Heal Your Mind & Find Yourself [MASTERCLASS] EP 1384

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We all develop this personality. No, the personality, we think that's us, but it's not us. Right. The personality is the traits that we took on to survive our childhoods.

Mm-.

But we identify with it. Yes. So we think we're the personality. I wouldn't say kill that part of you. I'd say let's make friends with it. Let's find out what it's really trying to do for you. What it's trying to do for you.

It's trying to make you feel good. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Welcome to this special masterclass. We've brought some of the top experts in the world to help you unlock the power of your life through this specific theme today. It's going to be powerful, so let's go ahead and dive in. what are the main, I guess, mental health? Are they diseases or they're not considered a disease? Like a depression, ABD, ADHD. What are the main mental health symptoms out in the world right now? Could you say?

Yeah. So depression and anxiety are fast growing and, and. their major challenges. More and more kids are being diagnosed with ADHD. More and more kids are being diagnosed with something called oppositional defiant disorder, which- what is that? Oppositional. That's when a kid is defiant and oppositional. And goes against adult values and adult expectations. But we think there's something wrong with the kid. instead of looking at the context of what makes the kids die?

The environment.

Yeah. No, are these diseases? Well, you can talk about the MERS diseases to some degree. And certainly, you know, I've had depression and I've taken medication for it in my 40s and it really made a difference for me. You might call it a disease, but actually that's a shallow way of looking at it. Because actually, what does it go back to? It goes back to being a one-year-old infant or being a three-month-old infant. In the book, the Myth of Normal, the first chapter has a painting in it. The painting is by my wife, based on a photograph of me and my mother. This is Budapest, Hungary, 1944, and I'm three months of age. and my mother in the photograph is wearing a yellow star that Jews had to wear. My father was a reenforced labor, and within two months her parents would be killed in Auschwitz. That was my first year of life.

Oh my gosh.

And the look on my face is full of terror. I was absorbing my mother's fear and my mother's anxiety.

Because she had terror in her face and you're mimicking and... She had it in her body. You're connected to her, eating 10 times a day.

Exactly.

And you're feeling the stress.

Exactly.

There's probably now no calm in her.

There's no calm there. But she's already so stressed and she's just trying to make sure that we survive. She's not there to really receive my feelings. And then when I'm a year old, or 11 months old, she hands me to a complete stranger in the street to save my life, 'cause she didn't think where we were staying, I would survive for a day and probably I wouldn't have.

Wow.

So I didn't see her for six weeks. Five or six weeks. And you're one? I was one then.

Oh my gosh.

And now, what could I do as a one-year-old? I could do two things. Or as an infant going through all that. First of all, how do I deal with all that stress? I tune out. I tune out, I become absent-minded as an adaptive mechanism.

It's a coping mechanism.

Exactly. 55 years later, I'm diagnosed with ADHD, which is characterized by tuning out. Is it a disease? The heck it's a disease. It started as a coping mechanism. I'm also diagnosed with depression. Why? Because in an environment, I had to push my feelings down in order to not to burden my mother, who was already burdened enough.

Create more peace and more.

Yeah.

So I took that on.

So I pushed on my feelings. I depressed my feelings. Then I have this depression. So are they diseases? Well, you can talk about them that way, but I say they began as coping mechanisms. And I'll tell you another story. I'm 78 now, so six, seven years ago, I'm in San Francisco with a therapist. And I've taken mushrooms. She works with mushrooms. And I've worked with psychedelics, and it's one of the things I write about. But this time I'm the patient, I'm the client. And I'm lying there on the mat under the influence of the psilocybin. And I know exactly who I am. I'm 71 years old. I'm a medical doctor. I'm a writer. I'm a speaker. I'm married to such, you know, my wife Ray, this is a therapist. So I'm not like hallucinating. I know exactly where I am. But at the same time, I'm experiencing myself as a one-year-old infant.

Oh my goodness.

