The therapy for Black Girls podcast is your space to explore mental health, personal development, and all the small decisions we can make to become the best possible versions of ourselves. I'm your host, Doctor Joy Hardin Bradford, a licensed psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia. And I can't wait for you to join the conversation. Every Wednesday, listen to the therapy for Black Girls podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Take good care, and we'll see you there.

Tune in to the new podcast, stories from the village of nothing much like easy listening, but for fiction. If you've overdosed on bad news, we invite you into a world where the glimmers of goodness in everyday life are all around you. I'm Kathryn Nikolai, and I'm an architect of cozi. Come spend some time where everyone is welcome, and the default is kindness. Listen, relax, enjoy. Listen to stories from the village of nothing much on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, friends. I'm Danielle Robe.

And I'm Simone Boyce, and we're here.

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I want to wake up more happy than depressed. I want to enjoy life. I'm not the final form of myself. I don't know what that's going to be. He's one of the most influential voices in morning radio. Yep, it's the world's most dangerous morning show, the Breakfast Club, Charlamagne. I had no idea who I was. There was this character that had been created named Charlamagne. I'm like, I don't know who this person is. At some point, I remember saying to myself, well, what's wrong with me? That I thought it was okay.

Hey, everyone, I've got some huge news to share with you. In the last 90 days, 79.4% of our audience came from viewers and listeners that are not subscribed to this channel. There's research that shows that if you want to create a habit, make it easy to access. By hitting the subscribe button. You're creating a habit of learning how to be happier, healthier, and more healed. This would also mean the absolute world to me and help us make better, bigger, brighter content for you in the world. Subscribe right now.

The number one health and wellness podcast, Jay Shetty. Jay Shetty.

He won the only Jay Shetty. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to on purpose, the place you come to become happier, healthier, and more healed. I'm so grateful that you're lending me your eyes and your ears for this time, investing in your growth. And today's guest is someone who I'm so grateful to because he came on the show back five years ago when we were just starting out. The platform was not established, and I'd reached out to him and I said, hey, I'd love to interview you. He came on as one of our earliest guests, did me a massive favor. Over the last few years, I've been on his incredible show, the Breakfast club, so many times now, some of my favorite conversations brings out a different side of me. I get to have a honest, vulnerable, truthful, reflective conversation. And he's a New York Times bestseller. And his new book is out right now. It's called get honest or die lying. Why small talk sucks. I'm talking about the one, the only, Charlamagne, the guard, Charlemagne. It is so great to have you back on on purpose and honestly, man, the friendship and the genuine connection that we built over the last few years has been a real honor for me.

And as I said, I'm very grateful to you because you believed in me when I was just starting out, and it really meant a lot to me, and it still does today.

Oh, man, thank you for that. I received that. And to see you grow into, you know, your purpose, you know, and see you have this massive platform has been amazing to watch. So thank you. I'm happy to be here. Happy to be here with one of my favorite people and on one of my favorite podcasts.

Thank you, man. Thank you. Well, let's dive straight into it. Cause you put this book out, and I think it's really true to the times that we live in. I think we're living in times that are defined by quarrel, defined by hypocrisy, defined by lack of self awareness, defined by gossip. And here's a book talking about all of that. And I wanted to start off simply by asking you, why have you built up such an animosity towards small talk? Where does that come from?

Well, number one, I hate small talk, just on the literal level, right when somebody sees you and they try to make conversation, and they're not really talking about anything. And it's just like, yo, you and this person are in this unique moment in time where y'all get to share space and nobody is saying anything. That is annoying to me. And it's annoying to the point where I'm like, I would rather just tell the person, like, oh, we don't have to do this. We can be on our phones, we can be reading the book. We can sit here in silence. You don't have to try to make conversation. But then on a more macro level, I feel like we're having too much small talk, meaning we're having too many micro conversations. We're taking these micros and making them macros. Like the things that people get online and discuss and debate about and argue about over and over and over and over, in the bigger scheme of things, mean nothing. And that's why things just come and go in this era. Every day you get online and, you know, it looks like there's a conversation that's the biggest thing in the world.

Wait 3 hours, wait 4 hours, wait 12 hours, it'll be completely gone and it'll be like, well, damn, I thought everybody was so concerned about this, you know, two days ago. So I just have a problem with everything being so macro that shouldn't be nowadays. And the things that we should be discussing, like the big macro conversations, we have a way of making those so micro. That's the background noise. That's why even, like, you know, on Breakfast club or on my podcast, brilliant idiots, when we do discuss things right, that might be rooted in pop culture, I'm always trying to see, like, what's the bigger conversation that we can be having behind this? It can't just be that y'all think this person is a terrible person or that was a bad tweet. Like, what's the psychology? Or what's the thing that we can, you know, discuss that people are gonna actually learn from? Yeah, that's what I wanna do.

And how do you break that cycle? Let's say you bump into someone that you haven't seen for a bit. And I think a lot of people struggle with this. You see them at a party, an event in the corridor, and you go, hey, how's it going? Oh, yeah, good. Yeah, cool. And, you know, you're not listening. You know, there's no real thing. How do you break that if you can? So one example is you say, look, we don't have to do this. How do you break it in a positive sense? Like, how even people with their friends, with their family. You're at a family dinner, and everyone's talking about, whatever. How do you actually break that and elevate that? Like, what's a healthy way?

Tell them, be honest about what you're feeling in that moment. Be like, yo, we ain't talking about nothing right now. I'll be like, yo, well, who's gonna start the conversation? Throw something on the table. Like, literally, that's what this book is. This book is literally just a series of topics that I feel like you could just throw in at a lunch. Throw in at a dinner table. Throw in. If you're just sitting around on a plane with somebody and you wanna have a conversation, but you can't. We make this a lot more difficult than we need to, and all it takes is for somebody to break the ice. That's all you're literally waiting for. And you're sitting at a. You know, you're sitting around with somebody, you just like, I want to talk, but I just don't know what to say. And you're thinking, should I bother this person? Should I not bother this person? Does this person want to be bothered? Does this person want to talk? Maybe they do, maybe they don't. Maybe that's the question, right? You can ask them, like, you feel like having a conversation. If that person says no, respect that.

Don't ask them that, hoping that they say yes. But if they say no, you're still gonna force them to have the conversation. Like, sometimes you should just ask a person, like, yo, you got time to talk?

Yeah. Yeah.

Like, how often do you get that, Jay?

Never.

Exactly. People just run up to you, and they just throw their stuff on you all the time. Instead of saying, yo, Jay, do you got time to speak right now? And if you say, not at the moment, they're offended, you may not wanna offend them. So you take time to have this meaningless conversation, this small talk. You're just telling them, yeah, just because you don't wanna offend them. But then you're not even really paying attention. You know too well, so nobody's doing it. We're not doing each other any favors by doing that. So just be honest about what you're feeling in that moment.

Yeah. And I feel like the reason you pointed out there, the reason why so many of us are struggling to be honest with people, is because people are offended by honesty, even if it's genuine and even if it's thoughtful. Like you just said, like, if I asked you, I was like, hey, Charlemagne, can you talk about this. And you were like, Jay, I don't have time right now because of this, this and this or whatever. I'm in between something. As a respectful person back. I'm gonna. I understand that. I actually had someone I messaged this morning. I'd messaged someone inviting them to an event, and they didn't get back to me, and they messaged me this morning and were just like, Jay, I'm so sorry. I was, like, getting ready for the Met, and my outfit went wrong. And then, like, I had to figure this out, and it's been crazy, and it all worked out, but I wanted you to know, you know, I always respond to you. And I was like, yeah, I wasn't offended at all. I respect that, and thank you for explaining. And it turned out. But a lot of the times I feel we're scared of being honest because we're scared the other person's gonna turn around and go, oh, you never get back to me.

Oh, you think you're too important for me. We are scared of offending people.

That's right.

How can we all stop being so offended? Because I feel like anything offends anyone these days.

That's a multi layered answer, right? Cause, number one, I think we have to stop being people pleasers. And I think that, you know, if you grow up in a certain environment, you've had certain things, you know, happen to you. Like my therapist always told me, like, I know exactly why I'm a people pleaser, right? And I talk about it in the book. I'm a people pleaser because, you know, of abuse to ourselves at the age of eight, right? So me not wanting that young lady to touch me anymore turned into her calling me ugly and saying I had a big nose. So in order for her to stop doing that, I would continue to let her touch on me. So it's like, you don't realize how that carries on into adulthood to where you just become this people pleaser. You don't want to let anybody down, because if you feel like you let them down, then they're going to start speaking ill about you and doing things that hurt your feelings. So you just continue to do what's best for them, sacrificing your own peace. And we can't do that. You just gotta set boundaries for yourself and be like, yo, I'm not gonna be a people pleaser in any way, shape, or form.

