Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6KGsI6QzD4
if I'm not drinking or snorting something what the [ __ ] do I actually enjoy doing you know who am I Africa Brooke is a speaker a podcast host and she's helped hundreds of thousands of people see the world in a new light Africa does not give a [ __ ] and that's why I love her if you're on the left then you're the good person if you're on the right then you're the bad person we're hanging out online where these platforms incentivize binary thinking are you with us or are you against us there's only so much you can take most people didn't like when I said that as a black person I'm not oppressed that there is a very real difference between being a victim and making victimhood an identity because if you don't think that you're worthy that's always going to be the belief that you feed every single time what became your dark side from the age of 14 I was a blackout Drinker that's when I started to see that I was behaving in the exact same way that my dad did sex and sexuality can you talk to me about what you've learned about those topics that might benefit me well without further Ado I'm Stephen Bartlett and this is the diver CEO I hope nobody's listening but if you are then please keep this to yourself Africa [Music] let's I mean if you've seen this podcast before it's no surprise where I'm going to start but um I was reading about your story I was reading about um where you grew up and yes where you're originally born give me your earliest most relevant context give me the context of um where you came from and and how that context shape the person that sits here with me today oh that's good some Zimbabwean I'm from Zimbabwe and I think uh this accent always falls people into thinking that I was born and raised here but I was born in Zimbabwe which is in the south of Africa and I came to the UK when I was nine years old so I remember my life back home in Zimbabwe quite clearly and vividly actually I don't remember it being hard apart from my experiences with my father even though he could be the most Charming Man and he was such a beautiful man he was the kind of person that walks
into a room and you can feel that Maxwell has arrived just a very beautiful spirit but when he was drunk he could be very different completely different so I think the times that I can remember experiencing most of my sadness or frustration as a child was experiencing that side of my father because he could be very abusive and he was physically abusive to my mum and to myself and my siblings but I don't even look at those things and think that I had a horrible childhood in Zimbabwe I have so many wonderful wonderful memories of being home and I still call it home you know when people ask me where I'm from I always say Zimbabwe before I say the UK or that I'm British um yeah you know when you say that you look back on Zimbabwe with fun fun memories yeah um is that because at the time when in your household you didn't understand that behavior you didn't understand that it was bad behavior or that it was abnormal or is it genuinely because on balance you you consider it to be a a happy childhood yeah I think it's actually the letter I think I definitely understood that this wasn't right although to be honest there were a lot of behaviors that my father exhibited that were considered normal just because of the culture for example things like disciplining your wife through hitting her etc etc or your children it was just kind of seen as normal but I definitely knew that it wasn't right I definitely knew that there was a problem I knew that seeing a person that is that drunk was not something that felt comfortable it wasn't remotely normal I'm able to now I think an adulthood hold multiple truths which is something interestingly enough that I speak about a lot of my work the importance of being able to hold multiple truths because like I say about my dad I saw him as a bad person I saw him as an evil person even and he passed away in 2004 and I never mourned his death because of the resentment that I was holding towards him but then when I got sober years later I had to hold multiple truths about him to realize that he was a beautiful man I got to experience him in the very early years of my life as
being a very present father um as being a very loving father before alcohol came into his life in the way that it did so I had to then start holding multiple truths about him because it wasn't all bad so I think I hold those fond memories because I've had to realize that they did actually exist Beyond everything else you said in your 10 years you started to realize that he'd been um how bad he'd been to your your mother yeah how did you start to realize that at that age three stories um through speaking to my siblings about what we had all experienced in the home because we never really spoke I I don't know what it's like in your family or when you were growing up but we never really spoke about much especially when it came to things that were potentially hard to talk about things that it revolved around emotions and being vulnerable things that had anything to do with intimacy or a lack of intimacy even the most obvious things like seeing my mum being hit and not talking about it almost just pretending that it didn't happen so I think in adulthood when I started seeing how other families were when I started to see how open other people are I then started to see the lack in what I had experienced growing up so I think that's when I started kind of one I wanted to know more did anyone else see what was happening did my aunts and uncles know what was happening um why didn't anyone talk about it why didn't anyone talk to us why so I think I had so many why type of questions which fueled a lot of my resentment yeah some of the times you used there you said before alcohol showed up in his life as you'll know um these things tend to We tend to attract these things into our lives easily as you describe it as a a firmer lid to hold some trauma I think there's some terminology used previously um in some some of your work yeah did you ever understand the trauma that he
was trying to and bottle up using alcohol you know what that's something that is still unfolding because I think there's only so far that other family members will go in terms of really telling me and my siblings or anyone else that wants to know the reality of what was really going on but I think he was also from a family where people didn't really have many conversations his younger brother had committed suicide when he was 26 and there were other instances of mental health and that wasn't really spoken about as well because because culturally people just didn't talk about these things so I think there were things that he was suppressing that I'll never ever know about so I think I've had to make peace with the fact that I I won't be able to get all of the answers as to why and how I just have to understand what did happen and what I experienced and forgive where I can get answers where I can and also let go of expectations I had a guest on this podcast called Tim Grover and he he talked about his early upbringing he was he ended up being Michael Jordan's and Kobe Bryant's trainer and he says that um our childhood experiences tend to create our Brilliance but they also create our dark side and he referred to it as his dark side he told me about his dark side yeah um Dark Side can sometimes mean insecurities it can mean the the worst traits or character flaws within us but from the experience you had what became your dark side um oh that's a fantastic question you know what I ended up replicating pretty much the same drinking behavior that my dad had from the age of 14 up until 24 when I finally got sober so a decade long um I was a blackout Drinker I was a binge Drinker very specifically I didn't know when to stop because my intention was never to stop from the first time that I drunk it's almost as if something magical happened I realized that I could change who I was that I didn't have to feel insecure anymore that I didn't have to think about the areas in which I'm Different the areas in which can lead to
me being abandoned because I'm different and what I mean specifically by that is when I came to the UK when I was nine years old I always say this and I I'll continue saying it because it was one of the it's a something that I love her but it was quite big it was the first time that I realized that I'm black I had never Stephen had to think about it before ever had to think about it but we moved to Kent when in 2001 when we first came to the country and in my school it was probably me and my sister and one other boy called Curtis we were the only black kids in the entire school and I know you've shared your similar experiences with kind of just seeing just how much you stand out in an environment that you have to be in and we were living in Kent for about three years and then we moved to London but the imprint was already made the insecurity around who I was as a young black girl when I moved to London it was completely different because now I was seen as prissy I was seen as attractive but that was also very confusing in itself because I still didn't quite fit in because now to most of the black people that I was around I was white because of the the way that I spoke by the time I was 14 and I drunk alcohol for the first time sort of silenced all of those things I remember it was in a park with some friends and the more that I drunk the more confident I became or so I thought um and the more that I just felt at ease in myself and in my body and with the people around me even though I didn't stop binge drinking or blackout drinking from that moment an imprint had been made a pattern started to develop that every time that I drunk from that time the intention was to get [ __ ] up the intention was to experience that same level of comfort and confidence that I felt that first time and I tried and did replicate that same pattern over and over and over and over again for 10 years and that's when I started to see that I was behaving in the exact same way that my dad did so I think that's the sort of shadow that started to form lying that became a habit of yours it did
compulsive lying what what was compulsive lying doing for you on a psychological level what was it what was it allowing you to escape from or Escape where to was it allowing you to escape to um it was allowing me to feel accepted it was allowing me to sort of create my own world because the world that I'd been in a world where someone that was supposed to protect me and my siblings and my family um did the complete opposite and damaged our family in a very very very big way I remember that it did start in Zimbabwe when I would be at school and I was quite young maybe even six probably around six or seven I would go to school and sort of tell other kids about my dad and who he was and how amazing he was and all these things that he would he would do and parts of it were true but most of it wasn't most of it was just me trying to create a reality that I could live with a reality that made me feel safe a reality that made me feel comfortable a reality that other people could sort of step into for a moment and think wow that's that's incredible so therefore it would make me incredible in some kind of way so I think I started to get rewarded for that and then it just became habitual because any time that I felt like I wasn't fitting in in the way that I wanted to or that things were happening within our home that were just very uncomfortable and I didn't again have the language for that it was it was all just feeling knowing that something is quite wrong I would then go into a different environment and just create a story and I when you was speaking to example I think he was talking about something similar in relation to lying where he was saying kind of embellishing the truth if you will to kind of create a story and I resonated with that so much because I think that's exactly what it was for me just trying to create a different world and when alcohol was a part of that as well it was just even more explosive and I think there was something quite addictive about that being able to create your own reality and convince other people that that
