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

25:23So I think that AI can be a brilliant companion when it comes to journaling. I think it's brilliant to bounce ideas off of. But if and when it replaces your therapist, which is another human and another human interaction touchpoint, I think we lose something really special that's a part of the therapeutic alliance. It's not just the questions I ask you or the training that I have. It's also the human to human connection. Yes. That we miss. But when we don't have any other options, right? Like, yeah, if you're in a very certain socioeconomic place, like LA is like just full of a ton of rich people, right?

26:03It's very odd how many rich people live here. LA and Dallas, the wealth is kind of obscene. It's absurd. And so there's like, there's, it's not, it's like a pseudo reality, right? People are going to see a therapist twice a week. It's like, they talk about it like they're going to Starbucks. I'm doing my Pilates and I'm going to my therapy. Then I'm doing this, I'm doing that. It's like not real life, right? Yeah. And at like$400,$500 a pop every time. Yes. And because people know they can get it here, the therapists, they keep on raising the prices. So that's what I'm saying. I think there's a lot of people who actually do need therapy who are not receiving it because they can't afford it.

26:42You know what I would love to see? Therapy is also, it's hard for therapists because we're licensed specifically to the state. Like if you say, I love you as a therapist, I would love to hire you. You can't because you don't live in D.C. Why? On Zoom I could do it? Not supposed to. Really? Yeah. You know that most of my friends who are in L.A., they have therapists. They don't live in L.A. anymore. They live in Utah. They're cheaper. They live in New York. Some of them live in New Jersey. They live in Michigan. Because, like, it's just that's what they're doing. And they're doing Zooms. And who's going to stop you?

27:16Yeah. Is the mental health police going to knock on your door? No. No, mental health police won't knock on your door, I assure you. But I think it does speak to how challenging licensing can be. I think that it needs to be challenging in a way that unqualified people shouldn't be able to get licenses. But when qualified people are unable to meet the needs of a population that is clamoring for the help, I think that that brings the entire system into question. You should be able to see anybody who's qualified and who serves a population that deals with the things that you deal with. 100%. Now, let me ask you a question back to this.

27:56Why do you think, or what do you think has kind of, besides social media, or what part of social media has sprung on, I feel like mental health in general, anxiety, depression, all the isolation, loneliness, is at an all-time high. Oh, yeah. Right? Mm-hmm. Why do you think this is beyond just Instagram? It's, well, I know that there's data to support it. We don't even have to guess. But one of the things that sticks out most to me, you kind of mentioned it already, is that we don't have third spaces as much as we used to where we gather in person. We communicate. Me and you texting each other?

28:36Are we communicating? Like, yeah. But it's not the same as if we're at a coffee shop face to face and we're catching up. And I think that the human to human connection is something that we just, this type of mammal that we are, we need desperately. And we've replaced that with convenience. Yeah. Everything we've replaced. We don't even go to eat. We just post-mated or door dash it. But if we all know this to be true, right? Because that's what we're, everyone's seeing it as a real hard truth, right? People aren't socializing. They're not dating anymore. Do you see that people aren't dating? Yeah.

29:13And people are so lonely, but the next step is to change it. Are people changing it or are they still stagnant and not do anything about it? I think it's a little bit of both. I just read something that said Gen Z is starting to go back to flip phones and not be on social media as much. I think that at some point it will change, but it's bright and shiny. You got to realize your cell phone isn't just a cell phone. It's a military-grade weapon against your brain, your neurochemistry. It's designed specifically to feel a certain way in your hand. The glass is smooth and gives you a certain response.

29:49It feels good when you go on Instagram and the algorithm finds things that you like and it force feeds it to you. The brain does not like to be inconvenienced at all. The brain will find the shortest path between point A and point B. I got the entire world in my hand. Why on earth would I go anywhere else? My friends and I, we notice all of us live in different places across the country, but we'll hop on the PlayStation and we'll talk while we play the game where we used to just meet and be outside and talk in a parking lot for hours. Are we still getting the touch points where we get to talk to each other?

30:24Yes, of course. But it is not the same. And if convenience is right there to grab, you know, I'd much rather just grab some fast food on the way home. Actually, I pose this as a question. What do you think is, even though, take the health aside. We know what it does to your health. What are you going to do? Are you going to go grab some fast food on the way home? Are you going to go to your garden? Are you going to pick the stuff that you, are you going to pick the peppers and pick the onions and pick the tomatoes. Then you're going to get the dough and you're going to make the dough and then you're going to send it through the processor to make noodles.

30:56And then you're going to cook your spaghetti that way. Are you going to go butcher the cow and grind the beef? No, but I will say this. I won't do that. But what I will do is I don't have any of those apps on my phone. I don't have a Postmate, Uber Eats, all those things. I refuse. Or those Instacarts. If I want to buy groceries, I go to the grocery store. If I want to eat something, I'll go to the grocery store or I'll go to a restaurant. I don't order in food on purpose because it's a slippery slope. Everything is a gateway drug to something else. You start with weed and then you end up basically on heroin three years later.

31:38You know what I mean? Instoring Coke in a bathroom. So I feel like certain things don't even open up that gateway drug to me. So not the drugs. That's not my weakness. But I know that once something becomes convenient, then you'll do it again and again and again and again like we talked about. So don't. I think that's the thing is not participating in it in the first place. I'm actually on this crusade now where I say I'll be my content will be on social media in two years, but I will not. I do not think that the human brain was designed to read the thoughts, views and opinions of that many people who I would never share community with in real life.

32:18And it's doing something in my mind now. I'm starting to dislike people because I read so many ridiculously stupid takes and harmful ideas and have chewed philosophies every single day. And the killer is I didn't ask to see any of it. Unsolicited, unprompted. These things are just in my face. And it's hard for me to see that and think that it doesn't change your neurochemistry, that it doesn't change the wiring of your brain over time. It's 100 % true. That's why I don't want my children on social. They're 11 and 13, and I refuse to have them on. Oh, you have an 11 and a 13-year-old? Yeah, that's when social media starts to get really dangerous.

32:57And it gets really dangerous. Oh, yeah. And, like, I've just seen, like, just in general, you know, you think that, like, all these pseudo-doctors and pseudo-experts are giving people all sorts of pseudo-advice. Oh, yeah. And it's super, like, a lot of it's, like, bullshit. Yeah. You know what I mean? Just bullshit. And, you know, people don't know that they're not discerning enough to know what's right, what's not right. And it also just, I feel like there should be the pendulum is slightly swinging the other way where people are kind of, like we said, noticing that social connection is very important still and we should try to do it.

33:33but once convenience like you said kicks in laziness starts like you know like why should i go why i don't want to go to that birthday party like we're not showing up even as humans that's right to our friends birthday parties because we just don't want to we're like so used to just like phoning it in literally phoning it in and if i don't have to why should i and if i don't have exactly i i want what's that thing like all these these taglines on social like my peace is more important. Oh, all the, I call that. What do you call it? It's well-dressed avoidance. Yes. Yeah. I'm going to protect my peace.

34:09I'm going to protect my peace. Yeah. I can't with that. And now you have no distress tolerance. So every minor inconvenience becomes an attack. Every minor inconvenience becomes an attack. Or you use past trauma as an excuse for not showing up. Oh, yeah. And everything's a trauma too. God forbid. It's just something that bad that happened. Yeah. Everything's a traumatic experience. Everyone who disagrees with you is an enemy. But, you know, I think that is an artifact of having the things that you deeply believe spewed at you on this little device that has everything that you could ever need all in one place.

34:48You don't get a chance to see people with differing ideologies and take their ideology, listen to it and realize that you don't have to agree with it. It doesn't compete with the way that you see the world. It lives alongside the way that you see the world. You don't have to respond to everything. You don't have to feel strongly about everything. In the book, I talk about self-love and one of the things that counter self-love is what about neutrality, a lack of self-love? You don't have to love everything. You don't have to hate everything. Neutrality is a thing. Hunt, thank you for saying that.

35:20Why does everything have to be, I love it or hate it? Like, why do you care? I think the best thing to be is unbothered. Right? As long as it's authentically unbothered. Authentically. Not you say, I don't care, and then you go cry in the car because you care deeply. Well, that's because you talk about this. That's a big thing in the book. So, listen, I actually have that as my note in my little book here. But, yes, but I'm saying learn to be unbothered. Yeah. Like, that could be a skill in itself. Yeah. I say the term practice. Practice being unbothered. Practice. How do you practice being unbothered?

35:49Well, unbothered, I'm a person who's naturally bothered by things. So unbothered doesn't show up for me. I'm not afraid to admit that I'm bothered by things because I don't think that that tells a larger story about me. It doesn't say that I'm weak. It doesn't say that I overpractice compassion. It doesn't say that I'm unable to deal with adversity. It says that there are things that I fundamentally disagree with that I'm asked to participate in or have a strong feeling toward that. And I don't necessarily want to. And it bothers me. It does something to me. It rubs the Labrador against the grain with the fur.

36:26You know what I'm saying? So but how do you practice being unbothered? I think a better example for me is I can tell you I talk about it in the book how to practice saying no, because people always talk about saying no, which is really hard for people. You're not going to be able to say no to everything. doesn't mean you're weak it means you're human people who are on the internet who say they say no to everything where's my camera this is my camera they're lying yeah they're lying to you because you'll never know that they're lying right um but when it's inconsequential do it at moments when it's inconsequential you practice it in moments when it's inconsequential so that when the stakes are higher you know what it feels like for you to experience the discomfort of no you know what it's like to experience people being disappointed in the answer that you have and knowing that you'll survive afterward.

37:10You could be disappointed in me and that's okay. That's okay. So if I'm in the mall and someone says, hey, you want to try this perfume? No. You want to try this cologne? No. Would you like a free sample? No. Knock on the door. Hi, sir. I'm selling solar today. No. No excuse. No long soliloquy. Oh, I would typically, but if I had. No, I practice saying no. My kids, daddy, can we? No. No. Why? The answer is no right now. It may change, but right now it's no. I love that because that goes to the guilt part, right? Because then you people feel guilty, so they say yes. And so if you practice saying no to the small things, it'll be easier to say no to the big things.

