I want to wake up more happy than depressed I want to enjoy life I'm not the final form of myself I don't know what that's going to be he's one of the most influential voices in morning radio yep it's the world most dangerous Morning Show to Breakfast Club Charlamagne the god I had no idea who I was there was this character that had
been created named Charlamagne I'm like I don't know who this person is some point I remember saying to myself well what's wrong with me it I thought it was okay hey everyone I've got some huge news to share with you in the last 90 days 79.4% of our audience came from viewers and listeners that are not subscribed to
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for you in the world subscribe right now the number one Health and Wellness podcast Jett J shett the one the only Jett why have you built up such an animosity towards Small Talk where does that come from well number one I hate small talk you know just on the literal level right when somebody sees you and
they try to you know make conversation and they're not really talking about anything and it just it's like yo you and this person are in this unique moment in time where y'all get to share space and nobody is saying anything that is annoying to me and it's annoying to the point where I'm like I would rather
just tell the person like we don't have to do this like we can be on our phones we can be reading the book we can sit here in silence like you don't have to try you know to make conversation but then on a a more macro level I feel like we're having too much Small Talk meeting we're having too many micro conversations we're taking these micros
and making them macros like the things that people you know get online and discuss and debate about and argue about over and over and over and over and the bigger scheme of things mean nothing and that's why things just come and go in this era every day you get online and you know it looks like there's a
conversation that's the biggest thing in the world wait three hours wait four hours wait 12 hours it'll be completely gone and it'll be like well damn I thought everybody was so concerned about this you know two two days ago so I just have a a a problem with everything being so macro that shouldn't be nowadays and
and the things that we should be discussing like the big macro conversations we have a way of making those so micro and that's the background noise that's why even like you know on Breakfast Club or on my podcast brilliant idiots when we do discuss things right that might be rooted in pop culture I'm always trying to see like
what's the bigger conversation that we can be having behind this can't just be that y'all think this person is a terrible person or that was a bad tweet like what's the psychology or what's the thing that we can you know discuss that people going to actually learn from yeah that's what I want to I want to do and
how do you break that cycle let's say you bump into someone that you haven't seen for a bit and I think a lot of people struggle with this you see them at a party an event in the corridor and you go hey how's it going oh yeah good yeah cool and you know you're not listening you know there's no real thing how do you break that if you can so one
example is you say look we don't have to do this how do you break it in a positive sense like how even people with their friends with their family you're at family dinner and everyone's talking about whatever how do you actually break that and Elevate that like what's a healthy way tell them be honest about
what you're feeling in that moment be like yo we ain't talking about nothing right now I'll be like yo well who's going to start the conversation throw something on the table like literally that's what this book is this book is literally just a series of topics that I feel like you know you could just throw
in at a lunch throwing in at a dinner table you know throw in if you're just sitting around on a plane with somebody and you want to have a conversation but you can't like we make this a lot more difficult than we need to and all and all it takes is for somebody to break the ice that's all you're literally
waiting for and you're sitting at a you know you're sitting around with somebody you just like I want to talk but I just don't know what to say and you're thinking should I bother this person should I not bother this person does this person want to be bothered does this person want to talk maybe they do
maybe they don't maybe that's a question right you can ask them like you feel like having a conversation if that person says no respect that yes don't ask them that hoping that they say yes but if they say no you're still going to force them to have the the conversation like sometimes you should just ask a person like yo do you got time to talk
yeah like how often do you get that Jay never exactly people just run up to you and they just throw their stuff on you all the time instead of saying yo Jay you got time to speak right now and if you say not at the moment they're offended you may not want to offend them so you take time to have this
meaningless conversation this small talk you're just telling them yeah just because you don't want to offend them but then you're not even really paying attention you know too well so nobody's doing we're not doing each other any favors about doing that so just be honest about what you're feeling in that moment and yeah and I feel like the
reason you pointed out there the reason why so many of us are struggling to be honest with people is because people are offended by honesty even if it's genuine and even if it's thoughtful like you just said like if I asked you I was like hey shalaman can you talk about and you were like Jay I don't have time right
now because of this this and this or whatever I'm in between something as a respectful person back I'm going like I understand that I actually had someone on message this morning I'd messaged someone inviting them to an event and they didn't get back to me and they messaged me this morning and were just
like Jay I'm so sorry I was like getting ready for the met and my outfit went wrong and then like I had to figure this out and it's been crazy and it all worked out but I wanted you to know you know I always respond to you and I was like yeah I wasn't offended at all I respect that and thank you for for explaining and then it turned out but a
lot of the times I feel we're scared of being honest because we're scared the other person's going to turn around and go oh you never get back to me oh you think you're too important for me we are scared of offending people how can we all stop being so offended because I feel like anything offends anyone these
days that's that's a multi-layer answer right because number one I think we have to stop being people Pleasers and I think that you know if you grow up in a certain environment you've had certain things you know happen to you like my therapist always told me like I know exactly why I'm a people pleaser right
and I and I talk about it in the book I'm a people pleaser because you know abused our at at the age of eight right so me not wanting that young lady to touch me anymore turned into her calling me uh ugly and saying I had a big nose so in order for her to stop doing that I would continue to let her you know touch
on me so it's like you don't realize how that carries on into adulthood to where you just become this people pleaser you don't want to let anybody down because if you feel like you let them down then they're going to start speaking ill about you and doing things that hurt your feelings so you just continue to do
what's best for them sacrificing your own peace and we can't do that you just got to set boundaries for yourself and be like yo I'm not going to be a people pleaser in any way shape or form and man honestly if my boundaries you know cause somebody to feel offended then that's the whole point of having the boundary in the
first place I got to have a boundary from this person to be with cuz you're upset with me because I'm placing a boundary for my peace of mind N I don't need you on my life to begin with yeah how how early well when were you ready to revisit that 8-year-old self like when did you feel comfortable to even
reflect back on that in therapy because I imagine that well you can tell me when you were eight did you just block it out in the next few years and then when did you go back to it and say oh actually that's where a lot of it started uh I was watching episode over winfy and Tyler Perry was on there and Tyler Perry
was you know crying about the abuse that he experienced from a woman in his family and I think I was in my 20s and I remember saying to myself like what's wrong with him like why is he you know upset about that and then when at some point I remember saying to myself well what's wrong me it I thought it was okay
but then you kind of suppress it again because I wasn't going to therapy in my 20s but then when I started going to therapy in like my late like mid-30s that's when I started the unpack a whole lot of that stuff cuz you know you go to therapy for one thing you go to therapy cuz you dealing with you think you're
dealing with anxiety and depression then you start peeling back all of these different layers and you start realizing all of this other trauma you know that you've experienced and you know that was that was one of those things like you know being a people pleaser not setting proper boundaries because of that moment
that happened to me you know when I was eight years old and carried on throughout my whole whole adult life until I finally realized like oh this is why I don't like letting people down this is why I do things you know for people even when I don't want to this is why even if I'm not happy necessarily about doing something I just
go along to do it because I don't want to upset or offend that person to cause that person to be you know looking at me in in in in a in a negative way so I would say like mid-30s is when I really started un unpacking it so it's probably been like the last 10 years of really unpacking it and when you ate how long
