Courageous Vulnerability and Loving Yourself with Najwa Zebian and Lewis Howes

for them to see you shine you must stay far away for you are just like the sun when you're too close your light makes them blind and when you're too far they seek you so let them seek you they're getting your light regardless but appreciating your presence is different from recognizing your existence if they don't appreciate your presence they may never even recognize your absence [Music] [Applause] [Music] welcome back everyone to the school of greatness podcast i'm very excited about our guest today her name is najwa zabian thank you so much for being here i'm very excited yes very excited you i can't remember where i first found you um but i think instagram yeah i found it on instagram but i think it might have been through uh the good quote i think they posted a quote of yours and there's an account that i follow and i just started checking out your stuff and i really like the thoughtfulness the intention behind your words your message your just your energy and your essence so i started follow you and um i don't know i think maybe i was commenting your stuff and we started a relationship and started connecting over instagram and then we chat on the phone and i was coming here and i really wanted to meet you and have you on so i'm super glad that we're finally connecting i'm very happy that i finally got to meet you yeah yeah um you have an interesting story because you were from lebanon correct and you moved here when you were 13 or 16 16. and you came here with your family or when did you who did you move with my family was already here i'm the youngest of six in my family by many many years so long story short my parents met and got married in canada and then had five children and one day my sister came home from school and my dad asked her a question in arabic my first language and she didn't know how to answer so it hit him that he needed to take his kids back home to learn the language so he up and left to lebanon and many years later i was born there so when my siblings would hit 18 they'd come here to finish their education and i was the only one who was left there so i was living with several family members aunts and uncles and then at 16 i came here to join the rest your parents yeah how long were you not with your parents um it was a period of about eight years of on and off so i would see them for months during the year they would come visit you you would come to canada they would come visit me during the year and i would come here during the summer yeah until i finally at 16 i came here with the intention of just staying for the summer and then the war broke out in lebanon i couldn't go back it was right before grade 12 so it was a sensitive year so i had to make the decision to stay here and i hated it really and yeah um i already struggled to feel like i belonged back there because i lived in so many different places and now all of a sudden i'm in a brand new country where you know people on the streets aren't speaking arabic they're speaking english and although i knew how to speak english it was just different because now it was a whole other world for me to adapt to and a way to express yourself yeah different languages yeah so i just i kind of shut down for a while when i first came here arabic english any other languages no that's it i want to learn french one day french yes arabic isn't that habibi is not the word yes i love my baby a few friends that are egyptian who would always say that to me yeah yeah it's like universal right in all the arab countries you say habibi to someone that you love yeah whereas there's differences in other dialects yeah that's cool um so you moved here when you're a teenager it was confusing you didn't really understand the language that well i guess you did but not as well as i understood it but it was weird for me to converse in that language when back home it was like an hour a week during english class that i had to speak it and now everything functioned that way so it just it was weird to produce the language is different from knowing it yeah i mean i barely speak english right i know what you feel yeah um now what was it like then the first couple years for you did you were you able to connect with peers did you have any friends were you just hanging out with your family the whole time what was that like very dark times if i think back to it i honestly feel like i was invisible at that time like i see those times i don't see them in color because they were so i was so depressed for and and looking for someone to blame for the way that i was feeling at the time you know is it the war is it my family is it me is something wrong with me um and i would go to school being the youngest by many years also in my class by a couple of years i was 16 and grade 12. usually you're older than that and the majority of the school population wasn't muslim and even the muslims who were there you know we were in grade 12 so you're focusing on school you're not focusing on those kinds of relationships so at lunch as sad as it sounds i used to sit in the library and study i never connected well with people um and i never wanted to i just wanted to go home and just be alone be alone yeah and not talk to anybody it was like that for a while so you didn't even go to the lunchroom or just hang out with kids or what i remember the first time i went to the cafeteria um one of my one of the girls i knew in math class who was very very smart she was like i just need to get something from the cafeteria and we walked in i was like wow this is where they come and eat and it's like in my school so yeah would you pack lunch then or would you go to the cafeteria first take it to the library or i would i would pack a lunch sometimes i could go in there yeah and sometimes i