EP. 207 — Level Up Your Mindset with Rob Dial

Jameela Rob Dial, welcome to I Weigh. How are you?

Rob Hey, I’m doing amazing. Thanks for having me.

Jameela No, I’m thrilled that you’re here. I have normally been reticent to have anyone on this podcast who talks around positive mindset or, you know, you yourself are known as the mindset mentor. There is a huge like portion of the internet that is occupied by people who are telling others that they can just think their way through problems, and a lot of the time the people who got circulated the most are straight white men. And I sometimes worry that that will not be relatable for my audience.

Rob Yeah.

Jameela But you kept on coming up on my feed because you, there is a a different strand to the way that you talk about these things and your own lived experience and what you have had to work your way through yourself while not discounting, you know, social advantages, I think is incredibly important, incredibly relatable. And I think that the evolution of your work is something that has really resonated with me.

Rob Wow, thank you.

Jameela And so that’s why I wanted you to be here today, but I wanted to just address that straight up in case anyone’s a bit dubious about this. I feel as though you have very much so considered a way to make this conversation relatable for everyone because I do think mindset, if used in the right way, is an imperative part of resilience.

Rob For sure.

Jameela And an imperative part of life. And I myself, as disadvantaged as I’ve been in some areas, I think I’m only alive because of the resilience that’s been built up by the discipline to do so. So before we start, can I ask you to explain that the incident in your life that you feel like sent you in this trajectory?

Rob Yeah. I mean, the biggest thing that that to kind of have everybody understand my story is, I was raised with two parents. Everything I thought was great until I realized probably about 6 or 7 years old, like, “Oh, this is this is not normal. Like when I go to my friend’s house is it’s not the same as my house.” So my father was an alcoholic. You know, I’ve some some stories of things that happened of, you know, alcoholic father which driving drunk, going to jail. You know, I have a tattoo on my arm, which is his handwriting blown up in my arm from a letter that he wrote from jail to my sister, which says, “live your life with courage, love and laughter.” And so, you know, there was definitely times when, when having an alcoholic father, I was forgotten about. I was put in danger’s way. There was, there was all of that. And, when I was 15, my father passed away from being an alcoholic. So we were, he lived in Tennessee at the time. We were getting on a plane, about to get on a plane to go see him because we got a message, it was Halloween, which used to be my favorite holiday, Halloween, that he was unconscious. So we went to go hop on a plane the next morning. And right before we hopped on the plane, we got a message that he was dead. And so, he ended up, you know, his own demise came from his addictions and, unhealed trauma. I ended up finding that out as time went on, I found out from my grandmother, his dad, that his, his mother, my father’s mother, that, my father walked in when he was 12 years old after he heard a gunshot and saw that his dad had killed himself with a shotgun, in his bed with my grandmother there. And so, I kind of had the idea that, and started to understand that a lot of his addictions and his stuff came from unhealed trauma. And so then I remember being a kid and thinking to myself, like, that won’t be me. Like I, whatever comes from this, I want to work through and I want to get better from. And, my father passed away on November 1st, 2001. My sister’s 21st birthday was November 24th, 2001, so 23 days later. And my mom asked us the question, we were in the car, and she said, like, “What do you what do you guys think about your father’s death? It’s been a few weeks.” And I said when I was 15 years old, I think that if dad were to understand how much good is going to come from this, he’d be okay with dying. And it has been like my life mission to try to help people that are going through mental health things. And the way that I had to first work on that was to work on my own mental health and the things that I had and my traumas from my father. And, and so, I don’t ever try to act like I’ve got it all figured out. I’m perfectly fine saying I am completely as fucked up as everybody else, and I’m just bouncing around and trying to figure this world out, you know? Like, I just think that I might be a little bit further along in the path. And I think that, I’ve developed tools and strategies that have helped me, and I use myself as a guinea pig first before I teach anything. And then, with being able to do that, then I can try to teach and hopefully with hearing my things that I’ve worked through and gone through that, it helps other people. And so I just try to work on myself to hopefully help the world by teaching the stuff that’s worked for me.

Jameela That’s one hell of an upbringing, and thank you for that story. When when you talk about trying to kind of turn into something beautiful and something that your father would be proud of and that you can be proud of, it definitely is something that I relate to. You know, I often talk to people about trying to find ways to recycle our trauma into something meaningful. And I think all of my work and advocacy in and around mental health has been me trying to make sure that nobody suffers the way that I did or the way that my family did, is that if I could just warn anyone, then it was for something. If I could even save one person from what I’ve been through then then I feel as though it wasn’t completely pointless and I wasn’t just the victim of something. You also didn’t really have access to therapy, not just because it wasn’t as accessible back then, but also financially it wasn’t accessible. And that’s another thing that I think is very important here that I don’t think work like this should ever replace therapy.

Rob No.

Jameela But I do think that it’s a, A) it’s an important tool to have alongside therapy because we need the tools of how to reintegrate into society. But it’s also a great starting point for those who are on a waitlist or who just can’t afford it right now.

Rob Sure.

Jameela And so what would you say is one of the most important initial takeaways you want people to have from your work?

Rob I think the first thing that people need to hear is like, there’s there’s nothing wrong with you, like where you are is okay. Like, I think that a lot of times when we, this is something I’ve realized in self-defense, but also just in general, is that is that when we become aware of the fact that maybe we’re different or we feel like, “Oh, I want to be somewhere else in the future, I want to be healthier, happier.” We start to think of our light, our self, in like a negative light, like there’s something wrong. To, to want to get better implies that I’m currently worse, right? And so like then we can start to look at ourselves and be like, “Well, I’m not even normal. I don’t, like if everyone else is doing so well, I’m just trying to get to okay.” And in, in in turn, we can make it really hard on ourselves by thinking like, “I’m just so far behind.” What I want people to understand is like, you are perfectly fine as you currently are. You’re you’re deserving of happiness and love and acceptance as you currently are, and you can continue to improve and evolve as a human. And I think that’s important. I think so many people, they come to therapy or they come to to me in general and want to get better, but it comes from this place of like, there’s something wrong with me and, what I have found, and I did this for years with myself, is that if I think to myself, “There’s something wrong with me,” and I hate myself to improve myself, it’s really hard to want to improve something that you hate. But if you come from a place of like, “Hey, I’m just trying to get better, I’m doing the best that I possibly can with everything that I have. I just need to figure out a way to accept and love myself a little bit more as I am. Give myself grace, and realize that I’m just a human that’s evolving, that’s on some sort of journey. The cards that I was dealt in life are the cards that I was dealt in life, and I’m going to try the best that I possibly can with what I have.” And I also think it’s it’s just important for a lot of people to speak up. Like, I think a lot of people keep all of these things, kind of like in their own heads and don’t speak to other people. And whether that is a therapist, whether that is a coach, or whether it’s just a friend that you trust, like sometimes just being able to speak about things allows you to hear somebody else’s perspective, but also just allows you to vent sometimes. And so I think like that’s just really important for people to hear is that I personally believe in this. My own personal life is that everyone’s mental health is the most important thing in their life, and the better that your mental health gets, the better that the world gets, the better that your family, everyone around you gets as well. And so I just I personally believe that people should just see it as something that should be of the highest importance for them to improve themselves in their life and also the people around them.

