"Decoding Fear" with Ellen DeGeneres

0:00The Light Podcast is presented by Starbucks and Intuit. Thank you so much. Hi. Hello. I'm very excited to be here. I have to be honest, I stopped filming my show in May, and I haven't really spoken to anyone or done anything for however many months that is. It's been a while since I've spoken to anyone, and my poor show once in a while, but mostly I'm talking to my dogs all day long, so this could get weird. Yes, it could. Who's going to be a good audience? Who's going to be a good audience? Huh? I'm sorry. I haven't spoken to people. I love this woman so much, and the book is amazing. You're going to love it.

0:48If you read, I don't know who reads anymore, but if you read, you're going to love this book. Please welcome my friend Michelle Obama. I'm top of the moon. I'm a version of the moon. Because I'm invincible. And I will never say. Woo! Woo! Everyone, Ellen DeGeneres. I... Hey, everyone. This is Michelle Obama, and you're listening to The Light Podcast. I want to talk to you about fear. Yes, our fears, those little monsters that all of us have to wrestle with. Maybe you're afraid of public speaking or conflict or what people think of you. It can be anything, really. But we've all got them. And if we don't take the time to understand them, they can really hold us back.

1:43And then all of a sudden, a fear is not just a fear. A fear becomes a limit. Fear might mean that we start shying away from opportunities or risks or adventures. It might mean that we eliminate whole categories of activities or passions or people that might expand our life experience. And then we have to ask ourselves, is this really how I want to live? That's one of the things that I dive into with my good friend Ellen DeGeneres in this episode. Now, Ellen is someone I met when my husband was first running for president. And I've been so thankful that over the years, we've built a real durable friendship that goes beyond our day jobs.

2:33It's not always easy to sort out who you can genuinely connect with when you're First Lady of the United States. But with Ellen, there was never a question. We text each other, meet up for dinner, visit each other's homes. And to that point, I fully recognize how much she loves her home time. So it meant a lot to have her travel across the country to join me for this conversation. Of course, one of the things I know for certain anytime I'm with Ellen is that I'm in for a good laugh. And that's exactly how our conversation started. With her struggling to sit on that big, beautiful chair I selected for the stage.

3:16gifts yes i heard the chairs were too big for you listen michelle i came out here to they said see if the chair is comfortable for you look what she's done it's my show my chair size so so then i had to bring this out you got a little booster there you go she's tall you guys she's very tall upsy-daisy yeah here i am we have taller moderators later on in the tour. Oh, okay. These are like lifeguard chairs. These are huge. I mean, this is like woo. If I still had my show, the next time you'd be on, I'd have a tiny, low-load chair for you. A little nursery school chair. I have to say, before I start asking you questions about the book, it's so good.

4:04It's so beautifully written. It's got so many wonderful tools for what we all are needing to have right now. No, it's a beautiful, beautiful book. Thank you, babe. Thank you. You talk about in the book being comfortably afraid, which is, I think, such a great way to put it. And it's a way that I think everybody can understand. So talk about comfortably afraid. Yeah. I spent a lot of time talking about fear because when you look over what's been happening over the course of, you know, not even just the last years, we have gotten so, oh, used to being engaged by our fear. It feels like our fear is being used against us.

4:49You look at the headlines every day, every year, every decade, each year is worse and worse. If you just look at the news, you know, if you listen to some of our leaders, we can't trust each other. We can't trust anything. You should be afraid. when I think about how fear affects the choices that we make and the choices of how we treat each other. A lot of times that's usually grounded in some fear, the fear of you're new, you're different. So I started thinking about fear and the fact that we struggle to properly decode fear. Fear is an important emotion. It protects us. It saves us. I write about my first memories of being afraid.

