going to talk about imposter syndrome. And the reason The reason why I wanted to talk about this is because our daughter, Kendall, who is 23 years old, just had a situation this weekend that triggered imposter syndrome. I thought, Why don't we unpack this moment where your imposter syndrome got triggered? And then, more importantly, the incredible things that you shared with me that helped you turn it around. So, ladies and gentlemen, everybody who's listening, Kendall Robbins. Hey, everybody. All right. So tell us what happened.

Okay. So this past weekend, I had my first experience as an artist in the real artist world, is what I'm going to call it.

What does artist mean?

I am pursuing a career as a professional recording and touring artist, and I'm a singer-songwriter. I've started to write my own music. I'm moving out to LA in a few weeks time. And this past weekend was my first experience surrounded by people that are really successful artists that are doing the thing that I want to do. And as somebody that's been in school for the past four years, I've had very few experiences like And so this past weekend was my first few days fully existing in that world without the label of a student on my back. I didn't have that shadow to hide in anymore. I was feeling embarrassed. I was feeling awkward. I was feeling like an imposter. I don't belong because I don't have music out, and I don't have fans, and I don't have a social media following, but I was just me.

Okay, well, let's just back the truck up a minute. So let's just Set the table. First of all, every human being struggles with moments of imposter syndrome. I'm looking at the research right here, everybody. I've got my research. Psychologists call this fear of being found out imposter syndrome. It was coined in the 1970s by two female researchers. In fact, Harvard Business Review, Kendall, says that executives worldwide agree that their number one fear is being found to be incompetent.

Oh, okay.

So this is a very normal thing for everybody to experience. And it is what is called intellectual self-doubt, where you enter a situation, or you enter a room, or you think about doing something. And in your own mind, you start doubting yourself. You start doubting whether or not you're able to do something. You start doubting whether or not you deserve to be in a certain place. And you start feeling worried that people are going to find out that you have no idea what you're talking about. And one thing that I will say from the get-go is the reason why I wanted to have you on is because the situation that you found yourself in on Friday morning, just a few days ago, is not only so relatable, but I was pretty impressed by how you coached yourself through it and turned it around and had one of the coolest most affirming weekends of your life. And I know that you have a lot of value to share. So with that, are you willing to go there?

Yes, I am willing.

Okay, great. So just put us at the scene. What was happening Friday morning?

So this past weekend, I was lucky enough to go to a music festival, and I had an artist pass, which means that I got to watch all of the musicians and artists that were performing at the festival perform from backstage in this separate area that the people with the Artist Pass can hang out in. And I didn't really know what that meant until I got there. And so what did you think it meant? I honestly had no idea what Artist Pass meant. I was just like, sweet. Okay. I get to cut the line. That's really awesome. I feel really grateful. And then I walk backstage and I'm surrounded by all of these very established musicians and artists and performers and people that I've been listening to for the past however many years.

What was that like?

I mean, it was It was really scary at first because I had no idea that I was going to be within arm's reach of all these people that I've looked up to for the past few years. Being there as somebody that has just gotten out of school, does not have anything released, is just in the woods right now, figuring out who I want to be, what I want to be, what I want to write, what I want to release. I basically don't exist right now in the world that I'm stepping into. And so stepping into this festival as somebody that doesn't really exist online or in this industry yet, but stepping into it physically and being surrounded by all these people was just incredibly daunting. I felt really scared and awkward. I stood alone a lot of the time.

So can you put us at the moment when you arrive at the Festival, you get this pass that is a special thing around your wrist that gives you all to go anywhere, and you walk into almost like the tent that serves as the green. Yeah.

Okay, okay, okay. So I have a family friend that works at this festival and has been going to this festival for a So he was the one that was actually able to get me the artist pass. I had honestly no idea what it really meant. I knew that there were some VIP features of this past, but I did not know what my days were going to look like. I didn't know what the schedule was like. And so basically, we We get to the festival, we cut the line, we go to this special tent where I get this wristband, and then we walk into the festival. Immediately, we're in this crowd. I'm seeing all the food tents, smelling all the smells, seeing all the people. And then we go behind the stage into this roped off section. Meanwhile, the family friend that I am with is showing me the ropes, but of course, he's very busy and has things to be doing at the festival. We go behind this rope, and there's this hangout area in the roped off section under a tent, and he said, This is the hangout spot. Okay, I got to go now.

And I was like, Okay. So I'm 30 minutes in. I'm wearing a long skirt, and it's 85 degrees outside, which automatically I'm a rookie. And he says, Okay, this is the hangout spot. This is our touch point. We can meet here. There's not a lot of service at the festival. In terms of self-service. Self-service. There's no service at the festival. So if you need to find me, we'll just at this tent. I'm like, Okay, sweet. I walk into the tent. I'm like, Okay, free food, free drinks. This pass is freaking awesome. And then I start to recognize the people standing under the tent. I mean, not every single person, but there were some very established artists. I start to recognize a lot of artists whose music I have been listening to for years now, whose name I have seen on the lineup for the festival, who are now standing in front of me in the free food line. And so I'm thinking, Oh, my God. Okay, this tent is where all the artists and performers hang out. And because I have this pass that says artist pass, I am also allowed to be in this tent.

So I'm putting the pieces together slowly, and I'm just like, Why am I here? I should not be here. I should be out in that audience with people. I'm not performing. I'm not part of a band. I'm here on a family connection. I just feel like, Why am I here? This is so awkward. Not to mention I'm alone. So So you can imagine that the imposter syndrome was even grander than if you're with somebody that you can bond with it over.

But did you go up to anybody?

No. So basically, I walk into this tent and I see all these people that I've been following, and I put the pieces together and realize, oh, my God, this artist pass on my wrist that says artist means that I have access to everything the performers do, which immediately makes me want to rip the thing off my arm and go stand in the audience because I'm not performing. I'm not on the industry side. I'm not a musician. I mean, I'm not a musician performing with anyone. I'm just here as Kendall. And like I said before, doesn't really exist in this industry world yet.

What do you mean by that? You don't exist.

I don't have any... I don't have anything out to... I feel imposter syndrome talking about the fact that I don't have music out yet on Spotify. I hate talking about it. It makes me want to I grow up everywhere. It makes me so embarrassed.

Why?

Because everybody else seems to have it figured out and have shit going on. I know that when I am not in an anxious state of mind, I remind myself, I'm on my own timeline. I don't really want you to include that.

No, but I think that's important because it ties into what I was going to share with you. Please say that.

Okay. I feel very embarrassed to share with my mom's millions and millions of followers and listeners that I don't have anything out on any streaming platform yet. I don't have a social media presence. I don't have fans. I don't have anything. I'm talking about being an imposter on this podcast When I've never been on tour, I don't have an album out, I don't have followers, I don't have fans. I feel like an imposter for being an imposter. I have imposter syndrome about doing this episode because I feel like I haven't been an imposter for long enough to talk about being an imposter.

What does that even mean?

This is just such a classic example of the syndrome, which is I feel as though I haven't... This feeling is so new to me that it feels like I don't even have enough qualification to talk about it.

Oh, so- Do you know what I mean? You don't feel like you're an authority on how to deal with imposter syndrome because you struggle with it.

I don't feel like I had my first real experience this past weekend dealing with imposter syndrome, and I definitely learned from it. I definitely gained a lot of insight from the experience, but it was my first experience, and I feel unqualified to talk about it because it was my first experience.

You're not really selling the episode.

I'm trying to make a joke. I do feel like an imposter right now because I feel like all of the other people in my industry have experienced this so much more than I have. Now I'm getting on here and getting on my soapbox trying to tell everybody what it's like.

