EP. 216 — Discover Your Purpose with Simon Sinek

Jameela Simon, welcome to I Weigh. How are you?

Simon I’m very well, thanks. Thanks for having me.

Jameela You have become a growing voice of reason and sense in the world and on the internet.

Simon Haha, that should let you know the state of the world.

Jameela Yeah. Haha!

Simon It’s like I subscribe to Groucho Marx, who said “I would never join a club that would have me as a member.”

Jameela Exactly. Yeah, yeah. And so I am always fascinated to know what has brought someone to that journey of wanting to share these tools in the world. And so I would love for anyone of my audience who’s new to you, for you to explain a little bit about why this is your chosen field of expertise.

Simon My journey began by accident. This was not my path. I worked in advertising and had my own little marketing firm, and I fell out of love with my own work. And I was deeply embarrassed by this because superficially, everything was good. I own my own little company. We had amazing clients. We did good work. After a few years, my, I didn’t want to wake up and go to work anymore. And so I pretended that I was happier, more in control and more and more successful than I felt. Which by the way, is not a good thing to do. Turns out when you keep darkness to yourself, it gets darker, and that’s what happened to me. I, I can I fell into what can only be described as depression.

Jameela Right.

Simon And it wasn’t until a dear friend came to me and said, something’s something’s wrong. And I used it as a safe space to come clean. And it was such a weight off my shoulders that all of that energy went into, that was going into lying, hiding and faking, could now go into finding a solution. And the solution that I found was this thing called The WHY based on the biology of human decision making. Everybody knows what they do. Some people know how they do it. But to truly thrive and feel inspired on a regular basis, you have to know why you do what you do. And I and I didn’t, so I went on this mag

Jameela Did you ever know what why you are doing what you’re doing? Because the thing is also that sometimes something changes, your WHY changes, so you do need to also keep engaging in why you’re doing something.

Simon Your WHY never changes.

Jameela What do you mean?

Simon Your WHY, our WHYs are the sum total of how we were raised. You are who you are based on the experiences you had during your formative years. That is what makes you who you are. And that consistency is really important because that’s way, that’s the way people know whether they can trust you or not. If your WHY was a moving target, then people who trusted you this year wouldn’t trust you next year because I don’t know who you are. So no, your WHY never changes, how you articulate it, how you bring it to life that can adapt. Can it go fuzzy? Can it go out of focus? Can you stray from the path of WHY? 100%. But the WHY itself never it never ever changes your whole life. And it’s not that we don’t know what it is. We’ve all been in states of flow. We’ve all been in states of euphoria when it comes to our work. We’ve all been in states of passion where we’re like, oh my God, I love this. I love doing what I’m doing. The problem is, it usually happens like roulette: unpredictable and hard to repeat. And the hard part is not feeling the WHY, it’s articulating it and making sure that you’re in a situation where your WHY is front, front and center more often than not. In other words, living with purpose on purpose.

Jameela Okay, so give me an example of a WHY.

Simon So I’ll tell you mine. My WHY, the foundation of everything I do, the foundation of who I am, is to inspire people to do the things that inspire them, so together we can change our world for the better. And if you listen to any of my talks or read any of my books, or you talk to any of my friends, if you ask the common thread in all that is people say it’s inspiring and that’s the greatest compliment anyone can ever give me. You know, people say nice things to me all the time, but the one that gives me goosebumps, that makes me feel like I’ve done, I’ve I’ve done well, I’m living my purpose is when somebody says, “That was really inspiring, thank you.” Or “I was inspired. Thank you.”

Jameela And so is that something that has always been a foundation, like has that always been your WHY that you hope to do that and you just didn’t know it yet, and that’s what led you to marketing?

Simon My WHY has always been my WHY like yours has always been yours. But we don’t know what it is.

Jameela That’s what I mean.

Simon And so it was always there. I didn’t know it, but once it was put into words, it gave me a sense of focus and passion like I’ve never experienced. And it has never waned, and more important, is I learned how to help other people find theirs. And that’s what started my career because it was just a tool to help me regain my passion. That’s all it was.

Jameela Mhm.

Simon Wasn’t supposed to be a career, but a WHY is always in service. It’s always a thing you give to the world, and it’s the reason your friends love you, so it’s definitely it’s definitely there.

Jameela How does one find out?

Simon It is, it’s all about pattern recognition, right? So there are times in your life that you loved what you were doing. These peaks of emotion, they come at various times, sometimes very unexpectedly, and finding your WHYs, being able to identify the common theme that is present in all of those moments, that is also missing in all of the troughs in your life. So tell me something you have done in your career.

Jameela Mhm.

Simon Doesn’t have to have been commercially successful, that is not a factor that you, something specific that you were part of that you absolutely loved being a part of. That if everything you did for the rest of your career was like this one thing, you’d be the happiest person alive.

Jameela It happened in January.

Simon Oh, okay.

Jameela I put on an event for people who wanted to come and exercise in pretty much the dark, with just a disco light lighting up the room where you wouldn’t feel like you had to be good at exercise. You wouldn’t have to have done exercise before you could be in a wheelchair or not able to stand up for very long, and you’d be able to participate. And I had this whole day of different exercise classes that were different levels of being adaptive for different people, and the room was full of everyone from every different age and every different background, and people were having such a laugh together. And we were mostly all shit at exercise, especially me. And we all felt so bonded in the fact that none of us knew what we were doing, and none of us felt ashamed. There were no mirrors anywhere, and there was no pressure to look a certain way. We were all wearing baggy clothes, and we were all eating foods that aren’t diet foods, and we all just, you could feel the tangible freedom in the room. And it was the the most poignant day of my not just my career, but also my life where I was like, this is exactly where I’m supposed to be. And this is my favorite thing I’ve ever done, where I’ve been in an industry where I’m selling stuff. Right? I’m selling products, or I’m selling TV shows, or I’m selling comedy or I’m selling ideas. But you rarely feel like you give when you take. As in, like when you’re selling something you really feel, you rarely feel like you’re giving something to the people that they will take on with them. And from the fact that people are standing there crying or telling me that never done exercise, like in maybe 30 years, or they’d never been to a dance class in their entire lives because they were in a wheelchair and they felt like they actually could now. I was nourished in a way that I have never felt nourished fully in my career before.

Simon So you’ve had, thank you for sharing that, the you’ve had a great career. You’ve done some pretty amazing things and you know, you’re playing at the highest levels, you know. What specifically was it about this one thing that stands out so much that you want to talk about it now?

Jameela So we weren’t alone. We weren’t alone. And I think that I don’t think I could have been born with this, but I was very, very lonely as a child, and I, I think I watched my brother be very lonely as a child as well. And I saw how much loneliness was such a huge part of what destroyed people I loved. And members of my family. And I come from a very proud culture, you know, where it’s all about achievements, and if you didn’t have certain achievements, you would basically be ostracized.