would go home i would walk home for lunch and come back or i would just take a tiny snack with me and eat yeah food wasn't really a priority when you're depressed you don't really think of well at least for me my friends always say when i'm stressed out i eat but i'm not like that you don't eat i don't i forget i just focus so much on my pain that i forget anything else which is horrible but yeah where did this pain come from originally originally i think the pain came from my desperate need to feel like i belonged somewhere you know the age gap that i grew up with between me and my siblings me and my parents me and everyone else around me that was something i was trying to make sense of as i grew up like i i wasn't aware that there was a problem there i obviously obviously thought something was wrong with me for not feeling okay all the time and then um i started getting bullied in school for being too sensitive like very very bad bullying by friends and and sometimes teachers was this in canada this was in lebanon yeah up to the age up to grade 11 pretty much and then when i came here that search for a place where i felt like i belonged was the same looking for someone who understood me someone who listened to me someone who could value my voice without saying you're 16 you don't know this much but i always knew that i knew that i always knew that i was mature like way too mature for my age but i always got the you're still too young you know get out of this conversation so that's where the pain started and it just got very amplified during recent years with you know an experience of finally feeling like i found a home and you know feeling the glory of that you know feeling like accepted feeling loved respected um feeling like i actually mattered to someone um someone actually cared about what i had to say and and saw me for who i saw myself as or thought i was um someone who loved my sensitivity which i was bullied for um and saw that as you know charming instead of you know weaker yeah or or you need to get rid of that um and then and then the the pain was amplified when when i found out that none of that was really sincere so to me it was finding my you know something i've been looking for my whole life and you're coming to tell me it wasn't real how dare you yes so that part of my life that pain of searching for a home finding one yeah finally finding one and then going through [Music] realizing that it wasn't it was just an imaginary home that i built that's what i wanted to see that was my perception it was it wasn't real and and coming to terms with that imagine coming home at the end of every day and and and you're in front of this place and you see it you're like knocking on the door let me in but there's nothing there in reality there's nothing there and getting that disappointment every day until you realize there is no home there's no place for you here you have to let this go so that realization really did impact um me as a person also the message that i'm trying to send out into the world um my writing yeah this was just a few years ago when all this happened huh yeah leading up to very recently um the i think the the worst point of the pain was was coming to terms with the fact that that is not a home what you found wasn't what you've been looking for your whole life and the struggle to accept that took a couple of years and then the struggle to you know stop blaming myself for seeing it in a different way that's been taking place over the last year or so i would say what's the thing you've been looking for then or what's the thing you're looking for now oh dear what am i looking for now if that thing you were searching for wasn't actually real or real in that situation wasn't what you were looking for then what is it so i was looking for a home right the mistake i made is that i built that home in a human being in another person not inside of me or not with that person you know what i mean so i i'm a giver it's my nature so to me investing in this person investing in this home meant giving all of the love and kindness and anything inside of me that was valuable to put it in that home in that person and when he walked away all of that stuff was gone from me and i felt so empty and i realized that we all do that we all invest in a person or in a place or in an idea we put all of our heart into it and then once it's gone because it's not meant for us or it never really was ours we're left thinking we're left feeling betrayed like i i invested so much and and it's gone so um i realized that the home i need to build is not in a person not bound to one place um you know having searched for a physical home literally for a long time like one consistent place that i'm in i also tend to attach myself to certain places because i want those places to welcome me i'm not like that anymore so when someone tells me let's travel i want to travel or why don't you think of moving somewhere i actually don't care about leaving the place that i'm in because i'm moving the the little homes the little pieces of who i am from certain places that accept those pieces into myself and i say wherever i am this is who i am and my what makes me who i am belongs inside of me or you know attached to a certain dream i don't know if that makes sense of course yeah yeah i know it makes a lot of sense i remember you doing a video recently about that on instagram about the home and with someone else and putting inside that was part of my ted talk yeah explaining why we feel so empty because you put all that stuff in into another place and that place left it's no longer there and now you're gone all the stuff you have is gone yeah so that feeling of emptiness is actually true because you it's literally like investing your money into a house right you you make a nice kitchen and and you know you you