Jameela Jamil: 'We’re not broken, society is' (E244)

0:28Watch it early on the High Performance App. for all this shit. That is Jameena Jamil. This is High Performance, the show that unlocks the minds of some of the most fascinating people on the planet. I'm Jake Humphrey, and alongside our high performance expert, Damien Hughes, we learn from the stories, the successes and the struggles of our guests, allowing us all to explore, be challenged and to grow. Jameena Jamil actually is a really hard person to introduce in 20 odd seconds because of all the incredible things she's done from being a teacher, then to a TV host, a radio presenter and actress in hit sitcom the good place along with many other things you know all of that i'm sure she's also an activist a podcaster and a woman waging war in some ways against the toxic way that we celebrate certain aspects of ourselves and our society i think the old phrase if you stand for nothing you fall for everything could not be more apt than for her she's got a voice and she ensures that it gets heard loud and clear damien what are you most looking forward to discussing with Jamila.

1:27Well I'm excited to discuss just the topic of courage if we class courage as speaking your truth. I think Jamila's got some great lessons to teach all of us. Great well let's do it then. Jamila don't look so scared. Welcome to the show. Hello how are you? Very well. Do you feel courageous? No. I sort of know that I'm considered that way but I don't feel especially brave. we will delve a lot deeper on that and many other topics throughout the program but first before we get going with jamila uh we'll have a quick word from our valued partners who allow us to give you this podcast for free so here we are at the high performance half the first ever run for high performance here in east london uh nearly 5 000 people ran the race how important has the would be in your in your training and preparation for today thing that's really kind of benefit me is So the sneak performance tracking?

2:21Yeah. That's been huge. When I train, it tells me, my body, what I can and can't do. So it gives me an idea of, before I attend a session as a runner, I know exactly what my body can and can't cope with. So I've got that information. If you want to get the best out of yourself, it's essential. So if you want to find your own version of high performance, then we will help you on that journey. I think it's about you understanding the kind of ebbs and flows of your body. And if you're interested in that and when you're going to be feeling good and you're not, then it's perfect. It isn't about being an elite athlete, mate.

2:54It's actually about being kinder to yourselves. Just try it and you won't have a time. So if you want to get involved, then you can. Just go to join.woop.com forward slash HPP and you can join risk-free for 30 days with no commitment. It's changed my life. It might do the same for you.

3:19driven companies are using Upwork to keep work moving. Go to Upwork.com today and start hiring proven freelance talent fast. No bulky overhead, no rigid long-term contracts, just the right expert right when you need them. Work smarter and faster with Upwork. Go to Upwork.com now and find your freelance expert. That's U-P-W-O-R-K.com. Post a job for free and get started today. No one knows your business better than you. So who better to create your website than, well, you? Wix's website builder puts it all in your hands. Create a beautiful website just by talking with AI or choosing from thousands of templates.

4:00Customize every detail with simple drag-and-drop tools and get everything you need to start running business your way. Build more, think bigger, and do it all yourself on Wix. Go to Wix.com. This episode is brought to you by Opera Air, the first browser with mindfulness at its core. Now, most of us spend hours every day online, but how often do we pause to take care of ourselves whilst we're doing it? And that's where Opera Air comes in. It's a lightweight, fast, secure browser built not just for productivity, but for your wellbeing. With Opera Air, mindfulness is built right in. You'll find free breathing exercises, guided meditations, and soundscapes with ambient sounds, lo-fi music and binaural beats, all designed to help you focus, relax and even spark creativity while you browse.

4:56Jamila, welcome to the show. Hello. It starts as we always do. What do you think of when I say high performance? I feel like the concept of high performance and the concept of success has been relatively bastardized by capitalism and so high performance to me before used to mean success money achievement and my idea of achievement was very much so based in what I was acquiring or what I was able to do for others anything I could do that would quote-unquote impress everyone and I think now that has very much so changed to my idea of success being very much so what I do not just for others but especially for the people that I love how much I'm able to show up for them how much I'm able to appreciate this life and this planet and uh how well I use my time and that does not involve working an 80 hour week anymore and it's a huge position of privilege from which I can say that because there are some people who are like a single mother of five or something who have to but I do think that it has just become a generally hyper normalized thing that just a hustle, hustle, hustle, acquire, acquire, acquire, sleep when you're dead, rest when you're retired.

6:07And I think post-pandemic, a lot of us had a wake-up call where we were like, hang on a second, what the fuck are we doing? Why? Why are we waiting? Why are we postponing pleasure? Why are we postponing love and community and friendship and connection for all this shit? and so I don't mean that to sound as judgmental as it just did it just it's more a judgment of myself of why I spent 15 years never taking a week off never really spending meaningful time with my friends having them go through huge moments in life that I wasn't there to witness just to just to impress a bunch of strangers I haven't just taken mushrooms uh but it is just how I, it is just how I've come to feel in the last few years.

6:54And how do you think you've come to feel that way? How have you come to realise that what you once treasured actually, you now realise is actually shit and the things that are important are the real things? I wouldn't, I think I was wrong to classify all as shit. It's not shit and it's lovely and I can understand why some of those things mean a lot to people. I don't want to diminish achievements. There are many wonderful things in the world that exist because of people who had ambition and aspiration. So I do value that, but I'm talking about more like the really expensive, certain really expensive things that we don't really need as much as we need community and love and cuddles and orgasms, etc.

7:33I've now said orgasms and thrown my entire brain off. What was your question? When did you make this revelation? So I think, as I said before, like partially COVID was a big wake-up call for all of us where suddenly all of our freedom got taken away and all of our certainty of our health and certainty of our future existence. And also like people lost their friends, they lost loved ones. And I think we all had to reckon with the idea of like, if this is it, do I feel thrilled with how I've lived the last decade of my life? And I come from the generation that survived the kind of 2008 crash. I say survived, that sounds dramatic, but we endured that and we were just sort of coming out of uni around that time.

8:16And it was kind of put upon our generation to rebuild the economy. And so we were really intoxicated with capitalist culture. And I think there are lovely elements to owning nice, pretty things, etc. I don't want to demonise that either. But I do think how much of a focus that became has been quite problematic. I think there's more moderation that we could have. We could indulge in a little bit of that, but also make sure that like you can see from the mental health statistics if it was making us happier I wouldn't say anything but clearly like with loneliness I mean I remember interviewing Dr Vivek Murphy uh who's the I think the Surgeon General of the United States uh on my podcast and this wasn't just before it was like maybe a week before the first lockdown of 2020 and he said that we were in a loneliness epidemic and that two-thirds of some of the biggest and most like densely packed countries in the world, the people felt desperately lonely.