Simon Well, you’re a failure because you’re neither an accountant or a doctor.

Jameela Yeah. Exactly.

Simon Right.

Jameela And I was super academic as a kid and my brother wasn’t, and I watched me be weaponized against him. And I watched him be rejected by the family for such a long time because he wasn’t. And I just thought, this is such fucking bullshit. And so I think that that created what was probably an injury in me for the rest of my life wanting to make other people not feel alone, even if I didn’t want to hang out with them personally, I wanted them to know that they’re not alone. And I think that’s part of what my compulsive sharing is online, which is that like, “Hey, I fucked myself up in this way. How about you?” And I think people like me, partially because I am so candid about my fuck ups and about the things that go wrong in my life, or the things that have happened that have been undesirable. I don’t put on a filter in any way, even when I fucking should, and I think that that makes people sometimes feel better about their own lives. They’re like, “Well, at least I didn’t fuck up my life as badly as she did.” Or some people feel like, “Oh, she’s not ashamed.” I’m not ashamed of my, not all of my mistakes, but, I’m I’m just not ashamed of what’s happened. I consider it part of the adventure. That’s part of the story.

Simon Tell me an early specific, happy childhood memory. Something I can relive with you.

Jameela Early specific childhood memory? Being with my brother, being absolutely devastated that I had to leave him because he lived in Spain and I lived in England. He was the light of my life. And as I was crying, he played me the first ever Beatles song that I’d heard, and it was Here Comes the Sun to cheer me up. And then suddenly it was raining outside. And then the sun came out as I was listening to Here Comes the Sun. And then we both started laughing. And then I discovered the Beatles in that moment and had this lovely moment with my brother. And it’s one of the only happy memories I can recall of what was a really dark childhood, but it always stands out as the moment I, it was like one of the happiest moments of my life, one of the most times I’ve ever laughed, and it was, all my happiest moments are with him.

Simon So if you listen, if we listen to those stories.

Jameela Yeah.

Simon Of the disco and this Here Comes the Sun, they’re very similar stories. And you sort of said it. You sort of said the words, which is I want people to feel not alone.

Jameela Mhm.

Simon Right? And to sit with someone in rain, whatever you want to, however you want to define that and give them the sunlight and say we are here together, let’s do it. Let’s, let’s listen to us together. And then the sun actually comes out is just the metaphor. And in some way shape or form you are becoming your brother, right. Which is you are finding the people who are sad, are despondent, are embarrassed, humiliated, ashamed, whatever, whatever word you want to use. And you are saying, let’s listen to the Beatles together, and the sun will come out and we’ll do it together. And what I love is you didn’t just put on the event, you did it with them, you know? So you in your WHY very much is in the, in the sphere of to ensure that people feel not alone. I love that. Let me ask a slightly different question. One day when we build a statue to you.

Jameela Haha!

Simon One day. What, what does the plaque say. You know, what does your epitaph say? You know like so like “She what?” She, she what did you give to the world? She she what.

Jameela She was very bad at Twitter.

Simon Right.

Jameela She was very rude on Twitter. And she’s sorry.

Simon But that’s not how we will remember you.

Jameela Okay. Haha!

Simon Like, like, like my mine will say “He inspired us.”

Jameela Right.

Simon And if I live to that standard

Jameela Right.

Simon That they want to write that on my epitaph, I would be very happy. What does yours say?

Jameela Oh, God.

Simon What are you giving to us? What would you do for us? She liked us.

Jameela I made them feel better about themselves, I hope.

Simon I think that’s what it is.

Jameela Both by affirming them, but also by showing them, like, like you’re not alone.

Simon She made us feel not alone. And you know, there’s what I, what I sort of like about it is like, I always tell people, you know, the English language gets in the way sometimes it can’t, the words are there, that are perfectly crystallize the WHY because we’re putting emotions into words. And I usually recommend to people that a WHY should always be affirmative. We never want it to be not, don’t, can’t. You know you don’t live your life, not to do something. But there’s something to there’s something rather poetic about that you that you live your life to make people feel not alone, rather than to make people feel seen or heard or care for. Like, yes, that’s true, but it seems in your case to be a little more powerful to wake up every day to make people feel not alone. And all the ways do it. You do it on your podcast. You did it in this, this event, the exercise event you did.

Jameela And tt’s largely my social media.

Simon And t’s largely social media, so how does that feel? That’s your WHY. Your WHY, you wake up every day to make people feel not alone so that they can do things that they never imagined that they could.

Jameela It doesn’t feel like anything. Does it feel like anything for you?

Simon Does it feel like nothing? There’s no emotional response when I say that.

Jameela Not about myself. There’s an emotional rush that I get from being in the situation.

Simon Yeah, of course. Yeah, of course.

Jameela But I think I just feel excited because I’m not alone. We’re all in this together.

Simon Well, this is the rub about a WHY, which is the thing you give to the world.

Jameela Yeah.

Simon Which is the value we have in you both as friends or as fans, is the thing you need the most. The thing you give to the world is the thing you need the most. So if you’re on this planet to make us feel not alone so that we can do things we never imagined, then you you need others to make you feel not alone, so that you can go off and do the things to find that energy to do things for others. So that’s the rub.

Jameela Right.

Simon The thing you give is the thing you need, so that makes perfect sense to me.

Jameela Yeah.

Simon But do you have no emotional response when I, when I say that that you are becoming your brother? Like what he did for you, you are now on this planet to give that to as many people as possible.

Jameela No, but there might be a chip missing, Simon.

Simon I failed.

Jameela Sorry. You haven’t failed. You’ve done great.

Simon Usually people have an emotional response.

Jameela I’m sorry, I know, but there’s something wrong with me. Are you worried that you, that we haven’t said the real thing?

Simon No. I mean, I know I’m in the ballpark, you know?

Jameela Yes.

Jameela I know I’m dancing around it.

Jameela I’m telling you, the full, I’m telling you the full truth. And that that was my happiest memory. All my happiest memories are just with my brother, but

Simon And I would, I would argue that your sad memories, like the harsh ones.

Jameela Yeah.

Simon Are when you, when you felt alone.

Jameela Yes. When I felt alone or, yes, yes, exactly.

Simon Yeah.

Jameela And like, it’s it’s, such scary things happened to me by myself, and no one else was there other than the person doing the scary things. And so even when I sleep at night, in my house, if I’m on my own, if my boyfriend and my roommates are away, I’ll ask someone else, I’m 38, I will ask someone else to come over.

Simon Yeah.