get a you create like an in-home cinema and whatever and then you get kicked out of the house yes you lost everything you had of course so you feel like you're starting from scratch and it's the same thing with feelings it's the same thing with that feeling of belonging somewhere yeah so instead of investing in a house or a place or a person we should be investing in ourselves we should be investing in ourselves and that home that virtual home i'm talking about is the the feeling of being welcomed somewhere into someone's life or um feeling like they accept you and they love you it's like if if if you and i were in a relationship and i came home to you at the end of the day do you know what i mean that's the other home i'm referring to so i was in search of both of these homes a relationship and a physical yeah yeah like a a stable physical home at least yeah and i did have that when i came here but it's still you know because of the the gaps i had in relationships with my family my siblings were much older and yeah and they're great people i love them very much but when you spend a long time far away from someone even if they're a family member especially if they're a family member actually ties you know get very rigid and they're they're at a different stage in their lives so yeah yeah what do you think pain has taught you the most about yourself um it taught me it really showed me how strong i was or i am um i have a a very high threshold for pain uh um that just tells me you're not good at getting out of it you just like to stick it and go deeper yeah i'm an empath so i i believe in people i give people excuses i and and the person that i was stuck with happened to be a narcissist and those you know having an empath and a narcissist is like the worst thing it's like a dream world for him exactly because a narcissist wants someone to make excuses for them and an empath is a person who makes excuses for people a narcissist lies and an empath tries to look for reasons you know maybe he had a troubled childhood maybe he never had a positive role model or all that stuff so yeah i am an empath and i'm too kind way too kind um i believe in people way more than sometimes they deserve to be believed in but i've learned to shift my perception from what they deserve to um who am i as a person if if i'm kind to you and you take advantage of that i shouldn't stop being kind because you're taking advantage of my kindness you're the one who's at fault me being kind is not a problem it shouldn't be a problem so when i start to shift my perception that way instead of reacting to people saying this is this is who i am and this is what i believe in i believe in kindness i believe in telling the truth i believe in you know not judging people based on experiences i've had with other people because this is who i am so who you are is not going to affect me or affect the way that i am going to react to you i'm going to be strict with my demeanor yeah yeah that's great yeah um how do we overcome the fear of pain a fear of pain and are you afraid to go back into that space you were for many years and repeat the pattern oh dear yeah i am afraid of course i am of course i am because as much as you think you know and as careful as you can be you have no idea how someone is going to hurt you or what life is going to bring your way you could be as prepared as you want to be but there's no way to shield yourself from the pain that's going to come and if you say you know i've experienced something horrifically painful which is what i experienced i went through an experience of gaslighting i don't know if you know what that is it's literally like me telling you like me walking in here and telling you i have no idea who you are and you'll be like we spoke like an hour ago i texted you i'm like no i have no idea what you're talking about so it's a it's a it's a psychological manipulation that really makes a person question their identity it stemmed from a 1930s play where a girl madly falls madly in love with a guy they get married and she has like the dream story and then the term gaslighting comes from when he wanted to make her feel like she was crazy so that he could walk away from the marriage instead of blaming himself he wanted to blame her he would go to the attic and dim the gas so the lights would dem downstairs and she would tell him the lights are dim he'd be like i don't know what you're talking about so the only person who could do that to you is someone that you trust because if you trust them then you trust that they're telling you the truth right yeah so so when you go to an experience like that for a period of years and you get out of it you could easily say i've experienced one of the worst pains in life that means that any other pain that comes my way i'm not going to feel it that's not the truth you will feel any new pain that comes your way the difference is that you know just because you overcame the pain before it that you will overcome this that's the difference yeah you can't you can't overcome your fear of pain you can't there's no way to shield yourself from it every person that you meet every person people who look like they're the happiest they all have pain we all have pain we all have something in our lives that's not working out the way we want it to and even if we have a period of you know pure joy and gratitude life brings something else our way right what do you think is missing in your life right now what's missing in my life let me think definitely not a person because i'm not there yet i'm not ready for that yet more [Music] liberation more self-liberation what's that mean what does it mean to me um i live in in many different worlds i live in the world of education right now i live in the world of my culture and my religion and my family i live in the world in this bigger