The Anxiety Expert: Get Out Of A RUT! Why Comfort Is The Enemy Of Growth

Humble the Poet 0:00 Don't say, "I'm anxious." Say, "I feel anxious because..." And that allows you to be a human having an emotion and trying your best to figure out why. Sharing your anxious feelings in a way that you don't identify with them, that invites connection, and now we can talk about it. And once we start revealing it, that's really the first step to healing.

Speaker 0:23 The number one health and wellness podcast. Jay Shetty.

Speaker 0:26 Jay Shetty.

Speaker 0:27 The one, the only Jay Shetty. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 0:31 You say anxiety isn't something that needs curing.

Humble the Poet 0:36 Yes.

Jay Shetty 0:37 Why was that important for people to know right at the beginning?

Humble the Poet 0:39 I think when I started this journey, it was really about meeting people where they're at. And I think now that mental health is like, mental health awareness has really become normalized, it may have gone a little bit too far with people identifying with certain things that they're struggling with. And it's like anxiety is not a problem. It's not a disease. It's not dandruff. It's not a condition that we have to deal with. It's a signal. It's here to help us. And what we need to do is reevaluate our relationship with it. Right now, where we're at is we medicate, avoid, and distract, and all of those are understandable coping mechanisms. They help us in the moment. They help us feel better. But none of that in the long term is gonna help us become better. And what it is, is we just have to pay attention to what anxiety and anxious feelings are trying to tell us. And the big thing with that is changing our relationship in a way that makes us not think like, "Oh, because I'm having anxious feelings, I must be weak. Something's wrong with me. Nobody else is dealing with this." And it's like, no, you are absolutely normal for having anxious feelings. And to start, that's the first idea we have to understand, treating ourselves with grace, that this is completely normal. And then once we get there, we can start this journey going from managing it in helpful ways and then also growing from it. We don't wanna just keep soothing anxiety. We want to gain strength through paying attention and understanding what it's trying to tell us.

Jay Shetty 1:59 One of the things me and you talk about a lot when we're having our offline conversations is this difference in the idea of East and West.

Humble the Poet 2:06 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 2:07 So the Western ideology is, "I had anxiety. I don't have it anymore." So everything's painted as this before and after. And we know that the East, which we both take inspiration from, is more cyclical, where it's like, well, wait a minute, anxiety isn't gonna go away. It's gonna keep showing up in my life in different ways.

Humble the Poet 2:25 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 2:25 Now, if anxiety shows up in the same way, it's because I'm not learning, I'm not strengthening-

Humble the Poet 2:29 Yeah

Jay Shetty 2:30 ... I'm not hearing the signal, as you just called it.

Humble the Poet 2:32 Absolutely.

Jay Shetty 2:32 And it's gonna show up in different ways because even if I hear the signal of anxiety here, anxiety's gonna show up in another way over here.

Humble the Poet 2:39 Yes.

Jay Shetty 2:39 And so I love that you really make it clear off the bat that this isn't about solving a problem.

Humble the Poet 2:45 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 2:46 Right? It's not about getting rid of it.

Humble the Poet 2:48 Yeah. What I'm promising in the book is I'm not promising to cure anxiety. I'm promising to cure the despair around anxiety. And the despair is when we feel hopeless 'cause we don't think we have options.

Jay Shetty 2:57 Mm-hmm.

Humble the Poet 2:58 So this book is full of options to better understand anxiety and to, to go from

Humble the Poet 3:03 managing to striving and growing and becoming stronger from it. And because we feel hopeless, that's where we stop, and a lot of the tension that we carry comes from resisting these emotions. It's not the emotions themselves. Anxious feelings aren't harming us. Resisting and avoiding these anxious feelings are what's actually doing the damage.

Jay Shetty 3:21 Oh, I love that. I love that. I, I think it, it resonates so strongly with me because I've been thinking a lot about how when you're anxious about something, you feel like you only have two options.

Humble the Poet 3:30 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 3:31 So it's like I either overcome this and my life's gonna be better, or I'm stuck with this for the rest of my life and my life's over, right? We kind of get these two extreme options.

Humble the Poet 3:40 Absolutely.

Jay Shetty 3:41 And the fact that you're saying, "Well, wait, wait a minute, there's a third option, there's a fourth, and there's 50 [laughs] in here"

Humble the Poet 3:46 [laughs]

Jay Shetty 3:47 That's actually what we all wanna feel. I remember when I was anxious about the fact that I hated my job. My career wasn't really going where I wanted it to go, but then I was anxious about leaving.

Humble the Poet 3:58 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 3:58 I realized the problem was my anxiety was all based on the fact I had limited options.

Humble the Poet 4:03 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 4:03 I thought I either stay somewhere I hate, or I leave and then I'm lost 'cause I don't know what's gonna come. And as soon as I started updating my LinkedIn resume and I saw other job offers coming in and there were other options, I was like, "Oh, it's not as bad anymore."

Humble the Poet 4:17 Mm.

Jay Shetty 4:17 But it... Nothing really changed apart from the fact that I could see a few steps further.

Humble the Poet 4:22 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 4:23 What have you found is the best way to open up your mind to more options when you're in a position where you feel imprisoned and trapped by your thinking?

Humble the Poet 4:32 So I love the idea that curiosity is courage in disguise.

Humble the Poet 4:36 And what we realize is, is often when we have this kind of dualistic thinking, "This is good, this is bad, this will help, this will hurt," that's us limiting our scope, as, as you said, and that's us being judgmental. And the only antidote to that is to be curious, is to ask more questions, to explore the gray between the black and white. And as we start doing that, more options arise, and we also start to realize often the fear that I'm dealing with is related to a story that I've told myself.

Jay Shetty 5:02 Mm-hmm.

Humble the Poet 5:03 That I can only do this, or I've gone so far, I've climbed this mountain, and now people would see him a failure if I have to climb all the way back down to find a new mountain. So I realized is keeping our mind open, keeping our hearts open requires curiosity, and that really is what courage is. And often we think this is a light switch. We think, you know, either I'm confident, or I'm not confident. I'm gonna fix this, or I'm not. And it's like, really, no, it's a dimmer. And it's not simply a failing on our part if we start to feel like this. We live in a society that really encourages us to, okay, well, if this is difficult, let's rearrange our lives to avoid it.

Jay Shetty 5:36 Mm.

Humble the Poet 5:37 You know? A, a personal story, for example, this book was inspired through one of our conversations when I was reaching out to you to come on the podcast for the last book. And I explained that I feel a lot of anxiety around asking for help. And you know, and you said many beautiful words to me to help soothe that, but I didn't address the fear of rejection I had. I didn't address any of that. And then I caught myself saying, "Well, you know what? Maybe this will be the last book, and I'll never have to ask for a favor again." That is not healing.

Jay Shetty 6:04 Mm.

Humble the Poet 6:04 That is me rearranging my life so I don't have to face the thing that is giving me anxious feelings.

Jay Shetty 6:10 Mm.

Humble the Poet 6:11 And there's no growth in that. That is me temporarily managing it because I'm going to have to ask for help. And what we have to realize is these challenges are an invitation for growth. Our triggers are an invitation for growth. There's an opportunity here for us to not only deal with them in a healthy way, but then also to grow through them because all of our growth happens outside of our comfort. And that's a really interesting thing where I've realized, I'm like, "Okay, I can feel better by avoiding asking for help, or I can be better by leaning into this and being okay with that."

Jay Shetty 6:42 It's powerful when you paint that picture because I'm sitting there going, I'm trying to think about all the times I've avoided things that I didn't wanna do. And I remember at one point I just avoided working out.

Humble the Poet 6:53 Mm.

Jay Shetty 6:53 Like, I loved playing sport, but I just didn't wanna work out. I didn't enjoy it. I'd come up with loads of excuses. I arranged my life in a way that I didn't have to do it. And as I grew older

Jay Shetty 7:03 and you realize the value of getting stronger and taking care of your body, not just aesthetically, but for the purpose of health-

Humble the Poet 7:10 Mm-hmm

Jay Shetty 7:10 ... like to actually live a healthy life, a strong life, you start going, "Well, wait a minute. Actually, it was only doing the thing and turning up when I didn't want to that has left me feeling better and stronger."

Humble the Poet 7:21 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 7:21 As opposed to when I was running away from it, I was just getting weaker and weaker.

Humble the Poet 7:24 And that's exactly how we should look at mental health. I think right now we're looking at mental health like it's this very fragile crystal that we-

Jay Shetty 7:30 Mm

Humble the Poet 7:30 ... have to protect from the world, and like, "Oh, I'm gonna avoid this person to protect my mental health." No, our mental health is a tool. It's a muscle. It's what allows us to deal with struggle. Struggle isn't the enemy. Struggle is the vehicle that makes us more resilient, that makes us more emotionally strong, that makes us more self-aware. Every time we have a negative experience or we get triggered, we're giving ourselves data. That data is, is a gift for our self-awareness so we can better understand who we are. And it's just like you said, if you want to help me move a couch, working out at the gym and voluntarily lifting heavy things will prepare you for that. It's the same thing with our mental health. We have to voluntarily put ourselves in uncomfortable situations. We have to challenge ourselves on purpose voluntarily so when challenges find us, we're more resilient, we're more confident, we'll feel more safe to deal with that stuff.

Jay Shetty 8:22 Yeah. And this isn't about making your life harder. It's being able to make your life harder in a controlled, choice-based environment. Like, it's not like just like you're not just creating drama in your life. That's not the point.

Humble the Poet 8:33 Definitely not drama-

Jay Shetty 8:34 Yeah

Humble the Poet 8:34 ... but I think the name of the podcast, On Purpose, when you discover your purpose, even if you devote 15 minutes to, like, digging in and, and, and picking up as much weight with that purpose as possible, that's gonna energize you to a level that most of us never experience until we figure out that thing that matters.

