i honestly think i maybe have a different view of failure than other people do um i think that it's one of the things people are most terrified of in the world especially in my community so many women in my community petrified of failing and i always think like if you can understand that 99 of the time you're not afraid of failing you're afraid of other people seeing you fail [Music] hey everyone welcome back to on purpose
the number one health podcast in the world thanks to each and every single one of you that come back every week to listen learn and grow now this is a guest a friend that i've been talking to dming messaging with for a bunch of years now and i've been waiting for this moment to actually sit with her in person i'm a huge fan i've admired her work for a long long time wanted to be in the same room we've
actually never crossed paths uh in person but we're finally here in the studio i'm speaking about none other than three times new york times best-selling author and the founder of the hollis company rachel hollis rachel thank you for doing this oh my gosh i'm so tickled i'm tickled just to get to hang out with you and the fact that there are cameras is also great i know i've i've genuinely been looking forward
to this and you were kind enough to have me on your podcast last year yeah yeah you had to do it digitally yeah i know but it was still wonderful i i felt like we really got along and connected and yeah even now you've just walked in and i'm already like i feel like i already know you like genuinely 100 and i anticipated that so yeah no this is wild yes same it's honestly wild too just
because with everything that's happened in the last year year and a half maybe at this point we haven't i just haven't had the chance to connect with um colleagues or with people who sort of have the same mindset or kind of striving for the same thing so it's always a treat to get to connect in real life yeah definitely i'm excited to talk to you offline as well right this and
more and as much as we can but we literally just discovered something which has to be where we started so rachel literally just said to me jay i need to tell you what i was doing yesterday yeah and i was just like i did the same thing so why don't you so there um dr daniel ayman is someone i've admired his work forever i've read his books and i always wanted he's a doctor of the brain yeah he's a clinical
neuroscientist thank you i knew you knew the words he's been a guest on the show twice okay so if anyone yeah love his work um but i had always wanted to have it done and my friend trent do you know okay so trent's a really dear friend and we were texting he got scanned recently because i saw him when he was here right yeah so he was here and he was like oh i'm in california i'm having some scans
done and i was like by who because i feel like if you're sort of in this industry there's one person you go to and so he connected me and i nerded out when i got to talk to uh dr amon for the first time just because in my life what i want most is to understand myself emotionally physically why do i do the things that i do and how can i become a better version of me and i just feel like the more information i have for
that the better also a ton of mental illness in my family my older brother was schizophrenic and took his own life and um there's just depression and anxiety and so many things that run in this and um i just want to understand if there are things that i can be doing to better live each day and so i felt like my favorite book by dr amon is um i think it's the end of mental illness yeah which i just found
fascinating um essentially the idea that the brain is the part of the body that like if you broke your arm they would take an x-ray of your arm before they did anything to try and make it better but if you go to a doctor and you're struggling with mental illness or emotional issues they don't look at your brain they just start prescribing things and i'm a huge proponent of taking the
medicine that you need and getting the help that you need but i just i know in my brother's case there was a lot of medicating and and it was a different time and my parents really didn't have the information they needed to help him um but i just think he would have been better served by by more info so that was why so i went yesterday and got brain scans and found out that you and your wife you were
there two hours before us so crazy that's actually crazy yeah we went so our reason was i mean that's a beautiful reason to go and you know i'm sure there's so many people listening and watching right now going oh my gosh like i need to know more about right we went because i've realized that we like like what you were saying we just know very little right like about us yeah and i'm just always like i want to learn
i want to be curious and i really struggle with not knowing that i could be acting in a certain way or behaving in a certain way because of something that i have no clue about right but actually i could be doing something about and i think the other thing that changed for me for a while was we were always told to like live a long life and that was like a big thing when you were growing up like
i don't know at least in my culture it was very much like you get blessed to like live a long life right and i was thinking but actually i want to live a healthy life yeah the length is going to be up to god and whatever that needs to be but the health is up to me yes of how conscious i am about how i live yes and so i think for me going to get my brain scanner and i went with my wife yesterday
we were going there for that reason yeah you know what are we doing wrong what are we doing that's harmful what are we doing that's good for us yeah and but i love your reason i mean that's such a i think for so many people who have had people in their life who've struggled with depression or mental illness and not known where to start yeah and we don't discover anything yet so we don't have
anything to share sorry yeah we don't know i know we just set you all up right rachel i have nothing to say i don't know well but i do think you know one of my big fears is being so intentional about trying to live in a healthy way but there are times in my life where i've found let's say i'm taking a supplement that i think is really good for me and then i'll find like something i'll start to feel off or go wrong and
then i'll go have blood work done and find like oh well you know you're anemic and um i am i'm anemic and i have low blood pressure so like you actually shouldn't be taking that supplement because it's going to make this thing worse so i hate the idea that without information we actually do things that are harmful that we think are helpful because i really just feel like that it's so discouraging when
you're making choices that you think like maybe they're choices that are even hard for you to make or you're eating in a certain way and you're trying to like take care of yourself and then you find out like oh it was yeah it was actually the opposite it was so discouraging so i just i am enjoying an example of something like that you've done because i think that's yes i can relate and i'm
trying to think about our audience like yeah what's something that you thought so i grew up what's popping into my head is i grew up in a family my family's southern on both sides oklahoma and arkansas and um really not conscious of health and any not mental not emotional not nutritional nothing so i grew up in a family that you know deep fried everything covered in gravy covered in cheese right it was delicious
um and sort of the idea in my family growing up was if you made it at home it was healthy um it was if you ate out that was unhealthy and so um just just no awareness around nutrition and i remember very specifically after i had my first son he's uh 14 and a half so it's been a while but um i had gained a lot of weight in my pregnancy because i just had no idea how to take care of myself or what to eat or um and
i just want to say for the record because this is very important to me um i hate how often weight is used to control women and make them feel shame and so this is not a conversation about weight i don't care what you weigh live your life you're beautiful but for me i'm five two and i was 52 pounds heavier than i am today and at five two that's a ton on my frame and physically very uncomfortable pain like
in pain just all the things and i remember after i had jackson it was the first time in my life that i thought i need to lose weight and i had no concept of even how to and no idea and absolutely did things in retrospect that were horrible for my body like fad diets or um protein powders or things and i mean like slim fast i don't mean like what we have today that's good for us
and um i remember about going through like a month where i was like on a diet and i didn't weigh myself because i was just trying to make you know great strides and whatever and finally getting to the end of the month and weighing myself and i think i had gained a pound and i was devastated like first of all i probably my son was probably four months old at the time i'm exhausted i don't know what i'm doing and now i've feel
like i've been restricting myself and feel like i've been doing things that are good for me and actually it was opposite because i really didn't understand food at all so i was eating things i thought were healthy and they weren't and i was it just it was a whole mess and it's been years of learning a different way but when you're already tired you're a mama and you like feel overwhelmed and now
you just did then you're like screw it like why am i even trying i may as well go to taco bell because at least that burrito is gonna make me happy instead of sort of making these choices so i just i i grew up without um education from my family about what that looked like and my personal development journey really was a journey of me trying to arm myself with information that i never had and i found
that information in books and podcasts and youtube videos and um it changed my life yeah no that's that's such a great example by the way like i love that story and journey because it's so relatable for so many people right no one grew up with parents who knew everything about it right every vets when i married my wife i was just like how do you know all this yes that's her world yeah and i didn't grow up in that
way either i grew up eating four chocolate products a day oh my gosh so i grew up i used to eat a chocolate biscuit a chocolate bar yeah a chocolate yogurt and a chocolate ice cream every single day and it was amazing i'm like addicted to chocolate for life yeah like it's it's such a strong thing yeah and it's funny i actually told dr danny lehmann this i said to him when he was on the podcast i said oh you know
now i've become really good at controlling my sugar intake and i do a cheat day once a week and he said yeah it should be called a cheat day i was like what he goes you're cheating your brain and he just he like flipped it on me like he did that matrix i was like he was just like yeah you're cheating yourself because he was just like it's not a good thing right because you think
that your sugar a week is a treat because it's actually cheating your brain and i was like oh man i still do my once a week honestly we were talking about it we're like he's go when we have this consultation he's gonna like tell us like you never have coffee again never because i did yesterday honestly i was telling you i couldn't have coffee beforehand and i had flown out from austin and so i could not believe
how much brain fog i had yesterday without caffeine like i i he texted me yesterday and said how'd everything go and i was like i am addicted to coffee i i am i because i haven't tried to live without caffeine um since i was pregnant the last time and i cannot believe how much i need that for focus and in fact as much as i am high producing like you know my i'm always doing i am the i'm an achiever i
like do all the things the lowest scoring thing on you know that computer test was focus lowest scoring for me and i had suspected that because i can accomplish a lot but i get distracted easily and so i'm dying to know like why or what am i what do i need to do and i'm afraid he's going to be like never have coffee again i think that's all of us though i really do believe that the evolution and i love
social media right like without social media i wouldn't even have this community we have and be able to have this podcast so i'm not someone who likes to bash social media or i think it you know it has its pros and cons as anything but i find that as social media apps evolve i find that they do worse for my focus and distraction consistently so i saw the difference between