And, man, honestly, if my boundaries cause somebody to feel offended, then that's the whole point of having the boundary in the first place. I gotta have a boundary from this person to begin with because you're upset with me because I'm placing a boundary for my peace of mind? Nah, I don't need you in my life to begin with.

Yeah. How early? Well, when were you ready to revisit that eight year old self? Like, when did you feel comfortable to even reflect back on that in therapy? Because I imagine that, well, you can tell me, when you were eight, did you just block it out in the next few years? And then when did you go back to it and say, oh, actually, that's where a lot of it started.

I was watching an episode of Oberwinfree, and Tyler Perry was on there, and Tyler Perry was, you know, crying about the abuse that he experienced from a woman in his family. And I think I was in my twenties, and I remember saying to myself, like, what's wrong with him? Like, why is he, you know, upset about that? And then when at some point I remember saying to myself, well, what's wrong with me? That I thought it was okay, but then you kind of suppress it again. Cause I wasn't going to therapy in my twenties. But then when I started going to therapy in, like, my late mid thirties, that's when I started to unpack a whole lot of that stuff. Cause, you know, you go to therapy, for one thing, you go to therapy. Cause you're dealing with, you think you're dealing with anxiety and depression. Then you start peeling back all of these different layers and you start realizing all of this other trauma that you've experienced. And that was one of those things, like being a people pleaser, not setting proper boundaries because of that moment that happened to me when I was eight years old and carried on throughout my whole whole adult life until I finally realized, like, oh, this is why I don't like letting people down.

This is why I do things, you know, for people, even when I don't want to. This is why, even if I'm not happy necessarily about doing something, I just go along to do it because I don't want to upset or offend that person or cause that person to be looking at me in a negative way. So I would say, like, mid thirties is when I really started unpacking it. So it's probably been like the last ten years of really unpacking it.

And when you were eight, how long did that abuse last? Like, how recurring was it?

And I don't know, man, because, and I even mentioned it in the book, I suppressed so much abuse that I experienced when I was young. That it wasn't even that one person, you know, but you just, you suppress it because in a lot of ways, it becomes the norm. Like, I remember being young, like 910, eleven years old, having conversations with other young men I grew up around. And we were all talking about older women we was dealing with and we thought we was lying to each other. But now when you look back on it, it was just all a bunch of young kids getting abused. But when you a young man, you don't look at it like that. When you a young man, you just like, oh, I'm getting action early. You know, I'm getting action early. And I'm getting action with older women early. So you don't look at it like that until you get older and realize how, man, how a lot of that impacts you, you know, like, mentally and emotionally. Yeah.

What were some of the ways that you think that impacted you? And it's interesting. I love what you said there. Like, when you're young, you actually see that as, like, ego, bravado, arrogance. Like, it's cool. What were the things that you started to extrapolate through therapy and the work you did where you were like, oh, that's the kind of impact that it's had in my real life, in my real adult life.

The biggest one for me is, is the people pleasing aspect. That's literally the biggest one. Like, not having no boundaries. And when I did try to set boundaries with one of the women in particular, her, you know, getting in my head psychologically, calling me ugly and saying I got a big nose and all of this other stuff. So for me, the biggest issue was the fact that I just did not know how to set proper boundaries. And when I did set them, it was like, it wasn't the brick house, it was the straw house. You know, you could just blow it. You could just blow it away. So I never really set any proper boundaries. It wasn't until I started unpacking a lot of that stuff that I realized, like, no, I'm gonna set my boundary and I'm not gonna be upset at, you know, any bad, big, bad wolf that's mad that they can't blow my house down.

Yeah. What I find interesting, especially, is I think we all developed a peacemaker, people pleaser personality type through different reasons. How have you found yourself not being a people pleaser with your therapist? Because I find a lot of people end up playing that role where they can't be honest with their therapist because we want our therapist to like us and say, well done, like, good work. You know, like, oh, you really? So how did you find yourself getting that ability? Because I think a lot of people listening and watching, maybe going to therapy, they may be trying to turn to help, but actually they find themselves playing that same role with their therapist.

Man, I got a new therapist this past year, and my first therapist, I might have been lying to her probably 50, 60% of the time just because there were so many things that I thought I wanted to share, but I wasn't. And it wasn't until earlier this year, me and my wife went away on this nice little spiritual retreat for a weekend, and we was indulging in plant based medicines, you know, ayahuasca in particular. And one of the things that came forth for me was literally, stop lying to yourself and stop volunteering those lies to other people. And so much came up in that moment. So much, like I said, abuse that I experienced as a child, all of that type of stuff. And that's when I was like, oh, I've been. I've been telling half truths. I haven't been being completely honest. Like, I've been telling, you know, just enough of a story to get just enough back, but that's not how you properly heal anything. Like, you gotta deal with it all. Don't even try. And so for me, I feel like I probably was lying to my first therapist for, like, I would literally probably say half of the time.

And do you think we do that because we're actually scared of having to address? Is that the reason?

100%. Like, it's still fear, it's still insecurity that we're not willing to share with anyone. Like, even that night that I was, you know, that first. Well, that was the second night of the journey on Ayahuasca. Like, me and my wife been together 26 years, and I was sharing things with her that I never had shared with anybody. And that felt so, so, so freeing. And even in that moment, I'm like, I don't think there's anybody else I trust to share these things with. Not even a therapist. No matter how good the therapist is, no matter how, you know, great the therapist is, like, this individual that I've shared majority of my life with is the only person I feel comfortable, you know, putting all that on the table for.

Yeah, I think that's a really interesting point, because I think the words honesty and vulnerability have somewhat been exploited in and of themselves in this idea that if you're honest, everyone has to know everything. Like, you have to just put it all out there. And what you just said is actually, even with my therapist, they're not gonna get the 100% version of me because my wife, my partner, who's been with me for over 20 years now, it's like that person not only deserves it, but we've built up enough trust and there's earned respect where we both can share that. What's been your take on, on the Internet? Like, oversharing, under sharing, overtelling, undertelling? Because I feel like there was a point in time where it was like, well, if you're vulnerable, you better say everything to everyone. Right? Like, that's what vulnerability is. And I think there was, like, this false pressure that you had to share all your business with everyone.

Yeah, I think on the Internet, it's a lot of people crying out for help who probably not probably who need to be in therapy actually talking to somebody. And there's a whole lot of people just lying. But that's what I mean when I say, you know, stop lying to yourself and stop volunteering those lies to other people. Every single day, people wake up and just volunteer lies for no reason. And I'm not saying lies have to be negative. Like, they just lie about their life. They lie about who they are, they lie about what they do. And it's like, nobody asked you for that. Like, nobody. So you're inviting all of this negative energy into your life. You're inviting all of this opinion and all of this critique that's literally going to have real world consequences because that's the stuff that's going to give you anxiety. That's the stuff that's going to cause you to have bouts of depression, and you're going to be sitting there dealing with all of this stuff for a farce you created. Like, what is the point of that? So it's like, for me, man, we really all just have to stop volunteering the lies we tell ourselves to others.

Yeah. What led you towards plant medicine as a method of healing, as a method of reflection? What made you go down that route? Because you've done therapy for years. You've talked about it, you're a big ambassador for mental health. What was the opening there?

I mean, it was just something I wanted to try. And then they always say, you don't do it unless it's calling you. And so, you know, just reading about it and seeing what other people's take on it was like, two things that really attracted me was everybody that did it was telling me, like, yo, I saw God. Like, I knew people who were atheists, like, Neil Brennan was an atheist, and he did it, and now he's, like, a believer. And, you know, and I was like, whoa. And I've always had faith, and I've always been a believer, so I just wanted to kind of see, like, I wanna see, you know, see more of that. And I think people saying how it detaches you from your ego. Like, I thought that was very powerful. Cause that's something that we all try to do every day. But they was like, no, it feels like somebody literally takes your ego and just rips it away from you. And I wanted to know what that felt like. And, man, I absolutely, absolutely overstand what it. What it felt like. Um, especially that. That second night.

Yeah. Where did you go for it? Where did you try it out?

I was in. I was in California.

Okay. Okay. In Canada. Okay, great. So you didn't go too far?

No, no.

Because I've heard of. I've had friends go out to, like, Costa Rica and then Ibiza. You went local.

