The majority of the way that you talk to yourself is the way your parents talk to you you. So if you don't first recognize that, you're gonna have a really hard time understanding how to get out of whatever you're in. Now, if you had great parents that were super patient and loving and kind and empathetic and didn't you know, jump at you, but held firm boundaries and you know all that stuff, there's chances chance are you have really good healthy self talk and good on you. Me not so much. Hey, everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast in the world. Thanks to each and every one of you that come back every week to listen, learn and grow. Now I'm super grateful when we get to have a guest on twice. There's not been many many people that have done that. On Purpose where great at finding a diversity of guests, but there are some people that just blow your mind. You love them, I know that the community responds incredibly well to them, And on top of all of the I love opportunity to get to sit down with them and talk about what they're up to, what's been on their mind, what they've been studying, reflecting, thinking about now Today's guest is someone who came on a couple of years ago and blew our minds his name and someone that you all know is called Zachary Levi, one of the most versatile actors in Hollywood, with critically acclaimed roles in TV, film, and on Broadway. Zach's career catapulted as the lead and fan favorite Chuck in the hit NBC series and Zach demonstrated his range as a Tony Award nominee for Best Actor in a Musical and She Loves Me. His impressive vocals landed him a leading role in the Disney Academy Award nominated Best Original Song, and the list goes on and on. I recently saw him in American Underdog, which I absolutely loved. Shazam was the reason he was on last time. But right now, what Zack's done is that he has created and written his first ever book, and today we get to get to dive into it. We're gonna have it in the caption so you can order it right away. You're going to find it in the links. I'm so excited to talk to my dear friend and awesome human being about his new book, Radical Love, Learning to Accept Yourself and others. Something we all need to do. Zach, thank you so much for being on purpose. It's so great to be with you, so happy to be back, so happy to see your face, even if it's virtually like I said, I really I want to hug your neck and see in person, but this will do for now. Yeah, thank you man. No, I appreciate you, man, And I meant it like last time you came on, there was just this beautiful energy in the room. I remember you were like sweating buckets as well. Well, it was warm. The studio was pretty bad studio too. It was our old studio. We're in Studio three point zero now this is the new studio. That studio was not well ventilated. Zach was very passionate. I didn't know how to stop him, to offer him anything because he was so in tune and aligned. And I was like, I guess we just have to like sweat together anyway. For you to write a book, I mean, you could have written many things. You could have written in a full autobiography. You could have written about your experiences, which you do of course in the book in a deep way. But you chose to write a book that isn't your name that isn't you know how you view your career. It's about life and you called it radical love. Can you explain to me what radical love looks like is? Because I think love is one of the most underdefined, misunderstood words in the world already, and radical love is taking us in a different direction. Radical love? What does that mean? In some ways, it's not a great title because I think it's a little redundant. I think that love itself is radical when we are practicing actual, true, deep empathetic love, it is a radical concept. In fact, I think what most people would point to, Oh yeah, it's like when I have warm feelings about someone or have warm feelings about myself, I love myself if I have warm feelings about myself or about other people. We've all been kind of programmed with these very romanticized ideas of love and marriage and relationships. I don't think that has anything really to do with the warm fuzzies. I think that it is a recognition of the divinity, the miracle that is another human being, regardless of who that human being is, to love, who loves you is that's that's patty cake, that's maybe that's you know, that's the child's play. To love is to love those who hate you, that you even have these feelings of disagreement or or anger with or whatever. To love your enemy, to pray for your persecutor. That is love. And that's the kind of love that's to me radical love. Again, I say radical because it's radical compared to what most other people's ideas of love is. But really it's just love. That's actually what love is. It's being able to look at whoever is across the aisle of a different political spectrum, a different sex, race, faith, country to country, people group to people group. We are so divided, I mean, are the United States is a really sad example of how much division. I mean, we just straight down the middle on almost every hot topic. We cannot look across the aisle and say I completely disagree with you. In fact, I think that what you're standing for can be very problematic in this world. And yet I still love you. I still think that the reason why you think the things that you think is not because you're evil. It's not because you're somehow this broken, bad person. It's because you are a product of your environment, in the same way that I am a product of my environment. In order to embrace and love myself, I have to first accept that I am a product of the parenting that I received. It's not my fault that I struggle with the things that I struggle with. In order to forgive ourselves, which we all need to do, we have to recognize that we're doing the best that we can with the tools that we have been afforded to us at that point in our lives, and that is the reality, that is the truth. So until we can come to that place as individuals, with ourselves, with other individuals, you know, just in our own lives, and then collectively as a people group, we're just going to keep fighting and fighting and going over this horrible, vicious cycle all the way to the bottom. If we want a better future, we need to be working on more than just saving the environment. Obviously we want we want the world to survive. But what good is a world to live in if we all hate each other in that future? That is not a future that any of us want to be living in. So that to me is kind of you know, what radical love I think stands for. It's to radically accept, radically forgive, and radically love whomever is across the aisle. And that is I understand, a very difficult concept for a lot of people to wrap their head around, because we look at someone doing a bad thing and our initial gut instinct is add evil, wrong, monster. We point the fingers and point the fingers and point the fingers. Now, are the actions that this person are doing? Are those sometimes monstrous, villainous evil? Absolutely, But there's still