You're not getting on your soapbox. But this is why this conversation is so important. You're in it. Everybody listening feels like an imposter in some area of their life. Everybody can relate to that feeling like, Here I am. I am physically next to the people who are doing what I want to do. It's so close. I can reach out and touch it. These people I've admired, I've streamed, I've watched them at award shows. They're standing right there. They're doing what I want to do. The only thing that's keeping me from doing what I want to do is this feeling of not being ready or this feeling that I'm not going to have what it takes, this feeling of being a nobody, this feeling like somebody's already done it, this feeling like, Is there room for me? And because you're in it, you are in a much better place to validate where everybody is, Ken. Somebody's already figured this shit out, coming in and being like, Well, when you feel like an imposter, do this, this, and this. It's easy when you're through it. You're right up against it right now. That tension that you feel is important.

I remember, God, this must have been nine years ago when I first got into the speaking business, Ken. I hadn't been paid to give a speech, and I get invited as I'm just starting out to go to this event in California and speak on a panel. I don't even know what the hell I was speaking about. All I know is there was this opening reception, okay? Sort of like what you're describing. Arriving, an opening reception for the people who had been invited to speak at this thing. And so like you, I walk into this room, I have the lanyard around my neck. You've got the little artist thing around your wrist, and I I walk in and I am like, Oh, my God, there's Christie Turlington, the supermodel. Oh, my gosh, there's Gretchen Rubin, the author. Oh, my gosh. There's this person, there's that person. There's that person. And I see all these famous people, all of whom are speaking. I felt like I had no business being there.

Yeah, same.

And all these people were talking, and they all seemed to know each other. And there were a couple of instances where I'm like, Okay, here we go. And I would walk up to a group of people, and I'd introduce myself, and they'd all turn, Oh, what are What did you do? I didn't even know how to answer it because I didn't have a book. I had given one TEDx talk, and nobody had heard of it yet. I didn't have anything. I felt like I had nothing. I didn't even know why it was there. And after I would introduce myself and people were like, Oh, did you write a book? I'm like, No, I'm just speaking about motivation. Oh, okay. And then they'd And something flipped in me because I felt like such a fraud being there, but something deeper was going on, and this is what was going on. I realized in that moment that I wanted to do something that mattered. I wanted to do the work or write a book or do something that when I walked into a room, it was like, Oh, you're the woman who wrote I'm on a five-second rule?

I freaking love that thing. And that discomfort that I felt in that moment, it sucked in the moment. I went back to my hotel room. I didn't go to the dinner. I cried. I stayed up all night. What am I going to do? But there was something deep inside of me that was like, You don't want to feel this way. You have something that you want to contribute. And feeling like you're on the outside of something that you want to be a part of is a normal normal experience. See, I think imposter syndrome, that discomfort that you were feeling that first few hours at the artist tent at this music festival, I think that is your dreams going, We got work to do. Oh, shit. You want to be in here? You want to be doing this? You got stuff to contribute? You got to wake up. You got to start putting yourself out there. This is a step on the path that's so important because you only feel imposter syndrome in situations that you care about because you care about whether or not you've got something to show for what you're doing.

Well, like I said, I was alone, and all of these very established famous artists are walking by me. And it's not like I can be introducing myself to people and saying, Oh, go check me out on Spotify. Go check me out on Instagram. It's like, hi, I'm Kendall. And then I disappear. To the point where someone literally came up to me and was like, Are you okay? Definitely knew. I looked like I was not supposed to be there. That's how the imposter syndrome had basically creeped onto my face. I was so uncomfortable and so just embarrassed and just felt like, Why am I here? I need to leave. I don't want to be here. I want to go home. I don't want to tell people I'm an artist. I don't feel like that at all right now. I don't feel like anyone's going to give a shit about me, including myself. But yeah, it was horrible. It was really horrible. But I mean...

What changed, though? Because this is where I want to go to. We can all... Well, hold that thought. I want to hear a quick word from our sponsors. And when we come back, we're going to go right to the moment where you flipped the switch because you did. And you made it one of the best weekends of your and you made incredible friendships, and you came home a different person after those three days. We're going to talk about what changed when we come back. Welcome back. I'm Mel Robbins, and I'm sitting here with our daughter, Kendall, who's 23, and she is pursuing her dream and goal of being a touring singer-songwriter, and we're talking about imposter syndrome. And so, Ken, I want to go back to the moment where you've been standing in the artist's tent at this music festival for the first five hours on day one. Somebody has come up to you and said, Are you okay? Because you look so out of place, and you're alone, drinking a white cloth, surrounded by all these touring musicians that you admire. How did you... What did you do to turn this around? Because you turned it around, dude.

Well, I definitely... It It definitely was not immediate. It continued for about a few more hours. So in that- Just tell me about it. In that tent... God. And I'm slightly tipsy now because I've had two white claws alone. And I'm sitting alone. Let me just tell you, every single person in that tent was with another person, if not three or four. So you can tell that I probably look so weird sitting alone. And I was just thinking, I'm here. I get to be around some of my biggest inspirations. I get to go backstage and be an arm's length from them while they absolutely murder it on stage. I get free food. I get free white clothes. Why the fuck wouldn't I enjoy this? I'm just going to enjoy this because no, I'm not performing, although I wish that I was. No, I don't have a Grammy, although that is a dream of mine. No, I don't have music out on Spotify that I can tell my favorite artists that are here to listen to. No, I can't do any of that. But you know what? I can be grateful that I'm here. And I can lean into that gratitude and just have fun.

So once I exhaled and I was like, okay, I'm going to enjoy myself. This has been God awful up until this point.

Grateful for the God awful.

I Why not? Why not have fun? I'm either going to continue to torture myself in front of my favorite artist or I'm going to have fun and put a smile on my face. So I said, you know what? I'm really happy that I'm here. Let's start to have some fun. And as I'm sitting alone drinking a water this time, I'm thinking about all of this advice that I've gotten over the past years and what are other things I can lean into while being here to try and find some sense of a belonging in a place that I feel I don't belong. I think back to this piece of advice that one of my amazing mentors, Sean Holt, who is the Vice Dean at the Thornton School of Music at USC, gave to me. He said, Because you're a beginner, Kendall, these rooms that you're going to start to walk into and these experiences that you're going to start to have, you can't be walking in there with some massive ego and some big head on your shoulders thinking, I know best. I know this. That's not the way to go about this is to be like, I know everything.

But instead, you should walk into those rooms with a learner's posture and lean into the gratitude that you have for learning all that you're going to learn. And he said, Every room that you walk into, enter with a learner's posture, but also know in the back of your mind that you have something to give to the people in that room that they don't have and that you might not even know you have to give, but there's a reason you're in that room and you're going to give them something that they don't know they needed, just like they're going to give you something you don't know you needed. Mic drop. Thank you, Sean.

Can I just stop there? Yeah. I wish I had known that when I walked into the room in Los Angeles, because I walked in there and I felt like, Oh, my God, these are people I admire, or they're famous, or they're known, or they're doing cool things. I'm not doing anything. I'm a nobody. I don't have anything yet. And yet, that's the important part, yet, it's not that you can't do it. It's that you haven't I've not done it yet. But if I had been able to flip to a state of, I'm just so grateful to be here, and I am going to introduce myself to everybody, and I am going to learn as much as I can, and I'm going to soak things up, and I'm going to be like a beginner. If you were in my shoes, what's one piece of advice you would have? Just soak it all up and in. It would have flipped off the insecurity that imposter syndrome can overwhelm you with because when you get up in your head and you start going, I don't belong, and you become very intellectual about it, you isolate yourself. You cut yourself off from both what you can get and gain from the room and what you can give.