Jameela And we’ll call it what it is, we’ll call it babysitting. I’m not going to, like, find another way to say I’m like, would you please come over and babysit me? And this is often a woman who’s smaller than me. So if someone breaks in, it’s not about that. It’s not about someone breaking in. And I’m like, I’ll use her as a human shield.

Simon Yeah, yeah.

Jameela It’s just that I want someone there. And I realized this very sad thing about myself when someone was like, “Why do you keep asking people who aren’t big and strong to come and be in the house that you?” It’s like, because it’s not about self-defense. I just want a witness to what happened so that if I die, someone will know what happened.

Simon Well, it’s feeling not alone.

Jameela Yeah, it’s feeling not alone.

Jameela So you see there it is again.

Jameela It is, is it there.

Simon But you’ll find, you’ll find that your, the times that you find the greatest joy and the greatest calmness and the greatest, like I am myself, is when people do it for you and you do it for others.

Jameela Yeah, but I personally, I think I’m a bit strange, and I think you did exactly the right thing and you did get the WHY out of me, and actually now I can I do find that very helpful to have actually solidified it

Simon Because what you’ll find

Jameela I’m British and we’re very like we find sincerity very, very difficult, and I’m sure you’ve experienced that when you’ve done British press.

Simon I’ll tell you a funny story is like when I do gigs in in London, for example, anywhere in Britain, nobody claps or smiles.

Jameela Haha!

Simon I’m, and I’m just like, “They hated me, I hated it.” I mean, I got a polite I got a polite clap at the end, but I mean, just like I can tell the difference. And then one by one, they all come up to me afterwards and go, “That was amazing!” And I’m just like, “What the fuck?” Like, you could have, like, showed a little love when I was on the stage.

Jameela We’re damaged. We’re damaged. We’re self-conscious, strange people.

Simon No, I know.

Jameela Well, given that I have an obsession with loneliness and with people not feeling alone, I think this is my big fear for our society at large is the way that we communicate and the way that we handle conflict. And we are in a sort of dumpster fire right now of social media, conflict, news and all of these things where we’re being encouraged to label each other and tattoo each other with these sort of like presumptions of who someone is based on an opinion they hold. You know, I’ve spoken before in this podcast about the fact that when we were young, it was identity which was relatively fixed, and then opinion, which was transient, and now the two have become so interlinked that we can’t separate them at all. So now when someone says, “I don’t like your opinion,” it feels like they’re saying I disagree fundamentally with your entire identity.

Simon Yeah.

Jameela And so tools like the ones that you give online, I feel like are, and in your work as a speaker and as a writer, I think are incredibly important because I think this is about to become a make or break situation socially, where if we don’t learn how to communicate with a bit more grace and a bit more empathy towards ourselves and each other, we are headed towards. I know this sounds alarmist, but I feel as though I’m seeing the patterns of just complete chaos and breakdown.

Simon Yeah, I think you’re 100% right, and I think you articulate it beautifully. And I think the thing that we’ve forgotten about all social media is it is not a communication tool. Right? Because communication goes both ways. It is a broadcast tool. That’s all it is. Never, never has anyone read any kind of post, and in the comments wrote, “You know what? You’re right. I’ve completely changed my point of view about this inflammatory situation. Thank you for that.” You know, said no one ever. There was a time where we read the news and we called a friend and we cried or we vented our anger to our friends. Now we take to social media, and we broadcast our anger or our sadness, and we don’t react now to the situation that happened. We now react to each other’s reactions. And we’re all in this sense of, your reaction is inappropriate or your reaction is wrong and you think you nailed it to the point where you know you are your opinion. If I disagree with your opinion, it means I don’t like your entire existence, which seems to be where we are. It’s just a total failure of listening. We’re all really good at broadcasting and we’re all really crap at listening, which is the one skill that makes every single relationship functional.

Jameela And when I talk to people about this, when I say to people that I’m worried or stressed about this, they say, “Oh, it’s just online, you know, that’s just social media. You’re less likely to have those conversations in the real world.” Now to some extent, of course, that’s true. And of course, people engage in more empathy when they are face to face with, not with, with one another. But from the way that you are nodding your head I think you agree with me that this stuff is making its way offline into our everyday speak.

Simon Yes, because we’re learning how to express ourselves online and are uncomfortable with being uncomfortable offline. And the easiest thing you can do when you feel uncomfortable is either retreat or attack.

Jameela Mhm.

Simon Right. Go super quiet and or or attack and but rarely if we’re uncomfortable do we say to somebody, “Can you tell me more please?” Tell me how you got to that opinion with genuine curiosity. And by the way, it’s very hard to do. I’m not saying it’s easy. It’s, like anything it takes a lot of work and a lot of practice, and even people who are good at it will falter. But it’s something we don’t have, which is curiosity.

Jameela But we do have curiosity, clearly, because we go seeking information all of the time and we’re googling things.

Simon Do we have curiosity or do we, are we looking for affirmation?

Jameela As in a kind of confirmation bias?

Simon Yeah. And remember, you know how you just said we go googling? Well, you know how Google works. Google doesn’t help you find the truth. That’s not how the algorithm works. Google helps you find the thing it thinks you’re looking for. So they did a study, on this very thing, and it was a few years ago, so the topic they used was Benghazi. And they took people with right leaning politics and people who are genuinely trying to find out the truth of what happened. So they don’t want to rely on big media to tell them or any media they’re going to do their own research, well-intentioned. And in Google, they type Benghazi and they got all right leaning sources to give them information. People with left leaning politics typed in Benghazi, and they got responses that were all left leaning based on their what their computer search history was. So two people genuinely trying to do the same research got completely different answers, by the way, people with no political leanings whatsoever typed in Benghazi and got travel advice.

Jameela Hahaha!

Simon So, so and I’ve done it. I’ve experimented with friends like I’ve done my searches on their computers, and then I’ve done my searches on my computer. And although my friends, we have similar values, but we did not get the same responses from Google.

Jameela Yeah.

Simon Or they were in different orders. This is the problem, right?

Jameela Yeah, I agree.

Simon This is part of the echo chamber.

Not, not to go into it right now, in this moment, but regarding what’s happening with the Middle East, when I noticed that a friend would come to me with a kind of fraught opinion on something that I had said, I would sit down and be like, “Let’s swap phones for a minute so we can see each other’s timelines, because then we have a better chance of understanding where the other one’s strong feeling is coming from.” Because as we learned with that documentary, The Social Dilemma, we all, that one of the biggest crises that we’re in is the fact that we all think we’re having different opinions to the same information, but we’re having different opinions to different information. We have no idea that everyone’s saying a different version of the same event, and therefore we think, everyone thinks the other one is stupid, or everyone thinks the other one is lacking in humanity or empathy because we have no idea what the other ones are seeing. And it is this, I don’t really know where we go from here or what we do, because the media is becoming left or right leaning like there’s very few independent sources or independent people, especially in the public eye. And so regardless of which avenue subject we’re talking about, this is happening in every social issue. This is happening everywhere. What is anyone supposed to do? How do we maintain that curiosity? Where do we go for the information?