37:51Yeah. And then you won't over practice saying no and build this callous because you said yes so many times. And you develop this self-frustration from saying yes when you didn't have the capacity. Oh, hey, I think the drink is kicking in. Okay. Good. There you go. I'm happy to hear that. My brain is saying words without a lot of effort. You know, you don't allow this. You don't allow the narrative building to tell the story of what happens after no. You understand that love and acceptance and community can still be accessible to you if you don't participate in everything. I have a really good friend who is an amazing person and will come to the gathering, bring in a bunch of stuff.

38:40I mean, like stuff you never heard of. Like, yeah, I found these these chocolate filled churros. That's not a joke. They were really chocolate filled churros and they were amazing. But like I found I found this specialty like pizza. That's also what do you call them? What's the what's the tacos that you did? Berea. What? Berea. Berea tacos. you know what I'm talking about? No. You've never seen it? It's like tacos you dip in the consomme. No. Oh my gosh. Are they good? What? What? Really? Okay, I'm going to put that on my list. Somebody got to get that to you stat. Okay. Especially here in LA.

39:12They are tremendous. Really? Oh my gosh. Okay, I'm going to try that. Yeah, Berea Tacos. But he'll bring the stuff and I pulled him to the side one day and said, hey bro, like you know we love you for you. You don't have to bring anything. And I think that's a hard thing to accept. You know, the fact that I'm enough just myself, I can just bring me and be okay. You have to practice those things. You have to practice that self-understanding. But there's so many, that's conditioning. Life has taught you, environment has taught you, family has taught you that you need to do more. You need to over-practice in order to not only get, but maintain community.

39:47And that's the narrative that gets added onto the reality. And it's not true, but you have to test it to realize that the reality is not as scary as the story that your brain created. It's never as bad as what our brain says. But you did say something and we talked about it a little bit now. I wanted to ask you more about it, is that we can react, not because something happened right now in the moment, but we're reacting to something that happened in the past and we're not aware of it. Now, does that go under the self-awareness thing or the uncomfortable truth part or both? Both. Both. Explain what you mean when you say uncomfortable truth.

40:20Sure. So the uncomfortable truth is a reality that you either have to dress up differently or you have to self-orient it in a really specific way so that you don't have to confront it. One of the uncomfortable truths that I talk about in a book is I can't change. That's an uncomfortable truth. I can't change. And my question when people say they can't change, I always say, change what? And to what extent? Because change isn't always a complete 180. change is also just one degree it's just one small thing people think that in order to change it has to be this explosion of difference no no no no change can just be one small thing that you alter and decide to do differently this time even if you don't consistently do it every single time this time you decide to alter it just a little bit you're not too afraid you're not so afraid of failure that you refuse to do it.

41:16But it's an uncomfortable truth because if I do change and if I do challenge these deeply held beliefs, oh, well, now I have to question all of my deeply held beliefs. And what if the things that hold me together aren't as true as I thought they are, or as I thought they were? What does that say about me? What does that say about my reality? What else isn't true? Wait, is my entire moral constellation built on a house of cards? we talk about healing as if it's this fun adventure to go on. And it's this roller coaster. You just wee all the way down. But healing can also be terrifying because of what it reveals.

41:53And I think that's scary for people. And I think the uncomfortable truth is scary to confront. So we just, you know, we throw a little salt, wrap it in bacon, and we call it something else. What's one of the most popular uncomfortable truths? Right now, I'm overwhelmed. No, I'm overwhelmed or overstimulated. It's very popular. Men didn't develop language of being overstimulated or overwhelmed until recently. And sometimes people who say that they're overwhelmed internalize that as a statement of self that says, I can't manage all the things that I'm dealing with. I'm too weak and too incapable.

42:32I can't do it. It's some type of indictment on their capabilities. No, overwhelm isn't an indictment on your capabilities. sometimes overwhelm is just a failure of systems. The systems that are supposed to pop you up have failed you one by one. Maybe you don't have the support. A lot of us are raising kids without traditional grandmas and granddads and aunties and uncles in this community that has extra hands that you need when you're raising a child. Overwhelm. Sometimes a lot of us, we need money and we take on two, three jobs and we're afraid to say no to any financial opportunity. Or we can't say no.

43:06Or we can't afford to say no because therapy is$500 a pop, right? Exactly. Exactly. Right. So what do people do in that situation? Struggle mightily. They struggle mightily. I think once you can take a half step back from trying to move around the idea that I'm not overwhelmed, you know, I'm not overwhelmed. It's just, you know, it'll get done. I'll take care of it. No. And once you can step further away from that and closer towards, hey, I'm overwhelmed right now. I have reached my limit. I cannot do any more. It is not an indictment on me. It's just a snapshot of where I am in the moment. You can open yourself up to receiving help, receiving aid or receiving assistance.

43:50How many times has something been hard for you and someone asked, can I help you? Like, no, I got it. No, I'll do it. Don't worry. No, I'll take care of it. A lot. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Because it goes back to the shame or the blame or the guilt. It's the same taglines, no matter who you are. Yeah. Yeah. There are things about the human experience that transcend race and gender and culture and everything. They are just intrinsic parts of the human experience that we struggle with. But there is no, no one's born with any type of instruction manual on how to do these things. And look, even when we find something to be effective, and I talk about this in a book, we can outgrow the tools that we've learned to perfect.

44:36And doing more of the thing that isn't working doesn't make it more effective. It just makes you more tired. Yes, 100%. But it's also like, I guess it's all about, I guess it starts with a self-awareness to know at least what you don't know. Yeah, I'd be okay with it. And I feel a lot of people struggle with true self-awareness. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, I've struggled with self-awareness for such a large portion of my life. So why? Is it because it's hard to see certain things or we have blind spots or what is the reasoning behind it? The way I explain it in the book is it's hard. If you were to just wake up inside of a car, you don't know how you got there.

45:14It's an unfamiliar car. What kind of car are you inside of? Are you asking me? Yeah. If you just wake up inside a car in the driver's seat, what kind of car are you inside of? Can you tell just from the driver's seat? It depends. It can be a logo on the steering wheel. So now you know the make of the car. Yeah. Might not know the model. No. Might not be able to tell. You can tell what color it is. You can't tell what color the rims are. It's hard to tell what's going on at the party from the dance floor. When you are experiencing life, it is hard to tell what's going on because you are trying to survive the moment most of the time.

45:49That's the thing. A lot of it's survival, right? Oh, absolutely. It's like people are like, oh, you should just do this and this and this, but I'm too busy surviving over here. Yeah, I'm trying to make sure I can make it through this moment. Yes, I can't do all those things because I can barely even survive this moment. That's right. And that's where the self-awareness piece kicks in. Because while you're trying to survive the moment, there are a myriad of things in what I call your blind self. There's an open self, things you know about yourself and other people know about you. There's a hidden self, things that you know about you but other people don't know.

46:21You keep those tucked away. Say it again. It's the open self? Open self, things you know about you and other people know about you. Hidden self, things you know about you but other people don't. There's the unknown self, things you don't know about yourself and no one else knows about you. There are things that have yet to be discovered. And then there's the blind self, and that's where we do a lot of work in therapy. Things that you don't necessarily see in yourself but other people notice about you. And that happens a lot. there are things in your character, in your ambition, in your motivation, in your moral architecture that are going to be obvious to the people around you, but not necessarily to you.

46:58You don't see it. Does it matter? Yeah, it matters. Okay, why? Let's say you're a parent and... Okay. She already sees where it's going, you know. Go ahead though, I like it. Every, every, so many women have dated the guy whose mom is still cutting his waffles, at 25 years old. And she sees herself as being loving and helpful and she's not wrong. But what's in her blind self is she's also being enabling and she's being growth prohibitive because she won't allow him to fail. Why? Because if he fails, then that means that I failed. And as long as that lives in your blind self, there's going to be a piece of your self-awareness that will evade you.

47:41And it's so hard to hear that because when someone tells you that and you're not prepared to hear that truth, your self-awareness is never even, it's not even a blip on your radar. Well, now it feels like an attack. And now I have open license to refute what you're saying. Ah, you're just jealous. Ah, you're just saying that because you don't understand. Ah, you just hate me. You can't take that helpful criticism and do something useful with it. So that's why self-awareness is so important because it allows you to see something in yourself, gain a curiosity about it, become introspective. And at some point when you get really brave, it allows you to take feedback from other people and help minimize that blind self.

48:23So there are less things about your character, about your personality, about your moral compass, all those things. There are less things that other people know about you that you don't. Do you have any blind spots? I'm sure. I'm married, so I get reminded about my blind spots all the time. Oh, absolutely. So what kind of personality, though, has having struggles with this? Are there certain personalities? Like when they say like a narcissist, is it hard for them to see blind spots, even if you point them out? I mean, yeah, naturally. People use narcissists all the time, a narcissistic personality disorder.

49:00By the way, I was going to say, it's a very overused term. Oh, my goodness. I'm so surprised people don't know about histronic. That's another personality disorder that I think a lot of people have. Maybe that's next up on the list. Maybe because, you know, kale was a big deal and then cauliflower became a thing. Avocados before that. Yeah, you know what I mean? There's always these like fads and trends, you know, like protecting your peace and all the things. Maybe that's up next. What's called histronic? What's that? Histronic personality disorder. It's another personality disorder that is, it affects the way, therapists don't kill me if I don't get this right.

49:35But histrionic personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder have a lot of things in common, especially when you talk about the self-awareness piece, how you see yourself, how you see yourself as being like the center of attention in the room, how you can recenter yourself in the lives, experiences, and stories of people that have nothing to do with you, how you may refute overwhelming evidence that there are things about your personality that are negatively affecting other people. As a therapist myself, it's very hard. We have this Bible called the DSM. And even me, it's hard for me to tell the difference between narcissistic personality disorder and histrionic.