Because every time you talk to somebody who is beginning at something you're really good at, their enthusiasm and passion always rubs off on you. Yeah. And so it's true. I was told that. What do you mean?

I mean, so a lot of things happened, but I just started to relax into it, and I started to meet people.

How did you meet them?

Well, the family connection that I had who invited me to the festival had a few friends there, and he introduced me to those people who I really hit it off with, and we started talking. It was the first time that I was talking to people, but it was the first time that I was able to just own where I was at and say, I'm an artist. I'm a beginner. I don't have anything out. I'm just in my creative, curative space right now. I'm working on some stuff. I'm really excited about it. I'm not trying to rush the process. I think saying that and just speaking that out into the universe was a weight lifted. But just being able to meet people and tell them that I'm a beginner and that I'm so excited and that I'm so grateful to learn from them and to be just surrounded by the greats and all these people that I've just been so inspired by for the past few years was enough. What happened? Well, they were so nice, and they welcomed me in, and they took me under their wing and introduced me to a bunch of cool people.

And nobody was quick to judge me that I was a beginner. And I had a few people even say, It's so inspiring being around you because we now have to make ends meet by doing this, and we pay our bills doing this. But it's so cool to be surrounded by someone that's just so fresh off and ready to go. And it reminds us all of the reason that we started, which is because we fell in love with it. And we can feel that love coming off of you. And it just reminds us of why we do this, because some days it gets long and it gets hard and we don't want to do it. And it's hard to be so in love with the thing that also pays your bills. But it's so nice being around you and being around somebody that's just so excited about it. And that was just so validating because they weren't complimenting my original music, but they were just complimenting my spirit and my ambition and my drive and my passion, which what I needed to be complimented on at this phase in my journey.

It's actually more important than being complimented on the music.

Yeah. And so I made a bunch of friends, and I even got the chance to perform at this late night performance. And after I performed, I had a bunch of people ask if they wanted to collaborate with me and write music with me. And it was just That's really awesome. I think once I owned where I'm at, which is a beginner. I'm not an imposter as a beginner because that's what I am. Wait.

Say that again.

I'm not an imposter if I'm a beginner, because that's what I am.

Oh, my God. Kendall, that's genius.

Well, I think you can diffuse the imposter syndrome if you just accept where you're at. I felt like an imposter around all of my favorite artists because of what they have accomplished that I haven't yet. But if I just give myself the space to meet me where I'm at, then the imposter syndrome disappears. Does that make sense?

It not only makes sense, but I have so many Any ahas and light bulbs blinking. It's like a galaxy in my mind. You're not an imposter. You're just a beginner.

Yes.

And what I also love about those moments where You're new to something. You're learning. You're in a new job. If you start at a new school, you feel like an imposter that everybody always has friends. When you move to a new neighborhood, when you try something new. And I think so many of us are so terrified of feeling like a beginner or feeling mediocre at something that we don't give ourselves permission to just be a beginner because we think people are going to like us more if we have it all figured out. And the truth is, nobody has it figured out completely. No. The people that you admire are tired of touring. And so the passion and the beginner's mindset infuses them with something. And I have so many takeaways from this conversation, Ken. I knew that I would. Number one, The next time that you're in a situation where you feel like you don't belong or you get up in your head, recognize it and flip it to gratitude. Be grateful that you are here at this new school or you're here in this new job, or you are here in a room with people that you admire.

Adopt that learners, beginner's mindset, and just absorb as much as you can. Another thing that you said that I think is brilliant is is that as soon as you gave yourself grace to just be where you are and to say it out loud.

Well, I have something to say about that.

Okay.

Another way to think about it, and this is another piece of advice that I got from Sean Holt, is that you become one of the most powerful people in the room when you beat everybody to your inconvenient truths.

What does that mean?

It means if you're a beginner and you don't have music out on Spotify, just say it. Just I'm feeling pretty embarrassed and feeling a little bit out of place.

Say, I love that.

Instead of trying to pretend like you have it all figured out when you walk into this room, just beat everybody to your inconvenient truths. It's inconvenient that I don't have music out. It's inconvenient that I haven't gone on tour. It feels inconvenient that I don't have fans or a social media following. And so instead of pretending like I have it all figured out, and I'm sitting in this room, I'm just going to be honest, and I'm just going to vulnerable, because if you come from a place of vulnerability, you're definitely going to make connection.

What happened the first time you said to somebody in that artist tent? Well, I haven't released any music yet.

Well, let me talk about how it felt to say that because it was horrible.

Okay, so say it.

I mean, the first time that I recognized that I was a beginner and was able to say it out loud was when I would be talking to people. And then, of course, the question comes, well, do you have any music out? And my jaw would lock, and I somehow spit out no and said, I just graduated from school. I'm working on some music now. I'm trying to figure out who I am, what I want to sound like, what I want to say. And I'm not there yet, and I'm really excited for the process. But no, I don't have music out. I don't have an Instagram page with with anything to look at, at least. I don't have fans. I don't have any of it. I don't have TikTok. I don't have it. And it's definitely scary being around everybody here that not only has that, but has gone around the country showing people. But I'm a beginner, and I'm excited, and I'm so happy that I get to be here around all of you who are people that I've looked up to for however long. I'm just really excited. I was met with so much, oh, my gosh, that's awesome.

You should take your time. You're so young. You have all the time in the world. Just things that I've been told for so long. But hearing it from these people that I've been so inspired by for so long was so validating. You have to be bad at something before you're good at it. People are so afraid of being not so great at something that they don't even try. Yeah.

They're embarrassed to admit that they're at the beginning of trying.

Yeah. Also, every single person that in that tent has probably had an experience like mine. Of course.

And you know what I also find interesting is that you call yourself a beginner, but you just graduated from the top program in the world for pop music at USC Thornton, studying with Grammy award-winning artists and collaborating with plenty of musicians. You're not exactly a beginner, but you're a beginner beginner on the journey of the touring artist world. And so I think that there are levels to that beginner mindset, because when I started this podcast, I was not a beginner when it comes to audio. I hosted a radio show in 2008 for years and won awards for it. And then I've published all these audiobooks with Audible, but I felt like a beginner that had never done a podcast. Yeah.

When I started this- No, I'm not a beginner singer. I am a beginner songwriter. I am a beginner in an artist tent. I am a beginner talking to my favorite artist. I am a beginner waiting in line behind my favorite musicians. There are so many things that I have. I mean, it all ties back into the there's something to learn and there's something to give. It's push and pull, but it's mostly balance. I think if you're only on I have something to give, you're going to get too caught up in your own world, and you're not going to be able to feel into the gratitude and the service, and you're going to be too obsessed with yourself. What do I give? What do I give?

It's all about me.

It's all about me. It's not. And then if you get into the, what do I have to learn? What do I have to learn? What do I have to learn? What do I have to learn? You're just going to dumb yourself down so much that you don't even give yourself the opportunity to express what you do have to give. And so it's practice. And I definitely have not figured it out, although it maybe on this podcast sounds like I have. But the balance thing, it's an everyday practice.

One thing I want to point out based on what you told me is that the first thing that you gave is your sense of humor. It had nothing to do with music. And so you started cracking jokes with somebody that you were introduced to that is highly regarded. And it was your humor and your passion and your beginner mindset that broke the ice. Yeah. And had you make this incredible connection with somebody who will probably be part of your career moving forward.