Simon Well, change starts at home, right? So I have a friend who, we became friends, and then it was only later revealed to both of us that we see the world very differently. She’s a conspiracy theorist, and I mean, like a lot of conspiracies.

Jameela Mhm.

Simon And I didn’t know this and we were, we she came to visit. She lives in, in rural America. She came to visit and we were walking, just chatting, and she said something and I said out loud, “How can you be so stupid?” And she stopped in her tracks and turned to me and said, “You just called your friend stupid.” And I’m really grateful that she did that, and I realized I judged my friend for her point of view, and I expressed no curiosity. Now, we’re at a fork in the road, right? Am I so incensed by her point of view in the world that was very different to mine that I abandon the friendship? Or do I say no, the friendship is more important to me. This is a good human being who cares about me, that I’m going to try and figure this way through. And we learned to talk to each other. We learned to hold space for each other, and when one of us said something that was that, the other thought was outlandish. We had to learn to say, “Tell me more.” Go on, without judgment. And what I learned was, if you go long enough down that path and allow someone to express and and tell you how they got to that opinion and what their point of view is, at some point you will find something that you agree with, or you will find something that’s grounded in fact.

Jameela You will probably find quite a lot of fundamental truths that you believe.

Simon So that’s what happened. She would start saying things and and I would say, “That’s right.” Or “Yes, I completely agree with that.” And at that point of validation where we found common ground, at that point, we could start building back up again. And now she was more open to my points of view and we did actually

Jameela And were you then more open to her points of view?

Simon 100%.

Jameela Yeah.

Simon And we didn’t have to completely agree on everything, but we understood the context for how we got to our respective opinions, number one. And number two, we actually did change each other’s opinions and bring us over a little closer to each other because we were actually listening as opposed to reacting. And unlike what the standard, you know, recommendation is like, you know, when you’re at Thanksgiving and your crazy uncle said that you just go quiet, don’t engage, disconnect, you know, that’s sort of what most people do. We didn’t. We stepped into the fire together and said, our friendship matters more than our worldviews, and our worldviews do not dictate. You know, people say, well, if somebody has a completely different worldview than me, then I can’t be friends with them. Well, I

Jameela This is huge what you just said. This is all I see online. This is people even, messaging me, being like, “I can’t believe you follow this person.”

Simon Right.

Jameela And this is someone who’s maybe a comedian who makes inappropriate jokes. And the expectation is that I will cut this person off that’s been my friend for 10 or 11 years. They don’t know the context of our relationship or what we’ve been through before, or what that person’s been through to get to where they are.

Simon Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Jameela They are expecting me to write that person off because we have become so, we have started to see each other in such a disposable, dehumanized way. Just kind of unclick unfollow as if you could, and we’re starting to think that we should do that in real life. And I understand where that comes from. I don’t have judgment of it, but I do know that if we are looking for perfectly moral people, we are going to find ourselves with smaller and smaller, smaller circles.

Simon I, I agree and I disagree.

Jameela Okay.

Simon Right, if you’re saying if we’re looking for people with perfect morals, we’re going to have smaller and smaller circles, but what we will find is people who share our biases and our lack of curiosity for others and we will feel more right as opposed to more lonely.

Jameela Mhm.

Simon And that’s a problem.

Jameela But it does become lonely because as we see like within social justice these things get more and more fragmented. And suddenly we find all these new ways that we didn’t think we would disagree, and we’re disagreeing with each other. Do you know what I’m saying?

Simon But I don’t think so that

Jameela So it keeps thinning out.

Simon I agree with you, but I, I think that’s one of the reasons why we latch onto people who share our biases is to feel not alone.

Jameela Yeah. It’s tribalism.

Simon It’s tribalism at its worst. And I think part of the problem is that there’s been a total loss of idealism in our world. I mean, and there’s nothing to latch onto at a very high altitude.

Jameela Would you define idealism.

Jameela A belief in a world, in literal utopia belief in a world that is beautiful and magical, that does not yet exist. And we should fight to, to to build it. And, you know, there was a time not that long ago that regardless of who was elected, whether it was the Democrat or the Republican, you could look at Ronald Reagan’s inauguration, you can look at John F Kennedy’s inauguration. And literally in both their inaugurations, they use the term “peace on earth.” They literally said “world peace, peace on earth” as a striving goal for their presidencies. And now talking about world peace actually sounds corny. It actually sounds cheesy to say “I’m driven by world peace.” I sound like I’m running for Miss America. And and the reality is that’s what our great leaders should be preaching to us.

Jameela Yeah.

Simon They should be preaching the most incredible idealized vision of the world, something that is absolutely unachievable, but my goodness, we should die trying. And we can disagree on the paths to take to get there, but we cannot disagree on is the destination. And because we have no longer any leaders preaching an idealized sense of the future, the only thing we have are our divergent opinions on the paths we’re taking. So we’re we’re disagreeing, it’s yelling at each other about which highway to take, but we haven’t talked about at all where we’re going.

Jameela Mhm. 100%. I feel that way so strongly. I feel as though we did not zoom out enough, but given that this is coming from like a deep anthropological place of tribalism, what would you say are the tools? You know, you’re good at the kind of the art of war, right? That’s it’s a dramatic way of talking about what you do, but you are good at laying ground rules. You are good at giving people suggestions of how to prepare other people for conflict, but how do we encourage people away from this tribalism that is only being validated online? Because right now we have young people who are listening to this podcast who have a problematic parent or problematic friend or colleague or grandparent, and they feel as though they are breaking a rule by even daring to hear out that person’s opinion or continue to affiliate themselves in any way with that person. It’s like a social contagion that we fear. So what advice do you have for those people? How do we step away from that terror of being otherized? And we step away from the tribal group and we dare to meet someone, even part of the way between our beliefs and theirs.

Simon Okay, so there’s there’s a few different ways you can do it. One is talk about things that are unrelated, like find those common grounds, you know? What was it like growing up in wherever you’re from, you know? What was your childhood like, you know? You have so many opinions about what’s going on in in life today, you know, I’m so curious where those opinions were from? Like, what was your childhood like? But you have to be the anthropologist. You can’t cut them off. You can’t tell them they’re wrong. It’s their story whether it’s true or not, whether it’s subjective or objective, it’s their story.

Jameela Okay.