world of my writing of reaching out to people and that's the world that i feel mostly like myself in [Music] and and i feel like i am trying to balance out all three worlds like 33 33. when it should be i should be devoting most of my time to the world that is calling out for me right now so that is what self-liberation means to me because it is a decision like as much as i sit there and say you know i can't i can't i just i can't let go that's to me it feels like uh i'm weakening myself when i say that yeah so i need to make the decision i think it's challenging we talked about this on the phone a little bit i've i've lost many friends over the years and i've been distant to my family i left when i was 13 to be in a private boarding school so i was just away from my family in general and there i'm the youngest of four as well so they were gone and off to college and off doing other things and when the more i went into like my calling i felt like the more i had to let go of certain people in my life who weren't supportive or who weren't you know lifting me up in that sense i guess and it was a it was a challenge to be like well i want to still have these friends and i want to be there for my family all the time that i can be but my calling was driving me somewhere else and unless they were along for the ride yeah it was like some people were left behind at certain times of my life so i think it's hard to balance 33 33 32 yeah for everything um but i know what you mean it's scary though it's hard to especially for someone who wants to belong yes it's hard to leave somewhere you feel connected exactly and accepted and acknowledged and i also don't like hurting people's feelings but i i do have to recognize that sometimes the way that people feel isn't my fault just like i'm reflecting they need to be reflecting as well yeah and in terms of talking about losing people you know it was it was easy for many people to lose me along their ways of life not because i wasn't supportive but because uh maybe i didn't i didn't seem like a um they didn't see the greatness in me they didn't see they didn't see me as a person and they weren't interested in seeing me as a person so i have been to a certain extent alone for a long time anyway it's just been since january of 2016 since i put mind plateau into the world that even i started to see the greatness inside of me as greatness instead of seeing it as what's wrong with me you know so i am definitely okay with not sticking around people or not begging people to let me keep a place in their lives if it means you know sacrificing where i'm headed if someone loves you and respects you they need to push you and raise you instead of you know pull you back and say don't do that because you're going to ruin this relationship between us right yeah again like i've lost so many friends who i felt like were trying to hold me back from my vision and it's just like they're lost yeah i mean i feel i feel bad because i don't want to let people down either you know i want to please people i want people to be happy but i'm just like i never want to look back and regret saying like oh i stuck around these three friends and i stood by their side and i was loyal to them and not loyal to my dreams yes i just feel like that would be the biggest crime i could ever commit and i don't care what someone says about me or if i'm not a good friend it's like i have to pursue that calling yes and i'm glad you're always i'm glad you're doing that now yeah we've been talking about that um now why do you think people have resonated with your message so much because you don't look like every other woman out there you know what's it called the aware again hijab hijab yes you wear hijab yes muslim i mean you're in canada but you look different um you have a different background than i guess most people and why do you think people are so connected to your message especially now i think when people look at me um i read a poem not long ago at an event in london it was actually a rally where i i started by saying you know if you ask to hear my story i wonder what story i would tell you do i tell you the story of the little girl who was bullied in school or do i tell you the story of the girl who moved to a new country at 16. do i tell you the story of the girl who never felt like she had a home and i asked all of these questions and then i said what story do i tell you when this and i refer to referred to my hijab is the only story that you see so i think and that was really powerful for them because it's true when someone sees me the first thing they think of is different islam sheltered oppressed many people think that and i don't want to hear what she has to say and many people make the assumption that i talk about religion but if they take two seconds to look through my writing it has nothing to do with religion has nothing to do with me you know judging others for their beliefs or [Music] any of that so my writing is about basic human feelings um things that we all share like i doubt that there is one person out there who could read my writing and not be able to relate to it at some level there's nothing in there that just refers to me as as a muslim woman um so an oppressed muslim woman yeah at all it's funny when they tell me you're oppressed i stand up there and i'm like well if oppression means publishing two books and teaching and being a doctorate student and speaking and all those things then sure i wish everybody were oppressed but you know what i mean it's uh there's a lot of misinformation out there a lot of misinformation but sometimes i i find myself falling into you know i receive messages from people saying how could you be muslim and talk about the things that you talk about because i know that it's you're not supposed to be talking about those things like love