Yeah. And I think another way that I think about imposter syndrome is, I think, about the fact that I'm a nobody. That's what I was feeling. I was literally texting my friends who I graduated with at USC who are incredible musicians and have music out and are just my best friends. And I was texting them being like, I'm a Why am I here? So-and-so just walked by. I'm drinking alone. Help me. And they were all responding like, You're Kendall effing Robbins. You're not a nobody. Go be you. Go have fun. You're supposed to be there. Love you guys. You know who you are. And I think in saying I'm a nobody, the only reason that I was thinking everybody around me were somebody's is because of the accolades and the accomplishments that they've achieved. And the followings and the fans. Yeah, and the The following. But the fans, at least in my opinion, the fans, the awards, the accolades, the attention that all of the people I was surrounded by have are not who they are. But as I was thinking about this, I was going, so and so is not her Grammy. She's her.

I don't have music out right now, but I'm still me, and I can still be me. And at the end of the day, we're all nobodies because people think we're somebody's when we have stuff to show. But without that stuff, we're just us, which is, I mean, the beauty of life. We're all just us.

You know, it's interesting is that you just said people think you're somebody because you have some something to show for yourself. But we're all just nobodies because there is something that is special about you that nobody else has.

Yeah, that's a great way of thinking about it. And I think the word nobody is, it's so negative, and people think, Oh, I'm invisible. But we're all just doing our own thing because I don't have music out, because I don't have these awards, because I don't have this following that everyone around me has. I'm like, You know what? All I can do is just be me. And that's all that I'm going to do throughout my career. And so I'm just going to do that right now because I hope that even when I do have those accolades and when I do have those fans, I can still be me. And I'm sure that all these people around at some capacity, are just trying to be themselves, too. So in doing that, I think I learned, and I hope you guys can learn that in just being me, the things that I started to give had nothing to do with my music and nothing to do with my voice, and nothing to do with anything that I thought it would have to do with. The things that you are going to give in these rooms that you walk into where you feel like an imposter will likely have nothing to do with that actual career or the skillset you mastered in college to get the job that you got.

It's probably going to have to do with your humanity or some experience you had that's relatable, or your sense of humor, or the fact that you're passionate about sewing. I don't know. Who knows what it's going to be? But I think what I learned this past weekend is that people felt a magnetic pull towards me because of my humor and because of my inappropriate jokes that really, I guess, brought some laughter to the rooms that I was walking into. And in giving people comedic relief and giving people laughter, that's what they learned from me. And in turn, I started learning from them, and the door is all open. And lean into you in those rooms. Just be you, recognize you're a beginner, beat people to your inconvenient truths. Be honest by telling them. Just be I do. And I think if you're you, you're going to give, and you will also receive. If I was trying to be somebody that had all these awards or had a TikTok following or whatever it may be, I wouldn't be Kendall.

Right.

And I was Kendall, and she had a great weekend. I made a bunch of friends. I ate good food. I saw old friends. I made new friends.

One of the things that will beat imposter syndrome is when you start to also tell yourself that there's a reason I'm here.

We didn't talk about this enough, I don't think.

Okay, well, there's a reason why I'm here. You don't have to be like, I deserve to be in this room. Grab faith. You're in the room for a reason, and you might not know why, but have faith that there is a reason for you to be in that room. There's something for you to learn. There's something for you to give, and that's why you're there. Because I see this a lot, and when you tell yourself that you have faith that there's a reason why you're sitting in this room, there's a reason why you're near these people, there's a reason why you're at this school, And if you can't muster up the belief that you deserve to be, anchor yourself in that there's something for you to learn. There's a lesson. There's something for you to discover about yourself. Because when I look back at my experience nine years ago, and I was in that room with all those people I admired, all these famous people, and I felt so unworthy. There was a reason I was supposed to be there. It helped me discover that discomfort that I felt, that I don't want to feel like this in rooms like this.

I want to feel like I'm somebody who's contributed something that's important. That's what started to motivate me. That's what got me to accept and confront the fact that I really wanted to be a person that had published a book. Now, I didn't publish it in the next year. I showed up in rooms for the next two, three years, Ken, still feeling like an imposter.

I'm sure it never goes away.

It does. There are new levels to it. When I met Alex Cooper and was on her show, Call Her Daddy, and I was in awe of her, the number one female ranked podcaster in the world, and I didn't even launch my podcast yet. You know what? Just absorbed everything I could learn from her, and I learned a lot. She's amazing. There are going to be moments where you feel that because you're going to be a beginner again. But if you really embrace what Ken and I are sharing with you. You don't have to destroy yourself. You can immediately catch yourself and flip it into a learning opportunity and a gratitude moment and reminding yourself that, wow, I have faith that I'm here right now because there is something I'm meant to learn by doing this right now. So I'm not going to get it right. I'm not going to be perfect. I'm going to be me, and I'm going to learn. And that has so helped me. And I think it'll help you listening right now. Yeah.

And I think the thing you also said about the fact that imposter syndrome, I think, comes from a place of, well, I really want this to feel like me. The only reason that you're feeling that, that imposter syndrome, is because you want to not feel like an imposter in those rooms. You want to be a badass in all those rooms. Yes, this is a good thing. It's a good thing. It's telling you. It's like your mental compass going like, yeah, this is what you want. There's a work to do. It's a reminder. There's a work to do. I don't feel imposter syndrome when I go to a financial Financial Convention because I don't know anything about that. And I don't want to. And I don't have a passion to. I don't desire to. That's a great point. I'm not like, oh, my God, I'm never going to make it in this. I'm like, I don't want to be here. I don't want to be in this room. I want to be in a different room. But it's the rooms that you want to be in that you're like, Oh, fuck. I don't know if I'm supposed to be here.

It tests everything. It makes you look in the mirror. It shines a light on the things you don't know about what you're so obsessed with and makes you want them.

And that scares the shit out of you.

Yeah. No, I think it's true. I think it comes back to the idea that some days you're going to be a beginner in the room, some days you're going to be the expert. If If you find yourself in that room or that tent or backstage, or in that workout class, wherever you are, and you start to feel that, creeping up, I shouldn't be here. I don't belong here. I don't know what to do. I don't know what to say. Just trust that you're supposed to be there and that there's a reason that you're there. And take on your learners posture. If you feel like you don't know anything and everybody else does, then just But really grateful and really excited to learn from the other people. And don't leave the room.

Don't leave that room. Boom.

Cheers.

Cheers. We're talking about fear.

Yes. My favorite topic.

Hello, fear.

Hello, fears. Yeah.

What made you decide that you were going to conquer your fears by facing a hundred fears in a hundred days? Why on Earth did you do that?

Oh, my gosh. Because I moved to New York, the city of my dreams, and I was not living my dream because I was too much in my comfort zone. And I heard this song by One Republic called I Lived. And they're saying about all the bones they broke and the hearts they broke. And I'm like, I've never broken a bone in my life or a heart or whatever. I'm like, I'm not living. I started crying because I realized I'm alive, but I'm not living and I want to live my life.

Okay, hold on. That was a big one. I'm alive, but I'm not living. I think a ton of people just went, Shit. I'm alive, but I'm not living.

And I was checking all the boxes. I was doing all the right things. I had a good job. I was already married. I was living in New York. Everything was in paper. Perfect. But I wonder, am I happy or am I comfortable? And that's very different.

Yes. So you go to your husband. What's his name?

Adam.

You turn to Adam and say, even though we've got this dialed in, I've decided I'm going to go and face my fears for 100 days. Yeah. Did he look at you and say, Absolutely, you're crazy?

No, he said, I'll support you 100 %. I'll help you face all your fears.

Wow. So did you take leave from your job or what did you do?

No. You cannot imagine. Every single day, I would wake up really early either to face a fear in the morning. Then I would go to my job. I was in advertising. And then I was doing a master's in branding at the School of Visual Arts in New York every single day of the week. So I would have to either face a fear early in the morning during my lunchtime before I go to the master's or right after at 10:00 PM. And then every day I would come back, edit a video, and upload that to YouTube, put it on all the social media channels, and then go to bed for three, four hours, and then go back.