a five year old child in them that came into this world and had nothing but optimism, nothing but potential, nothing but openness, nothing but love. And then the way that the world ultimately mis misform misfigured them in their heart, in their mind, and their psyche. That is what we have to be paying more attention to and recognizing and then applying an empathy to this person. It is not excusing the evil act. It is instead trying to apply love to those who are doing the evil act, because only then can we redeem those people. I mean, and this is happening on a regular basis. People go to prisons all the time. There are groups of people that see murderers on death row and yet they can still see the human being in them. They say, listen, I what you did was wrong and you're on death row because of what you did. But I am not going to give up on you and the redemption of who you can be in your soul because I see that x y or Z. I saw that you were raised in this type of an environment. You were abused as a child, Your father beat you and put cigarettes out on you. You watched your father or mother or cousin kills someone else. You saw that as a sign of survival. You didn't have enough money to buy food for your family, so you started to steal. And then in order to steal, you needed to protect yourself, you thought, And so you carried a gun. And then somebody tried to stop you from stealing, and you went and shot them. And now you're a murderer. At now none of that excuses the murder, but all of it explains why that murder ended up happening, and if we can do that. And this is where I think Christ was really trying to get to the heart of it. He's like, hey, there is none righteous, not one. There's not one person on this planet that can actually stand above everyone else and cast the stones. He who is without sin cast the first stone. Everyone's like dropping this, that's not me, that's not you, as not anybody you know. And yes, we could probably sit here and hash up like, well, what's a more egregious sin? But they're all sin at the end of the day, they're all things that we're all falling short of treating each other as the divine miracle that we are. And people ask me, what about people who don't believe in a spiritual plane or god or whatever, you know, how do you explain to them that they're a miracle? Very easily, we are a mathematical improbability this planet, that it even exists, That we are a perfect distance away from the Sun so that we don't freeze and we don't boil, That we have a moon that is the perfect distance away from us, that allows all of our literally the systems like gravity to even you know, the tides to go in and out, and that we have been as human beings, we've been searching the universe ever since we had the capability. We have been searching the universe trying to find life anywhere else, and we can't find it, and we haven't found it now, even if there is other life universe, we're still a miracle that this place exists. It's still a mathematical miracle. So even if you don't believe in God, even if you have no spiritual proclivity or you know whatever, you can still count yourself as a miracle. And if we can do that, if we can start seeing each other as miracles, if we can see that every blade of grass, every squirrel, every dog, every tree, every everything, anything that possesses actual life, we can create everything else. We can make more computers, we can make more phones, we can make more whatever we need to make. And yes, we can also create more life. We do that on a regular basis. But each one of those lives is unique. Every single one of us comes with a uniqueness that, you know, making another Audie doesn't necessarily come with a uniqueness. You know, we are a miracle. That is what I'm trying to drive to people, and well one of the things I'm trying to drive to people in the book, because I really think that if we can wrap our heads around that, if we can change our perspective and we can start seeing each other even the evil, you know, even the bad, even the monsters, even all these people, and say, okay, yes they are doing bad, but they started they were initially they had all of the promise, and let's have a little empathy with that, Let's have a little grace, let's have a little bit more patience, Let's hold them accountable. And I think that's one of the big disconnects that people have that we're they're afraid that if we start to give people even a little bit of grace, well now we're condoning their behavior. No, no, no, you can. You can love and not like that. That's another thing I try to get to in the book. Loving is not just this warm feeling. It's not just like times one hundred like is to like. To love is to just accept the divinity, accept the miracle that is across from you. Anyway, there's a rant for you that is there is so much to unpack. The first thing was this difference in responsibility and fault and when it comes to accepting ourselves. I think the reason why we struggle to accept ourselves is because we think that means I have to think it's my fault. And when it becomes my fault, now I become depressed by that idea. It's disempowering, it brings me down. Whereas A Zack said, when you actually go, well, it's not my fault, but it is my responsibility. That's empowering. It gives you a sense of choice and direction and designed. Like you said, our choices today are impacted by the decisions that were made for us when we couldn't make choices or when we didn't have the choice, and so that's the part that's not our fault. But now as we get wiser and older and more mature and more experienced, we now can take that responsibility. So I thought that was a really clear concept. The second thing that I wanted to unpack from what you said, which is really special, was the difference between excluding and explaining. So you were talking about how someone's actions don't exclude them for what's coming for them, but really we need to seek the explanation. We need to understand how they got there. It's the context, the complexity, it's it's one of the reasons why I really appreciate It's why. It's the why, it's the why. It's it's one of the reasons why I appreciated the movie The Joker, because to me, looking at a very fictional character, of course, but you start to recognize that even this villain that we have hated or disliked for so many years. Has a backstory, and often we tell our heroes backstories and origin stories, but we don't tell the villains backstories or origin stories. Running a business is never easy. 