50:14It's really difficult. But I do find that when anything goes wrong with somebody, like it could be a boyfriend, a husband, a girlfriend, a boss, it's always because they're quote unquote narcissists. Yeah. It can never just be the fact that they just didn't like you or that it didn't work out or they're just an asshole. I want to say sometimes people are just assholes. Why can't they just be an asshole? Not everyone's a narcissist, right? Not everyone has a mental disorder. No, no, no, not everyone. But we over pathologize. Everything has a pathology to it now. People don't just do things. You do things because there's this greater illness that you were, that you're stricken with.

50:50I think because people, this is where the self-aware, people don't want to just accept things for what it is. They need to have a huge, long, lofty explanation. Like these attachment theories, like this person's a. Oh, the attachment stuff kills me, man. People get that so wrong. Like he's, what is it? He's a avoidant. Avoidant. Anxious avoidant. It's so funny because online, we always kill avoidance. People are like, oh, avoidance, avoidance, avoidance. It's like, man, people with anxious attachments don't always realize. They think avoidance don't do enough and they don't stop to realize that perhaps they're doing too much.

51:23The avoidance. The anxious. They don't realize that sometimes they are doing too much. Right. to get that avoidant to avoid. To get that avoidant to stay sometimes or to see them. I'm saying to avoid. Like they're avoiding you because you're too much. They're avoiding you also because avoidance is their native language. I'm actually avoidant in a lot of parts of my life. I avoidant attachment. There's a couple different kinds. There's like two different kinds of avoidance. Which one are you? There's like a... God, I just had an avoidant... No, I just had like a therapy an attachment person on here.

52:01And I just, I just did a training for this not too long ago. My avoidance comes from, I think my avoidant personality or my avoidant traits come from the fact that I lost my mom at a young age. So I think my brain started to leave a trail of breadcrumbs that says, hey, if you don't attach yourself to people when they leave or when they die, it won't hurt as much, which is not true and I use the evidence of that to get me out of that thinking when I still have a loving marriage I'm still a supportive and loving father and husband and friend and cousin it it's not a diagnosis on my entire life it just perfectly describes some of how long have you been married five years seven yeah seven seven yeah and my wife shout out to know, Amy, my wife is, my marriage is the least complicated and problematic thing in my life.

53:02That God. Yeah. You're lucky. Yeah. We're both very lucky to have each other. Exactly. It should be that way. But I feel like these are all things that people hang their hats on. Right. So sometimes it's too much information or too much knowledge also not great. Absolutely. Like the people I know who are the happiest are the dumbest, most ignorant, stupid people I know. Right. Like, like, honestly. So, okay, great. So now I know all the reasons why I do what I do and why you do what you do. And I'm miserable. Wonderful. You know what I mean? Like, well, this person's like just basically bopping around happy as could be.

53:39Yeah. Just being a dumb dumb. Ignorance is bliss sometimes. Ignorance is bliss for sure. You know, and listen, there is overwhelming evidence that suggests that with more options, we think that life becomes easier. Oh, it's worse. But with more options comes a greater chance that we make the wrong decision. By the way, this is why I like you. This is exact. I'm a big believer in that. You know, when you go to Costco. Okay, not Costco is a bad example. But when you go to like a little mom-pop shop and you just need to get bread and milk, you'll buy the bread and milk that they have. Whatever's available.

54:13Whatever's available. And you eat it. And I'll eat it and I'll be fine. Yep. Go to a huge Whole Foods. I'm looking around. I'm wasting two hours there. And I'm so overwhelmed with all the different milks, the cashew, the oat, the almond, this one, the lactose-free. I'm so overwhelmed. I end up with nothing. I leave the store and I'm like, I don't know what to get. I'm not hungry anymore. And that's a tremendous motif for social media. Exactly. Too many options. Too many options. Tremendous motif for dating. That's why when you swipe and swipe and swipe, you swipe all the way to the left. you're alone.

54:46You're funny. I didn't realize that. Yeah. And you have all of these options and it increases the likelihood of profound dissatisfaction. And you see so many people that you don't see anybody anymore. No, I'm telling you, it's like the hottest girls, the hottest guys are all lonely and by themselves. While the person that was, you know, mediocre or below is happily married. They have their kids. They're living life blissfully. Quasimodo had love in his life. Right. Having the best time of their lives, having the barbecue, having the picnic while the hottie is by herself, crying herself to sleep because nobody, she's got nobody to date.

55:24And it's so funny because now we live in a world where she can turn on TikTok and she can be reinforced the idea that partnership is, and there's evidence that partnership is profoundly unfair to women. Let's not gloss that over. But she could be fed the narrative that partnership is this corrosive, destructive force that she should avoid at all costs. And the more she watches that, the more she believes it. And the more she believes it, the more she seeks it. And the more she seeks it, the more that information will be reinforced to her. So now you get a bias of the things that you already want to believe are true in a way.

56:01Confirmation bias. is real the other true part just to add to that what happens is you get a false sense of uh like validation oh yeah from a bunch of strangers so that feeds your ego enough so you don't even have to go seek a relationship in real time because you got that hit that oh i am wonderful i am hot because you have a bunch of random strangers calling you hot on on social absolutely or asking you out or like saying whatever that whatever they're saying so there's like such a it's such a disconnect in what's happening in life, right? It is. And I think the thing that brings that home for me is this idea of celebrity.

56:38And I don't get to talk about this a lot. My social media following, we jumped from in five years from what, 10 ,000 across all social media platforms to a little bit under 3 million. My Instagram at one time has 72 million people visited in one month. I can't go anywhere anymore and not have people know who I am. People recognize you now? What? Always? I was in line at the airport and the line was too long. I'm not going to say which airport because I don't want anybody to get in trouble. And the person, the TSA agent said, hey, come here. And they opened up a special line for me to go in. No way.

57:12My flight was closed and they reopened it just for me. The privileges are ridiculous, but it is unnatural to have that many people tell you how smart and funny and good and talented you are. It's unnatural. Unnatural. You walk in a room and all of a sudden everything I say is funny now. I wasn't this funny six years ago. I wasn't this interesting six years ago. Now everybody wants to take pictures with you. And oh, my God, let me FaceTime my mom. And they FaceTime their mom and their mom like, oh, my God, we love you so much. That is unnatural. It's unnatural. To me, my wife says, thank God I can't see it because she thinks I'd be a butthole if I could.

57:51I'm just not. I don't feel that self-important. it just it doesn't yeah i'm thankful for it but it just doesn't it doesn't do it for me well this is where the trap becomes a trap right because then people start believing their own hype oh my goodness and they'll leave their wife or they'll leave their husband or they'll leave whatever and then think that whatever's out there the grass is greener yeah the grass is never greener it's just a different shade of green i was gonna say or the grass is green where you water it yeah you That's one of my favorite sayings. Right? It's true. No, when I leave here, I'm going to call my wife and I'm going to see how hair day is going at home because everyone is washing their hair today at my house.

58:29I love that. And when I wake up tomorrow, I'm going to call my wife. It's because I don't care about any other grass. This is the grass that I chose. I was born into a family. I had no decision in that. I was just born into my family. love a lot of them some of them we're working on our relationship we're working on it yeah but i love i love a lot of them my wife is the family that i chose i chose her and we made a conscious decision to have these kids and it's me investing my time and my energy into that there's nothing that can make me deviate from that do you think it's because you had a good head on your shoulders before you got uh well known like if you're somebody who doesn't have a good head on their shoulders and someone who is who has a low self-esteem or no self-confidence and then this happens to them you got lucky because obviously you had enough intact up here yeah that you didn't let the outside external interfere yeah i think it's i think it's that i also grew up a very well loved child with a lot of hugs and kisses well i'm saying you came into this thing already a full human being but if you weren't a full human being oh it'll be it'll i would abuse the power like many other people have.

59:44A hundred percent. That's what I'm saying. You're lucky that way. Yeah, I feel very fortunate. I think someone who has always been looked over or overlooked or subjugated or made to feel less than, and then they assume the power of celebrity, it's like taking a kid who just learned to drive yesterday and giving them a Lamborghini. They're going to crash it into a wall at 300 miles per hour. A hundred percent. Yeah. A hundred percent. But so what is, because now we're living in a time where this is the culture that we have, right? Anyone can become famous in two seconds on social. For any reason or no reason at all.

1:00:26Thankfully, you have something to say of substance. A lot of people don't. Oh, I see. You know? And it's bad out there. So that's the thing. So then you have a whole new generation of people. That's their world. Do you know this kid? What's his name? Clavicular. Have you seen this? I've seen a few interviews. Yeah. He does the looks maxing thing. The looks maxing thing. Right. He's an interesting fellow. By the way, he's not stupid. No. I've never thought he was stupid. He's really smart. And he has a whole, you know, trail of stupid kids who are following him. But he's the smart one. Because he's, but like this is what we're, but you have, sometimes you're crazy like a fox.

1:01:06Right? That's very dangerous. also a social.

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1:02:23Let's talk about this toxic positivity because this is the thing on social I think that's actually very dangerous. people doing all of these manifest um what do you uh what do you call those affirmations affirmations i'm beautiful i'm wonderful i'm great if you don't really believe that and you're just saying these things it doesn't make a difference it's not true no they're just words they're just words can you talk about why you wrote about that what you meant by that and what you see yeah so it was it was really built on um originally i i didn't see value in affirmations at all. It's not until I became a therapist when I started to see what they really did.

1:03:03Oh, you like them? I think they're useful for people, not so much for me. Yeah. Yeah. They work for some folks. It's not for me, but that doesn't mean that it's useless because it doesn't work for me. Okay. I don't think affirmations are useless. I think the affirmations are just words if they're not followed up with an understanding and awareness and action. Understanding, awareness, and action, understanding that these words are supposed to supplement what I'm actually doing in my life to change the things that I don't like. The awareness to know that repeating these things to myself in the mirror does not make them true.