So, yeah, shaman I talked to was like, why? Even. I think it was. I don't know if it was Peru or Costa Rica. It was somewhere. I forgot where it was. But he was just like, that's a jungle. He was like, you don't want to have that kind of experience in the jungle. I mean, he wasn't knocking anybody. Who did he just, like, for you on your first time, I just don't, you know, recommend that. So it was just kind of like, divine alignment. Like, it was one of those things. Like, it had been calling me for the past, I would say, five or six years. And then, like, the opportunity just presented itself, you know, with some people with some really great energy. And I was like, yeah, why not? And it just all lined up. It was one of those things. It was like, oh, I'm actually free this weekend. Yeah, the wife wanted to do it. We went to do it.

It's beautiful.

The Therapy for Black Girls podcast is an NAACP and Webby award winning podcast dedicated to all things mental health, personal development, and all the small decisions we can make to become the best possible versions of ourselves. Here we have the conversations that help black women decipher how their past and form who they are today and use that information to decide who they want to be moving forward. We chat about things like how to establish routines that center self care, what burnout looks and feels like, and defining what aspects of our lives are making us happy and what parts are holding us back. I'm your host, Doctor Joy Harden Bradford, a licensed psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia, and I can't wait for you to join the conversation. Every Wednesday, listen to the therapy for Black Girls podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Take good care and well see you there.

Tune in to the new podcast, stories from the village of nothing much like easy listening but for fiction. If you've overdosed on bad news, we invite you into a world where the glimmers of goodness in everyday life are all around you. I'm Katherine Nikolai, and you might know me from the bedtime story podcast. Nothing much happens. I'm an architect of cozy, and I invite you to come spend some time where everyone is welcome and kindness is the default. When you tune in, you'll hear stories about bakeries and walks in the woods, a favorite booth at the diner on a blustery autumn day, cats and dogs and rescued goats and donkeys, old houses, bookshops, beaches where kites fly and pretty stones are found. I have so many stories to tell you, and they are all designed to help you feel good and feel connected to what is good in the world. Listen, relax, enjoy. Listen to stories from the village of nothing much on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Get emotional with me, Radhi Devlukia in my new podcast, a really good cry. We're going to talk about and go through all the things that are sometimes difficult to process alone. We're going to go over how to regulate your emotions, diving deep into holistic personal development and just building your mindset to have a happier, healthier life. We're going to be talking with some of my best friends.

I didn't know we were going to go there.

I'm going to people that I admire.

When we say, listen to your body.

Really tune into what's going on. Authors are books that have changed my life.

Now you're talking about sympathy, which is different than empathy, right?

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I already see myself.

And so when people give me an opportunity, I'm just like, oh, great, you see me, too. We'll laugh together, we'll cry together, and find a way through all of our emotions. Never forget. It's okay to cry as long as you make it a really good one. Listen to a really good cry with Radhi da Vlukia on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

What have you found has been the hardest thing for you to be honest with yourself about everything. Everything.

Yo, it's so easy for us to get caught up in lying ourselves. Cause we do it to protect ourselves in a lot of way, right? So, like, it might be a person that you genuinely have love for, like, genuinely, just as a. On a human level, like, you love this person, and, like, you know, this person might have a talent or a skill set that, you know, you want to help amplify, like, provide an opportunity for. But you know as well as I do that, you know, character talent sometimes will take people where character can't sustain them. So even though you see this person's talent, you know, once they get in a certain position, you realize their character isn't going to be able, you know, to keep them there. But you will constantly lie to yourself about this person's character over and over and over and over. And then you wonder why things aren't working out. And literally, it will affect everything that you're doing. Like, let's just say it's a team. And you put this person as part of the team. This person is causing problems with the rest of the team, and you see it, but you're making excuses for it, you know?

And it's like, even a friend that's. You might have been friends with a person for a long, long, long time. And, you know, y'all have very deep, intimate conversations. So you know this person differently, then a lot of other people know them. So you get a soft spot in your heart for said individuals. So when you're hearing everybody else talk about how terrible this person is, you're lying to yourself about it, and you're like, no, y'all just don't understand this person. It's like, no, the reality is they are a terrible person, and they need to do more work, and they need to really figure themselves out. So the biggest thing. Yeah, it's just we constantly lie to ourselves about everything. You might look in the mirror and know you need to lose 20 pounds. Like, you might put a shirt on and know it don't quite fit right, but you'll pull on it and tug it, and, you know, how does this look? And you know somebody like, oh, it looks all right.

It looks good.

And you're like, hey, it does. And then you get on Instagram, and then you get humbled. Cause it's a bunch of people that don't know you at all who are willing to tell you the truth about how you look. Then you lie to yourself again, and you say to yourself, oh, they just hatin'you knew that was whack when you put it on. You knew you had no right putting that shirt on before you put it on, but you decided to do it anyway. So I just feel like. I think every single moment of our lives is an exercise in being honest with ourselves, first and foremost, and then the rest of the world, and then choosing who to share that honesty with. Cause sometimes people aren't lying. It's just none of your business. And I think that's something that people forget, too, especially in this world of oversharing. I have to constantly remind people that, especially in this era of the Internet. I'm like, when you're talking about celebrities, you don't know any of these people. I don't care what they post on social. I don't care what you hear in their music. You genuinely do not know any of these individuals.

Stop lying to yourself like you do.

In what sense? Because I'm thinking of something. But in what sense do you mean, like, we don't know them or how that applies to us? You think we're commentating on a life that we don't know about?

Is that what people past these judgments? Like, you'll see whole psychoanalysts about people, right? And it's like, how did you come to that conclusion? Like, literally, you're breaking down a person's whole pattern. Oh, they're a narcissist and they're egotistical, and they're out for this. And now I'm like, how do you know, based off a tweet, how do you know, based off one conversation that they had, you don't know this person. This person has lived, you know, 30 plus years, 40 plus years, whatever it is, you do not spend every waking moment with this individual. How do we come to these full blown conclusions about people that we don't know? I had somebody get mad at me the other day. Cause I told them I don't know this person personally. Yeah, we were talking about an artist, and I was like, I don't know that person personally. Now, the person I was talking to did.

Yeah.

So I understand how they felt. But I don't have that same personal connection, our feelings toward this individual, because I don't have a personal connection with them. And when it comes to public figures, a lot of times it makes you more objective. Cause you don't have any bias. Cause anybody that you actually have a connection with, you're gonna have a natural bias towards them. That's another thing we lie to each other about. We lie to each other. Like, we're so honest and so objective. When we all have our biases for people, we all have our biases for places, we all have our biases for things, and that's okay.

Yeah.

And if you can address that and say, yeah, I know I got a bias, then you could actually have an honest conversation about whatever it is you're talking about or look at things, you know, from an honest perspective. If you can't even be honest about your biases, then you starting off from a lie.

Yeah. I often find it's this observer mindset that we're missing, where it's like, okay, we're having a conversation right now, but can I actually allow myself to look at it from this perspective if I can't do that? Like, if I can't see, oh, I'm currently displaying ego, and the other person is currently displaying defensiveness. If I can't see what I'm displaying and what someone else is, and I'm only seeing what they're displaying, then I'm not really observing. I can't be objective.

Absolutely.

And I find that that's exactly what's missing. Where. And I can testify to what you just said, whether it's inaccurate guest lists at people's wedding that are printed in the papers, or whether it's inaccurate. Oh, I know. The news thing. Oh, they're gonna get a divorce or their kids hate them, or whatever else it is.

How do you notice?

Yeah, I can testify to having knowing people going, none of that's true. And it goes back to the point you started with, which is this idea of we get so lost commentating on everything and everyone else that we know nothing about, that we don't have time and energy to work on what's going on inside here.

Absolutely.

And I find it remarkable that we spend our lives trying to solve, psychoanalyze, entertain ourselves by someone else's problems rather than fixing our own.

We do that on purpose, because if we can talk about everybody else, then we can avoid that hard, painful, excruciating work it takes to deal with our own b's. If I can look at everyone else, I can avoid looking in that mirror all day long. I'm too busy sightseeing other people and commentating on other people so I never have to look in the mirror, you know, at what it is that I need to fix.

Yeah. Yeah.

You said something that's interesting, too, man. And that's why this era we're in is so difficult. And I think even you know, our positions as media personalities. Because, you know, I remember when I used to work for Wendy Williams, she used to always say to me, you either gonna be of the people or of the industry, but it's almost impossible when you're in the business because you're gonna actually meet people and you're gonna develop relationships. And I think a lot of times we have a different perspective of things because we're kind of in it. Like, I've literally been with individuals, couples watching them love on each other, watching them kiss on each other, and then it'll be like breaking news. They're getting a divorce, they hate each other, they're apart. And I'm like, this is a mind fuck. Cause I'm like, whoa. And it puts so much in perspective. And not even just that. Like us as individuals, you'll see things about yourself and you're like, that's not remotely true. Like, that's not even accurate at all. And everybody around you will be mad, and everybody around you be upset, and you'll be pissed off too.