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That's NetSuite dot com forward slash J. And there's a lot to be gained from that because yes, nothing is excluded. Everyone should be held accountable, people should not be allowed to get away with things. But we might be able to reduce this happening in the future if we were to learn how these people are made. And talking about your Audie example, it actually does align because if you and I got an Audie on the same day and it was the same model, but you treated yours badly and I treated mine well, in ten years time, you get to see the exact same difference, and that uniqueness is going to be made by how it's treated. So I just wanted to unpack that for everyone because I think you shared such a breadth of insight there, and I just wanted to pick it a few of those things. So I love that you brought up The Joker because that movie. I was so grateful that it was made because it, to me, was one of the most important movies I had ever seen that dealt with mental health. I was like, how it took a DC. You know, I love that it's DC too, because that's my family. But you know, it took DC this movie about this villain to really highlight the incredibly powerful effects of trauma, like real, horrible trauma and what that does to a human being. There's that saying every villain is the hero of their own story, right or everyone is the hero of their own story, including villains. And one of the coolest things about being an actor is that it's very much based on empathy. You know. The whole idea is that you are looking at something that is outside of you, a character, a person, and you're trying to understand them so that you can bring them to life in an honest way. Now, if you're playing a quote unquote bad guy, well, guess what. Bad guys don't think they're bad guys. Bad guys think that they're doing the right thing, whatever that is. Now, it might be super twisted, it might come from all the wrong places, but their logic has brought them to their because of whatever traumas they've experienced prior to that. There are not a lot of people doing ad in the world that are sitting around twisting their proverbial mustache and being like, Oh, I can't wait to do these bad things. No, it's very hard for us to wrap our head around, but that is the truth. In order to understand why people are doing what they're doing, which is what we, like you're saying, we have to get to the bottom of it. It does not excuse, It explains. Excusing explaining and to explain builds empathy. It helps us to understand why people do what they do, and therefore helps us to hopefully condition them away from doing those things if we can find them early enough. Instead of, you know, let's say you meet somebody and you know that they're about to or thinking about doing this horrible thing. Now, the knee jerk reaction is, oh my god, they're a monster. I can't believe it. No, No, as opposed to oh you are hurting inside. Let's sit down. Let me be a conduit of love in your life so that you don't feel the necessity to go do these You know what if people saw that and said, oh, man, you know what, I think this guy might be very close to going and doing something really bad. And why, oh, because well, look how we's treated at school, Look how we's treated at home. Look hows treated online. They're constantly online, and they're finding themselves rejected even by strangers on the internet. They go on Instagram and they're constantly comparing themselves to the beautiful, perfect lives of everyone there. Comparison is not just the thief of joy. Comparison is literally destroying people's mental health. We have got to be able to get in there, hopefully early before the bad things happen, but then afterwards also we have got to be willing to allow ourselves to be angry, to be frustrated, to be sad, to be all of the things, but then still not allow ourselves to be the dehumanizer. The more we dehumanize all those that are struggling and doing bad things in the world, the more we dehumanize ourselves. We are all cut from the same miraculous cloth. Some of us are just in conditioning that makes them very troubled and doing very rible things. But again, there are people to go to prisons now that are going and seeing the human being even in the murderer, and saying, I refuse to believe that you are a monster. Instead, I will hold you accountable. We will all hold you accountable because that was not what you should have done. But I will still try to do my best to see the human in you. Because before you leave this earth, you should feel that you should know that. And I think that if we do that, we infuse that kind of love, there'll be less and less and less and less and less of this that we ever need to deal with, because people will ultimately be more healed and more whole. And that's why I think that if we can get to everyone there, if we get heal every head, every every heart in every mind in this world, all of our other problems go away. These are the source of all of the rest of the issues, of all the murder, of all the rape, of theft, of all the wars, of all of the greed, the amount of greed that is killing this world right now. All of the CEOs and leaders of industry that all value profit over people, that all value money over what that money is ultimately doing to this world, to the planet, to the animals and the life in it, and we all just kind of rationalize it. We all say, yeah, but you know, I mean, everybody needs to make money, so I guess I don't know, no, those people. The reason why we all do this is because we are all still afraid that if we don't have enough, we are not enough. And that is one of the greatest lies and the CEO is to get to the tops of these companies. Though, if we can get to them instead of what so many people want to do, which is dehumanize and vilify them and say you're the one percent and you don't care. Maybe maybe all that is somewhat true on some level, but guess what, They're still also a child of God. They are also still a divine, miraculous life. And I guarantee that if we want to actually help them to change their ways, pointing fingers and yelling at them is not the way to do it. If we want to actually change their hearts, We've we've got to lead with We've got to go to the Jeff bezos Is of the world. And this is hard because I really have big problems with people like, you know, like it's like, dude, you have all the money in the world, Why where's all the altruism? Why can't we give back? Like you can't take it with you? You know, one of one of my favorite quotes, you don't see a U haul in the back of a hearse your grave? Is it? That's all? You know? Now, some of these people I think they think well about I'll be remembered as one of the richest people in the world. No, you won't, not one hundred years from now, not two hundred years, not a thousand years from now. There are emperors that were ruling over massive empires, that that commanded millions and millions of lives, that could literally kill a person in front of God and everyone and do it scot free. Nothing would happen to them at all. Do you know all of their names, because I don't. I don't know all of these people. Nobody does. They're all forgotten. They're all forgotten in the annals of history. Very few of them ever get written down. And if they are written down, it's a little footnote. It's like, oh, yeah, and that person existed, but nothing of really any value. They're not looked at is like, oh, these were the great people of the world. They're not if they're even remembered at all. So if we can get to the ultra the ultra wealthy of the world, these leaders of industry and say hey, hey, hey, listen, there's