You know what this proves? This proves that if you feel like you don't have enough time, you don't have a big enough exciting game to play. And there's even research about this, that ironically, if you're super, super busy, the best way to reclaim your time is by adding in something really meaningful or challenging. And that's exactly what you did.

Yes. What was the scariest thing that you did out of the 100? I will tell you something. I get that question. I just got it today, speaking twice. And it's really hard to answer because the biggest fear is the one you haven't conquered, is the one you haven't faced. So if you ask me this in the middle of the challenge, I would say the next 50 fears, right? But now, looking back, I can't even choose one because this is how my everyday would look like. I would be I was like, Okay, today was not that bad. Tomorrow, I will die. And the next day, same thing. Okay, not that bad. Tomorrow, it will be the worst one. And then it was never as bad.

Well, what was the one that you had the most anticipatory, Holy shit, I might actually die if I do this?

Well, you will not guess my answer, but it's stand-up comedy. It was so scary. Doing stand-up comedy. So much more scary than I could ever imagine in a club in New York in the form of a real audience. That was so scary. More than sky diving and even posing nude in front of a drawing class. That was a really tough one.

You posed nude in front of a drawing class?

Yeah, that was one of the scariest one as well.

So what was that like?

It was really transformational, the whole experience, because when I started, I was so self-aware. I wanted to be as skinny as I can and hide all my imperfections. And then slowly, as the time progressed, what I realized is that I'm not giving anything to the audience. I want to draw something interesting because I'm just here thinking about myself.

So are you sitting there cross legs, arms across your boobs. You're like, that's my good chin angle. That thing?

Yes. And then when I saw the other models, they were all like, they have curves and hair everywhere. I'm like, And I shaped before coming here. I started bending more and creating interesting shapes. I was like, It's not about me. It's about them. And at the end, no one's judging us in the same way that we judge ourselves.

Why is it important for people... Why is it important for the person that is listening to us right now, driving their car, walking by themselves? Why is it important for that human being to face their fear?

I think the most important thing is that we get to live our most authentic lives.

How is fear the access to your most Most authentic life?

Because we hide ourselves. We hide who we are. We hide our needs because it is scary to speak up. It is scary to show ourselves. It is scary to experience rejection when we show who we really are, and we will experience rejection when we show who we really are. But it's not a matter of being liked by everybody. It's a matter of resonating with the right people and attracting to you into your life the right people, the people that value who you really are so you don't have to hide or create this fake filter character of yourself.

So what was... Oh, it was the nude drawing one. That's what was a really scary one. I keep thinking about that.

A friend suggested that. I was so mad. I'm like, why do you have to put that in my head? Because, yes, I am scared of that. I am in the process of facing all my fears. I can't now unsee this huge fear that I have. I hate you. So yes.

Wow. What did you learn about yourself by doing the 100 Days, 100 Fears Project?

So I learned that that feeling that you get when you're about to face a fear, you know that feeling? It's in your heart, and it's telling you, don't do it. Don't do it. That's probably your ego trying to protect you from facing rejection or embarrassment or losing your job or whatever it is. I always perceive that feeling as a sign that my body is telling me, don't go that way. After facing my fears and going through that feeling over and over again, what I see is that that's also the feeling that tells you that there's growth in there, and I never saw it like that. So I ran away every single time, and I missed out on so many opportunities because I was like, no, my intuition. I thought it was my intuition, but it was just, I think, my ego or whatever it is that's trying to protect me from facing my fears. I thought they were telling me not go that way. And it was exactly where I had to go. So now every Every time I experience that and I feel uncomfortable, I choose growth.

So I get that question a lot, and I would love to hear your answer or any tool that you may have for somebody who doesn't know the difference between true intuition and fear that's holding them back from reaching their potential. What's a tool or a technique somebody can use to try to tease that difference out?

Well, so whenever I'm about to do something that is outside of my comfort zone, and I have that feeling, immediately I can see how my body is telling me, don't do it. And all of these fears and negative thoughts start to pop into my brain, and it builds like a brick wall, and I can't see past that. And it's only when you focus on the rewards that you get to see past those fears. So a lot of people will ask you the question, what's the worst that can happen? And then that's a really bad question. Do not ask that question.

Because you'll see the worst.

Yes. And the worst, I know, is maybe not dying or getting fired. But the worst is hurting your feelings, and that is still as hurtful. So you don't want to go through that. But what I ask people is now change the question to what's the best that can happen? That's the only way you will get to see the rewards that are expecting you in the other side of fear. And if those rewards are not really exciting for you, then maybe that's a fear not worth facing. But if they are, then you have to go for it despite the fear that it may bring.

I love that refrain because you're right. When somebody says, well, what's the worst thing that could happen? They're trying to minimize your fear, but it actually has you laser focus on a fear, which magnifies even the smallest worst thing that could happen. But when you reframe it to, well, what's the best thing that could happen?

You see things in a whole different way. Just today, I spoke three times at this event, and it was a new presentation. So I was so nervous. And I told this to my community. I'm like, I'm really nervous. I'm giving all this new presentation, new material. And somebody asked, Michelle, What's the best that can happen? Because they know that's my language. And it helped me so much, so much. I immediately imagine my room full of people, people clapping, people laughing, people being inspired, even crying, whatever. I'm like, I'm ready. I'm ready for this.

What Tina is asking is, how the hell do I change my mindset? How do I stop trying to find it outside of me? I don't even know how to begin to find it inside of me. In fact, you mentioned that you were depressed, and I was reading an article where you were interviewed, and you said that you were writing in a journal during this period, and the first entry you wrote was, I don't remember being happy, and I don't think I'll ever be happy again. And now you're like the world's guru of happiness. So in that moment, though, Sean, you had an experience that I think everybody has at some point. I'm not happy, and I don't think I'll ever be happy again. And so what's the The worst thing that you would want somebody to know if that's where you are right now?

I think the very first thing I'd want is actually the recognition, because I wish I had known that earlier, that whole thing we're talking about. I think you're right. I think we all have that moment where you realize, I thought I'd be happy when, and it didn't work. But then if you ask somebody why they're not happy, they'll tell you about one of their externals, right? I'm not happy right now because I don't have a boyfriend. I'm not happy right now because I've got this guy at work. I'm not happy right now because I don't have enough money. So I think the very first step might be acknowledging it, that the human brain is designed to foil any attempt that success will guarantee happiness. Because every time you hit one of those targets, we change what we think would create happiness. I think the best example of that is actually the pandemic, because I think at the beginning of it, in the middle of it, everyone thought, think how happy we're going to be when the pandemic wanes. And the pandemic is waning, and we don't have that guaranteed levels of happiness. And what we forgot was there wasn't 100% levels of happiness before the pandemic.

So I think the first is a recognition that this isn't working. From there, I think that it requires a mindset shift and a behavioral shift. In that article and in the work that I do, I research what we can do to create happiness when the world doesn't look like it should. And I think one important caveat to that is that while I'm talking about what we can do internally, that doesn't negate the need for external changes. Yes. We have systemic reasons while there's inequality, discrimination, racism that we should fight. Absolutely. I believe what gives us the power to fight that is the internal changes. And that everyone needs to do it, not just the people seeking happiness, right? The People who are being discriminatory need to do it, too.

So let's start with the mindset. What is one step, one simple step, that somebody who is sitting alone, like Sean, unhappy Sean, back in the mid 2010s writing, I don't remember being happy, and I don't think I'll ever be happy again. How the hell do you change your mindset? Because if you keep saying that to yourself, you're not going to be able to access happiness within.