did that abuse loss like how how recurring was it and I don't know man because and I I even mentioned it in the book it what it I I suppressed so much abuse that I experienced when I was young that it wasn't even that one person you know but you just you suppress it because in a a lot of ways
it becomes the norm like I remember being young like 9 10 11 years old having conversations with other young men I grew up around and we were all talking about older women we was dealing with and we thought we was lying to each other but now when you look back on it it was just all a bunch of young kids
getting abused but when you a young man you don't look at it like that when you're a young man you just like oh I'm getting action early you know I'm getting action early and I'm getting action with older women early so you don't look at it like that until you get older and realize how man how a lot of that impacts you you know uh like
mentally and emotionally yeah what were some of the ways that you think that impacted you and it's interesting I love what you said there like when you're young you actually see that as like ego bravado arrogance like it's cool what were the things that you started to extrapolate through therapy and the work
you did where you were like oh that's the kind of impact that it's had in my real life in my real adult life the the biggest one for me is is the people pleasing aspect that's literally the biggest one like not having no boundaries and when I did try to set boundaries with with with with one of the women in particular her you know
getting in my head Psych ially calling me ugly and saying I got a big nose and all of this other stuff so for me the biggest you know issue was the fact that I just did not know how to set proper boundaries and when I did set them it was like uh it wasn't the brick house it was the straw house you know you could
just blow it you could just blow it away so I never really set any proper boundaries it wasn't until I started unpacking a lot of that stuff that I realized like no I'm going to set my boundary and I'm not going to be upset at you know any bad big bad wolf that's that's mad that they can't blow my blow my house down yeah what I find
interesting especially is I think we all developed a peacemaker people pleaser personality type through different reasons how have you found yourself not being a people pleaser with your therapist because I find a lot of people end up playing that role where they can't be honest with their therapist
because we want our therapist to like us and say Well done like good work you know like oh you really so how how did you find yourself getting that ability because I think a lot of people listening and watching may be going to therapy they may be trying to turn to help but actually they find themselves playing that same role with that
therapist man I got a new therapist you know uh this past year and my first therapist I might have been lying to her probably 50 60% of the time just because there was so many things that I thought I wanted to share but I wasn't and it wasn't until earlier this year you know having a uh I me and my wife went away
on this nice little spiritual Retreat for a weekend and you know we was in indulging in plant-based medicines you know um I iasa in particular and um one of the things that came forth for me was literally stop lying to yourself and stop volunteering those lies to other people and so much came up in that
moment you know so much you know like I said abuse that I experienc as a child all of that type of stuff and that's when I was like oh I've been I've been telling half truths I haven't been being completely honest like I've been telling you know just enough of a of of a story to get just enough back but that's not
how you you know properly heal anything like you got to deal with it all or you know don't even don't even don't even try and so for me I feel like you know I probably was lying to like my first therapist for like I would literally probably say half of the time and do you think we do that because we're actually
scared of having to address is that the reason 100% like it's still fear it's still insecurity that we're not willing to share with anyone like even that night that I was you know that that that that first well that was the second night of the journey on Iowa like me and my wife been together 26 years and I was
sharing things with her that I never had shared with anybody and that felt so so so so freeing and even in that moment I'm like I don't think there's anybody else I trust to share these things with not even a a therapist no matter how good the therapist is no matter how you know great the therapist is like this individual that I've shared majority of
my life with is the only person I feel comfortable you know putting all that on the table for yeah I think that's a really interesting point because I think the words honesty and vulnerability have somewhat been exploited in and of themselves in this idea that if you're honest everyone has to know everything
like you have to just put it all out there what you just said is actually even with my therapist they're not going to get the 100% version of me because my wife my partner who's been with me for over 20 years now it's like that person not only deserves it but we've built up enough trust and there's earned respect
where we both can share that what's been your take on on the internet like oversharing unders sharing overt telling undertal you better say everything to everyone right like that's what vulnerability is and I think there was like this false pressure that you had to share all your business with everyone yeah I think on the Internet it's uh a
lot of people crying out for help who probably not probably who need to be in therapy actually talking to somebody and it's a whole lot of people just lying but that's what I mean when I say you know stop lying to yourself and stop volunteering those lies to other people every single day people wake up and just
volunteer lies for no reason and I'm not saying lies have to be negative like they just lie about their life they lie about who they are they lie about what they do and it's like nobody asked you for that right like nobody so you're inviting all of this negative energy into your life you're inviting all of
this opinion and all of this critique that's literally going to have real world consequences because that's the stuff that's going to give you anxiety that's the stuff that's going to you know cause you to have bout of depression and you're you're going to be sitting there dealing with all of this stuff for a a farce you created like
what is the the point of that so it's like for me man we really all just have to stop volunteering you know the The Lies We Tell ourselves to others yeah what led you towards plant medicine as a method of healing as a method of reflection like what what made you go down that route cuz you've done therapy for years
you've talked about it you're a big Ambassador for me mental health what was the opening there I mean it was just something I wanted to try and then they always say you know you don't you don't do it unless it it's calling you and so you know just reading about it and you know seeing you know what other people's
take on it was like two things that really attracted me was everybody that did it was telling me like yo I saw God like I knew people who were atheists like like Neil Brennan was an atheist and he did it and now he's like a Believer and you know and I was like whoa and I've always had faith and I've always been a Believer so I just wanted
to kind of see like I want to see you know see see more of that and I think um people saying how it detaches you from your ego like I thought that was very powerful because that's something that we all try to do every day but they was like no it feels like somebody literally takes your ego and just rips it away
from you and I wanted to know what that felt like and man I absolutely Absol over understand what it what it felt like um especially that that that second night yeah Y where did you go for it where where did you try it out I was in I was in California okay okay in okay great great so you didn't go too far no
because I've heard of I've had friends go out to like Costa Rica and then you went low Co it easy yeah Shaman I talked to was like why even I think it I don't know if it was Peru or Costa Rica was somewhere I forgot where it was but he was just like that's a jungle he was like you don't want to have that kind of
experience in a jungle Ian he wasn't knocking anybody who did he just like for you on your first time I just don't you know recommend that so it was just kind of like Divine Alignment like it was one of those things like it had been calling me for the past I would say five or six years and then like the
opportunity just presented itself yeah you know with some with some some people with some really great energy yeah and I was like yeah why not and just all lined up it was one of those things was like oh I I'm actually free this weekend yeah the wife wanted to do it we went to do it oh it's beautiful what did you what
have you found has been the hardest thing for you to be honest with yourself about everything everything yo it's so easy for us to get caught up in line ourselves because we do it to protect ourselves in a lot of way right so like it might be a person that you genuinely have love for like genuinely just as a on a human level like you love this
person and like you know this person might have a talent or a skill set that you know you want to help amplify like provide a opportunity for but you know as well as I do that you know character Talent sometimes will take people where character can't sustain them so even though this you see this person's Talent
you know once they get in a certain position you realize their character isn't going to be able you know to keep them there but you will constantly lie to yourself about this person's character over and over and over and over and then you wonder why things aren't working out and literally it will affect everything that you're doing like