And this therapist said, my mom is my mom. And I start crying and I say, I'm so sorry I've made your life so difficult.

Wow.

That's my one-year-old self, all of a sudden under the influence speaking up. I took it on that early that I'm responsible. Now you talked about, oh my gosh. In our conversation before, you told me about how you were in this relationship and you couldn't leave it even long after you realized it wasn't right for you, because you took on the responsibility of how the other person would feel if you would quote, let them down. I'm telling you, that's your one-year-old speaking, that you took responsibility for the suffering of your parents. Wow. And how you mustn't let anybody down, because it's your responsibility. We take this stuff on so early without words, actually. they just become ingrained and then we live our lives out of it until something happens, like you did for you, your body rebelled.

You have a breakdown or something happens, right? And you're like, either keep breaking down or you wake you up and say, okay, why is this happening? What is off? What is out of alignment? What is, you know, where am I out of integrity? Whatever it might be.

Exactly.

And, I feel the challenges. I was like, I want to end this suffering. You know, I've repeated this pattern many times. I'm sick and tired of the suffering. Yeah, I'll do whatever. You know, I think when you for me, I was like, I've felt enough of this. I don't want it anymore. But it took so much courage to face these things for me. And I know other people have deeper traumas or different traumas, and it's it just seems so challenging.

I wouldn't go there. I would not compare your trauma to anybody else's.

Well, we all have our unique traumas, right? Different experiences that we face. Why is it so challenging for people to face it and start addressing it? I was telling you, you know, I've been doing pretty intensive therapy for about a year and a half now, every two weeks. Not because I feel like something's wrong with me anymore, that I'm stressed more, but because I want to maintain a level of peace. And I want to continue to maintain peace.

Good for you.

So once I realized and started healing, I didn't say, I'm good. Yeah, I was like, I want to go to the next level of.

Exactly.

Peace.

Yeah.

Love, you know, environment of beauty inside of my emotions. But why is it so hard for so many people to face it and actually speak the shame, guilt, insecurity, you know, imperfection about them?

Well, I think in your own work, you've touched upon very accurately on why it's so difficult. For one thing, if you just the words that you just use, peace and love and connection, if you had played that to your 20-year-old self, how would he have responded?

He'd be like, suck it up, or he'd been like, what are you talking about? You're fine. Yeah, yeah, don't be a little wuss or, you know, just work harder, you know?

Yeah, but where would that have come from?

I mean, just my entire conditioning growing up from sports and. Yeah, you know.

Okay, so that's that. So that's one of the factors is the conditioning in this culture. Okay. I also say it would have come from intense fear.

Oh.

Because if it actually. It's very fearful to look at all that pain inside oneself.

It's terrifying.

Yeah, it's terrifying. So there's intense fear. So there's the conditioning, as you say, then there's the fear. It really is fear, painful. Nobody wants to have pain, but that's called growing pains. And the third factor is we all develop this personality. Now, the personality, we think that's us, but it's not us. The personality is the traits that we took on to survive our childhoods, along with some genuine traits. So the personality is kind of a an amalgam of of childhood coping mechanisms and genuine qualities.

Yeah, some good stuff. Yeah, some also coping. Yeah, yeah. I remember I used to be like I was a fun loving guy. I was like a kind, generous. But then when there was a trigger, like I was angry and, you know, yeah, defensive and guarded and things like that.

Or you talk about the various masks, the sexual mask or the or the material mask, you know, aggressive mask, you.

Know.

When I started reading a chapter on the sexual mask, you wrote about some guy whose name I forget, but who's sort of the champion picking up women. I wouldn't want to be in his shoes for one split second.

Right.

Poor bastard, I was thinking.

Yeah.