Right. Well, I think there's something unique in that moment because I was attempting to do something about it because I'm trying to write in a journal to be happier. I'm just like, I don't think this is going to work, which we know from research, that's not a great mentality. You can predict the course of treatment based on whether or not you believe the doctor can heal you. So that was not an auspicious place to start. Okay.

So, Sean, are you telling us that what you're about to tell us to do is going to work. And we should believe in our ability to change our mindset and to take actions and to access happiness.

Yes. I would I would wholeheartedly say that. Not only because I've experienced myself, but then we've researched it ever since. I mean, what I've learned in this research is that depression was not the end of the story at all. And that even in the midst of a broken world, in fact, only in the midst of a broken world, have we ever been able to create happiness. So the question is, how do we do so? I think the starting point is realizing not only that our strategy wasn't working, but acknowledging that there are multiple realities in this moment. And one of them is, I don't have a boyfriend or girlfriend, or I don't have this money, or I don't have this job that I want, or I'm frustrated about whatever it is. I think when you acknowledge that that's true, you could say that's one reality, but there's also some other realities as well. Last week, I went to the hospital because I was having chest pain.

You were?

Yeah. I was in the ER. I missed my very first talk in two decades. And I realized in that moment when they strip you of everything, and the doctor is going to knock on the door. When the doctor knocked on the door, I was like, this could It changed my life. It didn't. I was completely fine. But in that moment, my whole life changed. My whole life could have changed, and was completely disrupted within those moments. I think when we realized that there's multiple realities in that moment. One of them is, I miss to talk. I'm not with my family. I'm in a hospital I don't want to be in. That's true. On the other hand, I'm going home today. I'm going home to two kids that I love and a wife that I love. Those are equally true, but in the same reality. And because my brain has a limited amount of resources, I need to choose. And I need to choose what I'm going to be focusing my brain on. There is so much negative in this world that I could spend the entire rest of my life focusing upon that and upon my fear, but that that doesn't serve me at all.

It's not a valuable reality for me. That in the midst of these multiple and true realities, I'm going to look at the ones and focus on the ones that are going to allow me to fix the negative parts of my life, or that are at least going to give me the optimism, the happiness, and joy to take the next step in the next step. In depression, I just needed a step forward. I felt like I just stopped moving. So I started doing these habits. And these are the habits that we know work. These are all the things you know about as well. Gratitude, for example. And I think that this would be my answer to someone sitting there and to that 26-year-old boy who is feeling this was in those moments, I needed to scan. I need to stop scanning for all the deficits in my life, and I need to use some of those finite resources to scan the world for the things that I was grateful for. And it was hard because my brain kept being like, yes, but what about this? What about this thing you don't have? So I had to literally train my brain, and we train And it's exactly like we've seen anything else with the human body, is I had to keep doing it.

I can't build a bicep if I only lift a weight once, then I'm done. I had to do it every day, and I had to create a pattern out of it, even when I I wasn't sure it was going to work, and even when I could see no change in my life. I'd say, easily for the first two weeks, I saw no change in my life. Well, I wanted- I'm just sitting there trying to- Oh, go ahead.

You, sorry.

I'm just sitting there writing down things I'm grateful for, and my life still feels terrible. I remember breathing hurt. When I was depressed because everything hurt. Everything didn't seem like it was worthwhile.

What kept you kept going?

So that's the thing. I don't get to talk about this much in any of the interviews, so I'd love to talk about this, too, because I think you're going deeper than some of the surface questions we normally get. I think that the habits are what pulled me out of depression. I write my gratitudes. I journal. I do exercise. I write a two-minute kind note almost every day. I'd say 90 plus % days since my mid-20s. I know that when I don't do those things, it's like when I don't brush my teeth, I get this film in my mouth. That's what I feel like my world looks like when I don't do those habits. Those habits are the way the building blocks for creating happiness. But the turning point for me, which I never get to talk about, the turning point for me in all this was actually not me. My job was to make sure other people didn't get depressed. So I kept trying to be there for other people. I was just supposed to be this paragon of knowing what you were supposed to do in optimism. And I kept going deeper and deeper in depression because I knew that there is a dissonance between what I was feeling and I was showing to the world.

The turning point for me, and what actually got me to try to do those habits, was at the bottom of the depression for me, I turned to my eight closest friends and family and told them that I was going through depression. A couple of these people were my competitors there at Harvard or my peers. I told them I was going through depression. I said, It's genetic. There's nothing you can do. My grandmother, grandparents, it's genetic. I just wanted to tell somebody. But immediately, the groundswell of support was phenomenal. They kept calling me. They emailed me. They met up with me. One of them brought me cupcakes. It's not what I did it to get cupcakes. But as soon as I did that, everything changed. The reason for it was actually a study I found way later in my life. It was a study by these two researchers in Virginia, and they found that if you look at a hill, you need to climb in front of you. If you look at that hill by yourself, your brain shows you a picture of a hill that looks 20 to 30 % steeper when you're alone, compared Compared to that hill that you look at of the same height while standing next to someone who you're told is going to climb the hill with you.

So I said that in a convoluted way. When you're alone, hills actually look 20 to 30 % steeper to the visual cortex, which is amazing because I thought we have this objective view of the world. That's bad. This is good. This is how tall that mountain is. And what we realized was, it was one of those matrix moments where I realized that the world is not objective, it's subjective. And that hill, those challenges are collapsing and expanding based upon whether or not you think you're radically alone going through this and trying to get out of this, or whether you're with other people. As soon as I did that, as soon as I opened up to other people, that was the turning point, because it was the move from happiness as a self-help idea to this recognition that happiness was not an individual sport at all. And suddenly, that hill of overcoming depression in front of me dropped by 20 to 30 %. And they opened up about things they were dealing with. None of them was depression, but it was just challenges they were experiencing. And we started creating these meaningful narratives and social bonds that made me want to do the habits because there was something worth doing the habits for.

So it was a combination of habits and social connection and a mindset shift that allowed in that moment to break from this idea that nothing matters and that there's nothing that I can do that matters, and I have to just wait for the world to change.

Well, it makes perfect sense. And it reminds me of the fact that the surgeon general just had that op-ed piece that went viral yesterday about the epidemic of loneliness. And in his op-ed piece in the New York Times, he talked about his own struggle with it and how the turning point was him admitting, just like you did, to his family, friends, and to a few colleagues that he was really struggling with this. It was there checking in on him and them sharing back that they felt disconnected from social groups and from themselves as well after the last three years. That really was the turning point. But I love that you added that research because it is true. When you are down and sad and you feel like a sad sack that nobody wants to hang out with, that's the story you tell yourself. And that story then and the emotions that feel low make you keep isolating. And it's when you reach out that you change the behavior and you change the narrative. And then that provides a little bit of that intrinsic lift that you need, that maybe there is something I can do.

Maybe there is hope. I want to go a little bit deeper on this because you've been there, and I've been there, and lots of people listening have been there and are there right now. And so when somebody like you come in or I'm sitting here on the mic, it's so easy to be resigned and push everybody away and be like, Well, that's great for you, Sean, but you don't know what I'm going through. And I think this question, Andrew, it's actually number three. It's Sharmaine. Let's play Sharmaine's question, because I think it's going to help us even go a little bit deeper to provide some hope, Sean, for somebody who's really feeling like I've tried everything? Since my teen years, I've been asking myself, why am I here? What's my purpose? How do I create happiness within myself? I've made so much progress. Yet, right now, I feel lost. I feel like a failure. I feel not good enough. I feel like I'm not a good girl.

I feel like I'm not a good enough mom to my daughters. I feel selfish I feel off course and like I'm not living up to my potential.