reality is actually true um so it would it was definitely a big part of my drinking something that would come out it's so interesting because when you were describing why you lied a lot of people listen to this and think well I can't relate because I'm not a liar yeah but the lens in which I sort of heard that through is um pretty much everyone listening to this is lying for the same reason the words you used were to create a reality then you said I would be rewarded for and I found it better to live in and if you think about an Instagram filter yeah yes that's a that's a form of creating a world where you feel more comfortable and get more rewards for even like this the selection of the the online identity that some some of us create where we show just the very best or we try and change how we look or whatever that is surely a form of lying to get better rewards and to to create a world where you feel more comfortable and safer to live in yes like you you know and so lying is not just saying something which is not true yes it's a morphing of one's identity to create a safer I guess Identity or story yeah that the world might reward you for but in doing so you obviously abandon yourself exactly so it's like um another word that comes to mind as we talk about is is deception right it's a form of of deception and I think it for me it was not even just about deceiving other people it was deceiving myself so that I could live with myself better you know if I see myself through this lens um but yeah it's very interesting how we can hear certain words and think no that doesn't that doesn't resonate with me I don't do that but then it just shows up very subtly in the things we do every single day but yeah lying was a was a huge thing was a huge huge thing for me and it's something that I really had to look dead in the eye when I got sober six years ago um yeah going back to that that period where you were drinking yeah you were engaging in certain abandonment star behaviors to try and escape from you know this um who you were what is the cost of abandoning yourself what is the cost I know it's quite a profound thing but yeah what was the
cost for you of that continual for almost 10 years finding ways to abandon yourself the cost was that forgot to know myself I never got to know myself not in the ways that I really wanted to anyway I got I got to know the version of me that I thought people wanted so I wasted a lot of time doing that and there was also a very real mental cost because waking up next to someone not knowing where you are not knowing if you've had sex with that person there's a huge mental cost to that on your self-esteem it feels a lot of Shame if he was a lot of guilt because I would be in relationships sometimes when these things would happen not not have I cheated on my partner or was this just something innocent because my clothes are still on so it it really really had a huge mental cost so there was a lot of anxiety there was a lot of insecurity I would even say you know a low level paranoia because when you wake up not knowing whether you've done something but feeling like you will need to apologize for something um going through my phone just to have an idea of what I've done or what I didn't do who was I with how did I end up all the way in [ __ ] sorry when I was in SoHo not too long ago um so there was a huge mental cost but also there was a spiritual cost because just like I said right a few moments ago not getting to know yourself and then getting sober further down the line and feeling like you're a newborn baby I I didn't even know what I like to do what the [ __ ] do I actually enjoy doing if I'm not drinking or smoking something or snorting something what do I actually what do I enjoy you know who am I as an individual without all of those things can I even be by myself so there was a huge spiritual cost and once I realized the cost of all of those things it was around the same time that I discovered the concept of self-sabotage right when you get in your own way and that helped me so much just to even have that language to understand what this thing actually was why I had been in that destructive cycle for such a long time um I want to just on that point of the destructive cycle because when you were
explaining waking up you know um the next day somewhere you don't know you don't know what you've done the night before yeah and that giving you guilt to hurting your self-worth it's yeah it was my brain was going well this was meant to be the the medicine for a lack of self-worth yes and it ends up taking even more of your self-where so it's this kind of race to the bottom of your self-esteem by thinking that the medication is this kind of destructive abandonment behavior and it's and that's weirdly self-reinforcing so you do it to try and Escape but it harms you so much that you need that maybe that sort of surface level attention the alcohol even more so that leads you in the same place and that vicious cycle to the bottom of your self-esteem right and trying to pick yourself up out of that is one hell of a task oh yeah it's probably one of the most grueling things I've done which is why I actually I'm actually very grateful for all of those times that I did Relapse because I think I was reminded every single time just how much I wanted to break this [ __ ] cycle and how much I had to because it's so anything that is familiar anything that is familiar feels safe in some way even though objectively it might look like how is this person not changing their life clearly they're losing everyone around them and I'm talking about myself losing everyone around them can't even stay in any job for longer than a month unable to commit to anything incredibly unreliable how can they not see that something needs to change but the thing is when you are in that cycle of self-destruction self-sabotage if it feels familiar it's kind of all you know that when I would have those bursts of sobriety where I'd be sober for three months and six months and I didn't have any chaos I didn't have any drama I was reliable I people were saying that they're proud of me you know I could see that I was doing well it made me uncomfortable it made me uncomfortable because it didn't feel familiar and there was always this thing in the back of my mind that would sort of say you're gonna [ __ ] up anyway so might as well just might as well just do it now you know and that's when the justifications would
come things like I haven't had a drink in six months so maybe if I just have one it's it's going to be different you know or I would say things like um I have a problem with alcohol but cocaine is not the problem so maybe I can still have a line every now and again and then you know and then I can still be with my friends and so all of these justifications but when I really looked at it I was uncomfortable with my life actually being drama free chaos free and being reliable being able to be there for the people that I that I love um because I was just so comfortable in that destruction and I chose that every single time until until I didn't until I couldn't if someone's listening to this um and they're in one of those sort of downward um negatively reinforcing self-esteem Cycles yeah where you're carrying out a behavior because it because you have low self-esteem but then that behavior is actually resulting in a lowering of your self-esteem it can be a toxic relationship where you're staying because they took your self-esteem so you think that they're the only ones that can give it back but they're hurting you even more yeah I see that a lot in my DMs right it can be other what advice would you give to someone to try and break out of that um that negatively reinforcing self-esteem cycle um I think one of the things I think questions are always the best place to start I always like to think of self-sabotage and self-destruction as self-protection you're actually protecting yourself from something and a lot of it is unconscious you're not consciously deciding to get in your own way you're not consciously deciding to stay in chaos and drama because you just absolutely love it maybe for some people that might be the case but for most of us it's entirely unconscious but I think getting clear on what the benefits are because you're getting some kind of reward from it right because if you don't think that you're worthy if you don't think that you're lovable that's always going to be the belief that you feed every single time it's some kind of confirmation it's like a c i I see I said that I wasn't unlovable that's why I choose someone who shouts at me that's
why I choose someone who manipulates me that's why I choose someone who cheats on me over and over again that's why I choose someone who shames me or whatever the details might be so I think there's always some kind of reward that we're getting from that situation and I think it can be a very sounds quite abstract but I think it can be an important question to ask yourself what am I what reward am I actually getting from this and is this going to be worth it in the long term and all of this to me kind of sounds like shifting your identity and what you're used to and allowing yourself to get used to things that might not be familiar yet I think you also have to understand that when you're breaking some kind of cycle it's going to be uncomfortable that's why I'm a huge advocate for discomfort because I think a lot of us when we change a pattern the moment we feel uncomfortable even though it's good for us the moment we feel uncomfortable we'll pull the plug and we often pull the plugs so prematurely so I think one of the things that I would suggest and I say this to my clients and anyone that I speak to allow yourself to be in that discomfort because a lot of the time it's where you currently are with your identity and the identity that you're trying to step into someone who is more lovable for example but that middle part is going to be quite uncomfortable and you just have to stay there while things sort of reconfigure is that like because you're contending against two counters or counters yes yes and it takes time to believe a new story so you're gonna have to sit in maybe a feeling of him feeling like a bit of an imposter or you know what I mean it's almost like this evidence but right at the end of the day all these stories are backed by either true or false but it's subjective evidence yeah that's who you are and what the world thinks of me and what I'm capable of so that's it writing new evidence is not an easy or a quick no no and it's not supposed to be because I think um I think we also have this idea that it's supposed to be easy you know that kind of once you make a decision and you decide that you're going to do it that it should just work and if it doesn't if it's uncomfortable that means it's wrong
that means you should pull the plug that's not that's not always the case what she what do you still self-sabotage with or how do you still sabotage you know what it is for me romantic relationships and it always helps me when I'm very honest about the fact that this is an area where I still have self-sabotaging Tendencies so what that looks like is feeling when someone is trying to get close to me I will immediately start to feel suffocated I'll start to feel like I need to find something wrong with you so that you don't get too close even if I want you to get close but it's because there's a a part of me doesn't want to be vulnerable because vulnerability in that area means being exposed it means being raw exposed to what exposed vulnerable you know what I think it is I think it's a to put it very simply I think it's it's a feeling of if you really get to know me you might abandon me and I think this is not something that's even you know on a conscious level because I have a strong sense of self I know who I am etc etc but I think there is still those sort of traces from childhood from everything that I've experienced in my life that those remnants of that that have that voice that say if I really let you in and you actually get to know me you might abandon me so what I need to do I need to find a way to get in there first and abandon you before you abandon me so that might look like as I said once the person is starting to kind of get close I will feel suffocated I'll feel like okay it's getting too much I need my own space what's what's wrong with you danger yeah huh danger um where did you learn that model that a romantic relationship might be danger oh gosh I mean take a guess take a guess the the first relationship that I ever saw a man and woman a couple being together was my mother and my father and that's the model in which I had to kind of build my own idea of romantic love and what relationships look like so I've never wanted to get too close and I could never have said this to you before I
