#335: Unleash Your Inner GLOW When Life Gets Dark with Tara Schuster Entertainment Executive Turned Mental Health Advocate & Best Selling Author

What are small changes you can make in your life to find stability, to find solid ground so that you're kind to yourself and you're not living in misery? Because up until that point, I thought that life was just a series of crises to endure. That's what my take on life was because that's what it had been through my childhood and high school and college. That really was what life was for me. And with Lily's as I was writing it, my decision was, I can't be miserable anymore. I do not accept that my life will be miserable.

I'm on this journey with me each week when you join me, we are going to chase down our goals, overcome adversity, and set you up for a better tomorrow.

I'm ready for my close up.

Hi, and welcome back. I'm so glad you're back with us this week. All right. I can't wait for you to meet.

My guest this week.

Tara Schuster is an accomplished entertainment exec turned mental health advocate and bestselling author.

What?

She's the author of the newly released Glow in the Effing Dark and the runaway hit Buy Yourself the Effing Lilly, a finalist for Goodreads best Nonfiction book of 2020 that is major. It was selected by Cosmopolitan, Real Simple, Goop, Publishers Weekly, and many more as one of the best books of the year on mental health and self care. Previously, Tara served as a vice president of talent development at Comedy Central, where she was the executive in charge of such critically acclaimed shows as the Emmy and Peabody award winning Key and Peele. She has contributed to InStyle, the New Yorker, Forbes, among others. And she lives in Los Angeles. Tara, thank you so much for being with us today.

Oh, thank you for having me, Heather.

Oh, my gosh. So I'm a follower of your ig. I love your content. And just selfishly, I want to get into your backstory because there are a lot of similarities that we both started out in these corporate exec gigs and. And then things totally blew up and we reinvented ourselves. So I'd love for you to take us back to what? I mean, Comedy Central sounds like an amazing gig, and your old job was beyond impressive. How did that go? Awry? Yeah.

So I only ever worked at Comedy Central for basically a third of my life. I started as an intern at the Daily show with Jon Stewart and just was like, I'm going to slay this. I'm going to climb this ladder. I'm going to go as fast as I can.

And.

And I ended up becoming vice president of talent development, where I, you know, was like, talking to Jordan Peele on the phone and running David Spade show. And it was super statusy and glamorous and fun and going to all these Emmys parties. But what I didn't realize was that it was a magic trick. It was like a total distraction from 25 years of complex trauma due to a neglectful, psychologically abusive upbringing that I was always compensating for, because I felt like such a weirdo and such an outsider. So I needed status. I needed something to point to and say, hey, look, I'm valuable.

I'm cool.

I made it, you know, not like, oh, I have all this. These hidden skeletons that aren't even doing that good of a job, hiding. They're, like, coming back from the dead constantly. And so around. It was the beginning of the pandemic. Comedy Central laid me off with just about everyone else, and I had considered that home, and I had considered my colleague's family and a replacement family for the one I never had. And so when I was cut, like, very unceremoniously cut, I had a complete crisis of, who am I? You know, I'd always been a hustler through high school. I always had a summer job. I always had an internship at college. I had two jobs. It was always, always going, going, going. You know, I'm going to make it somewhere. I'm going to make it one day. All of a sudden, nobody else is telling me my identity. Nobody's telling me my role. Nobody's in charge of my schedule. And that's when my deepest traumas really came surging to the forefront. You know, I was single, living alone in la, no family. It's the pandemic. Everyone had their horrible version of the pandemic that was mine. And I really couldn't bear these memories that were coming up from my childhood where essentially things came to my house to die. You know, the plants, the pets. I mean, it was extreme neglect that I had kind of buried in order to. To get ahead and make it through. And so I decided, I. I unwisely decided I'm not going to deal with any of this. I'm actually just going to move to Arizona, and I'm going to help with voter registration in the 2020 election. I was just, like, immediately like, oh, okay, you dropped me. Well, I'll hustle myself into more meaning. I'll do something even, like, more impressive and part of the world and making a difference. And so, you know, I grabbed my Vitamix, I grabbed a bag of Books and I just got on the highway basically in 48 hours to move to Arizona, of course. What a good choice I made. What a. Like, obviously this was going to work out. And I was on the road in the Mojave Desert, going 95, which if you know me, I should not be going 95. Like bad, bad idea. Having the worst dissociative episode of my life. And you know, I don't know if you've had a dissociative episode. So it's basically the unwanted love child of a panic attack and like out of body experience. So yes, it was terrible. Like I could see my hands on the steering wheel, but they were like floating, you know, it's basically your mind disassociates. Disassociates from where you are so that you can kind of like escape reality, escape the trauma. But it feels horrible. It feels like your whole body sick and like it would be better to throw up all of your insides. Like that would feel better than how you feel. And so I'm racing down the highway. There are gnarled Joshua trees all around me. I'm completely freaking out and out of control and. And I was lucky that my therapist called me and said, hey, are you safe? And I'm like, yeah, of course I'm safe. I'm just driving, you know, like just driving. It's no big deal. I'm moving to Arizona. She said, well, that's not safe in your current state. What you need to do is pull over. And it had never occurred to me, not one time to pull over. I thought the creed of hustle, that I'm just going to keep moving, keep going, keep surviving, get to the next thing. I thought that was the way, you know, and that that would bring me meaning and happiness and all the things I wanted, not stopping. And so I pulled over on the side of the road and because I was such a good planner, it was like late at night. Like I definitely should not have been on the highway then. And I looked up and you know, in la, we really can't see the stars. I mean, the best we see is a satellite. And you're like, oh, it's a star. Oh no, no, no, wait a minute. No, no, that's just a satellite. But in the desert in the Mojave, it was just like I was surrounded by a glitter field. It was so gorgeous. And I looked up at the stars and I thought, those stars keep on shining. It is bleak. Like the world is bleak right now. It is dead of night. How do those stars Shine. How do they shine? Even in the darkest of conditions? And I started like googling stars. I think it was somewhat of a divine miracle that I had service. But I started just like, what more can I find out about stars? And I found out that stars actually come together from all the pressure and problems and chaos of outer space. The nebula and the dust, they all come together to become brilliant. And I thought, I wonder if I can do that. Can I take all of this? Own it all? Okay, yes. All these things happen. I've been laid off. I had a bad childhood. I've made many mistakes. My own substance abuse issues. I've had all those things. Can I own everything? Bring it in and shine from that place. And so this book, Glow in the Effing Dark is basically about finding your own stardust self. Like, who are you at your core? Because we are all actually made of stardust. You know, it's not some cute thing that I would write on an Etsy mug in big script. It's the carbon in your muscles, the iron in your blood comes from stardust. So we all have that capability. It's just a matter of how do you unleash it, how do you let it glow? And so that's sort of what my what Glow in the Effing Dark is about. And also what my mission is now is unleashing that glow that we all already have.