I've done the work. I know this is coming from my limiting beliefs, trauma projections that I have taken on as truth. Yet, here I am, feeling lost, alone, and frankly stupid. I do understand the privilege I possess. I practice gratitude.

I know I am blessed, and I do a lot of things right.

I don't think I'm depressed. I'm not completely unhappy.

So what the fuck am I?

I'm in some goddamn vortex of nirvana and hell. Sean, what pops out of you?

I'm So many things. First of all, how self-aware this person is, right? To be able, in the midst of this, to be able to identify the stages that they've been through, where they are currently, a recognition of the good, but also feeling like that they don't feel good enough, and that there's more potential. What I kept hearing in my head over and over again is, this sounds like me. This sounds so human. I think we fluctuate all the time between this I've got things going, and then, wow, I certainly don't. If I have a really productive Monday, I get everything done, and I'm super cleaning the house. Tuesday and Wednesday are terrible. I'm exhausted. I don't want to do anything. I feel like I waste every Tuesday and Wednesday whenever I have an amazing Monday. I think that that's because we swing, right? And I think what our hunger for is... If our hunger is for a mountaintop experience all the time, that we always know that we're loved, that we're always amazing, that we're always beautiful and the smartest person in the room. I think that that's an illusion and a false desire, because I think it's an accurate reflection that we are not living up to our potential.

I think that that's true all the time. I think that I could be doing better as a dad. I could be doing better as a husband. I know that when I work really hard at being a great dad, I know I immediately look around at all the people where they're doing amazing things at work, and I'm like, whoa, I'm so behind. Then when I do a ton of stuff for work or travel ever, then I'm like, oh, I should be a better dad, right? I swing back and forth between this. And I think what we need are those anchor points in the midst of it. And where those anchor points come from? You had me on the show to join you because I research this, but I also went to the divinity school before getting into this. So what motivated my beliefs in why positive psychology mattered came from this belief that the story we tell ourselves and the lens to which we view the world changes how we act in it, and where we find our meaning, and where we find that value. I think that those narratives, those belief systems, can answer some of those questions about how can I feel loved, even when I'm not achieving my highest or my potential?

I think in in the world, that's very difficult, because then we get on Instagram, and we know exactly who's doing great, based upon likes, or based upon some quantification, or money can tell you who's doing great and who's not. None of those fill that void. Where those anchor points could come from? I think that they have to come from other people as well. There was a study that came out of Stanford that found that loneliness had nothing to do with actually the number of people within your life. Loneliness was simply the absence of meaning you felt in the relationships with other people and their meaningful impact upon you. That if you weren't doing anything meaningful for other people's lives, then you didn't feel social connection for the people that are around you all the time. And vice versa. So if that's the case, if meaning is what's driving our levels of happiness, then I think we actually... My grandmother said it. If you want to be a friend, if you want a friend, you have to be a friend. And I was like, okay, that's overly simplistic.

Not really, actually.

That's not working out for me. I can't be the girlfriend, right? In that moment, I didn't understand. Now I get it. What we're finding is that when people are experiencing that fluctuation back and forth, I think we're searching for meaning, and people search it in different ways. Religion, and philosophy, and psychology. I think that a lot of the things that we search don't work out for us, which is why we get to the point where she's talking about where we feel this vortex of, I've got it, I don't have it. Got it, I don't have it. Because we're reaching on to things oftentimes, through illusory, while we're grabbing on to things that are true. My mentor, Talbind Shahar, said that, You're never as great as you think you are, and you're never as bad as you think you are. What I loved about that is that meant that there was a middle path in the midst of it. That sometimes when I think I'm a great speaker or whatever it is, then I get humbled very quickly by anything. Or if I think that I'm not doing great, then occasionally I'll get an email and it's like, Hey, this was really important to me.

That middle path was actually the one that I wanted to be in. It's this recognition and being okay with, I am not at my full potential, but that's okay. The reason that's okay is because I'm having a meaningful impact upon other people. That habit that I mentioned of writing a two-minute pause of email, praising or thanking someone else, I found that one to be probably the most helpful of any things I've researched, because you can take someone in a socially isolated state with high levels of introversion, and if every day they scan for one new person to write a two-minute pause of email to, they stop on day eight, unless we pay them $15. On day eight, that's when they realize fully that they're not a crazy extrovert with all these friends that they could write to. They're like, I wrote to everyone my favorites list in my mom twice. That's everyone. And then they scan, and they remember, who's that mentor who got me into this job? Or who's that high school teacher that seemed to have some answer to some of those questions that that person was just asking? Or what about my kid's first grade teacher who transformed my son's life, but I don't talk to them anymore because my kids are in second grade?

And you start to see all these people that are in our lives that we're not connecting with. And a two-minute email thanking them or praising them or saying, I've seen how you've been going through breast cancer, and it inspires me that you're able to find happiness in low health when I struggled to find happiness when I seemed to have higher health. That those moments, that just brief meaningful act using technology for two minutes, we found that if you do it for 21 days in a row, your social connection score rises up to the top 15% of people worldwide. That's including experts. What we found was that you were lighting up these nodes of meaningful connections on your mental map of social connection. That, I think if you look at the philosophers, I think if you look at religion, I think if you look at psychology, they keep breaking down this idea that you can achieve happiness alone, that you could just figure out your thoughts enough, and then you did it. You could just maintain your happiness. That happiness and meaning only come from this interplay with the ecosystem with others around us.

I love that. Go ahead. If you're about to talk another study, go for it.

I just got to tell one quick study. It's a beautiful one. It's not about humans. You probably I read this one. This was also in the New York Times as well. There was a study where they found all these fireflies. Fireflies everywhere light up individually and randomly in the dark, and that's how they attract a maid. And their success rate per night per bug is 3%, which I'm told is good. But these researchers found on opposite sides of the globe, these two species, one in Southeast Indonesia and one in the smoky mountains of Tennessee that you can take busses out to go see. These fireflies have these neurotransmitters that allow them to all light up and all go dark at the same time, which is beautiful, but not that smart, because we live in a survival of the fittest world. We're told be the fastest, smartest, brightest light shining, otherwise you'll never be successful. At MIT, they studied these fireflies, and they realized, we just understand how systems work. That when they lit up together seemingly with their competition, the success rate doesn't drop. The success rate goes from 3% to 82% per bug. It's not like one bug does better.

The whole system was doing orders the magnitude better than we thought was possible, because as they lit up together, their light became brighter, and it was attracting more and more potential mates than a single light would have been able to do and create these virtuous cycles. We kept seeing the same thing when we looked at humans, we found that the greatest predictor of long term levels of happiness, as you know, one of the greatest predictors is social connection. It's the breadth of the meaning in your social relationships. So it's not something you could figure out in your head, and then you did it, and then you can hold happiness forever. It's about finding a way of lighting up with other people and getting them to light up as well.

So, Sean, what I love about what you just said, especially in response to that question from Charmaine, is that I was listening to her just tick off one negative, nasty, critical thought after another. I could feel this heaviness. And then all of a sudden it occurred to me, wait a minute. I bet happiness is broken into two things. It is from the neck up, and it's the things that you tell yourself. But it is also, and probably way more important, that you think about the things that you're doing from the neck down. And that's where these habits come in, that if it's all doom and gloom from the neck up, you're not going to feel any motivation, hope, or interest in lighting up with everybody else. But if you can force yourself to start ticking off these simple habits that you recommend, that you practice, that you've researched, and you just highlighted the one of taking and making a two-minute note, just a two-minute note every single day for 21 days, it will have an impact in how you feel, which, of course, will start to shift all that shit you've been saying to yourself, which probably is stuff that you heard your parents say to themselves.