9:10That's hundreds of millions of people. And so if that was before the pandemic, I can't even imagine what those statistics have now become. And so something's wrong, something's broken, something's not working. And I've noticed in my own mental health that pulling back and maybe having less nice things and maybe selling my things that I had and slowing down and spending more time with the people I love and spending more time with my dogs and with my beloved partner, I'm the happiest and most sane and most present that I've ever been. And so there has to be something to that. And that I consider to be now my greatest achievement.

9:51But was there a specific catalyst for you, Jamila, that led you to that conclusion? Yeah, there's definitely like, I think it was already kind of, I was marinating in that sort of mindset around the pandemic. And then last October 2022, I got very sick and I was sick for about seven months. And there were many like weeks in which I couldn't walk even up my stairs. And that again was that reminder of like, it just kind of felt like the universe was sort of knocking the door down to let me know that like, is it worth it? Is it worth it? have I have I if this is it if I now can't move I won't be able to live my life as I once lived it do I feel like I smashed my usage of that time and the answer was no and I was just like it's that thing of that everything else is your priority until you lose your health and then you recognize that actually your health is your greatest priority in this world and so I think that was the final hint I needed from the universe that it's time to start rethinking the way that I live my life.

11:00I've had such tremendous luck and I've reached such amazing moments of personal success, like maybe not according to other people, I'm not like a billionaire, I'm not on the cover of Forbes or something, but I've been able to do amazing things in my life and I'm so lucky for those things but they did also coincide often with some of the most miserable and lonely times of my life and I think I'm so not alone when I say that I have not really met a very happy very successful person and it's always the times when I have lived more like an Italian more like a you know a quiet farming yeah exactly yeah yeah in the like a rural Italian that I feel happy.

11:40And you're like, oh God, like no wonder there's so much more time for sex and love and fun and friendship and food. Like a meal takes three and a half hours there. It's like, cause they're not like, they might earn less, but they're not dying of exhaustion. The amount of friends I have who say that they don't have time to find love. They don't have time to find affection. They don't have time to have a dog that they would really like to have. It just begs the question that the entire planet does not work this way. There are some specific countries who operate in this way, and there is a significant correlation with their mental health statistics.

12:16What you've just said there, Jamila, is a recurring theme from a lot of our high-performing guests that we've interviewed. Can you share with us a specific moment where there was that juxtaposition where the outside world would have looked at you and seen that you had everything, but internally you were feeling bereft? I think the first time that really became a current to me, and I think I've had a kind of decade to kind of slowly peel my way back from it, was when I was 26. And I was like, I had my own clothing line. I'd made history on Radio One as the first woman to host the official chart.

12:50I was on billboards. I, you know, I was pretty well known in this country. I was treated like a bloody queen. um I was working constantly I was bloody everywhere and I internally had pneumonia because I wasn't sleeping properly because you can't you can't maintain that kind of level of success and sleep properly or look after yourself or eat properly um I hadn't spent time with friends friends had actually stopped inviting me anywhere because they presumed I wasn't going to show up because I was always prioritizing work over them and I was just totally miserable like totally just sick and suicidal and just so desperately lonely.

13:30I hadn't been held in such a long time. I hadn't laughed with the people I know. I'd just been surrounded by a bunch of people who were just, you know, a bunch of yes men who were there to boost my ego or do whatever I want, just enabling and infantilizing me. And I think that was a kind of like a moment of real, it led to like a real nervous breakdown, like a real crisis in my brain. And that was the beginning of me changing everything. But then I moved to America, where it's a whole other ballgame, like when it comes to ambition and success. And I wouldn't say necessarily it's just ambition that took hold of me.

14:07I think I'd learned my lesson at 26. But there is this fear mongering, especially when you're a woman, that is like, we've been given this amazing opportunity. And somehow you at the disgusting old age of 30 have been given another chance. So you better like take hold of it and run with this because it'll be over soon after like seven years of being told it's going to be over any minute you're like I mean it seems to still be going fine I feel like I'm just being terrorized into continuing to work and so I think that's been helpful but going to America you know you just end up whether or not you want to just kind of being shoved onto the kind of treadmill and into the rat race and you find yourself without even realizing just agreeing and agreeing and agreeing to work and work and work and again I say this saying I know how lucky I am I know how many people dream of this but I do think that we have a responsibility to say to those people that the Instagram and the red carpets and all those moments are so cliche by this point but I feel the duty to say it that what you have been shown is the absolute pinnacle of the highlight reel of what is actually a deeply unhealthy and quite unsatisfying life.

15:26Could that not cause you a degree of panic, though? Because I can imagine if you've been trying to climb that mountain, say, like the first example you said, to the age of 26, where you've been working hard, you've been investing so much of yourself in your life. Yeah, as an ethnic minority, you're like, I've got the responsibility to break through these glass ceilings and I've got to show that we can do it and represent for us and stuff. And so you're just driving yourself mad. But I can imagine that there's a degree of if you're so unhappy, there is a bit of a panic that that's what you thought you needed to get to and then you realise it's not anything like you imagined.

16:04Totally. And it doesn't mean you have to check entirely out of your dream. It just means what is this obsession with becoming billionaires? That just means hoarding money. like what is the why are these these extremes wanting to be on these fucking lists like i don't understand i really don't understand like that feels like a childhood trauma that's playing out as an adult that we've now rewarded and we've we've turned these people into these like demigods but all they are are like traumatized lonely people who are hoarding money out of some place of fear and trauma so i'm not saying that it'd be very easy for someone to watch this and be like well then don't be a fucking actress of course that would be the reasonable answer but there's a way to participate in a bit of acting or a bit of you know I think that's why I wanted to do my podcast because it was something I could do from home I really enjoyed it it really like fills my soul talking to other people learning about them learning about amazing things in the world I've just been kind of just slowed down and become a bit more moderate with the things that I choose to do and it means far less money and it means less attention and less of the you know whatever with the fanfare, but it means so much more time for me.

17:10It's just about moderation. It's all about incremental change and moderation. I think that's what my entire approach to mental health has become. And as I said, if I was now miserable, then I would know that this is not the correct thing to dare to come and talk about. And I don't mean to sound preachy with any of this, but I feel like whistleblowing has always been in my nature. And I think the importance that we put upon the sort of billionaire high roller status is really deeply strange having met some of these people you said mental health two or three times already is that what this is about for you yeah it's what everything's about for me it's what I realize now everything has always been about for me when it comes to why I speak out is because I was so desperately unhappy for so much of my life I was a mentally ill kid, mentally ill 20-year-old throughout my 20s, like really, truly quite mad at times, like severe anorexia, severe depression, severe anxiety, severe loneliness.

18:13And I feel this such a maternal, I'm not a maternal person, but I have a maternal sense of wanting to stop people from having to learn these lessons the hard way, the way that I did. and to stop them from suffering. I'm a bit like, no, no, don't go down to the basement in your underwear to investigate that noise. Don't do it. Just please, just stay up here. Call the police. I feel like that. I feel like I'm screaming at the screen, watching everyone just like fall into the sinkhole that I myself fell into. And now that I found a way to somehow claw my way back out, I'm like, go in there. Does that make sense?