Okay, first of all, there is no way. You were lucky that your therapist called. That was like divine intervention.

Oh, I agree.

Oh my gosh, that is wild. What a blessing. Okay, first and foremost, so where do you go from the side of the road? Like, how does. This is really throwing me for a loop.

So if I'm honest with you, the next place I went was In N Out. What's the next?

I went and had a burger.

Of course.

It's huge out there now. That was a good decision.

That was a very in a line of bad decisions. Going to In n out was a very good decision. I continued on to Arizona and what I realized is I need to dry out. I've basically been drowning in work and completely ignoring these deeper soul level wounds. And it's time that I bring care and nurturing to these things that I didn't grow up with. Care and nurturing. I thought that taking care of yourself was like the icing on the cake of life. When now I've realized, no, no, no, no. That's like the cake. Like you have a body, you have a life, you have it one time, so you better maintain it. If you actually value it and feel gratitude for it, take care of it. And so my mission became in Arizona, slow down. I'm not gonna hustle my way through this. I was very lucky. I had savings because I had been an executive and because I was also terrified of money. Like, couldn't spend. Absolutely could not spend any money, really. So had just been an aggressive saver, which had given me a big cushion to give myself some time to heal. And so the book really goes into simple, simple practices that anybody can use. They're. Yes, scientifically, you know, they've been through, like, yes, yes. Mental health. Real people, like, not a non expert like me vouch for them. But I use my stories to show how you can incorporate them into your life without blowing up your life. You know, like, you don't need to move to Arizona to find a little more emotional regulation and peace within yourself. Hopefully I'm just giving you the quicker way to it with a story that I myself went through.

What are some of the simple steps that people listening right now can implement in their life?

Yeah, I would say the very first thing is journaling, which sounds. Everybody says it, but nobody does it. And I'm like, your life would be so much easier if you just sat down and journaled because, you know, there's a lot of science behind if you can label and identify your feelings, you can immediately feel some relief from them. And so for me, for example, I had really bad anxiety, but I didn't understand exactly why. And at the time, I had this boyfriend who was constantly lying to me. Just, I think for legal reasons, I'm not supposed to say lie. So telling stories that were, like, interesting. He was telling. Telling tales, you know, you know, he. You know, he like told somebody, I bought this house. Gallery owner, he's like, I bought this house. I'm like, you rented it? He told me, I bought your book in like every state. And then I asked, well, can I see the list? He doesn't have the list. He's like, oh, it's in my laptop. And like, you know, I almost just said a real detail. So I stopped myself. But it was constantly shifting reality for me to. To be lied to so often. And I went to a psychiatrist. I hadn't been on medication for a time. My friends were just worried about my level of anxiety. And I'll never forget this. My psychiatrist looked at me and she said, I don't think you're anxious. I think you're furious. And when she said that, it was like, mic drop. Wow. I'm not anxious. I'm furious. But I don't know how to feel furious. I don't know how to feel anger. It's not an emotion I'm good at. So the suppression of my anger feels like anxiety. That's what's really hurting me here, is that I'm pushing down how I actually feel. And when you journal and in the beginning of Glow in the Effing Dark, I give you an emotion wheel that is hopefully way easier to use than what you might get in a therapist's office. It's just like more real language, I think. When I'm able to identify in my journal, here's how I actually feel. Not just a wash of anxiety but, but resentment, anger, grieving. When I can see what I really actually feel, then I have a chance to make a different choice. I have a chance to address the core issues and not just, you know, write myself off as anxious. And I'm an anxious person and there's nothing to be done. No, there's something to be done. I just need to dig deeper. And so for me journaling, by just telling myself my story, I'm able to more clearly see it. When I'm lying to myself, which I often do in my journal, I also am like, okay, cool, why are you lying about that? Like what are you afraid of? And you build self awareness and self awareness is a part of any healing journey, any like growth. You've got to be self aware. So for those reasons, I love journaling. And in this super chaotic world where I don't need to tell you, like if you've opened the news recently, things aren't the best that they've ever been, right? So in this chaotic world where there's so little safety, a journal is actually your own place. You can take it with you anywhere, it's reliable. It's never going to judge you. You know, you write something dark on the page, something you're not proud of, it doesn't like come back and scream at you. It's safe there. It's a safe place to put things and close the COVID on it. And so journaling, there's so, you know, there's so much science behind it, but even just like practically it's basically free. It's the cost of the notebook plus a pen. It in some studies have been shown to be almost or as effective as real talk therapy. So why not give it a try? You know, I really resisted it. I thought, oh, I don't have time to wake up 20 minutes like earlier, like that sucks. I've been consistently journaling for 10 years. I can just tell you you have the time. What you don't have the time to do is ignore how you actually feel because that that wastes years of your life. So this is a way quicker path to what any kind of self discovering. So journaling is always my number one tip.