And so what I love about your research is that you're also making it actionable, because I think that's part of the problem, that when we feel shitty and we say shitty things to ourselves, we don't take the actions that actually change it.

Yeah. I heard one time I was on a plane, and the woman sitting, I don't know, Katie corner behind me and to the back. She said she was talking to somebody else loudly that she had just met about all these psychological understandings about herself. Like, literally a litany of all the psychological problems that she had. I realized, and she said she had been going to therapy for years, she had this incredible knowledge about herself and understanding where she was. At no point did she ever mention anything she was doing about it. She was talking to a stranger about it, which was more trauma dumping than actually trying to move forward. But I think there's this moment where I really thought that if I read enough books, that I'd find happiness. I thought that if I read I'd be smart, and then people would like me. That was completely not true. I think that we take these paths, and I love what you're saying there, is that there's this interplay between the beliefs and the actions that we do. You see the same thing with religion, between this faith in works. It's the things you believe, but if you say you believe those, but you're not doing any of those, I'm not sure you actually believe these things.

That there's got to be a connection between those. And what I would say is, in addition to that, is don't try to do it alone. I think that we treat happiness like self-help. I know our books are in self-help sections sometimes, right? But as soon as we do this on our own, without that friend, without that mentor, without those people that we're doing meaningful acts for, then we get frustrated very quickly and think we're doing something wrong. And what's wrong is actually the formula. Like, happiness never works out if it's an individual pursuit. And that's one of those other mindset shifts I think was crucial to find that there wasn't... You can't do enough yoga yoga to force yourself into happiness unless that yoga caused you to be more peaceful with that interaction with your mother-in-law.

That's like happiness applied. I have not truly started learning all about self-acceptance and self-kindness and self love until the last couple of years. And so I want to know, was there a moment that you had an epiphany or what freaking happened?

Yeah, I'd love to tell you.

Okay. Maybe you should give everybody a little background of Oakley before he loved himself. Okay.

So to give context, 13. I feel like you start to become very self-conscious. 11 and so on. 11, 13 is when it really... 11 to 13 is when it starts. I think that's when it begins. I'd say that I Started to be a little self-conscious. When I was 13, I had very short hair, so short to the point where it wasn't even curly like it is now. It was blue and red and bleach and pink. It was every color. It was every color.

Why was it every color?

Because I really wanted to just do that. I woke up one day and I was like, I want that. I want that. Then a few months later, I was like, Oh, my God, I don't want this. I couldn't do anything about it because my whole head was literally a It was a different color. I think that's when I started to be like, Oh, I don't know. I'm not liking myself right now. Also, I feel like I was definitely struggling with weight issue. I don't know. I'd look at myself and look at... I was 13. I was 13. It was weird.

Yeah, but what would you look in the mirror and see?

Chubby cheeks, double chin, manboobs, moobs. Get out of the shower and be like, No. I was 13. I was so young.

You told me a story once about- The jeans?

Yeah. So seventh grade Oakley, bleached hair, no eyebrows. I didn't have eyebrows.

Well, they hadn't grown up. They had a grown-up. They had it like- But they were really blonde.

They were very blonde. So it looked like I had no eyebrows. I had blonde hair. For one day, I wore skinny jeans, and I just liked how they felt. I liked the look of skinny jeans on me. So I continued to wear them every single day. Every single day.

I remember this.

October to April. You know that first day in April where it is just warm enough where you can not have to wear a sweatshirt or wear shorts for the first time and you're like, Fuck, yeah. Winter's over. Yes. I'm like, Fuck, yeah. Winter's over. Let me throw on a pair of shorts. I go to school. I'm so excited. And No one even says good morning. The first thing everybody says is, your legs look so weird.

I was like, what?

This is the first time I'm ever not wearing jeans and everybody's making fun of my legs. I'm like, oh, my God. So for the rest of the year, I wore jeans, even in 70 and 80 degree weather, because I was so worried about people being like, your legs look weird.

That's so sad.

I know. Because I was just like, oh, my God, they think my legs look weird. I don't want to stand out. I don't want them to look at my legs.

What was it like that day at school with shorts on? Having had somebody say publicly.

It was more than one person, more than multiple people said, my legs look weird. It was like I just wanted to find a pair of jeans. I wanted to find a pair of pants anywhere. I would have fucking taken anything. I would have worn leggings. I don't care. Give me literally anything other than shorts, and I will be fine. But I just like, I didn't even want... It's not that I wanted to leave. I just wanted to get the attention away from myself, and I had no idea what to do or how to do it. So I just sat there and thought about it all day, and I was like, My legs do look weird. It's not even because they're pinging on me. It was just like, they've I've never seen my legs before. But anyways. So very self-conscious, very like, it continued into eighth grade. What happened?

Because this sounds terrible. What changed? Yeah, what changed? Well, Because I think we can all relate to this where you look in the mirror and you focus on what you don't like. You have an experience of just wanting the attention to be off you or wanting people to accept you or wanting to fit in. Every single one of us can relate to that Jean story, Oakley. I think we discount how these tiny moments where somebody picks on you or criticizes something about your appearance or your voice or your height or your skin color, how it affects us. It stays with you forever. I can remember as you're talking an incident that happened in my life. It was ninth grade, and this movie, Flash Dance, was super popular. Jennifer Beels was the star of it. I was so in love with that movie that I marched right to my mom's hairdresser and asked them to give me a Jennifer Beels perm. Now, to get curly hair like Jennifer Beels, you had to get layers ears first, and then I got a perm. I walked out of there and I looked like a labradoodle. Tight curls, wavy, big moppy perm head.

I thought it was fantastic. And so the next day, I go to School Oak, and I'm wearing a sweatshirt, of course, with my shoulder exposed, because that was the flash dance, dance look. I didn't even take dance classes. I had my bouncy, full, new Jennifer Beals poodle perm, and I walked in, and I'll never forget walking down that hall, just like you with the jeans. It wasn't one person that pointed out the perm. It wasn't one person that laughed. It was like everybody in that hallway. I went home that night, just like you went home and you never wore shorts again. I went home that night and washed my hair about 25 times to try to wash the perm out, which you actually can't do. It just makes it frizzier. What happens in those moments is that none of us, when we're kids, have the ability to turn to the people criticizing us and be like, You freaking idiots. My legs are fine. What we do in those moments where we feel separate is we turn against ourselves. It's those tiny moments that happen over and over and over again where we turn against ourselves and we become obsessed with making other people not pick on us or like us or fitting in.

That's where we lose that connection to self. Because when you turn against yourself, it's literally an act of self-hatred. So What happened next for you?

All right. What happens is eighth grade comes around.

Now, would you say at this point you didn't like yourself? Or where were you about your relationship with them?

I'd say it was 70-30. Liked myself 30%, didn't like myself 70%. But eighth grade, I'm older. I look a little bit older. It was a good year. I'd say it was a good year. I wore shorts, thankfully. I got over that. I wore shorts. I kept wearing sweatshirts, though. The top half of my body was a big like, no, thank you. Because my moobs, my manboobs, they were not it. It was like, oh, my God.

Okay. This is fascinating. But anyways, we're getting to the point. I never thought you had manboobs. I did.

I'd get out of the shower and I'd take a step and I'd see them like, go off.

Big jiggle?

I'd be like, No, dude.

Hey, it's Mel. Thank you so much for being here. If you enjoyed that video, by God, please subscribe because I don't want you to miss a thing. Thank you so much for being here. We've got so much amazing stuff coming. Thank you so much for sending this stuff to your friends and your family. I love you. We create these videos for you, so make sure you subscribe.