18:53Yeah, it makes perfect sense. I never mean it to sound preachy. There's something about me that comes across as preachy sometimes, but I mean it in a kind of a desperate urge to make sure that people salvage their happiness and their health while they still can. I don't think it does come across as preachy at all. I think if anything, the world likes to tell people that have these kinds of views that they come across as preachy because it makes the people telling them they sound preachy feel better. And you don't sound preachy at all. I think what's really nice about this, okay, is that you're not sitting on this podcast saying to your agent, right, I'm going to go on high performance and talk about all these things I care about because that will earn me X amount of money or you've got some strange deal that's going to weigh you in with a load of cash for this.

19:33It can't be preachy when it comes from the kind of place where it's coming from, which is just wanting other people to not feel the pain that it sounds like you were feeling when you were younger. Yeah, I'm very, very invested in the happiness of our society because also that improves our society. What we're seeing are just the side effects of a sick society. I think it was Esther Perel who was recently talking about the fact that we pathologize everyone now with anxiety and depression. We're telling everyone that they're sick rather than addressing the fact that this is a sick society. And we really need to have a bigger conversation about that because it's not possible for this many people to suddenly be mentally ill.

20:14Is it a mental illness or is it a very reasonable reaction to a very unreasonable state of being? So are we broken or is society broken? Yeah, society's broken. We're not broken. We're fine. We're having very normal reactions. It's very weird to not be anxious. It's very weird. You know, I was talking in the car with my publicist earlier about the fact that, you know, we don't understand the chemicals in our own brains. We don't understand the computer of our own brains. We don't understand really how dopamine works. We know it's bad to look at the screens. We don't really understand why. We don't really understand the impact that that has on your dopamine, which is a fundamental part of your mental stability and your access to happiness.

20:53We sort of go like, oh, exercise is, you know, this is why I've got this whole exercise movement that I've been doing. So we don't really think that, we know exercise is kind of important. It's supposed to be good for the mental health. We don't really understand why. We say endorphins. We don't really know what endorphins are. We don't really understand how fundamental our stability is and how much those chemicals enhance our stability, enhance our clarity of thought, obviously help our physical health and help our sleep, which improves every part of our lives. we just don't really know what we're working with up here and the more I start to learn and understand that the more I want to spread that word to other people so can I take you back from where you are now to yeah when you were a teenage girl then because you said you you were mentally unwell yeah and I know you had some challenges yeah both physically and mentally that we can talk about but I'm interested in what when you look back at that period of your life what did you not get that you can now with this understanding recognize you needed first of all i had anorexia which i now no longer have so i think i have food i have donuts i didn't have those then they dramatically improved my life and what age did the eating disorder start about 11 i was um weighed uh in front of my class but we were all weighed it wasn't just me i wasn't singled out we were all weighed as a way to teach us i think how to make pie charts or how to collect data and so we were all weighed it was an all-girls school weighing all these girls and um my name was either at the top of like I think it was at the top of like the heaviest because I was also the tallest and um and then everyone started making fun of me and that was the beginning of me understanding that there was a correlation between weight and value I was 11 and it just that plus living in a completely fat phobic era of like you know you remember it like heroin chic etc what ridiculous disaster over time um so that led me into uh 20 years of an obsession with food and obsession with weight and calories that I'm now fully out of thank god and only 30 percent 30 percent of people ever recover and it's the highest cause of death in any mental illness and we don't take it very seriously and yet we just have diet culture everywhere and again with exercise diet culture has infused itself it's it's just it's taken over exercise as like now the main thing we associate moving our bodies with it's ridiculous it's really dangerous but I so surviving that really helped um having friends I didn't really have friends back then has really helped having time with loved ones having affection um having freedom and then also just no longer we have to also give teenagers a bit of like space for their misery because they're going through such hormonal like dysregulation so I'm sure that was also part of it but yeah starving myself I was lonely and I was miserable I wasn't free I didn't used to say what I think is to hold in everything I was a deeply repressed person I'm sure for anyone who's had to tolerate my public persona for the last decade will find it very hard to imagine there was ever a time I held any of my thoughts in.

24:00Why did you not share your thoughts? Well South Asian women are not generally encouraged within our culture to speak up or to advocate for ourselves that's not to say all South Asian families but as a general culture we're known to be much more we're encouraged to be subservient and quiet and so I think that was part of it I also think British people especially back then didn't really say how they felt about anything you know the chin up stiff upper lip and I think I was also just someone who came from quite a oppressive family you know who of mentally ill people and that you know that either makes you also an oppressive person or it makes you repress yourself and I just learned how to shut up for safety and so that that amount of repression can lead to depression because I guess you're becoming a false version of yourself.

24:59There's a disingenuousness to holding in all of your feelings and thoughts and it kind of creates a gap between yourself and your public persona and so no one actually knows you. You barely know yourself anymore when you don't actually learn how to speak up and say oh no thanks or this is how I really feel or this is what I really want to do with my life and so I think learning how to speak out which is what happened after that nervous breakdown so tell us about that yeah just in what you learned how to do it yeah so when I was 26 after that nervous breakdown I tried to kill myself and um uh and I recognized that was the second time I'd already tried to do it so it was definitely going to be something I was going to do again if I didn't change radically change everything about my life and at that point when you're at the very bottom you have nothing left to lose and it's awful but it also can be with enough strength of spirit an extraordinary motivator an amazing catalyst for change because there's just no lower you can go and so therefore you can gain the momentum to come back up and I was like right well then I might try and kill myself again.

26:11Or, and until then, I'm going to completely change every single aspect of my life. I'm going to do everything differently. I'm going to start to speak my mind. I'm going to show people who I really am. So if they reject me, at least they reject me for who I really am. And I'll find out who my real friends are. I'm going to change the way that I approach my career. I am going to cut people out who are bad for me. I'm going to cut things out of my life that are bad for me. I'm going to practice self-preservation, which is categorized as selfishness and demonized as if it's not important to look after oneself, as if that's how you keep your cup full to be able to help other people in the first place.

26:55And so I decided to actually really take care of myself. And it started with the kind of year of no, which is a year of learning how to say no, which is especially hard for women, but also for many men. I know many men who don't know how to say no and don't know how to. You're looking at two right now. Yeah, tell us. So is that where it started then? Because we have a lot of people, and predominantly they are men, reaching out to us saying that actually this podcast is helping them at a time when they are suffering really badly with their mental health. And we love that because if there's one thing that men don't do, it's reach out in that way.

