What EVERYONE needs to know about SELF-LOVE | Najwa Zebian

these mountains that you are carrying you were only supposed to climb [Music] I had started writing when I was 13 to deal with the pain of feeling like I didn't belong I was invisible during those years and never expressed myself in any way [Music] I met someone who belonged to my Muslim community I developed an attachment over time to the attention that he was given me it felt natural I hadn't feel like I could raise my voice and say you're putting me in an uncomfortable situation I felt like I was zero and to nobody and invisible unless someone welcomed me into their life it's something and it's happening every single day to millions and millions of women and men just need to be smarter and more careful about positions they're putting women in [Music] welcome back to max out everybody I met my lat and today is going to be an experience that you were gonna enjoy so much I certainly know that I am and the reason for that experience certainly isn't me it's because of this lady to my left here she's an incredible woman and my crew will tell you I've been kind of giddy all morning about this conversation and looking forward to it for so long she is an incredible poet speaker author but I think she's become one of the great thought leaders in the world as well means a lot it's true you make me think and so this is Nessa Sabian everybody measure well thank you for being here we've been texting back and forth we both been excited about today so I can't wait to get into this by the end of this everybody your your whole world's gonna be just a little bit different and that's why we do this show is for you to experience different people to be thinking different thoughts and I have people here that max out their lives and your story is so amazing so let's get into it one helps example okay so you're one of those guests that it's impossible to not go back in time to hear your story inordinate of context for how incredible your message is so they have to know a little bit about this so in Ezra you grew up in Lebanon till you're about 16 right but sort of a way from your parents and that's sort of I think caused some some thinking in you so maybe even some insecurities in you tell them a little bit about your upbringing and how it impacted you if you could so I was the only one in my family born and raised my parents met in Canada had five children and then one day my oldest sister came home my dad asked her a question in Arabic which is our first language and she didn't understand so he thought I need to take my kids back home so he went there and eight years later I was born so you're the youngest by a lot yes by many years and the next ones up are actually twins which means they have each other right so I felt that growing up I always looked at in my life hoping to walk the same footsteps as them and I and anyone who knows me will tell you I matured at a very young age like psychologically and in terms of like I never liked playing because I'm like that's childish but I would be like eight or nine years old really yeah yeah and obviously there's times when you when you do it just because everybody else your age is doing it but it always seemed to me like it was a waste of time interesting not to interrupt you one of the things that strikes me about you is your maturity level even now you're 28 years old why don't we do this but your your presence and your your something funny yeah I often get messages saying I read some of your work and I was so happy when I searched you to find out that you're alive you would be somebody who died like 70 years ago I have this old soul young soul thing I believe and I don't know exactly where I think that comes from but you have this old soul spirit about you you know wisdom I think about you that's beyond your years but but let's keep going back to the younger years when I turned eight years old about that time my my mom and dad started traveling between Lebanon and Canada to stay with my siblings because as soon as they would hit a certain age they would come to Canada to study or work or whatever it was and it was mostly my mom at first and so I would stay with my dad and my dad used to work a lot and so I spent a lot of time with my grandma or with ever relative with whoever relative was available to take care of me or you know I'd go to their house after school and it wasn't and I always try to make a point of saying that I don't look at this as my parents badly parenting I think they were doing the best that they could do and they thought that I would experience better things if I'm around other kids like my my aunt's children my uncles kids or but the way we experience things is very different from the way that the world intends for us to experience them right so I have to honor my own experience so from the age of 8 to 16 there was no consistent sense of belonging and obviously at at 8 or 10 or 12 or 14 or whatever I wouldn't know how to put that into words so what would I think something's wrong with me why am I feeling this way and what confirmed to me that something was wrong with me was I got bullied in school for being the youngest in my class for being too sensitive for always doing the right thing for watching out for people and yeah I genuinely believed something was wrong with me so you had this dynamic you already I think you're like me a little bit I think people have me there's nature and nurture right and I don't believe anybody's necessarily an introvert or shy but you and I are both quiet people yes sort of introverted by many nature to some extent so you have that combination with mom and dad or in and out of your life at different times combined with the bullying know where to turn to I could see how that makes an impact on you so were you how would you describe your your emotions as a child up to your 16 how would you describe you were you serious were you sad were you I do believe I remember that I had a lot of sadness within me because it stemmed from that what's wrong with me when there's a void inside of you and again at that age you don't know how to express it but there's a void and I think that that void was for love and attention and someone to say nothing is wrong with you you know yes and when when that's missing again it confirms to you that maybe you don't deserve that yes right and so that's what I fully believed there was a lot of sadness and there was a lot of aching to feel like I belonged yes during those years see the thing about you I just did this show the other day about