didn't have language for it but when I looked at the patterns from relationship to relationship I always thought that they had a timeline as well never going anywhere beyond the one year mark always feeling like okay that's enough we've done our time let's let's uh release yeah yes so I think um romantic relationships is one and I also had one in terms of money and this one I really had to nip it in the bud when I started my consulting firm five years ago I used to sabotage any opportunity to potentially make more money than my mum so my mum is a nurse so when I started sharing my sobriety story and I started realizing that I'm actually very good at what I do in terms of speaking in terms of supporting people I'm a very curious person and I do have a powerful story a powerful story that allows me to reach so many different types of people so it gained a lot of traction quite early on in 2016 2017. so I would start getting speaking opportunities in the beginning everything was sort of free and I was okay with that never had to negotiate things around money money was not something that was spoken about in my family growing up I don't know what it was like for you but the only time that money conversations were really had um was through arguments you would only hear Money spoken about where there wasn't enough money etc etc etc so I always had so many different money stories money is very hard to come by money doesn't grow on trees you have to work hard for money um so many ideas about rich people rich people are bad rich people are this and no one in my family explicitly said that but I think culturally it was sort of just a thing people don't have to explicitly say it culturally we all know what the stories are so when I would hear or get emails saying Africa we'd love for you to speak at this thing it's just half an hour what is your rate we're offering 3K um I would just experience so much discomfort knowing that my mum is working so many hours as a nurse on her feet and she's probably making half of that or just about that so what I would do and this was not a conscious thing until I started looking
at my money story I would let those emails sit any email that was saying I would be getting paid I would let those emails sit until it was too late they've probably offered someone else because I just felt so uncomfortable making money so easily so I would sabotage any opportunity to get paid but if it was free I will reply straight away I'll do it but when you're in business that doesn't [ __ ] work it doesn't work but even outside of that I I was shown that because I was incapable of receiving when it came to money I was incapable of receiving in so many areas I was incapable of receiving love fully because when I did I would shut down because a part of me thinks I don't deserve it I was then capable of receiving opportunities because I'd feel like this has happened way too easily I'm supposed to it's supposed to be hard but this is so easy so I would be suspicious of it and sabotage it so those are the two main areas that I've really had to do some work on over the past years on the first point um you were very much preaching to the choir there as I've talked about quite a few times on this podcast why do I see relationships as like a bird trapped in a cage or someone trapped in jail well okay well that's what my father was my father was trapped my father my whole life I I was convinced he was trapped that was my first model of what a romantic relationship was so of course it was the most um most evidence-backed yeah and so you've got a it's similar to what we were talking about earlier about like stepping into a new story yes and although every part of your being is going this is bad you've got to stay you do communicate with in this case the person say by the way this this happens so yes I struggle yes um and hopefully build new evidence and the right person can help you build new evidence I agree which is what my girlfriend helped me to do she helped me to build without by just being herself and not being a prison guard she created new evidence and that new evidence is strong it's not the old evidence is still there I don't actually think the old evidence will ever go oh I love that you say that Stephen I really do because I think it's again this idea that it has to go completely before we
step into the other one and I think that's what holds people back from fully stepping into their new identity because they think if I'm really supposed to be here and this is actually real and I have all of this new evidence that's not supposed to be there at all and I think again there's multiple truths they can coexist it's just what you choose to feed over and over again yeah and you you know if you think of spiders like I'm not scared of spiders but there's a part of me that goes there's a lot of evidence because I've seen other people running away from them I've seen films yes but I'm not I know like objective but I've got enough evidence to say that despite they don't even bite yeah you know no one's dying of spiders really but I'm still there's still a little bit of evidence be careful you know and I can exist with those two truths as you as you described it you're totally right though in the sense that people expect them that they will get to a place where they are healed and cured completely and I I just have never seen it me neither me neither never seen it ever and I think we have a current culture actually so I'm um I'm a coach and consultant and speaker Etc who's in the realm of self-help but despises the self-help industry for a multitude of reasons because I think it perpetuates that idea that idea of healing as if it's a destination yeah you know you sign up for this course get this book listen to this podcast and then it's it's done then you're healed so I think there's a lot of people that are in a very good place if you were to look at it in a very holistic way but continuously believe that they have to rid themselves of these very human things and this you know inevitable human discomfort that we all experience and they put labels on it to make it you know mean like it's this um so yeah I think there's a cult there is a culture right now where people are on this continuous journey of healing when actually some of these things won't actually go away completely and that's fine that's normal it's an interesting thing because there are some people out there as well I want to get your take on this
sure I've basically made healing their identity uh-huh it's their personal brand it's their space being broken and healing is there it's who they are and they've embraced that is that harmful and dangerous in your view absolutely I think it is I think it is because it's it again perpetuates another idea which ties into this that we need to be on this pursuit of constantly fixing something you know um and I think I've also seen people do that in the as you say it as a brand but people making it yeah making it the actual business their public Persona this is who I am and I think it encourages other people or makes other people feel that they need to do the same thing or that they need to sort of make their pain their identity as well you also see this with people um who uh contrarian just for the sake of being contrarian right I think that's why you yeah they just have to disagree they just have to disagree with you and they usually that's why when I talk about um you know this kind of seemingly a battle between the work versus anti-work I always see that essentially they're quite the same they're exactly the same you will have the people that are for example anti-work want to be contrarian for the sake of it you know screaming about how woke everyone has got if people are let's say talking about being inclusive they'll just label that as work it's the exact same behavior as they claim to oppose which I find very interesting how people can be so loud about something and be so convicted and be wanting to point out a specific type of behavior not realizing that they're behaving in the exact same way but I think it is part of that performance where people are being rewarded because they're performing in a very specific way and they see that okay if I perform in this way I'm going to get likes I'm going to get opportunities I get to to sort of feel it really feeds the ego as well when you have your Echo chamber and you have people that say yes to everything you have people that see you as some sort of um leader but I think it's building some very interesting characters online especially I wonder if both extremes so the far left and the far right I wonder if
they're just both low self-esteem yes yes because they're the ones that seem to need the the reinforcements yes I will be militant about these views because by being further over here I'm getting more people that are clapping yes you know whereas Nuance seems to be a place where you don't care much as as much about the Clapping yeah you're not really doing it for the clap you're doing it for in my view more for truth yes yes I I see that a lot and have you found um would you say I think from listening to everything you've said I I kind of have an idea of what this would look like for you but would you say that you're more in that Nuance would you say you've always been more in the middle or have you ever found yourself on either I used to think I was ever on the left yeah now if I think I'm somewhere in the middle yeah so um I can't what you described earlier is like an intolerance of ideas it's you know and both but both extreme side so the far left the far right are both just really intolerant yeah and I and they're not willing to have a conversation with anybody so I find myself being pushed more towards this center point where I find people like me people like you yeah I think I don't know where you consider yourself yeah the exact same you know what I don't think I've ever um even used language like I'm on the left or anything like that and maybe there's something about being an immigrant because when I speak to immigrants and people that are not from this country I think we have a different relationship with politics in general you will never really hear most people um saying that on the left or they're on the right I think it won't really happen most people are the majority of people really are in that Center in that middle ground I would say if you were to look at my values and what I stand for objectively yes I'm a left-leaning person but I don't make that my identity I don't look at everything on that side and say okay check check I agree with that everything is context dependent and there are many things that I agree with from different sides because I just look at what is the context what are we
talking about does this make sense to me is this applicable in real life um so that's the sort of process that I take myself through and it's neither left or right it's very much in the middle like everyone like the majority of people yeah I think the majority of people probably are but but it I think especially in this day and age it takes it's much probably easier because you get to fit in if you're on either side yes there's no Club in the middle yeah there's no you know what I mean there's no uniform yeah in the middle so you don't you don't those that might want to fit in and be reinforced by um a group aren't going to find that in the middle ground yeah pick a side do you actually see what I mean it's like yeah it's a club they have you know a uniform they have stickers they have like a schedule they have a doctor in they have Ten Commandments yeah this is why people join Cults isn't it it's true and you know what um speaking of Cults when I wrote when I wrote my open letter um why I'm leaving the cult of weakness I was really trying to have this conversation because essentially I I was speaking about what we're talking about now an invitation into that middle ground where most people are inviting people to acknowledge nuance and context to really realize that black people for example we don't all think the same we have very different experiences and we have very different opinions we have very different beliefs World Views most people um that identify as being on the left would not have that conversation with me it's only just starting to happen now the only people that would be willing to have those conversations with me would be people that would be seen as being on the right and I found that very interesting that you know when you look at being a leftist it is about being tolerant it is about um well I guess that would be what would what would that be would it be classic liberalism if you were to I guess so right um but even that approach is seen as right wing now so I understand why a lot of people really are getting pushed out of the left and more into the center because most people would not have that