the difference between instagram and tick tock for my brain right and i'm just being aware like i haven't even had that test right right but i saw that the more time i spent on tick tock the more i would need distraction the more i would feed distraction the more i would choose distraction and i've realized that for me at least i'd love to hear yeah i'm trying to take this is i'd love to hear what yours is for me
i've found that when i don't look at my phone first thing in the morning i'm able to control that urge and when i go on breaks i was literally in miami for two weeks recently and the work that i was doing meant from 9am to 5pm we couldn't be on our phones i was working with the client and so i wasn't on my phone and not being on my phone from 9am to 5pm which is very abnormal for me in my life and i'm
showing yours too yeah it was a phenomenal feeling and so for me i've i've been able to figure that out by realizing i feel so much more clarity and focused when i don't pick up my phone in the morning when i do do like a social media fast right regularly throughout the year what have you been doing apart from the coffee like what have you been doing to help improve and i guess why do you want
to improve your focus is a good question too because some people are sitting going well i'm i'm happy just doing this but well oh my gosh so there's so many yeah so many things sorry so i'll just start here i literally just went i love it um so i think three weeks ago i not only did i remove tick tock from my phone but i closed my account wow i literally deleted it and um it was a very conscious choice
because of how like i would go on fast where i'm like i'm not going to open tiktok for a month or whatever but there's i mean obviously it's designed in such a smart way i just will lose an hour and a half yes and i would sort of tell myself um i would only do that like let's say it's night and the kids are in bed i have nothing to do and i'm like okay i'm just gonna watch for five minutes and
then i lose an hour and a half and i'm i know there's a lot of people who would say like well who cares i care because the greatest value in my life is growth and in order for me to grow i have to constantly be feeding my mind i sound so cheesy right now i feel like if i was watching i'd be like okay whatever but for me that's books and i never run out of non-fiction books on my nightstand on you know tables in
my and so i have all these stacks i really want to read and that hour and a half that was my reading time because when i'm done i'm tired and now i need to go to bed so for me it was a very conscious decision of um you you have to know what it is you want and this is fun and this is beautiful and it's a cool way to connect with people but i just knew this is not serving me well and i had tried
not having it there but i i don't know if you ever feel like this like if you have an account on social and you're not posting on it there's almost this like weird guilt that happens and so you feel like you have to and i just thought nope i'm just removing i'm removing this distraction from my life so why focus matters to me is there's so many things that i want to do meaning there are 10 books inside my brain that
i want to write and screenplays and things i want to try and stuff i haven't done before and the only way i'm going to pull that off with a company to run and for children is the ability to focus and get into flow state and get that work done and be highly productive and then move on to the next thing so for me i am constantly trying to figure out how i can do those pieces better and i
really feel like this is part of wanting to have a brain scan too i feel like my focus has gotten so much worse in the last few years and i don't know if that's the result of social or the phone or what it is but i just know that if i can get back into the focus that i had maybe four years ago whatever was going on i was so much more productive and i really want that back i can actually
relate to that so much like everything you're saying i'm just like i feel the same way and that's been what's making me yeah so conscious of it especially in the last 12 months right i think we've all consumed more content in the last 12 months than ever before and for me as well like so i this is this is real and i know it sounds like crazy but it's i hadn't watched television like a tv show
in the last 10 years before me either before kovalev before covered and then now i have and i sort of hate it yeah i've i literally noticed myself i i've i didn't watch tv i watched movies so i'm a big movie fan but i hadn't watched a tv show right or watched something consistently or binged or any of that so i do watch movies just to clarify uh because i talk about movies a lot but but tv shows i hadn't and i feel so
different mentally yep now that my habit became every night me and riley would finish our day and we'd turn on a show which we didn't do for such a long time we've been married for five years so for five years of our relationship we've haven't done that at the end yeah we've been doing that nearly every day for the past 12 months and i feel different right like i feel slower i feel
more lethargic i feel less alert i don't feel my best self well it's interesting i was talking to i was talking to my boyfriend about this which i'm fine to say that i have a boyfriend just not going into detail so i was talking to my boyfriend about this the other day about how important boredom is for imagination so when we were all growing up you were just bored sometimes and that was life yes right and in the boredom
you know when you'd have those times when you're a little kid and you'd be bored and you sort of like wander around the house and like try and figure out something to do and then you'd end up doing something clever interesting or like you'd make up a game or what kids don't have that anymore there's a million things that can distract them from being bored and he said something really interesting
he's like no kids are still bored they're just bored and distracted which is way more dangerous because they're they're still bored scrolling on their phone but now they're not even conscious of the boredom yes and what is that doing to the next generation of not being able to be creative thinkers or sort of go outside the box and i have this conversation with my kids a lot because they have i mean they have like our old
phones my ex and i like it'll be like oh here's an iphone 4 that you can like try and make work um but they definitely have phones and that's very much a part of their life and they get so frustrated with me because i'm like no you need you need to be yeah i i can't figure out what you're going to do with this time this is your time to you can read a book figure it out and as much as they're
frustrated by that process me removing tech and making them go do something that's also when my youngest will always gravitate to painting right the oldest will always go and start playing with legos or building something that he's like too cool to do because he's 14. but they'll always gravitate to these things that they wouldn't do otherwise but i wonder how much we need that as adults as well like how often are you bored
how often are you just like sitting sort of letting your mind wander um i feel like we're missing that because we just it's such a we're always here like grabbing for where's the phone yeah we're bored and stimulated which is weird right it's like how can you be stimulated but be bored but we are right there's actually a great book by the school of life called how to be bored it's a really small book well
interesting yeah i came out a couple of years ago and i spoke about with yuval noah harari the uh the author of homodeus and xavier yeah yeah we spoke about boredom on the podcast and and we were gonna start the boredom movement we were like you should have x amount of time every day where you allow yourself to be born yes and you allow yourself to not do anything and maybe like you said
with your children we'd actually do something innately creative and magical and beautiful maybe you won't maybe you'll just be bored just be bored but yeah but it's healthy for the mind and the brain i wonder what dr daniel was going to tell us but i i wanted to ask you that this is something i've actually wanted to ask you for such a long time because and you mentioned it you mentioned you love
reading books yeah stacks of books yeah and you've had three phenomenal successes as best sellers yeah but that's not where your author career began no and i remember reading articles about you and just looking at like and i and i forgot the exact number so forgive me but how many books did you write before so girl wash your face girl wash your face was my six six that's what i was gonna say six books before i
was gonna say six or seven but i don't wanna get right so go wash your face girl stop apologizing didn't see that coming these three books multi millions of copies sold extremely successful like the guidebook for literally every person i've seen online but then there's five books before these three and like four people right you have a number yeah do you have a number of yeah just as a rough i'm not asking for a
sales figure i mean more just like how many people would care i mean that i i it's hard with so the very first book i wrote oh they've all changed now yeah right yeah that's hard i'm like oh they sold hundreds of thousands now oh yes yes but back then you know here's how i would think of it um so uh when you're an author just saying this for peeps who are at home who might not know um you
get an advance so a publisher gives you an advance um to write a book and then if you sell out that advance and you start making royalties i know you know this no no it's useful it's very easy yeah so um just as a point of reference my advance for my first book which was party girl was one thousand dollars and i was like i am rich i have made it like i'm killing it in life um so that was
just this tiny fiction book that i wanted to write about and i still love so much and fiction is still such a big place in my heart actually just finished my first screenplay that's amazing i didn't know that yeah and i've always wanted to do it and i've had the idea forever but that's again this sort of like creativity and ability to focus is like how do i shift my brain from thing to thing
um so yeah so i started in fiction and i think that'll always be a part of i love that of of like love for me and it doesn't even have to be successful here's the interesting thing maybe we talked about this when we did the podcast um being an author was never ever something i planned to be known for yes i just love books and it was my hobby and so i would write a book and in fact party girl i self-published no publisher
wanted that book and i self-published and then it started to sell and it started to do well and then a publisher came and said hey we want to buy this and turn it into a series and we'll give you a thousand dollars wow hot damn wow um so it really was just supposed to be this little thing i did on the side and i honestly i don't know how this will sound but like i miss the obscurity i miss writing
and not having anyone care what i wrote about because there is a freedom as a creative to do whatever you want to do like do you remember when you first maybe started creating content and you could freaking do anything and now everything's under a microscope and how did it perform compared to that and what and so i feel like you lose some of that artistic you know joy in the process yeah i love that that's been
actually it's really interesting every time and i've been having this conversation a lot more recently like people have been asking me like what's the big thing you're doing this year right and that's a question i'm sure you guys right what's the next book yeah i'm just like well really if i'm completely honest the big thing i'm doing this year is self-discovery like rediscovery like
i'm so i'm in such a an a strange land for myself this year and i'm loving it yeah because it's the first time where i'm just like i just want to figure out what i care about right like i really want to just explore and be you know refined what i want to dedicate my life to for three to five years or whatever it is like and i'm just in that space and i can see how uncomfortable it is as
an answer to some people are like well you can be doing this i'm like well we're doing a lot of stuff that i love like i love the podcast i'm sitting down with amazing people like i am writing my second book and i'm loving the process but there's also a part of me that's allowing myself to just unfold and unravel again and a lot of it to me is and i said this to my friends the other day we had a group called with all