nothing wrong with going and taking care of yourself, you and yours and making money. Fine, go do it, but don't do it at the expense of other people's lives. Don't do it at the expense of your entire workforce. Don't do it at the expense of the environment. Don't do it at the expense of this miracle of a world that we have. But we can't do that to hate. We can't hate our way to a better future. We can only love our way there. That is the bottom line. And so and it takes this radical love. We struggle as human beings to allow two things to exist at one time. So the idea, as you said, is you can love someone but not like what they do. That's allowing two opposite, separate ideas to exist at the same time. Or the idea that I disagree with this person, but I have to connect with them and communicate with them in a way that will help them shift. And I may have to be more patient. It may take longer, but guess what, if it takes me longer, it will probably last longer as well. If you shout at someone, they may change their behavior right now, but they will go back to doing what they were doing a few moments later, just like you do with a child. Like if you shout at a child and it may stop playing the video game or whatever. It is because it's scared, but then a few moments later, it still wants to play the video game. Whereas if a child is engaged with and connected with and communicated within educated in what may be a better use of its time, it just starts to transform. And that requires love, and it requires empathy, and it requires patience. And I think because we've never received that ourselves, we find it so hard to go out there and give it to others. I mean, in the first section of your book, the first chapter, you call it stop running when we bring this back, because we've talked a lot about like the most big extreme global macro issues of how this idea cascades across the world. But when we look at it, as you said, it a start like it starts from us. And so what do you think, Za, what are we running from? And what are we running towards? Or are we just running nowhere? You know? In my case, and I think this is the case probably for a lot of people, but in my case, it was running from the pain and I didn't even know it. I mean, that's you know, that's that's part of the tricky thing about this, you know, like you can give somebody advice that absolutely applies to their life. But if they don't recognize that they're doing that thing, they think, no, I'm good. I mean, for so long in my life I had been given certain pieces of advice like maybe do this or maybe do that, but in my mind I was I was cool. I was like, I get that for somebody else, but for me, I'm I'm okay. I didn't realize until I had this massive breakdown that I had been running away from so much of what I had been trying to survive. And I do think that's pretty applicable to most people. You know, as a child, your ego is essential. It is your survival suit. It it is your life raft. It is the thing that protects you from all of the trauma that you experience. I mean, it's a thing that you know particularly like, not particularly, but using again an extreme example, there are people that are able to disassociate from themselves when they are sexually abused as children, because how else is a child supposed to process that. So many of these cases, the ego steps in. The ego is there to protect the psyche, and it says you're not here right now, You're good, You're not here right now you're somewhere else. This isn't really you. And then that child learns how to now disassociate. Well, that was great for then, but that becomes a massive problem later on in life if you don't ultimately heal from that, if you don't learn that that's what you're doing and heal from that. So the ego ultimately is this incredible gift, but that becomes an incredible hindrance. It becomes an incredible weight on us. You know, in the in the book, I talk about it's almost like this exoskeleton or this you know, this suit of armor. It's this incredible thing. You're walking around and people are swinging clubs and things at you, and it's the armor is taking all the hits, but the armor is getting dented and chinked and cut up, and you know, so you end up walking around by the time you're thirty five years old, if you're still depending on this suit of armor, you don't realize how malformed you are. You think you're walking smooth and straight, but you're really with a limp and you're doing this all because you're stuck in this contorted armor and that armor is only supposed to service up to that point, and then you know, we can argue or are you a debate about you know, some people, you know, they like to use wording like, you know, death to the ego or kill the ego, and other people are like, no, befriend the ego or whatever that is, however you want to word it. I think at the end of the day, it's something that we all need to realize as a beautiful necessity in our lives as we are children particularly, and then eventually it does not serve us in a positive way that it once did, and ultimately being grateful for it, but allowing it to not be the armor that we need anymore, because we are doing the work on healing ourselves and enlightening ourselves so that when things do come at us, we're able to evade. We're able to you know, judo them by us. We're not just hitting they're not hitting us anymore because we're we're now more mature in our thought process and in our feelings. I was constantly running because I was constantly trying to survive as a child. I didn't realize just how traumatic it was to me. You know, like, if you're growing up in chaos, you just kind of assume that's normal, that the standard is what it is. If you don't grow up in chaos, you assume that's normal. Now, I thought, when I would go to normal you know, friends, homes and things, I just assumed, well, people are putting on errs or they're putting on appearances. But when I'm not here, it gets crazy, Like it gets crazy at my house, not realizing that I was really in a massive, massive survival mode, I mean, my sympathetic nervous system, even to this day. I mean, it's something that I have to work on very constantly because we want to be in our parasympathetic We want to be in a relaxed rest and digest in a mode most of the time. We don't want to be in this again, incredible gift that our bodies were given, which is the sympathetic, which is to survive, which is to run away from the sabertooth tiger, which is to not be killed by a trampling elephant, or or you know, go running, going and running after an antelope to go hunt it and bring it back to your camp. These are all things that we are our bodies evolutionarily have these beautiful, amazing gifts, but they're constantly activated now, almost more than ever, because survival is no longer running away from the beast, or chasing the thing to hunt, or getting out of you know, the elements. We all have a roof, not all of us, but a lot of the world, more than ever before in humanistry, have some kind of a roof over their head, some kind of clothes on their backs, some kind of food in