Jameela And so it’s not about thinking of better or worse, it’s about just thinking of a shift and a change. I think that’s how I’ve been with myself is that giving myself a bit of a break and just going, “Okay, this is a shift I would like to make in the next year.” And it doesn’t make me superior to the person, you know who was there last year. I remember when I was, you know, talking to a friend who was still struggling very badly with her eating disorder. She, it’s just something that I’d struggled with before and used to really, really be so mad at myself for because I was so angry about the damage I did to my body. But, what her therapist explained to her, which I thought was a really lovely and potent way of putting this, is that maybe your eating disorder was, at the time, the only thing that stopped you from actually dying was the thing that stopped you from actively ending your life. That if that was your coping strategy, at least you weren’t dead, so let’s reframe the way you look at that, instead of as this flaw, or this failure, or this moral failure, etc. like against oneself. Let’s change that and sort of rebrand it as the thing that you did that has kept you here until now. And now we can let that go.

Rob Yep.

Jameela And you’re still here because of it, and now we can move on from that. And I think that that was such a beautiful way of creating a new narrative around it that that shifted my perspective entirely on myself. And now when I look back at all of the incredibly self-destructive things I did, I’m not trying to glamorize them, sut I am going, “Well, I’m still alive, and maybe it was partially because of that.”

Rob Yeah, sure. And I mean, I think the phrase that I’ve been using recently because I’ve, you know, I’ve been I kind of got into this industry really early. I got into it when I was 20 years old and I’m about to be 38 next week. And so 18 years I’ve been like working and helping myself and trying to help other people in any way I can. And for the longest time, I said the word change, like you want to change yourself. And when we think change, I think also sometimes implies that there’s that there’s something bad that needs to be changed. So the word I’ve been using recently is just evolve, like I’m just trying, I’m just I’m just a human. I’m not the same as I was when I was seven years old. You know, like, I have evolved over time, whether I’ve consciously tried to evolve or whether I have unconsciously evolved. And so it’s like we’re just all evolving ourself. And so, like, what is the next evolution of each person look like? It’s just a word that I’ve kind of landed on that feels better for me to kind of say to people.

Jameela Do you feel like there is a mindset issue growing in our society at the moment? Do you think that the pendulum from, you know, our generation, which was just like, fuckin chin up, shut up, carry on. You know, which definitely needed to change. The pendulum swung then more towards us saying, “No, actually, my childhood was really fucked up and I am suffering the consequences now of that childhood.” And, you know, we started to understand the concept of trauma as not just being at Viet, you know in the Vietnamese war, you know, that’s it, it, we started to understand that it was something that could happen in smaller aggressions. But then a lot of people are saying, you know, a lot of big psychotherapists are saying that now the pendulum’s swung much further towards everything being trauma and us looking at every reaction to a sick society as our own pathology. And we have all these labels for what’s wrong with us, and we call things PTSD that aren’t necessarily PTSD. It’s not actually the pathology of PTSD. It’s just you reacting to something very upsetting that happened. And I’m not trying to diminish anyone’s experience, but we can see a sort of phenomena of what some people will label a victim mentality. That is that, that that sometimes even I worry is, is taking away people’s motivation, to believe that they could achieve certain things. And those things don’t have to be winning an award or making $1 million. Those things can be: Will I ever find love? Will I ever be happy? Will I ever find friends? I worry that sometimes we are categorizing and labeling ourselves so much that we are, I mean the brain just works in a way where nothing to do with the laws of attraction or anything, but if you consistently tell yourself something isn’t possible, then logistically, how are you going to bring that thing into fruition? How are you going to master that challenge? And and I was wondering if that’s something that you, is that why there is a burst of people who are trying to talk about our mindset?

Rob Yeah. I mean, it’s interesting. I see, the way I see society is, is a projection of human consciousness, and everything that we’re going through inside of us is also what tends to be happening as a collective outside of us. And so I don’t, I think that the pendulum is swinging where it’s like, yeah, like when I look at like my mom and and her family and, you know, my grandparents family, like, they didn’t talk about emotions. They didn’t talk about feelings, they didn’t talk about mindset. It was just like, shut up and deal with it. So I think maybe we have swung another direction, which is now these things are starting to be talked about. I was talking with a therapist the other day, and, she was like, the word trauma is coming up a lot. And people keep asking me, is it coming up too much? And it’s like, you know what? I think that sometimes people need to actually start to talk about it more to realize that, yeah, I might have some trauma from childhood. Even if someone has a good life, they’re still, you know, as Gabor Maté, who I love that talks about trauma, says like big T trauma, small t trauma, where it could be like big T could be like, yeah, you had a parent that beat you. Small t trauma could be like, yeah, you were bullied as a kid or, you know, maybe your your mom was a great person, but at the same time, in order to, you know, in order to get you to do what she wanted you to do, she would retract her love at certain times, and that made you feel unworthy of love. And so, I’m really positive in the fact, like, I think I think we’re heading in the right direction, but I think it’s a lot of things have to burn in order for us to get into the right place. You know, it’s kind of like when you look at the human body sometimes in order for us to really understand there’s something wrong with the human body, we have to get very sick. And and that sickness allows us to realize, like, maybe there is something that I should do and I should change. And I think we’re kind of in, like, the sickness stage where it’s like all of the past things that have happened are kind of coming up and the things that need to change are coming up, and it seems chaotic when all that’s happening, but, it allows us to become aware of what needs to change in order to just be better as people, to treat ourselves better, to treat each other better. And so, I think, you know, I think that it’s it’s heading in the right direction. I think it seems very chaotic right now. I think a lot of people feel the chaos right now. I definitely do, especially with all the stuff that’s happening, but I, I personally just believe in the human spirit. And I think that we are going to be in the right place or a, a better place, not try to use the word better or worse, right, but in a better place in the next 10 years, 20 years, hopefully. I’m very hopeful in that.

Jameela I agree, but I don’t think that happens by just letting things go as they are, you know, and something that I’m not necessarily asking you to speak on, but, you know, as a woman of color, I was talking to Africa Brooke on this podcast a few weeks ago, and we were both talking about the fact that we’re not totally sure, that we think the, the conversation of, of race is so important and racism is so important to be able to address, and it’s real, but also the amount that we focus on it and tell other people of color to focus on it is sometimes unhelpful for us. I’m just using this as an example because then it becomes the first thing that’s on our mind as we step into every room is “I’m at a disadvantage. I’m at a disadvantage. People are thinking of me as different,” and that just doesn’t help.

Rob Right.

Jameela Even if it’s real, even if it’s true, it doesn’t help anything in the way that you put yourself forward. Of course it’s going to dent your confidence. Of course it’s going to dim your light. And she and I both have never really existed with that as like a mindset, I we both always forget our race until someone else reminds us of it, whether it’s in a positive or a negative way. I’m just a person. And it’s not that I’m trying to distance myself from my ethnicity in any way, but I also don’t want to obsess over my ethnicity because it’s just an, it’s a topping, you know, it’s not the main ingredient of me.

Rob Yeah.

Jameela My spirit is.

Rob That when I look at humans, I think that I know about the mind is that whatever we’re looking for, we’re going to find, you know, it’s like the phrase like the red car example, right? Where it’s like, if you ask, like, I drove to the office today, and I don’t I can’t recall any red cars that I passed. But if when I left my house to come to the office, I would have said, “I want to see how many red cars I pass,” I could find all the red cars because my brain is seeking that thing. And so, like, I can give an example, I can’t give an example for, for for race like you can, but I can give you an example as far as like feeling unloved, like not worthy of love. What how that ended up showing up over and over and over again in relationships. And so I think, the paradigm, the worldview that I developed in my childhood unconsciously was that my father loves alcohol more than he loves me. And I didn’t realize until I was maybe 30 years old, right, where I was like, “Oh my God, I didn’t even realize that I, I had this feeling of, my father loves alcohol more than he loves me,” which, was that true? I don’t think that it’s true now that you know that I’m about to be 38 years old, I don’t think that it was true at all. I know that he actually loved me, but he just had things he wasn’t overcoming. But what happened was that started, because of the fact that I had it in the back of my mind, it started showing up in all these other areas in relationships, and up until the relationship that I’m in now, my wife I’ve been with for ten years, any time something small would happen, I would think I was unlovable. She’s going to leave me. She’s going to leave me. She’s, it always, it always popped up in my head. She’s going to leave me. She’s gonna leave me. She’s going to leave me. And then what happened? I end up getting left many times. It just started happening in my reality. And the reason was because my father left me and and so because of the fact that I was subconsciously or consciously looking for that, I kept getting that as well. And so the way I always like to explain the brain is it’s like, it’s like cosmic Google if you type in, you know, “How am I unlovable?” You can have all of the examples of how you’re unlovable. If you find out how am I lovable? You get all the examples, and ao

Jameela Essentially this is confirmation bias, right? This is what you’re talking about.