Jay Shetty 8:51 Mm.

Humble the Poet 8:51 So it's really not about adding drama to our lives, but it's really about carrying as much weight as we can to see how strong we can be. We can only get stronger through struggle.

Jay Shetty 9:00 Absolutely.

Humble the Poet 9:01 And if we voluntarily put ourselves in stressful situations, and it can be even, like, think video games. We're not gonna buy a video game if it's easy.

Jay Shetty 9:07 [laughs]

Humble the Poet 9:08 You know?

Jay Shetty 9:08 Yeah.

Humble the Poet 9:08 We want there to be a challenge. We wanna fall on our face, get back up, and try again.

Jay Shetty 9:12 Yeah.

Humble the Poet 9:13 And it's the same thing with life. It's this is how our batteries get charged. It comes through choosing to do hard things voluntarily, on purpose, and that can be anything.

Jay Shetty 9:23 Mm.

Humble the Poet 9:24 For some people, it could be, uh, a specific art. It could be drawing. It could be working out. It could be jujitsu. It could be any type of challenge. And, and this is gonna charge our batteries so much more than a two-week vacation lying on a beach doing absolutely nothing.

Jay Shetty 9:36 Yeah. And it builds more confidence, right? 'Cause when you're doing difficult things, I always say to people, someone asked me the other day, they said, "Jay, how do I feel confident before I do this?"

Humble the Poet 9:45 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 9:46 And I said, "I never feel confident before I do something. I feel prepared, I feel organized, and I feel practiced. I feel confident after I conquer it." So when I'm about to give a talk, I don't feel confident before I give a talk, but I know I've practiced, I know I've prepared, and I know I'm organized. Now I give the talk and then I feel confident because I built a new muscle, built a new skill, whatever it may have been. And so this idea that I need to feel confident before I do something, I need to not feel anxiety before I do something, is actually quite unnatural.

Humble the Poet 10:18 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 10:18 How do we get comfortable with discomfort? How do we get comfortable with uncertainty when we're wired to want things to feel good and be comfortable?

Humble the Poet 10:28 I think it's recognizing that, A, we're wired for a world that we don't live in anymore. So we are getting way too much stimuli. We're comparing ourselves to way too many people. We know way too many people. You know, we're really wired to be in much smaller communities. And bringing up this concept of confidence I think is really important because it goes back to that idea that it's not a light switch. I like to think about reading. We didn't not know how to read and then one day know how to read. We started by learning the alphabet, learning the sounds, two-letter words, three-letter words, four-letter words, until we could all read big, complex novels. That was like a 14, 15-year journey.

Jay Shetty 11:02 [laughs]

Humble the Poet 11:02 You know? We may not have realized that was happening 'cause it was in school, it was fun. We may not have had a choice. We had to go anyways. But as adults, the thing is all of our growth came from doing these, struggling with a book when you were reading it. Now, as we become adults, we, we avoid all these things that are struggling, and it's really reevaluating our relationship with difficult things and challenges. And it's absolutely correct. Both motivation and confidence, they don't come before action. You can't wait till you're motivated to do something. Doing something will make you motivated.

Jay Shetty 11:33 Mm.

Humble the Poet 11:34 Doing something will make you confidence. And, and, and this also brings up a really important idea that as we have this conversation, this is really gonna hit people logically. Like, "Oh, that makes so much sense. That makes so much sense." But for the body to really believe this, you can't make sense to the body. You have to practice this.

Jay Shetty 11:49 Yeah.

Humble the Poet 11:50 You know, if I asked you to stand up and fall backwards and I say, "I'll catch you," your brain might be like, "I trust him." Your body is still gonna be a little bit nervous. Let's say I catch you. And then I'm like, "Let's do it again." You'll be a little less nervous, but you're still gonna have some nerves. We might have to do it 15 times for your body to completely trust the process. We have to practice.

Jay Shetty 12:09 Mm.

Humble the Poet 12:09 Practice makes progress. And we have to get out of this binary of like, I can't do it or I'm perfect at it. I can't do it or I've mastered it. We have to just continually be on a journey and celebrate the progress that comes from that, and that progress is what builds our confidence. And, and slowly turn up that dial, 'cause that's the only way it's gonna happen.

Jay Shetty 12:27 You say anxiety overestimates the threat and underestimates our ability to deal with it.

Humble the Poet 12:35 Absolutely.

Jay Shetty 12:35 What did you mean by that?

Humble the Poet 12:36 So I heard a really interesting quote which was, "Anxiety is when your intelligence grows quicker than your courage."

Jay Shetty 12:41 Hmm. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Humble the Poet 12:43 And oftentimes when we're younger, we accomplish amazing things and we don't know we're supposed to be afraid of it. We don't even know we're supposed to be afraid of playing on the street or what have you, what the stresses are. You may have accomplished something where the odds were against

Humble the Poet 12:55 you, but you didn't know the odds, so you didn't feel that anxiety. So when our intelligence grows, now all of a sudden our imagination is being used to invent threats, right? To detect threats, things that may or may not happen, and then that holds us back from actually acting. 'Cause the triggers are our amygdala. We have a little tiny part of our brain the size of an almond called the amygdala. In the book, I call it our survival brain, and it's like a very under-trained but loving bodyguard that wants to protect you from everything, but its definition of danger is uncertain, unrecognizable, unfamiliar, uncomfortable. And these, we know, aren't things that are actually dangerous. Struggle isn't danger. Challenge isn't danger. But when we come across that, we're gonna speak ourselves out of it. So it's really important to understand this kinda idea that we need to feel the fear and do it anyways. Resilience doesn't feel good when you're being resilient. When you have to be resilient, when you have to be strong, it's not gonna be a great feeling, and that's okay. Building resilience, voluntarily doing difficult things may not be a good feeling, but that's okay, because we're not here to live a life without suffering. We're here to see our own potential and see how much we can endure. And again, it's not about putting yourselves in uncomfortable and dangerous situations. It's about realizing that life is chaotic, life is random, most of it is out of our control. Let's stop tensing ourselves by trying to hold on to everything. Let the chips fall where they may, and trust ourselves that we can handle whatever is coming our way. Everybody is a social butterfly, and maybe you're just in the wrong garden.

Jay Shetty 14:29 Mm.

Humble the Poet 14:30 And I think that's really important versus the self-identifying of, "I'm socially anxious." It's like, or you're just in the room with the wrong people. Boundaries at the end of the day are saying, "I care about you so much that I wanna improve our dynamic." Teaching people say, "Listen, this is how I expect to be treated. I'm not telling you what to do, but if I'm not treated this way, I probably won't be around here." You can't guilt a caterpillar into becoming a butterfly.

Jay Shetty 14:56 Mm.

Humble the Poet 14:57 Really what it is, is people pleasing. It's wanting people to like us at the expense of us ever actually experiencing

Humble the Poet 15:04 any real love.

Jay Shetty 15:05 Do you want healthy, great looking skin without spending a ton of time on it? If you answered yes, and let's be honest, who wouldn't? Dove Men+Care body and face scrub is your ultimate hack for effortless skincare. When I say hack, I mean it. This scrub does it all: exfoliates, cleanses, and moisturizes all in one simple step. No extra steps, no hassle, just better looking skin made easy. Plus, it's made with natural essential oils. It's vegan and free from parabens and sulfates. Designed specifically for men's skin, so it does exactly what you need it to. The best part? It's easy. Your skin will look better, feel better, and it won't take up more than a moment of your day. Just hack your grooming routine and add the Dove Men+Care scrub into your shower. I remember for years I'd given talks about how failures are stepping stones to success-

Humble the Poet 15:56 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm

Jay Shetty 15:56 ... and how, like, you gotta feel the fear and do it anyway. And then I remember when I went through some real stuff-

Humble the Poet 16:03 Yeah

Jay Shetty 16:04 ... and I was like, "Oh." And at the same time, I remember that I'd been through, like you just said, real stuff when I was younger, and I never gave myself credit for it because I just assumed that that's what life was.

Humble the Poet 16:19 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 16:19 I didn't realize how much hardship I'd been through in my early years because to me it was just normal.

Humble the Poet 16:24 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 16:24 And I think that's true for a lot of people.

Humble the Poet 16:26 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 16:26 And then there's the other side of it where it's like I may talk about these ideas, I may hear them, but then life's gonna throw a challenge at me where I actually have to apply what I've learned.

Humble the Poet 16:35 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 16:36 And you say something in the book where you say home is where the anxiety starts.

Humble the Poet 16:40 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 16:41 I think a lot of us feel that. We felt the anxiety of our parents. We felt the anxiety of our siblings. We felt the anxiety of the extended family, and we kind of just ingested all of it.

Humble the Poet 16:52 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 16:52 And then it's only decades later that you kind of even realize that you might be sitting at, like, a dinner table at a holiday dinner at your parents' house, or you're sitting around with your family and you go, "Wait a minute, everyone here is carrying anxiety," and you can actually see it.

Humble the Poet 17:07 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 17:08 But then you realize you've kept onto it for decades.

Humble the Poet 17:10 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 17:10 What do you do when you feel like you've been carrying the baggage of anxiety that you picked up when you were a kid and you haven't unpacked for 20 years?

Humble the Poet 17:18 I think the first thing is be super, super nice to yourself. You know? Imagine eight-year-old you is dealing with these complex adults with their emotions, and they grew up at a time where emotional intelligence and being able to communicate an emotion wasn't a thing. So your coping mechanisms and your survival mechanisms, your, your mental health tried its best to adapt the best it could with your limited eight-year-old, nine-year-old brain. And then those coping mechanisms became habits. And then

Humble the Poet 17:46 as adults, we continued those coping mechanisms even though we have access to more helpful ones. And instead of s- looking back and being like, "Well, I- I'm a product of all this trauma," or, "I'm a product of I made all these poor choices and now I'm stuck in this habit loop," just be like, "Look, my mental health has always been on my team. It's always been helping me. Now we just need to upgrade it." With family, I, I do view them as the ultimate boss in this world of anxiety 'cause it's like they can push our buttons 'cause they installed the buttons.