5:30You're afraid of the dark. You're afraid of scary movies. You're afraid of people who look dangerous. I was afraid of a stuffed turtle in my Aunt Robbie's recital when I was four. The whole notion of a stuffed animal frightened me. I wouldn't get on stage. But I remember clearly overcoming that fear because I wanted to wear this red velvet dress because I thought I was cute. I remember telling myself, it's just a turtle. It's just a turtle, girl. Go on over there. Just pet it. And then you can be, you can just twirl your little butt off because it's not going to hurt you. You know, it's like I remember at a young age decoding my fear to get to someplace I wanted to go.

6:14But then there's the fear that keeps us stuck. You know, the fear of other, the fear of somebody who's not like you, the fear of somebody who's got a different skin color than you, that's an irrational fear. And if we don't learn to decode it and to know when our fear is keeping us safe from when it's keeping us limited and narrow and small, if we don't start thinking about how we process fear, I know I do. I've had to learn how to determine when my fear is rational and when it's just me not wanting to do something that makes me uncomfortable. And I think the biggest example is when Barack approached me about running for president of the United States.

7:04Yeah. It's like, yeah, that happened. But he played a, you know, I wouldn't say played a dirty trick, but it was sort of like he said, you know, a lot of people want me to do this. You know, it's going to be hard. And I know this is going to be a lot in our family. And if you don't want me to do this, then we just won't. And I'm like, really? You going to put this on me? He's like, no, really, really. So I had to sit with that choice, you know. And think about it. And for weeks, I walked around and I described walking around with the notion of that in my head. And my first gut instinct was no, no way, no, heck no.

7:57But then I had to say, well, what is that? What is that coming from? And it was it if I'm honest with myself, as I said here, it's coming from the fact that I didn't want change. I didn't want discomfort. It was all about me. It was all about not wanting to do something that would put me in an uncomfortable place. And then I had to ask myself, was that a reason to impact what could be a historic thing? Would I want to live in the legacy of many of my ancestors? I talk about our grandparents who had legitimate fears because they grew up in Jim Crow and desegregation. And men like our grandfathers had limited worlds because they would be in danger if they stepped too far outside of their comfort zone.

8:44So I saw in my own time my grandfather's worlds get smaller and smaller. You know, one of my grandfathers died of lung cancer because he just didn't trust doctors. He didn't trust anybody. He didn't trust white people. You know, so he didn't go to the dentist because that's all there were in our community. White dentists. He didn't have a tooth in his mouth. You know, fear, the legacy of some of our grandparents was small lives because of fear, fear that their kids would be harmed. Don't try this. Don't go away from home because we don't know what's going to happen to you. Real legitimate fears.

9:21But my mother and father didn't want us to live with that legacy of fear and let our worlds be narrowed. And so those thoughts came into my head and I said, well, if I say no only because of my fear, then what am I teaching my girls? What am I saying to them? How am I going to look back as an old lady? And my kids say, we hear grandpa could have been president. And it's like, yeah, girl, he could have been, but I don't want to be bothered with that. So we still here.

10:02So learning to be comfortably afraid is learning to rationally deal with your fear so that you can get to the other side. And when you get to the other side, nine times out of ten, there's a lot of growth and opportunity and possibility if you can decode it properly. I grew up with a father that was afraid of everything. Like he literally lived in fear of everything. He wouldn't let me, I never learned to roller skate because I could have fallen down and hurt myself. And we didn't go to doctors because we were Christian science. So I would have a split open knee and bone would be exposed and he'd just pray.

10:40You'd be fine, baby. Oh, he gave me some cherries and just prayed. Yeah. I had a bowl of cherries. And then he tied a rag around my knee and with a marksalot to a smiley face, which seems like ink could go into the bloodstream. But anyway, yeah, he was scared of everything. And I just grew up with that kind of, and I didn't realize at the time how much OCD he had. He was a very fearful person. And so I really worked hard to try to grow out. I didn't want to become that person. I didn't want to be that fearful. He was fearful of not having enough money, so we didn't have enough money because he made that come true.