Rob Yeah for sure.

Jameela Yeah.

Rob Yeah, and it’s and so it’s it’s kind of like if we have a perspective and we want to shift a perspective, whatever that perspective might be, can’t we just challenge our perspective a little bit and see if we can see like the other side of the coin a little bit? Because if we can just shift our perspective a tiny bit, we can start to see that maybe the world isn’t as we thought that it’s been the entire time.

Jameela Yeah. And when it comes to race, I guess the the mindset I’ve always had is I don’t see myself as different, so if you see me as different, that’s a mistake. And I’m just going to show you that I’m not different. I don’t want to lean into it. I don’t want to, I don’t want people to be labeled and categorized. I just want us to all be people. And I feel like, you know, in certain social justice spaces, we are leaning so heavily into making sure that we don’t deny the things that make us different, that we’re now making those things our entire identity. For me, when I walk into an audition or a room, I just don’t walk in as an Indian or a Pakistani or a Muslim or this, that, and the other. I just walk in as me and I’m like, I’m going to show you that I’m just me. Without getting rid of any part of myself, without making any part of myself small, I’m going to show you that this is something exciting and fun rather than something to fear. And I think that’s been a part of my success is that I haven’t hidden a part of myself, but I’ve also just, I have never allowed myself to be put into any pigeonhole as a woman or as a minority, or someone without perfect health or someone with a fucked up childhood. It’s just, and I think that’s why I’m enjoying having these conversations more of like, yes, we cannot help the childhoods that we had. Yes, we cannot, we cannot, erase the traumas that we have undergone in childhood or adult life, but we must not succumb to the idea that that defines us for the rest of our life. It can make its mark, but it doesn’t have to define us entirely. And I don’t want to become so afraid of feeling like I’m erasing someone’s experience, that I don’t make sure that we have that conversation.

Rob Sure.

Jameela Because it’s a downward spiral if you start to feel like you are just the, only the victim of circumstances, if that makes sense.

Rob Yeah, yeah, 100%. It’s like, Will Smith, I remember a phrase he said one time he was he had a video he put up and he said, it’s it’s not your fault that you have the life that you have, that were raised in the family that you were, that you are the person you are. All of the things that happened to you in your childhood are not your fault, but it is your responsibility. That’s like, these are the cards that you’ve been dealt like, what are you going to do with these cards? And it’s like the the phrase, like when we talk about, have you ever heard the stories, I don’t know if it’s true, but it’s the story of the two twins that have an alcoholic father?

Jameela No.

Rob It’s like they go up to two twins, two twin boys. They’re born to an alcoholic father. And years down the road, one of them is an alcoholic. And they say, “Why are you an alcoholic?” And he says, “I’m an alcoholic because my father was an alcoholic.” They go to the other one. He’s a successful business owner, and they say, “Why are you not an alcoholic?” And he says, “I’m not an alcoholic because my father was an alcoholic,” where it’s the same situation, but it’s just the viewpoint of of going, yeah, like this, This is what my life was, this is how I am, and this is what was given to me. So but what is important is that I try to make the best out of it with what I have. And so I always think about Will Smith in that where it’s it’s not your fault, but it is your responsibility.

Jameela So speaking of one’s responsibility and one’s mindset and the way that one frames something, one of the things that I feel like you’ve spoken about in a very empowering way is the power of no and rejection. And I would love for you to elaborate on that.

Rob Yeah, so I think, like as far as the power of no goes, I think there’s, there’s two things. There’s a power of hearing no from other people, and there’s a power of of telling yourself no, which I think is super important. And so the way that, that I like to look at the power of knowing the rejection that comes in from people is now, mind you, I was, I look at no a lot different than the way that I used to. When I used to hear no from people, it used to trigger my own feeling of unworthiness, which I shared why that was already there from my father, and probably things that happened to my parents.

Jameela And is that in is that at work and in friendship and in love?

Rob Everywhere. Yeah. It was it was everywhere for me and for a lot of people. That’s where I find it’s, it’s, it’s we try to and this is why I, a lot of people I don’t think take action to, to to do what they want to sometimes is because they’re trying to avoid the rejection, which could be rejection with somebody, which could be that you’re in a romantic relationship with rejection from your parents because you’re stepping outside the box, rejection from, you know, asking for a raise, like we’re afraid of it because a lot of times what happens is it it brings our insecurities to the surface for us to work through. And, I started when I was 19 and a sales position in, in order to be in sales, like, you just have to get used to no. And it is so triggering at first, and I think it’s one of the reasons why sales pays so well because it’s so triggering. You just hear no from so many people and all of the insecurities can come up through that, but what I think is, is really important though, is, is as you start to do it over and over again, it’s like anything else, like you just get used to hearing it from people. And at that point in time, the insecurities that used to come up don’t really matter as much to you anymore. You can see them, you can work through them and all that. The hearing of no from somebody like, if it’s if it’s no that where you go, and let’s just go back to the sales thing and someone says no to you, it’s not saying no to you as a person, it’s just saying no to your business proposal. But a lot of people, it’s like they’re saying no to me as a person, I must not be good enough. I must not be smart enough. And then we can go down an entire narrative and story in our own head of how we’re a piece of shit sometimes, right? Like, oh my gosh, I knew I was going to fail at this thing simply because someone said no to us. And so, I think the the importance of hearing no is, is if somebody says no to us, it has nothing to do with who you are, with whatever, whatever they say no to you in it is just the person’s perspective of you and whatever it is that you’re bringing to them and saying, no. There doesn’t need to be another story or narrative around that. Like one of the examples that’s that’s kind of an example of it, I was on a podcast, Matthew Hussey’s podcast the other day, and he does, deals with relationships. And we were talking about like, not getting a text back from somebody, right? And, what happens is I was like, you could text somebody and the three bubbles pop up and you see that they’re texting, and then they go away.

Jameela It’s the worst. It’s the fucking, it’s terrorism.

Rob Right? It’s it’s it’s it’s horrible because it makes you feel like there’s something. But then what happens though when you look at reality, reality is the three balls popped up and then they disappeared. That’s all that reality is. But then we can go off on an entire tangent of, “Oh, I know I wasn’t good enough. I knew she wasn’t into me. I knew that this thing,” and we make up this whole scenario in our head, when in reality, what just happened was three bubbles popped up. We don’t know that that person could be texting their mom because their dad might be in the hospital, right? But and then they just didn’t have a time to get back to us in the text messages that we said to them. And so I think that, the importance of no is that it will bring up a lot of insecurities of of our stories and our triggers of our self. And then what I think is really important is to, in cognitive behavioral therapy they, they, they say test the validity of your thoughts. So when somebody’s like, for instance, you’re going and the three little bubbles pop up and they don’t they don’t text you back, they texted someone else back and they’re like, oh my God. Like in my case, it’d be like, “Oh my God, she must be texting some other guy. She must find a guy that’s better than me. I’m not good enough. I knew I wasn’t good enough, I knew I wasn’t lovable.” It’s like this whole story. And then it’s like, take a step back and be like, okay, I’m noticing a narrative in my head, a story in my head. Is it true that I’m unlovable? Like, is it true that I don’t deserve love? Could there be that she was texting her mom and there’s an emergency? Sure. And so it’s just like noticing that the no can bring up insecurities and the insecurities are things that we can actually start to test and see if maybe we can see another perspective of it. And our beliefs and our, our paradigms kind of start to crumble as we do that. So I’m, I’m weird in the way that I like to really be in my own head and ask myself a lot of questions. I know most people don’t do that, but I like to do it and be like, “Is this absolutely true?”