before marriage how i thought islam said you're not allowed to to be in love before you're married and so i answer these questions and i i clarify certain things because i do want people to look differently at islam not just because i want them to look differently at islam in particular but at anything that's different all together like last month i marched in the pride parade in london i was the only girl wearing the hijab there the only one there may have been a few more but you can see them i didn't see anybody and and that's what i was told you're the only one i saw i see here today and you're the first one i see at this pride parade in london you know through the years i think this was the third or fourth time they've had it and just so i'm clear would traditional muslim people not be supportive of that no so they would say you know homosexuality is a sin and and we're completely against it see for me the the struggle is have your religious beliefs all you want but you can't you can't belittle a person because of what you believe then what does that say about your religion like belittling a human being for something that they have that is different from what you have that doesn't show acceptance that doesn't show compassion it doesn't show empathy and i don't stand for that um and and if we were in a country where you know it was it was the islamic rule which i i don't think that religion and government should come together i think there should be a separation of religion and state but i always say if we were living in a government where it was islamic then then you'd be able to say that if that's what the government said but you have to realize that there's a separation there your rule isn't the rule that everybody should follow so i i get hate from people who don't like islam and i get hate from people who are muslims as well because i go against what the traditional belief is um or maybe not go against i i hate using words like that but trying to like having a different understanding myself does that make sense of course no of course yeah and i think i think you wrote something about this where you mentioned you know that you really don't appreciate when someone is judging other people from a place of religion they're starting judging other people that goes against religion right is the purpose of religion together exactly exactly welcoming and yeah community not judgment of people yes and that's what the challenge i've always had i grew up in a christian religion and no longer practice per se but it's just kind of always the challenge i had with a lot of religion and maybe it's just certain people in religions that kind of ruin it for everyone i guess or they are very judgmental they are very negative and very right and wrong and it's all about hell and heaven i stood in front of a group one day and i told them if i was speaking to you 10 years ago like when i first arrived here i would tell you all you're all going to hell and i said i've had to unlearn so many things from that time till now and that's what i hope for you as well i want you to do that just you know i i've done it i've sacrificed a lot of things i've got into many arguments with people who i thought were dear to me to defend your rights and i i hope that you would do the same for me um we all learn certain things that we need to get rid of because they're just they're false why do you think so many people come from that place of in religion in general come from that place of like you're going to hell unless this and are so committed to being right and vocalizing it and constantly like preaching that to people why do you think people come from that space i think talking from my your own experience of course and also my my like poetic ness i would say and my understanding of people i would say it's a way for them to feel better about themselves um you know i'm better than you because i wear the hijab and you're not wearing it you're showing your hair so i'm better than you and then that way you take away from you know how good of a person are you compared to how good of a person i am we don't care about that anymore it's about the way that we look or whether we pray a certain way or or or show people that we are devout in a certain way so i always ask people like muslims for example who send me hateful messages and i say you do know that in the quran it says that gossiping and backbiting are huge sins they're like worse than killing a person really did you know that and gossiping is yeah gossiping and backbiting are very very bad like they're on the high level of sins there is one verse that uh um i don't remember exactly how it's worded but it says that backbiting and i hope that i'm remembering this right is worse than killing no way yeah worse than killing someone yeah why is it worse than everything so so the quran is very poetic as well and i think that it it's just to show the severity of it yeah it's just to show the severity of it and then and then i say so you know you leave this message and comment and then you go to your family and you talk about me like you're committing a huge sin too not that i'm you know i'm not i'm not trying to have like an eye for an eye but i'm just trying to point out the irony like a very stupid thing but a couple weeks ago i posted a picture you probably saw on my instagram page in my jeans yes you should have seen some of the messages watch yourself now get a little risky you get a little risque out there yeah you're really too much so so i i couldn't believe the amount of uh of hate i was seeing then you posted another one with your jeans right yeah yeah you talked about it oh yeah and i'll continue why do people hate so much on that just wearing jeans they remind me that you know as a muslim woman you should dress a certain way and um you know how dare you represent