27:27Maybe it feels safer for them to just DM us on Instagram or whatever. but often they're feeling at the point of helplessness that you've just described. Yeah, a lot of the men in my life have felt that way and I feel so deeply passionate about men's mental health and it's something I've been speaking about for about six years almost because I'm so worried for the men in my life and also a lot of the, you know, this divide between men and women, a lot of the problems that women have with men I think are partially linked to the fact that no one's helping men. Like men are not, like some men, not all men, but like some men are not very well.

28:04And I think they're not given a healthy release in this world. And I think that those people are more likely to take that out then on women. So it would help women for us to be able to help men regulate themselves. And women need to regulate themselves, but we cannot just dismiss men's problems because they have had more access to power in this world. It has always been my, like, you know, I want to be so careful in the way that I say this, but like, you know, a doctor would look for the, you would hope. In America, they would look for the symptom, but in England, I think they would look for the cause.

28:40And so I think a cause, a root problem between the genders is the fact that men are suffering. They're struggling. They're killing themselves. I think something like 60 % of the gun deaths in America are suicide and it's predominantly by men. So men are in crisis, and I really care about this deeply, not only for men, but also for women, because our lives would obviously become easier if we lived in a world where the people in power felt better. So whether they are men or women, if they are in the place that you described you were at, saying no really helped you, which almost maybe gave you time for yourself as well.

29:20Yeah. What else would you share? But it was a little micro-nose. I didn't just immediately turn up learning how to perfectly advocate for myself. It's really hard, especially if you're British, learning how to actually say something. So it was like tiny notes of like, oh, sorry, I didn't actually order my coffee that way. Could I get what I ordered? Or it could start with a meal. And no one wants to be that prick who sends a meal back. But there's a nice way to be like, sorry, could I just have this thing that I wanted? Why would that help you? Because it was a moment of honesty. it was a moment of honesty and it was a moment of like tiny tiny irrelevant self-advocacy but that just meant that I was like I think it was integrity like I was acting in a moment of integrity saying to my producers like I don't really feel comfortable doing that like I remember being asked to be mean to a pop star and I didn't want because it would you know generate clicks and you know clickbait etc and he was much shorter than me and I didn't want to belittle him for his height.

30:19I'm five foot ten and a half. I'm already taller than him. That's already considered to be somehow emasculating for some men. I'm not going to now make fun of his fucking height on the television. And I said no. And my producer threw a chair across the room in rage and I stuck to my guns. And I felt shaky and I felt weird, but I was like, I'm just not going to do it. And it's okay. It's just like little moments. It doesn't make me any kind of fucking hero. is just little no's. Like, no, you cannot show up late an hour and a half for me to a mate. No, you cannot treat me this way. No to family members who have no fucking boundaries, where it's like, oh, blood is thicker than water.

30:57Well, it's like, all right, well, cum is thicker than blood and poo is thicker than cum. So if we're going to go down those metrics, we're going to be in a real mess. That does sound messy. Yeah. It's fucking disgusting. It's a disgusting way of measuring that. and that's the clip isn't it that is the clip but anyway my point being is that I don't believe in that I don't subscribe to the idea that anything anything gives you permission to cross over someone else's personal boundaries it doesn't matter how long you've known them it doesn't matter how much you've done for them it doesn't matter how close you are or how related you are there are boundaries and I think it's important to extend someone the invitation to meet you at your boundary but if they continuously cross it after that they have to go until they have learned how to treat you with some respect because it diminishes your self-respect to allow others.

31:47I remember going to a therapist when I was about 28 and she's a fabulous woman, so like on the cusp of rude, which I really enjoy. I went to her and I was like, this person's doing this to me and this person's taking advantage of me and this person's treating me like shit. And she just said, well, darling, a doormat's already lying down before people wipe their feet all over it. and that fucking sentence changed the rest of my life because I think that we've become again I need to say this carefully but I think we've I think we've gone from never seeing ourselves as the victim of anything being too proud to see up to now as a generation seeing ourselves as the victim of everything and I think that while it's important to acknowledge when you've been wronged it's also quite dangerous and disempowering to never recognize that you have any accountability obviously there are some scenarios in which really like there was nothing you did that was your fault um and fault is also an unnecessary way of framing that but there are certain things that we can all do and I find it empowering to recognize when I have played any part in my own suffering because I'm like great well now I have some control to be able to stop it so there is something about me that's clearly letting these people think they can take they can I'm a pushover and they can take advantage of me and they can keep crossing my boundaries and that I'll just keep forgiving and forgiving and forgiving.

33:09So what is that about me? So give us an example of what you mean by that. I think family members, family members continuously crossing my boundaries and, and treating me really badly and never saying sorry and, and hurting me and, and pushing me constantly. And I cut my whole family off for like almost a decade. And I was told by everyone, I was shamed by everyone not to do that. But it was a very, very unhealthy dynamic. And I don't want to talk a lot about them and I don't want to go into specifics. But what I will say is that cutting them off, there are certain moments where you have to cut even the closest people in your life off in order for them to hear the message loud and clear that you have to earn the right to be in my life.

33:54Everyone. Everyone has to earn the right to be in each other's lives. There's 9 billion or 10 billion people almost on this planet that we could be spending time with. What the fuck am I going to spend time with you if you're going to make me feel like shit? And we don't really feel like we have the right to advocate for ourselves in that way. We have been somehow shamed out of ending toxic dynamics. And I think a lot of people go through that with old friends, you know, people who knew a certain version of you who now when you've changed or grown or evolved want to keep you as the person that they first knew because maybe they haven't grown.

34:28So they're like, don't leave me behind. was like well either you have to either like rise to my level not of like bollocks like as in actual emotional growth or like maybe this is we've come to the end of our road and I know that sounds ruthless but there is a but I think it's such a harm to oneself and I can't think of anyone I know who's being stepped on or badgered or bullied who's happy and it has again like freed me it's liberated me to just say no I'm sorry you can I'm open to you coming back to me when you have recognized when we have learned how to meet each other in the middle. This episode of High Performance is brought to you in association with AG1.

35:11Look we know that taking care of your health isn't always easy but we should make it as simple as possible. If there's one thing that guests have told us here on High Performance over the years it's that getting closer to high performance has to be an easy thing to do. Therefore, it encourages you to do it. I believe drinking AG1 every single day with no exceptions gets me closer to my own version of high performance. And it's so simple, a scoop mixed in water at the start of every day. And I promise you, everything's better. My energy, my focus, I just feel stronger. I know that AG1 is delivering my daily dose of vitamins, minerals, and so much more.

35:45But it also means I start the day with a powerful, healthy habit. And I think starting the day in the right way actually leads to a day where I keep on making really good decisions. I also love that I realize what I'm doing is really helping me. All the ingredients are sourced for absorption, potency, and nutrient density. Every single batch goes through a rigorous testing process, and AG1 covers my bases with high-quality ingredients, vitamins, minerals, adaptogens, antioxidants, and whole food source nutrients. I just know if I drink it daily, I get a boost and I feel great. So if there's one product that I would recommend to elevate your health, it is AG1.