Jameela Yeah.

Rob That she might be doing this or I’m unlovable, or I’m not good enough or whatever it might be that that comes up with the feeling of being triggered by rejections.

Jameela Yeah, that’s, that’s that’s really important. I think I think there’s, I think where I exist with that is somewhere, somewhere adjacent to where you’re at.

Rob Haha, adjacent.

Jameela Which is, that so I, I agree with you that I’m like very into seeing rejection as something that just means, oh, this just means that this isn’t a correct fit for me. Me plus them or me plus that school or me plus that that job. We’re not compatible and I’ve been saved the experience of being in a horribly incompatible situation. So that’s that’s how I look at that. But, you know, you were saying earlier that like, you know, you shouldn’t think to yourself like, “Oh, I’m a piece of shit.” I don’t know if that’s what you said. I think that’s just what I inferred from that. But, but like I am a scumbag in certain ways. I am lazy. I can sometimes, I’ve sometimes in the past been callous with my language. I dare say rude. You know, I have made mistakes. I have faced rejections sometimes because of my behavior. And so I also think that I like to split the difference at going like, sometimes a no is an opportunity for me to investigate is the reason that was a no something I would like to change about myself? Or is that actually just a fundamental part of my character that I like?

Rob Yeah.

Jameela And so I would just like just to elaborate on that no, I just like to dig into the weeds of like sometimes that no has taught me a little something about myself that I needed to be taught about because I was being a shitbag, you know. Haha!

Rob Oh, sure. Listen, I’ve been a shitbag many times in my life. I had a, I have a conversation that’s very similar to what you were saying. I literally had a conversation with my one of my first mentors. I was I was in a company, I thought I was awesome. I was like 21 years old, and we had, like, the number one, number one office out of out of 700. And he’s like, “Hey, do you want to go get dinner? Or do you want to go get lunch?” And I was like, “Yeah.” He met me at Chipotle, and he doesn’t sugarcoat anything. He’s like, “I don’t know how to tell you this, but a lot of people don’t like you.” And I was like, “What are you talking about? Like, I thought I was the hot shit,” right? And he’s like, and he said, one of the most important things. You goes, “I know your heart and I know who you are, but there’s a lot of there’s there’s a wounded side of you that won’t show that to other people. And what you try to do is you try to be be direct and brash and cut people first so that they don’t even challenge you because you’re too vulnerable on the inside that you don’t want to be challenged.” And I was like, “Holy shit.” And that was, if I could say like one conversation that was one of the most life changing conversations was that and I agree with you. Like, and I’ve been saying this a lot recently because it used to be like, I would find parts of myself and I would want to push them away. Like, you know, there’s a selfish side of me, I’d be like, “Fuck that selfish side of me. I don’t want to be selfish.” There’s, but, you know, there’s a good all of the sides that we deem as bad or negative, low energies, whatever they might be, can be beneficial at certain times. And so it’s about like, as you are actually saying, it’s the acceptance of the whole of who you are, which is, you know, like if someone’s a people pleaser, sometimes they need to be more selfish. They need to be selfish with their time. They need to be selfish with their boundaries. And so selfishness can be bad in some circumstances, but it’d be good in others. And so what I love about what you’re saying is like, there are parts of me that are beautiful and loving and amazing. There are parts of me that are a little bit kind of an asshole sometimes.

Jameela Yeah, I’m open to suggestion always.

Rob Yeah. Just acceptance of us.

Jameela But because I have learned so much about myself because of nos, like I’ve learned more about myself from rejection and failure than I have from the things that I just excelled in. I’m very, like similarly to you, I’m very self investigative, like, to fiendishly so where I just want to understand how everyone’s brains work, including my own. And I have the most access to my own, so I guess that’s where my focus starts. But, you know, I love learning about myself during failure. You know, I love learning what I’m capable of because often it’s also been when I’m running at failure that I learn something that I was actually surprisingly good at, that I had no idea that I would have any skills for, and I would never have learned if I hadn’t done the really brave, stupid thing that I maybe wasn’t perfect at. But then I learned about this other skill I have including my resilience and my ability to tolerate failure was like, “Oh, that’s something I quite like about myself.” That shows that I have a, you know

Rob Has it always been that way for you or did you just, I’m curious if, like, have you always been that way?

Jameela Yeah. Yeah, there’s something wrong with me I think where I just don’t see I think partially because I’m so comedically, like, sort of focused in that there’s so many funny stories that come from disasters that I almost prefer a disaster to a win. So it’s perverse, but I also, I think I’m just so curious to see what’s going to happen. I’ve never taken myself very seriously. I’ve never thought very much of myself or like I’m going to achieve very much. I don’t even know if that’s fully from a low self-esteem place, but just a sort of idea that I don’t think anyone necessarily deserves anything. I don’t really know what the idea of deserving something means. Who deserves to be in the room? Who deserves to be at the table of the board or in the board room, or winning the award? It all just feels so arbitrary to me, so I’ve always had a kind of “fuck it” mentality when it comes to putting myself in the line of fire and humiliation because I’ve just never had a plan. You know, I left school at just before I was 17, never went back, never got qualifications and had to support a family. And so I just didn’t have time to doubt myself. I was just like, I will throw myself at every job. I was a secretary, I was painting houses. I was working at a video store. I was also a model scout, didn’t know anything about that. Then I was an agent and then I did this and that and the other until I just scrapped and bullshit, bullshat I think is the past tense of bullshit. I bullshat to my way to where I am. Never done radio, became a radio DJ. Never acted, became an actress. Never hosted anything or been in front of a camera, was on television. Hate having my photograph taken. I, I work within an industry that photographs me all the time, like I I’m completely unmedia-trained and I speak on public platforms all of the time, like I don’t belong in any of the spaces that I’ve been in. But I’ve had a wild ride, and it’s been so interesting and fun and such an adventure that if I look at my life only as an adventure rather than a bunch of things that I have to live up to. It’s just much more fun. And so I think I’ve just always had that mindset because I kind of started at such a disadvantage. You don’t have any school and you are Indian? Like, you are already like shunned from your community. So I guess it kind of set me up kind of accidentally for a win. It could have set me up for a fall, but it gave me, not low self-esteem, but no self-esteem. I don’t have high or low self-esteem. I just don’t think about it. I can’t tell if you think I’m crazy.

Rob No, I don’t think you’re crazy at all. I’m just, I mean, I this is why I’m so intrigued by people. I just love learning about people and figuring out, like, how people got to where they are.

Jameela Right.

Rob And and so the thing I love about you is you’re just kind of like, fuck it, I’m going for it.

Jameela Yeah.

Rob That’s what I like about what you what you’ve said is, you’re saying, the thing you kept saying is like, I’m, I don’t fit into any of these things. It’s funny because I was actually think about this this morning. I was making eggs, and I was like, one of the reasons why I think so many people might struggle with wanting to be somewhere is because they feel like they have to fit a mold of who they’re supposed to be to be this type of person or to do this type of thing. But that mold was created by some other person who did that thing.