their stomach. And survival has now become money because money can pay for all of those things, and so our pursuit, all of our collective pursuit for more of this is keeping us all engaged in this survival mode. And I was running from all of that, trying to survive and then running two. Where do I find my worth? Where do I find my identity? Where do I find these other things that ultimately give me this purpose and this worth? And how do I survive now in this other world? So that's where I ran from, and that's where I ran too, And ultimately all of that is really unhealthy because you need to be able to sit with yourself and recognize that nothing gives you worth or value outside of the fact that you are, that you are here the fact that you are alive means that you are a miracle. If that alone, if we could get people to the point of recognizing that holy crap, that should be enough, hopefully to be able to say, I love myself. I can't believe what a lucky thing that I got. I'm here, I'm in this existence that will hopefully help us to stop running from things and sit and be present. I think the challenge I see that people have, as you address in this book, and that's why I really appreciate what you've done with this book. Like Zach talks about like how to get help, how to be open, how to share your story right like, the book is a systematic approach in the journey that we're talking about in this very macro way today, because the book lays out the steps that you have to take to If anyone's listening to us right now and going like that's what I want to do, that's what I want to figure out, the book actually walks you through that journey, and Zach, I want to ask you this question because I feel like that journey, as you said at the beginning, to radical love, often feel so far away because we haven't been trained that way. We have an experience that we didn't see, that we didn't have access to that growing up. What's the first step? If radical love is the step, what's the first step in that journey that people could take today, tomorrow, this year in their life that makes them feel like they're on that journey. Because what we both also know is that if you try and imitate radical love, or if you try and pretend to practice radical love, that can actually be detrimental to yourself and others because it's just it's not real, right, So I want to hear about that from you. Inauthentic anything is the opposite of the thing. So if we're trying to put on love, if it's not authentic, it's not love, particularly love. There's a lot there are actually some other things that you could do a proxy version of that. You can. Maybe you're not totally screwing things up, but if you are, if you think you're providing love, if you're loving, you think you're loving yourself. I mean, like like my own journey, I thought I was loving myself, but that was inauthentic love because I was still berating myself unbeknounced to me, I was still all my self talk was the same self talk, though it was the same talk that I got from my parents. My parents, the majority of the way that you talk to yourself is the way your parents talk to you. So if you don't first recognize that, you're gonna have a really hard time understanding how to get out of whatever you're in. Now, if you had great parents that were super patient and loving and kind and empathetic and didn't you know, jump at you, but held firm boundaries and you know all that stuff, there's chances, chids are you have really good healthy self talk and good on you. Me not so much. I had. I didn't. I didn't know that and then I figured it out and I still work on it. But it's a thing that you know. Now that I'm aware of the traps that I fall into. Now I'm able to go, oh, Zach, you're doing it again. You're doing that thing, and you know this is how you end up winding yourself back down. So, but going back to your question, what is the first step, The first step has got to be recognizing that you have a problem, right like that is that's the age old, that's the adage. You know, the first step in fixing a problem is recognizing that you have a problem. Now, that can be very difficult for people. You can't force people to do that. That's got to be something that comes because they recognize the necessity. Now, in my case, I had a complete mental breakdown, and so I knew I don't know what else to do. Clearly I have a problem if I don't want to live anymore. So I have got to go try and figure that out. Now, that was step one, Step two. Now, by the way, not everybody has to come to that dire of a conclusion. Hopefully nobody does. Hopefully we're able to recognize these things far earlier in life. Beyond that, the step is, you gotta talk. You got to talk about it. You got to start with one of your closest friends or closest friends, start with your family if they're the closest to you. Get some of it out. Say I am struggling, I don't know what I'm struggling with. I'm embarrassed whatever. Guess what, there's no reason to be embarrassed. There's no reason to be scared because everybody, everyone, without fail, There is not one person on this earth that hasn't dealt with even the best parents and people still deal with some form of stress, anxiety, depression, you name it. There is something there so everyone can relate to this. Ultimately, we're all afraid. It's getting better, which is great, it's getting less stigmatized as the more we do things like this and talk about it. But everyone still has these reservations and fears because nobody wants to feel like they're broken. Nobody wants to feel like everybody else is good. But I'm somehow struggling and I don't know how, and we all feel like we're uniquely broken. We feel like, well, clearly, no one has felt the way that I feel. No one has gone through this exact thing, And I am here to say that is also a lie because the world is really, really old, and there have been billions and billions of people who have lived on this earth, and even if they lived in a completely different time, guess what they have still struggled with the exact same problems, slightly different details, exact same problems. So talking about it, getting it out, you have got to acknowled knowledge that there's a problem. Talk about that, but immediately as soon as you can go to a professional, don't don't have your friends and family. Don't allow them to be this kind of end all of where you get your advice and your wisdom, because as try as they might, they all have biased They all have agenda, even bias, an agenda that they're unaware of, not even bias agenda like well, I'm gonna take advantage of This's like, hey, I have a certain idea of who I think you ought to be, so I'm going to give you advice when it comes to directing you in that way. Whereas a disinterested, unbiased, unagenda third party. I mean, I guess the only bias or agenda they would have a professional therapist is that they get paid to do it, So I suppose you could say that. But outside of that, I mean, and they should because it's a service, it's a job, and by the way, it's one of the most valuable, so it's so worth the money. Although