conversation with me because the moment you critique something from the left you're labeled as being on the right which is just the most absurd thing I have ever heard um but I think now two years on things are starting to shift a little bit more I think people have stopped being so fearful of what is known as cancer culture even though I prefer to call it Collective sabotage because I think that's a much more accurate term for it I think people are being less afraid now to ask questions to be like actually let's let's hear what this view actually is we don't have to agree with it but we can at least acknowledge that it exists but I think people that are on the right from my own experience especially if we're talking about media Etc have been more willing to have these conversations and to have more debates and to honor that gray more than the left I've you know I've probably had thousands of tweets from people telling me that I cannot speak to that person on my podcast right thousands of tweets and I promise you I've never had those tweets from someone on the right yeah no matter which guest I get on and what they believe no one from the right has said Steve you cannot platform that person right it's never happened so and that that again you're not help you're you're basically going to punish me if I don't um say think and have conversations that are in line with your Doctrine yeah and for me that for me has been alienating and this is why I now consider myself to be more in the middle because I don't agree with that intolerance I think I should be able to have a conversation with anyone including Donald Trump right I I hope I never get to the point where I would not be willing to have a conversation conversation you know what I mean yeah that's a that's a that reminds me of like the I don't know 18th century I know nothing about history so I just named an old Century reminds me of the 18th century when they used to like burn books because they even want people to hear stuff yes and yes anyway speaking of controversial topics one of the things that's become surprisingly controversial over the last couple of years is and probably for a little while longer
um since the 17th century um is this idea of accountability which to me seems like much of the antidote to self-sabotage is like taking personal responsibility for your life and your situation I've heard you talk about this I actually think this was the first the first one of your first videos that caught my attention was you talking about taking responsibility in a really you know a fairly direct way so tell me how taking responsibility what that means to you but how that helped you to rise out of that phase you had from 14 to 24. yeah oh it was huge it was huge and it had to be one of the first things that I did actually as I as I think about this and sort of speak out loud I think what allowed me to get and stay sober that eighth and final time was taking personal responsibility I think all of the other times I had wanted to place blame on a lot of things outside of me so my dad would have been the easiest person because he was an alcoholic and because of his abuse and because of everything we experienced and because of the instability because of coming to a new country moving to a part of the UK where just me my sister and Curtis are the only black kids the adversity I experienced from that so I think there were so many ways that I could externalize right but I think the moment that I was able to say okay well Africa what part did you have to play in this so you've experienced all of this adversity what now what [ __ ] now no one else can do it for you and I think that helped me so much and another thing that I had to do which is a part of that responsibility and accountability was making amends so people that have followed the 12-step program for example will know that making amends is a huge part of it I didn't follow the toaster program I what's the 12-step program so 12-step is AA essentially Alcoholics Anonymous you go through a process a 12-step process of accountability essentially and one of those steps is making amends reaching out to the people that you've harmed and making amends and that's what I had to do and I I really did that and there was a lot of Shame there was a lot of guilt there were a lot of people that didn't want to hear it but there were a lot of people that were very grateful that even after all of these years I'm coming to
them and acknowledging something that I did or played a part in and only then could I actually move forward with my sobriety knowing that I am responsible yes I've experienced a lot of adversity but I am the one that gets to decide what now so fast forward to finding ourselves in a culture where even just conversations around personal responsibility are have been politicized because I've noticed they're labeled as right wing the moment isn't that weird it's mad isn't that crazy the moment you say you do realize there is a lot in your life that you can control you're called a bigot [Applause] I'm a puppet and I'm a victim there's nothing I can control it's and it's that political party that did this yeah okay so yes and that yeah it's [ __ ] crazy it's mad and I think I've I speak to my family and my friends about all of these things quite a lot actually and because I'm still very much in touch with everyone back home in Zimbabwe and because I have that perspective when I compare to that part of the world to the Western World it this just seems like a completely different world like some kind of show it can't be real that people can get upset to know that there are things in your life that you can control yes you might have experienced X Y and Z but you are responsible for how you move forward yes there might be other components maybe it is the system maybe it is your familial environment whatever the details might be but there are also things within your control the fact that people can label that as being bigoted the moment you say I I just wouldn't you want that to be the case wouldn't you want to have things that you can control the thought of being powerless yeah to my circumstances is the most terrifying thing in the world you know being being a being a big that's why I refer to it as a puppet that someone else is pulling these strings right and I have no I'm powerless to my situation so I think it's I find it empowering and liberating to say do you know there is a lot of things I can control yes I'm I'm broke
yes I'm in this situation but there are there's something that I can do yeah and I have to also Express the Nuance that you did which is there are a lot of people that are um that are disabled there are a lot of people that have found themselves in terrifically unfortunate circumstances through no fault of their own yes but I find it really important for my sanity of mind and my optimism for the future to know that there is something often there is something that I can do to change my situation absolutely that's a controversial idea imagine that would you have I couldn't believe the people typing out at you Rich [ __ ] with his cards what what what is it though do you do you think you know what that is yeah because it holds a mirror up to you it makes you feel like for some people and I think it was for me at some point as well holding that mirror up and saying you know what I might have had part to play in this and I'm actually I I can have a part in getting out of the situation for some people is it evidence of their inadequacy that they just don't have the self-esteem to confront so it's easier to blame blame is a nice a nice Shield it's a nice way to deflect the attack against my already fragile self-esteem I would do that of course when I was younger and someone might point at something blame was a way for you not to hit me in the self-esteem it was a way of saying no no no no that's not because I'm inadequate or because I'm not capable or I'm not smart or because I'm not working hard it's because of this other thing and so leave me alone Africa blocks yes it's like do you know what I mean that's that's my analysis a bit often is it's for some people it's it's look it's a it feels like evidence of their inadequacy yes and why what would someone not like that well because it makes you feel like [ __ ] yeah and I I think because we're also being encouraged I've especially the youngest generation who I really now more than ever want to make more of an effort to really speak directly to them is because I think we're we're sort of training each other to not prioritize emotional resilience because along with personal responsibility resilience is
also another controversial word you know this this idea that you can build a strong Foundation within yourself that even if something happens externally outside of you you are able to deal with it you don't have to go into that deep dark place and think that is that full stop so I think because most people are not emotionally resilient and are not nurturing and sort of cultivating that within themselves it continues that cycle where you just end up in perpetual victimhood and then we are in a culture that rewards victims you know and I I think self-correction there actually and I want to make this very clear that there is a very real difference between being a victim someone who has genuinely been victimized and making victimhood an identity there's a there's a huge difference between the two but I think when you start to make victimhood an identity for anything and everything that's when it might be time to actually hold a mirror up to yourself on that word resilience yeah I think the reason why resilience is in part at least why it's a controversial topic is because it kind of starts to merge into the lane of like mental health and resilient people when they think of resilience they think of like shut up and deal with it yeah you know what I mean yeah and then that that acts as in Conflict to them Narrative of like express yourself feel your emotions yeah it's okay to be not okay yeah so talk to me about the distinction you make between those two things and your relationship with both you know what I guess this is where I would bring it back around to holding those multiple truths because why do we think that we have to choose between one or the other why can't you be both emotionally resilient as an individual as a being and allow yourself to express yourself and allow yourself to be vulnerable and allow yourself to have those real low moments that we all do and I think both can co-exist it's really not one or the other so what is the opposite of resilience then hmm the word weakness comes to mind but I don't know if that's accurate I don't know if that's accurate to what I'm not sure but it's interesting because the word weakness comes to mind and maybe a part of me