But then you gotta really say to yourself, what are you gonna do? Yeah, I'm not gonna. I refuse to go on the defensive and start explaining myself to a bunch of people who never even took the time to learn the truth anyway.

Yeah.

If you didn't, you never took the time to learn the truth. So you would rather just put this out there, you know, print this, say these things, not care if you're accurate, you know, not care if there's any falsehoods. You just, whatever. So why would I take the time to explain the truth to you?

Yeah.

Now, not only am I validating what you said to a certain extent, or not what you said, but validating you and your platform now I'm actually giving you more content. I'm not doing that at all.

Yeah, for sure. For sure. I was gonna go back to the personal again with you because I feel like a big turning point in your book that you talk about that I can't wait for people to dive into, is this moment where you realize that your father was cheating on your mom.

Yeah. Yeah.

And, like, that is like, a really big moment for you at that point because you're like, I think, 17 years old, and. And you're learning about this, and naturally you feel like, tell me how you felt like, in that moment, because it almost feels like the first time you discovered that something's a lie. Like, in a big way. I mean.

Yeah, that was a very macro conversation, you know, because I had made up my mind in that moment that me and my pops couldn't have no small talk about this situation. Cause, you know, we live in a small town, so you're hearing it constantly, right? And you're driving by, you know, this house, and you're seeing his truck out there, and, you know, you're fully aware of all of the different lies that he's. That he's told my mom, like, oh, I'm over there doing work, or, oh, that's my secretary. All this other stuff, right? So finally, you know, just deciding to have the macro conversation and say, yo, you out here cheating on mom? What you doing is foul. And my dad was like, yo, you only got one girlfriend. You know, one day, you gonna understand. Like, he. That's what that was his reply to me. And that. That messed me up for a while because that's my hero. Like, still to this day, I love my dad. Like, my dad. I fully understand, you know, the totality of my father as a man. And as I've become a man myself at 45 years old, I overstand, you know, everything that, you know, he went through.

And so when he said that to me, I felt like I had to live up to his expectations. So that's when it became a thing of, oh, let me show him that I can get a roster. I don't have to be, you know, committed to one person. And, yo, that lasted for a while. Not a while, but too long for my liking, right? And so I remember later on, years down the line, my dad saying to me, you know, the worst thing that he ever did was called my mother to leave him and telling me that I always had it right. Cause he, you know, I'm with the same woman, right, for 26 years. So he was, like, telling me I always had it right. And I'm like, damn, this is why you shouldn't always listen to adults, bro. Like, just because you love a person and they're older than you and they got more experiences than you don't mean that they're always right. But I give my father so much grace because, you know, one of the first breakthrough. The first breakthrough I ever had in therapy, I mean, the thing that led me to tears was just realizing that my father used to discipline me for things that he never taught me.

And now I even take it a step further and say my father used to discipline me for things that he never taught me, but also for things that he never learned himself. So a lot of his raising of me, he was raising me through fear and not love, right? Because he just didn't want me to make the same mistakes that he made. He was terrified of me going down, you know, the same path that he went down, and I ended up going down that path anyway, like, even down to, you know, the mental health journey. Like, when I wrote my second book, you know, shook one anxiety, playing tricks on me. When I wrote that, I was all the way discombobulated. I had no idea whether I was coming or going. Cause I had just started going to therapy, and I had just started peeling back a lot of those layers. So I was just raw, like, I had. I had no idea who I was. There was this character that had been created named Charlamagne. I'm like, I don't know who this person is. Then I'm dealing with Leonard myself. I don't know who this person is.

So I was just all over the place, and I literally just put it all in that book and had doctor ish major do clinical correlations to the things that I was talking about. But my father had read that book, and I talk about this story in the book, but he had read that book. And then that same week, I had a cousin who had completed suicide, and he had attempted to complete suicide, like, four other times. And the fourth time he completed it, I think he was, like, 25 years old. So my dad was triggered by a lot of that stuff. He was triggered by a lot of the stuff I wrote in my book, and he was definitely triggered by my cousin completing suicide. So my father calls me and he tells me, you know, he read the book talking about my cousin a little bit, and he goes, man, you know, I tried to commit suicide 30 plus years ago, but I didn't because of your older sister and you. And he was like, I was on two to three medications. No, he was actually on ten to twelve medications, and he was going to therapy two and three times a week, dealing with his own mental health issues.

And so much so that the state of South Carolina just started giving him a check. And that's what they used to call it, a crazy check. So I remember asking my mom, like, yo, do you know, dad was going through all of this, and she was like, I just thought he was playing crazy to get a check. So just think about that. Like, think about if he was able to just express himself and have those conversations with us as a family back then, how that would have saved me, you know, so much grief when I was dealing with panic attacks and stuff as a child and thinking something was, you know, wrong with me. And all of that makes me give my father a whole lot of grace. He's just a man who was just trying to do his best, you know, with what he had and the knowledge he had at the time. So I don't. I don't hold. I held a lot of that against him for a long, long, long, long, long time. But it was in that moment in 2018 when he told me everything he was dealing with. I don't know why.

It just clicked. Like, my dad just a man. Yeah, he just a man. Just like, I'm a man. Like, who am I to not give him the same grace I want?

Totally. What's allowed you to have that Charlemagne, to be able to zoom out and have that context and that grace? Because I think when we're analyzing these things and you kind of connect the dots, you're like, oh, yeah, my dad treated me like that. That's why I became like that. That's why I made that mistake. And you can spend so much time in this very linear back and forth journey of that was the past. That's how it connects to the present. That's how it impacted my life. But you're almost looking at it from a bird's eye view, looking down, going, oh, that makes sense. My dad went through, and then you can, like, give grace. You can have. What was the key in therapy and in your personal work that shifted it from being this linear thing to being a bird's eye view of this situation.

I honestly think I've always had that as a child. Like, always. Like, I've always had a bird's eye view of things. Like, I've always felt in tune to something, to something else. Like, there was always, like, this voice in my head or this spirit that was moving me in certain directions or causing me to see certain things. Sometimes I would see things I wasn't supposed to see, literally and figuratively. I've always had these visions. I remember my dad always telling me when I was a child, if you don't change your ways, you're going to end up in jail, dead or broke under the tree. A lot of people hear that, but don't actually learn that and apply that. For some reason, I was able, at a young age, to actually start seeing people that I love go to jail, like, for prison sentences. And I was going to jail, and, you know, I saw people around me that were actually getting killed. And I saw older cousins who I used to look up to. They are sitting under the tree, kind of, like, not doing much with themselves. And I'm like, oh, that's not gonna be me.

And I literally could see, all right, everything I do today directly is going to impact what happens to me tomorrow. So I need to start doing what I need to do today. It's like, yo, if I continue to eat like this, I'm gonna be fat in the future, right? Like, if I don't read this book, you know, my knowledge is gonna be limited in the future. So I've always, you know, by the grace of God, just tended to have, like, a bird's eye view of things. Like, my third eye is. Has been open for quite a long time. Like, to the point, even when I think about, like, me and my wife had a nonprofit back in the day. Well, we thought it was a nonprofit when we set it up. It was a. We set it up as a nonprofit, but we never went through the proper channels to make it a nonprofit. It just sounded like, oh, we gonna set this. You know, it was one of those things. And so we had a. It was called third eye awareness. Like, literally, that's what it was called. Or even when, like, the first tattoo I ever got was Wolverine from the X Men.

Cause I love Wolverine, right? Like, I love the X Men. I'm a big comic book guy. But back then, I got the tattoo when I was, like, 17 years old. This, when tattoos were illegal in South Carolina. I got the tattoo because the thing that attracted me towards Wolverine was his healing powers. And so the tattoo I got on my arm is Wolverine holding a microphone in his hand, because I thought rap was gonna be what changed my life. But lo and behold, it was these type of microphones that changed my life. And, you know, now I feel like my purpose in life is to not only continue to heal myself, but to continue to help as many other People, you know, get on their Healing Journey. So I was 1617 years old, thinking about stuff like this. At 1617, you get a tattoo like that, and in your mind, you're explaining it perfectly. I'm like, yo, I'm attracted to Wolverine cause of his Healing Powers. And then rap, Smile, and then rap the microphone. But now you. I'm 45, about to be 46. I'm looking at it like, oh, I understand what that was now.