36:23And that is why I've partnered with them for so long. And if you want to take ownership of your health, start with AG1. And thanks to listening to this podcast, you will also get a free one year supply of vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs with your first purchase. Just go to drinkag1.com forward slash HPP. That's drinkag1.com slash HPP. If you're still overpaying for wireless, it's time to say yes to saying no. At Mint Mobile, their favorite word is no. No contracts, no monthly bills, no overages, no hidden fees, no BS. I made the switch because I was tired of those ridiculous bills and sneaky charges from my old provider.

37:05With Mint, I'm paying$15 a month and getting the same high-speed data, unlimited talk and text, and coverage on the nation's largest 5G network. Honestly, the quality is just as good if not better than what I had before. And the best part, you don't need a new phone. You can keep your current one, bring your number and all your contacts. I use Mint Mobile and you should too. Ready to say yes to saying no? Make the switch at mintmobile.com slash HPP. That's mintmobile.com slash HPP. Upfront payment of$45 required, equivalent to$15 a month, limited time new customer offer for first three months only.

37:39Speeds may slow up a 35 gig on unlimited plan, Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details.

38:11U P W O R K.com. Post a job for free and get started today. You're invited to spend an evening on Fremont Avenue for generations. This house has been home to soulful music, good food and cutthroat card games, saints and sinners, unexpected laughs and unspoken truths, good times, hard times, and of course, family, always family. So pull up a chair and join us at Fremont Avenue, A world premiere play only at Arena Stage. Performances start October 8th. Tickets at arenastage.org.

38:53Can I ask you about that phrase you used twice there in your answer, which was about shame? Mm-hmm. One of my favourite books is the John Ronson book about you've been publicly shamed. Oh, yeah. It speaks about how people have almost been made to feel terrible terrible for an error of judgment and the latter part of the book he talks about how there's examples of people that refuse to be shamed by a mistake that they've made or a lapse of judgment and they just own their behavior but don't allow other judgments to infect them and I'm interested in what you've learned about coping with that idea of trying to be shamed whether it's family or a public shaming for setting your boundaries and what you could help our listeners understand how to manage that.

39:37So for me, I have a lot of my work is around shame and learning how to distance ourselves from it and recognizing it as largely a projection from other people. I'm someone who has never actually felt a great deal of shame about failure. I've always been made to feel ashamed of it, but I've never really seen failure as this big of an issue. I've always had a really healthy attitude towards it because I think failure is really noble because it means you were willing to try when success wasn't guaranteed. I hate the way that we frame failure. I hate the way that we frame rejection. We think rejection is the worst thing in the world.

40:14There is no teaching for children about how to receive or how to give rejection. It's one of the most important and pivotal things in our society, and yet there's no guidance around it. So because there's no destigmatization of rejection, we think it's the worst thing in the world rather than, oh, this just isn't the right fit. I wasn't the right fit for that job. I wasn't the right fit for that girl I just tried to talk to in the street. It's just not right. And why should I be in any situation where they don't really want me? What's the healthy way to give rejection? I think with kindness and without judgment and shame.

40:49If we give an example of the way that perhaps it's a tricky dynamic when the way that men will have to approach women because there's less of a dynamic in which women will approach a man that she's attracted to. So a man comes up to that woman on the street. Now that can feel harassing and it can feel like an annoying invasion of our space. But there's also a part of me that recognizes that, oh my God, how scary that must have been to pluck up the courage to walk across that bar and talk to me. I don't necessarily really feel like talking to you. I've got a boyfriend. But I also recognize that you're a human being who just shot your shot in a way that I would feel way too scared to do in your scenario.

41:29So I'm always incredibly kind when I can, until they start to harass me. But if they're just like a sweet person who's just come over and shot their shot, it's like, oh, I'm so sorry. That's so kind of you. I actually am with someone or I'm not really looking for love right now. I put empathy and kindness. I recognize the gesture and I say thank you because it is flattering. And then I just say this is not the right fit. And sometimes people will not take no for an answer. And that's when my kindness starts to diminish somewhat. And there's a different Jameela coming out then. Well, I still have to be safe, you know, so I still have to be as sweet and kind as I can be.

42:08But my genuine first reaction to someone putting themselves out there is always one of like flattery. and I'm impressed. It's fucking hard. But we have not learned how to take a lot of... But again, when I say no, some men take that really badly and they take it as though I've said something really awful to them. And I haven't. I've just said, no, thank you. And that's my right. But they feel as though I've in some way criticized them or that I don't think they're good enough for me rather than this just isn't a fit. There's a fantastic woman called Jemenika Eborn and she helps people who are survivors of sexual trauma.

42:44and she does a lot of preventative work by going into schools. And the first thing she teaches these four and five-year-olds about is rejection. How to be rejected and how to learn, for your brain to learn that that's actually not scary, it's not an attack, it's not something to fear. And she teaches other people how to say no kindly. If you say no to someone wanting to work for you, say no to someone, just gentle, kind ways that you can let someone down. This idea of rejection, for me, plays really nicely into what I believe to be brave. You started the whole conversation by saying you don't think you are, but other people seem to think you are brave and courageous.

43:21I think you actually are, because I think anyone that decides to have a voice has to be courageous to deal with the inevitable backlash that comes with anyone that has any kind of opinion in the modern world, right? So I'd love to talk to you about how this began. When did you go from Jameela Jamil, TV presenter, radio host, actress, to an activist who was happy to be seen? If I may, just so that it's clear that I wasn't being disingenuous when I said I don't consider myself brave, is that I don't see what the big deal is in just saying the truth or what you believe to be the truth. I think society is crazy for making people feel so bad about saying what they really think I don't think I'm brave I think there's something wrong with everyone that sounds maybe a bit weird or I don't mean it in an arrogant way I just mean like it doesn't make any sense to me why we wouldn't just say what we think yeah but you are brave because that's not how society thinks but I don't think that makes me brave I think it makes them very, very afraid or controlling or strange.

44:30I find everyone else strange. I'm just saying that it doesn't feel like a big deal to me when I'm standing at the UN or giving a speech or I'm going head to head with someone that is more powerful than me. It doesn't feel brave in the moment. I'm just like, why would I not tell you what I think? How are you going to know? How are we going to change anything if we don't know what each other really think? But we are in this fucking silencing culture now where we've made everyone feel afraid. So I understand what you're saying that it's technically brave, but I'm just saying that for me, it just feels completely reasonable that I would just tell the truth.