let's just say it's a team and you put this person as part of the team this person is causing problems with the rest of the team and you see it but you're making excuses for it you know and it's like or even a friend that's you might have been friends with a person for a long long long time and you know y'all
have very deep intimate conversations so you know this person ly than a lot of other people know them so you get a soft spot you know in your heart for set individuals so when you're hearing everybody else talk about how terrible this person is you're lying to yourself about it like no y'all just don't
understand this person like it's like no the reality is they are a terrible person and they need to do more work and they need to really you know figure themselves out so you know the biggest thing um yeah it's just we we constantly lie ourselves about everything you might you might look in the mirror and know you need to
lose 20 lbs like you might put a shirt on and know it don't quite fit right but you'll pull on it and tug it and you know how does this look you know somebody like oh it looks all right looks good and you're like hey it does and then you get on Instagram and then you get humbled there a bunch of people that don't know you at all who are
willing to tell you the truth about how you look then you lie to yourself again and you say to yourself oh they just hating you knew that was whack when you put it on you knew you had no right putting that shirt on before you put it on but you decided to do it anyway so I just feel like we I think every single
moment of Our Lives is an exercise in being honest with ourselves first and foremost and then then the rest of the world and then choosing who to share that Honesty with because sometimes people aren't lying it's just none of your business yeah and I think that's something that people forget too
especially in this world of oversharing I have to constantly remind people that especially in this era of the internet I'm like when you talking about celebrities you don't know any of these people I don't care what they post on social I don't care what you hear in their music you genuinely do not know any of these
individuals stop lying to yourself like you do and and in what sense because I'm I'm thinking of something but in what sense do you mean like we don't know them or how how that applies to us you think we're commentating on a life that we don't know about is that yeah people people pass these judgments like y you
you'll see whole psycho analysts about people right and it's like how did you come to that conclusion like literally you're breaking down a person's whole P oh they're a narcissist and they're egotistical and they're out for this and they I'm like how do you know based off a tweet yeah how do you know based off
one conversation that they had you don't know this person this person has lived you know 30 plus years 40 plus years whatever it is you you you do not spend every waking moment with this individual how do we come come to these fullblown conclusions about people that we don't know I had somebody get mad at me the
other day cuz I told them I don't know this person personally yeah we were talking about a a artist and I was like I don't know that person personally that now that the person I was talking to did yeah but I so I understand how they felt yeah but I don't have that same personal connection or feelings towards this individual because I don't have a
personal connection with them and I and when it comes to public figures a lot of times it it makes you more objective because you don't have any bias because anybody that you actually have a connection with you're going to have a natural bias towards them that's another thing we lie to each other about we lie
to each other like we're so honest and so objective when we all have our biases for people we all have our biases for places we all have our biases for things and that's okay yeah if you can address that and and and say yeah I know I got a bias then you could actually have an honest conversation about whatever it
you're talking about are look at things you know from a honest perspective if you can't even be honest about your biases then you starting off from from from a lie yeah I often find it's this Observer mindset that we're missing where it's like okay we're having a conversation right now but can I actually allow myself to look at it from
this perspective if I can't do that like if I can't see oh I'm currently displaying ego and the other person is currently displaying defensiveness if I can't see what I'm displaying and what someone else is and I'm only seeing what they're displaying then I'm not really observing I can't be objective
absolutely and and I find that that's exactly what's missing where and I I can testify to what you just said whether it's inaccurate guest lists at people's wedding that are printed in the papers or whether it's inaccurate oh I know the news saying oh they're going to get a divorce or their kids hate them or
whatever else it is how you yeah I can testify to having no knowing people going none of that's true and and it's and it goes back to the point you started with which is this idea of we get so lost commentating on everything and everyone else that we know nothing about that we don't have time and energy
to work on what's going on inside here absolutely and and I find it remarkable that we spend our lives trying to solve psychoanalyze entertain ourselves by someone else's problems rather than fixing our own well we do that on purpose yeah because if we can talk about everybody else then we can avoid that hard painful excruciating work it
takes to deal with our own BS if I if I'm if I can look at everyone else I can avoid looking in that mirror all day long I'm I'm too busy sightseeing other people and commentating on other people so I never have to look in the mirror you know at at at what it is that I need to fix yeah yeah you said something
that's interesting too man and that's why that's why this era we in is is so difficult and I think even you know our positions as as media personalities because you know I remember when I used to work for Wendy Williams she used to always say to me you either going to be of the people or of the industry but it's almost impossible when you're in
the business because you're going to actually meet people and you're going to develop relationships and I think a lot of times we have a a a different perspective of things because we're kind of in it like I've literally been with individuals couples watching them love on each other watching them kiss on each
other and then it'll be like breaking news they're getting a divorce they hate each other they're apart and I'm like this is a mind [ __ ] like yeah cuz I'm I'm I'm like whoa like and it puts so much in perspective and not even just that like us as individuals you'll see things about yourself and you're like that's
not remotely true like that's not even accurate at all everybody around you will be mad and everybody around you be upset and you'll be pissed off too but then you had to really say to yourself what are you going to do yeah I'm not go I refuse to go on the defensive and start explaining to myself to a bunch of
people who never even took the time to learn the truth anyway yeah if you if you didn't you never took the time to learn the truth so you would rather just put this out there you know print this say these things not care if you're accurate you know not not care if there's any falsehoods you just whatever
so why would I take the time to explain the truth to you yeah now I'm get now now not now not only am I validating what You' said to a certain extent or not not what you said but validating you and your platform now I'm actually giving you more content yeah I'm not doing that at all yeah for sure for sure I was going to go back to the personal
again with you because I feel like a big turning point in your book that you talk about that I can't wait for people to dive into is this moment where you realize that your father was Che on your mom and like that is like a really big moment for you at that point because you're like I think 17 years old and and
you're learning about this and naturally you feel like tell me how you felt like in that moment because it almost feels like the first time you discovered that something's a lie like in a big way I mean yeah that was a very macro conversation you know because I had made up my mind in that moment that me and my
pops couldn't have no small talk about this situation because you know we live in a small town so you're hearing it constantly right and you're you're driving by you know this house and you're seeing his his truck out there and you know you're fully aware of all of the different lies that he's that my that he's told my mom like oh I'm just
I'm over there doing work or oh that's my secretary all this other stuff right so finally you know just deciding to have the macro conversation and say yo I you you out here cheating on Mom what you doing is fou and my dad was like yo you only got one girlfriend you know one day you going to understand like he
that's what that was his reped to me and that that messed me up for a while because that's my hero like still to this day I love my dad like my dad I fully understand you know the totality of my father as a man and as I've become a man myself at 45 years old I overstand you know everything that you know he he
he went through and so when he said that to me I felt like I had to uh um live up to his expectations so that's when it became a thing of oh let me show him that I I can get a roster I don't have to be you know committed to to one person and yo that lasted for a while not not a while but but too long for my
my liking right and so I remember later on years down the line my dad saying to me you know the worst thing that he ever did was caus my mother to leave him and telling me that I always had it right cuz he you know I'm with the same woman right for 26 years so he was like telling me I always had it right and I'm