vulnerability and I said the reason of ulna really is so important is because it can magnify all the other great emotions you eventually want without taking the risk of being vulnerable you never really discover these other things the thing that's so wonderful about you it's even for me - I hear parts of my story in your story even though they're completely different if that makes any sense when you're vulnerable and you open up to other people it actually opens up a version of the person you're sharing it with as well right and so there's millions of people that are listening to this that felt those same things through different circumstances they didn't feel loved they feel like there's something wrong with them and you carry those things from your childhood all your life until you identify them right and so your story then goes down another term which is interesting because you about 16 I believe you then end up going to Canada I was on my sixteenth oh my god I know I had that really disgusting you flew on the airplane on your birthday yeah so you already have this combination of sort of not feeling great about yourself there's this disconnect they're being bullied and then you end up going to what is now really a foreign country at 16 years old so what was that like so about a few weeks after I arrived in in Canada I saw the airport in Lebanon on fire because the war started that that summer so you're not going back no so I knew there was no way to go back I was I was imagining like remembering getting on that plane and seeing just the airport and flames and so yeah so that was that hit me hard because it felt like this was a moment that I needed to decide whether I wanted to stay or leave so I decided to stay but looking back that really wasn't a decision it's kind of like I was forced to stay but to protect myself I had to convince myself that it was a decision right we often do that when I first arrived teachers didn't think I arrived from a different country so they didn't have in mind maybe she has maybe there's a cultural shock or maybe she doesn't know how school works they thought I'd transferred from a different school director so that made me just completely invisible and oblivious to how things work here did you like being invisible though in other words did you sort of enjoy the invisibility I have this sense about you this picture of you at that age where you didn't have a real problem with being it but no I wanted to be in the mirror I wanted to be invisible it was convenient yeah even at lunch I wouldn't go to the cafeteria I remember not knowing where the cafeteria in my school was until the last the last like two or three months of the year because I used to go to the library and do my homework or sit with whoever came and sat there yeah I just never never contributed to any extracurricular activities never did anything around the school so there was no there nobody there would have imagined you'd become you now know right no because now and I want to help people too because there's a lot of people listen to this who have become too comfortable with being invisible you're not supposed to be invisible and there's millions and millions of people who have just decided they're gonna go through this life invisible and it takes great courage it's a great shield right the great shield because there's no I just watched one of your recent videos where you were talking about perfection yeah when you say I'm a perfectionist you're kind of using it like an excuse saying I won't do it unless it's perfect right it's the same thing with being invisible you're like I don't make a difference to the world anyway it's just my life so right and you having these thoughts I think it's so important to people it's that sense this because and just picturing all this there's the added ripple that I'm sure not everybody at your school was Muslim either right so there's this all these there's just a lot of people who feel in life different or you know Who am I to think I should be successful or who and I've even watched a lot of your content you you use that phrase a lot about Who am I and there were people even in your life is who do you think you are it's not the events of our life that define us it's the meaning we take from the events I'm convinced of that so we sort of now have this like bio on you right now we kind of know who you were as a young woman and I could just picture you it's almost like and I don't mean this in any other way I just wish I could go there's probably you wish you'd go back to that young girl and hunger and say hey you know you wish you could just say something to her I have a version of me too I wish I could go back to the 16 year old me and say hey man everything's gonna be okay you're special you know and so I really relate to that part of your story but there there's a situation that took place that sort of started to define I think you and what you represent to the world can you tell him a little bit about the incident that kind of took place or this scenario the person that was in your life that story yeah gave you an awakening they're actually gonna be in a great gift to you right so tell them about that it's actually it got it took me quite a while to start seeing that and him as a gift because it's hard to describe pain and someone who caused you so much pain and the gift but it took me a while but I'm there hopefully so I'm very happy that we started way before this because it really builds up to help people understand why I experienced my experience the way that I did yeah so I had started writing when I was 13 to deal with the pain of feeling like I didn't belong and at 16 when I arrived in Canada I ripped up that journal and said I'm never writing again because I did not want to feel the pain I was so aware every single time I wrote of the pain inside of me and it killed me that I wasn't able to do anything about it so I said I don't want to feel anymore and for the next seven years of my life I really like I remember those years in black and white not feeling anything honestly uuv I actually remember those years in black and white because I they were so dark like I was I was I was invisible during those years and never expressed myself in any way went to university then started Teachers College and then I started teaching and it was during Teachers College that I met someone who belonged to my Muslim community but was also very high in the education field and I remember seeing him speak at her college and he was just so charismatic and so I would I felt so proud that our