You know, that this is what he has to do. But what's that? It's having to prove to himself that he's lovable. Where does that come from? You know? but we identify with it. So we think we're the personality. I'm this sexually attractive guy, or I'm this aggressive guy, I'm this material guy who's going to make it in the world. And so we think that we are a personality. So it comes from, I say, three sources. One is the conditioning, the other is the fear for the pain, and thirdly, the identification with the personality. We think that's who we are, and we don't know who would be without it. All of which is all based on trauma.

Yeah, it's the identity, you know, building this identity that, you know, and I talk about how the identity has supported you to accomplishing certain things or protecting you from certain things by having this identity.

Yeah.

But it's also not serving us to hold on to that identity if we want the next level of peace and freedom.

Exactly.

So it's, but it's so hard to kill an identity. It's like you've had this thing for decades maybe, and you've got to let go of this thing.

Yeah, see, I wouldn't even talk about killing. I mean, in my healing chapters of this book, I talk about let's make friends with it. Like, for example, I have to pay, by the way, I have to be honest. I said that I would not be in this guy's shoes for a minute. That's not true. Part of me was envying him. You know, even here, I'm 78 and married 53 years, but I read about this guy who slept with all these women. Why couldn't I be that guy, you know? I don't want to go there and I wouldn't, I've long ago chosen not to. But there's still something that... who doesn't want to be wanted that much?

Something with the ego or the desire, yeah.

But if we didn't kill those parts, but made friends with them, if somebody came to me, with that kind of pattern of I'm that sexual guy. But they realize that it's not, they might feel high for a moment, like any addict will.

It's not fulfilling.

It's not fulfilling. I wouldn't say kill that part of you. I'd say let's make friends with it. Let's find out what it's really trying to do for you. What it's trying to do for you is trying to make you feel wanted, making you feel valuable, making you feel desirable. making you feel loved temporarily, making you feel powerful. What happened to you that you don't feel lovable, that you don't feel desirable, that you don't feel powerful? You know, in other words, it's not a matter of getting rid of these parts or these aspects of ourselves. It's a question of actually getting to know them. And they all began as coping mechanisms. That man that you describe in your book, I guarantee he's a highly traumatized human being.

So when we start to ask ourselves this question that you're asking is what happened to you or when, you know, when did you feel not powerful or not lovable or not wanted?

Yeah.

And let's say we're able to, someone watching or listening is able to assess themselves and actually be present, really reflect on the painful moments of the past, which a lot of people aren't even willing to talk about it to themselves, right?

That's right.

For 25 years, I had a memory of being sexually abused and thought about it almost every day, like for a moment, you know, it would come, you know, at least weekly, maybe not every day, but it was like a memory. Yeah, that's there, you know, but I never told anyone for 25 years because it was so shameful. And I didn't want to be, you know, made fun of or all these things. And so someone's able to self assess and say, okay, I had this pain, this trauma I felt, not powerful or whatever it might be. What's the next step for them once they start to journal about it and be aware of it? And they're like, I really want to heal. What would be that next step in the process?

Well, I mean, it's not that I can prescribe, but sure, what should be for everybody and there's many different ways of working. But one of the things I would address, first of all, is the shame. One of the impacts of trauma is shame, because children are narcissists by nature. When I say narcissist, I don't mean in the pathological negative sense. I mean they think it's all about them.

The world revolves around me.

Exactly. So if bad things are happening to me, it must be a must be a bad person. Number one. Number two, I didn't fight back.

I couldn't defend myself.

And so that makes me weak and so I'm ashamed of that. No, actually, when you look at it, the not fighting back is nature's coping mechanism. Part of your nervous system just freezes because if you fought back, what would have happened?

It just depends on what age you are.

No, but as a young child, If you fight back on... Against the sexual abuser.

Oh, right.

What would happen to you?

Who knows? I mean, it could have been even worse.

And were you in a position to run? No.

No.

You were trapped in a bathroom.

So, the part of your nervous system that would have you fight or run away gets inactivated.

It's protecting yourself.

You're protecting yourself. And the part of the nervous system that freezes you, just be still. and you get through this.