or even for someone listening we we think associating the word weak to yourself means there's something wrong with you that it's a bad word I think there's this idea that it's it's bad to be weak or it's not acceptable to be weak but I think we all have moments of weakness but I don't know if that would be the opposite of of resilience what do you think um so if we're talking about emotional resilience maybe the opposite is emotional maybe fragility yeah maybe I don't know um it's something within that realm right yeah and the reason I I'm basically Playing devil's advocate was myself to see if to see if it is two truths because or if what we were describing earlier about being expressive and being in touch with your emotions is that being emotionally fragile or is that something else I wonder if another word that's coming to mind if some reason soft I think it's both possible to be soft and whatever you would consider hard because just in very simple language when I hear the word resilience you have to be hard there's something sort of it's not necessarily stoic but but it's it's sort of that kind of language where you're really fully grounded in yourself your back is straight you're internally up you know whereas the other side of that is maybe maybe there is an element of fragility which is fine I don't I don't think it's a bad thing allowing yourself to be soft allowing yourself to be um to not be as strong all of the time so I I think it's interesting thing because on one hand you're saying be resilient but then also be the opposite of resilience yes yeah yeah it can be context-specific Behavior so you can be resilient in the sense that when someone um pelts abuse at you and your Instagram DMS you have the resilience to not internalize that not let it um destroy your day or your mood and to move on but then you can be I guess emotionally you know then your dog might die I've got a lovely dog running around somewhere here yeah and my dog might die and that is real cause for emotional expression and to be emotionally to be soft and to be um open and to feel yes so maybe it's
context specific yeah I think so I think so but again I I think they can both coexist how did you get to this place of self-awareness because you know um I I you know we all know people who are repeating cycles and they have no either they're taking their responsibility for it or they just don't know that they're doing it yeah and sometimes as friends and this is again this is us looking in on this situation as if we know what's best for them so there's an error there but we look we see friends family going through cycles and they don't know what they're doing and they don't they don't understand themselves enough to the point where you are today where you clearly um you exhibit High self-awareness and understanding of yourself your past your behavior and the causes of it um one of my favorite quotes that I've ever written which is based on based on a friend I had was um you can read as many books as you like but if you can't read yourself you'll never truly learn a thing but you can also say you can read as many books as you like but if you can't read yourself you'll never make progress yes because you can have the information but implementing it requires understanding the being in which yeah you're implementing that too so how did you become so apparently self-aware you know what I think I've always loved to read I've always loved to read and to to hear other people's stories and to hear other people's thoughts so one of the first people that I discovered um the eighth time that I got sober was Carl Jung so he's a incredible psychotherapist who explores Shadow work and you know our Shadow Self Etc and I think through his work and then finding many other teachers many other mentors along the way um just through books mainly books and self-study I was able to finally have language for the things that I was experiencing internally so I think it helped that I did have that Foundation off already being quite a self-aware person but now having language for my behavior and I think just through different practices even reading something about why you know
lying to yourself is a form of self-betrayal it meant that every time that I was in a situation and I could feel myself about to lie I would kind of challenge myself to not and to just say something different or to just say what I actually mean so I think it's been a combination of self-study um reading tuning into the self-awareness I already had but using it in just a different way and actually stepping into the arena and practicing so I think that that has helped me kind of developed my sense of self over time what about writing and writing writing has always helped but you know what's interesting I found especially in those 10 years I would write in my journal as if someone was going to read it so I would lie what were you lying about in your diary oh that's a good question I was lying about how I really felt about my relationship so I was writing as if my boyfriend at the time would read it um so I wasn't being completely honest about how unhappy I was I wasn't being honest about cheating in our relationship when I was drunk um I wasn't being honest about my relationship with alcohol I wasn't being honest about how I really felt about one particular family member who I really wanted to heal things with um but it felt weird because we we didn't speak about emotional things in my family so there was a lot of resistance around medding mending that relationship even though I knew exactly what I needed to do um why do you speak about in past tense which part by that family member mending it you speak of it as if it's past tense what exactly did I say just um you're referring to it as if you haven't mended it I haven't right I haven't and I wrote that entry it's in the journal that I found the other day thank you for pointing that out um I haven't it's been seven years since I wrote that so maybe now it's bothering you can see it in your face really yeah
it does it does she was on that list of amends that I had to make back in 2016. and I made amends with everyone on that list apart from her and I see her quite often and there'll be times where I feel like I want to say something because there's not even anything specific that happened it's just the way that I was behaving at the time that I was in the height of my of my destruction and she had just moved from Zimbabwe to here and I was always her favorite cousin and we were so close and she was so excited to see me and to see me after all of these years and when she came she didn't meet the me that she remembered and I noticed that very early on and now we're much older seven years later I can still see that there's a part of her that feels hot in some way and I know that there's something that I can do and say to sort of break that but I just there's a lot of resistance around it because in my family they're just certain conversations we don't have but I've been starting to have those conversations with some family members but she's just the one person that I haven't done it with yet why I think there's almost a fear of the unknown of what our relationship will look like Beyond this and I know we can sound mad because someone listening to this might think just have the conversation I'm a huge advocate for conversations that are uncomfortable but when it comes to this for whatever reason there's a fear of the unknown even though I know that the unknown is going to be potentially a stronger relationship so you could say there's always a an element of self-sabotage when it comes to this but it's a fear of some kind of unknown around that any advice well I I mean I struggle with the same thing so let's not pretend that I'm perfect in this Arena but what's some of the advice that sometimes helps reframe the decision is you know taking myself to the to my deathbed and thinking about the decisions I would if this was if I was laying there and this was the last moments of my life would I
what decision would I wish I would have made on this particular situation yeah that's quite clarifying and it also it also cuts out this kind of unconscious feeling that I think we all have that there'll always be time to do it yes we can always do it next year yeah but we don't live forever unfortunately right we live under the illusion that we do that's why there's a sand timer on there it's just a nice reminder to me that I'm actually not infinite I'm finally and so that gives me a little bit of urgency to make um to live in a less Petty Way in a more a way that's more aligned with like my inner truth and my own values so yeah what would your you know if this were if you would touch wood diagnosed with something today and you you said you know what I'm gonna get my home in order um would you have that conversation I would absolutely have that conversation and you know what I'm grateful very grateful that you and I have just had this exchange because when I found that journal a few days ago and I saw that entry saying I need to speak to her I wrote I'm going to do this this week and I finished the entry with if I don't do this I'll never know what our relationship can be I'm going to do this this week and it was seven years ago I'm gonna [ __ ] do it this week you're gonna get a message from me saying she no longer talks to me she's blocked me on Instagram that's what the unknown was about wow my goodness and you know again what you've just done is hold a mirror up to side because I can feel a sort of tightness in my chest but I also feel kind of like a relief in my shoulders at the same time so it feels quite conflicting but it makes sense um because you've just held a mirror up to me because in every other area of my life whether it's business or life or writing I'm very sure I can have any type of conversation I'm very assured and confident and know exactly what I need to do but it's amazing how in certain areas there's still that sort of childlike or I can't I can't do this it's too much that's too big that's why having someone even in a
brief exchange that can hold a mirror up to that part of you and just ask just one question without asserting or trying to put forward a specific thing you should do um just a question that can kind of make you think oh I hadn't actually thought about that I mean I've got those things in my life too so like of course I have I've got conversations that I just we all we put off for various reasons and yeah I think one of the things as well that I that I often ask myself is like if you get too tied up in the outcome and it all come becomes outcome dependent what are they going to say how's it going to be you probably never make the decision but if it becomes based on like why do I need to do this for myself yeah irrespective of outcome you know what I mean then you start living more in your truth yeah and the second point I was going to say is that tightness in your chest it's an interesting thing because whenever we find ourselves in those situations where something is making us uncomfortable or you know you described as a tightness in the chest yeah the tightness in the chest is not gonna um doesn't leave us because we ignore it it just it it's like this little Insidious Force inside of us that will lead us up in little ways and we think often as I have in my past that if I just suppress or compartmentalize that right it will that's the best way to deal with it I think the way that we release whatever that tightness and the tightness in the chest is such a good indicator it means we've got work to do right right because think about that analogy like that conversation didn't put the tightness in your chest the tightness was already there yeah the tension was already there yes you just it just came to the surface yes so the way to never have the tightness again is to release the the thing the thing the young addressed yeah one of the things I've heard you talk about a lot is your your journey and your evolving relationship with sex and sexuality and how that changed from when you were very young through the period when you were drinking a lot um till today can you talk to me about