Simon And you have to let them tell their story. Now, if you really want to step into the fire and say, “You know, you and I completely disagree on who should be the next person of the United States or is it Israel-Palestine, right? I’m really curious about your point of view. Can you tell me what your how you got to it?” And then you have to let them empty their bucket because they’re going to be many points where you’ll want to interrupt, correct them, insult them, tell them they’re stupid, correct their facts, and you have to allow people to get their facts wrong until they completely empty the bucket. And by the way, this goes into interpersonal communications with with loved ones and friends as well. The number of, one of the terrible things that we do when we argue is somebody tells you how they’re feeling, and you correct the facts, right? There’s a guy by the name of Sean McBride, he’s a couples counselor who talks about this, and I love his metaphor. Someone’s in the pool drowning, and they scream out to you afraid, “I’m drowning.” And you say, “Well, there’s a sign that says, no swimming after dark. Why did you get in the pool?” And they look at you say, “I’m drowning.” And they go, and you say to them, “Well, you knew there was no lifeguard. Why did you get in the pool?” And that’s how we argue with people. They tell us how they feel, and we point out the facts that they got wrong, or the things that they shouldn’t have done, right. You cannot bring rational arguments to an emotional gunfight. You cannot bring facts and figures when emotions are the things that we’re talking about. And so part of what we have to learn is, are we having a conversation about facts where we’re both rational and we’re going to compare our scientific data and be curious about each other with no emotion? Rare. Or is this emotional?

Jameela And you’ve said before that when you can sense that someone’s in an emotional place, this is the time to sit back with your facts and just meet them back with emotion.

Simon Just wait, yeah.

Jameela And wait until there is a moment where things have calmed down.

Simon Just listen.

Jameela Where they’re no longer in an emotional place to then pick up, because I don’t think it’s a matter of people just listening and and doing all of the empathetic work towards someone who said something very hurtful or very scary. I think it’s about listening to that, that dump of, I don’t mean dump in a derogatory way, but

Simon No, no, no.

Jameela It’s about listening to their download, right, their full story.

Simon Yeah, yeah.

Jameela And then maybe being able to offer yours, asking them, would you like to know how I arrived at my beliefs?

Simon Well, no. You can’t ask people to be curious.

Jameela Okay.

Simon It’s what I learned with my friend, which is once they have emptied their bucket, they actually become, in that moment, more open to what you have to say. Once you have found some common ground, one detail you can agree on.

Jameela Mhm.

Simon They instantly become more open to almost anything you want to tell them, right. And so can you build, you have to go all the way to the bottom of the bucket before you can refill it. And so the job that you have is to hold that space until they have nothing else to say. What else? Go on. Tell me more. What else? Go on, tell me more. Go on. What else? Tell me more,  are the three phases you need. That’s all you need. Those three phrases. And when they have nothing else to say that like will, then you can start saying, “Here’s what I find interesting.” First of all, I completely agree about this thing that you said. And you’re right that that is a thing that happened, but here’s what I think is also happening. They are, they will listen because they feel heard. And it’s when people don’t feel heard that we won’t listen to each other, right? When someone is in a bad place, call it loneliness, anger, sadness, whatever you want to call it. When someone is in an emotional state, it is as if they are sitting in mud. It’s not comfortable. I don’t want to be here. I don’t like how it feels. And the worst thing is when somebody’s sitting in mud, when somebody’s depressed, that somebody else swoops in and tries to fix us.

Jameela Mhm.

Simon Here’s what you should do. You know what you haven’t done, you’re not, you’re not thinking about. It’s actually a horrible feeling and they go into fix it mode. And that’s not what I need. And what we have to learn to do is that when we have a friend in need, and by the way, if we don’t know, we can ask. You say do you want me to hold space for you? Do you want me to try and offer you advice right now to fix it? And our friends will say, “No, I just need you, I just need you to listen.” And you go, “Okay,” and you get in the mud with them. And this is the hardest thing for people to swallow. This is what friendship and love mean, which is I don’t want to get into mud. Mud is horrible, it’s gross and it’s dirty. But I love you and you don’t want to be pulled out of the mud yet.

Jameela I’ll come and sit in shit with you.

Simon And so I’m going to, I’m going to come and sit in the shit with you.

Jameela Yeah.

Simon And so, like, you know, a friend who does want to get out of bed because they’re depressed, don’t tell them all the reasons they should get out of bed, go over to their house, get into bed with them and watch movies all day. Don’t get out of bed. Like go sit with them.

Jameela My, one of my best friends did that when I had a nervous breakdown when I was 26. Like a complete full actual failure to be able to continue my life functionally. And he was only 25. I was 26 and he was not well versed in anything particularly emotional, but he went by his human instinct to come over to my house every day.

Simon Yeah.

Jameela And jump on my bed and put on Breaking Bad, and we watched the entire five seasons of that show. We just binge watched it in about a month, and at no point did he try to figure out what was wrong with me. He waited till I was ready and just made me feel completely safe and completely seen and okay to be the unbathed like, I feel as though Jeff Bridges is the only person who could have convincingly played me in the film of my life at that time. He sat with me through that, and that healed me more than almost anything else could have. And then afterwards, I was able to finally, when he could see that I was in so much chaos, I didn’t have the bandwidth to speak about it. But once I had come out onto the other side and we’d spent time together and I’d done a bit of healing and hadn’t been so lonely, and I had that affection and that kindness and that friendship from him, I was able to speak, and I think I’ve always credited him with saving my life in that period when no one else knew what to do.

Simon Cause people well-intentioned were trying to fix you, pull you out of the mud.

Jameela Yeah. Or trying to discipline me out of mud.

Simon And we’re smart, like there’s a point at which we’ll turn to our friend and say, “I think I’m ready to get out of the mud now.” And then they’ll go, “Okay.” And then they’ll turn on the fix it mode. And I mean, you have to remember, not everybody has the skills like, you may have the skills to sit in mud with somebody, but they might not have the skills to sit in mud with you, so you have to guide them, like we can offer them guidance. You know, we can’t get mad at them for not knowing. That’s not fair.

Jameela Mhm.

Simon So we can guide our friends and we can tell them what we need when we need it.

Simon I think, and I think when you’re talking about social justice or politics, you can say, I can see how so many of us are reacting from a place of fear. And that fear manifests sometimes as what looks like or can become hatred, right? Because you now see that thing that you fear as a threat to your safety or a threat to your survival. And so when you recognize that, when I recognize that, I try to tell myself, right, that person has fear. How do I navigate that fear and try to dilute it? How do I make them feel safe in this moment? Because that’s the only way I’m going to be able to communicate with them. Because while they feel in that frenzied state of terror or fear or like they’re not being heard or understood and therefore they’re not safe, I’m just literally not going to be able to communicate with them. And so it has been frustrating for me, you know, I’ve said I’ve talked about this a lot on the podcast that I used to be someone who was very inflammatory and very accidentally quite condescending and callous in the way that I would speak. I was just labeling people. I was like, well, you’re a misogynist or this is racist, or this is that and the other. And I meant those things. That’s how I felt. That’s what I was looking at. But communicating it to that person or at those people or at the people that also follow that person online, just meant that I labeled people. I meant, made them feel incredibly stressed. They had a literal cortisol stress reaction and now shut down on me. They have no reason to listen to me because they recognize me as a threat because I’ve just pointed the finger at them and labeled them. And so I saw that now I’m just talking to my echo chamber of people who already agree with me, who already don’t feel endangered by my differing opinions

Simon Which feels great, by the way.