like damn this why you shouldn't always listen to adults bro like just because you love a person and they're older than you and they got more experiences than you don't mean that they're always right but I give my father so much grace because you know one of the first break the first breakthrough I ever had in therapy I
mean the thing that led me to tears was just realizing that my father used to discipline me for things that he never taught me me and now I even take it a step further and say my father used to discipline me for things that he never taught me but also for things that he never learned himself so a lot of his his his his uh his his his raising of me
was he was Raising Me Through fear and not love yeah right so because he just didn't want me to make the same mistakes that he made he was terrified of me going down you know the same path that he went down and I ended up going down that path anyway like even down to you know the mental health Journey like when
I wrote my second book you know shook one anxiety playing tricks on me when I wrote that I was all the way discombobulated I had no idea whether I was coming or going cuz I had just started going to therapy and I had just started peeling back a lot of those layers so I was just raw like I had I had no idea who I was there was this
character that had been created named Charlamagne I'm like I don't know who this person is then I'm dealing with lonard myself I don't know who this person is so I was just all over the place and I literally just put it all in that book and had uh Dr is Major do clinical correlations to the things that
I was talking about but he my father had read that book and I talk about this story in the book but he he had read that book and then that same week I had a cousin who had completed suicide and he had attempted to complete suicide like four other times and the fourth time he completed it I think he was like
25 years old so my dad was triggered by a lot of that stuff he was triggered by a lot of the stuff I wrote in my book and he was definitely triggered by my cousin completing suicide so my father calls me and he tells me um you know he read the book talking about my cousin a little bit and he goes man you know I I
tried to commit suicide 30 plus years ago but I didn't because of you know your your older sister and you and he was like you know I was on two to three medications no no he was actually on 10 10 to 12 medications and he was going to therapy two and three times a week dealing with his own mental health
issues and so much so that the state of South Carolina just started giving him a check and that's what they used to call it a crazy check so I remember asking my mom like yo you know you know dad was going through all of this and she was like I just thought he was playing crazy to get a check so just think about that
like think about if he was able to just Express himself and have those conversations with us as a family back then how that would have saved me you know so much grief when I was dealing with panic attacks and stuff as a child and thinking something was you know you know wrong with me and um I just all of
that makes me give my father a whole lot of Grace he's just a man who was just trying to do his best you know with with what he had and the the the knowledge he had at the time so I don't I don't hold I I held a lot of that against him for a long long long long time but it was in that moment in 2018 when he told me
everything he was dealing with I don't know why it just clicked like my dad just a man yeah like he just a man just like I'm a man like who am I to not give him the same Grace I want totally what's allowed you to have that shoman to be able to zoom out and have that context and that Grace because I think when
we're analyzing these things and you kind of connect the dots you're like oh yeah my dad treated me like that that's why I became like that that's why I made that mistake and you can spend so much time in this very linear back and forth journey of that was the past that's how it connects to the present that's how it
impacted my life but you're almost looking at it from a bird's eye view looking down going oh oh that makes sense and my dad went through and then you can like give Grace you can have what was the key in therapy and in your personal work that shifted it from being this linear thing to being a bird's eye view of this situation I honestly think
I've always had that as a child like always like I've always had a bird's eye view with things like I've always felt in tune to something to something else like there there was always like this voice in my head or this spirit that was you know moving me in certain directions or causing me to see certain things
sometimes I will see things I wasn't supposed to see you know um literally and figuratively right and I I've always had these visions and I just I remember my dad always telling me when I was a child if you don't change your your ways you going to end up in jail dead or broke under the tree and a lot of people hear that but
don't actually learn that and apply that for some reason I was able at a young age to actually start seeing people that I love go to jail like for prison sentences and I was going to jail and you know I saw people around me that were actually getting killed and I saw older cousins who I used to look up to
they they are sitting under the tree kind of like not doing much with themselves and I'm like oh that's not going to be me and I I literally could see all right everything I do today directly is going to impact what happens to me tomorrow so I need to start doing what I need to do today it's like yo if I you know continue to eat like this I'm
going to be fat the future right like if I don't read this book you know my my my knowledge is going to be limited in the future so I've always you know by the grace of God just tended to have like a a bird's eye view of things like my third eye is has been open for quite a long time like to the point even when I
think about like me and my wife had a a nonprofit back in the day well we thought it was a nonprofit when we set it up it was a n we set it up as a nonprofit but we never went through the channels to making the nonprofit it just sound like oh we go set this you know it's one of those things and so we had a
it was called third eye awareness like literally that's what it was called even when like the first tattoo I ever got was Wolverine from the X-Men CU I love Wolverine right like I love the X-Men I'm a big Comic Book Guy but back then I got the tattoo when I was like 17 years old this when tattoos were illegal in
South Carolina I got the tattoo because the thing that attracted me towards Wolverine was his healing powers and so the tattoo I got on my arm is wolver holding a microphone in his hand because I thought rap was going to be what changed my life but lo and behold it was these type of microphones that changed
my life and you know now my I feel like my my purpose in life is to not only continue to to heal myself but to continue to help as many other people you know get on their get on their healing Journey so I was 16 17 years old thinking about stuff like this and you at the 16 17 you get a tattoo like that and in your mind you're explaining it
perfectly I'm like yo I'm attracted to Wolverine cuz of his healing powers and then and then WAP the microphone but now you I'm 45 about to be 46 I'm looking at it like oh I understand what that was now and that was another Revelation that came to me um you know when I when I went on my waska journey was like yo
nothing have been wasted literally nothing there is absolutely nothing that has happened to me in my life whether you want to label it good bad you know ugly pretty whatever it was nothing has gone to waste in my life every single thing has a purpose and had a purpose and has gotten me to this point and I think man when you look at things
through that lens it just kind of like shapes it shapes your understanding of of trauma and you know why so-called bad things happen in a in a different way I don't look at it as good or bad it was just like one process of life that gets you to this point I think you just nailed something so powerful then I I I
want to emphasize it for people because I think we go through this Loop where we say oh now I get it everything else I was wrong I wasted time now I get it and then a few years later we go oh no no no no I just wasted the last few years now I get it and we constantly have this belief that we have to neglect and
reject our past in order to establish our present m we feel like we have to constantly say our past was a waste of time in order to establish that our present is now us doing the right thing and I actually fully agree with you and completely disagree with that because what you're doing is you're negating all
of the lessons all of the wisdom all of the learning all of the growth that actually got you to that point absolutely and then you're also negating the fact that all the skills you learn during that time all the habits they could still be useful but because you're writing off that time you're writing off
all of that growth and and I've been saying that to so many people lately even when people are like je I think I'm wasting my time I'm trying to find a new job I want to do something I'm passionate about oh Jay like the last few years I just wasted them being anxious now I'm confident it's like no no no no no like you need to remember
that because that's how you got here and by the way life is going to give you those scenarios again and you're going to need to remember this because next time it will be a familiar right it will be like a familiar feeling of oh I've been there I know how to deal with this that's why when you even when you