us that way you represent the religion i say i actually don't you can't put the responsibility of the religion and all the atrocities that are happening out there i don't even hurt a bug you know like i i'm the type that if if somebody got me a cup of tea and you know i forgot it somewhere and you know i would text them later and say i'm so sorry i you know you you went through the effort of getting me a cup of tea and i forgot it and i didn't drink it that's that's who i am as a person you can't tell me that everything that's going on out there in the name of islam you can't tell me i'm the one who's representing it and why now why are you why are you messaging me now why not for the last year and a half since my writings have been out point something out that they don't like as opposed to acknowledging things that are that are meaningful exactly yeah so but at one point i stopped responding because it was just getting it's not worth it yeah sometimes when you give people the when you're kind to them they come back and they're like well i'm questioning your intentions at this point you're like i shouldn't have spoken in the first place exactly yeah not out of lack of respect but yeah you get it what do you think humanity needs the most right now empathy empathy we need to be able to put ourselves in other people's shoes [Music] feel exactly how they're feeling before we utter a word and that takes a lot of authenticity with ourselves and with the world because if we are not aware of our own feelings and are not willing to admit how we feel acknowledge how the experiences that we went through shaped us if we can't do that ourselves we we won't be able to relate to another person so it has to start with being authentic with yourself to say yeah man that was hard so you see someone else struggling and you say that must be hard i'm not struggling the same way but we share the struggle yeah that's what our world needs for sure yeah yeah more empathy more empathy i've got this uh you know i'm working on this new message this book about masculine vulnerability and i feel like a lot of challenges arise from especially right now in the world or from men who are wearing masks yes who are showing up not their loving vulnerable authentic selves for whatever reasons the pain they're feeling they're feeling rejected they're feeling not accepted they're feeling they need to protect their what is their right whatever it may be um what message would you have for men the challenge is here's the challenge the reason i'm writing this book about masculinity is because i love renee brown and oprah i love brene brown i just interviewed her she's amazing really yeah she's amazing i wish she was here before was younger she's amazing and um i love all the women who are sharing these messages of being real and loving and authentic and opening up and and being truthful about yourself things like that but i feel from my personal experience growing up uh in a sports mindset most of the men that i grew up around were not open to those messages and we had this conditioning from our peers from coaches from family society just everything yeah if i ever tried to show like any emotion in elementary school it's like the other boys would just say you know suck it up or don't be a wuss or you know other names be a man yeah be a man man up and women would say this too you know in relationships at times women would be like just man up like own it quit being so like whatever they need to come come talk to me right but i mean so there's a lot of mixed signals for men i think yeah um and listen we all get to be responsible for our actions and own things and you know be in ownership and not make excuses for whatever's happened yes and the reason i'm doing this is because i hope men will be able to see me and judge me in a way and be like okay maybe i can relate to this guy judge me in a good way yeah and say okay he looks like me he talks like me like he kind of gets it um you're using your privilege in the right way that's my intention to trojan horsemen in some in some sense to give them hey come and come hang out let's be bros yes because i can be the pro with the best of them and just start to have more real open conversations about this and create a safe space for men to really just share the things they're shameful about reveal things that maybe that really hurt them that they've never talked about that just have been bottling up inside and i hope that i'm able to be a catalyst for some people unfortunately i feel like a lot of men aren't willing to listen to women some aren't but if they were willing right now what would you say for them first i'm going to give you some hope because i get many messages from men that's great thank you for the writings that i do and how i talk about vulnerability going back to my to the previous question that you asked me authenticity empathy but at the root of that is vulnerability you can't be authentic if you're not vulnerable right because vulnerability it that is the the birthplace of of connection right you don't connect with someone unless you have that authenticity piece so um if men were listening and i don't want to generalize just to not make anybody feel like they're uh and i try not to as well i i've been attacked by so many people you know so i try to be as politically correct in my language as possible but yeah again sometimes yeah sometimes i get men who message me and say you know not all men are like that of course you have to realize that i'm talking to a person who shattered me to like dust so i'm gonna talk with that kind of passion and and and pain my pain is driving what i what i'm writing right um so not to generalize but to say this to to men i think men maybe who aren't vulnerable or open or afraid of being vulnerable because oh i also receive the