I do think all of that needs to be worked out too that really I'm hoping that we can keep pushing toward getting mental health services and information and education to people on much more reduced rates, if not entirely free. I wish that there were clinics that people could just walk into right off the street and be like, hey, I'm struggling. I need to talk to somebody. I need somebody this kind of like help click this back into reality. What a beautiful world that will be. But until that day very worth whatever, you know, the money I believe of an investment in yourself. So that's the first step. I really truly believe you got to You gotta acknowledge it, you got to talk about it. And then within that, now you have someone who is guiding you to the various other steps. Because the other steps, though some of them are kind of universal, some of them are not. Not Not every person needs to do X, and not every person needs to do why, And even the people that need to do both don't necessarily have to do them or should do them in that order. You know, it all depends on what your particular personal journey has been in your life with your traumas, how they came about, how they're manifesting in your life now, how you happen to be struggling or not struggling with them, or don't think you're struggling with them. You know, all of that can really you know, with a license professional, somebody really understands these things. It was studied this stuff. They can guide you through the rest. But so that that's what I would tell anybody out there, do yourself the service in the favor and go lug yourself first and foremost by investing in a therapist and being able to talk about and just get out what it is you need to talk about. I love that, Zach. I mean, I'm sure everyone can hear your passion, your drive, the amount of like. And it was the same last time, like even last time. I remember there was this one clip we had and you just went empathy, empathy, empathy, empathy, empathy, empathy, and he said empathy like thirty times. And even today I've heard you say radical love, you know, And it's the message you're asking us to do is hard but necessary. It's challenging but real. It's pushing us because that's the only way we get to our truer selves. And you can see that in you that it's a it's a plea, like you're almost plea pleading with us to say please do this. You know. It's not even it's not a direction, it's not preaching, it's not pushing, it's pleading. Uh. And I just want to say thank you to you for your energy, for the time to put this book together, for just just your ability to speak the truth so emphatically, and you know, with so much, with so much not confidence, that's that's actually an understatement, but but with depth, right, there's a there's a real depth behind these thoughts. And I appreciate you, man, I really do, because it's it's so much harder to talk about the things that you're choosing to talk about than than the software version of a lot of these ideas. So I appreciate you. I'm grateful for you. I'm recommending to everyone, please, please please go and grab a copy of the book Radical Love, Learning to Accept Yourself and others. Like I said today, hey, Zach's taking us on a journey of really understanding the concepts and ideas as these big principles. But the book really goes into his journey, his story, the experiences he went to be on the brink of that position of breaking down and falling apart, and then guides you through this step to step journey, whether it's overcoming your ego, whether it's loving yourself. So please do go and grab a copy of Radical Love, Zach. I'm grateful I can't wait to catch up with you, hang out with you. I miss you, and I'm wishing you all the best for the book tour. I hope he goes exceptionally well and I'm really excited to reconnect man. Thank you so much, thank you, thank you, bless you, love and appreciate you so much. And I hope that I get to see you and your wonderful wife in La or wherever we get to connect somewhere in the world. Absolutely, thank you, man. Have a wonderful evening. Thank you for doing this at your time. I'm sure it's pretty late there too, so nah, I'm good. Totally worth it. Great seeing you. Thank you, litt

The majority of the way that you talk to yourself is the way your parents talk to you you. So if you don't first recognize that, you're gonna have a really hard time understanding how to get out of whatever you're in. Now, if you had great parents that were super patient and loving and kind and empathetic and didn't you know, jump at you, but held firm boundaries and you know all that stuff, there's chances chance are you have really good healthy self talk and good on you. Me not so much. Hey, everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast in the world. Thanks to each and every one of you that come back every week to listen, learn and grow. Now I'm super grateful when we get to have a guest on twice. There's not been many many people that have done that. On Purpose where great at finding a diversity of guests, but there are some people that just blow your mind. You love them, I know that the community responds incredibly well to them, And on top of all of the I love opportunity to get to sit down with them and talk about what they're up to, what's been on their mind, what they've been studying, reflecting, thinking about now Today's guest is someone who came on a couple of years ago and blew our minds his name and someone that you all know is called Zachary Levi, one of the most versatile actors in Hollywood, with critically acclaimed roles in TV, film, and on Broadway. Zach's career catapulted as the lead and fan favorite Chuck in the hit NBC series and Zach demonstrated his range as a Tony Award nominee for Best Actor in a Musical and She Loves Me. His impressive vocals landed him a leading role in the Disney Academy Award nominated Best Original Song, and the list goes on and on. I recently saw him in American Underdog, which I absolutely loved. Shazam was the reason he was on last time. But right now, what Zack's done is that he has created and written his first ever book, and today we get to get to dive into it. We're gonna have it in the caption so you can order it right away. You're going to find it in the links. I'm so excited to talk to my dear friend and awesome human being about his new book, Radical Love, Learning to Accept Yourself and others. Something we all need to do. Zach, thank you so much for being on purpose. It's so great to be with you, so happy to be back, so happy to see your face, even if it's virtually like I said, I really I want to hug your neck and see in person, but this will do for now. Yeah, thank you man. No, I appreciate you, man, And I meant it like last time you came on, there was just this beautiful energy in the room. I remember you were like sweating buckets as well. Well, it was warm. The studio was pretty bad studio too. It was our old studio. We're in Studio three point zero now this is the new studio. That studio was not well ventilated. Zach was very passionate. I didn't know how to stop him, to