Jay Shetty 18:12 [laughs]

Humble the Poet 18:13 Right?

Jay Shetty 18:13 Yeah, I love that point.

Humble the Poet 18:15 And there's that, and I always think about even in, in my household where it's like I have a lot-- I get along with my family great. Just stepping into my childhood home brings up anxious feelings.

Jay Shetty 18:24 Oh, I can relate.

Humble the Poet 18:25 It br- it reminds you of versions of yourself that you don't wanna remember. And I think the, the idea that really helped me realize this was like, if you learn the lesson, you won't be afraid of the test.

Jay Shetty 18:37 Mm.

Humble the Poet 18:38 So I think what ends up happening is when we have these feelings, again, these are signals. It's like the smoke detector going off. Instead of pulling out the battery, ripping the smoke detector off the ceiling, putting a piece of tape over the light, let's look for the smoke, you know? So when we're at home and these, these anxious feelings start coming up, this is an opportunity for us to start exploring and figuring out what it is. And it's simple as feeling the feelings, you know? And maybe in the moment it may not be the best time for you, so do what- do whatever you do to soothe. You know, if it's-- If you gotta go and look at your phone, please, do what you gotta do. Look at your phone. If you gotta go distract yourself, if you gotta medicate, you gotta go have a cigarette, whatever you normally do, cool. But the next day, when you're well-rested, you've had a glass of water, you're hydrated, you know, you haven't read a bad text message, a bad email yet, you're in a good place, voluntarily go back into that. Maybe pull out a journal and be like, "What is it about my family situation that's there?" And now you're in a good place to peel back these layers and voluntarily lean into a trigger.

Jay Shetty 19:35 Mm.

Humble the Poet 19:36 And once we lean into it, that's the way it's actually going to heal. And then once it heals, we'll have room for something new to come. It's never gonna be, "I've healed, and I live happily ever after." We're not-- We don't live this linear life. It's a cycle. And as you said, like you thought you can handle stuff until something new came. That's not a failing on your part.

Jay Shetty 19:53 Mm.

Humble the Poet 19:53 That's the next level for you to build that strength. And then as you, as you come out of that, which I've definitely seen you have, and you've come out much more wise, much more strong, much more compassionate, much more kind to yourself and other people, now something new may come. A new curveball may come. And as you continue practicing your swing, you'll be able to handle that as well. And that's what I believe our mental health should be. It should be this confidence that, hey, it will be hard, but I'm not afraid of hard. Having a hard day does not mean I've, I've experienced trauma. Having a person that is difficult to be with doesn't instantly make them toxic. You know, we've, we've got to this point where mental health awareness has increased, but we may have swung the pendulum a little too far, where now we've created identities out of these things.

Jay Shetty 20:34 Mm.

Humble the Poet 20:34 Let's not create an identity. It's okay. Things are going to be challenging, and let's train and trust ourselves to handle it, and that's only gonna come through practice.

Jay Shetty 20:43 So in England, I remember when I was at school, we'd have fire drills, right? And even here you have a fire drill. And it's like that fire drill may or may never come, like the real thing may or may never come-

Humble the Poet 20:55 Yeah

Jay Shetty 20:55 ... but you're prepared.

Humble the Poet 20:56 Yes.

Jay Shetty 20:57 And now you know that even in the face of a fire drill, you know what to do. You know where the exit is. You know what to take, what not to take.

Humble the Poet 21:03 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 21:04 You know where to line up outside school, whatever it may be. And I think that's what it is for life. It's almost like you can't fire drill everything 'cause that's where anxiety comes from too. 'Cause you're like, "I'm gonna prepare for everything possibly bad that could happen," and that could be an unlimited list.

Humble the Poet 21:18 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 21:19 But at the same time, it's having the confidence that I've built the skills to know I can deal with certain things. And by the way, there will be curveballs that I don't have a clue with. I wanna go back to what you said about family. What do you do when the family that, as you said, installed the buttons, when they push them, what do you do?

Humble the Poet 21:38 I think immediately, in terms of managing them, you know, before we worry about growing through it, the magic word is gonna be boundaries. And I think what's important is we define boundaries in a way that matters. Boundaries is teaching people how to be with you, and your boundaries can be universal. For example, I can have a boundary. "Listen, if you are gonna remind me of my age and that I haven't gotten married and had any kids yet, and that, you know, I'm not living out my purpose in life, then obviously I'm not gonna call as much, Mom," you know? But if anybody else does that, it's gonna be the exact same thing. It's teaching people say, "Listen, this is how I expect to be treated. I'm not telling you what to do, but if I'm not treated this way, I probably won't be around here. And this is what my bound-- I'm setting a standard, and I'm really teaching you how to be around me." And I think boundaries at the end of the day is saying, "I care about you so much that I wanna improve our dynamic." And I think that's a really important thing when it comes to family because that's the hardest place to set up boundaries 'cause everybody is so used to it. And I'll be completely honest,

Humble the Poet 22:41 when somebody has hit me with boundaries, it was uncomfortable for me. You're so used to things being a certain way, sudden change for anybody is not gonna be comfortable. And we have to approach this with a lot of grace, grace for ourselves and grace for other people. So I think boundaries is generally the first place, and then also having context and just being like, "Look, they really did try their best." When I worked with a therapist, they were always reminding me, "Listen, your parents were in survival mode. They may not have been the most emotionally nurturing, but they were trying to put food on the table. They were trying to make sure you were good, you were safe." And they're like, "That's what they were doing. That's all the tools that they had." And I think it's really important 'cause what I realized, especially in the last year, is the kinder and more gracious I am to myself, the kinder and more gracious I can be to other people, and vice versa. The, the more I put in effort to be more understanding and kinder to other people, the more effort I can put to be kinder and more gracious to myself, and that's removing judgment, which takes us back to courage through curiosity.

Jay Shetty 23:39 And that's the thing, that even when you set boundaries, that person's still gonna break your boundary.

Humble the Poet 23:45 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 23:45 If you set the boundary, which I, I'm just gonna use yours as an example. If you talk to me about getting married and having kids and all this traditional way of living-

Humble the Poet 23:53 Mm-hmm

Jay Shetty 23:54 ... I'm gonna talk to you less. You may find that even when you make an effort to talk to that person, they still bring it up.

Humble the Poet 24:00 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 24:00 You may find whenever they get an opportunity, they message you about it.

Humble the Poet 24:03 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 24:04 So they're gonna do that anyway.

Humble the Poet 24:05 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 24:06 I think the challenge people have is they feel guilty for not loving their family, not being seen as a good person Maybe they even feel guilty for not delivering on the promise that their, or the expectation that their parents had.

Humble the Poet 24:19 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 24:20 And then that guilt and shame, which you call, like, anxiety's BFFs-

Humble the Poet 24:23 Yeah

Jay Shetty 24:23 ... like, it's really weird because you're, like, now going, you're breaking your boundary-

Humble the Poet 24:28 Yeah

Jay Shetty 24:28 ... to make yourself feel better-

Humble the Poet 24:30 Yeah

Jay Shetty 24:30 ... for how you take care of that person or because you just love them.

Humble the Poet 24:33 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 24:33 But now you're breaking it, but then they upset you again. So it gets really messy. Like, how do we, how do we really define it in a way that we go, "Yes, that makes sense. Now I know why I'm gonna keep it that way"?

Humble the Poet 24:44 Absolutely. I think it's not even guilt. I think I've realized over time it's people-pleasing.

Jay Shetty 24:48 Mm.

Humble the Poet 24:49 It's abandoning ourselves for somebody else. I think true guilt is when we abandon who we are based on our own values. You know, let's say you were having a bad day and you spoke to somebody that you cared about in a way that you don't normally do, and then a little bit of time goes by. You're like, "I really wish I didn't do that."

Jay Shetty 25:10 And that's guilt.

Humble the Poet 25:11 That's, that, that, to me, that's authentic guilt.

Jay Shetty 25:13 That's a great definition.

Humble the Poet 25:14 That's, that's betraying who you authentically are. Now the idea of like, "Oh, well, I'm speaking to Jay and he keeps bringing up these things I don't want to talk about, but I really don't want to let him down and I don't want to make him upset 'cause he doesn't hear from me anymore," that's me trying to absorb your pain. That's me thinking, 'cause, a- and a lot of us do that in childhood. We absorb other people's pain 'cause we don't believe in their resilience either. Like, "Well, I can handle it. I'll handle their pain. I don't want to make my mom upset. I can handle her pain." I'm robbing you of the resilience that's gonna come from you dealing with that challenge, and I'm betraying myself, increasing

Humble the Poet 25:47 my own anxious feelings. And so I think what we really need to do, and, and, and I have a quote in the book, you, "You can't guilt a caterpillar into becoming a butterfly."

Jay Shetty 25:55 Mm.

Humble the Poet 25:55 You know, we can't speed any of this up. So I really think sometimes when we use this word guilt, it really goes around us romanticizing some of these things, but really what it is is people-pleasing. It's wanting people to like us at the expense of us ever actually experiencing any real love. Establishing boundaries and then honoring your own boundaries, that's being your best friend. That's protecting yourself to a level. And as I said, this is just the beginning to manage it. At the end of the day, the, the secret here isn't to avoid these people. It's to open a dialogue, open more vulnerability, build the connection, figure out where they're coming from, and strengthen the relationship accordingly. It's not, we don't want to get to this point where anybody who presents any type of struggle or challenge for us, we just continually cut them off from our lives. And 'cause this is just us rearranging our life to make it easier. No, we gotta lean into the challenges. But just immediately the boundaries gotta be the first step.