And that was another revelation that came to me. You know, when I went on my ayahuasca journey was like, yo, nothing has been wasted. Literally nothing. There is absolutely nothing that has happened to me in my life. Whether you wanna label it good, bad, you know, ugly, pretty, whatever it was, nothing has gone to waste in my life. Every single thing has a purpose and had a purpose and has gotten me to this point. And I think, man, when you look at things through that lens, it just kind of, like, shapes. It shapes your understanding of trauma and why so called bad things happen in a different way. I don't look at it as good or bad. It was just like one process of life that gets you to this point.

I think you just nailed something so powerful then I want to emphasize it for people because I think we go through this loop where we say, oh, now I get it. Everything else, I was wrong. I wasted time. Now I get it. And then a few years later, we go, oh, no, no, no. I just wasted the last few years. Now I get it. And we constantly have this belief that we have to neglect and reject our past in order to establish our present. We feel like we have to constantly say our past was a waste of time in order to establish that our present is now us doing the right thing. And I actually fully agree with you and completely disagree with that because what you're doing is you're negating all of the lessons, all of the wisdom, all of the learning, all of the growth that actually got you to that point.

Absolutely.

And then you're also negating the fact that all the skills you learned during that time, all the habits, they could still be useful. But because you're writing off that time, you're writing off all of that growth. And I've been saying that to so many people lately, even when people are like, Jay, I think I'm wasting my time. I'm trying to find a new job. I want to do something I'm passionate about. Oh, Jay. Like, the last few years, I just wasted them being anxious. Now I'm confident. It's like, no, no, no, no. You need to remember that because that's how you got here. And by the way, life is going to give you those scenarios again. And you're gonna need to remember this because next time, it will be a familiar. Right. It'll be like a familiar feeling of, oh, I've been there. I know how to deal with this.

That's why even when you're talking to young people in the field and they'll say things to you like, well, what if I leave New York and go to Atlanta and things don't work in Atlanta, I'm like, okay. Like, Ann, like, yeah, what do you mean if things don't work? Because what you're going to realize later on in life is regardless of what happened when you was, it worked. I don't care if you went down there and you worked there for six months and got fired. There's going to be something you pick up in those six months. There's going to be somebody you meet in those six months. It might just be a time in your life that you actually enjoy and you need that. You might just need to be in a different environment, you know, for a little while, but there's going to be something you pick up within those six months that's going to make you realize, like, it worked. I think, you know, we have these extremes when it comes to work. I could easily look back in my radio career and be like, I got fired four times. So those were four times things didn't work.

That is a complete lie. Every single one of those situations I got fired from, I had the time of my life, and I learned so much from, and I met people that are still, you know, my friends to this day. So I wouldn't trade any of that for the world. Like, for all I know. How do we know what we're doing now is working? We don't. This is just what we're doing in the moment. I know it's working for now, but who's to say this is what we're going to be doing when we're 50 years old? Who's to say this is what we're gonna be doing when we're 60? We might be still trying to hold on to breakfast club and on purpose. And God is like, I need you to move. And he might even still let you keep it, but you'll be sitting here unhappy, depressed, angry, like, oh, why isn't things moving the way I want him to move? It's because God asked you to move a long time ago, but you didn't want to, because you're still trying to make this work, and it's not working no more. Just because something is successful doesn't mean that it's working.

Totally, you know, totally. That's such a good point. That's such a good point. And it reminds me, there's this beautiful story that the Buddha used to tell about a person who's on a journey, and they're on this journey, and they come across an obstacle, and the first obstacle is this fast flowing river. So they realize, I need to build a raft. So they get the bamboo, they get the rope, they tie it up, they build themselves an oar, and then they paddle with all their strength, and they get to the other side, and then they think, this raft saved my life. I'm going to take it wherever I go. So they strap it to their back, and they carry on walking. And then the Buddha says that, just like us, this person gets to another challenge. And the challenge is not a fast flowing river this time. It's a tall wooded forest with trees dotted at every other step. So now the person is trying to walk through, and the raft keep getting stuck, and they're trying to maneuver, and they're trying to get through, and the raft is getting chipped, the raft is blocking them from walking through.

And the Buddha says the person has two choices. They either hold onto the raft and they struggle to get through, or they put it down and they walk on freely. And it's the same thing point that you're making right now. This idea of, like, what are you holding on to that you believe made you successful, but is actually stopping you from breaking through the next challenge. And if you keep holding on to it, you're just going to hurt your hands, gonna hurt your back, you're never gonna walk through. And I agree, success is probably the greatest prison because the feeling of success is so intoxicating that you think, I'm just gonna keep doing this like a drug because it makes me feel good. But actually, I may not be actually feeling healthy. Well, feeling like I'm moving in my best self. And I've seen that even in my. In my career. I remember when I first started my work, we grew based on videos I made on Facebook. And today, eight years on, I don't make those videos anymore. Facebook is not our core platform anymore. We had to move on and evolve. And I've seen that time and time again, whether it's been a YouTube platform or whatever it is.

And I think we get tied to platforms, we get tied to algorithms, we get tied to patterns, we get tied to all these things, and then eventually, we become a prisoner of the pattern and get to become a prisoner of the algorithm. And letting it go is hard. And what you're saying right now, like, recognizing that what you're doing right now may be something you have to let go of is a healthy thought.

Something that makes me crazy, is when people say, well, I had this career before, but it was a waste. And that's where the perspective shift comes, that it's not a waste, that everything you've done has built you to where you are now. This is she pivots, the podcast where we explore the inspiring pivots women have made and dig deeper into the personal reasons behind them. Join me. Emily Tisch Sutzman. Every Wednesday on she pivots as I sit down with inspiring women like Misty Copeland, Brooke shields, Vanessa Hudgens, and so many more, we dive into how these women made their pivot and their mindset shifts that happened as a result. It's a podcast about women, their stories, and how their pivot became their success. Listen to she pivots on the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When you find that bright spot to help you get through your day, it's powerful.

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I'm living proof. I talk about that in the book. You know, get honest and die lying. Why? Small talk sucks. Shameless plug. But I talk about that in the book because 2016. That's why I was at with it. You know, I'm six years in on the breakfast club. I'm having more success than I ever imagined. I'm making more money than I ever imagined. Like, you know, I put out my first book, black privilege. It's an instant New York Times bestseller. Like, we moving. Like, things are great. Things are fantastic. But I'm not happy. And the reason I'm not happy. Cause I'm still dealing with this anxiety, I'm still dealing with this depression, and I'm starting to feel like I'm becoming a caricature of myself to a certain extent. And it was like I made the decision to start going to therapy, number one. But then you start going to therapy, and you start saying to yourself, like, all right, this has gotten me to this point. What is going to get me to that next level of life? I wasn't thinking about career or anything like that. I said, what's going to get me to that next level of life?

Because I want to enjoy life. I want to wake up more happy than depressed. You know, I want to wake up feeling more secure about myself than impostor syndrome. Like, what's going to get me to that? And what got me to that was letting go of just what I felt like people wanted from me. And that's another reason the comments and stuff are so dangerous, because you can put things out there and immediately get real time feedback. And, you know, this is 2018, right? Or 2016. 2017, you know? Or prior to that, it was 2010 and 2016. Things weren't that toxic on social media. So you could kind of get, like, some real world criticism, and you would see these things that, you know, I guess people like about you. So you would constantly feed them more of that. Or you got publications saying, oh, Charlemagne is the hip hop Howard Stern. You're like, well, what does that mean? So you start giving them more of the wild, crazy antics. But for all I know, they could have meant that because of the introspective interviews that get done on Breakfast Club as well. But I wasn't seeing that aspect of it.

I was just seeing the rah rah, the wildness. And so for me, just personally and professionally, I just was not happy, and I had to let that go. So that was the most freeing thing for me because when I did that, I experienced way more. I wouldn't be here sitting with you, you know, having the success that I've had if I hadn't to let that raft go.

Yeah.

And there was also a period where, you know, because of this cancel culture era you live in, you'd be definitely ashamed to see some of the stuff that you used to do. You're not necessarily ashamed of it. You're more so afraid of, oh, they're going to use this against me. Whatever, whatever. But guess what? You can't care about that. And the reason you can't care about that, because if you really have faith in a higher power, if you really trust God to God, you have to know that every single moment that you were in, you were the person you needed to be for that moment, because it's just a journey and it's a process, and eventually you become who you're supposed to be. And even the version you're looking at me right now, I'm not the final form of myself. I don't know what that's gonna be. Nobody does. But I know that I'm on the journey, and I'm gonna keep walking.