community had someone like him so that was when I when I first met him and then during Teachers College I got to do a teaching practicum at his school okay and I remember at the time that he gave me a little bit of attention but I never thought anything about it I was just very grateful and thankful that he was helping me as a new teacher and as soon as I left Teachers College that's when I started teaching at a private school so I had nothing to do with the public board of education where he was and at that school I had a Libyan refugees who just arrived from a war-torn country and the principal said they're yours for the rest of the year Wow so that's how I got back into writing and getting back into writing meant that I was getting back into feeling and giving people chances and not being too you know I'm alone don't talk to me yeah and so I you know I started making more conversation things like that so that that affected my openness and my willingness to to feel and and I'm sure you know this when you do that there's there was a flood of emotions a flood of things that you want to express and you see things differently so it was over that year and a half I would say that he reached out to me quite a few times asking me to tutor his children and I was under the impression that he was married I had no idea that he wasn't and he was much older than me I never thought anything of it but when I look back I do because it was all part of a plan I believe and so I took on that tutoring job I I started teaching the girls and you know he that he would send me messages and and call me saying that he wanted to know what I was teaching and things like that but always got into personal thing and that's how I found out he wasn't married anymore and talked about the sadness that he had in his life and so I started seeing similarities and I do believe that he knew my background I've been in Canada for six or seven years at the time and very very sheltered I was very sheltered I had never dated before I had never been in a relationship before I had my life was just school home work school homework and I lived with my parents at the time because in my culture you stay home until you're married and so he would ask me questions about that after every tutoring lesson he would ask me questions about my personal life and to me I thought oh you know a high school principal is interested in knowing I never saw it as a as a romantic thing at all and then he said you know I want to help you get a job with the public board this is what you should do contact this person whatever so I got an interview and he said that he was gonna help me with the interview and I arrived to the location I hadn't slept the night before I was very stressed out because I'm like what if he asks me something that I don't know I was really nervous and I arrived and he was there early and I sat down and I was you know I had this big binder and I'm like I've been planning this and I printed off this document and whatever and then he went like this and I looked at him and he goes what perfume are you wearing and my reaction was why is it strong yeah because I felt so ashamed that my perfume was strong enough that he smelled it and that no he noticed it he's like no it just smells good and that was the first time that I got a hint that maybe there's something more it wasn't just the question like you can ask a woman what perfume she's wear sure it was it was the way that it all happened in the way he was looking at me and and then things progressed from there where he would he expressed his interest in me said really inappropriate things and and and eventually asked me out and I said I I don't do that I can't do that because I don't do that and I actually felt guilty for turning him down and rejecting him with that feeling of guilt I started apologizing like I'm sorry but this is how how it is and I said if you know if there's this actually happened like a week or two later when he asked me out again and I said I thought to myself is there something that I'm doing that's wrong so I just responded and said if there's something you want from me that I can't give you then feel free to stop contacting me because of the power imbalance I didn't want to anger him yes it was a lot that was yep on the line for me and so I wanted him to say I don't want to talk to you anymore instead of me saying leave me alone yes you're a jerk so he was always in control of our dynamic and our contact and how we talked he would call me whenever he pleased and text me whenever he pleased and he was always in control and I accepted that because it felt it felt natural I I didn't feel like I could raise my voice and say you're putting me in an uncomfortable situation yeah and at the same time the twist that many people question is well then why did you develop an attachment to him I developed an attachment over time to the attention that he was given me because I had never experienced that I were too visible anymore no I wasn't invisible anymore I was all of a sudden seen and heard that's how I felt yes but I don't know if that was in reality I don't think it was can I say something about this as we go but I want the reason I wanted you to cover that in the detail you did it's because I first I want the men to hear that because men that are and your responses to it and your reactions in your thoughts men that are in the positions of any kind of authority or control I think sometimes uneven sometimes are in your case it was conscious and some that are even unconscious unknowingly taking advantage of that control that they have and not understanding the really awkward position and no-win position in some cases that they're putting a female in by communicating with them what is it in an appropriate way like that and so even the fact that you felt guilty about not accepting those advances yes it's revealing even for me to hear because it sometimes I think as men we should just talk about this I think the men think well she would just tell me stop completely doing that but we forget there's an authority position yeah and then there's probably even a part for the ladies listening to it's so beautiful that you said it that maybe even some of the attention you get on some level some way is a good does feel good to you and then you know then you feel guilty for feeling that way right and so that's the the real truth the hard truth is that maybe there is a little bit of it that is appealing doesn't make it any less inappropriate than it's taking place right that and that's what we need to