Jameela It’s it’s it’s a lovely high for awhile.

Simon Oh my god, it’s so wonderful. It’s so affirming.

Jameela But then you move exactly zero needles.

Simon Yeah.

Jameela And so it has been a frustrating but wholesome journey for me to recognize, as you were saying earlier, that I have to meet them where they’re at to try to find a better place for both of us to exist.

Simon The minute we label someone especially to their face.

Jameela Yeah.

Simon Even if they were open minded ten minutes before, they’re going to be closed minded now.

Jameela Yeah.

Simon You know?

Jameela Also their blood has literally rushed away from their brain to their muscles in preparation of fight or flight.

Simon Which is what cortisol does.

Jameela So, yeah, so they don’t have enough oxygen to even take in this new information.

Simon So so the when we start labeling people and again you know, you know we’re getting into sort of global sort of sort of these political things. Let’s take it away from those things because they’re so

Jameela Inflammatory. Yeah.

Simon You know, let’s just take it to personal relationships or work relationships. The minute we label somebody something to their face, “You’re a coward. You’re an idiot. How dumb can you be?” You know, the minute that happens, even if they were open minded ten minutes before, they’re closed minded now. And so we have to take responsibility for that again that we’re contributing to, to creating a tense situation. Like my friend, thank goodness, she said to me, “You just called your friend stupid.” You know, I did that. I did that to her face. Not even in my imagination, you know? And I’m just glad that she was smarter than me in the moment and didn’t abandon me because if she had reacted like, “Yeah, you judgmental piece of shit?” she could have said, and I would have lost an amazing friend who cares about me and makes me feel seen and heard. And makes me feel safe. And yeah, I disagree with her on a lot of things. And you know what we do? We talk about it. And I don’t get off the phone and think she’s stupid. I get off the phone and think she has a different life experience than me, and I have a different life experience than her.

Jameela And do you ever just not talk about it?

Simon No.

Jameela Because, because in the 90s, I used to just not talk about every fucking belief that I had with my friends, and we were able to sometimes.

Simon It’s a stretch. I mean, look, we don’t, it’s not like every time we talk we bring up one of these subjects, but we don’t tiptoe around them either. You know, like if if it like, I mean, Covid was the best time to have these conversations because, my goodness, people were on one side or the other of almost everything.

Jameela Yeah.

Simon Mask, no mask. Vax, no vax, you know.

Jameela Yeah.

Simon Government, you know, Bill gates, not Bill gates. You know, it’s we were all pretty clearly on one side or the other. You know, very few people were like, I mean, I’m going to wait and see. And so we had all the conversations because that was that was the thing, so, yeah, we stepped right into it. It’s not, by the way, it’s not always fun. It’s not always comfortable. It’s sometimes it’s a challenge and sometimes learning to wait your turn to speak, like listening and waiting for your turn to speak are not the same thing. Listening is is trying to find the meaning of what people are saying. And you have not listened until the other person feels heard. It’s not like I can repeat back to you what you said to me. No, no, no, that’s not listening. You’re not listening. And then you simply say back what they said to you when somebody says you’re not listening, what they’re actually saying is, I don’t feel heard. And shutting the fuck up and letting somebody even if you want to think about like, your shopping list, let them empty their bucket to the point where they can go, “Thank you. That’s all I’m trying to say.” That means they’ve now felt heard.

Jameela And something you talk about, which I think is helpful for this, you talk about sometimes preparing people for conflict. You talk about asking for permission.

Simon Yeah.

Jameela Do you know what I’m talking about?

Simon Yeah.

Jameela So I think that that’s something that I think we don’t always have the language to do. We have the feeling. We feel the feeling in the moment, and we have been taught that authenticity

Simon Yes.

Jameela Is saying the feeling as you have it, regardless of the circumstance.

Simon So there are this has many, many applications. And again and you said it before, which is you have to meet someone where they are, right. Not everybody, having a having a fight with somebody, having conflict, and by the way, I don’t believe in the fact we can live in a world without conflict. Like when we talk peace on earth, which I believe in. I believe in world peace. I do not believe that world peace is a is a world without conflict. That’s not what I believe. I believe peace on earth is a world in which we can resolve our conflict peacefully. Right. And that goes for interpersonal relationships as well. I believe that every relationship is going to have conflict, but the question is can we resolve the conflict peacefully.

Jameela There’s no peace without justice, right? Because peace without justice is just obedience, and that’s not true peace.

Simon That’s not true peace. Yeah. So so so elimiting conflict is unrealistic. Learning to resolve conflict peacefully, is very realistic. And so what you’re talking about is timing. Like, I may be ready for the fight. I may be incensed. I may be angry, but I don’t know where you are. And so learning to say, “I need to have an uncomfortable conversation with you. Can I have an uncomfortable conversation with you now? “The answer you can get is, “Can we do it in an hour?” Or “Can we do it tomorrow?” And I’ve told this story, there’s many applications of this, of timing, of meeting emotion when emotion is ready to be met. Right? I worked with someone who, so we we often give feedback the way we like to get feedback. So I like it blunt. Just, just tell me what you need to tell me. Please don’t give me a sandwich.

Jameela I’m the same, yeah.

Simon You know, don’t give me a feedback sandwich. I can’t stand it, you know? So I tend to give blunt feedback, and I tend to leave out some of the mushy stuff, which you know, sometimes that doesn’t go well. And I worked with someone who I did that and it rarely went well. And at one point it was a full on yelling match. I mean, I couldn’t believe it. Like I’m being yelled at by someone who works for me. I’m yelling back. It was a full on yelling match. And I stopped, interrupted, said, “This is not working. Whatever I started here isn’t working. How do you want me to give you feedback? Because I’m, I’m, it’s not going well.” And she said to me, “I can take hard feedback. You just have to prepare me for it. So either ask me, can I tell you, give you some hard feedback now?”

Jameela So that someone has the chance to ready themselves.

Simon So I say, so I say can I give you some harsh feedback or can I give you some blunt feedback, or can I give you some feedback? And she’d say, “Yes.”

Jameela Is it because you’re giving them the agency to opt in? The critique?