Yeah. One thing I wanted to pick your brain about was this idea. You kind of alluded to it there. It's this. We have this rhetoric on social media, which is like, we want people to be more empathetic and compassionate and kind. We want people to, when they share their vulnerable mental health journey, that we all gotta listen and be attentive. But then when sometimes we see someone with a mental health challenge, make them act different, we're the first ones to point out that they're an idiot, they're a loser, there's something wrong with them. I'll give an example of what I mean by this. Like, Tom Holland talked about this when he came on the show. He was talking about how, you know, he's always been seen as Spider man and this cool kid and all the rest of it. And then when he started talking about his mental health, or, actually, no, when he just announced that he'd given up alcohol and he was sober, all the news was like, he was saying this. He was saying all the news was like, oh, Tom Holland, the happy go lucky kid, wasn't actually. He was depressed, and it was like.

And they made it a whole thing. And he was like, no, I just gave up alcohol. I wasn't like an alcoholic. I just didn't want to drink anymore. And so all of a sudden, it was, like, twisted the other way where it was like, oh, the kid that you think is happy isn't. He's depressed, or the kid, he's got mental health, or whatever it may be. And it wasn't in the kind of compassionate way. It was more like a, well, look, you didn't see this. So I find it like the way we react to certain things. It's almost like we're being hypocrites in and of ourself, because at one point we're saying we should care for people who have this, but then we're willing to point it out. How have you kind of seen that navigate? When you see the worst forms of what mental health can do to people versus someone maybe not displaying the worst mental illness externally, but is just talking about it, does that make sense?

Yeah. I don't know how anybody can diagnose someone just by watching them through the media. Like, you know, if that's the case, we're all dealing with mental health issues 100%. Some people are just shitty people, and that's the other thing. And by the way, we say two things can be true. No, multiple things can be true at one time. Like you used the example of Tom Holland. Why can't he be the happy go lucky kid who said he's not? But that's the only version of him you had in your mind. So now when you see another version that doesn't fit your expectation with him, the happy go lucky kid is not so happy anymore. That's life. You show me a human, that's one emotion all the time. It's just that when you're a public figure, we get these. It's like these freeze frames. So Tom Holland, happy, you know, this person crazy. Like, it's just free. Like, literally freeze frame. This person always mad angry. It's these freeze frames of people. That's not the whole totality of a person. Like, that's actually kind of insane for us to even think about it like that. Even if you watch Jay Shetty on purpose, you have a thought, a perception of Jay Shetty in your head, or you got a perception of charlamagne in your head based off something you may have seen, that's your fault if that's the one thing you saw, and you came to a whole diagnosis about an individual.

So, you know, even when you talk about people having empathy, that goes into what I'm saying now, we might want to. Everybody, all of these humans might wake up every day saying to themselves, we're going to be empathetic today, and we're going to be caring and all of that stuff. Until something happens to somebody that you don't like, and then all that goes out the window. I tend to see that people have more empathy and sympathy, and they're more caring towards people they actually like. It's really a popularity contest. But nobody wants to admit that we're not looking. We're not being consistent about any of these things, and we're not being consistent with how we deal with people. There can be two people that come out in the news today with the same situation, and based off if we like the individual or not, we'll give that person a whole lot of grace and come to that person's defense. But if it's somebody that we don't like or somebody social media tells us we shouldn't like, oh, we gonna bury them. We want them out of here. We want them gone. That's not consistent. And that means you're lying to yourself, and that means that you're not the person you say that you are, because you should be giving both those individuals the same amount of grace.

But you not. Because we're all hypocrites. And that's fine. We're everything. Like, everything that we pin on other people, we are all those things and more. We just gotta make sure that we're not projecting.

Yeah. Wow. That's powerful, man. Yeah, that's. And I. And it's true. All of us are right. We all have bias.

Absolutely.

We all have the natural human tendency to be empathetic to people we like. And. And we're all that way. And. But we've got to be able to see that. Because if we can see that, then it's something that we can. Like you said, we don't project otherwise. We live in our tiny. We were talking about this earlier, like, we live in this righteous mind, as Jonathan Haidt calls it. Like, this idea of, like, my way is righteous. And I believe the way I live and the way I think is the only way and the right way. And that's where it goes wrong. Because the truth is, if everyone thinks like that, now you've just got 8 billion righteous ways.

We even have to watch how we express that language, right? Because we all do it. We'll say things like, man, the way you're seeing that is strange, are the way. I can't believe you're seeing things that way. Why? Cause they're not seeing it the way you are. There's probably nothing wrong with the way that individual is seeing it. But because you think they should see it the way you are seeing it, you're upset with that person, or you might have had the expectation, I know I can call this person. Cause we love confirmation bias, right? So I know that I can call this person because this person is gonna agree with me. And then when you pick up the phone and call that person or text that person and realize that person has a different opinion. Now, you arguing back and forth with that person, trying to get them to see things the way you see things, it's like, no, let them see it the way they want to see it. Like, one of the hardest things to do is to get. Is to step into somebody else's shoes. One of the hardest things to do is to see things from the perspective of other people.

I literally fight myself to do that. And some people might say, oh, he's being a contrarian. No, I'm just literally. I've literally taken the time to step out of myself, step into that person's shoes, see how they see it, and I can understand where they coming from. What's wrong with that?

Yeah, I don't see any.

I don't see anything wrong with that. I'm not saying that person is right or that person's wrong. I'm just simply saying I can see where that person's coming from. Like I said, multiple things can be true at once. I can think a person's wrong and still see where they're coming from. I can think a person's right but still see where they're wrong at in their argument as well. I think that's very hard for humans to do, and I don't know why.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, talking about calls, you talk about in the book, the call that you get from Kanye.

Yeah, yeah.

And that call, like, I walk us through how that applies to what you're saying here, where you're trying to see things through his perspective, but then you're also like, but I know Pete, and we're friends.

Yeah. His perspective was, I'm black. He's black. We both from hip hop culture. He's from hip hop culture. Pete Davidson is this white kid from Staten island who does comedy. He's younger than us. Cause we're in our forties. He's younger than us. You know, his ex wife is now out here dating Pete. I'm gonna call Charlamagne. Cause I need charlamagne to start, you know, siding with me against Pete Davidson. And he should, because he's black and of the culture, as Kanye says. And it's like, no, Pete Davidson is my friend. I can care if he's black. I can care if he's white. I care what race he is. I don't care what age he is. That's somebody that I met when he was 16 years old, when we was all doing Geico together. And we developed a real friendship and a real bond. I know his mother. Me and his mom talk. We check on each other. I've been to his mom's house. You don't sit in somebody's mom's house and eat food with them and call that person a friend and then turn around and do snake shit like that. Pete's been to my house.

He's been around my kids. He's been around my wife. I know him. You're not going to call me and get me to turn on my friend and try to say, because we're black and we're of the coach. It's like, no, right is right, wrong is wrong. And as I told him, you know, and I had to quote Snoop Dogg from the 1990s, don't be mad at the player, hate the game. Because your girl chose him. You know, I didn't say girl. I used some other language. I used the language snoop used, but your girl chose him, and she's a grown woman making her own decisions. Y'all not together no more. So for me, it's like, you're not gonna call me and try to guilt trip me, you know, using blackness and hip hop to go against somebody I consider a friend, because if I considered you a friend like that, Kanye, nobody could make me do that to you as well. So it's really that simple with me. I don't have, you know, I don't have flexible morals and values when it comes to people that I love, and when it comes to people that I consider actual friends and consider actual family.

That's why, you know, betrayal hurts so much. That's why when you realize that, you know, certain people's character gets revealed when they don't get what they want from you, that's another realization that I've been, you know, having a lot lately. It's just like, I don't know, that person wasn't necessarily my friend like I thought they were. Yeah, they were my friend based on what opportunity was being provided at the time.

Right.

And so it's like, it's sad, but you do realize some of that stuff is transactional. That's why I say I'm not mad at being used. Just don't. Just don't misuse me. And when things don't go your way, don't all of a sudden start, you know, kicking my back in just because things don't go your way. Cause I'm not gonna do that to you other than, you know, I'm lying. I would do that to you. Meaning that when I'm around my people, I'm definitely gonna be like, that person is so fucked up. That person is such a. Like, I cannot believe that that individual did such and such. But guess what? I can believe it. Cause I understand humans.

Yeah.

So I give that. I give all of those type of, you know, humans, grace. But, you know, it does. It's very disappointing when you're more solid to a person than they would be with you. Cause if I embrace you and I say, you, my friend, if I say I rock with you, we gonna ride to the wheels fall off.

Yeah, yeah, totally. And I find it's an interesting one because it's like. It's almost like, also, it's only the people. The only people that attacked you are the people who wanted to do something with you, but it didn't happen.

Yes.