talking to you know young people in the field and they'll say things to you like well what if I you know leave New York and go to Atlanta and things don't work in Atlanta I'm like okay like and like yeah what do you mean if things don't work because what you're going to realize later on in life is
regardless of what happened when you was there it worked I don't care if you went down there and you worked there for six months and got fired there's going to be something something you pick up in those 6 months there's going to be somebody you meet in those 6 months it might just be a time in your life that you actually
enjoy and you need that you might just need to be in a different environment you know for a little while but there's going to be something you pick up within those six months that's going to make you realize like it worked I think you know we have these extremes when it comes to work I I could easily look back in my radio career and be like I got
fired four times so those was four times things didn't work that is a complete lie every single one of those situations I got fired from I had the time of my life and I learned so much from and I met people that are still you know my friends to this day so I wouldn't trade any of that for the world like like for
for all I know how do we know what we're doing now is working yeah we don't this just this is just what we're doing in the moment I know it's working for now but who who's to say this is what we're going to be doing when we're 50 years old who to say this what we're going to be doing when we're 60 we might be still
trying to hold on to Breakfast Club and on purpose and God is like I need you to move and he might even still let you keep it but you'll be sitting here unhappy yeah depressed angry like oh why isn't things moving the way I want them to move it's because he God asked you to move a long time ago but you didn't want
to because you're still trying to make this work and it's not working no more just because something is successful doesn't mean that it's working totally you know totally that's such a good point that's such a good point and that it reminds me there's this beautiful story that the Buddha used to tell about
a person who's on a journey and they're on this journey and they come across an obstacle and the first obstacle is this fast flowing river so they realize I need to build a raft so they get the bamboo they get the Rope they tie it up they build thems an or and then they paddle with all their strength and they
get to the other side and then they think this raft saved my life I'm going to take it wherever I go so they strap it to their back and they carry on walking and then the Buddha says that just like F this person gets to another challenge and the challenge is not a fast flowing river this time it's a tall
wooded forest with trees dotted at every other step so now the person's trying to walk through and the raft keep getting stuck wow and they're trying to maneuver and they're trying to get through and the raft is getting chipped the raft is blocking them from walking through and the Buddha says the person has two
choices they either hold on to the raft and they struggle to get through or they put it down and they walk on freely and it's the same thing point that you're making right now this idea of like what are you holding on to that you believe made you successful but is actually stopping you from breaking through the
next challenge and if you keep holding on to it you're just going to hurt your hands going to hurt your back you're never going to walk through and I agree success is probably the greatest prison because the feeling of success is so intoxicating that you think I'm just going to keep doing this like a drug because it makes me feel good but
actually I may not be actually feeling healthy well feeling like I'm moving in my best self and I've seen that even in my in my career I remember when I first started my work we grew based on videos I made on Facebook and today eight years on I don't make those videos anymore Facebook is not our core platform
anymore we had to move on and evolve and I've seen that time and time again whether it's been a YouTube platform or whatever it is and I think we get tied to platforms we get tied to algorithms we get tied to patterns we get tied to all these things and then eventually become a prisoner of the pattern and get
a become a prisoner of the algorithm and and letting it go is hard and and what you're saying right now like recognizing that what you're doing right now may be something you have to let go of is a healthy thought man I'm living proof I talk about that in the book you know get honest to die line um why Small Talk
sucks Shameless plug but I talk about that in the book because 20 16 that's where I was at with it you know I'm I'm six years in on The Breakfast Club I'm having more success than I ever imagined I'm making more money than I ever imagined like you know I I put out my first book Black privilege it's an instant New York Times bestseller like
we we we moving like things are great things are fantastic but I'm not happy and the reason I'm not happy because I'm still dealing with this anxiety I'm still dealing with you know this depression and I'm starting to feel like you know I'm becoming a character of of of of myself to a to to a certain extent and it was like when I
I made the decision to start going to therapy number one but then you start going to therapy and you start saying to yourself like all right this has gotten me to this point what is going to get me to that next level of life I wasn't thinking about career or anything like that I said what's going to get me to that next
level of life because I want to enjoy life I want to wake up more happy than depressed you know I want to you know wake up feeling you know more secure about myself than imposta syndrome like what's going to get me to that and what got me to that was letting go of just what I felt like people wanted from me and that's another
reason the comments and stuff are so dangerous because you can put things out there and immediately get real time feedback and you know this is this is 2018 right or 2016 2017 you know or prior to that it was 2010 2016 things weren't as weren't that toxic on social media so you could kind of get like some
real world criticism and you would see these things that you know I guess people like about you so you would constantly feed them more of that or you got Publications saying oh Charlamagne is the Hip Hop high with Stern you like what is that mean so you start giving them more of the wild you know crazy
Antics but for all I know they could have meant that because of you know uh the introspective interviews that that that that get done on Breakfast Club as well but I wasn't seeing that aspect of it I was just seeing the raah the wildness and so for me just personally and professionally I just was not happy
and I had to you know let that go so yeah that was the most freeing thing for me because when I did that I experienced way more I wouldn't be here sitting with you you know having the success that I've had if I hadn't to let let that wrath go oh yeah and there was also a period where you know because of
this cancer culture era you live in You' be definitely ashamed to see some of the stuff that you you know used to do you're not you're not necessarily ashamed of it you're more so afraid of oh they're going to use this against me whatever whatever but guess what you can't care about that yeah and the reason you can't care about that because
if you really have faith in a higher power if you really trust you know God to God you you have to know that every single moment that you were in you were the person you needed to be for that moment yeah because it's just a journey and it's a process and eventually you become who you're supposed to be and
even the version you're looking at me right now I'm not the final form of myself I don't know what that's gonna be nobody does but I know that I'm on the journey and I'm GNA keep walking yeah one thing I wanted to pick your brain about was this idea you kind of alluded to it there it's this we have this rhetoric on social
media which is like we want people to be more empathetic and compassionate and kind we want people to when they share their vulnerable mental health Journey that we all got to listen and be attentive but then when sometimes we see someone with a mental health challenge make them act different we're the first
ones to point out that they're an idiot they're a loser there's something wrong with them those I'll give you an example of what I mean by this like uh Tom Holland talked about this when he came on the show he was talking about how you know he's always been seen as Spider-Man and this cool kid and all the rest of it and then when he started
talking about his mental health or actually no when he just announced that he'd given up alcohol and he was sober all the news was like he was saying this he was saying all the news was like oh Tom Holland the Happy go-lucky Kid wasn't actually he was depressed and it was like and they they made it a whole
thing and he was like no I just gave up alcohol I wasn't like an alcoholic I just didn't want to drink anymore and so all of a sudden it was like Twisted the other way where it was like oh the kid that you think is happy isn't he's depressed or the kid he's got mental health or whatever it may be and it wasn't in the kind compassionate way it
was more like a well look you didn't see this so I find it like the way we react to certain things it's almost like we're being Hypocrites in and of ourself because at one point we're saying we should care for people who have this but then we're willing to point it out how have you kind of seen that navigate when
you see the worst forms of what mental health can do to people versus someone maybe not displaying the worst mental externally but it's just talking about it does that make sense yeah I don't know how anybody can diagnose someone just by watching them through the media yeah like you know if that's the case