Simon I’m giving them agency to opt in, which makes them accountable as opposed to feeling attacked. Right. They’re now a party to this.

Jameela And they’ve engaged in maybe empathy because they want to know what you think or feel about the situation.

Simon Right. And sometimes they can change the timing. It’s like, “Can can we can we make a point in the calendar to do this tomorrow?” “Yeah, we can do that.”

Jameela Mhm.

Simon “Does it have to be now?” “No, it doesn’t have to be now.” It can be any, it can be, can we do it in an hour?” “Yes.” “Can you just give me a minute?” “Yes. I’ll give you,” like whatever the response is, is the response. And once I learned to do that, it was unbelievable how blunt she could take feedback more than anybody on my team, in fact. It was incredible. As long as she was prepared for it.

Jameela Yeah. The element of surprise is so destructive to our thinking faculty that it’s unbelievable. And so I do a similar thing, although I have a quick question about relationships. So if I want to have a conversation that is uncomfortable with my boyfriend and let’s say asking for a friend. No, I’m not I’m asking for me. And he is like, “I don’t want to talk about this right now.” Now sometimes he means I don’t want to fucking talk about this, but we need to talk about it. So then I say, “Alright. When could you talk about this?” He immediately finds this annoying because now it means it’s back on the table as a possible discussion. And he’s like, “Tomorrow.” I’m like, “Okay,” but I’m fucking pissed and I don’t want to talk about anything other than this thing. So I’m happy to talk about it tomorrow, but I don’t I can’t bullshit my way through the rest of the day or the evening now, so can I just take some space? Is that okay? Because I tend to take some, this literally happened this morning where I was like, “We’ll talk about this later.” And but I couldn’t just do niceties and bullshit during the day, so I’ve just stepped away for a bit to just give, give us some space. And then when we come back together, we can talk about it, which means he gets to wait until he’s ready. And I don’t have to bullshit my way through a day and pretend that this isn’t the only thing I’m thinking about.

Simon Communication is lubrication in any relationship. The more communication, the more lubricated the relationship. Right. And so tension literally like gears is, is is a lack of lubricant.

Jameela Yes.

Simon Right? And so if you say, “We need to have this conversation,” and he says “I can’t do this right now.” You can, you can say, “Fine. When specifically would you like to talk about it tomorrow?” Right. “Talk about at 3:00 tomorrow when I come home.” Right. Fine. And then you have to say. Just say, you know, this is eating me up, and I want to talk about it sooner rather than later because I want to clear the air, but if you want to talk about it at three, I will honor that, just know that I cannot get this out of my head, so I’m not going to be the most fun. And I just need you to know that I’m probably gonna be a little distant and maybe little one word answers. It’s not personal. Don’t react to my reactions. It’s just that until I get this out, I’m going to be a little distracted by it.

Jameela Great. That’s, that’s vaguely what I say, but not as cheerful a Santa Claus-y sort of way that I’m going to now adopt because that is a nicer way of explaining. I think the thing of saying, please don’t react to my reaction is incredibly potent, because I am having a visceral reaction that I cannot control myself, but I also want to give that person the time and the agency.

Simon Yeah. Just like you want yours.

Jameela Yeah, exactly.

Simon The thing you can’t do is run away from an argument.

Jameela Yes.

Simon That’s not allowed.

Jameela No.

Simon You can never run away from it and never come back.

Jameela Yeah, not in perpetuity.

Simon Not in perpetuity. You can take moments and you can manage timing. And I find managing timing of emotional things really fascinating. So I went to see a friend’s play, and easily the worst thing I’ve ever seen in my life. If I, if I could have walked out twice, I would have. But I sat there through the whole damn thing because, you know, it’s my friend. And at the end, I was in the foyer in the lobby of the theater and just waiting with the friends and family, and she comes out still in costume and makeup, and she’s all jacked up with adrenaline. And she says, “What do you think?” Now, she knows I’m an honest broker, but now is not the time. She’s jacked up with adrenaline that I’m going to be like, “Oh, fucking worst thing ever.” What that will do is the emotional equivalent of punching her in the face, right? But I can’t lie either. That’s not allowed. So I said things that were true, but didn’t answer her question. “Oh my God, it was so exciting to see you do your thing. I’ve never seen you on stage before. It really was fun to come here.” It’s all true. That was all true. The next day, 2 or 3 days later, when the adrenaline had clearly settled, I called her up and I said, “Can I tell you what I actually thought about the play?” She said, “Of course.” So I asked permission, and I told her I’m like, “The directing was pretty shit. The script is pretty shit. That one actor, they were pretty good,” and we had a rational conversation about it and we agreed. She actually agreed with everything, but that was not the time or place. And so when people hurt someone’s feelings, when they attack, when somebody feels attacked and we go, “Just speaking my truth.”

Jameela Just being authentic.

Simon “Just being authentic.”

Jameela Yeah.

Simon It’s completely unacceptable and unsympathetic. Which is, yes, you have to be honest, but not every moment is is is the time for it. You you cannot meet emotions with facts when it’s not the time. You cannot meet rational with emotional. And sometimes if you’re inflamed and they’re inflamed, you also sometimes need a cooling off period. So so disconnect, like you said, with your with your boyfriend. You can adjust the timing of things. Or me with my with my colleague, I can adjust the timing of when I give that feedback of when I’m honest about something I can, you can adjust the timing. You have to be honest, but you don’t have to be honest in this very second.

Jameela I’m very blunt and

Simon That doesn’t come across.

Jameela And my, my friends, I find it easier to find the different facets of me that can be challenging or versatile, I find it helps to name them as different characters in me. I know this is weird. I’m not suggesting this is a tool for every one, it’s brilliant for me.

Simon So what’s her

Jameela And my friends

Simon What’s her name?

Jameela No, well, they’ve named my most ruthless truth teller, Gareth. And that is just the name that has been chosen for, for him, for that part of me.

Simon He’s very English.

Jameela That he is very British. Great English, his truth. He’s a truth teller. And my friends now will call me and deliberately ask to speak to Gareth, not me, when they need some harsh truth about like why aren’t my friendships working? Why am I single? Why did my show not get picked up or whatever?

Simon Yeah yeah yeah yeah.

Jameela And so I have found this very helpful because I, I’m working really hard on my tone. But I sometimes say the honest thing, and I’m better and partially because of your work at my timing. But it’s so helpful when you have a blunt friend for your friends to also know that I’m not going to offer my opinion now unsolicited, but also, if you want it, give me, give me like the the the green light to tell you the exact thing. And so they are they are as opting in as opting in could be. And it means that we both feel very free and they don’t take what I say somehow, they just don’t take what I say personally. And it has led to such bonding in our friendships.

Simon I was so eager when you first started down this line of thinking to judge you

Jameela Haha!