that Evolution and what you've learned about those topics that might benefit me yes absolutely so I'm going to sort of keep referring to my sobriety in that period of my life because it was so transformative and it revealed so much to me so much that I could have never imagined at the time so something that also happened when I got sober I think this was about a year into my sobriety I realized just how much sexual shame I was holding so much of it and I initially sort of wanted to fix it wanted to do something about it what are some surface level things that I can do what can I read what can I sort of dive into how can I deal with it from where I am now as a 25 year old but I quickly realized that I actually had to trace it back to see where it even comes from and I realized just like so many things it did come from my childhood being raised in a Christian home I learn again not directly more so indirectly that being a sexual being was not something that was of God it was not something that was supposed to be a part of who I am pleasure was never discussed sex was never discussed even Intimacy in general I never saw my parents hold hands I never saw my parents hold hands I never saw them kiss I never saw them hug I never saw any sort of affection but I knew that they loved each other I knew that they cared about each other but affection and intimacy I just never saw that Not For a Moment did you see that growing up um it's a really interesting one because I'd say I'd say yes and no so I say yes because below the age of maybe eight maybe I could've got memories of that and then above the age of 10 um no and I call my parents by their first names okay I really struggled with with intimacy because of the exact same reasons right even the word best friend made me cringe until the age still kind of makes me cringe now like when people would say it or call me their best friend this is part of me like Steven meets like it's just a bit even boyfriend would make me like ah prison me too that's why when I found the word
partner I was like okay yeah stand next to each other we don't oh my goodness so when I sort of wanted to really understand where a lot of the sexual shame was stemming from or just more so even outside of sex intimacy intimacy feeling very disconnected to other people when it came to intimacy but also from myself I realized that I could only be expressive as a sexual being if I was drunk or if I was high if I was in that place where of course my inhibitions are low but I had no insecurities I didn't have to feel like I'm doing something wrong I didn't have to feel like my pleasure was wrong but then when I got sober all of those things came to the surface and then I I had to look that in the eye so that also became something that I started sharing over time as well as sort of sharing my journey with sobriety I then started sharing the things that were revealed as a byproduct of me getting sober and sexual shame was a huge one was a big part of that my relationship with sex has evolved a lot yeah over over time I think it was early in my early years influenced by porn yes for many people so me too that's the way I went into the game in trying to be those those male porn stars right and I think over time and I think there's this wider issue in our society specifically I've got to be honest with men yes um what they think that what they think sex is in terms of this kind of very aggressive often dominating transactional um encounter yeah and then there's you know again I'm just I'm just talking freely I don't give a [ __ ] whatever please do please but I'm seeing a lot in my in my close friends they're all in relate they're often in relationships not all of them where they're having problems with their sexual relationship with their partner they're basically saying things to me and I'd say this is crazy I'd say 75 to 80 of my male friends are saying my partner doesn't want to have sex she doesn't like having sex yeah and I was there at one point too my partner said that to me at 1.2 yeah and I took it on face value I thought they don't like sex what I came to learn is that wasn't true but that what what
I'd learned to be sex and what I was bringing as sex this kind of aggressive you know whatever was not yes the language that they spoke right and I feel like I'm surrounded by men that need to start seeing sex as a language because then you can ask yourself well actually she's speaking Spanish and I'm speaking English that's why it's not she doesn't like English she just doesn't she speaks a different language yeah I mean yes that's a lot I'm just dumping that on YouTube no that resonates so and I'm I'm really glad that you said this because I think you're speaking something that is on so many people's minds or something that they've just never really put language to and a big part of my Awakening if you will and really addressing that sexual shame is because I also learned sex from porn at 10 years old 10 years old so by the time that I had sex for the first time when I was 14 it was very much like a porn performance to put it very simply and I speak to so many people men and women about this very specific thing a lot of us learn that we should perform that sex should be driven by orgasm and ejaculation and this sort of production if you will which is not actually accurate for most people when it comes to what really actually feels pleasurable especially for women so I started to realize when I got sober that every time that I was having sex for example I faked every single orgasm it was all a perform I didn't know much about my body because I'd learned from porn and because the men that I was with had also learned from porn we were just in a performance and no one's actually talking about it right so in time times when I was in relationships and I made myself think I don't want to have sex I don't want to have sex anymore it actually was not that I didn't want to have this type of pornified sex that's what I actually meant so what you just said is really important and I realized that's when I found tantric sex actually yeah that's when I found tantric sex around 2018 because I realized that I had always felt like sex was being done to me yes that I was not a part of it and that is how most women feel I I felt like I needed to apologize yeah because that's what that's what I came to learn yeah was that the the
reason why the person I was with had turned around to me and said I don't like having sex is and when we got talking about it after I acted like I mean let me be clear the first time she said that I did not understand my little Neanderthal monkey brain went uh like I was emasculated by it yeah it made me feel what is this something that I was I didn't know of course ended up breaking up but this person got back with this person a year later when I was maybe a bit more mature I apologized and I said I want to have a conversation and I also said to her that I'm going to be here regardless of whether we have sex or not yes and then she could she had a safe enough space to start talking to me about it and what I discovered is she'd been with should I add three previous boyfriends over the course of seven years her view of sex was this person comes and takes from you treats you like this object and he was with him for five years treats you like an object takes what they want from you and then he was actually going and cheating on her as well right so Not only was he taking he was then like hurting her and that cycle just repeated her relationship with what sex is was really really toxic she didn't like that yes she didn't want that anymore yes and that's what she and me probably referred to as this word sex so it was kind of like learning a new language of sex and what it actually is she went from the place of like I don't have sex anymore to absolutely loving to have sex yeah I didn't think it was possible I thought if they don't like sex dump them yes you know I'm gonna go find someone else right that will let me take yes and you know what you you've articulated that so beautifully in terms of sex being a language and it's going to look different for every single person because something that I realized is that I could tell when I was with a man sexually I could tell if they were sort of if it was like a script almost like a play-by-play like this is exactly the method we do this we do that switch into this switch into that it wasn't sort of flowing and very intuitive as to what's actually needed in that moment which reminded me of porn and I would also realize actually and this is something
that I've spoken about so much because I ended up um starting a sexual wellness company called Cherry Revolution over time and I realized that even some of the positions I would get in were very much like porn because certain positions in porn are like that because the camera is there not because it's comfortable because that's the shot for the viewer to be able to see it so when I started to see that I'm starting to replicate this in my most intimate private moments but we're both doing it I made myself believe that I didn't enjoy sex so then drinking and drugs and everything that came with it I felt like those were the moments that I could be fully expressive without needing to perform which is very interesting because you would think it would be the opposite that I would then perform more but I felt as if I could actually speak my mind if I didn't enjoy something can we try this can I do this instead or I just want to give or I just want to receive can we be slower and then when I was sober I felt like I couldn't say those things because if I say to you as my partner I might be emasculating you I might be embarrassing you you might think something is wrong so I would just perform and you're performing as well and then it just causes a huge disconnect so tantric sex was the first thing that I came across that made me realize and really articulated that sex is actually not a specific destination did you know that you can actually enjoy sex without uh ejaculation that you can have a full body orgasm that you can be very slow that foreplay can be the main thing that you do that you can experience orgasm without penetration just so many different ways of articulating that experience of sex and it's just that an experience and that changed so much for me it's such a sort of a narrative violation for so many people who've spent their whole life watching porn and then yeah recreating it this idea that you can have an orgasm from touch that you can use energy to to cause someone yeah orgasmic pleasure and yeah um yeah I do that's it's a really important topic that I think people need to talk about a lot more and I think just just saying to someone that's listening to
this that might be in a relationship where they're not they're in a sexless relationship yes just proposing the idea that what if you both just speak there's just say there was ten languages what if you're just speaking the wrong language right you know what I mean and what approach would you then take you'd probably try and learn the language yes yes and also communicate to them what language you speak and see and see how you can be bilingual I guess yeah you know what it it reminds me of um are you familiar with Love Languages and and that that whole thing yes I realized that a lot of people expect someone to give in the way that they like to receive you know so no one really says okay how do you like to receive love how do you like to give love and the moment that I started asking those questions even though I believe I [ __ ] cringed in the beginning I'm like really if I get it but you get used to it yeah and if they run off it's Stephen it's been a game changer to just ask the person that I'm dating or my current partner to be like how do you like to be loved how do you like to receive love and how do you like to give it um because just those simple questions can change so much and then you can use the same with sex what do you like and what do you not like what have you changed your mind about what do you like to do now and again or maybe not so much sometimes um how much time do you need how does your arousal actually work and I know that some people might not know how to answer these questions for themselves so it's actually very good to start asking yourself those questions before was speaking about it with someone else these are questions that you can just start to ask yourself before introducing them to someone else but they can they can change so much because I think we get into relationships and make so many assumptions based on our individual experiences and our world view and we expect the person we're with to reflect the exact same thing back to us but we don't we don't ask questions it comes back in many respects what we were talking about earlier this kind of binary approach to life they either fit or they don't uh-huh there's no space