Jay Shetty 26:46 That's a great redefinition. Like, that understanding, I don't think I've ever heard anyone say that before about that difference between authentic guilt and people-pleasing.

Humble the Poet 26:54 Mm.

Jay Shetty 26:55 Because you're so right. That, that resonated completely. That idea that if I was, if I was rude to someone, I would think about that the whole day because I'd be upset 'cause I know that's not who I am is very different to like, "Oh, I wanna make sure that that person likes me again."

Humble the Poet 27:10 Absolutely. Absolutely.

Jay Shetty 27:10 And that I hope that they... Yeah, it's such a, such a great redefinition. And one of the biggest places, we feel it at home, as you say, but we also feel it with our friends.

Humble the Poet 27:20 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 27:20 And you talk about how anxious friends equals anxious you. The challenge today is a lot of our friends are anxious.

Humble the Poet 27:27 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 27:28 If we get rid of all of our fr- anxious friends-

Humble the Poet 27:30 Yeah

Jay Shetty 27:30 ... we may not have any friends left.

Humble the Poet 27:32 Absolutely.

Jay Shetty 27:33 So what do we do? Because I feel like also all of our friends have different anxieties.

Humble the Poet 27:38 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 27:38 Someone's anxious about their career, someone's anxious about their relationship, someone anxious about their appearance, someone's anxious about this. How do you deal with an anxious friend?

Humble the Poet 27:47 When we start talking about the de- the specifics of like, um, I have anxious feelings around my job, anxious feelings around my appearance, what we're still saying is, you know, it's anxiety around things out of our control, anxious feelings about things that remind us of previous danger, uh, anxious feelings about things that feel unfamiliar, and I think these become the headings that we can connect on. If I'm vulnerable with you and I share a vulnerable story, I'm generally gonna be nervous about it 'cause I'm, I'm, I'm afraid that you're going to judge me, and I'm sure your listeners have been in that situation, but the vast majority of the time that we're vulnerable with somebody, we're inviting them to be vulnerable with us. In the book, I talk about this idea of my friend in Berlin inviting me to a, uh, spa, and I was excited to go to this spa, and I ha- I'd hurt my shoulder dragging a, uh, a broken

Humble the Poet 28:34 suitcase. And we're on, we're on the way to the spa, and he goes, "I love how open-minded you are." And I was like, "Why are you thanking me for being open-minded?" And then I realized he mixed up the word spa with sauna, and we are going to an all-nude sauna.

Jay Shetty 28:45 [laughs]

Humble the Poet 28:47 And I'm about to see, and h- this is the, the longest friendship I've ever had. I've, I've been his friend since we were three. So I'm about to see him naked and a whole bunch of other people naked in, in Berlin, and the voices... And I realized I wasn't afraid of being naked. I was afraid of being judged, and afraid of standing out, afraid of not understanding a custom, how, how this was gonna work. I mean, I'm in a different continent. And the first thing, you know, that helped was admitting to him, 'cause he had just propped me up saying, "You're so open-minded. I love that you're willing to do this." I didn't wanna let him down. My people-pleasing started to come up. But I'm like, "Look, now that you've clarified what this is, like, and this is not just a, a candlelight massage, I'm very nervous." And his response was, "I'm nervous, too." And, and we, we strengthened the connection.

Jay Shetty 29:29 Yeah.

Humble the Poet 29:30 And it wasn't the easiest experience, but we got through it.

Jay Shetty 29:32 [laughs]

Humble the Poet 29:32 And it was a funny story. And you gotta realize every thing that makes us interesting is a challenge that we've made ourselves go through. And I think the first step, again, and I'm always gonna say this is the first step, it's not the absolute solution, is going to be sharing your anxious feelings in a way that you don't wanna identify with them. I'm encouraging people, and, and I got this from Mel Robbins, don't say, "I'm anxious." Say, "I feel anxious because..." And that allows you to be a human having an emotion and trying your best to figure out why. "I feel anxious because I'm about to be naked in front of you and a whole bunch of other people in this country, and I don't, and I don't know if people are gonna judge me or what have you." And I think that- Invites connection. And if you get, and someone else will be like, "Well, I feel anxious because I don't know if I have job security." And now we can talk about it, and once we start revealing it, that's really the first step to healing. You know? Jay-Z said it. He goes, "You can't heal what you don't reveal." And we all know there's a value to this because every single person has felt super stressed in their brain about how much things they have to do, and then they write down a to-do list, and it's like three things. And they're like, "Why did that feel so heavy in my brain?"

Jay Shetty 30:42 Mm.

Humble the Poet 30:43 It's just getting it out is important. And we are, again, in a society that structures a lot of individualism, a lot of isolation. We need community. It's not, as, as I said, it's not about cutting off your friends who feel anxious.

Jay Shetty 30:56 Yeah. [laughs]

Humble the Poet 30:57 Everybody feels anxious. And we probably shouldn't label them as our anxious friends. However, if they decide to cling onto the identity, and they're more interested in proving how hard life is versus looking at it as an opportunity to improve from it, then that definitely is a friendship worth reevaluating.

Jay Shetty 31:14 Explain how this friend did not know the difference between a spa and a nude sauna. [laughs]

Humble the Poet 31:20 I believe-

Jay Shetty 31:20 'Cause that's-

Humble the Poet 31:22 It was, I hon-

Jay Shetty 31:22 This friend sounds very, um, peculiar. Yeah

Humble the Poet 31:23 You know what? It's, yeah, he, I honestly believe he had lived in Germany for eight years at that point, born and raised in Canada across the street from me.

Jay Shetty 31:30 [laughs]

Humble the Poet 31:31 Uh, he's of Jamaican descent, and he had gotten married, and they both moved to Berlin together, and I guess maybe eight years of him not speaking English every day.

Jay Shetty 31:39 [laughs]

Humble the Poet 31:39 But it was most definitely, I, I remember it vividly. I'd taken one of my parents' suitcases back then, 'cause this is when I just started traveling, and, you know, my parents bought a s- you know, like six pieces for, like 30 bucks. Like-

Jay Shetty 31:51 Yeah

Humble the Poet 31:51 ... cheap, don't buy cheap luggage. There's a reason. And the wheel broke off, and I was in London, and I was dragging it up the stairs from the tube. And I had pulled a muscle in my shoulder, and I was so excited for a massage. And he said, I remember, he's like, "Yeah, we're gonna go to the spa. It's gonna be great." It was definitely him not speaking enough English for eight years.

Jay Shetty 32:09 [laughs]

Humble the Poet 32:09 And it totally, and it ended up becoming a situation where, you know, now it's a great story, but all the emotions were there. And it didn't get easier the moment I was there. The longer I stayed there, the more my body was able to trust.

Jay Shetty 32:22 Yeah, yeah.

Humble the Poet 32:22 "Okay, this is a thing." Again, and this is

Humble the Poet 32:24 the big thing. Our brains will understand this immediately. Our bodies have to catch up, and the way to reinforce it with our bodies is through practice. We have to practice this. We can't just hear an inspirational quote once and be like, "All right, I figured it out."

Jay Shetty 32:37 Yeah.

Humble the Poet 32:37 We have to practice.

Jay Shetty 32:38 So you're encouraging everyone goes to a nude spa. [laughs]

Humble the Poet 32:40 Definitely. You go, go to, yeah, go, go to a naked spa. But definitely, yeah, do, do the things where you're like-

Jay Shetty 32:46 Yeah

Humble the Poet 32:46 ... "I can't do this."

Jay Shetty 32:46 Yeah.

Humble the Poet 32:46 When you voluntarily do something that you think I can't do-

Jay Shetty 32:49 It's the same as sitting in the cold, which you did. I mean-

Humble the Poet 32:51 Sitting in the cold, definitely-

Jay Shetty 32:52 Yeah

Humble the Poet 32:52 ... one of those things. And, and even that, I, what I've realized too is, like, you know, got to go to Poland, got to train in the cold, uh, you know, at the invite of Lewis Howes. And, and the irony of that was, like, you know, sitting with Mike Posner in the ice for 10 minutes, freestyle rapping, feeling like I'm the most resilient person ever. Fast-forward six months ago, I am in a sauna with, uh, Lewis, and we're just chatting. He goes, "You wanna take a dip in the pool?" So this is October in LA, and I went in the pool, and I couldn't stay in for 10 seconds-

Jay Shetty 33:20 [laughs]

Humble the Poet 33:21 ... 'cause I didn't keep practicing.

Jay Shetty 33:22 Yeah.

Humble the Poet 33:23 There's a value to the practice, but if you don't keep practicing, and in terms of having self-compassion, that's okay.

Jay Shetty 33:28 Yeah.

Humble the Poet 33:29 I used to be able to sit in the ice for 10 minutes. Now I can't take a cold shower for three seconds, but I can get back there through practice. My dial just went back the other way.

Jay Shetty 33:37 Yeah.

Humble the Poet 33:37 And I think that's really important. We have seasons, seasons where we can be more resilient and build more resilience, and then we have seasons where it's like, "Nah, I'm just in survival mode. I can just do the bare minimum." And I think that's absolutely okay. We-

Jay Shetty 33:48 I agree.

Humble the Poet 33:48 Yeah, we create so much extra tension with these expectations we have of ourselves, and it doesn't help.

Jay Shetty 33:53 Especially when you lock in a new habit. Then when it breaks, you're just beating yourself up about not having that habit.

Humble the Poet 33:59 Absolutely.