Wait till it passes.

Yeah, that takes over. So it's actually what you're ashamed about is actually the brilliance of your nervous system that protected you.

But you're beating yourself up in retrospect, saying, I should have ran, I should have fought back, I should have done this.

Exactly. That's the first point. Man, the second point is, if I can ask you, how old were you when this happened to you?

Five.

And how long did it go on for?

It's probably 10-15 minutes, yeah.

No, but it was only one time?

One time.

Okay, who did you speak to about it?

No one.

Okay, now, you don't have kids yet. No. But if you did have a child five years old and this happened to who would you want them to speak to?

Me.

Yeah. Now, if you found out that this happened to your child and your child never told you, how would you explain that?

How would I explain it to... How.

Would you explain to yourself why my child is not talking to me about this terrible thing that happened?

I would explain it by saying it's something I'm not doing. I'm not creating a safe environment to allow this child to speak up.

And that was your primary trauma? Yeah. So the sexual abuse is a secondary trauma. As a matter of fact, the abuser, like you were bullied in school, you said. And, The bullies can always sense the vulnerability.

The bullies have like a little weakness in you.

They have a laser like, because there's.

An insecure, weak person, yeah.

Which by the way speaks to their own trauma. Right. But they have a laser like the physicians who abuse their patients, the spiritual leaders who do that to their followers.

They see a weakness.

They laser like they sense it. and that's who they pick on. And the bullies do the same thing. Now, that weakness, as we call it, comes from not having the solid support and protection and confidence and security in your family of origin. So that's the primary trauma. That's the first thing that happens.

Yeah, I mean, that's the case for sure.

So to answer your question, then, if somebody comes to me with those issues, well, first of all, if somebody realizes those things, I'd say, Don't try to do this on your own.

It's so hard.

Talk to somebody.

It's so hard.

Yeah. Well, look, people with addictions, at least they have the 12-step groups where they can actually talk about it. And people ideally will not judge them.

It's a safe space to.

Safe space. Or you might have friends, or you might reach out to a professional, or you might have an intimate partner that relationship is close enough where you can actually share this, you know, but you have to bring it out of you. By the way, that just reminds me, this is one of the ancient gospels written on the same time as the other gospels. It's the Gospel of Thomas in which Jesus says that what you shall bring out of you will save you. Oh, and what you don't bring out of yourself will doom you. he says something like that.

Right.

He was a supreme psychologist.

Wow.

And so you got to bring it out. Yeah.

What you suppress becomes more depressed.

Right?

It's like.

Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's got to start with that somewhere.

You've got to bring it out. And if someone has a. What if they say, well, it wasn't that big of a deal. This thing that happened back in the day. I was a kid, and it only happened a few times, whether it's sexual abuse or someone screaming at you or you were neglected or put in the.

Corner, you know, I. I hear that all the time.

It wasn't that big of a deal. I hear that all the time. Yeah, we're coming. Okay, it shouldn't be that concerned about it. It was five, who cares?

You know, it was like, yeah, okay. Then that's a very simple way to answer that.

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No, no, no, no, no, not at all. If a five-year-old kid came to you and you were the uncle, Uncle Lewis, this guy did such and such to me, and I'm really scared and hurt. Would you say to them, oh, no big deal.

No.

Think of all the other kids that worse things have happened to. Would you say that? Why wouldn't you say that?

Because I'd want to be there for my nephew and make sure he felt supported and seen and loved.

And what would be the impact if you did say that?

I feel like it'd probably affect him for a long time if that was a pattern of, yeah. that was the response that he got.

But you see, that is what you are saying to yourself. When you say that it is no big deal, you are saying to the five-year-old that was hurt, it does not matter. In other words, there is no self-compassion there. What you would never say to anybody else, you are saying to yourself. And one of the impacts of trauma is lack of self-compassion. And again, if I may mention my book, the Myth of Normal, I talk about that, about this idea of self-compassion. And I see it all the time. And so when somebody says to me, no big deal, you know, I say, okay, take any other child in your position, plug them into that situation, and tell them it's no big deal. And of course, I wouldn't.