Jameela Yeah.

Rob And so it’s like us copying to be somebody else or fit in the mold of that. But it’s what’s cool about what you’re saying is you’re just like, “Hey, I am who I am. I see, I see myself for the good, for the bad, and I accept myself as I am. I’m trying to improve. I’m trying to get better.” And with that, I think is the cool thing about it is it’s kind of lets you be like, yeah, fuck it, I’m going for it anyways because I only get one shot at this thing.

Jameela Yeah. And who’s to say, you know, who’s to say who’s going to get into the room and who’s going to get the thing and have the fun experience. And I think specifically women really are burdened with this idea that they are not allowed to entertain that mindset. I’ve said a few times on this podcast that statistically, we see evidence that employers hire men based on who they think they’re going to become, and they hire women mostly on what they’ve already achieved and can concretely prove that they can bring to the table. And so that that set up is very real. And then that gives women this idea that we have to be perfect at everything before we even apply. That there’s no space or no room for improvement and no space for us to fuck up enough to find out the special skill that we didn’t know we had. We have this, this, this pressure on us that I think, again, because of whatever chip is missing in me, I’m just like, “Well, that sounds ridiculous, so I’m just not going to do it.” I’m going to do what men do, which is figure it out as I go along and bullshit and bullshat my way through until I find what I’m good at. And I think what I found I’m good at is interviewing and podcasting. But I would never have gotten here from where I was 17 years ago just being like, “Well, not me. I mean I don’t have the right to do that. I don’t have the right to do this.” It’s like fucking who has the right? Like people who are born into it? No.

Rob Yeah, yeah, it’s funny because it’s like you just kind of test the water and like, you were never a podcaster at one point, neither was I. I just wasn’t a podcaster. Then we started doing podcast things.

Jameela And like how dare we?

Rob We somehow became podcasters.

Jameela Do you know what I mean? How dare we. How dare we be like, “Oh, I’m so interesting that like, hundreds of thousands of people need to hear my thoughts every week people

Rob People need to listen to me.

Jameela And have to hear about my special interests.” Yeah, it’s like, how dare we? But I think, yeah, I think that’s part of the fun where I know that there’s an element of how dare I to everything that I’ve put myself up for. But it’s like, well, I just dare. I just dare to do it. I’m not forcing anyone to participate or hire me or listen to me or follow me online. So it’s just like I’m here and I’m a wrecking ball with nipples. And if you’re up for the ride, like, let’s go. And that is the tagline for my mindset book. Haha!

Rob The the the the whole narrative that’s good behind it is it doesn’t seem like you take yourself too seriously.

Jameela No, not at all.

Rob Which I think is a positive thing. You know, I think a lot of people take themselves very, very seriously.

Jameela Yeah. And and again, that just comes from self-preservation. Like, I think we also sometimes can judge people who take themselves seriously and, and, and actually a lot of that just comes from, as you were saying earlier, rejection early in life that was probably delivered in a very unkind way that has taught their brain to have a high cortisol reaction, like a chemical, a neurochemical reaction to that rejection that has gone, “Oh my God, let’s never feel that ever again.” So you do everything you can to avoid that stress reaction, that fight or flight and that complete like nosedive in dopamine. And so your brain is always protecting you. It’s not even something you might even be aware of, but your brain is constantly is predicting, predicting and protecting. So it might be predicting failure and then protecting you from it. And so that can come in the form of procrastination or all kinds of different, like self-sabotages. I’m supposed to be writing a book right now, and I am stalling on it. And it’s because it’s a very difficult book to write that I have insisted on writing by myself because I don’t want to take the credit or the fall for someone else’s work. Like, if it’s shit, I don’t want to have to be like, “Yep, I wrote that.”

Rob Yeah.

Jameela But, I’m struggling. My brain is stopping me from sitting down and facing the music. So what would and I think in different iterations, a lot of people have that screenplay they want to write. They have this, they want to do that. They want to do. What would you say to me and to them?

Rob Yeah. I mean

Jameela Give me some, give me some tips

Rob Here’s the thing that I, I like, love what you said because I love the human brain. I love learning as much as I possibly can. And that’s why the reason why, when you said, I don’t know if I think I’m crazy, if I think you’re crazy like, I just love listening to people stories. Like I love trying to put the pieces together. Right? It’s like a I used to a lot of puzzles as a kid with my mom. It’s kind of like people are all just huge puzzles. And I, I’ve actually started, I stopped saying the word procrastination because it’s got this whole thing. And what I’ve actually changed it to and been saying to people is avoidant behavior, which is another way of thinking about it, is we’re never not doing something, you know, even if we’re our procrastination or avoidan behavior from doing the thing that we need to do is sitting on the couch and scrolling on Instagram, we’re still sitting and we’re still scrolling. Even if we take Instagram out and we’re staring at the ceiling, we’re still sitting and we’re still staring like we’re always in the middle of taking action of some form. It just depends on what the action is. What I have found for procrastination, and I joke like I became obsessed with with this specifically because the, I know what you’re talking about and I feel you for writing a book because it’s hell, like it takes years off your life I feel like because it’s just it’s, I did 16 rounds of edits for my book and just kept going through, and I was like, meticulous with it. But I was, the first title of my book was Take Action. Like we went, we went, we settled on Level Up because my publisher thought it sounded sexy. Take Action was the original one. And so I asked myself, like, okay, when I look at the Mindset Mentor podcast, almost everything that I teach in 1400 episodes is how to use your mind to take action versus hold yourself back. So I was like, what if I wrote a book on just that? I was like, cool I’m going to settle on that. And I thought to myself, why don’t people take action? Like that’s the first question that pops up, and then I started thinking about the brain and what’s, as you said, our brain is always predicting and it’s always protecting. The problem is, most of us, if we’re not consciously trying to think about the future, we’re usually subconsciously thinking about the future in a negative way. And we’re we’re trying to avoid that negative future. And so like, like, for instance, if if somebody is writing a book, let’s just let’s it might be your case, it might not be, but it’s like I need to sit down and write a book, but what if I put it out there and, and everyone’s like, “This book is trash.” Or everyone just starts to get, everyone’s like, this book is trash, you know, it doesn’t sell any copies. It’s an embarrassment. I will go into an avoidant behavior to try to avoid that future.

Jameela Mhm.

Rob Because and so what happens is it’s like I always tell people like if you’re inside of a room and I say, hey, outside of that room there’s a tiger, you’re going to really not going to take the action to open the door and go after a tiger. We’re imagining the tiger at all moments in time. But here’s what’s crazy, and you’re talking about neurochemically inside of our brain, right now, in this moment I’m sitting in my office. Everything’s safe. Everything’s great. I can sit here and imagine a future let’s say, for instance, where my business fails, and I can see it in so much vivid detail that my brain makes my body, it sends neuropeptides to my body to actually create the adrenaline, to create the cortisol, to make me feel as if my business has already failed, as if I’m in that future. And so my present moment can be amazing, but I can make my present moment feel like shit by thinking about that future.

Jameela So this is the neurochemical reaction to catastrophizing, and it could be about a relationship or colleague or anything.

Rob 100%

Jameela Right.