for conversation and nuance and and and I guess um Mutual development together like towards the same this idea that you have to actually build and develop a relationship towards a place of um satisfaction as opposed to finding your perfect soul mate or perfect fit right I'm gonna find someone that likes to have sex like I do that likes to talk like I do that likes the things I do as opposed to this kind of molding towards being more cohesive together I love that term Mutual development and it makes me think actually that this is a term that can apply even outside maybe even especially outside of romantic relationships this idea that people don't have to be perfect that they don't have to exist in the way that I want the world to be or in how I expect them to be maybe we can actually mutually develop a different perspective together because we're two different beings coming together my most successful relationship my current relationship we are completely different really we don't believe the same things we don't believe the same we don't have the same fundamental beliefs yeah the reason why it works is because of one very simple thing communication a very healthy high respect communication yeah where everything isn't an attempt to win it's an attempt to like genuinely understand to move forward yeah and I think you can have two people that are that went very very different things whether it's in sex or in business or their beliefs about religion and spirituality be bound together as long as they have respectful communication I agree you know what I mean I guess empathy is part of respective education yeah this is a bit of a left field question but it just came into my head yeah because I remember a previous guest writing this in the diary after they left very left field what is the pain that you enjoy having oh I won't give my x-rated answer let me think of what is um I experience a lot of growing pains now more than ever now as my especially in the past I would
say four years as the work that I do in the world reaches more people and as I'm I'm constantly stretched in a lot of ways which I really do enjoy but it challenges my sense of self I think sometimes it can feel painful to shed aspects of my identity and I actually enjoy that I enjoy that because it is part of my growth process and this is not a PR answer or anything like it's the absolute truth I experience there's the discomfort that I experienced but sometimes it's painful because it means that I have to make decisions that scare me it means that I have to allow myself to be fully seen and really step into that idea of being visible um and with a with visibility comes a lot of vulnerability as well so I think that is a pain that I enjoy and will gladly accept and then the x-rated thing that I will not say that's that's the thing no no this one I'll keep to myself thank you we just want to monetize this episode can I can I turn the question back onto you of course you can what is the pain that you enjoy the gym now I'm joking no um the first answer that came to mind quite honestly was heartbreak and I tell you why because heartbreak feels like the most intense pain that I think I've ever experienced the most all-consuming um like black hole that I've ever been in is just like having my heart broken but at the same time that pain for me is evidence of so much it's evidence of my ability to feel so deeply and so I almost feel sorry for people that never get to have a heartbreak because you never get to feel the full what I think to be the full spectrum of your heart so it's not something that I would ever wish for but it's something that is a real indicator that I had a chance to feel so strongly a bit of a weird answer but no no no not at all not at all thank you I am so excited to announce our new sponsor for this podcast and that is Blue Jeans by Verizon for any of you that aren't already familiar with blue jeans they are a video conferencing and collaboration tool who offer an immersive communication experience that drives pretty unparalleled employee and
customer engagement experiences me and all of my teams across all of my portfolio companies switched over to Blue Jeans a couple of months ago and we have not looked back the best thing for us has been the totally frictionless experience no glitching no sound issues no delays or any of those things that usually make virtual meetings really really frustrating we use blue jeans anywhere on any device at any time and it's perfect for my small businesses that just have 10 or 20 people to some of my bigger businesses that have hundreds of people I'm a big fan as you can probably tell so I've been quite excited for for some time to announce this partnership and in the coming weeks I'll explain the features and really why it's perfect for you if you haven't considered using or switching over to Blue Jeans yeah but if you can't wait head over to Blue dot com to learn more honestly it's been one of the real sort of game changers in my business what ideas or beliefs do you hold to be true that pretty much everyone else disagrees with things that you are sure are true yeah but most people I'll tell you one of the biggest ones that uh most people didn't like a couple of years ago when I said um that is a black person I'm not oppressed and I mean you could say that anywhere else in the world and it'll be like yeah of course we we understand but people maybe a small minority but a very loud minority especially at that time where everything was so overly politicized really didn't like me saying that as a black person here in the Western World having have come from Zimbabwe a country that is the population is genuinely truly oppressed and I know what that looks like I'm I'm not oppressed I'm not oppressed because of my race I don't see my race as a burden yes there are things that I've experienced a lot of adversity that I've experienced I know the reality of what it means to live under the systems that a lot of us do in and out of the western world I acknowledge all of that and at the same time I'm not oppressed as a woman I'm not oppressed yes there are oppressive systems and things that absolutely have to be questioned and looked at and there are many things that I advocate for where
people are truly oppressed FGM is an example I'm a huge advocate for working with survivors of FGM female genital mutilation so I work with a lot of groceries activists I do a lot of work around that so I understand what oppression looks like sex-based oppression but for me as a woman I as an individual am not oppressed um and I think a lot of people didn't like me saying that but for some reason because I think some people saw it as me undermining black people or undermining women which is very odd you know to to even think about so I think that's something that is to me completely non-controversial that was seen as a controversial statement to make maybe because of the climate at the time but that's one of the things that I can think of that's a decision you're making it's a decision you're making not to feel not to label and stick it on your chest again yes I'm an oppressed person yeah why are you making that decision I think not I think I I know why I wasn't raised to see myself as a victim I I just wasn't culturally or in my family home or with everything that my family and I or I as an individual have been through I have never for one second apart from the moments where I needed to misplace my own anger and outrage and blame onto other people around me I never saw myself as a victim to the world so I think for me it's not even a conscious decision that I have to be like okay um it just is I I don't see myself in that way I don't walk through the world thinking that my skin color is a burden I know that there are things that I might experience because of it I'm very aware of that I don't ignore that but I don't see that as the only truth or the only side of the coin so it's always been quite easy for me to say that and a few years ago I did I never would have had to declare anything like that at all but I think something happened especially in the past two years where to even sort of see yourself as a powerful individual means that you're taking away from other people yeah which is not truerto I've just never seen myself as a victim ever
ever and I won't I won't do it why not there's a real cost to that just like we were talking about before there's a mental emotional spiritual cost to that and I I just won't [ __ ] do it um and I think it's a lie it's a lie to make myself believe that I'm a victim and that I'm oppressed and I I you know I'm a powerless individual I'm not I'm not are you no I'm not I can tell yeah yeah that's why you know it's I get asked this question a lot when I do talks is about you know discrimination Steve obviously you know being a guy a man that was born in Africa I've got a black mother I'm I'm I guess I don't know what the politically correct term is so I'll say the more mixed race Brown well I don't know what the correct term is so forgive me uh half cast I don't know Brown okay yeah Brown I think you are um did you not experience discrimination in business I get this question a lot and to me it's it's a fascinating question because my brain goes I don't care yeah because I can't control it anyway yeah even if it were I'm sure it's true I'm sure there's multiple moments in the rise of my career when I went into boardrooms and everyone there was four times my age and white I'm sure there was um prejudices before I even opened my mouth yeah that acted for and probably against me the thing is I can do nothing about them in terms of in that moment and in my my day-to-day life I can't I can't cure your Prejudice or discrimination and I don't think it's my responsibility to right I see my responsibility as like doing the best that I can with where I am and with what I have and I then heard about this thing called labeling Theory where in Psychology if you're given a label it then has a big impact on your future performance so yes if I call myself um if I label myself as oppressed or at a disadvantage I will start acting like I'm a disadvantaged person I'll show up with less confidence with more pessimism and um and all of those things are probably going to be more harmful than the Discrimination itself absolutely so it was a it was it was a decision that like to focus on what I can control on a on a macro level of course you fight
every opportunity you have for equality and to end systemic discrimination and to educate people better yeah from a very early age and to change the way that media looks and to have more black podcasters as we've done a big campaign around and all of those things but on a day-to-day do I want to burden myself as you say with um a label which I don't think will help will serve me right will help me show up better the answer is unfortunate is no and that is my personal decision and yeah others can do with their life what they wish to yeah um but I don't think it will serve me and you can again this goes back to holding two truths you can you can choose not to be oppressed but then also fight for those that 100 will fight for equality at the same time absolutely it's not to diminish the authenticity of the issue um no and I I also another reason why I'm very Fierce about this um is because I think as we have those conversations around representation Etc I think we do need to see more people whether it's black brown what have you people that are in the minority depending on where they are um I think we need to see them positioned as powerful Sovereign beings so the reason I'm very serious about the conversations I have and saying no I'm not oppressed I do know what oppression looks like and I will continue to Champion for as you say equality Etc but I it it's actually my responsibility to claim my power as an individual who inhabits a black body it's actually my responsibility this has to be a part of the representation conversation we can't always just want black people to step forward to talk about the struggle because just like you say I started to notice actually that every panel that I would get invited to do all the interviews it would start with something along the lines of so Africa as a black woman yeah South Africa as a woman of color what have you experienced nothing what if I haven't experienced any kind of what if I don't have some kind of story because I started to find that it would put me into a position where I would kind of feel like I have to find a story where something but what if nothing happened you know why can't I just be seen as a writer as a consultant as a business