messages that say well i've been vulnerable and they just used it against me that's true yeah that's where men put their masks on even stronger yeah they're like okay i'm gonna defend myself even more yeah i felt the same way because girls like bad boys and all that stuff so there's a lot of mixed signals yeah yeah there's a lot of challenges there i would tell men to [Music] be vulnerable for their own sake and for the children that they will one day have be vulnerable for the little boy who's looking up to you who's going to be a man one day be vulnerable for yourself not for the person who is receiving it because when you think when you attach your vulnerability to the way that your partner reacts to it you're going to hate it because you're going to say i was kind and you know she took advantage of me i was um i was you know i'd listen to her at the end of every day and and where i'd come and talk to her at the end of the of every day and and she would tell me to man up or whatever don't be vulnerable just to please the other person because you think that that's what they're expecting be vulnerable for yourself because it's such a liberating feeling to know that you are being honest and you are being authentic and you're not hiding anything if the person that you're with takes that as weakness that's not the person you're meant to be with and trust me there are many people out there including myself who see vulnerability and love seeing it and and they're actually seeking it or think that it's very rare so focus on what your vulnerability does for you instead of what it does for the person that you're you're giving it to i think you know the more i've become vulnerable over the last four or five years and really started to open up more about my experience i felt like it's been the ultimate power to be honest like i've been able to powerfully lead my life with uh clarity freedom without suffering and the pain that i used to be attached to and also it's allowed me to connect with people in such a more intimate and deep level that i never could before which supported my vision which helped me in my business which helped me in my relationships like it all helped me more because i was willing to open up more and i think when we hold back we can never truly connect with people in a way that is going to move us forward in the power yeah holding back is like covering yourself um you don't feel like you're authentically yourself unless you are with yourself you're you're isolating yourself from everyone else around you and it becomes a very heavy weight to carry with you but when you open up and you say this is who i am i know you might judge me i know you might not like this version of a man who i am but this is who i am this is what manliness means to me because this is what humanity means to me being a human being means to me and if we really want to advance the human race just thinking of future generations we need to break we need to let that mask fall off we really do yeah yeah i want to have you read a poem from each one of your books start with mine platter let's start with mine and what was the context of this um book what did it why did you write this okay mind platter is a compilation of journal entries these are my journal entries i wrote them not thinking that they would ever be published i never thought i would be a writer did i tell you what i did my undergraduate degree in no yes um engineering no [Laughter] science okay no one believes that because i actually i don't look like a person who's into science i did it because my family wanted me to so i started writing when i started teaching a group of um refugees who came to canada and i started healing from the pain of that 16 year old when i started helping them adapt to life here by writing for them so these are journal entries that took place over three years i would share these writings with them they would share them with their friends and families and then a few teachers here and there would see them and they all said you need to put this into a book wow so i just compiled them and put them into a book cool that's the context okay yeah uh the one i will read today is the very first i actually would like to read the dedication of mind platter sure it's just short one and then i'll i would like to read you are the sun to the heart and you don't be afraid to feel to the sun in you don't be afraid to shine to the love in you don't be afraid to heal to the ocean and you don't be afraid to rain to rage to the silence in you don't be afraid to break that's the dedication and you are the sun for them to see you shine you must stay far away for you are just like the sun when you're too close your light makes them blind and when you're too far they seek you so let them seek you they're getting your your light regardless but appreciating your presence is different from recognizing your existence if they don't appreciate your presence they may never even recognize your absence so this stemmed from a personal experience obviously they all did and from this one and that one what was right i that one was why did i write nectar of pain the nectar of pain what does that even mean the sweetness from pain yeah so what you could uh how you can turn your pain into sweetness because we tend to make are to allow our pain to make us bitter so i i will read the dedication of this one to give the context so i started with why the nectar of pain they asked me how is your soul able to give so much love to this world i said there is a sweetness in the nectar that bees seek for honey there is a sweetness in you that every sting and every pain seek to make love do not allow your pain to make you bitter turn it into the sweet nectar that your soul contains and gives as a sign of strength and resilience after it's shattered so that's the that's the