Rob Right. And so what tends to happen is that we end up not taking the action. We can consciously want to take action, but subconsciously there’s so much programing and stuff that’s going on in the background and a lot of stuff that were unaware of, unless we try to pull it to the conscious mind that we can consciously want to go and create the life that we want to change or whatever it is that we want. Write a book. But subconsciously, our brain will go 50 steps ahead of us and start focusing on, yeah, but what if I’m a failure? What if she says no to me? What if I get rejected? What if what if I put this post up on Instagram that’s really like a video of me talking about something I’m passionate about, and my mom sees it and then calls me and starts talking trash about it. Well, then I’m just not going to do it. And so it’s easier to go into avoidant behavior vs actually take the behavior that we need to. And so I think it’s just about trying to become aware of what’s happening subconsciously in the back of our head.

Jameela Alright.

Rob So do you know what’s so, that’s going

Jameela I think I do. Okay, so yeah. I think I do. Know what’s going on. I think I do, I think I do, and I like I can see where I probably need to go back to therapy for it, but, essentially, since I was a child, I was an extreme high achiever. And I don’t know why because I didn’t work that hard. But I’m just naturally, I think, gifted at memorizing textbooks. So I think it’s probably just some sort of a hack in my brain. But I was very good at school, good at nothing else, and very bad at sports, very bad at friends or love. And so that was my thing. And from such a young age, they just had all these predictions, like, she’s going to go to Cambridge and Harvard and she’s going to be a neuro like, I guess something to do with a brain surgeon or some sort of like something within the medical field because I’m fucking Asian as fuck and, and then as soon as I started on television, everyone was like, “You’re going to be so famous,” or you’re going to do this, or you’re going to win this award and you’re going to achieve this, that, and the other. And actually, I don’t like that. I don’t like the fact that, and I know this sounds incredibly ridiculous, but I’m then being set up for an arbitrary expectation that plenty of factors could get in the way of that actually happening. I don’t like thinking ahead. I don’t like planning for something. I think that that is the road to disappointment. I believe that desire is suffering, and I don’t want to aspire towards anything other than fun and growth, which I have some sort of control around. I don’t like being told that I have to meet these, that I’m going to almost like it’s being like my fortunes being told that I’m going to have these extraordinary achievements. I found that very stifling my whole life. And I think it’s why I pivot every five minutes to a new career because I’m just like, “Oh, I don’t want to go for that goal you’re telling me to go for.” I want to do something completely different that’s I’m actually going to learn something in. I’m going to defy expectations. And so I’m, I’m obsessed with the risk. I don’t like having a trajectory because and I think that probably comes from now your therapizing me sorry, but, you know, I got hit by a car just before my 17th birthday, and I didn’t walk again for a year and a half. I didn’t know if I’d ever walk again. My entire life, my studies, my university placements, everything got taken away from me, y health, my ability to see anyone. I wasn’t able to move. And after that, I was just like, “Oh God, life is so unpredictable. Why am I ever going to plan for anything ever again?” And so I think that’s where, does this, does any of this make sense? That that’s where my hatred of planning comes from. And it’s also where my feeling of like, just just fuck off, don’t tell my fortune, just let me surprise myself and surprise you. And so I think with this book, and I hope they’re not listening to his. I’m so sorry. I think you’re such wonderful people. And I am writing it and writing it, even today, I’ve been writing it. I’m just so sorry it’s late. But it’s that they had such immediate high expectations of me because they like what I wrote in my book proposal and in my first chapter. And so it got everyone really excited, and they started making all these big plans already. And I’m like, fuck, I’m not even halfway through. Please don’t, please don’t put the pressure on that because then it’s pre-designed in my head, you know.

Rob Do you think that it’s it’s possibly because like like when you when you were 17, you got hit by a car that things were going so well and you had this thing that you’re working towards, and it felt like maybe you worked so hard for something in the rug was taken out of it, that if you put a whole lot of work into the book, that it could also feel like the rug was taken out of it, like it’s a pattern that could possibly pop up again? Like I’m curious, like if it if if.

Jameela Well if I’m worried the rug pulled from under me? No, no

Rob Yeah. Is there a possibility that you could write this book, and it could be, it could be whatever it ends up being, whether it ends up being like good ends up being a massive success like, is there a way maybe put it this way, is there a way that the book could be written? This is what I asked myself when I was writing my book, because I was putting a lot of pressure on myself, is there a way that I can make this feel effortless? As if and I and so that it it just kind of flows out of you vs feeling like it’s something that you have to white knuckle to create.

Jameela It fucking was effortless until everyone got excited about it. It was a, it was the excitement that then made it feel like it’s not my adventure anymore because now it’s now I’ve lost that feeling of like, ooh, what’s going to happen? Is it going to be huge humiliation or is it going to be success? What’s going to, what am I going to learn from that? It feels predestined and pre-designed, like prescribed, if that makes sense. And there’s just, I haven’t yet figured out what that thing is. It’s not a fear of failure. It’s just this feeling like my autonomy gets taken away when someone you know, and I think it’s very Asian to, like, impose so many fucking expectations on your child. And I think that’s the part of me that I need to learn to divorce myself. There’s like an anti-authoritarian thing, even though these people are just being lovely. They’re encouraging and also fucking moving to America with this fucking positive mindset has been such a like trigger to me constantly, where everyone just tells you that the the world is your oyster. And I’m like, but it might not be, and then they think I have depression and I don’t. And I think that’s why like I said, I was like, you are one of the first, you and and Lewis Howes are like two of the only people who’ve ever actually like that I’ve seen speak about positive mindset that didn’t make me feel a bit like, not to sound like a massive cunt, but just like, “Blech”, because I feel like it’s unrealistic. Your advice is tangible and emotionally intelligent, which I appreciate a lot.

Rob Yeah. I think there’s toxic positivity, which is just everything’s going to be

Jameela Yeah.

Rob Or there’s also the other side, which is, yeah, there’s a lot of negative shit that’s happening in in the world. There’s a lot of negative shit that’s happened with me. Can I take this and turn it positive? But I have a question for you guys because I’m curious, is the other people’s expectations, and now that everyone else has come in with the book, kind of like a fuck you to somebody that’s in your childhood, that what, because your whole childhood, it sounds like, was pushed towards you’re going to be this big thing.

Jameela Yeah.

Rob And then it was kind of like, now it’s kind of the, it’s the exact same pattern. You’re going to be this big thing. And it’s like, no, but this is my own fucking thing. I don’t want this to be your thing. Is it kind of like the stopping and the creativity not coming through kind of like a fuck you to anybody specifically?

Jameela No. You know, I’m so glad you asked me that.

Rob Whether it’s a publisher or whether it’s like, parents or no family or whatever it might be.

Jameela No, it’s not a fuck you at all. No, it’s the fact that I think I have a disdain for metrics being used to measure someone’s value or the value of someone’s work. That’s what it is, right? I have a brother who is not academic and is so fucking smart and brilliant and such an amazing person whose confidence was destroyed. This is insane that I’m having this breakthrough because I’ve been trying to figure this out for like six months. And so I really appreciate you asking this question. I’m so sorry to everyone if this is really boring, but my brother and I

Rob I’m, I’m enjoying the hell out of this.

Jameela Okay, great. I have never, I’ve never been this open, but, but my brother and I are both, we have special brains in different ways. One of us that worked in academia and his is in imagination. I have no fucking imagination. But mine was rewarded and his wasn’t. And then he was treated like he was worthless. And I was overly congratulated for just memorizing textbooks.

Rob Yeah.

Jameela For just knowing how to do algebra, you know, from learning very arbitrary things. These are both interesting, important skills that make the world go round. But I’m not an artist the way that he is, but I just, at such a young age, realized I was like, this is fucking bullshit. Like, I want to write the book and still be able to love the book, whether it’s a success or not, because I made that and it was my best shit that I could have done at the time. But as soon as these metrics and these numbers and these awards and these, you know, the amount of audiences and your tours that there’s going to be, it ruins it for me because I’m like, “Oh, now you’re trying to impose a value on me.” And you see this with beauty standards. You see this with all kinds of different things, and I watch them tear someone I love apart society at large, not just my family, over arbitrary metrics that didn’t even exist a few hundred years ago.