1:03:39It doesn't make it true just because I say it. It makes it true when I become the person that I think that I am and I do the things to reaffirm that I am the person that I say that I am. And the action where the rubber meets the road. What am I actually doing in my life to change these things? That's the performance piece, not performance in a way that you're putting on an inauthentic show, but performance in a way where you are putting the things in motion that you say. If I say money falls to me easily, money falls to me easily. And my account is at negative$30 ,000. And I do not know what I want to do in life in order to get more money.

1:04:22and I don't feel purpose and I feel empty and the money is just to make me feel better and look better but not be better then what is this affirmation supported by Mm hmm. So if you are working towards a particular goal that you can make money on and you say the affirmation, then it's not it's it's it's a good it's a good affirmation. Yeah. If you're just saying it, that's more of like what like like you're like it's more of a you're talking more like visualization stuff without any action behind it. Yeah. Which is good if it wants to if you need to be encouraged. Right. Right. Right. Right. But encouragement isn't really a sustainable thing to lean on.

1:05:02No, encouragement, no. No, encouragement and motivation and inspiration. They're all fantastic. Do not rely on them to get to where you need to go. Because if you don't have them, you still need to move forward. But that's a vehicle with no gas in it. You won't know how to put one foot in front of the other without these profound, positive feelings propelling you forward. So, yeah, it's not that I don't believe in affirmations, but you have the affirmation and what else? Exactly. What else is... So when you talk, what made you write it? When you think about toxic positivity, besides what you just said, what else is about it that you kind of see?

1:05:44I see avoidance. I see avoidance. The way that I describe toxic positivity in the book is saying if you were, if there's a recipe that you cook, you made dinner for yourself. And it asks for just a pinch of salt. And instead of a pinch, you put a cup of salt in it. Right? And it's overly salty. You tasting it and saying, oh, this is too salty and deciding to put a cup of sugar on top of it doesn't make it less salty. It just makes it disgusting. All right, putting, adding an overwhelming amount of the inverse of what gives you discomfort or distress doesn't take away. It may distract you from the discomfort or the distress, but it doesn't take away from the reason that you're feeling discomfort and distress.

1:06:28You know what I'm saying? And if you toxic positivity goes around the issue that needs to be handled, it doesn't go straight through it. It doesn't grab it. It doesn't hold it. It doesn't take accountability for why it's there. It doesn't get curious. It doesn't research it. It doesn't recognize why this is something that maybe isn't helpful for me to believe. you just blow past it and i think that there's something developmentally disingenuous about feeling a negative experience and grabbing from the outside world what you believe is the inverse of that experience and whether you believe it or not just applying it to your life blindly because sometimes negative experiences there's this thing called distress tolerance i don't know if we talked about it here or not i can't remember but distress tolerance is your ability to withstand stressful situations and moments.

1:07:23And when we don't practice sitting in those moments that don't feel good and really examining why they exist, what feelings am I feeling right now? When we are in such a rush to feel better immediately, we don't get the message. We don't see that that negative feeling was a signal to call our attention to something that is deeply in need of healing with us. Nope, we just blow past it. I just want to feel better, not be better, not do better, but just feel better. And I think you cheat yourself out of the opportunity for some realistic self-healing when you do that. That's really good. I like that a lot.

1:08:02Why did you name the book It All Starts When You Do? Because it all starts from us, right? Yeah. It works when you work it. I think sometimes just on the heels of talking about motivation and things like that. I think we wait for people coming to therapy all the time and they're just waiting. They're waiting to start. They're waiting until, you know, I'm waiting until the perfect time. I'm waiting until my kids get older. I'm waiting until my spouse finally decides to listen to me. I'm waiting. I'm waiting. I'm waiting. I'm waiting. But it's not going to happen while you're waiting. It's going to start, but it's going to start when you do.

1:08:40And there There will never be a perfect time because that doesn't exist. The only time that you know that you'll have is the moment that's in front of you right now. That's it. And it's really a call to action, not necessarily calling you out, but calling you in. Saying, hey, you can do it afraid. You can do it ugly. You can do it imperfectly. But you have to start. And starting is nobody's job but yours. So how are we going to regain control of this thing? How do you get people to start? because starting is the hardest part. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. It depends on who the person is and why it's hard for them to start.

1:09:18Sometimes people just need a little inertia. They just need a little bit of a push to get going. Sometimes people need a complete reframe. They need to see things differently in order to get started. Sometimes people need to understand what their needs are. You know, some people who feel lonely may not know the difference between solitude and isolation. You may not know the difference between what's inconvenient and what's catastrophic. Solitude and isolation. Right, it's all about a reframe and your perspective. Yeah, and what you're actually doing and what the motivation is. If the motivation is avoidance, it's one thing.

1:10:00If the motivation is clarity, it's another thing. That's the difference between solitude and isolation. Are you choosing solitude because this is your decision consciously or because you don't have community and you've been relegated to solitude? Because that changes it too. So different people need different things to start. And it's not a one side. One thing I hate about self-help books is it does this one size fits all unitard approach to just say, hey, here's what you need to do in your life. I'm not. Therapists don't tell you what to do. Therapists chew away at the problem. They help you chew away at the problem until you isolate what the real issue is and you can attack it.

1:10:38But you have to trust the process. You have to be open and willing to interrogate the things you think, feel and believe. You talk about depression. You said that you were clinically, you have depression. I do. Yeah. So do you feel it like right now? Are you depressed? Right now? Right this moment? No. No. Because if you're clinically depressed, you said, like, are you on any medication or do you do lifestyle changes or how does? Because I think that people may be depressed sometimes, not even know they're depressed. So let me rephrase it. Am I depressed right now? Yeah. Yes. I'll be dealing with depression for the rest of my life.

1:11:16Do I feel depressed right now? No. Absolutely not. But I'm using my tools. Depression isn't something I'm going to wake up and be over one day. It's something that I have to consciously steer the ship around. And look, sometimes I scrape my ship up against an iceberg. It's not always possible for me to avoid depression. But what's important is for me to know what it looks like in different stages of my life. I just turned 40 and depression looks way different than it did 10 years ago. She's like, it's going to change again. But that's okay because I'm open to being flexible and understanding and not being in one of another uncomfortable truth is I'm not over something that happened to me.

1:11:57I'm okay withholding the fact that depression is something that is a co-host to the Keir Gaines show. You know, it's going to be a roommate in my life for the rest of my life. When you say that, what do you mean? Because I listened to an episode that you did on depression on your podcast. And I found a few things very interesting. I found one part is that I think a lot of times people don't even know that they're depressed. Oh, yeah. They can be very functional and social. A lot of people are high-functioning depressed. High function, right? Is there a difference between being clinically depressed and, I guess, circumstantially depressed?

1:12:34Yeah. Right? What kind of depressed are you? Were you clinically, like, how did you, have you been struggling for a long time? Is that why you had the tools? Like, I'd like to understand this because I think that probably a lot of people have symptoms of one thing and think it's one other thing. Right? How do people know? Well, I got evaluated. I got evaluated. I got formally evaluated and diagnosed. Okay, you personally. Okay. So how do other people know? Did you have the, I guess this is my first question. Did you have the common symptoms? Like, oh, you didn't want to get out of bed. Were you getting, like, because it's like very, I think a lot of times people just like put something in a bucket without maybe knowing all the facts.

1:13:20100%. You know? Yeah. So no, I didn't have all the classic symptoms. That's the word I was looking for, classic symptoms. One of the ones, my depression was in textbook. Sometimes I would have moments when it's hard for me to get out of bed. The key way that I know when my depression is really affecting me is when I don't have, I can't find joy. Okay. And it's not that I don't have joy in my life. That's a classic symptom. It's that my brain can't read it. Yeah, but me getting out of bed is not really a thing. Me not having interest in the things that I once enjoyed isn't always a thing. I don't gain weight.

1:13:57I don't lose sleep. I don't lose weight. But it does start to affect other parts of my life. I may self-isolate a little bit. But this is the thing. It's easy to say, oh, I'm just isolating because I've been on a podcast tour and I've been talking in 40 different cities in the last six months. And I'm just tired of people. Oh, me, I'm not self-important. Do you know how tired I get of hearing my own voice and seeing my own face on phone screens? I am sick of me. Do you understand? So then like it's also you have to look at the circumstances around why you feel the way you feel. And my depression now at 40 isn't sadness anymore.

1:14:36It comes off as irritation. Then my daughter chewing gum in my ear would just piss me off in this really particular way. Or my wife would ask me to do something. I'm like, oh, my God, I just got off the road. I've been in 30 cities. You know, it's irritation. It doesn't look like sadness as much as it used to. So some of the classic symptoms I had, yeah. But a lot of symptoms, no. It was something completely different. And that's why it's so important to get a diagnosis. Mine was from a nurse practitioner. Really? Yeah. Sat in front of a nurse practitioner. She gave me an inventory. We did a couple of different tests.

1:15:14And she came on. She said, yeah. And she showed me. And this was before I was a therapist. She said, so this is the normal range for people. And this is where you are. And mine was elevated. And then my anxiety was also elevated. This thing we have a GAD. It's a scale to tell how bad your anxiety is. And mine was as bad as it could be. Because with depression and anxiety, it's smoke and fire. Where you see one, you typically got to look out for the other. I heard this book. They go hand in hand. Oh, man. They're really good buddies. Yeah. So a lot of people I know are like, I've got so much anxiety.

1:15:44Does that mean that typically there's depression like right behind it? and they're just not diagnosed with it properly? Could be. Could be. It depends. That's why it's so important to get evaluated so that you can have a professional tell you what they see. Technology is a beautiful thing. And we have so many instruments that allow us to see where we are in our own bodies and in our own minds. In real time, like this stuff is at our disposal. I could guess. I could guess. I could try to figure it out for myself. but I needed another voice and another mind in the room to see what I was going through and give me some feedback.