45:04I do think that I've had to learn how to moderate my approach because the way I used to speak even three years ago was totally unacceptable. I look back at like, but I mean, calling a certain television pundit a shit stain smeared across our country was a little bit unnecessary saying about a politician that he looked like a freshly wanked cock. Unnecessary, unhelpful, undignified, uneducated. I wholly regret not the sentiment but the wording and I think that I too much so was like oh why wouldn't I say every single thought in my brain. That's not acceptable and it's not helpful and it just puts people's back up and it means that the very people I most would like to actually reach across to, I've just pissed off and belittled.

45:58And I think that partially that came from coming from a T4 and comedian background where it felt very tongue-in-cheek. But in writing, which is where most of my big

46:12vocal moments happened. People can't sense the tongue in your cheek. And also those are just incredibly disrespectful things to say. And I think I spoke in a disrespectful way that my heart was in the right place. I was angry. I was impassioned. I was fighting for the right cause, but I fought for it in a way that I really deeply cringe at now. And I can recognize that I've never learned when I've been shamed and maimed. Why on earth? How on earth could I expect someone else to listen to me or empathize with me if I'm speaking to them in such a way? But the problem is that we are in a culture that has not just congratulated that, but monetized it.

46:51Look at the rise of figures whose almost only purpose is to stoke outrage and division. And I was unintentionally one of those people. I remember the first thing I ever said to my agent when I met her, and this was just before I signed my T4 contract, which was my first proper job on telly, my first job on telly, is I'd like to use this job to be able to help people and to be able to make documentaries and expose things that are wrong with our society. And I said that to her, and I wasn't meant to be this noble thing, but I really liked Dawn Porter and people like that, Louis Theroux, those are the people that I looked up to and I was like oh I think that's really cool and I want to do that with this um and so I think I think I was always doing it I think people just weren't listening to me and then 2015 happened and 2015 is when Me Too movement happened and suddenly they wanted to hear every social political thought that all of us had we went from only being asked about our hair care routine and how we stay so thin and like what's your favorite lipstick at the moment to, regardless of how, you know, bright or impassioned you may be, it was always the same bullshit fucking questions, to suddenly, like, what do you think about the giant social infrastructure of history of patriarchy?

48:08And so none of us had ever spoken about that before. Like, we'd never, we weren't orators in this subject. We weren't academics. We'd all experienced it, but we didn't know exactly how to vocalise it. And also we had all this pent-up rage and repression. So some of us who did speak out about it, we're a little bit inelegant in our approach because like you know i just i had no media training you know like i didn't know and i was so angry about everything that i'd seen and everything that happened and the way that the world works and so it just came out like and that happens with people and we don't give people a bit of grace in going like all right these women have never spoken about this thing before there's a lot of pain and like they've overcome like abuse or rape or all these different things like they're going to be emotional and they're going to get they're going to be clumsy and they're going to take it a little bit too far for a minute we we don't know what to do we have a history like a a lifelong a society long history of of throwing women in a mental asylum if they show too much emotion we really fear women's emotion we don't look at anger men's anger as an emotion we look at a woman's emotions especially if there's any kind of sadness or shaking or tears as hysteria.

49:23But we see anger as something completely separate. They're both emotions. But we really fear an emotional reaction from a woman. We immediately decide to label her as crazy. And it was so weird to see the headlines where I would even, if I calmly said something to someone, if I calmly engaged, it would be Jamila Jamil slammed. Jamila Jamil slayed, killed. Jamila Jamil bummed. I don't know. It was just like any kind of really intense verb. adjective used about me that always made it sound more violent than it was. That's the classic trick and they still use that all the time. Totally. In capital letters normally.

49:57Always in capital letters. And I was like, if you actually read the exchange, it was actually pretty calm for me. So it feels to me like maybe you've realised that the thing you were saying and the message you were trying to put out, you absolutely stand by that and so you should. But my delivery was off. The delivery almost divided, right? Totally divided. Great phrase, which I know Damien loves, which is, we need to stop shaking fists and start shaking hands. We need to get close before we can understand each other better. Yeah. So how do you communicate now compared to then? What's the answer, do you think?

50:32I highly recommend Marshall Rosenberg's non-violent communication. His videos are quite annoying, if I'm being perfectly honest, but it's extraordinary. Annoying in what way? It's just annoying. It's annoying, all the puppets and the voice. It's a little bit grating, but push through. because it will change your life. It will change all of your communications. What will change in your life? I actually managed to resolve every conflict I have with ease, with less stress, with less emotional damage done. I have become a calmer, kinder, and more empathetic person and that has been framed now as a weakness.

51:13And it's not. It's an immense strength. Grace is an immense strength. And like, you know, like I'm a sort of lefty liberal. And I think that we have a terrible fucking approach of getting our point across. I think we are a chaotic disaster of awful communicators largely who want empathy and tolerance in this world, but find it very hard to show empathy and tolerance, not only to the opposition, but to each other. We're so hard on each other and our communication is so violent. and um and I I can see my carbon footprint in that where I was part of the problem where I was part of they're like you're a fucking terrible person you're a cunt like I could see where I went wrong five years ago and now I am working with my podcast with my platform all the time to try to atone for that and try to say I was wrong and we need to change direction very fast because we are just driving people away.

52:10And that was never my intention. So give us your top tips then on how to speak and to get people to listen. So an interesting thing that's kind of like the tenant of a nonviolent communication that I learned is rather than saying, you do this and you do that, it's you make me feel like this when you do that. This is how I feel. Because immediately you engage someone's empathy. because now they're thinking of how you feel rather than you're shining a light on them and now they're thinking about themselves and now their defense comes up and they feel really attacked because when that happens you're just shutting them down and you're making it much harder for them to actually receive information like neurologically it's hard for them to receive and maintain information but if they're reaching across going like well you feel ashamed or you feel embarrassed or you feel like shit about yourself when I've said that thing if there's a real connection there, they're going to go, if there's a real, you know, empathetic human being in there, they're going to go, oh, fuck, I don't want you to feel that way.

53:08We very rarely actually ever get to the point of considering how the other person feels because we've been attacked. So we're just defending ourselves. And so it's not actually very practical. It's much more practical to engage each other. And now when there are people who I disagree with or people whose beliefs so I disagree with, I recognize that so much of, I don't know, bigotry or xenophobia or all these kind of unpleasant things come from a place of fear. That there's an inner child in there that's just afraid, who's been taught by other people to be afraid. They're a product of their environment.

53:44How could I reassure that person first? How can I make them see that I am invested in them feeling safe. But also maybe there's not as many things to feel afraid of as they think. Maybe they haven't actually, maybe they've been given all this misinformation and propaganda. You know, when we're on different political sides, you've got people cutting off their grandmothers and cutting off their mates and, you know, fighting with their colleagues. And there's just so much distress at the moment. And they never consider that there's just a human being who's a product of their own environment. The algorithms are showing us completely different events.