my friends in london who i miss and i was saying like i literally feel like i'm back at the beginning of my journey again so many i do too yeah that's wild yeah i do too and it's really like liberating and refreshing and i i love that you said that and i'm so happy it's it's nice to know that you know you're not alone even even when you are well i feel like i'm experiencing that too or did experience that maybe
everybody did coming through 2020 but in 2020 i got divorced and i had been with him for 18 years so he's literally the first date i went on i nev i never been on like my boyfriend right now is the second man i've ever been on a date with wow i didn't know that yeah wow that's amazing pretty wild um but what i'm seeing in real time and it is like how often we think this is gonna sound i don't know how
often we think like this is what life is and then you go through something hopefully we just went through this globally but you go through something that shakes that and you realize like oh wait i can redefine my life at any moment i can change the way that i see things or do things even um in my relationship um you know what he does for a living and it's not a normal job and it involves a lot of travel
like a lot and even that is very interesting for me to wrap my brain around like at first i was sort of like well how is this gonna work because i only know one way of being in a relationship with someone and now i'm i'm like oh or you can reframe the way you see this like how lucky are you first of all he's amazing he's super hot but also he is but also like what a cool job and what sort of
adventures are we gonna get to have because of the travel and all of those things and i'm reframing how that looks even um sort of reframing we all did this with work and i know you've worked from home but for most people that was a new experience last year and now i feel like suddenly business owners besides me are like wait do i need an office i don't think i need an office i mean i need a studio but i
don't need everything i thought i needed to do life in a certain way so i'm really loving the redefinition of how i'm going to show up in the world and like you said discovering what that means i also think um coming out of 2019 2019 was the most insane constantly on the road speaking all the time i don't know if you've had seasons like that um and a you know second book in a row comes
out and press tours and just it's madness it was untenable it was not something i could have kept doing and it was also the most financially successful year of my life and what i love is the reminder i want to acknowledge that in 2020 so many awful hard things happen for so many people lost jobs lost businesses less family members like there were so many pieces of that that were brutal
but as a human having gone through a lot of really hard stuff in my childhood i really do live my life trying to figure out how an experience can be for me like how can this experience um what can i learn from even the hardest seasons and so i'm looking at 2020 and i'm grateful for the knowledge or the reminder that it can all be taken away it can all be taken away the business that you thought couldn't be touched the
speaking career that you thought was amazing your health your relationship like all of these foundations i had in my life were eviscerated in 2020 and i will because i know this about myself i will hold that knowledge for the rest of my life that like i'm going to be so grateful that i get to sit in this room with you because there were 18 months that i didn't get to sit in a room and
like talk to friends um i i'm a little worried i don't know if you how you feel about this but i feel like human nature is that everyone wants to forget what we just went through i mean i you know if you go to an airport and if you've been to an airport in the last month it's wild they are packed people are like i'm going on vacation i'm living my life and i get it but at the same time there were
beautiful pieces we did slow down we were more present we spent time with our family we called our grandma we did these things and i'm i just don't want to forget the the redefining and the shifting and all of these things that we learned last year that's my big thing going forward is like just hold this and so i was actually gonna follow up with that but i think you answered it that's that's how you process the idea
that the lesson you said you learned was that everything can be lost at any moment yeah which can feel like a very overwhelming painful thought for a lot of people and and it is you know in a valid way but you're saying that the way you hold that thought is saying let's not forget yeah what we did this is precious yeah this is precious this is like let's hold this let's be conscious of this um
it was actually a big part of what i wrote about in the last book because unfortunately i've experienced a lot of loss like i've lost a lot of people i love in my life um and when you go through when you lose someone in death i think you're always reminded of how short life is and that it can be taken in so fast and you don't expect it and so i think you're more when you come out the other side of grief like that you're
more aware to like to say i love you every time to give people hugs to look them in the eye to be conscious of those moments and that's what i'm hoping coming through last year that i just don't miss like i remember the first time i i have a very close group of best girlfriends and they are my sisters my squad my like everything and i went through however many months we all did where we were on lockdown and
i couldn't see them and i will never forget we all met up in palm springs so i had seen them last at the beginning of march and it was july and i know there are people who went longer than that and so i'm conscious of how blessed i am but i remember coming out of the palm springs airport and my three best girlfriends are waiting there and just running and like holding them and sobbing because we just
hadn't been together and i just don't want to miss that i just don't want to lose those pieces i even thought this you know i'm in this newer relationship it's like five months and um i was telling him today i was like i want us we're both big journalers i'm a big journalist we're so cool but we both journal every day it's a big part of our morning routine and um i was like i want us both to journal
what it feels like at five months because it already feels different than it did at two months and i don't want to lose this because i know what it feels like to be in a relationship for 18 years and lose pieces because of kids and life and hardships and pain and all this stuff that you lose like i'm gonna sound so cheesy right now and that's okay but um when we first started i love how you
keep saying that you preface your preference i'm like embarrassed so um when uh when we first started dating well first of all i'll just tell you this because it's great we we're not dating we were friends you know he lives in austin and it was just supposed to be this friend that like we got coffee and we would go walk around the lake that was like we were just friends and both of us were not we're just wanting nothing
and then we would go have we would get coffee we would walk around the lake and then i would get back to my car and it had been like four and a half hours and i was like that's weird what a good friend this is and then i just started to feel like oh my god i think i have a crush like i'm eight like it was so lame whatever but when we first started dating i remember i was embarrassing but i would literally
like i would look at his eyes and i would just like like have a panic attack and i was just like he's so beautiful and his eyes are so beautiful and i'm just like lost in his eyes that he'll be like are you okay and i'm like what i couldn't even hear what he said and yesterday i was like oh my god when is the last time that i looked at his eyes and freaked out about how beautiful
they are and i know that sounds whatever but i just thought it's just like being conscious of these things being conscious of my daughter's four and she's so sassy and she like puts her hand on her hip and she's like got an opinion and she's adorable and honestly i'm so screwed when she's a teenager but i just want to be conscious of this stuff because life is speeding back up
so fast and i don't want to miss it um there's this have you ever read the artist's way yeah cameron so she has this quote which i'm going to butcher right now but like basically that the quality of your life is the quality of your ability to pay attention to pay attention to the details and to see all the little things that are happening around you so that's my that's my goal that's a great lesson that was a
beautiful affirmation for all of us i think the way you were sharing that like i think we were all thinking about like oh what if what have i what am i going to miss or what am i going to forget right or like what is it the law of familiarity yeah that it happens so often that you just take it for granted um we have a mutual friend who has a really and i'm not going to say his name but i'll tell you later but like he's a
really insane house here in the hollywood hill hills just absolutely insane and i remember going over there for the first time and he and his wife have worked so hard and this is like such a celebration of how hard they worked and it's the most insane view i've ever seen in l.a like ridiculous and i remember walking in the first time and being like what the hell like what on earth and he's like
exactly you know what i'm talking about right it took me so i'm like walking through with them they're like yeah and it's whatever and he's like and just i feel like what i'm most nervous about is the day that i walk into this living room and that view doesn't take my breath and the only way to counteract that is to be conscious of not wanting to have that happen yeah you know i i think this with them
like interacting with fans or readers or listeners of your podcast if you've ever had those moments where maybe you're tired or you're on press tour or just something's happening where you're like i you're depleted and you maybe are like oh i've had those moments where i'm like oh i have to go do a book signing right now right and i make myself remember i make myself remember the first 25 book signings where two people came
and i was related to one of them right like i make myself remember what it feels like to sit at that table and have nobody come up and ask you or nobody cares about your book nobody wants to read and like you've worked so hard because if i can put myself back into those places i will always be conscious of appreciating these yeah i love that and and it's so and it is like you know this this is we know
this but we still don't get it right tomorrow is going to be the three-year mark of me moving to la oh really yeah so did you move from london from new york i was in new york for two years so i went from london to new york for two years and then moved to la three years ago so i've been in the states for five years and i hope every day and i do this right now but again what you're saying i drive
through la street and people think it was always interesting people always just like oh why do you live in l.a it's superficial or materialistic whatever and i'm like i live here because i get to see blue skies every morning i didn't get that in london i know what that feels like it barely rains i can i can wear anything i want every day i don't have to think about carrying an umbrella
right and i was like i look at the palm trees every day in like the mirror through my car yes and i'm just like i live in a place that i would have dreamed to go on vacation and so there's such a like appreciation for nature and the heights today i went on a hike around we have a hike close to where we live yeah and it was just like that to me is how i want to feel and i hope i feel like that forever but you're
right the only way you feel like that forever is by not forgetting yes and so i think everyone right now i want you to sit down i want you to take a moment to do what rachel just said and take a moment to just ask yourself what am i scared of forgetting oh good one you know like what am i scared of forgetting yeah from this last 12 months it's been painful for all of us i've lost people rachel's says she's lost
people we've had family friends and mentors and people that we've lost what are you scared of forgetting that was a gift at this time i think that's such a beautiful reflection for people to do yeah and i'm so glad you shared that with us because we do need to hear it again and again yeah i mean i think another this is sort of going back to an earlier thing you said about not looking at your phone in