meaning of the mixture of pain this one is one of my favorites the day you walked into my life i felt like the chosen one how could a king like him love a free soul like mine how could he love you you fool the distance you'd have to run is far too far and the soldiers of the battles you'd have to win are gone long gone he's championed wars and you're still training to fight he's run marathons and you're still learning to walk he's conquered cities and you're still learning the maps he sailed oceans and you're still building your boat it must be your foolish mind crafting stories with invisible ink and reading between lines that don't exist then you told me that you loved my smile and the time after that you asked me what perfume it was that i wore i felt so lucky that a man like you wanted me in a kingdom like yours and when the gates opened and i entered inside i saw nothing that pleases the eye you see you worked so hard to build your fort but forgot to tidy what's inside the years had tainted your every corner with the torture that you'd inflicted on every visitor and now i look back and think what a fool you were to think that you could conquer a queen's kingdom like mine what a fool powerful what a fool oh gosh i love it i love it yeah that's one of my favorites in the nectar of pain i think that was one of the turning points and talking about the things i found inside that's the vulnerability and uncovering things if you don't work on tidying what's inside no one wants to enter and anyone who wants to enter will just leave scarred and that will define who you are as a person because you scar people right yeah um i want to uh wrap it up with a couple final questions yeah is there any question that you wish i did ask you first uh no i think you asked everything yeah uh this is called the three truths okay and if this was the final day for you many years from now and you've achieved everything you wanted to achieve live the exact life from here on out all the pain and the love you experienced at all um wrote every book you wanted to write but for whatever reason all your creations were lost and erased and all you had was a piece of paper and a pen to write down three things you need to be true about all of your experiences in life these could be three lessons that you would leave behind what would you say are your three truths things about me or things to my audience things that you would share and this would be kind of like the message that the world would have about to remember me to remember you what would you say are your three truths the very first one is be yourself for yourself not for people so focus on your own actions instead of reacting to people the second one would be the one who broke you cannot heal you healing has to come from within you self-healing is the most important thing taking ownership of your healing and the third one is these mountains that you are carrying you're only supposed to climb no struggle that comes your way is meant to be carried with you everywhere you go it's meant to be conquered it's meant to be climbed and championed those are the three lessons that i would leave i love that that's the final one is powerful um i want to acknowledge you for a moment for your incredible courage to stay empathetic and compassionate even through the pain and the hurt and the struggle that you face when someone took advantage of you or multiple people have taken advantage of you because it takes a lot of courage to continue to be loving open giving and put your your message out there so the fact that you continue to share your truth even though you may look different or sound different or be different than so many people is so courageous in my mind and i really acknowledge you for having that courage to to share your truth so thank you very much for saying that i thank you for the same of course yeah um before i ask the final question i want to make sure people get your book this is the new one the nectar of pain go grab it right now the first one mind platter we'll have it linked up on the site as well and we can connect with you on instagram yes it's nashwa zabian zabian it's just one word well how does that mean we'll have it all linked up for you guys do you have a website as well yeah nashvillesavion.com okay perfect um anywhere else we should connect with you you can find me on facebook twitter everywhere yeah very much you can tweet a lot too yeah i do twitter i don't like that i see you on there i remind people many things yes um cool the the final question then is what's your definition of greatness my definition of greatness is being true to yourself being true to your story owning your story being authentic with yourself because when you do that that greatness honestly emanates from inside of you and it just effects change in the world it has to start with you has to start with you being truthful with yourself with what your your your true core is your what your weaknesses are and strengths being true to that admitting what you went through how you overcame it owning all of that saying this is who i am that alone makes you great and it just gives you that push that will propel you into the world that's my definition thank you so much appreciate it appreciate you thank you

Channel: Lewis Howes

Views: 68,173

Keywords: lewis howes, the school of greatness, motivation, as seen on ellen, success, interview 2017, author, the mask of masculinity, entrepreneur, audio podcast, najwa zebian, TED TALK, nectar of pain, mind platter, how to love yourself, poems, youtube, i choose, videos, courageous vulnerability, loving yourself, ny times best seller, lebanese, canadian, educator, poet, speaker, woman, man, america, toronto, self publish, liberation

Id: y2T-PM638-o

Length: 56min 2sec (3362 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 01 2017