1:16:22All of which, by the way, lived in my blind self. I didn't see it. You know, you can make an excuse for anything. Oh, I'm just that. Oh, I'm just tired. Oh, I just didn't sleep well last night. No, it was something bigger going on underneath the surface that I was unaware of. And so what do you do to counter it? Now, sometimes I can't. sometimes it comes and it washes over me and i have to completely recalibrate what my self expectations are when my depression is at its peak i i'm compromised neurochemically i'm compromised it is a mood disorder my mood is compromised and i have to operate with that understanding and i go from trying to do the i try i go from trying to do the best and just doing the best that i can what a win is when my depression is on 10 is a different thing than what a win would be considered if my depression is at a two.

1:17:14But what I do now, I try to spend more time with friends. Me, I try to work less. When I work a lot and I don't have time for myself, I don't have free time, my depression starts to rise. I try to spend a lot of alone time with my wife. Not an over-dependence on her company to make me feel better. No, not at all. She's not my mom. But she is a good friend, a trusted advisor, and someone whose company I enjoy. We mutually enjoy each other's company. And there's something about being married and having kids, where the having kids part just takes away from the partnership part. I try to spend more time with myself.

1:17:51I try to spend more time in nature. I try to spend more time not distracted by my phone. I try to get a good amount of sunlight. I try to get a good amount of darkness, which is just as important as the sunlight. I try to go to sleep on purpose and have good sleep hygiene. Yeah. Darkness. Be in a dark room. That helps. Oh, for me, oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I hear sunlight, but I've never heard darkness. Yep, sunlight and darkness. I try to, I see my therapist. I try to be on top of my vitamins. What do you take? Right now, I take a men's multivitamin. I take a little bit of extra iron, a little bit of extra vitamin D, cod liver oil pills.

1:18:32try to make sure I have a balanced diet that matters a lot and I try to make sure that I'm aware of how the depression is starting to creep into other areas of my life how well I'm taking care of myself how excited I am or motivated I am about my future how I lean into the things that are significant for me so a lot of it's not just doing things to prevent it's not always preventative sometimes it's management. Management, yeah. But it's already there and learning how to cope and learning how to adapt and learning how to not beat myself up for an internal circumstance that I have no control over.

1:19:11Did your depression get worse or better when you became a content creator? That is a great question. Content creators are a sad bunch. I would say worse. I would say worse because creating content was my favorite thing in the world until I did it for a living and my family's survival depended on it. And now I'll say I don't enjoy creating content, but creating content allows me to do things that I do enjoy. You know, I can go - It's the hamster wheel. It is. It is. And the more I create content and the longer that I'm here, the more I'm able to create or control what terms I create content on.

1:19:46I can employ better systems. I can hire more people so that I can just do the things that I love. Because scaling a business is a nasty nasty nasty nasty effort if you do not know even if you know what you're doing even if you know what you're doing but when you can put again systems in place that better support you you can focus on the things that you genuinely enjoy well because people think that you just put a camera on and go blah blah blah blah and don't drop it it's like a it is a thankless job in a lot of ways it's very time consuming yeah it's a lot of stress it's a lot of admin work it's a lot of admin stuff that people like behind like a lot of stuff that people don't even think of takes a lot of people a lot of team and like you're right like it's a lot of pressure because if you're doing things for brands and doing things for numbers because you're only as good as your last piece of content right yes it's very what have you done for me lately what have you done exactly what have you done for me lately as in like 12 hours ago right yeah you gotta start you know like that's i mean usually in a normal business it's like okay you have some breathing room okay hey, I did something that did well.

1:20:55Give me a month. It's like, oh, actually, I did something that did well. I have about 30 minutes to think of something else. That's right. It's like that monster that constantly needs feeding. Yeah, you have to feed the beast. It's just not good for the mental because - It's terrible. That's what I'm asking you. You can't really sit on your wins for too long. You get a win and then you're like, all right, what's next? I got to do different. And you're trying to always outdo yourself. Right, exactly. And then it becomes, even if you say it's not competitive, You're not necessarily competing because you're trying to let you're just like, oh, that person did a really good thing.

1:21:27How do I do something that's unique and different that also because like your business and your finances now rely on it. Yeah. You know, it's just the way it is. And if you're not performing, guess what? Your your money goes down. Yeah. It's just what it is. I'm being honest. I'm being straight with you. And so for someone who has any type of mood disorder or a mental health issue, it wreaks havoc on you. It's a hamster wheel. And I know because so many people I work with, a lot of my friends are doing this. And it's like people think because you smile on a camera and you're really sharp for 30 seconds or a minute and a half that that's your life.

1:22:08But it's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. And sometimes you can. I'm just being honest. You can know, and I appreciate the honesty. I think people need to hear that. I think honesty and authenticity are rare commodities, especially in the social media space. But I was at a Harvard University creator summit for mental health creators, and they share some terrifying data about how many creators self-reported poor mental health outcomes in the last couple of years, and it's getting progressively worse. Like, give me some numbers. I don't remember what the numbers were, but I remember seeing them and I was like, oh, my goodness.

1:22:45I knew that a lot of creators were having issues, but I didn't think that it was that bad or that profound. But it's a business where, you know, especially if you rely on your looks, there's a more handsome guy who's just as clever and creative and probably more charismatic. He's coming. And once he's prominent, people will forget about you. It's worse than being an actor. Or an actress. Yeah. Right? Because there's always somebody just down the street that just like had a video that hit and now they're the hot thing. Everybody's focused on that person. And when your livelihood is built on a reputation that requires you to be public facing and people forward and the calls stop coming, you got people that you need to pay.

1:23:33You got bills that you need to pay. Nothing stops because you stop making money. and you want to talk about some poor mental health outcomes, poor mental health outcomes and lack of financial resources go hand in hand. 100%. And this is a business where it looks very shiny and bright until it doesn't, until it's not anymore. You peek behind a curtain and you realize that it's being held up with like painter's tape. Exactly. Duct tape, maybe. And grandma's prayers. Oh, 100%. I see so many people, just from the podcast, and I always say, it's interesting, so much of everything is smoke and mirrors.

1:24:17I guess I find it interesting. People are always just like, oh, I wish I could be that person. I wish I could do that. And then you peek behind the curtain and you're like, oh my God. It's never what you think it is. It's never what you think it is. Yeah. Never be envious or jealous of anybody. No, it's a frivolous endeavor, man. And then you get to meet people who you admire for a long time. And that is disappointing. Super. You meet them and you realize that, oh, this is it. Yeah. Oh, I thought this transmission had another gear in it. Nope, just one gear. Yeah, just one gear. It happens all the time.

1:24:59Yeah, it's profoundly disappointing, but it's also profoundly eye-opening. Yeah. And it helps put your life into perspective where you realize, one, perfection isn't a thing. And two, you know, perfection isn't a prerequisite to happiness or joy or self-satisfaction. No. What would you say the prerequisite for happiness is? Hmm. I think that there are a lot of them. I think that contentment is the first thing. learning to be content even if things aren't ideal learning to be content with who you are what you are where you are and why you are you don't have to be in love with it you don't have to feel have negative feelings toward it but i'm okay with it this exists in a way that i can live with like right back to that point we were talking about neutrality i'm content with it yeah i'm content.

1:25:53I think that that is a super highway to joy because if you can be content with what you have, I think it keeps your eyes off of the next thing and it allows you to do the hardest thing in the world and that's remain present, be in the present moment, not obsessed with the past, not fixated on the future, but just existing in the time that's under your feet. Tell me another one. a prerequisite to happiness not allowing comparison to make you feel worse about yourself oh that's like where the comparison is like the thief of all joy yeah they say that i don't necessarily agree with that i think because comparison can sometimes just be a really good waypoint indicator i compare myself to people all the time and it's not to make me feel bad i compare myself to people because i don't know where i am on the scale of development so i look at what other people are doing.

1:26:51It's like, oh, you're doing that a lot more effectively than me. And instead of me seeing people doing that and allowing the chasm between where they are and where I am to make me feel worse about myself, I allow that to inspire me or ignite me or bring to my awareness something that I never thought about before. So I think comparison can be the thief of joy if you allow the space in between the two of you to make you feel worse about yourself. I like the word chasm. That's a good word. You got a good vocabulary. Thank you. Thank you. I like to read books and stuff. What are you reading right now?

1:27:21Well, I read my book front to back five times, which if you're writing a book, I'm going to tell you. You have to read your book front to back several times and you will start to question yourself. Right. A hundred percent. And also, though, it's good to read your book because if people ask you questions and you're like, I don't remember. I don't know what I wrote. Did you write this book? Yeah. Good. Most people don't write their books. That's why I'm asking. Oh, really? Like I've asked people questions and they don't even, they're like, I'm like, it's in your book. And they're like, oh yeah.

1:27:51And then they talk about it. Oh no, no, no, no. It's in my, when I first. It's Hachette, right? Yeah, Hachette. That was my, that was my publisher. Oh really? Yeah. Yeah. Little Brown Spark is my imprint. Shout out to LBS, man. I love Little Brown Spark. They've been tremendous partners in this whole thing. Oh, I don't know them. Yeah. They don't want an imprint to Hachette. Hachette has so many. Yeah, they have so many. It's so hard to know. You ever been in their office in New York? I don't think so. Was it nice? It is gorgeous. Really? Oh, my gosh. For a publishing house? Because most publishing houses don't even really exist really anymore.

1:28:25Oh, my gosh. Their office is beautiful. And Little Brown Spark Post, they're also the imprint for one of my favorite authors, Malcolm Gladwell. I love him. Yeah. I love him so much. Yeah, they packaged up all his books and gave it to me. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I had them all already. But I always take more Gladwell. He's brilliant. I love his. He's one of the pioneers, I think, in all of this stuff. The Tipping Point was probably the first book I wrote. Love Tipping Point and Outliers. Outliers, exactly. He's great. Outliers made me feel better about where I am in life. I didn't realize that success sometimes is a probability game.

1:29:01You were born at the right time, in the right place, with the right set of circumstances. By the way, that's why I love that book, too, for that exact reason. because a lot of it is, I guess, kind of luck. Yeah. At the end of the day, it is luck. Absolutely. And when people say it's not luck, like I always have this conversation with people, like a lot of times, like you got lucky. Like you can say you're skilled and you're talented and all the great, wonderful things. But by the way, you're also in the right place at the right time. You have the right parents. You had the right circumstance and the right situation.