offer him anything because he was so in tune and aligned. And I was like, I guess we just have to like sweat together anyway. For you to write a book, I mean, you could have written many things. You could have written in a full autobiography. You could have written about your experiences, which you do of course in the book in a deep way. But you chose to write a book that isn't your name that isn't you know how you view your career. It's about life and you called it radical love. Can you explain to me what radical love looks like is? Because I think love is one of the most underdefined, misunderstood words in the world already, and radical love is taking us in a different direction. Radical love? What does that mean? In some ways, it's not a great title because I think it's a little redundant. I think that love itself is radical when we are practicing actual, true, deep empathetic love, it is a radical concept. In fact, I think what most people would point to, Oh yeah, it's like when I have warm feelings about someone or have warm feelings about myself, I love myself if I have warm feelings about myself or about other people. We've all been kind of programmed with these very romanticized ideas of love and marriage and relationships. I don't think that has anything really to do with the warm fuzzies. I think that it is a recognition of the divinity, the miracle that is another human being, regardless of who that human being is, to love, who loves you is that's that's patty cake, that's maybe that's you know, that's the child's play. To love is to love those who hate you, that you even have these feelings of disagreement or or anger with or whatever. To love your enemy, to pray for your persecutor. That is love. And that's the kind of love that's to me radical love. Again, I say radical because it's radical compared to what most other people's ideas of love is. But really it's just love. That's actually what love is. It's being able to look at whoever is across the aisle of a different political spectrum, a different sex, race, faith, country to country, people group to people group. We are so divided, I mean, are the United States is a really sad example of how much division. I mean, we just straight down the middle on almost every hot topic. We cannot look across the aisle and say I completely disagree with you. In fact, I think that what you're standing for can be very problematic in this world. And yet I still love you. I still think that the reason why you think the things that you think is not because you're evil. It's not because you're somehow this broken, bad person. It's because you are a product of your environment, in the same way that I am a product of my environment. In order to embrace and love myself, I have to first accept that I am a product of the parenting that I received. It's not my fault that I struggle with the things that I struggle with. In order to forgive ourselves, which we all need to do, we have to recognize that we're doing the best that we can with the tools that we have been afforded to us at that point in our lives, and that is the reality, that is the truth. So until we can come to that place as individuals, with ourselves, with other individuals, you know, just in our own lives, and then collectively as a people group, we're just going to keep fighting and fighting and going over this horrible, vicious cycle all the way to the bottom. If we want a better future, we need to be working on more than just saving the environment. Obviously we want we want the world to survive. But what good is a world to live in if we all hate each other in that future? That is not a future that any of us want to be living in. So that to me is kind of you know, what radical love I think stands for. It's to radically accept, radically forgive, and radically love whomever is across the aisle. And that is I understand, a very difficult concept for a lot of people to wrap their head around, because we look at someone doing a bad thing and our initial gut instinct is add evil, wrong, monster. We point the fingers and point the fingers and point the fingers. Now, are the actions that this person are doing? Are those sometimes monstrous, villainous evil? Absolutely, But there's still a five year old child in them that came into this world and had nothing but optimism, nothing but potential, nothing but openness, nothing but love. And then the way that the world ultimately mis misform misfigured them in their heart, in their mind, and their psyche. That is what we have to be paying more attention to and recognizing and then applying an empathy to this person. It is not excusing the evil act. It is instead trying to apply love to those who are doing the evil act, because only then can we redeem those people. I mean, and this is happening on a regular basis. People go to prisons all the time. There are groups of people that see murderers on death row and yet they can still see the human being in them. They say, listen, I what you did was wrong and you're on death row because of what you did. But I am not going to give up on you and the redemption of who you can be in your soul because I see that x y or Z. I saw that you were raised in this type of an environment. You were abused as a child, Your father beat you and put cigarettes out on you. You watched your father or mother or cousin kills someone else. You saw that as a sign of survival. You didn't have enough money to buy food for your family, so you started to steal. And then in order to steal, you needed to protect yourself, you thought, And so you carried a gun. And then somebody tried to stop you from stealing, and you went and shot them. And now you're a murderer. At now none of that excuses the murder, but all of it explains why that murder ended up happening, and if we can do that. And this is where I think Christ was really trying to get to the heart of it. He's like, hey, there is none righteous, not one. There's not one person on this planet that can actually stand above everyone else and cast the stones. He who is without sin cast the first stone. Everyone's like dropping this, that's not me, that's not you, as not anybody you know. And yes, we could probably sit here and hash up like, well, what's a more egregious sin? But they're all sin at the end of the day, they're all things that we're all falling short of treating each other as the divine miracle that we are. And people ask me, what about people who don't believe in a spiritual plane or god or whatever, you know, how do you explain to them that they're a miracle? Very easily, we are a mathematical improbability this planet, that it even exists, That we are a perfect distance away from the Sun so that we don't freeze and we don't boil, That we have a moon that is the perfect distance away from us, that allows all of our literally the systems like gravity to even you know, the tides to go in and out, and that we have been as human beings, we've been searching the universe ever since we had the capability. We have been searching the universe trying to find life anywhere else, and we can't find it, and we haven't found