But people do. They do say these things to their kids or to their nephews or nieces. They're saying like, ah, You'll be all right, you know, and I think it's because they don't have the emotional courage to, to handle the, the wide range of emotions because they probably suppress the emotions themselves.

I mean, that's the whole point, right? Is that they're, they're not, they're not comfortable with the child's pain because they're crying.

They're like, I can't handle it.

Right.

They can't handle it. Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, my daddy should be like, stop crying, you know, just, yeah, stop. You know, there was no, like, hugging and, like, he had a lot of love and affection in other ways, but.

He couldn't handle the crying and the, the emotional screams.

Yeah, the emotions.

Well, one of the, in the book I talk about the essential needs of children, and one of them is that they're given their freedom to feel all their emotions, particularly sadness and grief and pain, also joy and everything else.

Is it a symptom of trauma or unresolved healing that causes this disorder? And if we heal the trauma.

Would.

We be able to eliminate these symptoms or these disorders?

I think we'll be able to get rid of a lot of stuff. A lot of it. Some of it, as I mentioned, because there is that genetic loading, and we got to think of the genetics that we talked about already, right? Like we're talking about lineages of genetic loadings. So, you know, if we start doing the work now, maybe we'll see a lot less of these disorders happening within our families and our communities. So there is a lot that we can do to actually rectify the abundance of mental illness that's out there. I believe that there is a lot of the mental illness that exists in the world that has an undercurrent of trauma, and we just haven't talked about that undercurrent or that possibility as much. But I don't know if we'll be able to absolve ourselves of 100% of the mental illness in the world, but I think that we can do a really good job in this generation to break cycles.

Could an individual eliminate these mental health issues on an individual level if they're willing to do the deep healing work? Because essentially, because I feel like, correct me if I'm wrong, these are like symptoms of trauma. You didn't grow up depressed, certain things happened, an event happened, an environment continued to foster the feelings of depression, the state of depression. And if we can heal the memory, the trauma, the event, and reconnect to our purest self, our whole human self, wouldn't those things start to go away?

That's precisely the goal. So, you know, where we started off with psychology and psychiatry is we started off with symptom management. A lot of psychiatry, you know, we're.

Still kind of there a little bit. Which is like, here's the drug to manage the symptoms. Band-Aid. But that's not healing.

Yeah.

That's not resolving, that's just managing it.

Precisely. But that doesn't do anything to bring back to wholeness.

Yes, and integrate the person. Integrating the healing, right? Exactly, and that's the goal. That's the goal for me, that's the goal in my practice. I want full integration of that person. I want them to see, really see their authentic self. Some people have never even had an opportunity to see who they could be at their true core self because it's been masked by so much of the trauma and the symptomatology that's associated with the trauma, like the depression and anxiety.

And all those things. Yeah. So you believe that people can heal these mental health challenges as well if they integrate fully.

Many of them, especially the ones that, you know, because I think we have like bipolar disorder and we have, you know, schizophrenia that have a different mechanism to them, but many of them absolutely.

But many of the ones that a lot of people are facing, depression, ADHD, depression especially.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah. How important is finding a meaningful purpose in life supports you in overcoming feeling depressed or depression.

It's like so critical. It's really- yeah, 100%. I mean like when we're talking about what happens after trauma, meaning making is at the center. It's like one of the biggest things because you have to see your life having some sort of value and that there's meaning associated with your life and with everything that's within your life in order to actually like even feel motivated to do the heavy lifting that is the healing work to get yourself to the other side. So you have to have meaning in that journey. Meaning making, it's alchemized in that journey. It's created in that journey, right? But I think at the very least you have to have hope that meaning making can be possible.