Jay Shetty 33:59 So, like, I've been working out consistently this year, probably, like, four or five times a week, and I feel great. And then last week I was on the road, and I could- I genuinely just couldn't work out. I was in a different city every day. I was barely in the hotel. I would've been having to work out, like, 10:00 PM or something, and I prioritize my sleep over my workout. And there was a part of me that was just beating myself up, going, "Oh man, you just missed four days that you didn't work out." Like, "Oh man, you know, you haven't got the discipline," whatever it is. That doesn't make you wanna get back on it.

Humble the Poet 34:29 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 34:29 That just makes you feel worse.

Humble the Poet 34:30 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 34:31 Whereas then I gave myself grace by the end of it, and I was like, "Look, you know what? I needed some time off." I also slept really well. I also didn't get sick 'cause I wasn't pushing myself. And by the way, I'm really excited to get back to working out this week when I'm home-

Humble the Poet 34:42 Mm-hmm

Jay Shetty 34:43 ... because I've had a bit of a break, and my body needed it while I was traveling. And all of a sudden you're refreshed. And so there's so much truth in the fact that guilt blocks growth.

Humble the Poet 34:52 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 34:53 You don't guilt yourself into becoming better. It doesn't work that way.

Humble the Poet 34:57 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 34:57 You encourage yourself, or you gotta talk to yourself. I think they've done studies where they looked at how teachers talk to students, and you used to be a teacher.

Humble the Poet 35:04 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 35:04 Teachers who just told their students that they weren't smart or they didn't figure it out, that never made a student better.

Humble the Poet 35:09 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 35:10 Student who believed that their teacher believed in them-

Humble the Poet 35:13 Yep

Jay Shetty 35:13 ... made a huge difference to their result and their psychology.

Humble the Poet 35:16 Absolutely. The, the big lesson that we were taught when speaking with children was address the behavior, not the student.

Jay Shetty 35:21 Mm.

Humble the Poet 35:21 So if a student was doing something that they shouldn't be doing, you'd be like, "Hey, that choice, I'm not a fan of that choice. Can we, can we, can we crumple up that choice and throw it in the garbage? You, you're a great person, but I can't see how great you are when you make that choice."

Jay Shetty 35:36 Yes.

Humble the Poet 35:36 And I realized is when we speak to ourselves, we're still speaking to a little eight-year-old inside of us. There's an inner child there that needs to be spoken with love and grace. And it's not coddling. It's actually realizing that we have to be our own best friend. We have to be our own biggest advocate, and view it through the lens of is it helpful? Are we, is it really helpful, especially for folks who are, like, self-employed or trying to do things, is it helpful to, to

Humble the Poet 35:59 continually guilt yourself to do stuff? Do you get better results that way? Is it taking you where you wanna go? Or can we have the conversation of like, "Hey, okay, you know what? You were making a lot of progress working out. You know, you were seeing great things happen, and now all of a sudden you gotta go on tour. And now it may be eating room service, and it may be sleeping in different time zones, and that's okay. That's what this requires. And then we'll get back to the other stuff."

Jay Shetty 36:23 Yeah.

Humble the Poet 36:23 "And that's totally good." And for me it's always like, "Hey, maybe one more game of FIFA before we start." And then for me, the big one was like, "Hey, let's go back in our history." You've been, you've been Humble The Poet, self-employed for about 15 years now. Have you ever played too many video games and messed up? Did you ever mess up a deadline? Did you ever mess up an opportunity because you played too many video games? No? Let's trust us.

Jay Shetty 36:45 Mm.

Humble the Poet 36:45 Let's trust ourselves. Go back into your own history and let that be the support and to speak to these words, 'cause a lot of these voices are not ours. They sound like us. They were ghostwritten by other people. These-

Jay Shetty 36:57 [laughs]

Humble the Poet 36:57 ... these criticisms were somebody else, and they just sound like they're our voice, and we give them value. We don't have to believe everything we think, because those thoughts are often there just to keep us in stasis. It's like, well, we're gonna try to scare you, guilt you to stay where you are, 'cause if you try something new, we consider something new dangerous.

Jay Shetty 37:13 Yeah.

Humble the Poet 37:13 And it's not.

Jay Shetty 37:14 It leads nicely onto the next thing I wanted to pick out, which you said, "Don't should all over yourself."

Humble the Poet 37:19 Yes.

Jay Shetty 37:20 So I should be more productive. I should be happier. I should have this figured out by now. I should work out five days a week-

Humble the Poet 37:27 Yeah

Jay Shetty 37:27 ... even when I'm traveling. I should never make mistakes. I should be in a relationship by now. I think we have so many shoulds-

Humble the Poet 37:35 Yes

Jay Shetty 37:35 ... and a should, as you clearly say, doesn't create a shift. None of us do more when we think we should do something. And you know what? Don't you feel this way, that we all know what we need to do? Like, even when I'm giving a keynote, when I'm recording a podcast, in my head I'm thinking, "Everyone already knows what they need to do."

Humble the Poet 37:53 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 37:53 Most people.

Humble the Poet 37:53 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 37:54 Unless you... something specific like I'm trying to figure out how to build a business-

Humble the Poet 37:57 Yeah

Jay Shetty 37:57 ... and I need to, I don't, I may not know.

Humble the Poet 37:59 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 37:59 But so most of us know what we need to change in our life. Like, we're actually quite aware of it.

Humble the Poet 38:03 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 38:04 What is the block from I know to I am, and in the middle it's like the should is what ruins it almost?

Humble the Poet 38:14 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 38:14 Right? We keep saying I should work out four times a week-

Humble the Poet 38:17 Yeah

Jay Shetty 38:17 ... 'cause we know we should.

Humble the Poet 38:18 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 38:19 But then why is the should the block?

Humble the Poet 38:21 I think the should is the language of perfectionism, and, you know, it's the idea that everything needs to be perfect because we're afraid. And one thing that we do to try to counter this fear is have control. So should becomes the language of perfectionism. Perfectionism gives us the illusion of control, but the reality is perfectionism isn't about making things better. It's about finding flaws easier. So we, what we start to do is constantly look for flaws, and that way that keeps us from having to do stuff, right? So a lot of this, the same way I'm saying curiosity is courage in disguise, a lot of this is fear in disguise.

Jay Shetty 38:55 Mm.

Humble the Poet 38:56 You know? What it really, what we're really just addressing is the fact that we're scared. And here's the thing. It's okay to be scared, and what I would encourage anyone to look at is, like, maybe the step you're trying to take is just too big, and maybe we've gotta break it down into something a little bit more manageable, into baby steps. And if those baby steps feel

Humble the Poet 39:14 too big, let's do micro baby steps. Then let's do micro baby tiptoes. Let's keep going smaller and smaller until that next step feels manageable. Because the only thing we have to do is know what that next step is and try it. And I think this goes back to having grace for ourselves, and this is why we overthink. Again, this goes back to this idea that we're so afraid that we're gonna trick ourselves to think that we're solving a problem by constantly running it on a treadmill and going through a loop, and now we're just inventing new problems to solve them, and all of that results in nothing. When it comes to anxious feelings, you can't think your way out of them. You have to act your way out of them. You know? There's, there is something brilliant about Nike saying just do it. It really is just do it. It, it really is feel the fear and do it anyways. And again, these are catchy lines that we've heard a million times. Our body isn't gonna immediately accept them. We have to start small and practice that every day.

Jay Shetty 40:05 Yeah.

Humble the Poet 40:05 And say, "You know, for five minutes I am gonna just do it." I do jujitsu, and it was really interesting 'cause this actually helped, and probably because I was in a physical situation. I'm rolling with somebody who has many more years ahead of me, and we're rolling, and in the middle of the roll he goes, "You're thinking too much. It's okay. We all make mistakes."

Jay Shetty 40:23 [laughs]

Humble the Poet 40:24 And instantly it was like, okay. Stop strategizing. Just trust whatever I'm doing, knowing that I don't have a chance against this guy regardless. But what he was, he was addressing was the pauses and the avoidance that I was doing in real time. And now when I'm sending a text message, sending an email, making a request, I keep hearing his voice. It's like, "Stop thinking so much. We all are going to make mistakes." The fear is the mistake.

Jay Shetty 40:50 Mm.

Humble the Poet 40:51 I might use, I might say the wrong thing if I ask Jay for this favor. Uh, let me reread it and proofread it 45 times. Let me run it through ChatGPT. Let me do all of these things. And it's like, but what we're just doing is ruminating to avoid the discomfort. And what we're really saying is, "This is hard. I don't wanna do it," and that's okay.

Jay Shetty 41:08 Mm.

Humble the Poet 41:08 This is hard. I don't wanna do it. That is a normal human feeling. But we have to go through that in order for us to grow. We'll start by being kind to ourselves and be like, "It is hard. Let's take a break, but let's address it." And sometimes it might be like, "Hey, we'll do it first thing in the morning when we're the most fresh." That concept swallow the frog. We'll do that now. Or it could be like, "Hey, maybe this is too big of a step. Maybe today step one is this." And that really... And, and it is a reflection. It'll go back to the people that we're around. If we're around people that we can share this stuff with and they speak to us with that same level of grace, which is like, "No, like, you did a lot today. It really matters." And I remember this in the beginning of my career. I came up with Lilly Singh, you know, who, who we both know, and as you know, one of the hardest workers I've ever seen.

Jay Shetty 41:54 100%.

Humble the Poet 41:55 100%, and it really signaled to me how hard I needed to work, and it was always this idea that if I wasn't working hard enough, she may think less of me. And then fast-forward during the pandemic, I remember us having a call, and she's like, "Look, like, your, your only job right now is, like, stay healthy and stay in a good place. Don't try to be productive." We've been signaled that we need to be productive all the time. We- there's honor in suffering. There's honor in burning out. It's a badge of honor. And it's like, it's not a badge of honor. It's a warning sign, that we're abandoning ourselves by doing too much, especially in the society that we live in where there isn't, the word enough doesn't exist when it comes to our productivity. So it is really important to, to surround yourself around people who are doing the same work, can have the same language, even if you're the first person to start these conversations. When you're kinder to someone else, it'll encourage them to be kinder to you as well.