the morning um probably the greatest practice in my life and i've done it for a decade uh is journaling every single morning and a lot of times those are where i remember it's that very conscious moment of i mean this is a julia cameron thing too but um doing the morning pages so having to fill a certain amount of pages every single morning and sometimes you have great things to say and sometimes you're
just like it's cold i'm tired you know you can't think but those are when i have those detailed moments and for the longest time i never reread the journals and i've started doing that every time i get to the end of a journal i'll start at the beginning and read all the pages how many do you have a lot wow that's cool i have a lot yeah and it's such a beautiful collection for me of um of just life and what was happening and
how i was feeling and i heard someone say recently she was like you'll never get to be with this version of yourself again and i just thought that was so beautiful i heard it at a time when you know when i started dating this person um and i didn't have a lot of experience and i felt so nervous and you know i can get on stage and speak to 18 000 people zero problem like hanging
out with oprah we're all good but going on a date i felt like i was gonna die like i felt like i was going to have a heart attack i didn't know how to act i was so awkward i didn't feel like myself i just it was it was a joke um and i was really hard on myself internally about that like how can you be this person who's achieved all these things and you can't sit and have dinner with this man without acting like an
idiot and i was so frustrated and i heard that quote and i just loved it like oh you're never gonna be with this like nervous giddy version of yourself again you're never like if if it doesn't work out with this person and you date someone else that time surely you won't be as nervous as you were here so could you just allow yourself to be graceful and appreciate this version of you who she
is today um and that really helped me to sort of sit in the process but if you're already journaling about what you don't want to forget i i can't there's no greater practice i have in my life is is just writing down the thoughts i love that yeah and for anyone who who doesn't see themselves as a writer try yeah because it will come out and if you really can't then what i do is voice note yeah so i
voice recorded myself all the time i find it easier to talk find it easier to listen to myself i can always listen to myself on 1.5 yeah or two if i'm listening back and i find like talking out loud to myself helps me remember things in a really you know visceral way that's awesome and so yeah i think journaling is a huge practice writing or audio whichever one works for whoever's listening but you
know you were talking about you've been doing my relationships and you know people have gone through so many big relationship transitions during covert you you went to a huge one i feel like transitions are hard but that's what life is made of yes right it's like life is made of transition yeah and transitions are usually where we feel we need the most help it's where we're at our weakest where we struggle like
whether you're moving house getting married getting divorced breaking up meeting someone new all of these are transitions yeah and these are the most life-defining moments yes how how have you learned to transition better as life has progressed because we never perfected we never get it right yes how have have you have you got better at transitioning in life do you feel you have what has helped you i think i've
gotten so much better because i don't rush it that is the biggest lesson i have learned in 38 years is had i gone through a divorce 10 years ago i would have pushed myself to like okay get over it figure it out it's been four weeks and i really was so proud of myself in the divorce that i let myself sit in the pain and it was so painful and it was so hard and i let myself feel every emotion i
let myself feel super sad i let myself feel very angry at him and very angry at myself and i just let it all sort of flow through me and kind of um almost like watching yourself experience those emotions instead of like drowning inside them and that was i think so much more healing and i think is a huge reason that i can't speak for him and and how he processed but i know for me that's a huge reason
for why i think our relationship is so healthy and good and why we were able to transition our kids so well through the process um so for me i think in transition just allowing yourself to like be in it is a big one and i also when you were talking about transition i was also thinking it's not just the transitions that sort of make us it's also points of tension it's areas of tension which essentially
if you are going through a change that's going to feel tense but those areas of tension in our life are either going to make us someone better or we're going to get worse there is no there's no sort of stasis there's no i think a lot of people think they can hang out in a comfort zone but you're either being pushed and becoming better or you're being pushed and becoming worse and if we can um
i think there's a lot like if we can sort of not embrace tension well actually yeah like my tattoo says embrace the suck because i really do believe that the best version of me comes on the other side of the hardest seasons and that feels like transition or change or or whatever it looks like is just allowing myself to be like we're gonna embrace this we're gonna embrace all the parts of this and hopefully come out the
other side as a better version of me um i do really believe that um i i assume that you are like a manifesto goal setting like you have an idea of like who you want to be in your life right um and not even necessarily what you want to achieve but just like the kind of man that you want to be and i think that when we call our shot like that when we start to dream and envision and and have a plan for where
we want to go i do think the universe shows up to aid us in that process but it isn't necessarily a an easy journey or a comfortable one i think that most of the time people call the shot and then everything goes to hell in a hand basket everything gets hard everything feels impossible they're like they use that as an excuse or they see that as an example of oh well that goal
wasn't for me or that dream wasn't meant to be mine when the reality i think is that the universe was like oh no no no you said you wanted that thing and so we've put things in your path to make you strong enough to climb that mountain like you had to go through these things to have that but you just you gave up here you quit because you thought that the hardship meant that it wasn't
supposed to be yours when really i think that the hardship was meant to grow you into who you meant to become absolutely is that is that what kept you going when you were writing five books right because that's just that to me is the perfect example of you living what you just said right like that to me is such a great you know if it's like when i look at you and everything you've achieved and all the
amazing work you do to me when i when i i remember reading that story years ago and just going wow like six books like that is not a joke like there's nothing about that that is easy you know we talk about like you know it's like oh and i think a lot of people can relate to this today because we live in the world of like i put out three videos and none of them went viral so like what i do like you know we live in this world
like oh but i've been posting every day for a month and nothing's happened or and i feel people have this how did you write five books and keep going was it just that you loved it and you were passionate were you getting better like what was what kept you going to get to that point i think all those things right i did love it i was very passionate about doing it and i felt like i was getting better
and i honestly think i maybe have a different view of failure than other people do um i think that it's one of the things people are most terrified of in the world especially in my community so many women in my community petrified of failing and i always think like if you can understand that 99 of the time you're not afraid of failing you're afraid of other people seeing you fail
and that's about your ego that's not about your work and so for me i have a a really different definition of what it is to fail and i get it wrong i freaking get it wrong all the time like i i'm oh gosh back in april said something on social media that was so hurtful to so many people and i was devastated i'm still devastated i could like cry forever you and i texted about this the last couple months
but i also think that like i have to get it wrong and i hope i freaking hope that people see me get it wrong and then keep trying to learn and do better like i think as honestly as a white woman in america i have to acknowledge when i mess up when my privilege is showing understand that i didn't understand and do the work to figure it out but i feel like there is this this sort of way of being right now that it's like if
you get it wrong like go just quit just stop just just if your book flopped then don't write another one if you put out five pieces of content nobody cared then that should be it if you say something that you shouldn't have said like but my god how are we going to improve how will we evolve as human beings if we're not willing to get it wrong and honestly as painful as that experience was and it
was so painful because my worst nightmare is hurting someone especially without intention like all of that but i freaking have i am like i'm a different mom because of that experience i've had my two of my best girlfriends are black women and like have had to have the hardest most painful conversations with them and how that has evolved our friendship because of that what it looks like to have
your kid come home from middle school and be like oh i saw a youtube video or someone was making fun of you like that as a mom that's devastating but then okay great let's have a conversation about what it looks like for us to have privilege and own that and man i'm never gonna get better as a human being if i don't go through that process all of us so i guess i just have um i really oh this is going to sound like
a bumper sticker but i really i only think it's a failure if i didn't learn from the process and that goes for books or content or podcasts or relationships any of it um you know when i got divorced i got such awful backlash from so many people and you know that my marriage failed i'm like my marriage is a massive success four beautiful kids four kids through foster care 18 years together like beautiful
memories grew so much dear friends still raising a family to get like that's not a failure maybe that's your definition of failure this not mine and so i think that i guess maybe the advice i would give in this is if we could all be more graceful with ourselves and redefine like earnestly and humbly um go into situations where you're really your intention is to grow i mean i told you
my number one value in life is growth and i will tell you that when you call that shot you know i've for years i've had i have i'm a nerd and so i have written down all my core values um but if that's true yeah it's the only way yeah yeah that's your defining core value it's the same sort of thing like all right the universe is going to give you some opportunity to grow but yeah i think that that is the most
important piece is that you have to redefine what failing is i mean failing is getting to the end of my life and not having tried and not having written these stories down in my head because i was worried about what people would think of me for you know wanting to write about superheroes or wanting to make a movie like who freaking cares because i think that when you get to the end of your life
you're the only one there it's just you yeah you know and i don't want to get there and think like oh i could have i could have done that thing or i might have had that or maybe there was more work for me to do but i was so scared of what people would think or are so scared of getting it wrong that i just thought it was better not to try yeah yeah thank you so much for sharing that yeah i think it's yeah
it's amazing just hearing someone go through a difficult time personally professionally and then to share in the way you have and you know it's it's hard because it's it's that balance between what you've just said is it's that balance between being humble enough to learn from others right but there's a part of you when you're creating to not get tied up in people's opinions right so it's like knowing like for