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My first.

Book, Confidence Creator, I write about how.

Journaling changed my life. And in my situation I never I was like you in An Executive in Corporate America, quote unquote successful but not fulfilled. Not really happy, you know, just kind of living in empty life in many regards. Just chasing a paycheck. And I would always say, well, I guess this is it. Like I. I don't know what else I'm supposed to do. And people would ask me no, like what's the. I'm like, I don't. This is it. And then I started journaling and it did. It was not long, it was only a few months into journaling. I started seeing a pattern because I would go back and read like, and read yes. Things right? Like I'm like this seems like a clue and it really is like a clue. It's like you're on like a little hunt in your own life. And I started seeing clues that anytime I was speaking at an event I felt like magic. When I got off the stage, people were saying like the nicest things to me that they ever said it was weird and I would write that down. This is weird. Like why? But I would never acknowledge, wow, maybe this is something different I should start looking into. I didn't know it was a business at the time. I like, I wasn't even like, that's not what I do. I'm supposed to be over here. But after a few instances connecting those dots in the journal, it made me pause and say, wait a minute, there's something here that I'm missing. I need to start looking at it. So journaling can help in so many profound different ways. Whether you're trying to find your purpose, you're trying to find what your anxiety is, you're trying to find what's really going on. And like you said, just from a simple self awareness, oh my gosh, it is game changing. But when you were explaining that you went to the therapist, I thought she was going to say to you, it's not anxiety, it's you got to dump your boyfriend. Ye.

Well, she did actually. She said before I walked out, she said, I don't usually give advice, but you need to break up with him. Like I was like the door closed. She's like, and you need to break up with him. So she did also say that.

And you did break up with him after. Oh yeah.

Immediately I was like, bye, like, see ya. Once I realized, oh, like the issue isn't even me. The issue is how this person's treating me and that I'm allowing myself to be like, treated this way. So I need to get out. I have a lot of reasons to be furious, so this has to end now. Wow.

It is always so much easier for someone else to see in us what we could be missing. And just the same way I was just having this conversation with a friend, I was telling her directly. It was so obvious to me what was wrong in her life, but for her it was a mystery. And I think that happens to so many of us. But to your point, journaling can definitely be a solution.

Absolutely. Yeah. And just to your point, about patterns. So I have 10 years of journals sitting next to me and it gives me the ability to be a time traveler. Like I can go back and see, well, what did 30 year old me want? What was it really a good idea that I broke up with so and so was that really a good career choice when I passed up that job and go back and say, well, yeah, look like literally in writing, here's what I thought about at the time. So you know, I could go on and on and I'm a big journaling proponent. I hopefully one of my impacts has just been to get people to journal to realize it's actually not that hard and there's so many benefits.

So where did you go that took you to write your first book from Comedy Central to taking a break to heal yourself, which I completely get. And I'm so proud of you that you, you know, had the awareness and commitment to do that. How do you go from there to writing your first book?