11:21We thought about it enough that we didn't have. So fear to me, and so I've pushed myself, the comfortable fear for me is, you know, I want to host the Oscars. I want to do something really dangerous so that I can, like, feel good about myself, you know? Do it. So, and it's hard. It's hard to push yourself to do something that's really scary. And another thing is that I explore how much fear affects bigotry and racism and isolation from each other. And that's what people try to feed on. Be afraid of the other person. You know, be afraid of them. And that's why we have to be really careful when people try to lead us by our fear.

12:03We should be suspicious of that. Because I live in this country. I've traveled around it. And let me tell you, people disagree with one another, you know. But the fear is coming from other places. noises in people's heads things coming from folks phoned and I think that's the one of the reasons why I encourage us all to be mindful of getting out of our comfort zones of reaching out to people who are not like us because you know we will not see the truth of each other if we just sit in our fear and isolation and assume that what people are telling us about them is true because they're telling them about us and that's not true so it can't just be one way so i i think decoding fear is a part of us being able to drop our guard and really learn each other and not be manipulated by power that's trying to gain more power because of our fear well yeah i think also i think we have the loudest noise is from extremes.

13:10We're hearing extreme, extreme right voices and extreme, extreme left. That's just noise. Most of us aren't feeling or thinking that, but it just looks like that. The middle part of us, all the smart ones have to go, we're as loud as you people on each side. It's really hard to quiet that noise. and it's a really horrible thing. Your daughter was scared of Chewbacca, and yet you brought it to the White House. I did. That was a big mommy fail. We thought we were doing something great. We invited all the Star Wars characters, and I forgot that Sasha hates all things big and furry where you can't see the face.

13:56That poor child had on the cutest little costume. You don't see her here because she's crying in her room upstairs. but I eventually got over my fear of stuffed turtles and she is now no longer afraid of big hairy things so we are now comfortably afraid together and moving through life normally. She's gotten over that. She's good. That's good. I'm a physician and being a black woman it's not always easy. So there have been many times where my voice just seemed very muted. If I made a suggestion or something like that, it wasn't heard. Whereas maybe one of my counterparts who doesn't look like me, it's heard.

14:39And so there have been many times where I've had to bite my tongue or kind of pretend like the microaggressions weren't there, you know, and just keep moving, keep my head down and keep doing what I know that I need to do. At the end of the day, it's about patient care. And if I can't take a breath and kind of let that roll off a little bit, then it comes back on them. And the other thing is, as a Black woman, I always have to be very cognizant of how I'm handling my Black patients because they don't get to see us all the time. And so it's really good that they see somebody that they're like, oh my gosh, she looks like me and she sounds like me and her hair is like mine and things like that.

15:14If I get bogged down with that other stuff, that I don't get to show up like I need to for them. we'll be right back with more of my discussion with Ellen

15:28you talk about in the book meeting yourself and others with gladness and this is your friend Ron who does this and I think it's a it's a really beautiful thing to do that it's a short chapter in the book called starting kind as is one of the tools that I learned I described a friend of mine Ron Kirk. Some of you may know him. He used to be the former mayor of Dallas and was in Barack's administration. You know, handsome, charismatic, funny, you know, southern dude who is confident and poised. He's a good friend. His wife is one of my dear friends, and she would tell me about a habit that Ron would have in the morning.

16:04She's lying in bed, and she'd hear him getting up. So he gets up early, you know, start his day, and she'd hear him talking to himself in the mirror, and he would say, hey, buddy. You know, I was like, he'd say that out loud. He's like, no, no, no, she's, he's talking full. Hey, buddy, how you doing? You're going to have a great day. And so she tells me, and we're just cracking up because imagining Ron Kirk giving himself that little morning pep talk. Now I asked him before I told him, I said, I'm about to write about you in this book. And he said, go ahead. And he just wants the, you know, percentage of the mug sales when it's like the hey buddy mugs that are going to come out of this.