54:19Like the last three months of the world. And we don't need to get into the politics of that specifically. But everyone's seeing a different version of events, of the same event, right? Because the algorithm is pointing us towards more of whatever it is that we happen to have clicked on. Whether we agree or disagree with it, we've clicked on it, the algorithm goes, oh, she likes that. We'll send her more of that. So we get sent off on this, like, I don't know, down this rabbit hole of that type of information. The problem with our society right now is that we think we are all having different reactions to the same information.

54:51We are having different reactions to different information. And that is the crux of the problem. So now we're like, oh my God, we've seen the same thing and you have a completely different reaction to me. You're not a human being. You're a bad person. It's like, we're not even aware of what each other are seeing. And so once you start to understand that, and I think that's what I saw in COVID, I was like, oh my God, COVID was when I really changed the way that I communicated because I saw the way that we started to rip each other apart and the judgment over vaccines and masks and all these different things and people cutting off long-term friends and like the demonizing the tribalism that just I'd never seen before on that scale that's when I pulled back and I was like oh my god I don't want to be a part of this I do not I do not wish to I didn't say a word during any of that on either side of that I just stepped back and I observed I was like this is this is the demise of our society tribalism is the and division is and so I watched the way people communicated I re-examined the way that I used to communicate and I have not perfectly I have slipped a few times since but I have been working towards really thinking about the way I communicate really thinking about how I can make someone feel safe I can make someone feel heard and I can make them feel as though I give a shit about them that I'm not just advocating for my needs that I'm understanding their needs and we're trying to work together towards some sort of a happy healthy compromise and I don't think we know how to do that in a social political atmosphere that we're in right now and you made reference to the inner child for lots of people where how much of this is about settling your own inner child because you've described that some of this stuff you weren't seen you weren't necessarily heard on your terms you weren't made to feel safe at times how much of this is about trying to address that those issues that you didn't have i would say it's not it's not just about mine it's just about recognizing that we're all just a bunch of big babies with pubes and taxes and once you start to look at people like that yeah you can't unsee it it's a bit creepy i don't mean it in a creepy way it's actually correct it is it is i mean that is what's going on it's like we're all just like when we're babies we're perfect and we know how to advocate for each other for ourselves and we're just like i need a poo i need a hug i need some i need some a banana like you know i'm like i need to go to sleep now like we just always tell people what our needs are we don't we're not racist we're not fat phobic we love our big thighs like we're just we've got no issues with each other it's just human to human heart to heart everything else is taught.

57:37Self-judgment, judgment of others, fear of others, all of it is taught. And so when you start to think about the fact that like, God, at some point around the age of two or three, we just get told to stop advocating for ourselves, to silence that voice that says I'm lonely, or I feel rejected, or I need something, or I'm cranky, I'm not in a good mood today. We just cover it all up and just become these fucking shells. So I think once I started to understand that a few years ago and I started to look at all these people fighting with each other online I was just looking at babies babies you know in adult bodies who were just fighting for their their inner needs and what babies want is to feel safe and loved and you know happy and peaceful it's what we all want we're all told about all these like all these fucking culture wars or about all these micro differences we have versus the massive things that we have in common and now I'm fighting with every bit of platform I have for us to recognize those similarities and work from there because it benefits the media and it benefits social media and it benefits governments who aren't doing fuck all to really help the cost of living crisis or the medical problems or you know the mental health crisis it serves all of those people for us to be so distracted by ripping each other to pieces that we don't actually look at the larger system I don't mean to go all like Woody Harrelson here but like you know it's really important but I do think it is relevant and I think it's important for someone with my platform who was such a like lefty darling to make sure that I to that I express that and this isn't me saying I don't still have liberal values I do I just really really worry for the way that we execute what we wish to happen and before we wrap up with our quickfire questions you know we have a widely shared and listened to podcast called high performance so how do you want us to be talking about high performance in a really healthy way i have no desire to control how you uh talk about high performance because i think it is individual to everyone but what i hope uh that you and people in your hemisphere like continue to do is to encourage, really encourage mental health and to really encourage happiness and connection and time with one's loved ones.

59:59Like I really hope that that is in that, like at the top of the priority list. I swear to God, I've never met a happy billionaire. I swear to God, I've never met a happy, super, super successful, multi, multi Oscar Grammy winner. Like they're really happy on the night. But like, I've met a lot of these people, which makes me sound like I'm a character from The Good Place, but I have. And I've seen what happens when the camera stops rolling. And it's just, it's not worth it. So definitely try to achieve some of your dreams, but all whilst having them as like number four on your priority list. Success should never be above number four or that version of success.

1:00:38What should be above there? Happiness, affection, and community. And I think service. So maybe it's number five. because a bit of service is what we're built to do as a species. It's really interesting. I don't know if you're familiar with the concepts of ikigai. No. I'm really ignorant. I don't know about anything. No, no, you're not. We had the author of a book called Ikigai on a Spanish journalist, Hector Garcia, that lives in Japan, where one of the communities in Japan, there's these areas called blue zones where people outlive their normal lifespan live to 90 plus and one of the concepts in Japan they call it your ikigai your reason to get up in the morning is the translation and what you've just described there unwittingly are the questions that form your ikigai so what do you love doing?

1:01:31Oh yeah. What are you good at doing? How can you serve the community or serve others and how can you generate wealth or wellbeing from it? That's why I still live with flatmates and I'm almost 80 like it's because I like I just love community I love having a bit of community I'm still an introvert but the people I love to be around are the people I live with my boyfriend and I live with my mates from when I was 19 in a house together and that just feels great and makes me happy and I would like to expand that into a commune um or a cult who's to say uh but like I want I want that I want to build that I want to spend my time focusing on on that happiness we're so lucky for our time on this earth and i think the current the constant news cycle should be a reminder to us of that ready for a few quick fire questions yes god help us all what are the three non-negotiable behaviors that really matter to you manners are really important i was working with mine um and i think that there is just no excuse to not have good manners um and i think those manners have to be offered to everyone especially almost especially those who do not have as much power as you and that's something I take very seriously grace is something that is now a non-negotiable for me grace towards oneself and grace towards others giving people the space you know to make mistakes and come back from it and I think funny is mine which it shouldn't be but I just you have to have a sense of humor That's my personal non-negotiable.

1:03:10I can't be bothered. Like, life is so ridiculous. Everything about life is so ridiculous. And if you cannot see that sense of ridiculousness, I just can't. I think humour speaks to an intelligence and it also speaks to just, like, an ability to, I don't know, have a malleable and fun brain. So I need a sense of humour. I know kindness is very important, but I think being funny is more important to me. We'll take that. I think Grace encapsulates kindness. Yeah, exactly. what advice would you give to a teenage Jamila just starting out oh god the advice I would give to her is always that in the same way that you advocate for the people you love you've got to learn how to advocate for yourself and the things that you say to yourself in the mirror if you would never tolerate them being said to a friend you're not allowed to say them to yourself and I really think that that is valuable advice for everyone because we are so brutal towards ourselves we hold ourselves to such extreme standards and we would never let those things said be said in front of us even to a stranger on the bus but we say them to ourselves constantly and I think that if we could learn to listen out for that voice for that inner bully um then at least we can expose it and then find someone to tell about that voice because an abuser is only successful in continuing to abuse you when when it's in private.