Well, so if we back up in time a little bit. I had always wanted to be a writer. I went to Brown for playwriting. I, you know, was like deep in this theater scene in New York before Comedy Central. And I gave it up because I thought, I'm going to be poor. I'm going to be poor if I do this. I don't come from a family of money. There's no security net that's going to catch me. I need to be practical. TV is close to theater. You know, being an executive is close to being the writer, but it's not the real thing, right? So I settled. I was like, I'm going to settle on this because it's an awesome settling. It's like the best possible good enough plateau is fancy. It's fun. I'm with creative people, but it's not the real thing. And so while I was at Comedy Central, I started feeling the pangs of I need to create. And so I started submitting things to the slush pile of the New Yorker. That's like their random email address you could send stuff to. And I started getting things in and I realized, okay, well, let me take this a little bit further. And I started writing. I woke up earlier every day before work and I wrote the first book, which is by Yourself, the Effing Lilies. And I had like two full time jobs essentially. And that was what it took, you know, to, to get it done. But that book was really about healing myself enough that I was stable. Because having such a chaotic childhood, you have no emotional regulation, right? It's like a roller coaster of depression, anxiety, anxiety, joy, total fear. And I basically just created rituals and ways to structure my day so that I always had consistency, you know, So I write a lot about journaling, a gratitude practice, having a physical, a way that you move your body every day. And you, you have to trust me in the book. I'm way funnier. I'm funnier in writing. So it's so stuff isn't like, woo, woo. Like, I'm not like blow up Your life and, you know, start working out an hour every day. I'm like, running sucks. Like, I had to do about 50, 000 things to trick myself into running. You know, like silly stuff. Like, I had to at the very beginning, go stop by stop sign by stop sign and just congratulate myself, like, bribe myself, get a fancy candle if I went quarter of a mile, you know, really, like, had to trick and bribe myself. And so that's what Lilly's is all about, is what are small changes you can make in your life to find stability, to find solid ground so that you're kind to yourself and you're not living in misery. Because up until that point, I thought that life was just a series of crises to endure. That's what my take on life was, because that's what it had been through my childhood and high school and college. That really was what life was for me. And with Lilly's as I was writing it, my decision was, I can't be miserable anymore. I do not accept that my life will be miserable. So that's how Lilly's came about. And then after I was laid off and realized, whoa, there's like, I kind of felt like a fraud too, because here I had written this self care book, this memoir slash self help book that had done really well. It was like a big bestseller. And now all of a sudden I'm like, wait a minute, I don't totally have it together. Like, can I even write this? Are people going to think I'm an imposter? You know? And what I realized is, no, because we're all on this journey and it's always evolving and it's always changing. And if anyone ever tells you I've done all the work, I'm completely healed, well, then, you know, you've met a liar. Like, there's just. There's absolutely no way. And yeah, it kind of sucks that every time we think we get there, we realize, oh, wow, there's much more work to do. But as I have done this work, it's gotten easier and easier and easier, and my life feels like more yes, like more just unabashed yes in it than no or misery or any of those feelings I used to feel. So it's definitely. It's a journey that is not linear, takes so many different turns. And now I'm just really upfront with my readers and my community on Instagram. You know, I'm. If I'm having a messy day, I'm not hiding that I'm not perfect, and that's we can't hold anybody to that standard. The best thing we can do is investigate these moments and be honest so that other people see I'm not alone. You know? And at the end of the day, that's what I hope I do for people is just make them feel less alone.

Okay. This is what I find weird, though, now that you've shared. Thank you for sharing that. That you know, your background with Brown and your passion for writing, because I did not know about that. So now that I know that, though, this is what I find weird. You're in the comedy central position. You write this book. The book does better than 99% of books do. Like, this is incredible, Tara. And I am so confused. For me, that would be like, the sign of, wait a minute. This is my passion. I just took a chance and did it. I had the stability of the exact job still, which I totally get that. Right? But now I have the proof. Now why don't I jump?

It was a combination of things, one of which was I wasn't convinced that I was successful. It's taken me a long time. You know, when you grow up in that kind of negativity, it's actually very hard to accept joyous, positive things. I think it's called the positive affect. You're used to misery, used to negativity. You're used to criticism. You're used to, everything's doomed, everything's going to fail. There's no way I can do this. And so it's really hard, actually, to hold on to, wait a minute. I just succeeded. The data is in my favor, not against me. So that was the first part. The second part was my first book. Lilies came out at the beginning of the pandemic. So the time between success and pandemic being laid off was actually not that long, but it was a blessing. They laid me off, you know, and so quickly. Because what probably would have happened is I would have tried to make that job work for fear of money, for fear of, I'm going to struggle, I'm going to be poor, then I'd be homeless, nobody loves me, then I'm going to die. Like, I would have gone through that and just stayed in my corporate job. So they did me a favor ultimately by cutting me loose.

It was a gift.

But did you struggle ultimately when you made the decision to write the second book, to say. Because I know I struggled with this when I was really out of corporate and saying, okay, I'm going to work for myself. That feels so unstable and scary at first, right?

Yeah.

I mean, I deal with that still. I mean, I feel like even up until last night, I was, like, way more nervous about it. Comes up all the time. I wish I could say, well, you know, now I've been fully supporting myself as an artist and entrepreneur for three years in a lifestyle that I'm obsessed with. You know, like, I love my life. I never want to go back to corporate. I just want to show people that, oh, if you don't like the situation you're in, you actually can change it. It's not a huge magic trick. It's a bunch of small steps taken with a teensy bit of discipline and a big dose of joy. So, like, you're excited to do it, but I definitely get scared sometimes, you know, and wonder, what if this next book doesn't do well? Like, what if Glow doesn't do well? And what if people stop coming to my workshops? And then again, I'm going to be poor and I'm going to doomed, But I stop myself and I say, look at the data. Just look like, what has actually been true in my life? Has it been true that when I took a calculated risk, when I had created something of quality, that I just fell off the face of the planet? No. And money actually isn't security as much as I think it is. It isn't. My relationships are security because the people around me are the ones who, if things get really bad, are going to take me in and are going to help me. So it's. I've had to tweak what. What is security, actually. And security can never be a job and it can never be money.

And I.

You know, we need a certain baseline, obviously, for resources, but it's not everything. And I really genuinely used to believe that it was. So my answer is, it's an evolving story. I'd say the majority of days, I'm so excited to be an entrepreneur and an author and have all these things, and sometimes I worry and both of the things are true, and I just have to remind myself of the facts.

It's so good. And I'm with you. I am so with you. And I'm five years into it, and I still feel the same way.

Right.

Have the days where I'm like, oh, I'm killing it. This is amazing. And then other days I'm like, wait a minute, what if this launch doesn't go well? What is that gonna look like? Maybe it's not gonna work.