we're all dealing with mental health issues 100% some people just shitty people and that's the other thing like and and by the way we say two things can be true no multiple things can be true at one time like you use the example of Tom Holland why can't he be the happy gold lucky kid who said he's not but that's
the only version of him you had in your mind so now when you see another version that doesn't fit your expectation you're upset with him the happy go-lucky kid is not so happy anymore that's life you n you show me a human that's one emotion all the time it's just that when you're a public figure we get these uh it's
like these these freeze frames so Tom Holland happy you know this person crazy like it's just free like literally free from this person always mad angry it's just freeze frames of people that's not the whole totality of a person like that's actually kind of insane for us to even think about it like that like like
like like if even if you watch J shett on purpose you have a a thought a perception of Jay shett in your head you got a perception of shamain in your head based off something you may have seen that's your fault yeah if that's the one thing you saw and you came to a whole diagnosis about an individual so you
know even when you talk about people having empathy that goes into what I'm saying now we might want to every all everybody all of these humans might wake up every day saying to themselves we're going to be empathetic today and we're going to be caring and all of that stuff until something happens to somebody that you
don't like and then that all that goes out the window I tend to see that people have more empathy and sympathy and they're more caring towards people they actually like it's really a popularity contest but nobody wants to admit that yeah we're not looking we're not being consistent about any of these things and
we're not being consistent with how we deal with people there can be two people that come out in the news today with the same situation and and based off if we like the individual or not we'll give that person a whole lot of Grace and come to that person's defense but if it's somebody that we don't like or somebody social media tells us we
shouldn't like oh we gonna bury them we want them out of here we want them gone that's not consistent and that means you're lying to yourself and that means that you're not the person you say that you are because you should be giving both those individuals the same amount of Grace but you not because we're all
Hypocrites and that's fine we're we're all we're everything like everything that we pin on other people we are all those things and more we just got to make sure that we're not um projecting yeah wow that's powerful man yeah that's and I and it's true all of us are right we all have bias we all have the natural
human tendency to be empathetic to people we like and and and we're all that way and but we've got to be able to see that because if we can see that then it's something that we can like you said we don't project otherwise we live in our tiny we're were talking about this earlier like we live in this Righteous
Mind as Jonathan height calls it like this idea of like my way is righteous and I believe the way I live and the way I think is the only way and the right way and that's where it goes wrong because the truth is if everyone thinks like that now you've just go to you know eight billion righteous ways we even have to watch how we uh Express that
language right because we all do it we'll say things like man the way you're seeing that is strange like are the way I can't believe you're seeing things that way why because they're not seeing it the way you are like there's there there's probably nothing wrong with the way that individual is seeing it but the but
because you think they should see it the Way You Are seeing it you're upset with that person or you might have had the expectation I know I can call this person cuz we love we love confirmation by right so I know that I can call this person because this person is going to agree with me and then when you pick up
the phone and call that person or text that person and realize that person has a different opinion now you arguing back and forth with that person trying to get them to see things the way you see things it's like no let them see it the way they want to see it like one of the hardest things to do is to get is to
step into somebody else's shoes one of the hardest things to do is to see things from the perspective of other people I literally fight myself to do that and some people might say oh he's being a contrarian no I'm just literally I've literally taken the time to step out of myself step into that person shes see how they see it and I can understand
where they coming from what's wrong with that yeah I don't see any I don't see anything wrong with that I'm not saying that person is right or that person is wrong I'm just simply saying I can see where that person is coming from like I said multiple things can be true at once I can think a person's wrong and still
see where they're coming from I can think a person's right but still see where they're wrong at in their argument as well I think that's very hard for humans to do and I don't know why yeah yeah you I mean talking about calls you talk about in the book The call that you get from Kanye yeah yeah and that call
like I walk us through how that applies to what you're saying here where you're trying to see things through his perspective but then you're also like but I know Pete and we're friends yeah yeah his perspective was I'm black he's black we both from hip-hop culture he's from hip-hop culture Pete Davidson is this white kid from Staten Island who
does comedy he's younger than us because we are we're in our 40s he's younger than us you know his uh ex-wife is now out here dating Pete I'm gonna call Charlamagne because I need Charlamagne to start you know siding with me against Pete Davidson and he should because he's black and the culture as as Kanye says
and it's like no Pete Davidson is my friend I can care if he's black I can care if he's white I can care what race is I don't care what age he is that's somebody that I met when he was 16 years old when we was all doing you know guide code together and we developed a real friendship and a a real Bond I know his
mother like I mean me and his mom talk we check on each other I've been in his mom's house you don't sit in somebody's mom's house and eat food with eat food with them and and and call that person a friend and then turn around and do snake [ __ ] like that Pete's been to my house he's been around my kids he's been
around my wife I know him you're not going to call me and get me to turn on my friend and try to you know say because we're black and we're of the culture it's like no right is right wrong is wrong and as I told him you know and had to quote Snoop Dogg from from the 1990s you mad don't be mad at the don't
don't be mad at the uh the player hate the game because your girl chose him you know I didn't say girl I use some other language I use the language Snoop used but your girl chose him and she's a grown woman making her own decisions y'all not together no more so for me it's like you're not going to call me and and and try to Guilt Trip me you
know using using Blackness and and Hip Hop to go against somebody I consider a friend because if I considered you a friend like that Kanye nobody could make me do that to you as well you know so so so it's really that that simple with me I don't have you know I don't have flexible morals and values when it comes
to people that I love and and when it comes to people that I consider actual friends and consider actual family that's why you know betrayal hurts so much that's why when you realize that you know certain people's character gets revealed when they don't get what they want from you like that's something
that's another realization that I've been you know having a lot lately it's just like I don't know that person wasn't necessarily my friend like I thought they were yeah they were my friend based on what opportunity was being provided yes at the time yes right and so it's like it's sad but you do realize some of that stuff is
transactional that's why I said I'm not mad at being used just don't just don't misuse me and when things don't go your way don't all of a sudden start you know kicking my back in just because things don't go your way cuz I'm not going to do that to you other than you know I'm lying I wouldn't do that to you meaning
that when I'm around my people I'm definitely going to be like that person is so [ __ ] up that person is such a like I cannot believe that that individual did such and such but guess what I can believe it because I understand humans yeah so I give that I give all of those type of uh you know human Grace but you know it does it's
very disappointing when you're more solid to a person than they would be with you cuz if I embrace you and I say you my friend if I say I rock with you I'm I'm I'm we going to ride to the wheels fall off yeah yeah totally and and I find it's an interesting one because it's like it's it's almost like
also it's it's only the people the only people that attacked you are the people who you know wanted to do something with you but it didn't happen yes right what you're saying about changing morals like I find like people attack you and they're like oh I want to do a podcast with you but you didn't want to make it
happen so now I'm going to find a way to attack you it didn't work out and and it's interesting because you go oh well then it wasn't ever a collaboration and it wasn't of High character it was an opportunity now that the is lost now you have a different view of the situation and and I love that point you made about
how that's why I think opportunities going well or not going well shows how someone responds to it absolutely right like when there's a yes or a no someone who actually responds well to a no and a healthy no again obviously in a in a way that is communicated effectively someone who responds in a positive way to a