Simon and, and I, I mean, literally, I was so eager, but I have to say that is sheer genius. And I think to label the different, it’s not really it’s not labeling or naming the aspects of your personality, it’s way more sophisticated than that. It’s giving names to the kind of feedback I want. I want Gareth, which is one kind of feedback. I want Felicia, which is a different kind of feedback. You know, I need, I need, I need Stewie, who’s just like the therapist. Just just shut up and listen. And I think for people to choose the reaction that they want in the time which is

Jameela Choose your adventure.

Simon Choose your adventure, but it’s also the same thing as, can you just come sit in mud with me? Or I need you to fix me. And it’s and it’s giving, it’s giving, it’s so empowering for the person who asks for Gareth. Who literally, I know how this goes. They take a deep breath.

Jameela Pick up the phone.

Simon They, they call, they call you, they go, “Okay. I need to talk to Gareth.” Right. And that, that’s magic. And I actually strongly recommend that everybody have names for

Jameela The different facets.

Simon But, like, I need to talk to the therapist. I need to talk to the, you know.

Jameela Yeah.

Simon The different facets I actually think is brilliant.

Jameela Okay.

Simon I actually think is brilliant.

Jameela Great. And also, by the way, it’s also given us a non-violent way for if Gareth accidentally enters the chat without having been invited, they can just be like, “No, no, no, no, I didn’t call up to speak to Gareth today.”

Simon Yeah.

Jameela No Gareth. No. And they speak directly to Gareth and tell him to stand down.

Simon And it makes you

Jameela And it makes us both laugh and it makes me immediately like not feel defensive because it’s been funny and go, “Oh my God, I’m so sorry.” And then I stop immediately.

Simon Did you did you see Elizabeth Gilbert’s TedTalk?

Jameela I didn’t.

Simon Okay. So she does this brilliant talk where she talks about the concept of genius. And in the pre-renaissance, a genius, the definition of a genius was a spirit that lived in the walls. And if you did something remarkable, people would say, “You had your genius. Your genius was with you.” And if you completely screwed the pooch, people would say, “Oh, your genius wasn’t with you. Just your genius wasn’t there with you.” Right? And at some point in the Renaissance, having your genius became being the genius. And now we live in a world where you are a genius, you’re a genius. Did you see what you accomplished? You’re a genius. And then what it does is it leaves you with the desperate fear that if you screw up and you fall off the pedestal, that people will no longer think you’re a genius anymore. And what I love about the pre renaissance genius is you can’t be held responsible for the things you screw up entirely, but you can’t fully take credit for the things that go right either. And there’s a humility on both sides, right. And what I love about this is it allows you to feel in partnership with the world as opposed to, you know, you and you alone. And what I love about labeling these different aspects of your personality, it allows you to live in partnership. So when you’re excessively blunt because you’re not thinking and you’re a little bit blind, and if you’ve made it you, “Shut the fuck up. I do not need you to be up my fucking ass right now with your fucking blunt feedback.” That’s now personal. Versus I did not ask for Garrett to come to this conversation. What I love is it it allows for things to be not personalized, which you are disconnected from, from the things that you do. So you can’t take full responsibility, but you also can’t take full credit either. “Oh my God, you give the best advice.” Well, Gareth gives the best advice. So I actually think it’s way more sophisticated and way more brilliant, as you said, it’s incredibly disarming as well, which if someone’s not ready for it. It’s not quite you, it’s, it’s Gareth living in the walls.

Jameela Yeah. When my roommate feels incredibly negative and dower and is a shadow of his former self, we know that Wayne has taken over his personality for the day. And I’m like, “Oh, I see Wayne has joined us today.” And then he can laugh with me and sort of nod silently, and then we just both have an acknowledgment that he’s not himself today in a way that doesn’t make him feel like there’s a spotlight on him. We’re removing just a little bit of responsibility, not all of the responsibility, but just just that it’s never supposed to be a dehumanizing thing. It’s just supposed to be a way of just categorizing things. I think humans like little categories. I think we like little boxes. And so this is how me and my friends, you know, my friend Monica, when she’s being really fucking mean and intense, Monique comes out.

Simon How do you remember all these friends?

Jameela Haha!

Simon Haha! I would struggle with all the names, you know, as if I can’t, I struggle enough with people’s regular names. I got to remember their alter egos as well.

Jameela Well, they’ve got to remember their own, and if I were to get it wrong, then they’ll they’ll remind me. But generally, like these characters are big parts of who they are. Gareth is a ginormous part of who I am. I’m suppressing him most of the time. He’s he’s he’s in me.

Simon Not now.

Jameela Yeah. Not now Gareth. Even I’m like, “Shut up, Gareth.”

Simon Because otherwise what you get and we’ve all had it lobbed at us.

Jameela Yeah.

Simon What, what’s wrong with you?

Jameela Yeah.

Simon Like nothing’s wrong with you.

Jameela Why are you so nappropriate? Yeah.

Simon And then we find ourselves apologizing. “I’m sorry. I’m just a little bit tired. Sorry. I’m just a little grumpy. I don’t mean to be so forward.” But we should be allowed to have different aspects of our personalities have names, but that doesn’t disassociate accountability.

Jameela Exactly.

Simon Because one of the things I hate is, there was a guy who took a personality test and the personality test, the personality test revealed he’s an asshole.

Jameela Yeah.

Simon And he now goes around using it as some sort of, like, “Oop, just an asshole. That’s just who I am. I’m just an asshole.”

Jameela Haha!

Simon I’m like, “Well, why don’t you work on that? Because you’re an asshole.” Like,

Jameela Yeah.

Simon And I hate how he he uses this personality test to excuse his behavior.

Jameela Yeah.

Simon You are still responsible for Gareth’s behavior.

Jameela Totally.

Simon But the point is, it allows people to recognize that we are different people at different times. You know, depending on your sleep or your stress level, your distractibility or, you know, I think it’s, this is this is all been worth it for that one thing.

Jameela Hahaha! Oh my God, I’m so glad I saved it at the very end.

Simon It’s so good.

Jameela Thank you so much for coming in today and talking to me about all of this stuff. And I appreciate you and and look forward to seeing more of your warmth and reason radiate across the internet.

Simon Thank you for making me feel not alone.

Jameela My life purpose. 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 iweighpodcast@gmail.com. And now we would love to pass the mic to one of our listeners.

Listener I weigh the fact that I’m the cool, fun from out of town, and my nieces and nephews get so excited when I attend birthday parties and holidays. I way that my mom doesn’t worry about my mental health anymore. I weigh that everyone around me comes to me for advice and validation. I weigh that I am secure in myself and I know who I am and I weigh that I don’t look at my sizes anymore when I buy clothes.