example when you make a mistake yeah to be able to learn from it and you know i think about it i've made so many mistakes i'm not perfect and and often when you're trying to teach the challenges that yeah it's you're on a pedestal now and it's difficult to then make mistakes yes but we're trying to learn as we're trying to help and there's no you know like i don't think i don't think anyone on the
planet is perfect yeah and i don't think we should aspire for it and i don't think there's anyone who gets anything right all the time yeah my best girlfriend we talked a lot about this she does a ton of work in um racial reconciliation and understanding diversity and it's it's what her training is in and um she had this great line she was like rachel there's a difference between your intent
and your impact those are two completely different things like your intent was this but the impact was this and in you not knowing that the impact would be this that is the definition of your privilege and like you not being aware of that thing so there was that's so well explained i love that because i think what i definitely had a moment of getting trapped in this narrative and i'm sure other people do
too is you're like but i wasn't that wasn't what i and it's like no no it doesn't matter it doesn't even matter what you said it matters what they heard right and like if you care about the community and what you're trying to do and the work that you're putting out in the world and you did hurt someone it doesn't matter what the intent was it only matters what it felt like to them and so
i have to own that and hold space for it and learn from it and grow and all of that but i'm curious then how what that looks like for you as a creator i was talking to trent about this too and i think a lot of us in this space like we've all been in social for a long time we all built our careers in it and i think what is maybe hard to understand um unless you kind of were back at the beginning is i'm guessing for you i know
this is true for me and trent we sort of almost like a comedian working out a joke at the local bar we worked out our bigger form content in social posts so you would sort of like have an an idea and you'd put it out there you'd throw it out you didn't give it a ton of thought you just be like here's this thought right and then based on the feedback maybe you'd have a a dialogue with your
community or something would like go wild you were like whoa i wasn't expecting that to go viral it was sort of how we learned what to do longer form or what to like evolve and make bigger and that doesn't feel like it is a possibility anymore i don't know if you feel like that yeah first of all when we when we first started like you didn't know you didn't try you don't try to make something go viral
yeah you just you create something yeah that you really value and believe in and you like and you enjoy and it's and you put it out there and you see the feedback and then people like it or you know whatever they don't like it and to me it was always you know i was always looking out for like where's the positive energy where's the positive comments because i'm trying to put so my intent was positive yeah
and when the impact was positive yeah more than uh critical or like oh we don't like your hair or you pronounce words weird or uh you know you don't know what you're talking about who are you yeah like when it was that kind of stuff i was like all right well i'm going to keep trying my best yes with my intent and hope and i think that now i'm trying to do that more and more and i think
what i've and you've said this and this is where i think we're we're aligned on this is i've gone from living a life where all that mattered to me growing up was being educated because that's how i was raised and i was very fortunate enough to go to great educational institutions and none of them were paid for it they were just exam based and study-based and academic and then i went off and lived as a monk
and that was completely the opposite because i gave up all my job offers and work and then i was a monk for three years and then i've left went back into the world of business and then now married and an entrepreneur and everything else and i feel the most myself today with my hair like this because you're jerking rather my hair like this wearing the clothes that i wear living in the way i feel the most
of myself today yeah and there's a bit of monk in there there's a bit of management in there there's a bit of business in there there's a bit of academic in there there's a bit of uh hopeless romantic in there which i've always been my whole life and that's who i am and i just want to i know that i struggle with having to choose because i don't want to choose it so i'm trying i think is the answer
to be more and more putting out all elements of myself yeah and that can often be difficult for people because people go well jay you're the monk how are you the entrepreneur right i'm like i used to be a monk and this is what i learned from being a monk that i practice today every day but hey this is what i love about entrepreneurship and business and strategy right and i love both and i always say to people like you can't have
strategy without sincerity and you can't have spirituality without um strategy and you can't have uh data without intuition you need both yes and i i feel like i'm being forced sometimes to pick yes like jay are you are you gonna be the monk or you're gonna be this and i'm like well i am there are parts of me that are still monk-like i'm not a monk of course i'm married there are parts of me that uh i
always say you can think like a man cannot live like a monk so there are parts of me that still think like a monk but there are parts of me that think like an entrepreneur i think like a strategist and and that makes me happy and i feel fulfilled and i feel real honest to myself yeah so i don't know if that even answers your question i do i'm allowing myself to be like it's what you're
saying if i want to i'm and i'm not going to do this don't worry anyone if i wanted to be an athlete like a soccer player which has always been my number one love in terms of sport i want to go and be a soccer player like i'm going to try i'm not going to try it but but i'm going to try because if that's what i want to be and express myself in that way yeah then why not yeah so anyway i've got to a point where
i don't want to limit myself as to how i express myself and i'm trying to reconnect with that i'm trying to be comfortable with that and it's uncomfortable it is because often you feel forced and squashed and i think that people feel that even outside of social they definitely feel that in their very real lives that it's sort of like well you're you're an accountant yeah why do you
think you can also play guitar like why and the reality is that the most beautiful versions of ourselves are they're whole there there are many parts of us it's not just this sort of one area and i do think that there is this desire on social or this thing that comes through and this exists with the with the community and it also exists with the algorithm frankly that they want you to stay in your lane yes
they want you oh but you're if like if you and i put something on social and we're using words that the algorithm is used to seeing us use that's going to get shown to more people than if you're talking about right work or business or whatever and so there's all of these things that again it's these points of tension of yeah you could be really happy like i i i could keep writing girl wash your face
over and over and over and make a crap ton of money and have that be my life forever and and there are people who do that and that's amazing and awesome but because i started and writing was never supposed to be my job i never want it to be about what is gonna make the most money or what is the box that i can check i mean my last book was i mean you know god bless the publisher was like okay you want to write a book
about grief and pain when i'm known for writing things that are funny and so it's like you're gonna come out of nowhere with this book about all of these hard things and that book did nothing compared to what the two books before it did but i would rather um oh there casey musgraves has this great line in one of her songs where she says i'd rather lose for who i am then when for who i ain't
like i'd rather like get it wrong in your eyes but i showed up as myself then keep doing the thing that the world wants me to do so i i love that and i think that as a fan of yours and i think like any f anybody in your community like you want to see the whole you want to see all the parts of it right like the people we admire really we want to see all of who they are as a person not just like what's the pr spin
on your life and my biggest thing of that is like i think when you allow yourself to have that opportunity you allow others in your life and when you allow others to have that opportunity you allow yourself and i think the more you know does that make sense yeah usually what happens is we project so if we feel we're not allowed to be all of ourselves right we don't let anyone including our kid and by the way
uh this doesn't just transfer over to your partner or a friend or someone who follows you on social media it transfers over to everyone in your life because you can't suddenly not live a value yes right you either live a value in it transfers and cascades all over your life or you don't live a value and it doesn't cascade yeah and so if you live the value that i don't allow myself to be fully myself
you're not going to let your wife your husband your partner your kids your parents your aunts or uncles whoever it is be themselves fully yeah or alternatively if you go around saying well that person is that person and they're not that you're then blocking your own self yeah from being two things and i think that's where that's what it always hits me by i'm like we me and my friend were talking yesterday
and we were having a very frank and honest conversation about another one of our mutual friends who's struggling and it was so easy because those conversations so often roll into judgment and criticism and feeling holier than dao and like oh at least we don't have that problem yeah and it's crazy because you can do that by people you know and me and him just sat down and i and i said look what i want to do actually to
grow this conversation and you said the value is growth i said i just want to talk about all my flaws right now in this area because i was like only if we do that yeah will i not walk away from this conversation thinking i'm better yes because if i think i'm better guess what i don't have to become or grow right because i already think i made it just by talking about someone yeah and so we
spent the rest of the conversation really talking about our own challenges and impediments and flaws in in that particular area we were discussing we just realized i was like i'm just that person just doesn't know about yeah my flaws yeah so well i think this too with kids is it has always been so important for me as a mom to give my kids autonomy over themselves um like they can wear whatever they want
yes they show up they're so fun to watch like my oldest is in middle school and he is so himself like he wore a revolutionary wig to his school pictures he like shops the goodwill and like wears funny t and i just never had that kind of confidence at 14 years old he's so himself and i was really conscious of that i wanted it for them but mostly i felt like if they had autonomy over
who they were they would give it to others so i didn't i grew up in a a really religious yeah like i grew up in a really religious um home and environment and city and it was very much like we know the right way to be and if you're not this way you're wrong and i just never wanted my kids to have that i want them to believe that everybody is valuable and good and cool and has potential and gets to do and be whoever
they are um so yeah i love when he was like can i get a wig for i was like yes every year this should just be the thing man like let's go and that starts there with wigs and autonomy and then leads to forgiveness so yeah if i can forgive myself right i'm more likely to forgive others right right if i forgive others i'm more likely to forgive myself well to be totally honest i was
brutally hard on myself when that happened like i was maybe the lowest i've ever been in my adult life i'm for real and um i because i just felt so ashamed like i i can't imagine hurting someone like you know you know how much this work takes and how hard this is and showing up and doing all this these things with the intention of putting goodness out into the world and positivity and um the worst for me was