16:46But I share that story because while we teased him, because he can stand teasing, is that it is a simple thing that we do not do, particularly women, for ourselves. We do not send ourselves simple, kind messages, especially not in the morning. And it is such a simple tool. It's a tool that I know I have to practice more and more because those negative thoughts, I don't care what, they are sitting comfortably in my head. You know, even if I can play it off, that negative thing is like, oh, girl, your hair didn't look good or this didn't happen. Oh, did you gain weight? And what's wrong with that wrinkle come from?

17:26And oh, why does your face look like that? You know, we all just get used to these negative messages and we practice that over anything else. When Michelle told me I was going to be in the book, I was at first flattered, surprised, and then a little anxious to have a story about somebody who talks to themselves in the morning might be received. Most of my life, I'm up at 5.30 in the morning. My wife is very much not a morning person, and I just like to think through what I'm going to say. And so it got to be on Wednesdays. I like to just remind myself, you got this. Then it sort of evolved. I would call and leave myself a voice message if I could.

18:17So I called and I was like, hey, buddy, it's me. You know, you're going to have a good day. But I didn't know she was listening. My wife never gets up. So at some point, I could think during one of their trips, she would take her girlfriends. She shared this story with Michelle and the group. And then the next thing I know, when we were all together in Marga's Vineyard a couple of years ago, Michelle, Barack, everybody said, Hey, buddy, how you doing? I said, so it's, I can't believe she remembered that story. I didn't know that it resonated like that. It speaks to her unique talent to take everyday life stories and find something of value of them, I just never dreamed I'd be, you know, one of those stories.

19:15You have been attacked in so many ways, and people have tried to turn off your light. And I just, the strength that you have, and it really is, I think, a big part, like you said, to your parents because they were amazing parents and really gave you the tools. But to go through what you've gone through and how do you keep that light strong when you have people saying such horrible negative things? And a lot of people, it's really interesting, young people now who know me on this side of it don't even remember how bad the attacks were on me when Barack was running and the country didn't fully know me.

20:00I mean, these are major magazines. They took the image of a smart, articulate, outspoken black woman, and they turned it into a threat.

20:14And so, yes, it definitely hurt. It was stunning at first, because it's like when you see yourself in a way that is not you, you wonder, well, wow, how easily your whole persona can be manipulated when you're in the public eye. Ellen, you've experienced as a public figure, unfortunately, we often treat it like, well, that's the cost of being a public figure. And it is sad, but sadly, social media and the press, again, preying on negativity, preying on fear, preying on anger, you know, it's become the easy go-to? You know, what pain and anger and fear must you be holding on to that you would do that to anybody, let alone a woman, a mother?

21:03What prevents you from seeing my humanity? Something is broken. And when you're the first lady, your job isn't to worry about it. Your job is to figure out how to fix it. Because people are in pain. People are afraid. People are afraid of people who aren't like them because they don't have enough. And that's the problem with living in a country where people don't have enough. You know, they take their anger and their bitterness and their loss out on each other, you know, which is why we should all be promoting more taxes and more support systems and better schools for everyone of all races, because it makes people feel like they have a stake and then we don't have to go after each other.

21:47So I get through it because it's an armor that I built. Another tool is that you learn how to not let that stuff in and to grasp on to the truth of who you know and to rise above it, to see your own light and to hopefully help them see theirs so that they're not in that place. I overcame the fear of animals by getting an animal. I was afraid of dogs and cats. As a child, dogs especially were seen as something scary, not necessarily as pets, but as things that chased you down the street. And we never had pets in my family. And so someone said a cat might be an easier thing. So I got a cat. Prince, the 23-pound cat, that started off as a cute little kitten and became a 23-pound cat.

22:38My biggest fear was for a long time of saying no. So I felt like a lot of the time I would say yes to everything because if I said no, then I maybe lose the person that I'm saying no to. But I found out as I got older that it's important to say no sometimes because you have to refuel yourself. You can't say yes to everything because you're giving more than you're receiving when you say yes to everything. So you have to learn how to say no, you know, just to kind of keep your own sanity. We'll be right back with Ellen in just a moment.