But can I ask you this? Overall, compared to your corporate job, don't you feel more free, more alive. Like, isn't it like I'd never go back now, even with my worry. Do you feel the same way?

Yeah. No. I mean, listen, for a long time I was straddling both because I was like, well, this doesn't work. I'll just head back to corporate. I had to withstand an 18 month non compete. So once that window passed, I was like, well, you know, for 18 months I had to go all in. And then I was like, well, I don't know, I was cheating myself. Because as you know, any time you split your attention and focus from one thing. My friend, a friend of mine just wrote this book, Burn the Boats. Stop looking back at this, you know, let go of that and just go all in over here. That took me, that took me a couple of years to, to really let go of. But that's all about imposter syndrome. Self doubt, you know, negative self talk. Like self sabotaging behaviors. Right, like all these things. Yes. What are some of the other tactics you share? And glow in the effing d on how to overcome those things?

Yeah, I'm so glad you brought up that in particular the negative self talk, because I call it the frenemy within. You know, someone you've known forever, but if you met today, you wouldn't be friends. That's how I think of it. Like I'd never, like, if I met this person in a restaurant who's like constantly tearing me down, I'd be like, bye. No, like, no, thank you. But since she's been with me since I was a little kid, I feel some affection for her and some, you know, comfort with the discomfort. And so in Glow, what I really talk about is I used to push all these things away. Particularly I had a core wound that I felt like I'd always be lonely and I'd always be rejected and I'd always be abandoned. And it was actually that was based kind of on the facts. I was left alone a lot of my childhood. One of my first memories is I'm five years old, wandering down the cement roads of my neighborhood, which was kind of more wild than you would think for Los Angeles. There's like trees and coyotes and deer and I'm really little and it's so scary because my babysitter has just vanished. Just completely vanished, isn't there? And I go to a neighbor's house, I'm like crying in the street looking for an adult. And I go to the neighbor's house and I knock on the door and. And she Looks at me like I'm the most wretched little thing she's ever seen. Like it's my fault I'm alone. Which, looking back, I came from the bad family of the neighborhood. The family that had the garbage container on the front lawn, you know, where the parents were weird and nobody liked them. And so I was seen as that way, even just as a kid. And so not only did that memory kind of haunt me as I was so scared, but I was shamed into feeling that it was bad, that it was bad that I was alone and I had done something wrong. And so I had always pushed away my loneliness as this shameful part of me, oh, I shouldn't need people so much. I shouldn't want to be with people so much. And as I did the work of discovering my own true self and being way more gentle with myself, I realized loneliness is my superpower because I have felt so alone. I want to write, I want to connect. I'm Jewish and I like, go to my synagogue when I just need to see people in community. And all the best things in my life actually do come from a need to be seen and to see other people. And when I realized that, I realized all these things in us, our anxiety, our depression, all the things we hate about ourselves. The way to heal them is not to reject them. You can't self reject yourself into self acceptance, right? You can't self hate your way into self love. We all try and we all fail. It just doesn't work that way. But in the book, what I talk about is embracing that part of us really saying, oh my loneliness. Like, thank you, thank you for truly all these gifts you've given me. I have a worksheet in the book, actually that people find really effective for how to talk to that part of yourself. It's from a form of therapy called internal Family Systems that was created by this really smart doctor, Dr. Richard Schwartz. And it basically just says, we all have many different parts within us. If you've ever said, I feel one way about it, but also this way, then you recognize the truth of it. We feel a bunch of different feelings. And when we can pay attention to one at a time and just kind of bring some caring and some loving to that part, rather than throwing it away as entirely bad, it loses a little bit of its charge. But with time, it becomes gentler and gentler and easier and easier. And now I see my loneliness as a great source of my power. So, you know, we all have this inner critic, we all have this frenemy within. And the way to overcome it is to accept it. To accept, oh, wow, why am I being so mean to myself? You know, I sometimes put a hand over my heart and just say, it's okay, sweetheart, that's, that's fine. I'm so, I'm so sorry you feel that way. That sounds rough. And by speaking to myself the way I would want to be spoken to, you know, the way that I would want to be reassured and the way that feeling wants to be reassured, I really, it sounds insane to me, but I really don't have that much negative self chatter. Like it does come up sometimes. You know, we're talking about the big career shifts, but mostly I walk through my days. There isn't, there's no longer a diss track. Like when I was writing lilies after my very turbulent childhood, basically all I could hear was, you're ugly, unlovable, you're never gonna make it. At age 25, I was like, you're never gonna succeed. There's nothing in this life for you. I, I would truly. That's all I could hear. And today I can barely relate to that. I just don't hear it anymore because, you know, it's kind of ironic because I've heard it so clearly and I accepted it and I bring love to it and I no longer push it away as something terrible. So that's, that's how I now deal with my negative self chatter. And also the facts like I talked before about, you know, I'll write down, here's the fiction. I'm believing I am going to spiral and this next book isn't going to do well and then I'm going to be poor and then I'm going to regret everything. Then I. So that's the fiction. Like on a piece of paper I write, you know, a line down the center and it's a column that's a fiction. The fact, everything I've done up to this point has been successful. When I put in the work, I have put in the work and I have a whole network that loves me, like truly, what's the worst that's going to happen? Dolly Parton said of her starting her career, she said, what were they going to do, kill me? Are they going to eat me? Like, really, what was the worst case scenario? So that's another quick habit I have of deciphering fact and fiction. So loving on these parts that we want to reject and always being good at backing up, being self aware and seeing the difference between fact and fiction.