1:29:35Yeah. Because I know I'm smarter and better than half the people who became billionaires, but luck played a big part of it. Absolutely. Who was born before them, where they were. It's just being honest. Honesty is hard, though. Why is honesty so hard for people? Because the thing that is the honest truth, it's not always ideal or convenient. It's not the story that you wish for it to be. Honesty is hard for the person to be honest with yourself, but also honesty is hard for people to hear for them. Like me being honest with you can be very difficult. Sometimes people have to blow smoke up someone's butt because they can't take the honesty.

1:30:16And people like them because they blow smoke up their butt, even though they know it's not true. So now it's a machine that powers itself. Exactly. It's a machine that powers itself because people don't want to know the truth. I need to know the truth. I like to know the truth too. I tell people all the time, cut it, give it to me straight. I don't, I don't appreciate all of the, um, all right. So I didn't want to tell you this and sit down if you're ready. Like, hey, is this for you or is this for me at this point? A hundred percent. Because that song and dance doesn't do anything for me. Tell it to me straight so I can know what the problem is and I can do something about it.

1:30:51But why is it so hard for people to accept the truth? Because it hurts. The truth is painful sometimes. If you spend your whole life trying to avoid something that you're not ready to confront and then it gets smashed into your face at a thousand miles per hour, that's painful. But then you can actually deal with it. If you have the capacity to do so, which a lot of people don't. Like, what's the number one thing people ask you about? In therapy? Or, yeah, in therapy, in real life, and online. I would say online and in real life, people usually ask me either about parenthood or partnership, what they're doing wrong, or how to motivate a person to change their behavior into something else.

1:31:33How do I get my husband to do less of this? How do I get my wife to see that I'm doing this? How do I get my son to stop doing this? I get that all the time. It's almost never about people, more so about change behavior and the people that they love. I was going to say, so what is your answer to those people? Because all that is like other related. It's like, how do I get that XYZ person to do this or not do that? Well, the first thing that we learn in therapy is that we can't control other people. We can only control ourselves. So a lot of times the answer isn't convenient or fun or what they want to hear.

1:32:10You can't. Now let's talk about how you're going to cope with that. Let's talk about how you're going to adapt and overcome. It's true though, right? Because all you can do, and this is what you always hear also, it's like you can't control anybody else, but you can only control how you act or behave. That's it. Are you going to react or are you going to respond? Are you aware of whether you're reacting or responding right now? Why is this so important to you? If this thing doesn't change, does it change the way you feel about yourself? What is your connection to personal failure in this situation?

1:32:45Now, that's something that's helpful. That's something that you can do something very useful with. But you can't, no set of behaviors, no set of, no magical words that you can ever say, no sentiments that you can espouse will change the heart of someone who doesn't wish to have their heart changed. Exactly. And that's why I think the most important tool for happiness or peace actually is to be able to have emotional regulation. Oh, that's a good one. Yeah. Yeah. Learn how to regulate your own emotions. Because if you cannot regulate your emotions, You're going to be constantly upset, disturbed, and imbalanced.

1:33:31You won't know how to manage disappointment. You can't manage disappointment because you're dysregulated based on how that person's treating me or saying what they say. Like outside external forces are constantly coming in. And if you can't regulate how you respond, you're fucked. Yeah. And you will stay in that cycle and be unable to help yourself and not realize that those are your circumstances. And you'll be able to distract yourself by asking me, what can I do to help my wife or help my son or help my... You ignore your internal universe because you'll be so focused on other people to the elimination of understanding what's going on with you.

1:34:13So to me, the best thing that a therapist can teach me or anybody, not me, anybody, is how to regulate your emotions because that will cover the gamut for so many other things. We have this thing in my office. It's called a feelings wheel. And I talk about it in the book, too, about your feelings, basically, like primary, secondary, tertiary emotions. and what is when you sit on that emotion for long enough what does it reveal to you and sometimes it's another emotion you know you thought that you were angry but you're angry because you feel disappointed and you you feel disappointed because you feel hopeless oh so it's not that you feel angry it's that you feel hopeless you're trying to solve for angry when really which we need to solve for hopeless first.

1:35:04So it's also understanding the broad range of emotions that you feel and not allowing guilt, shame, and blame to make you feel like you need to disguise that emotion or rebrand it some way to make it more palatable.

1:35:23Let's take a quick break because I want to talk about something I ignored in my own house for way too long, my air, and how Air Doctor fixed it. I track pretty much everything, sleep, recovery, performance, and for a while, my recovery numbers were all over the place, even though nothing about my training had changed. Turns out, the variable wasn't my workouts, it was the air in my house. Once I started using Air Doctor, I noticed better sleep, more consistent recovery, and fewer allergy flare-ups. And with kids at home breathing the same air, clean air is just not an option, and I'm not willing to leave anything to chance.

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1:37:10You also talk about this Venn diagram, right? Your self-identity versus who you want to be. Oh, yeah. Actual self versus ideal self. Actual self. See, I really wrote my book. I know. I love that. And I actually read your book. I'm really impressed by that, by the way. Thank you. because I listen I'm a big believer if I want to be able to show someone like respect is very big with me like if you're going to come on my show and give me your time I'm going to be respectful enough to read the thing that we're talking about I appreciate you because I've been on many people's podcasts or did many interviews with my life when I went to that person and they didn't know what the fuck I was who I was you know yeah you can always tell when they don't know who you are It's embarrassing.

1:37:49But I'm embarrassed for them. Yeah, for sure. I'm like, are you that much of a fucking idiot that you wouldn't even take two seconds? Because number one, then you're just wasting everybody's time because the interview is going to be terrible. Because everything is on the surface and silly. Because if you don't know what you don't know, how are you going to have a conversation? You can't go deep. You can't go deep. You can't even go like second layer. Yeah. Deep is like, forget about it. So then like it's a waste of everybody's time. so I always made a vow like I'm never I'm going to do the same to like how I want to be treated I'm going to treat somebody so I would never let someone sit here for an hour with me pretending that I read the book no I really appreciate that and I sat up to like 2.25 last night because I wanted to make sure I got every word and I listened to podcasts I've listened to your podcast with Mel Robbins I listened to your breakfast club I listened to your own podcast oh my goodness yes it's respect it'll get you far in life see are you are people podcasters are you listening to this this is how you do it this is how it's done i bet you i bet you of all your podcasting tours i would bet you 50 or more did not read your book yeah i couldn't yeah absolutely and i can tell and i don't hold it against people i do no i don't hold it against people but i just really uh make sure that i share profound appreciation for the folks that did right yeah so what was i saying oh yeah self-help that because Also, by the way, I really do like yourself.

1:39:15There's been times I've had real dogs on here where I was like, oh, my God, how am I going to read this thing? It's so bad. Yo, there are some terrible and maybe I shouldn't say this, but I'm going to say this. Say it. There's some terrible books out there. Oh, I've cracked the book open. I read it and it was it was awful, awful, awful. It's in and I try to give it like, OK, I'm gonna give it three more pages and I'm giving four more pages. and after chapter three, if the book is still awful. Now I'm upset because I wasted my time. Yeah, I was going to say, because it is a waste of time. But very few books, though, are that, I mean, I don't know.

1:39:52A lot of books are not great. And a lot of them are always very, they're all the same of the same. It's the same message repackaged 7 ,000 times. Because I get a million pitches for this podcast, right? I can imagine. Everyone has a podcast. Everyone's an expert. Everyone's a specialist. most of it's all beige and vanilla I can't tell who the book's the same, the title's almost the same the author's the same I wanted my title to be different, my original title and forgive me if you heard this on another podcast but you know what the original title was? do yourself a favor and let that shit go oh, that's a good title, what's wrong with that?

1:40:31it doesn't tell you what the book is about what if you said let that shit go that would be a good title. Nah, I think it was the Let That Shit Go the publisher wasn't feeling. Hachette maybe was not doing it. But you know the book that's one of the best sellers of all time is The Art of Not Giving a Fuck. The Art of Not Giving a Fuck, yeah. And like that whole series they just put like a couple asterisks in the word fuck and they were good to go. You know, I think I'm a huge fan as an entrepreneur of allowing the people that you hired who are experts to be experts and when they said oh, we don't know if that's a good idea I was like, alright hey, let's figure something else out.

1:41:07Really? I'm a big believer in gut instinct. Sometimes. My instinct has been wrong. And while I trust my instinct, I've never written a book before. I've never bought a book to market. And I don't always know the nuance. So I don't want to delve into the instinct of something that I don't have any lived experience traversing. That's a very good point. Yeah. That's a good point. I like that. Because you're right. What do you know? What the fuck do I know? So I ask myself that all the time. No, but I will say what I'll tell you what I think you know. This is what I really believe is that you are good at what you do, right?

1:41:44You know how to capture people's attention and word things. You're a wordsmith, right? Because it's how you word something that makes something like have virility, viralness, right? Yeah, for sure. So like at the end of the day, you know how to like wheel people in. someone sitting at a publishing house who doesn't who's not a creator or a content machine right they don't know right like you like you it's your audience you know what your audience is going to like you know kind of like kind of like vibe with that's how i would see it yeah it's you know when when i when it came to this book you know even when we were pitching it we did i pitched it to maybe 10 or 11 different publishers and we did those interviews in two or three days yeah i know yeah it's it's crazy work like it's ridiculous but when i met with hachette when i met with little brown spark they actually sent me a note afterward and the note was like here was great to meet you we really believe in this work that you're about to bring to the world and we don't know what decision we're going to you're going to make but we believe that it's going to be incredibly impactful I was like well oh damn yeah I'm signing with you I mean I signed with them also because they I think we just had a similar view of what this thing could ultimately be but to feel wanted and desired by a publisher chosen and to be chosen in that way because everybody said yes nobody told me no we didn't get any no's everyone said yes but that yes felt different do you know you're not jewish obviously but i am so what makes it obvious

1:43:34i was gonna say you know there's like a big thing with the rabbinical in the jewish law what's rabbinical mean i think rabbis i heard this from a very famous rabbi okay god is there is Rabbi Shmuley. He's like Madonna's rabbi. It was like a long, long time ago. But his words were really powerful. And it's a truism in life is that he says, at the end of the day, everyone's core need is to be chosen. So if you feel chosen, you got to make somebody feel chosen. If you're marrying someone, you're going to make that person. Like feeling chosen is above all the most basic and most fundamental need. And the truth is, whenever I think about that in life with anything, personal, professional, whatever, it always does come down to that.