understand is that just the fact that someone gives you attention that you admire you shouldn't feel guilty about that because it's normal to feel grateful that someone you admire or look up to gives you some type of it a way yourself force operates right when you define yourself through the eyes of others right if someone who you really admire admires you back it's like I'm I'm good you know you you elevate yourself worth in your own eyes because in someone else's eyes your self-worth is elevated and it makes it no less inappropriate when the man does that no there's it's it's something and it's happening every single day to millions and millions of women from men some intentionally in this case we both believe probably intentionally and in some cases and then just need to be smarter and more careful about the positions more sensitive the positions they're putting women in mm-hm and that's why this is if we get nothing and we're gonna get a lot more if we got nothing out of the conversation today it's for the men that are listening to this on my behalf listen to what this sounds like on the other side I felt like I was zero and nobody and invisible unless someone welcomed me into their life I really feel like in relationships one of the things the old Jerry Maguire movie where Tom Cruise walks in if you've seen this movie but his girlfriend in the movie ends up saying you complete me and I think if that happens millions of people are looking for another person to complete them and that's a form of building their home right yeah and I don't feel like a great relationship should be somebody completing here even if people say well he's strong where I'm weak and that'd be great that's an element I suppose but the fact of the matter is is that I think another person can magnify you that's the great things about you there's a joy right they can do that but do you agree with that by the way that too many people looking for someone else to complete them rather than working on that I do yeah too many people look for someone to fill in the void that they have because they truly believe that it can only be filled by a person not by what you have to do for your own self and that's why I said to myself I need to build a home within myself so that at the end of the day when I'm feeling down I come home to myself right I don't go home to someone else and I don't feel lonely and alone just because that person isn't beside me or doesn't exist in my life yet I feel complete on my own I feel like I can self fulfill my needs I don't need you to tell me that I'm worthy of love for me to believe that I'm worthy of love right I don't need you to tell me that that I'm I'm doing great things for the world for me to see that I'm doing great things for the world even though I do fall into that sometimes when someone tells me you're doing such amazing things I say I hope I'm doing that here right but coming home to yourself is such a beautiful thing because there is no void there and the void that is there you can fill it for yourself and kind of it prepares you for people walking away it prepares you for in many ways for dealing with grief of any sort hole right the loss of a loved one the loss of because if their own if if the value that you see in them is the fact that they fill the void for you when they're gone you're not struggling with them leaving you're struggling with what they took with them when they left so how do you balance that with by the way totally beautiful I totally agree and you say it at such rate I think people build homes and other people ironically some people build homes in how many likes they get on social they build homes and getting a Ferrari they build homes and what they look like but the most prevalent one is building a home in another person needing the validation but how do you balance that is so good you balance that with wanting to be in a relationship and wanting to be in love and not being so closed off that I don't need you to validate me I don't need you to believe in me how do you there's many are you learning that even that skill even right now you're just learning that because it is an interesting balance is it's like I don't need your love to feel loved but I certainly would like someone to love me right so how do you navigate that what do you think the answer is there's a period after experiencing any kind of pain where you want to be closed off it's a natural defense mechanism where you say I'm never gonna love anyone anymore right I'm never going to feel any more it's just kind of like when I ripped up my journal at 16 I don't want to feel anymore I'm okay on my own you just stay back when it comes to relationships and building homes within other people the mistake is that you've only built a home in that person or right so to fix it you don't say I'm gonna build a home with him myself and just be self-sufficient for the rest of my life and if I do meet someone then you know we'll just live a life together but there's no sharing or anything you know I'm independent and he would be independent and that's it it would be to take time for yourself to heal and part of it would be building that home within yourself for yourself because another mistake that people make is that immediately after a relationship ends you want to be in another one because you you can't handle being alone right exactly right so you delay building that home within yourself you continuously build home you there people avoid it yeah because you're addicted to the feeling mm-hmm it's often not the person it's often the feeling of being home yes so brilliant taking the time to build that home within yourself and not being in a relationship for however long you need to it could be a month it could be a year mm-hmm healing is very personal but build that home within yourself so that when you meet someone they're not completing you they're not welcoming you into their own lives and saying here I'm gonna give you everything that you want but imagine meeting someone when you already have a home built within you and you build a home with that person so right like a shared home yeah you have a home within yourself you don't need me to validate you you don't you're not needy in a way where I have to validate all the time it's the same thing in my case yes so you have a home I have a home and we build a home together someone said to me as we were prepping they said vanessa has had so much pain in her life you know she talked about pain so regularly and I literally as I was prepping and getting to know you more I told this person I