feeling like um i've worked so hard to create a safe space for my community and having people who felt like it wasn't safe anymore like because i showed up in a way that was different than what felt safe or right to them and i just was dead i was devastated i was heartbroken um and i spent for real like a few weeks just like wallowing there's no other way to say it i was just wallowing in misery and so
ashamed so mad at myself and then one day i was like this is not helpful this is not helping anybody like you're just feeding into your own narrative you're feeling sorry for yourself you're like spinning out you're all of this and so you have to own yes like in life sometimes you will make a mistake you will hurt someone else like you have to own this you have to hold space for this
and you have to learn from this experience or it was all wasted like it was all for nothing all this pain all of these people that you hurt this way that you felt embarrassing your kids embarrassing your best friends like all of this stuff you have to hold this and learn from it or it was for nothing and it took i mean i i just i want to say that because i don't want anyone to think like oh you flip a switch and then
you're fine that's why i was talking earlier about transitions for me are about allowing myself to feel it points attention yeah i needed a few weeks to like be a weenie and then i had to like okay time to grow like which makes sense that's what you're saying that that level of like sitting in the paint yeah is all proportionate to how big you think the impact yeah ended up being yes right
if something has massively impacted others it is going to take a deeper longer process of reflection to grow yes yeah and so it's in proportion to the impact yes and i think in those situations i don't know if you've ever gone through something like this everybody wants like what's what are you gonna say or what's the statement or make a podcast or whatever and i just i kept telling everyone like
it would be disingenuous it would be at the time right like if i don't actually learn from i can't show you what you need to see right like i can write a perfectly you know appropriate response right we can all do that we can write the thing and put it out in the world or i can actually learn i can actually grow and you can see i hope the evolution as i continue to grow as a woman and and a sister and a friend and a mama like
i i want you to see through action like who i am not because i just really quickly like gave you the answer i just yeah so it was not a fast process and it did involve a lot of self like yeah you're going to have to forgive yourself because you're never going to get better in this and um if you don't yeah thank you yeah thank you yeah yeah no i i think that's what happens right it's like the world's
forcing us uh to provide an answer but it's actually the behavior that is is what yeah is what we're working on yeah that's always what i found like for me it's always been about like well what do i need to change what do i need to figure out what do i that's always been my focus because that's what actually is the what the universe is trying to tell me to do yeah um so well it's sort of
that i there's some quote and i don't know who said it and i'm going to butcher this one too but it's essentially like an apology without action or an apology without change is empty it's not real you know if you have someone in your life who is i think we do this in relationships all the time they're like they say they're sorry i'm sorry that i did this thing but there's no change they're not then
it's not actually real um and it i think it's a really powerful um thing to process whether you're you know guiding your kids through a issue with their friends or you're dealing with this in your marriage or whatever it looks like if you continue to do the same thing that someone has said this is hurting me like i'm going to continue to make mistakes in my life of course i'm going to
continue to make mistakes because i'm going to keep trying and if you're continuing to try you're going to continue to make mistakes it's just what it is but if you've told someone like if my community says to me rachel you said this thing and this was hurtful and this made us feel these ways and i don't change based on that then i was never really sorry if you told your partner that um you know when
they lose their temper they do these things or they have too much to drink or they're smoking or whatever and that it is hurtful to you and it's sincere and you have a conversation and they say they're sorry and they keep doing it again and again and again it's not a real apology and so i do think that there's something we that we need to hold on to of like what does it look like in our lives to actually make change
based on what we said or who we said we didn't want to be like it's as important to know who you don't want to be as this person that you do want to reach for yeah i remember i started in my spiritual community i started uh mentoring young men quite early on and i remember saying to all of them and i still say this to people when i coach them today or when i work with people
like one of the first things i say to them after we've agreed to work together or or connect is is always just know that i will let you down and and the law is just it's it was really useful to me to see their response and i'll say i will let you down not because i don't care not because i don't love you not because i don't want you to be your best not because i want that to happen but because i'm human yeah that
will happen yeah and if you're okay with that then this is this is real right but if you have some other then this is actually not gonna work and it's been really interesting to me i remember when i first used to say that i was probably like 22 or something and and there were some people who who changed their mind about me being their mentor wow based on that and i used to be like this is great yes because now we
know at least we're both safe like yeah they're safe now because i've told them the reality of it and and i'm safe now because i feel and so that's always been my approach to it is just just being okay with that yeah and putting it out there and just you know not having any other false expectations yeah i'm curious um i'm jump i have just a question for you um i was curious as you were talking
about that because i know you do mentor and you coach a lot and that mixed with what you're doing in the wider community in on social and you know with videos and pockets and all of it how do you maintain your own energy in the midst of giving so much to other people yeah that's a great question yeah you're like there's a million dollars questions no it's no it's oh as in this is the obvious answer but
it's true and it's the start it's ongoing like it's everyday right so me and my wife had a conversation this weekend and she was just like to me uh and my wife's great at this and she was just like i think you need to recommit to these practices like to do them deeply to do them better and my ego was just like all right like you know you want to just you just want to be like well i do all this and i do
this and i was just like nope take it seriously and then i recommitted to certain practices and behaviors that i may not have been doing with as much depth and i feel so much better for it right and so i think having a wife that is really grounded and rooted is is huge and so that's just a blessing and i lucked out but having that is so important uh i think another thing for me which is probably like the biggest
thing is my i still speak a lot to my monk mentors and they are just so not interested in anything i do externally and i remember my you know one of my monk teachers he said to me said he asked me a question he said what are you up to this was probably about i don't know maybe like three years ago and he was like well what are you doing and so i gave him a long list of like all the cool stuff i was doing
and and he said something really powerful to me he said you know for all of this i have no expectation and he said he said i have no expectation for what you're doing all of this he goes i simply demand the purity of your heart and it was just like it was one of those moments where like my heart sank like yeah and and it was like a punch in the gut and i was just like but it's so much easier to give you all this like it's so
much easier to offer all of this uh and i think that happens in relationships i think uh at least the men that i know are always thinking oh but i'm doing all of this yes and their partner's just like but i just want to feel loved right i want to feel seen i want to feel heard and and the men in my life and me it's very easy to be like no but we're doing all of this yeah i say you want to be
the magician because that's actually easier like it's actually easier to do that than do this and so having my monk teachers in my life has been a really great one because they're just so oblivious to everything and so above and beyond all of this world that they're just a good reminder uh and and i think like you're right failures and mistakes keep you on the path so there's another
one like that's partly why they're there and i really spend a lot of time alone yeah like i really that's my biggest one for regenerating energy and i think people find it uncomfortable because and i'm really honest with you i had a friend i have a friend staying with me right now who opened the door for you by the way and he's such a sweet guy he's been you only allow beautiful people around you by the
way because between you and your wife and that guy who opened the door i was like what is happening he's my wife's best they basically grew up together their moms are best friends and when he's in l.a stays with us but he's been trying to get us to so he's always like can you come visit me can you come do this and i'm always honest with him because he's such a close friend and he
lives with us when he's in la so i spend plenty of time with him but i'm always just like i can't because if i got that time that you want me to come and spend with you i'm gonna take that for myself yeah and it's so awkward and uncomfortable to say it to people but i've got so used to it today i got a message from someone and they were just like i'd love to spend more time with you and i messed them back saying i
would too but my schedule just won't allow you yes and when it does i'll reach out yeah and i know you do this and it's like i really love time alone and i crave it and i seek it and i it's such a big part of my dna that i will i recharge alone i can't recharge around people and when y'all started dating were you really upfront with her about that yes yeah i feel like that's so important because it's like
you're establishing those boundaries in the beginning yeah so there is an expectation of okay i'm the same way i love being alone and so does my i don't know why i'm referencing up the ceiling and that was one of the first conversations we had was sort of like we're gonna love this time together and we're gonna be really honest about when we do need to decompress and there are definitely times where um
he'll have come back from a trip and i want to like tackle him immediately and he'll be like i need a day yes and it like i'm sad because i want to see him but i also totally respect and get it and that was something that we established from the very beginning is that like when you're coaching people do you ever give advice on if you've never established a boundary and maybe it's
being alone or whatever it looks like for you how do you establish a boundary when you haven't done it before yeah i i think it's exactly what you just said like it is just a status update like it is like saying like this is a new thing for me and by the way it doesn't mean i love you less right it's it's saying what it doesn't mean yes as much as what it means to you and i think the mistake we do reload we say
this means so much to me yes i want you to value it because it's important to me yes and we negate how it is important to them yes so if we say oh how it's relevant to them so if i had a new update for radi and riley had a new update for me actually today but if if i had a new update for her i would say to her riley i have this new update and i just want you to know this does not mean i don't
love you yeah this does not mean i don't care care for you it doesn't mean that i don't love spending time with you it just means i'm exhausted yeah that's what this means yeah and that helps someone rather than saying you know what i'm so overworked and i've been doing so much that i need this time yes and that person's going oh so you'd rather have that time than time with me yes and that's what they're thinking yeah and so