Jay Shetty 42:47 Yeah, and I think it's hard because- I'll give an example. Like, I landed at Sunday, I would have gotten to bed by like 1:00 AM.

Humble the Poet 42:55 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 42:56 And I knew I had a workout at 8:00 AM in the morning scheduled, and everything about me was like, I've been on the road, I'm tired, I've been working. It's all work. I-

Humble the Poet 43:06 Yeah

Jay Shetty 43:06 ... gave four keynotes in four days, podcasts. But what was really interesting is that I'm at a place in my life where I've actually realized that waking up and working out actually sets me up to have more energy throughout the day. So now I'm fully convinced. Now, if this was literally three or four years ago, I would have said, "No, I need to have grace on myself."

Humble the Poet 43:25 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 43:26 "I'm gonna let myself lie in. I'm not gonna work out. Maybe I won't even work out for two, three days 'cause I deserve a break." The thing is, that actually didn't make me stronger or more resilient.

Humble the Poet 43:36 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 43:37 It actually made me more sluggish. It actually slowed me down.

Humble the Poet 43:40 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 43:41 So sometimes grace is actually choosing something that's good for you, even if it doesn't feel good.

Humble the Poet 43:47 Absolutely.

Jay Shetty 43:48 Right?

Humble the Poet 43:48 As I said, it's not coddling.

Jay Shetty 43:49 Exactly, yeah.

Humble the Poet 43:50 It can be like, "Hey, you don't, you, you don't wanna go to the gym today? You don't wanna work out with the trainer? Let's just go for five minutes, and if you don't like it, you can go home."

Jay Shetty 43:57 Yeah.

Humble the Poet 43:57 And then once you

Humble the Poet 43:58 get in, you know-

Jay Shetty 43:59 You're locked in. Yeah

Humble the Poet 43:59 ... it's, it's gonna continue. Yeah. And I'm, I'm definitely like that, where it's, you know, I'm, I'm doing all the mental gymnastics to be like, "Oh, I ate and it's only been 43 minutes. I can't go to juj- I might throw up on somebody. I can't..." You're making all these excuses, and then the, the graceful voice is like, "Hey, just show up. Try it out for a couple of minutes. If you don't feel good, sit against the wall. We see people doing it all the time." And the truth is, and then I go back to my history, you have always not wanted to go. You have never regretted going.

Jay Shetty 44:26 Yes, exactly.

Humble the Poet 44:27 Even when I've gotten hurt, I didn't regret going, and I think that's the really important thing when, when it comes to this grace. We're not coddling ourselves. We're being our best friend, and we're, and we're encouraging ourselves to do it. And you're absolutely right, and this is how I, I would like us to view mental health the same way. Let's train it. Let's constantly pick things that are dif- the same way you're lifting a heavy weight to tear your muscles and then have them heal to grow bigger, let's continually put ourselves in challenging situations, whether it's a cold shower, whether it's holding a yoga pose, whether it's doing, you know, calf raises until you fe- feeling the burn. Any type of movement, any type of challenge where your mind is like, "I can't do anymore." You're like, "Hey, let's just try to stay in a little bit longer." Let's do these things because this will help build resilience. And it, and it's one of the things in addition to creating connection, in, in addition to practicing, that we do. And we realize, like, I don't wanna do it. Totally understand that you don't wanna do it, but try it and see how you feel afterwards. 'Cause just like working out, the harder the workout, the easier the day.

Jay Shetty 45:25 Yeah.

Humble the Poet 45:25 And let's apply that to our mental health. Let's treat our mental health like a muscle. The more we work it early, the easier the rest of the day will be.

Jay Shetty 45:33 I've always been saying that there's like, there's two types of people. One needs to do the easy thing first to build confidence and get to the hard challenge.

Humble the Poet 45:43 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 45:44 And there's other people that need to do the hard thing first. They need to throw themselves into the deep end in order to build confidence.

Humble the Poet 45:50 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 45:51 And it's really important to know which one you are.

Humble the Poet 45:53 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 45:53 Because some people, if you are someone who needs to do the hard thing first and you keep trying to build up confidence through small things, you'll actually never, ever get to the hard thing, or you'll feel like, you'll take on a challenge that isn't big enough.

Humble the Poet 46:06 Yes.

Jay Shetty 46:06 And if you're someone who's like, "Oh my God, I need baby steps," and now your friend over here is lifting, like, 10 times as much as you are, now you're pushing yourself, you won't do it either.

Humble the Poet 46:16 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 46:16 And that's why it's such a individual journey, but I find so much anxiety is around timelines.

Humble the Poet 46:23 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 46:24 It's all around comparison. And I was thinking about this. When you're at school, the one thing you don't have anxiety about as much is people being ahead of you or people having figured something out.

Humble the Poet 46:38 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 46:39 Because everyone goes from seventh grade to eighth grade to ninth grade. All of a sudden when you graduate, now someone's getting promoted first and someone's getting promoted last. Someone's getting engaged first, and someone's getting engaged last. Someone got the beautiful new apartment, and someone is still living with their parents.

Humble the Poet 46:57 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 46:57 All of a sudden now, there's this timeline effect where I'm now anxious because I'm not 30 and married and making six figures and whatever it may be, building a family. How do you deal with that existential anxiety? Because this anxiety is more than the anxiety of just, "I'm anxious about talking to these people. I'm anxious about this friend." This is like this existential anxiety that sometimes we just don't even wanna think about.

Humble the Poet 47:25 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 47:25 But it's in the back of our mind, "Crap, I'm 30 and I'm not married."

Humble the Poet 47:28 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 47:28 "I'm 40 and I don't have kids," right?

Humble the Poet 47:29 Yeah. I think the first thing most definitely, and, and I love how you talked about school and how that was our world, the classroom or maybe the size of the school was our world, and that made a lot of sense for maybe, you know, up until the last 20 years. Social media has expanded our world where now we are endlessly being exposed to people who are living lives completely different from us, and now we're comparing ourselves to that. And so when we hear the cliché line, "Comparison is the thief of joy," we're constantly stealing our joy by spending time on social media and comparing ourselves to people, and we're not even comparing ourselves to a real thing. We're comparing our behind-the-scenes to this highlight reel of what we put on social media. So the first thing I would say is reduce the amount of exposure you have to compare yourself to other people. I would definitely make efforts to reduce my social media consumption. That would make a huge thing. I think also the more we commit to understanding

Humble the Poet 48:21 who we are, the more we start to realize that we need to design and develop a life for ourselves. I think currently we're just trying to deal with life, and I think as we commit to a, a mental health journey and, and voluntarily doing challenging things, we start to develop life and we start to understand what matters to us. For you, for me, as we go through these different challenges, we're like, "Wait, this is, this is the shoe that fits me. This is the one that doesn't. Oh, I can afford the, the fancy sports car, but I realize that really isn't for me. But I definitely wanna make sure I have a great hot tub, or I wanna definitely make sure I have," uh, you know, I have a friend who just sold a company and I was like, "Oh, what are you gonna do?" He goes, "I'm gonna get my mom a personal trainer so she can open a jar until she's 90." And it's like, this is someone who knows his priorities. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 49:05 [laughs]

Humble the Poet 49:05 That's the first spend with the money.

Jay Shetty 49:07 Yeah.

Humble the Poet 49:07 And that only comes through self-awareness. Self-awareness comes through paying attention to yourself and collecting information. That's gonna come to when we have these anxious feelings. These are revealing things. You know, triggers are a roadmap. They're telling us where the work can be done. So we have to abandon these ideas that like, "Oh, trigger warning, I have to avoid my triggers. Oh, I have to constantly be in a safe space." That's just us rearranging life to never gain. And, and we're denying ourselves that self-awareness. So I really think self-awareness is going to be the first thing. So now... And again, this is not gonna make it all go away. I still get jealous when I see people on social media. I think the other thing we have to realize is envy helps us understand what authentically matters to us. Let's say for example, I, I watch, you know, I watch your show regularly. You got a couple of guests on. Then all of a sudden a certain guest comes on, and let's say Rick Rubin comes on, and I'm like, "Oh, I am so jealous. I wish I was in the room with Jay. I wish I knew this was happening. I wish I could've called Jay. I wish I could've stood in the corner when it happened." What that is doing is that's not a bad thing to experience. That's teaching me that, okay, something that Rick says matters to me, so I should go deeper into that because it's teaching me what's important. Versus if you have another guest on who I'm like, "Oh, that's cool, but I'm not really excited about that." So I think there's something there that I think is really important. And I think the other thing that's really important is realizing are we trying to catch up or are we trying to improve?

Jay Shetty 50:31 Mm-hmm.

Humble the Poet 50:31 Are we trying to keep up with other people? And I think very often in, in going back to our families, it really often isn't to... We're not doing things to keep our, make our family happy. We're doing things to keep them off our back.

Jay Shetty 50:42 [laughs]

Humble the Poet 50:42 Right? And I think there's, there's definitely this when it comes to like, you know, being out here, going to events, dressing up. All of this is like are we doing this to even stand out at the party, or are we doing this to make sure we don't feel irrelevant?

Jay Shetty 50:54 Yeah.

Humble the Poet 50:54 That we, we, we're falling behind. And I think paying attention to that will challenge us to go back to what are our unique values?

Jay Shetty 51:02 Mm.

Humble the Poet 51:02 What are the things that we actually care about? And the more we discover that, the more we can share that with people. And, and for me, that also brings me into the thought of the gap between fitting in and belonging.

Jay Shetty 51:14 Mm.