Well, I know we were talking about this a little bit off air. You've been talking about a breakup on social media, and I find it so interesting because so few people, A lot of people will be like, oh, yeah, I had a horrible childhood. Or like, this happened five years ago, and I got, like, me, like, I got fired in corporate America. But very rarely do you ever see people in real time. The way that you're, like, documenting this talk about a breakup. And it. It caught my attention, and I was so. I was so drawn to it because I've never seen it before. What compelled you to do that?

Yeah, I. You know, I felt like on Instagram or any of these things, people seem so perfect, you know, And I think there, you could look at my own life as like, oh, she wrote these books and they did really well, and now she can, you know, fly, you know, fly around the world and do whatever she wants. Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. And I got dumped so badly and so cruelly, and my heart was so broken that I just thought, there have got to be other people that feel the way I feel. And what I want right now is not to be alone. So I bet they don't want to be alone either. And so I just started talking about it, and not in a let me unload on you kind of way, because I do think there's a difference between talking about our feelings and talking about our experiences and being the aunt who, like, went on a rant for, like, you know, five Facebook posts about something, and you're like, wait, what? Like, maybe someone needs to check on Aunt Shirley. Like, you know, there is a difference. And it's been really interesting because so many people, I felt really unloved. I felt really unlovable in this moment. And so many readers and fellow authors and people just, like, rush to my defense, and we're just like, whoa, whoa, whoa, I've been through this. You don't deserve this. This is terrible. I'm here for you. And it's just a good reminder that you never know who's struggling. You really don't. And if I can be open about these struggles without over sharing, you know, without making it a woe is me kind of situation, then I know I'm empowering other people to own their stories. Like, I own it. I got dumped in a really bad way. Like, it's somewhat embarrassing, and it's what happened, and I'm not afraid of it. It's nothing. It's nothing ultimately to be ashamed of. So that's sort of why I've been talking about it.

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It's funny because when I got fired, I posted 24 hours later. Nobody was calling me. No one was saying anything. So I realized nobody knows. And so I posted, I've just been fired. And people in my inner circle freaked out and they were calling me. Take that down. Are you crazy? People aren't going to want to hire you again. You're really going to leave a mark on your good reputation. Like, unwind that. Delete, delete, delete. And I remember thinking, I didn't kill anyone.

I didn't.

Yeah, like, this lady didn't like me. Why do I have to feel bad? You know? But I was, you know, of course I questioned at first. I was like, is that right? Or, you know, I am not sure these people love me. But ultimately, in the end, I decided, similar to you, I'm like, probably there's other people that have been fired, I'm pretty sure, and they probably didn't kill anyone either. So maybe it will help some other people and maybe it will help me to. To see there's other opportunities out there. Whatever. Yes. And it. And it beyond did like. And like, you people came into comfort to be like, hey, I've been there. Private messages that I would like. Don't you get down. My whole life turned around, Heather. Here's what happened for me. And this was what's going to happen for. And you start getting inspired by real true life stories of other people. And that's when social media is at its best.

Absolutely. I mean, I think a lot of us think we need to hide our problems and we can't ask for what we need. We can't ask for help because then we'll look weak or they'll look down on us. And what I have found is that every time that I'm just vulnerable and tell the truth, like, try to be as truthful as I can be. If you look on Instagram, I'm not like, this guy's evil and he at all. I'm really just talking about my experience and how hurt I am. People, they just want to be closer to you. You know, it's like the friend who never has any problems is extremely hard to relate to. You're like, what's going on inside of you, Nicole? Like, truly, like, do you have a life like you're just smiling this whole time. There's no problems. Because we all want to feel needed. Every one of us wants to feel like we're needed and we're helpful. And so when we, in a measured way, express our grief, express, you know, that we've been laid off, that we've been rejected, and that we need community. I have never seen anyone turn on me or anyone else because people want to help you. Like, it's the ultimate truth is people want to help you. They don't want to put you down. They've probably been through the same thing you've been through. And that's how we grow closer. The way we grow further apart heart and like, less in touch with our compassion and humanity is we. When we pretend life is some other way. You know, I had a whole schedule of what was supposed to be on Instagram of like, woohoo. Look at me with my book in D.C. like, this is me at the White House. You know, I got a private tour of the West Wing. I did a post about the White House, but it was all about, like, I was like, unbelievably joyful to see the Oval Office where so much history has been made. And wow, like, I can't believe how amazing this country is. And I cried directly after the tour about how heartbroken I was that both things were true at the same time. So it's. It's been. This one has been really interesting just to see how many people connect to having their heart broken and having no one to tell about it.

I love your use of the word, and I'm not surprised because of your background in comedy. And so this is interesting. When I gave my TEDx talk, I was challenging the concept of the MeToo movement to look at. Not only do men bully women, but women bully women actually more often in my experience, in corporate America. And at first, I guess, the way I hired a coach who had a background in comedy and theater and when we were working together, she's like, I feel like you're alienating the people in the Me Too movement. And then you're like, saying, this one's better. Is that what you're trying to do? I said, no. She said, then what you need to do is use the word and effectively. And it's so interesting to hear how effectively you use it that I guess I had grown up the certain way of not thinking that two can be true at the same time. If they were, they seem polar opposite, yet they actually can. It's just A way to bring things together and say it is okay to have both.