said I don't think she said any more pain in her life I said I think she's finally discovered the power of letting yourself experience pain because this pain is what's allowed her to grow so many people avoid pain avoid feeling things and they cheat themselves out of the best parts of life which is growing into this person that I now see sitting in front of me when you're going to an abusive situation you honestly define yourself through the eyes of one person you see the whole world as just how that person sees you and that person saw me as absolutely nothing so I saw myself as absolutely nothing and completely degraded me and completely just put me down at every single instant so to me it was raising my voice was reconstructing my story not as he told me I lived it but as I actually lived it and coming to terms with that made me see you were talking about the resistance to pain that I had where you said she just opened herself up to feeling the pain that's really what it was I was so afraid of acknowledging that I was so broken because I that would tell me that there was a lot that needed to be fixing so the moment that I decided you know what what happened to me was horrible and it was painful and it was like if poison enters you you need to cleanse it somehow right you need to let it out and I wasn't letting it out and the moment that I realized how horrible what happened to me was then I could start healing and healing is not easy and that's why I wrote these mountains that you are carrying you were only supposed to climb say that again please could I just say that I wanted you to say it later they were just I want everyone to hear this this is awesome say that again these mountains that you are carrying you were only supposed to climb that changed my whole life so so this guy that I'm telling you about after continuously rejecting him getting unattached in a very unhealthy way and and not knowing how to deal with it not knowing how to understand me accepting that attention and wanting it without shaming myself for that and and not knowing how to be compassionate with myself I I felt that it was my responsibility developing those feelings was definitely my responsibility and that maybe he didn't do anything wrong and so with time I was dealing with it on my own and he was aware that I was struggling with this attachment but but I kept it to myself until he came knowing how vulnerable I was I was working at his school at a time and asked me for money and said that I need this for my mortgage I think it was my children and my children's lives are on the line and all that stuff and so I just gave him money and I and it was immediately after that that the the the abuse started becoming clear to me and the manipulation started becoming clear to me because immediately after I gave him money I was of no value anymore and so his recollection of the experience is nothing happened I never expressed interest and you you took it that way because you were raised in a very sheltered environment if a man says hello to you you think he's in love with you and so he was erasing all of those times when he asked me out and he said I can't control myself around you and he would call me so much and text me so much and and all that he was erasing it and telling me here's what happened and that's called gaslighting I'm not sure if you know that term Yeah right yes exactly what it is yeah yes and so that's what I'm telling you after a while it was well after a year after everything completely ended that I named it for what it was and now the healing was that was the beginning of the healing the beginning of the healing wasn't the ending of whatever that was I can't even call it a relationship because it wasn't that experience it was an experience the beginning of the healing was the beginning of acknowledging that I was in pain that something wrong happened to me and so these mountains that I mentioned are the the feelings that weigh us down the feelings of I'm not good enough something's wrong with me I made mistakes that whole experience was my fault those feelings were weighing me down everywhere I went and I felt so I was so worried for my reputation because he was in my community and I didn't know what he was gonna tell everybody I felt ashamed for having feelings even though they were feelings that I was reciprocating to someone else but in my culture you only develop feelings towards someone that you're gonna marry it's very serious and so all the time I'm walking around feeling on edge feeling like I'm not myself I'm hiding something huge I hid it from my family I hid it from my friends I hid it from everybody and I was walking around with those mountains when you're climbing and you reach halfway through and then decide to keep going and going and going and you know that the higher you get the more lonely you are because people aren't going to climb with you they're going to say you're still on that you're not done with it and when you get to the top you look down it and say look how far I've come I gosh and then you say to yourself if I climbed this mountain I can climb another one because one of the things that you write about its self-confidence yeah and you said that exact thing and it stood out to me he said if you're wondering whether you can accomplish something look at all the other things you used to be afraid of then you have overcome right I mean you guys what reason I wanted you to hear her first thing I was want to point out for those of you that may not have a whole lot of experience this is a Muslim woman and the reach I told I told her before we started I said listen one of the great things about this is that there's many people that are listening to this that have friends of all different but they may not have really even have a really great friend who's Muslim they may just not and so this is this woman is she represents so many things for writing is so magnificent it's so beautiful the way that you word things it affects me you know and our backgrounds are different our styles are different but I think oftentimes those are the people that reach you you're a bunch of guys like me I don't know I kind of sound like me you say things in a way that no one else says them you did say that in the watch this in your relationships that he was a narcissist and you're an empath and this is a combination that is really not good for the empath in a real relationship so just give everyone just a minute on so they can identify it if they're in one what that looks like what a narcissist does and what an empath