Humble the Poet 51:15 We create so much stress trying to fit in, and we have to wear masks to fit in, and that is definitely going to feed anxious feelings. Instead, if we have a better understanding of who we are, if we're constantly exploring this universe inside of us, we know who we are, and we can find people that we feel comfortable being around where we belong. There's a quote in the book that I say, "Everybody is a social butterfly, and maybe you're just in the wrong garden."

Jay Shetty 51:41 Mm.

Humble the Poet 51:42 And I think that's really important versus the self-identifying of, "I'm socially anxious." It's like, or you're just in the room with the wrong people.

Jay Shetty 51:49 That's so good.

Humble the Poet 51:50 You know? If you really enjoy Dungeons & Dragons, go in a room full of people who play that game. All of a sudden there won't be as much social anxiety as you may feel if you're in a room full of people who work in finance or full of, uh, Hollywood stars. And I think that's a really important thing is like go where you belong. Focus on where you authentically belong. And that requires a depth, 'cause it may not just be like, "Oh, well, I'm South Asian. I should be around South Asians." It's like, "No. Well, who am I?" You know? "I enjoy art. I should be around more folks who love art. I enjoy MMA. I should be around more folks that love MMA. I enjoy playing certain video games. I should be around people who play those games." It's, it's the deeper you understand yourself, the more you can share. And it's really important because we want to be seen, we want to be heard, but the only way we can authentically be seen and heard is if we show people who we authentically are. And you can't be yourself if you don't know yourself.

Jay Shetty 52:41 I love that. I mean, that is such a big one because I hear that so often.

Humble the Poet 52:46 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 52:46 And I think you're so right. Most people are going to events that they don't even wanna go to. They're hanging around people that they don't wanna hang around. And then we're wondering why we're socially anxious.

Humble the Poet 52:56 Yes.

Jay Shetty 52:56 And we also say, "That person's an introvert," or they feel like an introvert, and someone who knows them goes, "They're not an introvert."

Humble the Poet 53:03 Yeah. [laughs]

Jay Shetty 53:03 "They're really loud around their people."

Humble the Poet 53:05 Yeah, yeah.

Jay Shetty 53:05 Like that person is wild around their people.

Humble the Poet 53:07 Absolutely.

Jay Shetty 53:08 It's just right now they're not around their people.

Humble the Poet 53:10 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 53:10 And you have this beautiful quote in here. You say, "The only way people can accept the real you is if you show them the real you." And I think that's what it is is that sometimes we don't even know the people that are around us because if that's not their vibe, if that's not their crew of people, they're never showing the real them.

Humble the Poet 53:28 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 53:29 And I know that for me, even in a crowd full of people, I'll try and find the person who wants to have a deep spiritual conversation.

Humble the Poet 53:38 Mm.

Jay Shetty 53:38 The amount of time me and you-

Humble the Poet 53:39 Yeah

Jay Shetty 53:39 ... and Jeremy, our good friend-

Humble the Poet 53:41 Yes

Jay Shetty 53:41 ... end up together at parties, right? So when we're at a party and I know Humble and Jeremy are gonna be there, I know we're gonna find a little corner to have like a conversation, a discussion, a debate, a, a thought prov- Like that's what's gonna happen, and that's why I don't feel out of place at the party.

Humble the Poet 53:58 Yes, yes.

Jay Shetty 53:59 But if you expected me to just kind of have two-second conversations with lots of people and just hang around, that, that's not my, that's not how I like to spend my time.

Humble the Poet 54:06 Absolutely.

Jay Shetty 54:07 And I've got to look for... I can still be at a big party-

Humble the Poet 54:10 Mm-hmm

Jay Shetty 54:10 ... and look for my community.

Humble the Poet 54:13 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 54:13 And I think again, it goes back to what you're saying is knowing yourself where people just go, "Oh, no, I just don't like big parties." It's like, no, no, no, but there's a way

Jay Shetty 54:21 in every space, in every world. It's kind of like people who have judgments about New York or LA or London or whatever it is.

Humble the Poet 54:27 Mm-hmm.

Jay Shetty 54:27 Like we can have these broad strokes judgments. And it's like no, you can create what you want here. It does exist. It just depends on if it exists in the way you wanna create it and how it works for you. But let's not sit around here and go, "I'm just not gonna... It, it's not possible in this place."

Humble the Poet 54:42 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 54:43 'Cause that's like saying one day you're gonna get to the point where you go, [smacks lips] "There's just no one, no one's my type on Planet Earth."

Humble the Poet 54:47 Yes.

Jay Shetty 54:48 Right?

Humble the Poet 54:48 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 54:48 And it's like [laughs] that's not a healthy mindset to have.

Humble the Poet 54:51 Absolutely. And it goes back to that idea of judging again. We, we, we start to judge, which is a language of fear, and we start to limit. We're like, "Oh, no, I've, I've met three people at this party. This isn't my crowd." And also f- for folks listening who are thinking, "Well, what about, you know, I'm at work, or I have to wear a certain mask to, to survive those places?" I completely understand.

Jay Shetty 55:10 Right.

Humble the Poet 55:10 And the best way to counter that is when you're done with that, go to a place you belong. We all have to be in places, and we all have to play the game to fit in sometimes. It's not, you know, we have to survive, and that might be part of the game. But then to counteract that, to avoid burning out by doing that, go ahead and be in a situation where you belong. Be with your people. Be with your tribe. And again, it still starts internally by figuring out who you authentically are.

Jay Shetty 55:36 Well said. There's one quote that I picked out here just because I loved it. You said, "A broken heart is an open heart." And that said so much to me because I felt that if my heart's ever been broken, it's only led me to more compassion, more context. But I wanted to hear what-- why you were inspired to write, "A broken heart is an open heart."

Humble the Poet 56:00 I think for me specifically, it's, it's this idea that when, you know, the idea in your head doesn't match the idea in front of you. Like, our expectations of life don't match the reality. That's kind of when we-- what we define as unhappiness. And I think that's an opportunity to, A, you know, on a lower vibration, feel sorry for ourselves and, and, and reaffirm that life is so challenging, life is so difficult. But there's also an opportunity to grow. You know? W-when-- once we let go of that idea, I'm like, "Well, there's something to grow from here." So when our heart is broken, when everything that we thought was is no longer the case, whether it's a broken relationship, whether it's losing something you care about, losing an identity, losing money, whatever it may be, there's an opportunity to grow in there.

Jay Shetty 56:44 It's almost like a broken heart is an open

Jay Shetty 56:46 mind.

Humble the Poet 56:46 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 56:46 Like that idea that now I can actually allow-

Humble the Poet 56:50 Yeah

Jay Shetty 56:51 ... for life to be.

Humble the Poet 56:52 It's like now you're, oh, now we're paying attention.

Jay Shetty 56:54 Yeah.

Humble the Poet 56:55 All of a sudden, things aren't moving according to plan, and now we're actually focused, and we're present, and we're paying attention to things, and there's a lot of opportunity there.

Jay Shetty 57:04 Mm.

Humble the Poet 57:04 Versus just assuming everything was gonna be on autopilot. This idea of the happily ever after. You know, these linear ideas. [chuckles] It's like, no, we're gonna continually be in these cycles and anticipate things happening. And everybody listening knows how transformative that first heartbreak was-

Jay Shetty 57:20 Mm

Humble the Poet 57:20 ... whatever it may be, and how much resilience can come from the moment it happens, you're like, "I can't, I can't be here anymore. I can't deal with this." And then as time goes by, we start building resilience from it. And then all of a sudden, we are a much more rounded, three-dimensional version of ourselves because of it.

Jay Shetty 57:39 Mm.

Humble the Poet 57:40 These hard times that form us and formulate us as people. And, and this is why it's the idea of, like, look, obviously I don't wanna have super heavy days every single day, but I gotta be able to trust myself to, to deal with them or at least try my best to deal with them and at the very least not sabotage myself by not sleeping enough, not eating the right foods, not drinking enough water, not hanging out with people that, that give me energy. And I think that there's something important there. So I always look at it, especially as, as my life has progressed, where it's like the things that are breaking my heart right now are absolutely out of control. The people that I care about who have health issues, there's nothing I can do. I catch myself avoiding messages, getting updates on some of these folks 'cause it just, it breaks my heart to think about. And it's like this is me avoiding 'cause it's so overwhelming. But I speak to myself with grace and say, "Look, it's overwhelming. Let's get you back to where you gotta get to. Let's feel better, and then we're gonna lean into this." We have to lean into this 'cause there's going to be some growth that's come from it. The fact that this impacts you so much, it's a sign that you care, and that's beautiful because we need to care about more things in this life.

Jay Shetty 58:47 I think the anxiety around aging and death for ourselves and the people we love-

Humble the Poet 58:53 Yeah

Jay Shetty 58:53 ... is without a doubt the anxiety we avoid the most, right? The anxiety of, "Oh my God, I'm getting older. Oh my God, someone in my life is unwell, diseased. God, someone just died." Like, there's such an anxiety around that. What have you found to be helpful at that time as you're going through it? What would you wish you would've been told, or what do you wish people would hear in order to help soothe that anxiety?