1:04:36So expose the bully. Find a therapist. Find an online talk therapist, whatever you can find. Find a mate. Tell them the truth about what it is that you've been saying to yourself and then start to really, because once you hear it, you can't unhear it and then you start going, my God, that's so unreasonable. I find myself now just arguing. As soon as I say something horrible about myself in my head, I just go, no, she's not. She's not a total twat. She's just a bit of a twat. Leave her alone. Give her a break. She's had a hard day. She's doing her best. And I fight for myself the way I would stick up for my best friend.

1:05:08Do you? Yeah, I genuinely do. It does sound like a type of mental illness, but it really isn't. It's genuinely positive where I hear the negative thought, I allow the negative thought, and then I go, fuck off. That's too much. Yes, she got that wrong, but she's a human being, and she'll learn from that. She'll come back better tomorrow. And so that's kind of where I'm at. I'm very anti-perfection, very pro-failure. Great. What's your biggest strength? What's your greatest weakness? My biggest strength is my attitude towards imposter syndrome. I look at imposter syndrome as a wedding that I have, like any situation I'm in where I don't belong, I look at it as a wedding that I've crashed where I'm like, all right, I'm going to snog whoever I can.

1:05:53I'm going to get as much cake as I can. I'm going to have as much fun as I can before I'm thrown out. And that has led to a life of constant adventure. for better or for worse I've lived one of the most like exciting lives I ever could have imagined and it's because I don't wait to feel like I belong or I deserve it I just try and get away with what I can until I'm exposed and that's fine yeah and so I think that is a great strength of mine because I do think we're very fear-mongered about failure in this society and I think my greatest weakness I'm trying to be sensible because my honest answer is that I can't do reverse cowgirl and that is just the truth I've got three pumps in me and then I'm flat as a pancake I'm tired I've got no upper body strength that's a cardio issue but you know it's incremental change I'm working on my fitness my greatest weakness is a reverse cowgirl.

1:07:00That's the best answer I think we've had in nearly 300 episodes.

1:07:07Sorry, everyone. I'm hoping this one isn't a similar answer. Sorry. The final question, your one golden rule for a high-performance life.

1:07:20Seek pleasure wherever you can find it. The world is shit. work like find any pleasure you can i think it was a neurologist who said to me that our brain is 80 negative thought right because our brains are built to predict and protect right and that's our main function because one of the ways that we can you know circumnavigate trauma is by not being surprised so our brains are always scanning for danger so with 80 negative thoughts you've got a 20 shot in this terrible world of being happy you have to fight for it we think that it's just like a given and we can take it for granted. No, it's a fight.

1:07:53It's a daily fight. Find pleasure anywhere that you can. Find that connection, find that joy, find that laughter, wherever you can. Make it your, like one of your main priorities in life. It is so weird how much we don't prioritise pleasure, how we've made it look like one of the sort of sins, like it's some sort of, that it's like a greedy, indulgent thing. It's the, it's a cornerstone of life. And so seek it out wherever you can because you are at 80 % disadvantage in happiness. So that's what I understand from a neurologist. If I'm wrong, I'm sure I will be told in the YouTube comments. Jemina, thank you so much.

1:08:29Thank you. Thank you. What a fascinating conversation. Love that. Thank you. It's been lovely. You're very nice people.

1:08:40Damien. Jake. I mean, I think, you know, for people that have listened to this and not watched it, let's just talk about the energy that she brought to the room, to the production office next door, to the team all around us. I mean, incredible, incredible. Well, we sometimes joke, don't we, when we talk to people about some people light up a room when they walk into it, some light it up when they walk out of it. She definitely lit up the room when she walked into it. What was the highlight for you? I love the conversation she had about just being mentioned, the humility to recognise that what she was doing wasn't working, whether that was when she was in her mid-twenties and she was having external success and going, this isn't making me happy.

1:09:17or whether it's a more recent re-invention of the way I'm speaking and communicating is creating division rather than bringing healing. That takes real humility and I think she demonstrated the ability to change her mind which we all need to understand and embrace in our own worlds. What was yours? This idea that she brought to the table of stop expecting perfection from people. Like expect people to say the wrong thing, to not be fully educated at any point about the way that the world is changing or the way we should talk about other people now in society. Expect people to fall and falter, but just give them the benefit of the doubt.

1:09:55Like, just be tolerant with other people, but also hold yourself to really high standards. You know, and she's clearly learned that, and she knows when she slipped below those high standards. But again, it's another story on this podcast that the Jamila that we've all seen from the outside is so different to the incredible person that's just sat in front of us just now. And there's no doubt about it. She is the epitome of high performance. And my biggest emotion is I'm just really pleased for her that a person who clearly was struggling deeply at one point in her life has never been happier and has found freedom.

1:10:26And that's great. Yeah, I think I'm going to get that line that she said to us all printed on a T-shirt, which was about just raise your standards. So when you raise your standards, people can either choose to meet them or not, but it makes your world a lot clearer. And I think that involves understanding your boundaries, understanding your non-negotiables, and just understanding what's really important to you. And I think Jamila's a great example of someone that's been on a real journey of discovery. And I feel lucky she wanted to come and share her insights with us. Thank you, brother. Thank you, mate.

1:11:00So that's it, our conversation with Jamila Jamil. As always, huge thanks to you for growing and sharing High Performance among your community. And can I just say a big thanks to all the people that I've spoken to over the last couple of weeks, telling me how valuable high performance remains to them. Please continue to tell people, please continue to spread the learnings you're taking from these conversations. You can also watch on YouTube as well as download the high performance app where there is a whole world of extra content to get you even closer to your own version of high performance. Bye-bye.

1:11:57We'll be right back.

1:12:12Family. Always family. So pull up a chair and join us at Fremont Avenue. A world premiere play only at Arena Stage. Performances start October 8th. Tickets at arenastage.org. Your sausage McMuffin with egg didn't change. Your receipt did. The sausage McMuffin with egg extra value meal includes a hash brown and a small coffee for just$5. Only at McDonald's for a limited time. Prices and participation may vary. At Capella University, learning online doesn't mean learning alone. You'll get support from people who care about your success, like your enrollment specialist who gets to know you and the goals you'd like to achieve.

1:12:52You'll also get a designated academic coach who's with you throughout your entire program. Plus, career coaches are available to help you navigate your professional goals. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at capella.edu.