Rob Right. Yeah.

Jameela Does that make sense?

Rob 100%.

Jameela So that’s what it is. It like it triggers a part of me that’s like, “Oh, you’ve just imposed a value on my thing that I was making.”

Rob Yeah. There should be inherent value no matter what other people’s perception is. And I agree with you. I think I think there’s a lot of really creative people who have so much fucking value to give the world, but the way that we’re raised sometimes by some of the people that raised us, but also society and schooling and all of that is it is kind of, I’ve said this before is I think one of the greatest tragedies is I think that society tends to strip creativity from a child. And, because it’s not, there’s no value in it. There’s no quote unquote money to be made. And you should go out and be successful, whatever that means.

Jameela They literally defund like, art programs in England.

Rob Yeah. It’s crazy. And I think, I think that creativity, if you look at the people who our society and we look up to a lot of times they’re the most creative people that are out there.

Jameela Yeah.

Rob Right, like they are the people who don’t fit in. It’s like, they’re different. They want to think differently. They want to challenge. They make a piece of art that’s different. They they go into politics and they’re different. They go and they break a, do a business and it’s different. It’s just like, it’s the thing that that helps somebody be quote unquote successful, whatever that ends up being meaning for somebody is a thing that’s actually stripped from a lot of children. But it’s interesting with you, with with you and with your brother is that, and the thing about is going back to it is that you can look at that side of you and you could say, “Yeah, I want to change this part of me.” But it’s it’s also just the acceptance of like, “Yeah, this part of me is being triggered. It still exists inside of me. I can love this part of me. I can accept this part of me.” And I think what it is for you is like, what did like, take the metrics out of it because you don’t care about them, but, like, what would it mean for you to create a book and make it your thing? Because I did the same thing. I stressed so fucking much about the book for a while, and then I was just like

Jameela The fact that you were procrastinating about a book that largely is about procrastinating is so amazing and ironic, and I love it.

Rob Isn’t that great?

Jameela So good.

Rob But that, it’s the way that I view it is God or the universe coming in and saying, “I’m going to give you this fucking challenge because you need to learn this thing.”

Jameela Yeah.

Rob And then I used, I was I was the guinea pig, and at the same time I was writing it all together. And so, yeah, I mean, and that’s where I started talking about avoidant behavior.

Jameela I need to learn to separate other people’s expectations from my own. I need to go, I need to learn that it is not my responsibility to live live up to other people’s expectations.

Rob Yeah.

Jameela I need to solidify that feeling that if I made it, then I just made it. And it’s okay if it disappointed people because I never promised anything to anyone.

Rob Yeah.

Jameela It’s, I feel this obligation to meet people at their expectations, but I never promised anything to anyone. I’m a scumbag.

Rob The the success is having the book written. Writing a book is a big success. Do you know? Do you want to, I think part of the, part of the thing that makes it hard too, like we both know a lot of people who have written books, right? And and there’s a lot of people who have written books, and you interview people who have written books. And so it becomes very normal to think like, “Oh, everybody has a book, right?” And then there was one time my, my, my COO, she’s my wife’s best friend. I’ve known her for like ten years, and she’s incredible. And she’s like, “Have you celebrated that you wrote a book?” And I was like, “No.” And she’s like, “No?” I was like, “Yeah. But,” and I started talking about other stuff. She goes, “Do you realize how fucking awesome that is?” And I was like, and immediately it pops in my head like, yeah, but I’m friend with Lewis. He has three books. I only have one, right? Like that’s the immediate thing that pops up. And then I’m like, “Fuck, that is kind of cool that I wrote a book.” Like very few people write books, and that’s, I was also the kid that couldn’t read in school, and I wrote a book like, that’s a pretty amazing thing. And so I had to kind of go and go on this own journey of myself of like, whether it becomes New York Times bestseller, whether it sells a million copies, whether I can just retire and it makes me money forever or it flops, I should just feel good about the fact that I was able to do it because I was the kid in third grade that couldn’t read and felt like a fucking idiot because all the other kids were reading as well, and it’s basically us giving ourselves what it is that we’re searching for a lot of times from the external world.

Jameela Yeah, I unrealistically in a capitalist industry just want someone to go like, “Fuck it, let’s just see how it does.” No one’s going to do that because why would they bank on me otherwise? So I just need to figure that out. Speaking of the comparison you just brought up, social comparison theory. This is the last thing I really want to talk to you about, about how and I think this is being massively generated and perpetuated by social media. Can you talk about the impact on our mental health of social comparison? Because it seems like an obvious thing that we all kind of know, like, “Yeah, you shouldn’t compare yourself to influencer’s lives. It’s bad for you.” But can you talk about what’s actually happening to our mental health from this?

Rob Yeah, I mean, I’ll be fully transparent with you. I have whatever it is, almost 700,000 followers on Instagram, and I just deleted Instagram from my phone a few months ago. Like, I just it’s not even good. I’ve realized that I don’t like the way that I feel when I’m on it. Now, I still post on it. I have, I create videos and my team posts them for me, and if I need to go on to social media, I go on at my computer, like I literally type in instagram.com on my computer and that’s how I see what’s going on. There’s, I had a video that literally came up like last week, and it was talking about how, why we should take children off of social media. And it’s like when you look at the link of childhood anxiety, children with anxiety, and you look at social media on a timeline together, the spike of childhood anxiety goes up with the with the spike of social media and when social media came out. I think that you and I were kind of the last Mgeneration that was raised without social media.

Jameela Mhm.

Rob And we were able to have a childhood and we were able to go outside and we were able to play and all that. And so I think number one, I think the first thing is, is that I think about it like children and what they’re going through with always seeing other people’s posts and not being good enough and not being pretty enough. And these are edited photos and edited videos. But there’s also like a thing like that, that I’ve seen people that I love, like my wife and then my wife looking at people, women who are who are models, who are probably edited and photoshopped and comparing herself to to them. And then she sees herself in the mirror and she starts comparing herself or, you know, saying that she’s got this thing that she needs to cover up on her face with makeup or whatever might be. If we go back to, what, 100 years ago, 200 years ago, it was like you only knew like 100 people in your area. And those are the only faces that you ever saw and you compared yourself to. Now we can compare ourselves to unrealistic standards all across the board, whether that’s what we look like.

Jameela People are  literally AI now that are being sold as people and we’re comparing ourselves to them.

Rob I know. And they’re like, perfect, you know?

Jameela Except a lot of fingers.

Rob People like follow them and have no idea that they’re AI.

Jameela Yeah.

Rob Right?

Jameela Yeah.

Rob So like, I think that I’ll tell you how

Jameela Two of the most successful influencers and models in the world are both AI generated.

Rob That’s crazy.

Jameela Yeah,

Rob That’s, it’s

Jameela It’s an Asian model. And, I think an Ethiopian model, maybe, but they’re they’re not real people. They were just completely, it was years ago, long before the ChatGPT explosion. It was like 5 or 6 years ago, and they immediately shot to success. And people know that they’re AI and don’t care. And they are followed by millions of people. Get huge brand campaigns. And it’s just a dude who’s good with a computer, who’s pretending to be an unbelievably tall, thin, symmetrical woman.

Rob Yeah, yeah. And then so people compare themselves to that, right?

Jameela Yeah. It’s beyond dystopia.

Rob It’s like a modern day version of, like Barbie used to, people always used to compare themselves to Barbie and say it’s unrealistic standards, but it’s

Jameela Yeah.