Yeah. In comedy, the expression is yes, and. And it comes from improv. Like, if you're doing an improv scene, you can't, and your partner says, we're on Mars, and you say, no, we're not. The scene dies. Where can it go from there? But if you say, we're on Mars.

Yes.

And the air up here is freaking me out, or whatever. You're building, right? You're not stopping, you're building. And you're including somebody else in your story. And so I, too, grew up thinking things were black and white. It was totally right or it was totally wrong. But the more and more work I've done in both books, what I talk about is you have such a deep emotional world inside of you. And instead of thinking, I'm either totally happy or I'm totally sad, you could be happy, sad, grieving, jubilant, angry. You could be all these things at once. And it's up to you to decide what are you going to tap into? You know, the. For me, this grief that I'm feeling about this breakup is not my whole life. It is one part of my life that I'm experiencing right now. And one of the ways I get out of it is by journaling about all the other ways that I feel. So I can see that this guy, this one little pinpoint. Wow, It's. It's just one pinpoint. It's not my whole vision. So really getting good at feeling multiple things at the same time and accepting that it would be so much easier if the world was black and white. Right. Everything was good, everything was bad. It's just not that way. So why do we pretend like it is?

You mentioned earlier that one of the things that you learned after leaving corporate and getting into this journey of writing is around the importance of joy. How do you get yourself to redirect and feel joyful in moments?

So I would be lying if I said, it's so easy. You know, I've come so far, and it's so easy. So generally, for me, what that looks like is actually feeling my feelings. You know, again, at first, I felt really embarrassed.

Just.

I'll use the breakup as an example. It had only been four months. How could I be this heartbroken? Yada, yada, yada. And I just said, I own my story. I really am this heartbroken. There's. I think a lot of us get caught up in how we should feel, and particularly about our childhoods. Like, well, I didn't have it the worst. I wasn't starving. I. I wasn't the worst case scenario, so I should feel better. And I think we say that because we feel like we're being disrespectful to the people that we think, quote, unquote, had it worse. And it's. Who does that help? It's actually demeaning to other people that you think that you're like so above them in their experience. And it's brutal to yourself. Because if that's actually how you feel, then that's what you need to work with, you know, Otherwise you're just going to be pushing it down, pushing it down. And what's really unfair about that is that the things you don't deal with deal with you. And they also deal with the people you love the most. So a big part of my message of self care is if you want to change the world and the people you love the most, like today in this moment, then you will start working on these things you don't want to deal with because they are unconsciously dictating how you see the world, how you move through it, how you communicate with other people. Self care, when done authentically, you know, I'm not talking about a blowout vacation to Hawaii though. If you want to invite me to Hawaii, totally game, like, let's go. I need a vacation. But authentic self care. Where you really look at, how am I really doing? If I was honest and I wrote an inventory of how I really feel, how I really think I'm doing in this world, if you put that all down and brought nurturing and care and not condemnation to what was real, you show up very, very differently. And you show up for your community very, very differently. And particularly in times like these when everything seems so out of our control, you know, I can't go change the world today, right? But I can change my world and I can start to change the world of the people around me. And that has an enormous ripple effect. You know, I wrote Lilies, basically. I wrote by yourself the effing lilies basically for a younger version of me. Like, I wanted a younger version. But then I realized the book actually spans basically all demographics. But I wanted somebody else to have a guidebook to how to find stability. And now that book has sold over 200,000 copies. That's a lot of people, you know, that's a lot of people where I thought that I'm just this one little voice, what can I really do? And then how do they act towards different people? So we start really little just with I need to heal myself. And the ripple effects are. The magnitude is insane. That how it goes exponential. So I really hope that people, you know, realize that taking your mental health seriously is taking the whole world's mental health seriously. Like, you're not just a little island. You're connected to the rest of us.

Who did you write Glow in the Effing Dark for?

I'm so glad you asked that question. So I think that I was put on earth to write by yourself. The effing lilies, as wild and hokey as that sounds. That was in the book proposal. I thought that was my why I'm here. That's my meaning, is to write that book. Glow in the Effing Dark wrote me because once I decided I can't live like this anymore, I can't live in the dark. I can't live dimming my light one second longer when I said to myself, I need to make decisions in line with glowing, with acknowledging that I am made of. Of stardust. Like, I need to honor that, that I'm grateful to be here at all, much less in stardust form. It was a challenge. If you're going to write a book with that title, you better be living in line with that title. And so it up leveled every single part of my life, you know, and. And so it's sort of their sister books, you know, one is about finding stability, finding grounding, and the other is about getting right with your soul and shining. You know, it's such a buzzword, authenticity, you know, what does it mean? I think it means really finding out who you were before everything else happened. Like, what was essential you. Like, what did essential you want the most in life. And it's not that essential you. We think we can't trust ourselves. Or at least I thought, oh, I can't even trust myself. I can't even hear my internal. Like, what is my gut even? I can't make any decisions. But what I realized was, yes, I could. I just needed to clear everything away that had dimmed me. All that had to go. And I had to let go of my identity and my status as money and corporate and Hollywood. This makes me a person. No, no, no, no. There were many other things that. That made me a person, and. And I was just worthwhile. At the end of the day, there's so many of us who feel like we're not enough, we're not worthy. We've made too many mistakes. And I'm really here to say you are good as you are. And when you realize you have inherent self worth, no matter what you've even done, your whole life gets a lot better, you know? And just to bring it back to the stars, we never look at the stars in this completely politically divided, messed up world. We can all agree that stars are awesome. Nobody is saying, oh, those stars didn't finish their to do list. They suck. You know that. Those stars made a mistake in their job and their boss is really thinking about them poorly. We don't say that. And so we don't need to say that about ourselves. We have that in us. We can all acknowledge and embrace our inherent worth, our inherent stardust.