rejection or a no or a closed door that person person you should keep them around forever man Jay you hitting it on the head so crazy pause it's like do you rem like you know you ever met somebody who's so talented and you say to yourself why isn't this person here yeah like why isn't this person doing X Y and Z cuz they're so talented
yeah and then when you start to like get in business with them and you go down the path with them and you start to you know be around them you realize exactly why they haven't gotten where they need to be cuz once again my my my good friend marvette brle always says this Talent will take you where character
can't sustain you so you start to see like this person is not really a hard worker or this person really is is is a gossip like this person just likes to talk about everybody else instead of focusing on what they should be focusing on they're so worried about what everybody else is doing and trying to
shoot down what everybody else is doing and you're trying to tell them like don't wor worry about that cuz you know listen sometimes jealousy and envy it's natural right but don't focus on what's going right for everybody else because you don't know what's going on in their lives they might be looking like on on
the on on on the surface like they're winning and things are great but they might be going home crying every night like don't worry about that you focus on you but you see that they can't do that and when things don't go their way oh they become the most they become the worst people everybody's the enemy
everybody's a terrible person all of these people are out to get me nobody's looking out for me and you realize like that's exactly why you're not where you're supposed to be I've had so many doors closed on me I've heard so I've I've gotten way more NOS you know than yeses in my life I never was bitter about any of those NOS cuz I truly
believe in God yeah and so whatever God has for me will absolutely positively be for me we love saying that but we don't mean it you don't mean it CU when things don't go right for you guess what you say why God why is this thing not happening for me cuz I don't want it to at the moment do you trust me or not if
you don't trust me I'll be sitting here waiting until you do and guess what if you never do God Bless yeah literally straight up God will be sitting right there I can bless you at any moment but not until you ready you don't trust me anyway yeah so until you find that trust in me good good luck yeah yeah I respect
you for that in this I mean you always like this off uh online and offline but in the book I really feel like you get honest with us but you're about your own pain and trauma but you also get honest with us about just you know you're just right now you're just spitting facts like it's just reality it's just the way
it is and I think one of the things you talk about is this desire to like you want to also make a joke when you can like you want to make it funny you want to be able to let it you know let it kind of live in that world when have you found it that it works and when have you found that that doesn't work like like
when you're trying to make something into being funny or silly or kind of lightening the mood when have you seen that be effective and ineffective probably quite often like which one which way ineffective effective I mean I think it works both ways both times right CZ cuz cuz like say you do if you're in a room full of
people somebody's GNA laugh but then the person you might be trying to make laugh does not want to laugh in that moment so they're the one that's upset now you're really in your head like I was just trying to make this person laugh I was just trying to something good so now you really like trying to get this person to
just have you know you're trying to put better energy on this person reality is you just leave that person alone in that moment everything does not require a joke I have not learned that I may not ever I may not ever you know learn that I really may not like I just feel like I like to be around people who don't take
things too serious even when things are serious cuz I don't feel like you can you know make really good sound decisions when things are too serious because emotions are too high like sometimes you got to like let's laugh about it let's joke about it let's really really really light in the room and then let's like sit down and try to
like figure it out like if you are sitting around a whole bunch of people and everybody's angry and everybody's upset everybody's mad you just got a team that's about to make a poor decision wow somebody on the team got to just be like whoa yo everybody relax here somebody got to be the r one in the room and most of the time the rational
one in the room is the person that's not they're taking it serious but they're just not taking it serious in the way that you want to take it serious because I'm the type person I'm like what can I do yeah like there's certain situations that you hear about certain situations you you are confronted with
in the moment and you realize like there's really nothing we can do about this except for let it play out yeah so while we letting it play out let's let's laugh yeah what I'm saying let's crack some jokes you ever seen that movie um uh don't look up yeah of course yeah yeah yeah yeah exactly you see how they
handled the end of the world yeah that's how like I'm talking about the Leonard character when they were all at dinner they were still pouring drinks and they were eating they knew the inevitable was happening they knew there was nothing they could do to stop it they spent the whole beginning of the movie trying to
stop trying to stop it and they real they they accepted fate in that moment and they decided I'm going out like this cuz they knew there was nothing they could do about it and I know that that's a movie and it it it's probably easier said than done but that's what I that's what I strive for yeah like even in the
face of adversity even when it seems like you know Chicken Little the sky is falling everything's burning down around you you're like exhibit in that video he's just walking and everything's burning down and all this bad stuff is happening behind him but he's just rapping and moving rapping and moving it's just like yo that's how I feel like
I want to you know constantly live my life and that's the kind of people I want to you know be around people that keep me in that space yeah for sure last question I want to ask you Shaman before we wrap up is and it's interesting because it relates to where you just said if you want to be around those
people how do we find belonging in a world we don't agree with but stop ourselves from only being friends with people we agree with right it's like because right now we look at belonging as like if we age then I find belonging but we both know from what you're saying in the book from what you're saying right now from what you
say on your podcast from what you say on your show is like but you are very comfortable sitting down having uncomfortable awkward conversations with people who people wouldn't place you with that's right from completely different backgrounds different walks of life different schools of thought and you find that to be a very important
thing to do absolutely so how do we find belonging in a way that we're not just creating little Echo Chambers and confirmation bias schools where we just all just say what we think and we all double click on and go yeah yeah yeah that thing that thing how how do we create a culture where which you're
doing through your work through your book how do you actually do that in your life because I think we all like to be around people who agree with us I don't even know if you realize it but as you was talking you referred to you refer to that stuff as little yeah and that's exactly what it is it's small that's why
that's why it's literally called why Small Talk sucks you you macro conversations are big conversations that you can have with anybody like when you put yourself in those small boxes right when you confine yourself to just speaking with the people that you agree with when you confine yourself to just being in those Echo Chambers those
rooms are so small they just seem big because of social media but that's not how the world Works yo there's really there's really not too many people that are going to see the world EX exactly the way you see it so that can't be true all of y'all are lying to each other because y'all just love the community of
each other y'all are really a bunch of people who need you know support from each other and y'all want to have a friend group just like all humans do so y'all are all just going along to get along with each other so y'all make this imaginary role book this imaginary Playbook and y'all have this imaginary
rhetoric that everybody has to say and if you don't see things like this if you don't say things like this then you can't be in this club no more this club is this big like this that club is so so so so small so in order to just like understand that you live in a world that you are going to disagree with people
like I said earlier I can think you're right but still not necessarily agree with you I can understand where you're coming from but still think you're you're wrong like I don't understand why we just can't sit down and have more conversations with people and realize this surface that I saw of this individual or this
perception of this individual that I had in my head if you sit down and actually have a conversation with them and like listen to the whole totality of everything that they may be saying or experience you'll never be able to experience the whole totality of a person but you'll get closer to what you
thought if you just sit down and have a conversation with them you'll realize like oh what they're saying isn't necessarily that bad or oh I understand why they see things that way I disagree with them but I understand it and I respect their right to think that we spend so much time trying to change people's minds because