23:40you have to have thick skin. You just have to grow thick skin. It's like, I don't, I don't have thick skin. I don't want thick skin. I like being sensitive. I like feeling things. And it's, it's taught me compassion and empathy because now I know what it feels like to be attacked and to be judged and to be criticized. And I don't, I don't ever want to do that to anybody because I know what that feels like. And if I had thick skin, I wouldn't know what it felt like. So I'm happy that I feel things because I want other people to feel good like I feel good. That's why people love you. It's one of the reasons.

24:17I think that social media though has exponentially I think has created and it seems to prey on all the negative and all the attacks versus anything nice that you're saying about somebody. They love to keep sharing and spreading nasty. I mean, I don't know what we do about that, but social media has really hurt. Well, you know, I don't think that it's a coincidence that we're seeing, you know, high rates of anxiety and depression, especially among our young people. There are wonderful things that social media has done. It's opened up the world in so many ways. It has connected us in ways. It gives you access to information.

24:59my children can now correct us on point by going mom you're stupid this is the right answer you don't know what you're talking about it's like oh I hate google I hate google makes parents look stupid they do it to my mom all the time it's like grandma that that that science experiment didn't work that way so but we don't know where all that is coming from and it's too much information. It's like everybody's opinion doesn't matter. It really doesn't need to be heard and shared. It really doesn't. Before you had a crazy uncle and he just talked crazy at the kitchen table. And now he's got followers.

25:44You know, it's like nobody was supposed to hear from Uncle Bubba ever ever ever we were just like you just listen go now he's spreading that stuff um it's just we haven't yet figured out how to manage it you know so I think we have to be wary and I think and it's hard as parents to you know set those boundaries for your kids um and we just just escaped it because Malia wasn't as old enough where she wasn't hooked on it like a drug. Sasha is, you know, just right in that cusp. So I know it's easier said than done. But for the sake of our young people, our young adults, we've got to be, you know, we don't know what this is doing to them.

26:35And we, and I think that it's just making us all way more anxious and suspicious. It is dividing us in ways that we just have to be careful of. And it's going to take us some time to really know these effects. But I am wary of social media, even though I'm on Instagram and Twitter and all that stuff. I know. So follow her. So follow me on, well, you saw my community page. So you talk about your mom a lot in the book. She's amazing, Marion. But you talk about some pretty, her rules. Do you want to talk about her rules? Well, the chapter is called Meet My Mom. Because let me tell you, you want to know what's my source code, what's my biggest tool, is that I had Marianne Robinson as a mother.

27:26She is common sense, unique kind of wisdom. But it's called Meet My Mom. And, you know, there's a lot of little Marianisms in there. just to share one this notion is you don't go to school to be liked you come home to be liked and this is another thing that helped me get through some of those tougher times because my mother's view was you go to school to learn you know you can't control whether the teacher likes you what you need to do is get the math that she has from her head into yours you come home to be liked. That's just an example of just the kind of steadiness that my mother provided to me and my brother, our family, her entire life, and that she up ended her life to come and live in the White House, which she did not want to do.

28:22And the only reason she did it is that her favorite child, my brother Craig, convinced her that it was the best thing for her to do. so she reluctantly came and lived in a couple of suites in the White House to do me a favor but it was a huge favor creating a kind of stability I talk about the fact that grandma lit up for us all those eight years in the White House she was there seeing us as ourselves Barack, the girls, me. She was that source for me to come to when that stuff would happen. I could go up to her room and just sit and let out a breath and she would remind me who I was, who we were.

29:10You know, if we were traveling and we wanted to keep the girls on a schedule and make sure they were doing what they were supposed to and they didn't grow spoiled or pampered or didn't take advantage of the staff there. Grandma was there to be like, you know what you're supposed to do. You know who you are. Don't come in here acting new. All of that kept us grounded. So a gift that I, one of the biggest gifts in this book is the chapter on my mom, because there's so much that she teaches us and me. One other important thing is that you raise the child you have, I mean, you don't try to change them into another version of yourself.