1:44:24That's the most wonderful feeling if someone chooses you or makes you feel special or puts you, kind of like positions you to be unique or special in some way. So when you said that about the note, it's like subconsciously or consciously or whatever, the fact that they went that extra mile to tell you that is probably why that's, you know, that's why. Yeah. I think your rabbi, is he your rabbi or a rabbi? He's a rabbi. He's also, I know he's a very well-known rabbi. I think rabbi was on to something there. Rabbi Shmuley? That's a really cool name, by the way. I think Rabbi Shmuley was on to something there being chosen.

1:45:03And also, I think there's something about feeling exceptional that just really jives with something in our brains. Even from a religious standpoint, there are there is a lot of there are a lot of motifs about being chosen or feeling chosen or listening to someone who is specially chosen. It's just a reoccurring theme and a lot of the things that we believe. So, yeah, I think he's on to something. Also, I had gefilte fish for the first time. When? Today? No, years ago. Oh, okay. I had the same, in the same six-month span of time, I had gefilte fish latkes. Latkes are underrated. Who underrates them?

1:45:45They're delicious. People who've never had them before. They're fried potatoes. Potato pancakes. Yeah, it's like a French fry that's delicious. It's so good. And what's the other one? It's a soup that has chicken in it. Oh, that's a ball soup. You never had that until recently? No. What made you have all these Jewish foods? I had a Jewish co-worker Oh, was she religious? Why was she bringing all this Jewish food around? No, so she wasn't religious She was just culturally So where were you? Were you at a work meeting? Did she order from a deli? No, it was just she and I working together She's like, hey, I'm making this stuff and you gotta try it Did you go to a Shabbat dinner?

1:46:19No, she just brought it to the office Really? How many people do you have working for you now? Well, no, this was when I worked in a place Oh, you worked in an office space. How many people work for me now? It's just a ridiculous number. I don't remember. The last time we counted, it was like 30-something. 30? Yeah, it was like 30-something. Doing what? Tell me. Just different agents and managers. Wait, wait, wait, wait. How do you? Okay, wait, wait, wait. Who helps you with your actual online stuff? Do you have like a social media manager who posts? You do all the social. I do all the socials.

1:46:52Because you walked in with that stick of some kind. The Osmo. You walk in with a stick and you just make things happen. Like Moses. Yeah, I don't even use, I just started using an editor maybe about a year ago. How many pieces of content are you doing a day? Not as many as you would think. I've started being more smart about it. So my speaking events, I'll bring my stick and I'll record it or I'll hire a videographer and I'll turn that into content. Yeah. or um i maybe film content twice a week and then that two times a week i'll have two posts but then my podcast learn the hard way is another two posts a week and then i like when this comes out we'll have content five clips yeah and that will be content and then i have threads that i type and i turn that into content so it's not like i'm recording every single day which has saved my mental health because I cannot.

1:47:50Yeah, that's a lot of content. It's ridiculous. Do you believe in this whole I have to post four times a day stuff? They keep changing the algorithm. I don't know what's going on anymore. You can't change it. I mean, that's the thing. They're constantly changing this algorithm. I can't keep up anymore, so I quit. You got it. I quit. I'll do what I can do. If it works, it works. If it doesn't, it doesn't. That's all you can do. So then go back to the 30. Who's the 30 people? Different agents. I have a speaking agent. I have a literary agent. I have a I have another agent I'm forgetting right now My speaking agent has a team of a whole bunch of people then I have a manager who's my general agent and she has a team I have an executive assistant my wife is my COO and my business partner she doesn't really work for me we work together yeah I have an editor who edits maybe about 30 % of my content the rest I do myself I have a cameraman that I utilize Were you good at all this stuff before like how did you edit end up becoming a content guy like you were a therapist you were a trainer and then you became a therapist but then how did the therapist become the the content creator yeah i didn't start off as doing mental health content i started off as being a family content creator on instagram and youtube and my content blew up just from viral videos back when videos used to go viral yeah nothing really goes viral anymore trends go viral but individual videos not as much yeah yeah yeah I made a content piece.

1:49:14I was holding my daughter. It was at the end of a YouTube vlog video. And I just, I was talking to the camera and I just had a moment when I was talking about therapy and I was just, I wasn't a therapist yet. I just entered, I just started grad school to become a therapist. I just had a baby. I just proposed to my girlfriend at the time, who is now my wife for seven years. And I was talking about therapy and I was like, hey, you know, men, y 'all will see me here. and I'll be hugged up and loved up on Noemi and you think it's easy. And I was like, it's not. It's a tremendous amount of work. And if you don't go and see somebody about all the things you've been through, you'll have all of this and you'll never be happy.

1:49:52Yo, it took off. I mean, hundreds of millions of views. That's when we got managed by DBA. How many views did you get? I can't count. It was tens of millions. I wouldn't be surprised if over, not just on my account, but it got reposted. Viola Davis reposted it. Jill Scott reposted it. Then Oprah called me and was like, I want to have you on this special show celebrating fathers. And then that happened. And she sent us to Hawaii on a family trip. It's a crazy story. We had a whole, I made a video about my daughter. She was in a pink hoodie and she tried ketchup for the first time. And I had her dip in taste of ketchup and she did a little dance after.

1:50:32That goes to show you where social media was like eight years ago. Wait, how many years ago did you say that? You did that video? With me holding my daughter. Yeah, and said that whole thing about. It was during COVID. I remember that video. Yeah. I didn't realize that was you. Yeah, that was me. I was shirtless. I had a hat on. I totally remember that. Yeah, that was me. Yep, and once I got managed, my team was like, hey, family content is cool, but since you're about to become a therapist, you want to try mental health? I said, no, I don't want to tell people what to do. And then my manager, Christina Richardson, shout out to Christina from DBA.

1:51:06she was like yeah let's let's let's try it out a little bit and i was all john snow from game of thones the reluctant king like no i don't want to do that there's too many people giving advice and then i tried it and people resonated with it so deeply i just started to lean into it i know it's crazy so that one video probably got what like a hundred not a hundred million would it be on my page it had to be it was ridiculous it had to be like 25 50 million or something like that. It was ridiculous on my page. But then all the other reposts, it had to be in a hundred. It had to be, I wouldn't be surprised if it hit a hundred million.

1:51:42But what I don't get is I've had posts that had shares of like 50 ,000 shares or 80 ,000. That's a lot of shares. Oprah's not calling me. You know what I mean? Like, why do you think that? Is it because it had that sweet, your man father like that stuff you like for whatever reason that hits hard yeah i think it's masculinity is a big was a is a big thing like i just think it hit on a lot of topics yeah that maybe aren't spoken about openly as much it came from a young black dude it came at a time this was right after the george floyd murder so people were in a place to just hear that perspective in a different way.

1:52:30Remember, we just talked about this on Outliers. I was going to say this. This is the video that kind of did that for you. Oh, absolutely. It catapulted us into the national spotlight and people didn't know that I was studying to be a therapist. Nobody knew that. I don't even think I took my exam yet at that time. And what was the line that when you left on that one, you're like, what was your point? What was the premise of the video? So if you are someone, work on the relationship, what was your thing? I was talking to men. I know you said men. Go to therapy and have someone help you deal with the challenges that you've gone through in life.

1:53:06Or you'll have all this and you'll never be happy. It's not instant oatmeal. I totally remember that. Yeah. And I can't even believe I only remember it because you're saying it and you're sitting here. That's crazy. And I wouldn't even connect the dots. Because you see a video, like to me, it's like you see these videos. I don't remember that. Like if I watch a video right now and I close my phone and start talking to you. Oh, you won't remember it? No. Like, if you ask me now, like, what video did you see in me yesterday? And I watched all these videos of you. I don't remember what. Oh, gun to my head.

1:53:34If you ask me the last video I saw on social media, I'm done for. I had a good life. No, I think I saw a video of you, like, in an airport maybe, but I don't know what you were talking about or what the hell you were saying. Oh, yeah. I just recently did a video in the airport. It was about people being overly conscious of people watching you because I used to make content, but I was so scared to do it in public. And I was like, look, I'm in the airport. And I was in Charlotte's airport. If you've been to Charlotte's Airport, it is an unassumingly massive airport. It is huge. And I was filming in the middle of the airport.

1:54:03And if you look in the background, not one person had their eyes on me. No one cares. No one cares. Nobody cares. But this is the thing in life. Nobody cares about anything. No. People are so concerned about what, you know, people are so concerned about what other people think. They're so busy, especially in today's time. They're focusing on themselves. They're not paying attention to you. I went to the gym the other, like, a couple of weeks ago. there was a crazy person. I'm not joking. Like literally a crazy girl. She was doing like massive choreography in the main part of the gym, like in like a leotard and like listening to music and she was doing backflips.

1:54:36And she was obviously, she wasn't doing it to dance. She was obviously a very, she was, who knows what she was doing. She had something going on. Yes. Not one person. I think people were like this and they looked away. No one cares because they're too busy with their listening to their music on their phones. You could be, you could be like a person from an insane asylum. People don't care. No one cares. And that is the gift and the curse of this reality. The good thing is nobody cares. But the bad thing is nobody cares. Nobody cares. Yeah. So it's a double-edged sword. I choose to use that to my advantage and not overthink what people may think or feel about me when I'm, you know, wrapped up in my own lived experience.