Right. What you're saying about changing morals, I find, like, people attack you and they're like, oh, I want to do a podcast with you. But you didn't want to make it happen. So now I'm going to find a way to attack you. It didn't work out. And it's interesting because you go, oh, well, then it wasn't ever a collaboration, and it wasn't of high character. It was an opportunity. Now that the opportunity is lost, now you have a different view of this situation. And I love that point you made about how. That's why I think opportunities going well or not going well shows how someone responds to it.

Absolutely right.

Like, when there's a yes or a no. Someone who actually responds well to a no and a healthy no, again, obviously, in a way that is communicated effectively, someone who responds in a positive way to a rejection or a no or a closed door. That person, you should keep them around forever, man.

Jay, you hitting it on the head. So crazy. Pause. It's like, do you remember you ever met somebody who's so talented, and you say to yourself, why isn't this person here, like, why isn't this person doing x, y, and z? Because they're so talented. And then when you start to, like, get in business with them and you go down the path with them and you start to be around them, you realize exactly why they haven't gotten to where they need to be. Cause once again, my good friend Marvette brittle always says, this talent will take you. What character can't sustain you? So you start to see, like, this person is not really a hard worker, or this person really is a gossip. Like, this person just likes to talk about everybody else instead of focusing on what they should be focusing on. They're so worried about what everybody else is doing and trying to shoot down what everybody else is doing, and you're trying to tell them, like, don't worry about that. Cause, you know, listen, sometimes jealousy and envy, it's natural, right? But don't focus on what's going right for everybody else. Cause you don't know what's going on in their lives.

They might be looking, like, on the surface, like they're winning and things are great, but they might be going home crying every night. Like, don't worry about that. You focus on you, but you see that they can't do that. And when things don't go their way, oh, they become the most. They become the worst people. Everybody's the enemy. Everybody's a terrible person. All of these people are out to get me. Nobody's looking out for me. And you realize, like, that's exactly why you're not where you're supposed to be. I've had so many doors closed on me, I've heard. So I've gotten way more no's, you know, than yeses in my life. I never was bitter about any of those no's. Cause I truly believe in God. And so whatever God has for me will absolutely, positively be for me. We love saying that, but we don't mean it. You don't mean it. Cause when things don't go right for you, guess what? You say, why, God? Why is this thing not happening for me? Cause I don't want it to at the moment. Do you trust me or not? If you don't trust me, I'll be sitting here waiting until you do.

And guess what? If you never do, God bless. Literally, straight up, God will be sitting right there. I can bless you at any moment, but not until you ready. You don't trust me anyway. So until you find that trust in me, good luck.

Yeah. Yeah. I respect you for that in this. I mean, you always like this off online and offline, but in the book, I really feel like you get honest with us, but you're about your own pain and trauma, but you also get honest with us about just, you know, you just. Right now, you're just speaking facts like it's just reality. It's just the way it is. And I think one of the things you talk about is this desire to, like, you want to also make a joke when you can. Like, you want to make it funny. You want to be able to let it, you know, let it kind of live in that world. When have you found it that it works? And when have you found that that doesn't work? Like, when you're trying to make something into being funny or silly or kind of lightening the mood. When have you seen that be effective and ineffective?

Probably quite often. Which one?

Which way? Ineffective.

I mean, I think it works both ways both times. Right. Because, like, say you do it, if you're in a room full of people, somebody's going to laugh. But then the person you might be trying to make laughter does not want to laugh in that moment. So they're the one that's upset. Now you're really in your head, like, I was just trying to make this person laugh. I was just trying to do something good. So now you really, like, trying to get this person to just have, you know, you're trying to put better energy on this person. Reality is, you just leave that person alone in that moment. Everything does not require a joke. I have not learned that I may not ever. I may not ever, you know, learn that I really may not. Like, I just feel like I like to be around people who don't take things too serious, even when things are serious. Cause I don't feel like you can, you know, make really good, sound decisions when things are too serious because emotions are too high. Like, sometimes you gotta, like, let's laugh about it. Let's joke about it. Let's really, really, really lighten the room, and then let's, like, sit down and try to, like, figure it out.

Like, if you are sitting around a whole bunch of people and everybody's angry, and everybody's upset, everybody's mad, you just got a team that's about to make a poor decision.

Wow.

Somebody on the team gotta just be like, whoa, yo, everybody relax here. Somebody gotta be the rational one in the room. And most of the time, the rational one in the room is the person that's not. They're taking it serious, but they're just not taking it serious in the way that you wanna take it serious. Cause I'm the type of person, I'm like, what can I do? Like, there's certain situations that you hear about certain situations you are confronted with in the moment, and you realize, like, there's really nothing we can do about this except for let it play out.

Yeah.

So while we letting it play out, let's. Let's laugh. Yeah, let's crack some jokes. You ever seen that movie, don't look up?

Yeah, of course.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

See how they handle the end of the world? Yeah, that's how, like, I'm talking about the Leonardo DiCaprio's character. When they were all at dinner and they were still pouring drinks and they were eating, they knew the inevitable was happening. They knew there was nothing they could do to stop it. They spent the whole beginning of the movie trying to stop it, and they accepted fate in that moment, and they decided, I'm going out like this. Cause they knew there was nothing they could do about it. And I know that that's a movie, and it's probably easier said than done, but that's what I strive for. Like, even in the face of adversity, even when it seems like, you know, chicken little, the sky is falling, everything's burning down around you. You're, like, exhibiting that video where he's just walking and everything's burning down and all this bad stuff is happening behind him, but he's just rapping and moving, rapping and moving. It's just like, yo, that's how I feel like I want to, you know, constantly live my life, and that's the kind of people I want to, you know, be around people that keep me in that space.

Yeah, for sure. Last question I want to ask you, Charlemagne, before we wrap up, is, and it's interesting because it relates to what you just said of, you want to be around those people. How do we find a belonging in a world we don't agree with, but stop ourselves from only being friends with people we agree with? Right. It's like, because right now, we look at belonging as, like, if we agree, then I find belonging. But we both know, from what you're saying in the book, from what you're saying right now, from what you say on your podcast, from what you say on your show, is like. But you are very comfortable sitting down, having uncomfortable, awkward conversations with people who people wouldn't place you with.

That's right.

From completely different backgrounds, different walks of life, different schools of thought. And you find that to be a very important thing to do.

Absolutely.

So how do we find belonging in a way that we're not just creating little echo chambers and little confirmation bias scores where we just all just say what we think and we all double click on and go, yeah, yeah, that thing. That thing. How do we create a culture where. Which you're doing through your work, through your book, how do you actually do that in your life? Because I think we all like to be around people who agree with us.

I don't even know if you realize it, but as you was talking, you referred to. You refer to that stuff as little. Yeah, and that's exactly what it is. It's small. That's why it's literally called why small talk sucks. Macro conversations are big conversations that you can have with anybody. Like when you put yourself in those small boxes, right? When you confine yourself to just speaking with the people that you agree with, when you confine yourself to just being in those echo chambers, those rooms are so small, they just seem big because of social media. But that's not how the world works. Yo. There's really, there's really not too many people that are going to see the world exactly the way you see it. So that can't be true. All of y'all are lying to each other because y'all just love the community of each other. Y'all are really a bunch of people who need, you know, support from each other. And y'all want to have a friend group just like all humans do. So y'all are all just going along to get along with each other. So y'all make this imaginary rulebook, this imaginary playbook, and y'all have this imaginary rhetoric that everybody has to say, and if you don't see things like this, if you don't say things like this, then you can't be in this club no more.

This club is this big. Like this. That club is so, so, so small. So in order to just, like, understand that you live in a world that you are going to disagree with people, like I said earlier, I can think you're right, but still not necessarily agree with you. I can understand where you're coming from, but still think you're wrong. Like, I don't understand why we just can't sit down and have more conversations with people and realize this surface that I saw of this individual or this perception of this individual that I had in my head. If you sit down and actually have a conversation with them and, like, listen to the whole totality of everything that they may be saying or experience, you'll never be able to experience the whole totality of a person, but you'll get closer to what you thought. If you just sit down and have a conversation with them, you'll realize, like, oh, what they're saying isn't necessarily that bad, or, oh, I understand why they see things that way. I disagree with them, but I understand it. And I respect their right to think that we spend so much time trying to change people's minds because we're trying to make ourselves comfortable.

So true.

We talk about all of this growth that we want to have as humans. And we talk about how, you know, and we like being uncomfortable, because when we're uncomfortable, it's making us grow. We know that we're evolving. We really don't like growing, and we really don't like being uncomfortable. We get to a certain point, and we all need to admit this. We get to a certain point where we're very comfortable, and we don't want anything disrupting this comfort. So to have new conversations and to talk to people that we may not necessarily agree with, oh, man, that scares us to death. That scares us to death. But I would say you should be more afraid of not growing. You should be more afraid of thinking that. I've gotten to a certain point, and I'm fine and cool here. The world is a beautiful place, Jay. Humans are beautiful people. Like, why would you not want to experience everything that God created? Because a lot of these things that we've learned, that's not necessarily of God. It's just the things that we've picked up in this world. Some people have picked up things that are different from us.