we're trying to make ourselves comfortable so true we talk about all of this growth that we want to have as humans and we talk about how you know and and uh we like being uncomfortable because when we're uncomfortable it it it's making us grow we know that we're evolving we really don't like growing and we really don't like being
uncomfortable we get to a certain point and we all need to admit this we get to a certain point where we're very comfortable and we don't want anything disrupting this comfort so to have new conversations and to talk to people that we may not necessarily agree with oh man that scares us to death that scares us
to death but I would say you should be more afraid of not growing you should be more afraid of thinking that I've gotten to a certain point and I'm fine and cool here the world is a beautiful place Jay humans are beautiful people like why would you not want to experience everything that God created because a
lot of these things that we've learned that's not necessarily of God it's just the things that we've picked up in this world some people have picked up things that are different from us but sometimes when you sit down and you listen to that person and that person shares their experiences or that person you know
tells you what they've been through that's gotten them to that you know point in life it can be eye opening and it's been very eye opening for me throughout my life like my best relationships in life have come through me having conversations with people that I necessar that I that I didn't have anything in common with one of the
greatest you know gifts my mother ever gave me she was she was an English teacher growing up in South Carolina like when I was going up in South Carina she told me read things that don't pertain to you great so I'm in the library I'm reading and everything from UFOs you know sasquash to Judy Bloom and
Beverly clearly to the point where I'm like this woman Judy Bloom is a phenomenal Storyteller so I love Judy Bloom the same way I love Scarface the same way I love Jay-Z the same way I love Ghost Face she's that level of Storyteller to me and now because of that love of somebody like Judy Bloom and me expressing that she's somebody I
actually call a friend she's actually somebody that I you know have gone down to Florida and you know kicked it with her and her husband George me and my wife like I've been to her bookstore and her movie theater like we was just in together in New York a couple weeks ago like that that comes from being open to
other people other experiences and just listening to each other and that's really what you know get hon us s die line why Small Talk sucks is really all about it's really about us you know getting to listen to each other that's why I end every chapter by saying let's discuss CU I want us to have conversation
I'm opening up conversation I don't want you just to talk to the people that you agree with every day Tear Down the Walls of that Echo chamber and realize how big the world is the world is infinite that's what I want people to get you know you know from this from this book yeah and just the way you reacted to
that I could tell how deep the topic is for you it took me a second but when you said oh the way I said it was little and then you were like oh it's actually small talk like it applies that showed me just how deep this is running for your veins abely you picked up on that and it's like yeah I was saying yeah SE
little groups and these little Echo Chambers and these little kind of like you know text threads or message threads whatever we have that langage is important J just gets smaller and smaller and smaller what's last question what's the hardest hardest conversation you've had to have with your kid so far so far or the most honest conversation
i' say not hardest the most honest conversation oh man that's listen I got a 15year old a eight-year-old a 5-year-old and a 2-year-old all girls so I haven't had it yet they're all hard they're all difficult okay every single one especially you know the my my 15-year-old cuz she's a sophomore in high school now and you know they're
dealing with things that we never even thought of dealing with like literally like you know and we're dealing with adults that we never thought of dealing with and these kids are smart like why you know I I remember during covid my daughter came to me and she came to me and my wife and she was like she was in
tears and she was just like y I'm overwhelmed like I'm overwhelmed like this is driving me crazy you know my grades are slipping I'm like I gave her a hug I'm like we are in a unprecedented time right now like we're literally at home I'm at home doing work you're doing pottery class on the kitchen floor do
you think I give a damn if your grades slip at A Moment Like This like I don't care about any of that but when made me proud in that moment was she had the language because you know she she's she's been to therapy not cuz anything's necessarily wrong I'm just I'm just realizing that we're in an unprecedented
time like they these kids deal with things that we don't have to deal with so I want them I want her to have the tools and the language early because I'm just the person still going through it myself her mom is the person still going through it herself so I want her to sit down and you know talk to experts so but
just the fact she had the language So when you say difficult conversations honestly the difficult conversations come from me having to check my ego as a parent because I'm 45 and I believe this little 15year old doesn't know anything yet yeah she knows a whole lot and she can she's teaching me you know a whole
lot right there's some things that change there's some things that stay the same in this world but there's a whole lot that has changed and I think that you know we um we we sometimes are too stubborn to to to realize that and so yeah I guess to answer your question every day is a difficult conversation I got four I got four girls every day is a
difficult conversation like I'm dealing with a different set of emotions every single day the biggest thing for me is to stay centered insane and you know not let my emotions get the best of me like that's one of the biggest conversations me and my wife constantly have like we get together in our little prayer
circles and huddle together like we are doing the best we can I I literally it's so funny I told her this yesterday I was like yo you know we've been together 26 years and we've experienced so many different levels of life together and so what I said to her I was like the other we've we've re we also realized 26 years
go by fast so regardless of how stressed out we get because of these children let's enjoy the moment like literally let's just enjoy the moment we are doing the best we can there is no manual that comes with this you don't want to take everything you learn from your parents because you realize they didn't have all
of the proper tools and they didn't necessarily you know instill the right things in us at least from a man's perspective my mom I felt was phenomenal but my at least from a man's perspective you know I didn't have that so we're just all doing the best we can so let's just give each other some Grace man and
like and and enjoy this ride called called adulthood absolutely everyone the book is called get honest or D line you can get it right now why Small Talk sucks Shalom the god this is the book that I want you to get discuss it with your friends dissect it allow it to infuse into reality I've been really really happy that this book's out
because I spent last Christmas in London which is what I usually do and I started to find that even friends I've had for a couple of decades I found that we were becoming less and less honest with each other and I was feeling really disconnected when I was back at Christmas and I was trying to figure out
what it was I was like wait a minute is it cuz I left eight years ago and I've been living in the states is it because of this is it this and I realized it was honesty and so I started to create conversations in my friends group that were uncomfortable and when I saw that you'd written this book I was so moved by it
because I was like that was the exact issue that I felt I was moving further away from the people I was closest to because we were all now just playing a role and everyone was playing their part but there was no longer a get honest conversation it was all small talk and so I really hope that this conversation inspires people to get closer to the
people you already think you're close to that's right and understand the people that you're far away from that's right and so the book is called get honest or d Ling why Small Talk sucks that's right you can grab it right now we'll put it in the comments in the link in the caption sham man thank you so much again
man as always I appreciate these conversations I appreciate any man we always have conversations on air off air and I mean just what you built with this platform on purpose it is so necessary man like you know everybody's having these conversations about mindfulness and you know wellness and we're all just
trying to be the best versions of ourselves something like this didn't exist five years ago just like those conversations that people are having now weren't necessarily as loud as they were you know as as loud five years ago as they are now and your platform on purpose is a big big big huge part that so thank you for your service brother
thank you I appreciate you absolutely thank you if this is the year that you're trying to get creative you're trying to build more I need you to listen to this episode with Rick Rubin on how to break into your most creative self how to use unconventional methods that lead to success and the secret to
genuinely loving what you do if you're trying to find your passion and your lane Rick rubin's episode is the one for you just because I like it that doesn't give it any value like as an artist if you like it that's all of the value that's the success comes when you say I like this enough for other people to see it