doesn't weigh it's no bueno so an empath is the perfect victim for a narcissist because when we were talking about you complete me yeah it is a complimentary thing it really if you imagine a heart that's just the way that you would draw a heart and then an inverse heart and just put them together they're very complementary so a narcissist makes a lot of mistakes and looks for someone to make excuses for them an empath by nature makes accused excuses for people a narcissist needs fixing needs help and an empath naturally wants to fix people and wants to help people gives love unconditionally blames themselves for anything that happens the narcissist is always blaming and projecting blame so when he would blame me for things I would accept that and say yes you're right when he would say look at the way you're standing look at yourself look at your body language like who do you think you are when he would say those things to me I would think I'm a nobody you're right because we as empaths we take things we absorb and then we give all of ourselves and when you're completely depleted from giving everything within you you have no defense mechanism to tell that person that's not true about me because you're completely depleted they take everything out of you yes that's just how narcissists are so as an empath you would be called one of their supplies they come to you for whatever they need and so that is what I was yes an empath love it they obviously the empathy play they love to build homes in narcissists yeah and so you have to really watch this if you really think that you can change them and you cannot you can you can change you but you cannot change you but you can't change them and there might be short periods of time like here's the thing and I'm sure you know this but when you go through an experience where there's somebody who's very toxic to your well-being at a moment when you're contemplating leaving you think back to those very brief moments when he or she expressed to you love in their own way and you say they can do that I know they can true right yes so you hang on to those little moments hoping that if there's one thing that you do differently right you put the blame on yourself they changed because I change so if I go back to the person I was when they first met me maybe they will go back to the person they were when they first met me or they will treat me that way or that moment will happen again we hang on to those moments when they've completely moved on that's brilliant and you just help the millions of people with that help by the way that is absolutely totally true that's exactly how the mind works you go back to these little glimpses yes you think if I could go back to this other wow that's really good it's about a couple things I want to we're helping people thank you by the way because you don't need to be doing this and I want to say one thing about about her speaking to Nashua is an incredible speaker and I told her before we started the reason is if she has it by the way when she comes speak to your organization just so you know nobody moves are we talking about that the most dynamic screaming speaker in the world this woman wants out on stage I'm telling you no one moves no one's grabbed with her cell phone no one's looking around no one's using the restroom she she has this ability to have presence in silence like no speaker that I've seen and she uses silence she's comfortable in silence because the caliber of her content and the beauty of the way she writes things she will literally get up there at some points and just read to you what she's written and you'll be captivated by having it have hearing it come out of the mouths of the actual author so I want everyone to know you can go to her website you can go to her social media you're talking about a speaker that will reach people and I just know both men and women hearing this you've made so many points that are so profound but one things you talk about itself love and I've had I mean I've had professional football players on here who struggle with self-love who come up with that top people think that that's some sort of foofy New Age you and I will practice mindfulness mindfulness we're gonna hike a mountain and meditate and self-love is critical no matter who you are if you're running into somebody on a football field it's the key to a happy life it's key to opening yourself up to God even and so one of things I want to say everybody then I want you to talk about self-love because we're gonna unfortunately we're gonna run out of time too because this is so good I think it's wonderful when people should evaluate their behavior you should observe your own thoughts right that's what causes us to grow what really is your stuff is so observational you you really have the courage to experience pain you started to begin to finally step out and observe your own behavior your own life experiences evaluate your thoughts and behaviors which is what growth is there's a fine line though when you do that everybody I want you to hear between that and scrutinizing yourself observation and scrutinize ation are two different things observation is very healthy scrutinize ation is you begin to you know think something's wrong with you you beat yourself up for the mistakes you've made or the negative thoughts you have or the sins you've had in your life be careful everybody to toe that line of observation and not scrutinize ation of yourself you can't become your own worst enemy really constantly scrutinizing yourself and people fall into their habit once they go I'm gonna make some changes let me look at my life and I've watched people for many years of my life then they begin to scrutinize themselves as opposed to observe themselves and so there's just that subtlety then talk about self-love a little bit because I think it's one of the topics you write most eloquently on and I consider you to be an expert huh so what would you tell somebody what does that mean and how do we find it and why is it important so I I look at self-love very differently from the way that people say it in the past I remember people telling me go to a spa do this take care of yourself and to them self-care was just doing something with your time that it was bought with money basically yes right and so to me when I envision self-love I tell a person imagine that you are one of your loved ones and that you don't treat yourself in a way any less than what you would treat a loved one so if a loved one of yours was going through crisis what do you do you listen you are empathetic