1:55:18It's tremendously liberating to not be consumed with the what if of other people's thoughts, views, and opinions. Absolutely. Yeah. I just have one more question about your video, Myra. So you did that video. All these people call you. Then what? The next day you have to do another video. I don't understand how you became a... I can't even tell you what happened the next day. Because I never saw this coming. I went to sleep. What's crazy is I can't believe I'm sharing this story. I actually got a free bike from a neighbor. Financially, I was still working in education. Yeah. I was doing well. I was making like$100 ,000 a year.

1:55:53It was a great job working for state education, working in SPED. And I mean, it's much better than I ever thought I'd do financially. And I went to sleep. Oh, no, a guy gave me a free bike. And some guy at the gas station backed up and ran over my bike. And I was so upset that I almost got into a physical altercation with this guy. And the only reason I didn't punch this guy in the face is because I looked inside the van. His son was right there. and I didn't want that man's son to watch him hit the ground from getting a fist in his face. But the guy ran over on my bike and said, man, I'm not paying for anything.

1:56:26He pretty much said F you and drove off. And I was so upset. I had to carry my broken bike back home from the gas station because I was filling it up. I was filling the tire up. And I told my wife and she was like, it's OK. Everything will be fine. And I was so upset and I was just I was so mad. I just fell asleep that night. And I woke up the next morning to my wife saying, yo, Jill Scott just reposted your video. She's like, babe, Viola Davis just reposted your video. And the followers just went boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. And we ended up on Ellen. And it was crazy. It was a whirlwind.

1:57:01So that whole thing was birthed out of a situation that's so counterintuitive to what you think it would be. If you all are just on audio, her mouth is open right now. I love it because I love this story. is because it's completely organic. And you were really upset about something that you thought like that was going to like, it basically ruined your, like you really wanted that. It was a$600 bike. You love that bike. That just says to me that like, you never know what can happen down the road or around the corner. Absolutely. You could be so down and out. And then something out of the blue just turns your whole life around.

1:57:40Tomorrow gives you an opportunity to completely rewrite the narrative that exists today. so how many followers did you get just from that one video it was oh hundreds of thousands hundreds of thousands i think right now i have about 1.6 million on insta yeah on instagram yeah but that was you started this six years ago yeah so it grew from like how many did you get from that video like it's it's no telling maybe maybe maybe 200 300 000 but how did it keep on going is what i'm like i just kept making more content but listen a lot of people make content but there's never it never hits yeah i'm lucky yeah i was gonna say you're lucky exactly i'm lucky i i'm lucky management came in and kind of gave me a bird's eye view of what they saw and say like look you know my my manager when i first met her said we're gonna turn you into the male oprah and i laughed in that woman's face i thought she was being ridiculous i don't know if i'll ever get there i don't know if i want to get there because i find fame to be a very strange thing and i'm very satisfied with where i am if my career never grows from this i'm so content and i'm so happy i'll i'll be fine i don't think that's gonna be the case for me at all but yeah it's it's all these things that came my way with just further confirmation you know what i'll tell you the truth of what really pressed me forward it's these dms that i get i get so many dms that if you were to send me a message right now and i hit refresh i wouldn't be able to find it anymore and i get dms from men that have been in prison for a long time who are still in prison who wish they would have their fatherhood differently i get dms from women who see my videos with my daughters and say man i never envisioned what fatherhood could look like from that perspective which is incredibly heartwarming.

1:59:32I get DMs from young men, sometimes from other countries who don't really have a positive male influence to see online because red pill content is very attractive to a lot of young men and affirms a lot of their realities. But it also, along with the candy, it feeds them a little bit of poison too. And then it wraps that poison, that more poison. They overdose on it without knowing, just giving people hope and having people see things differently. allow me to keep going. And it's really what fuels me. So many people are this close to a breakthrough. And for something that I think that just rattled off in my kitchen while washing dishes to help your marriage or help your perspective or give you a more profound understanding of what you're dealing with in life that you can't admit to yourself, what better thing to hold than that reality?

2:00:24So I feel tremendously honored to be in this position. There was a video, you know, the one I like the most? I tell us to Demetria that you know from my team. I saw one of you doing your wife's braids or something. Oh, yeah, I was taking out her hair. Yeah. Yeah. I don't even know what that means. You were like picking out her hair. You know, chimpanzees do that to each other as a sign of love. Do you know that? Mm-mm. They like help each other taking out like little things from their hair. It's like a very loving type of thing. Interesting. You don't see it in real life. and you did that with your wife she was sitting on the floor and you were sitting behind her and you were like doing her braid or something i'm like i've never seen a guy ever do that like it's so crazy to me because i do that all the time i've been doing that for her since we've known each other it's just a good it's a good opportunity for she and i to connect and it also helps her like she's a mom she's also the business yes what are you doing so it's like it's like it depends It's like tracks.

2:01:24It's like weave. Like extensions. Yeah. Listen, I don't know enough about hair. Don't get me lying and mislabeling. But I know it's very expensive. I don't have it, but I saw that you did that. I was like, wow, that's amazing. Yeah, you got to cut it out with a very small pair of scissors. And you did that? Yeah, I do it all the time. I saw that. How long did it take? I'm good now. So it takes me like 35 minutes. She's taking on her braids right now. And I help undo the braids too. I do the girls. I don't do the girls here, but I have washed them. I saw that. I said, I'm like, he was, I'm like, he seemed to such a nice guy.

2:01:58He was helping his wife with her hair. Oh, yeah. I mean, listen, man, in the house, you got to get shit done. Yes. Yeah. I love that. Okay. I guess. I hate doing it, by the way. But I don't mind. I love helping her. Right. But you're doing it to help her. Of course. I'm not saying that's your number one pastime in the world. It's not my passion. Yeah. It's not your hobby. No. You get in where you fit in. Exactly. Okay. So wait. So the book is called, you guys, it all starts when you do, by Keir Gaines. It is wonderful. He's wonderful. And you need to pick it up. But you don't need to take, listen, he's got to, you're probably going to have a New York Times bestseller anyway.

2:02:35Every podcast that I'm on keeps saying that. And it's, thank you for that. I appreciate the vote of confidence. Right now, we're like top 10 in every category. And we don't even, by the time you hear this podcast, the book is probably dropped. Big surprise, you know, everyone pre-films. yeah yeah shocker i know exactly but right now we're a few weeks out from the debut and um i think we're number one we're the number one emotional self-help new release on amazon and we're like number four number one two three or four in every category do they know how many sold pre And yeah, they give me the numbers.

2:03:12They give me as close as they can get to the numbers. I try not to focus on it, though. Are you doing a lot of speaking gigs around it? No. I'm doing a lot of podcasts right now. The speaking gigs are starting to pick up because people see me on Mel Robbins or all these different places. People will see me here and they say, oh, I think I want this guy to come and speak at this event. You should do a lot of those speaking things. How many podcasts have you done already? Oh, my gosh. I can't count. Yeah, I can't count. And they're all dropping around the same time. So if you're sick of my face, I regret to inform you.

2:03:48I know. That you're going to be sicker. They should be, like, spread out. Yeah. Hey, that's not my thing to do. I know, exactly. That's why I have 30 people on my team, so I don't have to worry about those things. My God. It's like Barack Obama. It's like crazy. Who I recently met, which is a crazy story. How did you meet him? Really? Yeah. I don't know if I could tell the story or not. Why not? Yeah, I met him at a golf course. I met him playing golf. Why is that? That's not like secretive. I don't know. I never know what's okay to say and what's not. Why? He plays golf. Woo-hoo. Yeah. It's like he was doing crack in the bathroom.

2:04:19No. No. Barack Obama would not do a thing like that. What did you mean? Like you were on it? Martha's finger. Okay. And what happened? He was on a golf course and so were you? Yeah. And my mentor introduced me to him. Who's your mentor? He's this brilliant man named DeMond Martin. He's from Boston. and he has this great company called Will With All. And he just casually introduces me to a former president. Casually? What do you mean casually? It's like, hey, hey, Kira, I want you to meet Barack. Barack, this is Kira. Kira's one of the leading voices in mental health. And I'm like, oh, hey, how you doing?

2:04:57And he just like ticks off his golf gloves like, hey, hey, good to meet you. Are you serious? Dead serious. And you just walked away? No, we were all in the same place. He golfs way better than me. So he went far ahead of us. Did you speak to him at all? Or was it just more like, hey, how you doing? No, talked a little bit. But he's nice with golf. He was on a putting green. And I suck at golf. I'm horrible. Like, very bad. And I was just more impressed by the game. And I thought in my mind, I was like, man, what if I beat Barack Obama in golf? Not a snowflake's chance in hell. Why? He's that good.

2:05:32He's that much better than me. Who else was there besides you and Barack? I don't know if I can say. Tell me. I don't know if I can say. Why? It's not like they're doing crack. I know. They're playing golf. What is this obsession with crack? I know. No, it's just, it's one of those things where it was like I found myself in a space. And if I say too many names, I'm afraid I won't be invited back. Okay, fine. I won't. You can tell me after. I'll tell you off camera. Okay, fine. Good. Okay, you guys. Maybe, well, we know Barack's going to have a copy of this. Obama. I sure hope so. Yeah, right? You should send him one for free.

2:06:04Yeah, like I know where he is. Oh, yeah, exactly. But your friend does at the golf course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And my friend will definitely be getting the copy. I love that. Well, like I said, you are, like, this is going to be a smash success, I'm sure. Thank you. You're welcome. And everyone, go pick up a copy. Follow him online if you don't already. If you don't, you're missing a lot of fun and also insightful, wonderful content. You are such a good spokesperson for me. You're really gifted at the complimentary words. I'm loving all of it. Really? Yeah, I sincerely appreciate that. Oh, thank you so much.

2:06:43Anytime it's true. That's why maybe you feel it's actual and genuine. Okay, everyone, by the way, don't forget to subscribe if you haven't because I always forget to say that. And let me know if you have any particular people you'd like me to invite on this podcast. And have a wonderful day or night, depending on where you're listening or what time. And goodbye. Okay, well, I guess.