Humble the Poet 59:22 There was something beautiful I heard from a, a scientist on Instagram, and I don't remember her name. She said, you know, "Life is not beginning and ending. Life began once, you know, and we're all a part of it. We don't have a life. We are life. We're a drop in this ocean." And, and, and I think there's something really beautiful about that which is, you know, this is, depending on your beliefs, this can be a vacation from not existing, and we can choose this existence to be whatever we want it to be. And I think for me it's been realizing, and I actually have a, a tattoo on my chest

Humble the Poet 59:57 inverted so I can read it in the mirror. It says, "At any moment you're dust." And it was inspired b-by a friend who had said it, but another friend, and I specifically remember where I was when he said, he goes, "Our problems are only real because we forget we're going to die." And when we think about all these things, w-we're zooming in so much into our lives, but it's like we've heard the cliché, will this matter in five years, 10 years? Will it matter in 90 years? Will it matter in 200 years? You know? Are any of us making it out of this alive? And I think there's something really beautiful about that where it's like we can only enjoy a movie 'cause we know it's gonna end. You know? If it, if it was going on forever, if it was one of those TV shows that go on forever, we may not appreciate it as much. It's the finite-ism of it, and I think that has to do with life as well. In the book I make a lot of jokes, and one of the big jokes is the secret pill to get rid of anxiety. I make up a joke about it, but at the end I'm like the actual magic pill [chuckles] is remember you're going to die. When you're in these moments that just feel completely overwhelming, if you can remember not just with your brain but with your body that you are going to die. And we have so many examples of that in history with people who have experienced near-death experiences and then have thrived. 'Cause they realized, I'm here for a deeper purpose. I'm here for a bigger purpose. I survived, you know, 50 Cent survived nine shots and all of a sudden thrived in his career. It's like that's the worst it can get, me not existing, so let's, let's go. It's not, no longer fear of embarrassment, fear of rejection, fear of not being seen. 'Cause some of these are the things that we just forget. We're living creatures that won't be here forever. And I think reminding yourself of that is really important. And, and there's a b- you know, a Buddhist and Eastern philosophy around make it your goal to remember your mortality five times a day and watch the quality of your life improve.

Jay Shetty 1:01:44 Mm-hmm.

Humble the Poet 1:01:45 Allow that. Make that part of the mantra. Make that part of the daily affirmations. [laughs] That I won't be here forever. Pick the year that you know, like in the year 2235, neither of us will be here. Okay, let's remember that when we're worried about sending a text message and not getting a reply, or when we're worried about putting ourselves out there and potentially getting rejected, or when we're worried about anything else. And I think that's really important. This isn't to minimize anybody's problems. It's to minimize the unnecessary stress that we may come with that. And then we can realize that the stress isn't holding us back. The stress can actually stretch us to reveal our potential of who we can actually be. Pressure builds diamonds. We can really become something beautiful and massive from this when we no longer view challenges as an attack on our existence, but instead an opportunity for us to grow, for us to thrive, for us to increase our capacity to not only be amazing to ourselves, but to be amazing to other people.

Jay Shetty 1:02:46 And there's a reason why stoicism has memento mori. There's a reason why Buddhism has the statement you shared. There's a reason why these wisdom traditions-

Humble the Poet 1:02:55 Yes

Jay Shetty 1:02:55 ... all remind us of that impermanence and, and insignificance to some degree. And again, I loved what you said. It's not in a negative way. It's not in a morbid way. It's actually to free yourself of the pressure and stress you put on yourself.

Humble the Poet 1:03:09 Absolutely. And I, and I think 'cause even now, like we have these, we have these concepts of like legacy. You know what I mean? Like there's, there's also this stretch of like, "Oh, I wanna be alive after I'm not alive." And it's like these are stories that we're being told that, that we think are important. And I remember seeing an interview with Alex Hormozi where he spoke about like, "When's the last time you thought about the Queen of England?" You know? She was really popular, and then she passed away and, and we're not thinking about her on a d- We don't need to have legacy. You know? Let's enjoy what we have while we have it. The only thing we have is the present. Especially when we speak about Eastern philosophy, especially for people listening here, it really is us having to unlearn a lot of the stories that we were told. We were told these linear stories. Do this, do this, do this, get over this hump, and then everything will be smooth sailing. It will be happily ever after. You can ride off into the sunset. Everything will be great. And it's like no, there's always a day after happily ever after. And instead of wishing for an easier life, let's work towards being able to hold more weight, because the weight's gonna keep coming. And just as you're working out, 15 years from now the amount of effort you put

Humble the Poet 1:04:11 working out will have to increase just for you to maintain where you're at.

Jay Shetty 1:04:14 Mm-hmm.

Humble the Poet 1:04:15 So it's the same thing with our mental health. Right now our avoiding, our distracting, our medicating is us maintaining, and by all means, maintain. But at some point we wanna get to the point where we're actually growing from it, and that's gonna require us leaning into things being more difficult, having more difficult conversations, acknowledging difficult realities like our death.

Jay Shetty 1:04:35 Humble the Poet, the book is called Unanxious: 50 Simple Truths to Help Overthinkers Feel Less Stress and More Calm. As always, I love your books, Humble, because the way you divide up these 50 lessons are so beautiful and it's so easy to digest, easy to understand. There's highlighted statements. There's quotes. Each section of the 50 is like, you know, two, three pages. Thank you for always making complex, big, difficult topics simple, easy, and accessible for everyone-

Humble the Poet 1:05:06 Oh, thank you

Jay Shetty 1:05:06 ... to understand. Congratulations.

Humble the Poet 1:05:08 Thank you, man.

Jay Shetty 1:05:08 Uh, and-

Humble the Poet 1:05:08 I just wanna thank you, like you, this is also a moment of like closing the loop for me, 'cause it's, you know, you, you gave me a beautiful blurb on the book, but it was because I was brainstorming the ideas to you over dinner and you were having authentic reactions to them. And it was like this journey for the last two and a half years writing this book, there's also just these moments of you coming to visit in New York, us having a meal, us having fun.

Jay Shetty 1:05:33 Playing FIFA. [laughs]

Humble the Poet 1:05:34 Playing, playing a lot of FIFA. And um, and just for the record, I want everyone to know Jay is the most frustrating person to play FIFA with because whenever you score on him he'll congratulate you. He'll be like, "Great job. That was an awesome goal." He'll still beat you-

Jay Shetty 1:05:48 [laughs]

Humble the Poet 1:05:48 ... but he'll do that. So it's like you can't even like talk crap to him. It's so frustrating to like play somebody who beats you but doesn't hold space for crap talk. Instead he'll just like, he'll, "Oh, let- let's watch the replay of that goal you got on me. That was so good."

Jay Shetty 1:06:01 [laughs]

Humble the Poet 1:06:01 And then he'll score five more goals on me, and it's so, it's extremely frustrating. And but one thing that you said the last time we played is I had music playing. I had the volume down. And then

Humble the Poet 1:06:11 you're like, "This feels different." So we turned the music off and we put the, the volume on the game. You're like, "Ooh, I like this. This gives me the right type of anxiety."

Jay Shetty 1:06:18 Yeah.

Humble the Poet 1:06:18 What I realized is while writing this book, I just have all these milestones of having all these different hangouts with you and, and running these ideas with you. And then I feel like today having this conversation with you, having the book in, in your hand right now-

Jay Shetty 1:06:33 Yeah

Humble the Poet 1:06:33 ... it's this full circle moment which kind of closes the loop. And I think it's that journey. It really is that journey that matters less than, "Oh, I have a book out now and I have to worry about how the book does."

Jay Shetty 1:06:42 100%.

Humble the Poet 1:06:42 It's like no, I got to have so much fun doing this with some of my favorite people, and you definitely are one of those people. So I deeply appreciate you for being endlessly supportive of this and all my projects, man.

Jay Shetty 1:06:54 No, man, it was, it was fun. It was, it was a... The best thing is hearing about your friends working on stuff-

Humble the Poet 1:06:59 Yeah

Jay Shetty 1:06:59 ... and working on it with them, and you do the same for me and just I think that is the joy of it. Like, and you are right, that is the best part about it.

Humble the Poet 1:07:06 Yeah.

Jay Shetty 1:07:06 And the fact that now people can dive into it is beautiful and, yeah, I wrote on the front cover, "Three pages in, you'll feel a thousand pounds lighter." Uh, and I really feel that way. It's, it's just made so simple. It's made so easy and digestible, and I think that's what we all need right now. The world's complex enough. You talk about that in the book. Family, life, it's all complex enough. We don't need growth to be complex.

Humble the Poet 1:07:30 Yes. Es-

Jay Shetty 1:07:30 And, and-

Humble the Poet 1:07:30 Especially now with change. It's just please remember the change isn't the enemy. Us resisting this change is, is what's gonna give us more anxious feelings.

Jay Shetty 1:07:40 Mm.

Humble the Poet 1:07:40 The change is gonna happen regardless. Change is a promise. It's a constant. Wherever you are in the world, we're all experiencing a lot of change, and that's okay. And if it gets overwhelming, that's also okay. But please, the more we resist, the tighter we hold against it, the more that we're just doing damage to ourselves. It's not gonna be helpful. So let's embrace the change that's happening. Be curious about the change, 'cause that's where our courage can be.

Jay Shetty 1:08:04 Well said. And, uh, grab a copy of the book, Unanxious. It's available right now. Make sure you follow Humble across social media if you don't already. And Humble, I hope you come back many, many more times to have more of these conversations, and I can't wait to hang this weekend and, and chat more as well, my friend, so-

Humble the Poet 1:08:20 For sure. Definitely

Jay Shetty 1:08:21 ... thank you, brother. Thank you so much.

Humble the Poet 1:08:22 Appreciate you, man.

Jay Shetty 1:08:23 Uh, super proud of you and really grateful for what you're doing in the world and excited for people to read this.

Humble the Poet 1:08:27 Thank you, man.

Jay Shetty 1:08:28 Thank you, brother. If this is the year

Jay Shetty 1:08:30 that you're trying to get creative, you're trying to build more, I need you to listen to this episode with Rick Rubin on how to break into your most creative self, how to use unconventional methods that lead to success, and the secret to genuinely loving what you do. If you're trying to find your passion and your lane, Rick Rubin's episode is the one for you.

Speaker 1:08:52 Just because I like it, that doesn't give it any value. Like as an artist, if you like it, that's all of the value. That's the success comes when you say, "I like this enough for other people to see it."