Because what it sounds like to me Is a lot of people attach meaning in a more negative, harmful state to events, to words, to actions that happen around them. And therefore that meaning causes more depression, ADHD, or negative thoughts, all these different things that hurt us. But if we created a different meaning around the event or the words or the breakup or the loss of a career, created a new meaning around it and had a different intention, different purpose moving forward, we wouldn't have those mental challenges as much.

Yeah, I mean, I think people, you know, just haven't been trained to ask themselves the right questions around meaning making, right?

And so-- what's the right questions?

Well, the right questions are, you know.

Well-- Someone experiences a traumatic event or big T or little T. What questions should we ask?

Yeah, we should be asking, you know, So questions around, well, let's talk about what was learned in that circumstance. It's a really hard question to ask because sometimes people will be like, you think that that needed to happen? No, it didn't need to happen.

It did happen.

It happened.

You can't change it.

You can't. That's in your history now. But what can we take from that experience? And it doesn't even need to be the traumatic event itself, but your response, your reaction. what can we take from that to learn how to now create a healing protocol for you? And it's about being able to ask questions that get people thinking outside of the box. Because what happens when you're in a state of trauma is that you're frozen in many ways. Your thoughts are frozen. You start thinking a lot of the same things, right? Like it's a lot of protective functions. Your feelings are frozen in time. Like people like constantly feel worry, anxiety, like a lot of things that are, you know, just them being in a protective state. And so we can start asking questions to free some of that up. That's gonna be like really key. But I like that question even though, you know, I think it can veer us in different directions, but I'm open to that whenever it comes to work with a client, right? Because wherever we go, I'm with them. I'm going with you and we're following that path.

If someone stays committed to their story of meaning, that it was this horrible event and it ruined my life, the divorce, the job loss, the injury, whatever it might be, what happens if they hold on to the meaning in a negative way as opposed to, that was a traumatic event. I don't wish it upon anyone, but here's what I learned from it, here's what I gained from it, here's what I'm gonna do with it in a positive way. what happens to those?

Well, the way that I interpret that is that that person is one, still in a state of fear. They're not ready to really get curious about what other definitions meaning can have in their life. They're just really stuck on the one definition that it tarnished their lives, that it got in the way, and they're just stuck there, right? And so if that's the case, then my role as a clinician or their role as a person that wants to get out of it, hopefully, is to work on the fear. You got to work on where is fear trapped. How is the nervous system operating around fear? Where can we free them up in a bodily sense? Because the nervous system requires a lot of that body-based work. And so we have to really get curious about that and go in that direction versus, you know, the questions are very mind focused, right? But we need the body-based practices in order to create safety in the body.

To release also, right? To release the fear, the pain, the trauma, and reconnect to the safety of your body, is that right?

Exactly. And so that when a person can feel that there is safety in their body, they can feel that they can actually go into the depths of their minds in a way that doesn't feel scary and existential.

Right. Speaking of fear, I saw somewhere recently, I don't know if this is true, but I saw somewhere recently that we were, that human beings are born with three fears: the fear of loud noises, the fear of falling, and the fear of abandonment. I don't know if that's true, but if it is, we tend to build, add more fears as time go on. I don't know if that's true if those are the only three or we don't have fears at all, but But it seems like we gather, we collect more fears through childhood and adulthood. Why do you think we gather so many fears and collect them?

Well, I think you're talking about like primary fears, right? Like those feel like primary fears to me. Like they're like what you start off with as a baby.

Yeah.

You're gonna have that startle response. As a baby, you're gonna need to feel deeply connected and attuned to a caregiver.

Otherwise you don't live.

Yeah.