Rob It’s way worse where it’s photo after photo after photo.

Jameela Yeah.

Rob I, I personally just like from, from my and I’m actually starting to kind of be more vocal on it, like I really think that social media is really hurting people’s mental health. And I’m somebody who’s been working myself for a long time, and I’m very introspective. And I noticed it was hurting me and just the way that I felt. And like, for instance, I remember when everything was happening, probably about 2021. I remember I woke up in the morning and I was up for probably about an hour, and I felt like shit. And I was like, why do I feel so bad? And I realized I was like, let me retrace my day. I’ve only been up for an hour and I had gone onto Instagram. I never get on Instagram right away. I always try to delay it for a while. I got an Instagram and I saw like three different people’s stories that made me feel terrible. And I was like, “Oh, I need to start unfollowing people.” So I call it the Great Purge. I have an episode on it, like just unfollowed 600 people in one day. I was like, they’re not good for my mental health.

Jameela Yeah, yeah, I did that with like, almost all celebrities and models.

Rob Yeah.

Jameela I don’t see anyone I just see dogs.

Rob And when you follow somebody, you’re also following and taking a piece of their mindset and their way of thinking and saying, “I’ll bring it in to mine.”

Jameela Yeah.

Rob Or and so for me, it was like, “I’m going to start unfollowing people.” And then it turned into I’m just going to delete it completely. And I run a business off of it and, and all of that.

Jameela But can I ask you something just quickly just

Rob Yeah.

Jameela Some people, when they talk about coming off social media, either do it, try it for two weeks and then come back on. As someone who’s done it, when you’re like, because I think this is one of the fears, right, that we have that I think even I can relate to is like, “Oh, then I won’t know what’s going on.” And then, you know, when I’m at a dinner party, or like chatting with friends, I’m going to be like, “What? Who did what? What’s going on?” Like, I enjoy this feeling of being in the know, which is probably some sort of, like, safety preset in my brain that wants to know all the information so I know where all the danger is coming from. But but do you feel like you’re not in the know about certain things?

Rob No I mean, here’s the, here’s the thing is, is, and I realize not everyone’s in the same circumstances as me and I could understand, like, I, have my wife that lives with me. My wife is, you know, due to actually 60 days from today, she’s due with our first child. I am trying to be what my father wasn’t which was present. And in order for me to do that, I realized that I was spending an hour, 90 minutes, two hours on Instagram looking at things that didn’t matter, and what I have been focusing on in waking up, I haven’t really been saying this, but, but I’ll tell you, like, I’ve been waking up in the morning and I’ve been saying like, I’ve been like, I don’t know if you want to call it praying or meditating on it, but I’ve been saying like, “Please take anything from me that I don’t need before this child is born,” because I just want to be the best that I could be. Right? And as I started looking at it, I was like, I want to be present because I don’t feel like I had a present father. What is taking away my presence from being in the present moment? And immediately, it was like social media. And I was like, “All right, I should delete it.” And I’ve been off of it again, like I deleted it, and then the book came out and I reinstalled it because I had to put all the, you know, the all the stuff for the book out. And then I had it for a few more months, and I started like feeling my, like, myself get more anxious in the morning when I would see it or whatever would happen, or feel like I needed to check how many likes I had on the post.

Jameela It also literally overstimulates your dopamine, and then you feel a dopamine deficit that becomes increasingly worse over time because you become kind of dopamine resistant.

Rob But what I have found is that I am trying to prioritize peace in my life.

Jameela Yeah.

Rob And I have noticed that since it’s been gone again, way more peaceful, way more calm. And for me, like I told you, like, mental health is really a thing I try to focus on for myself and try to help people with. Since ocial media has been gone again, I feel better, I feel more peaceful. I don’t feel as on edge and it’s not like crazy on edge like I want to fight people. It’s just like there’s a little bit of something in the background. And so like, so I just developed a system with my team of like, “Hey, I’ll create the videos, you guys post them, and then I’ll just send me at the end of the week, we just go through and see how the videos have been doing, and I never have to sign on to it.”

Jameela So it’s like a sort of ostrich theory.

Rob What’s that?

Jameela It’s an ostrich theory. You you deliberately bury your head in the sand about certain things, and it’s to protect yourself, which I quite like. I mean, that’s I mean, you’re saying that like, that’s kind of what you’re doing. There’s a famous celebrity who gets a lot of up and down press, and she has never read a negative thing about herself, like, because she’s been around since the kind of 90s, so before social media. And so she would just always ask her publicist what people are saying, and he would always just go, “Oh, fabulous, darling. Everyone loves you.” So a movie would come out and she wouldn’t read the reviews and she’d just ask her publicist, and he just knew to be like, “Fabulous. Everyone loves you. Could be an Oscar.”

Rob Oh my gosh.

Jameela And she is the happiest celebrity I have ever, happiest person I’ve ever met. Has never heard a bad thing about herself. Now, I’m not advocating for this because obviously there could be some growth that comes from criticism. But I am saying happiest bitch I know like it’s it’s it’s really incredible.

Rob There’s something to that.

Jameela There’s not nothing to that. Yeah. Is that she’s just that’s it, just all she ever hears is, “Fabulous darling. Everyone loves you.”

Rob Yeah.

Jameela And she just carries on with her life. And it hasn’t really massively been detrimental to her existence. She’s just really positive and happy and smiley and bubbly. And she continues to work here and there and she’s none the wiser. Lovely.

Rob Yeah. I mean, it’s it’s I understand that not everybody can do it and some people have to use it for work and some people have to have it and some people use it, and some people want it not. There’s nothing wrong with having it or not having it or whatever it might be. But if somebody just asked themself like, I like to look at things and make it very, I try to make things as simple as possible. If I look at this thing and I look at myself, is it a net positive or is it a net negative? And if I just assess based off of that, I can usually make really simple decisions of like, yeah, I feel like it was a net negative to have social media. And then I started adding up how many hours of my life it would take up. And so I just decided to start removing myself from it. And I have noticed my mental health feel better. I felt better. Even, even my best friend was like, “Dude, you just seem so calm recently.” He said that to me the other day and I was like, that’s awesome. That’s what I’m trying to become. I’m trying to work towards that thing, you know, hole of the rabbit hole we get on. And I think I developed a addiction to stress from childhood that I perpetuated throughout a lot of my life. And now I’m trying to just basically go on the opposite side of that, which is how can I be more peaceful? How can I be more calm? And for me personally, this is the next step to do it. I may download it again, but to be honest with you, I don’t think that I will.

Jameela Interesting. Well thank you. And, I have really enjoyed this conversation.

Rob I have too. It’s been great to get to know you and hear your story.

Jameela Likewise, I did not expect to share during this chat. But for whatever you were told when you were 21 about not being likable, I think you’re very likable now, and I think that’s probably demonstrated in your success. But, I wish you loads of luck with the baby. I wish you loads of luck with staying off of social media.

Rob Yeah.

Jameela And come again sometime. This is really interesting.

Rob Thank you, I appreciate it.

Jameela Thank you. Thank you so much for listening to this week’s episode. I Weigh with Jameela Jamil is produced and researched by myself, Jameela Jamil, Erin Finnegan, Kimmie Gregory, and Amelia Chappelow. And the beautiful music that you are hearing now is made by my boyfriend, James Blake. And if you haven’t already, please rate, review, and subscribe to the show. It’s such a great way to show your support and helps me out massively. And lastly, at I Weigh, we would love to hear from you and share what you weigh at the end of this podcast. Please email us a voice recording sharing what you weigh at iweighodcast@gmail.com.