you can help the person with their thought process by answering all their unsaid questions yes without them saying it so it obviously doesn't always work out that perfectly yeah but i think that it's a status update and you can change i think at the beginning of lockdown radhi and i had completely different expectations than we've ever had before exactly we've never lived together for this long yeah
in one place yeah and so we had to set new boundaries around cleanliness about chores about housekeeping all that kind of stuff that we haven't had to do for a long time because we're always moving around yeah and so i think every time there's a change or a transition or a point of tension it's because you haven't made someone aware of your new priorities right and how it affects them yeah it's it's the same as us doing
things like going on tour or writing a book like i always preempt i'll always say to we've been talking about like we haven't seen our family for a long time yeah and so we've been trying to go back to london and me and radha have been talking and i was like but if we go back then we have this priority and so we're thinking ahead and i'm like just you know this is what we plan to do in september yeah i
i just don't think there's any substitute for being honest up front and and resetting your actual needs yes as opposed to pretending yeah that yeah that's fine and then expecting the person to know you're stressed out and then figure it out right and that's a long answer to it right no and i think it's a it's sort of like a habit or a muscle to build like anything else that if you haven't done
it before it is really hard to learn to say no yeah and to allow yourself to frustrate people or have them be disappointed or maybe even hurt their feelings unintentionally because you need to hold that space for yourself because i i am so with you if you are doing something where you're serving other people you're around a lot of other energy or however that is you have to have that time where you go
sort of refill in whatever way makes the most sense for you um because i think that other people will we we see life right as as we are not as it actually is and so even um what i think of is like when i'm going through a hard season if i'm going through grief or when i went through the divorce anytime i'm going through something hard i want to be alone yeah i do not want to be around and it is how i process yes
and i have girlfriends who they process grief for pain in groups yes and so all they want to do in the world is bring me soup or wine or sit with me or talk it out and it is so hard to navigate they're really trying to love you well and they're trying to love you in the way that makes sense to them and having to be so clear about thank you and i love you and i promise you i'm gonna call when i'm ready but
this is how i need to handle these things yes um and it you are allowed to do those processes exactly how it works for you and it's not selfish and i think that that's what is put on most of us is that you wanting time alone away from your wife or me wanting time alone away from my kids that that would be a selfish choice because you're not showing up for those other people when
the reality is none of us can serve those we love well if we're depleted totally i feel like i want to and i also want to give my best to people right so you're just exhausted and drained i i think about it like gary chapman's love language yeah it's almost like this is pain languages right like how do you process pain yes and like i know that radhi likes to have sp if we're having an argument rather we'll
want to have space and time to reflect yeah and i want to talk it out like i'm like all right let's figure this out yeah let's figure this out and she's like i just don't i need to just think about it like i just need to reflect and think otherwise i'm going to say something i don't want to say or whatever it is and it took me a while to realize that that wasn't because she
didn't i'd always be like you don't want to talk about because you don't care as much as and that's the problem you see it as a sign of care i go oh just because you don't want to talk about it right now that means you don't care about this relationship as much as i do yeah this is not true yeah you you care about it as much as i do yeah that's why you don't want to that's why you're being
intentional yeah what is your love language by the way my love language is okay so i it's adapted and i've talked about this so my top love language and i realized it was from when i was growing up was gifts and it was because my mom we didn't have a lot but when we were growing up on my birthday my mom would always get me the one gift that i'd and it was such a big moment and she'd always surprised me but here's where it
got interesting i realized that the value was not gifts it was surprises oh it wasn't the actual thing yes it was the feeling that someone had thought about me in in like disguise and then made me feel special so it was surprised i put surprise at the top but it's gifts in the five yes uh and then the other one has always been words of affirmation yeah words of affirmation is huge for me
yeah it took me ages for my ego to admit that yeah because it felt so like oh that's so lame like i want to be told like and i was like no i actually really like to be told by the people i love how i make them feel yes and that's great like because i'm good at giving words of affirmation too and i want that so those are my topics yeah how about yours so it's interesting mine was words of affirmation forever and then
however this sounds but when my career really exploded beginning of 2018 um all i got were words yes and so it sort of stopped having meaning i agree that makes sense um and so my number one now is acts of service like if you bring me a cup of coffee if you um you know help with the dish it like if you just do something that's really helpful that is it just makes me feel so taken care of and loved and appreciated
i just that's that's a big one for me and interestingly um when i first went on like when i first started hanging out with the guy um i was explaining to him what what love languages were because he had never heard of it because you know me i don't know if you do this but i'm like what's your enneagram number yeah um so we're walking and i'm trying to explain all these things and i with love
languages you don't need to take a test you can tell someone and they're like so he's like oh i'm words of affirmation so i'm thinking great that that feels whatever and then as every time we would hang out he would be like oh i saw this and i thought of you or like oh you said you like this kind of coffee or what every time you show up at my house with just some little thing and i was like no
you're gifts you're not words your gifts because he just did it always and on a random whatever i like showed up at his house one day with coffee and he acted like i had brought him a million dollars and i was like oh your gifts yeah buddy this is actually what you care so here's how it but it's just such a powerful tool for friends or even members of your team to understand how to like love them
well and lead them well and doing it for pain too that's why i think we've uncovered what you're saying today like knowing that oh when we're in pain yes rachel needs space yes but rachel's friends need to talk yeah and this friend needs two friends this friend needs drinks and a party right friends right distraction yeah whatever it is and like we judge how we process pain and how we want to be loved yeah and it's it's not selfish
it's it's real and so yeah i'm really glad that we stumbled upon that because it's a good one maybe that's your next book hang languages yeah no i i don't yeah it's just i i do think there's something about learning how people process pain yeah and being okay with how they want to do it yes which is beautiful yeah and not making that process not making their process of pain about you yes because we
do do that all the time it's like you were saying earlier about someone wanting space or someone asking to hold a boundary and you somehow making that about them and what you need in this process or um i think this a lot in a new relationship because my um do you know about attachment yes yes okay so um i'm anxious attachment yeah it is avoidant anxious [Applause] [Laughter]
and he's like whatever the chill one is he's just like chill and happy and fine and i'm anxious about everything and i do if you if you don't know what we're talking about you're listening to this you gotta look it up there's a great book called i think it's called the attachment attachment or attached for you he would do something or ask for something and i would be like oh he doesn't like reading more i said
something soon whatever and so what's really helpful for me when i'm having those moments or just i think this in life is just to ask like act as if or give the benefit of the doubt or what if what they're saying is actually totally truthful now certainly there are times in life where we're interacting with someone and our intuition is telling us this is not a good person there's something wrong here
you need to listen to that but i do think when it's sort of my mind running away with me that it has been so helpful to just hey rach act as if this person is good and honest and and mature and has done a lot of therapy and is literally just telling you what they need instead of playing games with you yeah um because you have no reason to believe otherwise and that can shut off my anxiety about that
moment or me making it about me that fast because i'm like oh yeah you're being ridiculous yeah no i i think there are there are certain things like the love languages attached the attachment styles like if you know them in an early stage in a relationship yes for you and your partner it can save you so much time and unfortunately we feel geeky or cheesy or lame to talk about these things but it's like that's
actually what's going to help yes because if you know your partner has an anxious attachment style you're now going to be more conscious of that yes you're going to know how to behave with them and speak to them in their language in a way that's going to help them feel secure right i think it's called secure no i think it's called attached no no no i think it's called the secure
attachment style yeah i think it's attached avoided and secure i think that's the word yeah yes you are correct i think that's the word yeah that's the third word secure like and but that's the whole point right it's like if you know that someone is an avoidant person a personality type attachment type you know how to make them feel more secure yes rather than being like oh they're just weird or they've got something
wrong with them right you know right all those terms well i it's interesting have you ever i don't know if this sort of falls in i feel like we read all the same books do you know um um is it tim grover tim grover yeah so i am not into sports but i love understanding how athletes at the highest level function i'm just fascinated by it don't know anything about football it is another level right
like tom brady right i don't so if people i don't know anything about football but how in the world at his age and even more importantly and more impressive to me is how can you have won that much and still have the drive to keep winning like i'm with a new team oh my gosh like fascinated by what it takes because i think if you've ever pushed to sort of a high level in your career let's say or maybe
for an athlete or whatever what you understand is that staying at that level or even evolving past that level is a million times harder than it was to get there it's so much more difficult because it takes like something other and so i'm fascinated by uh kobe or michael jordan or just serena williams like how in the hell do they maintain so i don't know if you'd like these books because they're pretty intense but i
love tim grover's work and um i was i interviewed him the other day and i was geeking out so hard and i was telling him that the first time i read uh his first book which is called relentless which is this pers relentless pursuit of excellence and trying so hard and whatever i it was like a out of body experience like i felt like i was reading something i could have written and i
felt i don't know if you've ever had a moment where you're reading something or listening and you're like i thought i was the only one yeah and he was explaining things that i just had never sort of this sounds terrible and someone can do therapy with me later but like that i would achieve something and maybe you have a bit of this as an achiever but i would achieve something and immediately what's the next thing