you're kind to them you're compassionate you do everything it takes to help them but when you are going through crisis what do you do something's wrong with you it's your fault you know if you could go back and do it's your fault something is wrong with you you yourself up yeah by criticizing yourself and scrutinizing yourself whereas if you were to imagine that you are one of your loved ones then you give yourself the empathy and the kindness and whatever that you would give to someone else sometimes that could be doing yoga right to think of things sometimes that could be spending time with yourself or spending time with someone that you that truly is healthy to your existence it's just it's it's like a trick once you imagine you know think of all the people that you love and then put yourself next that's beautiful by the way right yeah that's brutal tired of Tony want to read something to you yet I've got two things left yes I love this okay you know why I love this because I've never had anything like this on my program really know the people that are I knew I kind of knew but like it's just great than it's happening for me because I'm learning things I do the show for my audience but every once in a while I do a show and it's for me this has been for me so this is awesome and my camera guys are nodding which means within two so I want to read it just something from your book that I love this is from mine platter everybody and it talks a little bit about I think it's about intention but I want to read this to you and just get your thoughts but I want to read back to your own writing which by the way or my voice is just slightly different than yours would you do all of the things that you normally do if you knew that no one was watching when was the last time you did something good without anyone knowing about it and felt like you'd accomplish something we tend to wait for people to praise us for things that we do so we can feel that there was a value for what we did we had meaning to what we do through the way that we know people will perceive it and this is relative it is relative to who we are trying to impress at which time and for what purpose it is an innate drive that makes us want to be perceived in the most positive way by those who appeal most to us or those who have the power to have an impact in our lives it is not wrong to want to be perceived in a good way we all want to be good people but this becomes problematic when the praise that we receive becomes the purpose of what we do instead of wanting to do good things because of the goodness in our hearts we want to do good things because we want to impress others to seem to be better than others or even to compete with others when we have sincere intentions nothing can stand in the way of us feeling happy and content with what we do the beautiful part is that the rays of shining light will eventually penetrate through the darkest of nights and people see how truly good you are without you going out of your way to prove it some of the most beautiful plants have their beginnings unnoticed under rocks but that only makes them stronger if the goal of the Sun was to impress us with its light it would rise when we wake up and set after we sleep what you'll get when you read our stuff it's not it's not the same stuff you've ever heard before in your life what were you thinking when you wrote that and what's that mean to you I was saying you don't have to do things to impress people it doesn't always have to be about wanting to look good in other people's eyes or but I had done that throughout my life of course I I did where yeah all of us do because we are we see ourselves as the projection of what others see right I see myself as as I think you're seeing me and oh yes right it's the truth the Rays of who you are and your goodness will always strike through you don't have to go out of your way to tell someone look I'm a good person or prove to them that you're a good person or that you're a hard worker do the work me a good person and with time that will shine through and about the the beginning of many beautiful plants under rocks many people genuinely feel like they are under rocks and undiscovered as long as they are not seen or heard by the one or two people that they want to see or hear them right so I'm saying those are some of the most beautiful beginnings because you learn with time that your goodness is not based on somebody seeing you your goodness is based on who you are I read your stuff it was interesting I I took a minute and I just stopped and looked at myself in the mirror which by the way I get in front of a mirror every single day right so does everybody listening to this I see myself when the reflection of my mirror and my Carr yes it was interesting just as a practice I just did it I don't mean to sound who fee or hokey I just looked at myself in the mirror and I realized this is why the today was so important for me and by the way I'm busy helping people growing I think people look to me as advice I had not just looked at myself in a while yes I do like just looked at myself and it was a great gift and you're writing because it's been too long since I looked at myself and I don't know being honest with you if I was real familiar with that guy hmm right now I've just been so busy and you talk a lot about that topic and so I want my audience to know that it's an interesting exercise if you just stop for a second alone and look at yourself in the mirror and when's the last time you had a great conversation with you when's the last time you really took a look at yourself and so just talk about that do you like who you see in the mirror now has there been a time when you didn't and as if there's someone listening to this who Mamie hasn't done that in a while might not like that person is there any advice that you would give them it's amazing that you said that before my last question that was the most powerful thing I've done in a while I'm like you know what I need some time looking at me a little bit more right now and I'm going to be doing that so what would your answer to be hey I think I lived my whole life seeing a different person in the mirror and thinking to myself that when that person changes then I'll be okay because the person that I was seeing was the person who was not worthy of love and belonging not worthy of being heard or seen not worthy of any of the goodness that this life has to give and the period of time in my life that I became most foreign to myself was during that experience because I was being fed