owner as an entrepreneur without being a black entrepreneur or a black speaker or all of which I really value and I see the importance in recognizing those things in those specific terms but why does it have to be positioned in such a way where I have to look for adversity connected to my race so I've really started to be very firm around that and to reject that and in in interviews to say I'm really curious to know why you opened the question like that you know and sometimes people don't even realize they're doing it because they've it's just become a script you know that would be a terrifying rebuttal if I if I'd asked you that I was and I was not in a minority right I'd be terrified because you're right there's there's almost this assumption that you're going to be the voice of Oppression on this battle so we're gonna come to the yeah depressed now and we're going to ask you about oppression right so I think there's a bit of cognitive distance where then someone like me says actually no I'm not oppressed people don't kind of know what to do with you then it is really yeah Violet's a bunch of narratives right and that's a good thing Who You Are no Africa you are but you and don't forget that and be but Stephen that happens yeah I know that happens in some messages that you get how how can I deny how can you deny that you're oppressed I've had people tell me um so that's very interesting because it tends to be white people a lot of the time that do that because they they kind of and in a way I sort of can understand where they're coming from and that they really want to stand up for something they really believe um this idea that every single person that fits into this identity Market thinks and behaves and has had this experience so they don't then realize that they've become quite regressive in their quest to be Progressive which is very it's very interesting I had the most interesting conversation um about racism on Twitter many years ago where um I think the I think the trending topic
of the day was like you can't speak you can't tell a black person what racism is or something like that and so and I'm saying well no like racism can go both ways I I can be racist to a white person yes I can be I can not give someone a job because they're white I can discriminate against them purely based on their skin color I can be and this one this this lady online was arguing with me basically saying no white people can't tell a black person what racism is she was saying that to me and I literally you're telling me what racism is right now yeah and that is totally okay yes and she apologized she went you're completely right I should never have spoken she literally went I should never have told you what racism is she got herself caught in her own right because she abandoned truth and she just started falling in line with this like yeah binary nonsense narrative that white people can't talk about races yeah what are you [ __ ] talking about yes to be honest as well like I'm half white right I've got this luxury I can shape-shift so yeah so does that mean because I'm half white I can only half talk about racism right because it's also racist just to say that I'm black that's just picking one half of my identity right so see how this entire thing falls apart the more that you sort of you interrogate interrogate anyway you blowing it it just [ __ ] crumbles because it's just [ __ ] it's propped up [ __ ] by people that are virtually signaling right just don't know what they think or believe so they've just gone with the cult it's like yeah it's the script it's the script that's why I think um questioning and it can seem so simple but questioning can really allow you to sort of snap out of this trance because a lot of it is it's a trance it's a script that people repeat and you regurgitate that interrogation right it's like you wake up in the morning you go to your like your side and then they give you the the beliefs the 174 beliefs that you have to believe and you go okay cool got it and you you don't even look at it you just insert it in your little it's like a SIM card they just put it in your brain and you never understand why you believe these things because they're not
your beliefs yeah someone said to me one day they said um if you if you believe the same things as everybody around you they're not your beliefs and it was a really interesting thing because it's true that's powerful but think if you believe every if you believe pretty much everything that everyone around you believes they are not to your beliefs they're the beliefs of the society you lived in if I moved you to Germany at a certain time you might well have had a different set of beliefs exactly you know what I mean yes or if I moved you back to the you know in my history's Goods the 16th century when slavery was Rife yes and you you had a slave you might have believed it completely different set of things but okay and normal so beliefs there's there's very little correctness to it to many of them if happiness is this recipe that contains all of these essential ingredients in order for you to make the the dish of happiness what is your recipe which ingredients are you currently lacking for that recipe which ingredients am I lacking for the recipe of happiness you said that much clearer than I did I should just use that just before we take that when she's gone no question um vulnerability yeah really really I would surprise a lot of people yeah and it's tied to what I mentioned around romantic relationships yeah allowing myself to be more vulnerable I think that could allow me to have access to layers of happiness that I haven't yet experienced that's what comes to mind but it's a it's a it feels like a very big question because I think it makes you well it makes me have to think about even just with the word luck it makes me have to sort of turn that mirror onto myself um yeah but I think honestly I'm able to be vulnerable in so many other areas but if I think about the happiness that I could experience in terms of romance vulnerability
it's funny when you think it when you're answering that question I was thinking about the analogy of ingredients and one of the things that um makes a recipe go bad isn't a lack of ingredients it's the wrong quantities yes which is probably what people call balance yes if I put a fourth egg in when it says three eggs the recipe goes bad right so as I think about that in terms of balance you think about the scales of ingredients that you're weighing up you've got to get the right quantities of each ingredient in order to make a great recipe sometimes I think in my case I maybe have too much of I have too many eggs yeah you know what I mean too many eggs in the basket I have too much professional commitments and I've I've I don't have enough sugar which is maybe romance and that kind of connection yes so maybe one can have all the ingredients there but just have the complete wrong quantities yes to ruin the the recipe that's a good one we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest writes a question for the next guest what is the crazy big idea you would try if you knew you could not fail I want to start off first of all or a huge annual event that is a place for all of us to express our Unthinkable thoughts and it's going to be a place for people to come and see what honest raw and filtered respectful compassionate communication looks like in real time and I want this to become something that is global I want it to become something that has a life of its own outside of me and I've wanted to do this for a very very long time um and I know that I'd be able to do it very well but I think it's it feels scary because I know that I could do it very well yeah and I've never shared that out loud um I'm not sure if I understand that last part it was still scary because I know I can do it yeah that doesn't make a lot of sense to me it does really yeah
and I'll tell you what I mean by that it's almost like that feeling that I was telling you off when I would get emails and offers to speak for half an hour which comes so easily to me and get paid so much money so I would resist it because I know that I can do it and I know that I'm going to get rewarded so much from it which means that there's a leap in identity that has to happen which feels quite scary so it's almost the same with this event and this idea that I have and it's it seems as you say like it doesn't make sense it's scary because you know that it's going to succeed it's scary because you know that it's going to work um and something that I've had to work on over time is the fear of success yeah so this event and this thing that I want to do is sort of linked to that it's a barrier that I have to break and will um so yeah what a great question Africa thank you um I wanted to speak to you because I saw so much so much nuance and truth and um importance in the way that you communicate but also watch you communicate and so it's very rare these days that I will DM someone out of the blue and say you should come on my podcast yeah and that is just a for me that is a um a sign of how much I respect what you're doing and how important I think it is to have conversations that are you know there are Unthinkable thoughts and that are fearless and that are um challenging whether they are right or whether they are wrong I'm a big believer in just being able to have the conversation because I think that is the starting point of progress where you can where two ideas can Clash and then they can merge and find the truth and move forward as maybe one shared idea um and there's not enough of that there's not enough people like you that are doing that so you I have a suspicion I have a very big suspicion that you are going to be a very important voice on a global level and that you are going to be a star I really believe that because you're very rare and it's an important rare it's a very important round it's a it's a hopefully it's a flourishing type of rare but it's it feels like it's
become a bit of a Dying Breed of rare and people that are willing to have conversations um regardless of how they might be perceived right by those that receive those those conversations so thank you for being that voice in society and I think this is just the start of our friendship if I feel that might make you cringe because yeah friendship please more of them we are best friends yeah let's say okay we'll revisit that yeah we'll get back Stephen thank you um you know what I was saying to my friend Emily that I was really just looking forward to this conversation because especially in the time where everything is so heavily politicized and people are sort of lead with identity and what it means to be a certain person I think I was just really looking forward to having this conversation with you because of the work that you do beyond the work in itself your curiosity and your willingness to sort of learn and to be open and to change your mind and to be corrected and to also be assertive but to also be soft and to just allow for ideas to exist openly without disagreeing or agreeing just hearing I think it's yeah I think it is you know something that is quite rare but I think through conversations like this it actually causes a beautiful ripple effect so I I do think this is the start of a friendship so thank you thank you I had a few words to say about one of my sponsors on this podcast for many years people have been asking for a coffee flavored Hill and quite recently he'll release the iced coffee caramel flavor of their um ready to drink Hills and I've just become hooked on it over the last couple of weeks I've been on a really interesting Journey with huel which I've described and talked about a little bit on this podcast I started with the berry ready to drinks then I moved over to the protein salted caramel because it's 100 calories and it gives you all of your essential vitamins and minerals but also gives you the 20 odd grams of protein you need and now I'm balanced between them both I drink mostly the banana flavor ready to drink I've got really into the iced coffee caramel flavor of Jules ready to drink
and now I'm drinking that as well as the protein make sure you try the new ready to drink flavors that the caramel flavor is amazing the new banana flavor as well is amazing and obviously as I said the iced coffee caramel flavor has been a real Smash Hit [Music] [Music] thank you [Music]