But sometimes when you sit down and you listen to that person, and that person shares their experiences, or that person tells you what they've been through that's gotten into that, you know, point in life, it can be eye opening, and it's been very eye opening for me throughout my life. Like, my best relationships in life have come through me having conversations with people that I necessarily. That I. That I didn't have anything in common with. One of the greatest, you know, gifts my mother ever gave me. She was. She was an english teacher growing up in South Carolina. Like, when I was growing up in South Carolina, she told me, read things that don't pertain to you.

Great.

So I'm in library. I'm reading everything from UFO's, you know, Sasquatch, to Judy Bloom and Beverly, clearly, to the point where I'm like, this woman, Judy Bloom, is a phenomenal storyteller. So I love Judy Bloom the same way I love Scarface, the same way I love Jay Z, the same way I love Ghostface. She's that level of storyteller to me. And now, because of that love of somebody like Judy Bloom and me expressing that she's somebody I actually call a friend, she's actually somebody that I, you know, have gone down to Florida and, you know, kicked it with her and her husband, George, me and my wife. Like, I've been to her bookstore in her movie theater. Like, we was just together in New York a couple weeks ago. Like, that comes from being open to other people, other experiences, and just listening to each other. And that's really what, you know, get on us or die lying. Why small talk sucks is really all about. It's really about us, you know, getting to listen to each other. That's why I end every chapter by saying, let's discuss. Cause I want us to have conversations.

I'm opening up conversation. I don't want you just to talk to the people that you agree with every day, tear down the walls of that echo chamber, and realize how big the world is. The world is infinite. That's what I want people to get, you know, from this book.

Yeah. And just the way you reacted to that, I could tell how deep the topic is for you. It took me a second, but when you said other way, I said it was little. And then you were like, oh, it's actually small talk. Like, it applies. That showed me just how deep this is running for your veins. You picked up on that. It's like, yeah, I was saying, yeah, these little groups and these little echo chambers and these little kind of, like, you know, text threads or message threads.

Whatever we have, which is important, just.

Get smaller and smaller and smaller. What's. Last question. What's the hardest. Hardest conversation you've had to have with your kids so far? So far or the most honest conversation? That's it. Not hardest. The most honest conversation.

Oh, man. That's. Listen, I got a 15 year old, an eight year old, a five year old, and a two year old. All girls, so I haven't had it yet. They're all hard. They're all difficult. Okay. Every single one. Especially, you know, my 15 year old. Cause she's a sophomore in high school now. And, you know, they're dealing with things that we never even thought of dealing with. Like, literally, like, you know, and we're dealing with adults that we never thought of dealing with. And these kids are smart. Like, you know, I remember during COVID my daughter came to me, and she came to me and my wife, and she was like. She was in tears, and she was just like, yo, I'm overwhelmed. Like, I'm overwhelmed. Like, this is driving me crazy. You know, my grades are slipping. I'm like, I gave her a hug. I'm like, we are in an unprecedented time right now. Like, we're literally at home. I'm at home doing work. You're doing pottery class on the kitchen floor. Do you think I give a damn if your grades slip at a moment like this? Like, I don't care about any of that.

But what made me proud in that moment was she had the language. Because, you know, she's been to therapy not cause anything's necessarily wrong. I'm just realizing that we're in an unprecedented time. Like, these kids deal with things that we don't have to deal with. So I want them. I want her to have the tools and the language early. Cause I'm just a person still going through it myself. Her mom is the person still going through it herself. So I want her to sit down and talk to experts. But just the fact she had the language. So when you say difficult conversations, honestly, the difficult conversations come from me having to check my ego as a parent. Cause I'm 45, and I believe this little 15 year old doesn't know anything yet. She knows a whole lot, and she's teaching me, you know, a whole lot. Like, there's some things that change. There's some things that stay the same in this world, but there's a whole lot that has changed. And I think that, you know, we sometimes are too stubborn to realize that. And so, yeah, I guess, to answer your question, every day is a difficult conversation.

I got four girls. Every day is a difficult conversation. Like, I'm dealing with a different set of emotions every single day. The biggest thing for me is to stay centered, insane, and, you know, not let my emotions get the best of me. Like, that's one of the biggest conversations me and my wife constantly have. Like, we get together in our little prayer circles and huddle together like, we are doing the best we can. I literally. It's so funny. I told her this yesterday. I was like, yo, you know, we've been together 26 years, and we've experienced so many different levels of life together. And so what I said to her, I was like, we also realized 26 years go by fast. So regardless of how stressed out we get because of these children, let's enjoy the moment. Like, literally, let's just enjoy the moment. We are doing the best we can. There is no manual that comes with this. You don't want to take everything you learn from your parents because you realize they didn't have all of the proper tools and they didn't necessarily instill the right things in us, at least from a man's perspective.

My mom, I felt, was phenomenal, but at least from a man's perspective, I didn't have that. So we're just all doing the best we can, so let's just give each other some grace, man, and, like, enjoy this ride called adulthood.

Absolutely everyone. The book is called get honest or die lying. You can get it right now.

Why?

Small talk sucks. Shalom in the God. This is the book that I want you to get. Discuss it with your friends. Dissect it, allow it to infuse into reality. I've been really, really happy that this book's out because I spent last Christmas in London, which is what I usually do, and I started to find that even friends I've had for a couple of decades, I found that we were becoming less and less honest with each other, and I was feeling really disconnected. When I was back at Christmas and I was trying to figure out what it was, I was like, wait a minute. Is it because I left eight years ago and I've been living in the States? Is it because of this? Is it this? And I realized it was honesty. And so I started to create conversations in my friends group that were uncomfortable. And when I saw that you'd written this book, I was so moved by it because I was like, that was the exact issue that I felt I was moving further away from the people I was closest to because we were all now just playing a role and everyone was playing their part.

But there was no longer a get honest conversation. It was all small talk. And so I really hope that this conversation inspires people to get closer to the people you already think you're close to and understand the people that you're far away from.

That's right.

And so the book is called get Honest or die lying. Why small talk sucks.

That's right.

Can grab it right now. We'll put it in the comments and the link in the caption, charlemagne. Thank you so much again, man. As always, I appreciate these conversations.

I appreciate.

Any time, man.

We always have macro conversations on air, off air. And I mean, just what you've built with this platform on purpose, it is so necessary, man. Like, you know, everybody's having these conversations about mindfulness and, you know, wellness, and we're all just trying to be the best versions of ourselves. Something like this didn't exist five years ago. Just like those conversations that people are having now weren't necessarily as loud as they were, you know, as loud five years ago as they are now. And your platform on purpose is a big, big, big, huge part of that. So thank you for your service, brother.

Thank you. I appreciate you.

Absolutely.

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

Just because I like it, that doesn't give it any value, like as an artist. If you like it, that's all of the value. That's the success comes when you say, I like this enough for other people to see it.

For mental Health Awareness Month, I'm partnering up with the National alliance of Mental Illness, Nami. If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health, there is help. Call NAMi Helpline at 800 950 NAMI or go to www.nami.org help or text helpline to 62640 for immediate 24/7 cross crisis support. Call or text nine eight eight or visit www. Dot nine eight eight Lifeline.org.

Something that makes me crazy is when people say, well, I had this career before, but it was a waste. And that's where the perspective shift comes, that it's not a waste, that everything you've done has built you to where you are now. This is she pivots, the podcast where we explore the inspiring pivots women have made and dig deeper into the personal reasons behind them. Join me Emily Tisch Sussman every Wednesday on she pivots listen to she pivots on the iHeartRadio, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Tune in to the new podcast stories from the village of nothing, much like easy listening, but for fiction. If you've overdosed on bad news, we invite you into a world where the glimmers of goodness in everyday life life are all around you. I'm Katherine Nikolai, and I'm an architect of cozy. Come spend some time where everyone is welcome and the default is kindness. Listen, relax, enjoy. Listen to stories from the village of nothing much on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Get emotional with me. Radhi Devlukia in my new podcast, a really good cry, we're gonna be talking with some of my best friends. Friends I didn't know we were gonna.

Go there on this.

People that I admire, when we say, listen to your body, really tune into what's going on. Authors of books that have changed my life.

Now you're talking about sympathy, which is different than empathy, right?

Never forget, it's okay to cry as long as you make it a really good one. Listen to a really good cry with Radhi Dvlukia on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.