Basically, right? And so like, it's basically a fear of losing life or a fear of losing safety. So it makes a lot of sense, but the accumulation of it also makes sense because we operate in mental representations in categories basically. So we have specific categories in our minds that are primarily created in our childhood. And then everything else that happens in life, we put in the different categories in the buckets of our minds and they just start accumulating and growing. So if you have a big fear bucket, then you're gonna have a lot of fears that are gonna, you know, like, come into your life and stay there because your fear bucket is just, you know, so enormous.

I was always a very grateful person, you know, not before the accident. You know, I used to crib a lot because I was too young and I was too naive. But, you know, with time. Yes, with time, I realized that. You know, everyone is fighting an unseen battle, Louis. Everyone. And we are so good at the art of concealing the pain that we are in. All of us. You know, the methodology changes. You know, there are certain ways that we conceal pain. Sometimes we share, sometimes we don't. But we all are going through something in life every day, you know? And I realize that if I think that I'm the one who's the most broken one, no. I have traveled around the world. I have met so many people and they had shared their very personal stories of how broken they are. And let me tell you, none of them were in the wheelchair. So there are so many people who are walking around who are perfectly fine. They are running their businesses. They are so broken from within. All they want is to be understood. They want someone who can understand their pain. And I feel so blessed that when people look at me, when they see me in the wheelchair, maybe they just think that because she is in pain, we can talk to her because she can understand what we are going through.

Why do you think so many people are broken in the world who maybe aren't in a wheelchair who have able-bodied, let's say, don't have a disformed body or something, but they're broken. Where do you think that brokenness is coming from for so many people?

Too many expectations from people. Too many expectations. You know, we want to get into a relationship because we want happiness. We want to feel complete, right? Soulmates, no, you are your own soulmate, period. You know, if you are not in a good relationship with yourself, you will be miserable even if you are in a relationship with someone. That's why people are broken. My happiness cannot be taken by someone because my happiness does not come from someone. Nobody is giving me my joy. I am the reason of my own joy. If we manage to understand this tiny little truth about life, we will heal. And time doesn't heal you, you heal you. You need to sit down with yourself and think, do you love yourself enough? You know, and if you love yourself enough and you believe in self-love, no external force will ever be able to break you.

How do we learn to love ourselves if we have been telling ourselves for so long, I'm not lovable or I had this accident or I went through a breakup in a relationship and they left me or they abandoned me or whatever it might be. How do we not let outside factors dictate our feelings about ourselves? and not let the fear of abandonment of people or people's love hold us back from loving ourselves.

Yes, the fear of abandonment, we all have that. And we need to overcome this fear. You know, when I always say when wrong people leave, right things start to happen. And we all are living a life story. You have your own story. I have my story. My brothers have their story, my mother has her own story and when you find yourself in the wrong story, just leave. If someone is not adding value to your life story or if you are not adding value to someone's life story, leave. Sometimes it takes letting go to realize we are holding on to nothing. We are too busy clinging on to those relationships which are not meant to be in our journey. you know and that's why I say that these people are so toxic with time they become so toxic for you that you know what your presence in their life is their only definition.

And.

They will never want you to leave because they are so weak they want to stay in your shadow so you need to pick and choose this person is toxic leave. Liberate yourself by setting all these extra people free who do not belong to your journey. You know and these people will always weigh you down and if there's something is weighing you down, how will you fly high? You know and fear of abandonment if you can manage to overcome this fear again when you are on your own completely that is where you will understand that Solitude is very powerful.

So powerful.

It's very powerful.

Yeah.

You know, because even in that silence, you're having a conversation. I mean, there is no energy vampire around me. I'm on my own and I'm manifesting the best things for myself. I would never trade my Solitude to anything because when I am alone on my own, I am the best version of myself.

Really?

Because I'm kind to myself. Yes.

You're kind to yourself?

Yes.

How much time did you spend alone after the accident?

So I have this really cool habit. I switch off. So even when I'm surrounded by a lot of people, I'm actually not there most of the times.

Really?