Oh, my gosh, you're reminding me of this morning. This is making me so sad. I want to give this book to this poor guy I saw this morning. It broke my heart. I live in a building that has a restaurant downstairs, you know, a grab and go kind of a place. And he had gone. And there's lines, you know, everywhere. I live in a major city. And he. He was running out in his suit, a young guy late for work. Like you could see it, right? And it's packed, people everywhere. And he's got the sandwich, and he drops a sandwich.

No.

On the cement and obviously major city dirty. And he just starts picking it up. And another woman says, no, no, no, don't pick that up. Go get another one. They'll give you another one. You don't, you don't need to eat that. Like that's on the ground, you know, she was trying to be nice.

Yeah, yeah.

And he goes, no, I can't. I'm late. I'll get fired. This is the only chance I have. The line's too long.

And.

And it was. I just saw like the fear he was operating from. And like this, you could just see it on him. And I. So it resonated with me because I remember how I was in my young. I was. I was that guy. I was like, no, it's not worth a panic. Panic, panic. And so many of us, us are living like that and not living as if we're stardust.

Yeah. And the worst part of that is we just are stardust. Like it just is a fact. And we're living like it's not. We're living in some fiction where we all suck and we're in panic and everything's spiraling out of control. Or at least that's how I was like him, like, oh, I guess I'll just eat this disgusting, dirty street gutter sandwich now. And now I've realized, you know what? You can go back. You can go back to the restaurant and nothing bad happens, and they give it to you.

P.S. if it does happen and that boss fires you, that's nowhere that you want to work.

Oh, no.

If your employer, for anyone listening right now, is going to fire you because you dropped your sandwich and you went back in line to get a fresh one so that you could eat something decent during your lunch hour, that is not the company for you. If they fire you, bye.

It's, you know, when we think about it, it's just common human decency that we have to reclaim that that's no way to live. Like, you weren't put on Earth to grovel on the ground to get your sandwich, to go into an office. Like, that's not worth your soul. That's not. You know, I have a lot of compassion for that guy because like you said, I, having been there, I know how much it sucks to live from that place of scarcity. And. And you look at other people who talk about abundance and you're like, they're liars. There's no way that works. That's not going to work for me. Having been in both places and sometimes going, you know, visiting my shadowy. Nothing's gonna work out. I can say definitively, 100%, enjoying your life and thinking you are worthwhile and reminding yourself that you are made of stardust does not negatively impact you. In fact, it gives you the freedom to live the life you were always meant to live, to take bigger chances, to enjoy the time you have here. And I would have never thought that was possible. And probably if someone told me that, I would say, you're a liar or a charlatan or what are you trying to sell me? But now I just know the truth. And I really hope that I can be with people in the truth and that by being honest, they'll see, like, oh, this isn't. It's not all one way. It's not always perfect, and it's so much better than it was before.

Well, since you do create things that aren't for sale, tell us a little bit about your newsletter and how we get that.

So I have a newsletter where I write basically one short essay every week about something you could do to uplevel or be inspired. But I'm real about it. Like, no toxic positivity here. It's really real. So if you go to tarashuster.com newsletter or if you go on substack. Tarashuster.substack.com I have a weekly newsletter, and I have a journaling club. If any of the journaling has sounded interesting to you, you can join the journaling club. I reply to every comment. I'm in a constant dialogue with my readers. And also on Instagram, if you're interested in any of this, of me being real, but I think funny, I hope it's like, mostly it's, like, real and funny and sad. You know, I'm just Tara Schuster on Instagram, and obviously, I hope that people go out and get Glow in the Effing Dark and Glowing the Effing Dark.

Where do they go for that?

Anywhere books are sold. Target Amazon, your local indie. Anywhere.

Audible. Did you narrate the Audible?

I did. I did, yes.

Love that.

I love that.

It's my favorite when authors do that. Yeah.

Yeah. And I. It's. It's really fun when readers come up to me and they're like, I feel like you're in my head. Like, I feel like we've been in a conversation. I'm like, we have. Like, true. Like, you know so much about me. Like, we have just been in a very intimate conversation. But that's the coolest thing, is a real community has grown around this book that has, like, nothing to do with me. It's just people who want to be real, who want to get better, who are willing to put in the work to have the life that they enjoy.

If that is you or someone you love, get it now. Glow in the effing dark. It is out there. You need it. Tara, thank you so much for being here. And thank you for all the work you're doing.

Oh, this was so fun. Thank you for having me.

All right, guys, go get the book. And until next week, keep creating your confidence. I decided to change that dynamic. I couldn't be more excited for what you're gonna hear. Start learning and growing. Inevitably, something will happen. No one succeeds alone.

You don't stop and look around once in a while. You could miss it.

Come on this journey with me.