a story different from the one that I lived so you know the intention is for you to start feeling like you're crazy and I remember this vividly one night this is before anybody found out my whole family didn't know it was right before my dad went back to Lebanon because he it's us a lot where he looked at me and I was sitting on at the corner of the couch and he said I had just shared a picture of me on Facebook I was like this small I was wearing a red and white dress and you can't see my dad in the picture but you can see me holding on to his hand very tightly and I had shared that for Father's Day and he told me he said when I looked at that picture I there was a spark in your eyes and and I remember that day he said I remember when you were that small I used to look at you and say she's going places because of the look that you had in your eyes and and and he looked at me and this was very heartbreaking because my dad doesn't express his feelings either and he said I I don't see that look anymore and that hit me very hard however I was like nearing I was nearing the end of that period of feeling like I was done I ate up that story that was given to me and and that was it I was I was nearing the end that's how I saw it and I remember going upstairs honestly looking in the mirror and seeing someone that didn't resemble me at all I couldn't see who that person was and I've described it this way before I looked like like like when the sky is choking on greatness a grayness there is clouds and it doesn't know whether terrain or be sunny or whatever there's just so much darkness and so much not knowing what to do so much uncertainty and that that was close to the moment when I said I need to name this I need to name what happened to me and come to terms with what happened to me because my father is one of the people who have been there through from the beginning and he was all of a sudden reminding me of a beautiful version of myself of that look that I had and my goal was to get that look again and now when people it's so funny when people comment and say you look like you're glowing or you look like you something is different you're happy you're at peace I'm like I am actually happy and at peace and so now obviously I have those days when I go through that because and I'm sure many people out there would not want to admit this to themselves but anybody in our field you go through times where you're on a high of what people think of you right like he said this and he says and it gets to you whether you like it or not and so you start seeing yourself based on what they see and based on there was a period of time when I first started of course where I would say oh this post didn't do so well and I would and I would say it's because it wasn't I shouldn't have put it out there or whatever like we all go through that your validation isn't saying like the actual like means that I'm I'm okay but it's like it's a subconscious thing where you think something's wrong because you're looking for that validation of the outer world and so I stopped that a long time ago I started just I would post something and then put my phone away and not look at it and ask myself about my intention ahead of time is my intention to get likes mm-hmm or is my intention to genuinely help someone out there and when you shift that and you don't care if you get 20,000 or 1,000 you just don't care so an answer to your question do I still experience it on certain days I act I absolutely do I think it takes unbelievable courage to look in the mirror mm-hmm cuz you experienced some of that pain and then you're gonna grow from it I got to tell you my intention today was that you were going to help a whole bunch of people and that's what I hope I did you helped so many people today I also promised the audience in being that this would be an experience what I think you've not had an experience like this before you've heard things felt things there are people right now that different things you've said that they relate to them in this exact moment different story same emotions my message is to everybody the person that you want to be dress however you want project your image however you want but let that be because that's what you want not because you think that if you do something or are something that you're going to be a certain thing in someone else's eyes I've loved this me too me too yeah it's so cool really cool I wish it wasn't ending thank you so much thank you so you guys need to fall measure what we're gonna put it up on the screen here where you can find her on social media our website and Instagram and you're gonna want to read her books you're gonna get both of them mine platter and the nectar of pain you're they're just beautiful they're just beautifully written and she's just she's special so thank you thank you so much I was just glad to sit here today thank you so much everybody I hope you enjoyed today's show just want to remind you he already followed me on social maybe do the 2-minute drill on Instagram every day which means when I make a post on Instagram if you just make a comment within the first two minutes I do a daily drawing sometimes there's not a graph copy of my book one of my guest books coaching call with me I just did five coaching calls last week sometimes coaching call with one of my guests max out gear but every day engage in the max out community make a comment within the first two minutes we select the winner every day and if you missed the first two minutes just make a comment every day and at the end of the week we picked somebody who's made a comment every day too so there's all kinds of ways to win please share the message of the max out universe and of this program with your friends and the people that you love it's the fastest-growing program in the world and today is gonna be something's gonna change so many people's lives so god bless you everybody and max out [Music] [Music]

Channel: Ed Mylett

Views: 135,235

Rating: 4.9519944 out of 5

Keywords: Najwa Zebian, Ed Mylett, Finding home through poetry, tedtalk, tedx, lewis howes, courageous vulnerability, poetry, the iron lady of pakistan, muniba mazari, muniba mazari speech, how to love yourself, TEDxTALKS, muslim women, islamd and women, moslem woman, muslim woman, motivational speech, dan lok, impact theory, motivation, best motivational video, best motivational speech, best poetry, best motivational speech compilation ever, speeches compilation

Id: PtZPCi27EY4

Length: 54min 45sec (3285 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 05 2018