Yes, I'm just thinking, you know what? Recently I was thinking about something that when I was talking about that how, you know, this beautiful balance of strength and vulnerability makes us who we are. I was thinking about it the other day that I've experienced this balance on daily basis. You know, when I see my social media, you know, when I read emails and people sending beautiful messages that, you know, how your words have empowered us and you know because of you we're not never going to give up. It gives me so much strength, you know and I say to myself oh my God I'm so strong and then at the night time when I'm thirsty I'm unable to get up and get a glass of water for myself.

Right?

That's my reality and how wonderful I am at that moment. So this strength and this vulnerability makes us who we are. So I need to have my own moment with myself where I am willing to understand myself better. That if I am vulnerable, that's okay. I'm strong too. And the perfect balance of these two things make me who I am.

I'm so fascinated by your story. And every time I see your content, it makes me smile every time I see you post a to a video or photo, I'm always just rooting for you. I'm so excited for you and your life and the impact you make. And you are so much more talented than just an artist. At first you wanted to be an artist and then you thought you couldn't be. You were like, these don't look good. But now you're selling your art, your arts and galleries. It's really inspiring. But you're also a massive activist. You're a TV anchor. model, you did modeling, you sing, and you're a speaker, and you motivate millions of people around the world. You could have not done any of it. You could have said, I just want to be an artist and just go after that one thing, but you decided to go for more.

What.

When and why did you say, I want to start sharing this story and start putting this message out there in a bigger way? and revealing these things about yourself that maybe you were scared to do.

You know, I remember when I gave my very first talk that was TEDx. And it actually happened when I decided and I manifested that I'm going to overcome the fear of facing people. That's so ironic that a public speaker was once scared of facing people.

I was for sure, yeah.

I know. So what happened was, I gave my very first TED talk. And after my TED talk, A girl from the audience, she came to me and she was crying and she said, Can I give you a hug? And I said, Sure. So she gave me a hug and she said, you, 10-minute TED Talk has solved 10 problems of my life. And she said, Today you made me realize that those 10 problems never existed. They were just in my head. And I was overthinking. And because of you, I'm never going to give up. You know, in that moment, in the flashback, I could hear my mother saying, one day God will show you how did he choose you out of so many for this test. And that was the moment of realization that you know what, if my words can change someone's perspective, maybe this is my true calling in life. You know, and as they say that in the end, what matters is how many lives you have touched. So art is my comfort zone, Louis. You know, I can sit in the corner of my room in a cozy environment, have a cup of coffee and paint and sell the work, make both ends meet, pay the bills, raise my son and live. But, I mean, is that enough? It's not enough. Because comfort zone is a good place to be, but nothing ever grows there. So if you really want to grow as a person, if you really want to learn and unlearn, we need to tap on all the abilities that we have. We are so blessed with immense potential which remains untapped because we are too busy doing nine to five. We are too busy paying bills. And we live the same routine for so many years and then we end up calling it life. It's not life. It's not. You know, I realized later that, you know, I was labeled as the first wheelchair-bound model, the first wheelchair-bound singer, the first wheelchair-bound anchor, first wheelchair-bound, you know, and it was so much rubbed in my face that I said, you know what? I might be the first one to do all this, but I wouldn't be the last. I had to pave path for so many people who are supremely talented, who are differently abled, who are supremely talented, but maybe, maybe they were just a bit scared to take the first step. I took the first step. I broke those barriers. At least I tried. You know and now I see a lot of young boys and girls doing amazing work. Why? Because now it's normal. It's normal for a wheelchair user to smile. It's normal for a wheelchair user, may it be a boy or a girl, to look good, to wear lipstick, to look nice, you know, to face the world. It's normal now. And even right now when being an anchor person, you know, I'm working for the National TV of Pakistan and when I'm doing my show, I'm always thinking about that little boy or girl, you know, sitting in a far-flung village watching my show and I think about them that, you know, they might be thinking that if a girl or a woman in a wheelchair can do this, we can do that too.

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