that's done like we did it what's the next thing and um i so i was reading this book and i loved it it's the only time in my life i finished a book and immediately started it again wow and i gave it to my ex-husband and we were married at the time and i was like this book explains me like this is it read this book and i was telling tim that he dave was they've read it and i remember him
looking up and looking at me like i was an alien like what the hell like what and that's nothing against dave yeah yeah um but i was telling tim this like oh i felt seen and like and then he read it and looked at me like i was an alien and tim was like oh that's actually way more a reflection of you yeah and you being in a relationship where your partner didn't know who you actually were
like that's way more telling about you than it is about him right right and i part of that is we got together so young and i just had evolved so much you changed so much i mean you've got like right i mean how old were you in your first date you said i met him when i was 18. yeah so it's like at 18 you really do not know who you are no like no one no um but i just thought that was so interesting of how many times in
relationships your your partner really sees you as who they think you are instead of who you actually are and how much tension in a relationship happens because you're trying to be you and they think that you're actually this per i don't know i just i thought that was so fast well i think sometimes you're and i'm so glad you brought this up i and i want to read that book i think sometimes
you actually are becoming more of the version they think you are so you're i think in a relationship often like if your partner sees you as loving and caring and homemaking right you start becoming more of that to try and be who they love yes and they do it back and that's considered a good thing right but actually what ends up happening is there's a whole part of you that's being underserved yes and then
when they discover that they're like who are you i don't even know who you are yes and and i can relate to that so because i met me and rodney met when i was 20 21 but we started dating when i left being amongst i was 26. okay and so but when i left being a monk that's when i felt the most self-aware so when i met radi i was really clear i was like this is what i care about my purpose comes
first this is where what i and it wasn't about achievements like i didn't have like goals it was more just like this is who i am and i'm more likely to choose this over this if we had the choice yes and and i remember having all the and i have not changed a bit like i'm the exact same person and rather we will testify to that we should be like yeah you're the same guy married just maybe on steroids
a bit but but like you know you're the same person and raleigh has actually changed more so radhi's changed more when i met radi she was very much like she just wanted to be a homemaker and now it's like she's like got her career growing she's doing really well and it's and i've found that because i'm so still and steady in my space i'm able to appreciate and support yeah as opposed to feel threatened or scared
or confused right or like you're not the person right because i'm seeing her go through what i went through back then and i'm seeing her find herself yeah which is actually so beautiful to watch but it's only beautiful to watch if you're doing that yourself exactly and otherwise it's really scary because your world starts to change right it's like your world's getting shaken yes because all of a sudden that that person you
thought was this is not that anymore and i i know for women in my community especially and i'm sure this happens with men but i know with women there's often this massive tension of their beginning to change and evolve and their partner usually a man is really struggling and it's exactly what you're saying because that man maybe hasn't gone through his own evolution and so she begins to change
and he's terrified so it's like well if you're gonna change are you gonna change in such a way that you leave me behind and then it's sort of like holding on tighter and you know that honestly that was a a massive um catalyst for why i'm not married today is i mean there's a million factors obviously but he met an 18 year old and when we got married when i was 20 i guess yeah yeah um
i all i wanted was to be his wife and to have babies and to here's the home and i'm gonna work but obviously this is what it is and that's sort of like who he signed on for yes that's what it is and he was a massive cheerleader of mine and a dear friend and whatever but it just kept shifting to such a place where it felt like in order for this thing to work i had to keep pretending to still be that woman
and i'm not like she's gone she's so far gone and i can like play that role and i would play that role but then there was um so much resentment there because i feel like i'm trying to fit into a certain box in order to accommodate the vision that you have of me and then when i step outside of that box or i do something that feels threatening and just is too much space to hold there so
i it's interesting one of the things i hope most for my kids and this is maybe a random thing but i hope that they find the person that they want to partner with long term later in their life like i hope that they have that time to figure out who they are in a way that i really didn't and i think is very common in definitely like in southern culture and sort of how i grew up oh my gosh heck yeah even in indian culture
yeah yeah and so you are growing up together but that can cause tension if sort of one of you is growing in a way that the other is not yeah yeah i'm so glad yeah and i'm so happy that like you said like you've both and you know i i love dave yeah and it's like i'm so happy that you've both seen how this isn't a failure oh and your friendship and your connection for your kids just i think it's
it's so beautiful to see that and and i'm i'm glad that we need to stop seeing the end of things as failures right it's like do you see the end of your favorite show as a failure yeah you don't it's a celebration and there's nostalgia and you miss it but it wasn't a failure because the show ended yes there's no show with never-ending seasons there's shows that have eight seasons four and twelve well also it's crazy to think
that success is length of time oh which is terrible it's a terrible relationship like metronome for people people who've been together for 25 years and they're miserable terrible metric for a relationship yes absolutely and that's what i when when bill and melinda divorced recently yes and i don't know why i said that like i know that yeah no no neither do i i don't know either uh but when melinda gates said that and
this you know i'm again i'm not commenting on their anything else i don't know them i'm just commenting on this one statement yeah uh she said that you know we realized we had nothing more to learn from each other oh wow and i was just like that's beautiful i love that yeah i was like what a great and you know it was like the picture that had been put up in the press was like a broken glass picture of
them right right i was like come on like yeah that's actually a really good lesson like if we're not learning from each other then we probably shouldn't be together yeah and i i don't know i just i love that you guys have found that way and it makes me really happy as you know as a friend of both of you yeah and seeing that and just seeing how wonderful you all both are independently too yes and i think like it's so
rad um watching him in his new relationship truly like from the beginning i'm just like hell yeah like i think it would be really surprising to people how much we sort of talked about that or what it looks like and to i think there's something so beautiful about him having someone who is meeting him as he is today and because that's a gift for me in my life this man met me right now not 20
year old version like 20 years ago me but like who i am right now today this is who he's getting to me and the same for dave and having a girlfriend who's just like you're the best so this is awesome and it's so cool to see him have someone who like shares his hobbies and the things that he's into whatever like look at this this is so great um so yeah i just i refuse to see it as something that's bad because i think
my god it has been such a ride and we will be family for the rest of our lives we've got four kids like we're a family we're about to have a crazy thanksgiving with like i love it his girlfriend all her family my like all it's just we're figuring it out um and there's something beautiful about that process but i don't think that's possible if you sort of see it all as this negative
thing or this it all went awry or it all went badly and it's not to say that it wasn't painful and it's not to say it wasn't hard on our kids and all of the things to navigate and figure out but um yeah this was just what that chapter of our lives looked like yeah i love that rachel i could talk to you for hours and hours and hours i'm in love with this broadcast yeah i am going to lean into the final five these are your
rapid fire fast five oh my gosh okay so you can only answer the questions with one word or one sentence maximum okay one sentence is like ten words okay i'm gonna try and do one i don't know what a definition is of a sentence uh but rachel hollis these are your final fives okay okay question number one what is the best advice you've ever received the best advice i've ever received um
okay this was not given to me directly but my favorite quote and this is i'm going to take his advice was from oprah when i was a teenager i saw her say this and i thought it and lived it ever since there is no such thing as luck there is only preparation meeting opportunity at a moment in time and i've spent my life preparing for those moments that's beautiful i love that and it was so
great to see you both on stage as well so i love that okay question number two what's the worst advice you've ever received i know exactly what it is um my mom always told me that um if if your husband doesn't get you what you want for christmas just tell him like if you want something just buy the gift yourself she would always just tell me like basically sort of saying you can fix him and kind of
make him who you want to be and i am conscious of this now because i now know what it's like to date someone who gets you exactly as you are and that you don't have to explain anything to and so i consider that really bad advice you shouldn't try and mold someone to be who you want them to be beautiful all right question number three how would you define in one sentence your current purpose to
make as many beautiful memories as possible with the people i love i love that that's a beautiful purpose all right question number four uh what's the next thing you're most excited to learn or what's something you're currently learning that's new to you and that's exciting letting go of my attachment to the outcome hmm that is a big one for you right now we can talk about that question number five the fifth and final
question is if you could create one law that everyone in the world had to follow what would it be we are not allowed to care about what other people think of us i've been amazing i think that would change the world and i think that if we could give that to our children to not be concerned with other people's opinions it would change everything it's amazing rachel hollis on on purpose rachel thank you so much for doing this
this is so much fun like we've talked to it i don't know [Laughter] uh we would love to see there are so many incredible takeaways in this episode i hope you're gonna go back make notes me and rachel would love to see what stuck out to you please please please tag both of us on instagram on twitter let us know what were the moments what were the things that rachel mentioned that are going to
stay with you and that you're going to remember so that you can apply them into your own life rachel thank you so much is there anything you'd like to share with anyone about it oh oh my gosh everyone thank you for watching please go follow rachel on instagram and across all social media platforms and find out more from the hollis company as well so you can go to the website uh we'll put
all the links into the comment section rachel thank you again for being here this will be the first of many yes absolutely thank you thanks everyone if you want even more videos just like this one make sure you subscribe and click on the boxes over here i'm also excited to let you know that you can now get my book think like a monk from think like a monkbook.com check below in the description to make sure you order today