it now, even if there is other life universe, we're still a miracle that this place exists. It's still a mathematical miracle. So even if you don't believe in God, even if you have no spiritual proclivity or you know whatever, you can still count yourself as a miracle. And if we can do that, if we can start seeing each other as miracles, if we can see that every blade of grass, every squirrel, every dog, every tree, every everything, anything that possesses actual life, we can create everything else. We can make more computers, we can make more phones, we can make more whatever we need to make. And yes, we can also create more life. We do that on a regular basis. But each one of those lives is unique. Every single one of us comes with a uniqueness that, you know, making another Audie doesn't necessarily come with a uniqueness. You know, we are a miracle. That is what I'm trying to drive to people, and well one of the things I'm trying to drive to people in the book, because I really think that if we can wrap our heads around that, if we can change our perspective and we can start seeing each other even the evil, you know, even the bad, even the monsters, even all these people, and say, okay, yes they are doing bad, but they started they were initially they had all of the promise, and let's have a little empathy with that, Let's have a little grace, let's have a little bit more patience, Let's hold them accountable. And I think that's one of the big disconnects that people have that we're they're afraid that if we start to give people even a little bit of grace, well now we're condoning their behavior. No, no, no, you can. You can love and not like that. That's another thing I try to get to in the book. Loving is not just this warm feeling. It's not just like times one hundred like is to like. To love is to just accept the divinity, accept the miracle that is across from you. Anyway, there's a rant for you that is there is so much to unpack. The first thing was this difference in responsibility and fault and when it comes to accepting ourselves. I think the reason why we struggle to accept ourselves is because we think that means I have to think it's my fault. And when it becomes my fault, now I become depressed by that idea. It's disempowering, it brings me down. Whereas A Zack said, when you actually go, well, it's not my fault, but it is my responsibility. That's empowering. It gives you a sense of choice and direction and designed. Like you said, our choices today are impacted by the decisions that were made for us when we couldn't make choices or when we didn't have the choice, and so that's the part that's not our fault. But now as we get wiser and older and more mature and more experienced, we now can take that responsibility. So I thought that was a really clear concept. The second thing that I wanted to unpack from what you said, which is really special, was the difference between excluding and explaining. So you were talking about how someone's actions don't exclude them for what's coming for them, but really we need to seek the explanation. We need to understand how they got there. It's the context, the complexity, it's it's one of the reasons why I really appreciate It's why. It's the why, it's the why. It's it's one of the reasons why I appreciated the movie The Joker, because to me, looking at a very fictional character, of course, but you start to recognize that even this villain that we have hated or disliked for so many years. Has a backstory, and often we tell our heroes backstories and origin stories, but we don't tell the villains backstories or origin stories. Running a business is never easy. 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That's NetSuite dot com forward slash J. And there's a lot to be gained from that because yes, nothing is excluded. Everyone should be held accountable, people should not be allowed to get away with things. But we might be able to reduce this happening in the future if we were to learn how these people are made. And talking about your Audie example, it actually does align because if you and I got an Audie on the same day and it was the same model, but you treated yours badly and I treated mine well, in ten years time, you get to see the exact same difference, and that uniqueness is going to be made by how it's treated. So I just wanted to unpack that for everyone because I think you shared such a breadth of insight there, and I just wanted to pick it a few of those things. So I love that you brought up The Joker because that movie. I was so grateful that it was made because it, to me, was one of the most important movies I had ever seen that dealt with mental health. I was like, how it took a DC. You know, I love that it's DC too, because that's my family. But you know, it took DC this movie about this villain to really highlight the incredibly powerful effects of trauma, like real, horrible trauma and what that does to a human being. There's that saying every villain is the hero of their own story, right or everyone is the hero of their own story, including villains. And one of the coolest things about being an actor is that it's very much based on empathy. You know. The whole idea is that you are looking at something that is outside of you, a character, a person, and you're trying to understand them so that you can bring them to life in an honest way. Now, if you're playing a quote unquote bad guy, well, guess what. Bad guys don't think they're bad guys. Bad guys think that they're doing the right thing, whatever that is. Now, it might be super twisted, it might come from all the wrong places, but their logic has brought them to their because of whatever traumas they've experienced prior to that. There are not a lot of people doing ad in the world that are sitting around twisting their proverbial mustache and being like, Oh, I can't wait to do these bad things. No, it's very hard for us to wrap our head around, but that is the truth. In order to understand why people are doing what they're doing, which is what we, like you're saying, we have to get to the bottom of it. It does not excuse, It explains. Excusing explaining and to explain builds empathy. It helps us to understand why people do what they do, and therefore helps us to hopefully condition them away from doing those things if we can find them early enough. Instead of, you know, let's say you meet somebody and you know that they're about to or thinking about doing this horrible thing. Now, the knee jerk reaction is, oh my god, they're a monster. I can't believe it. No, No, as opposed to oh you are hurting inside. Let's sit down. Let me be a conduit of love in your life so that you don't feel the necessity to go do these You know what if people saw that and said, oh, man, you know what, I think this guy might be very close to going and doing something really bad. And why, oh, because well, look how we's treated at school, Look how we's treated at home. Look hows treated online. They're constantly online, and they're finding themselves rejected even by strangers on the internet. They go on Instagram and they're constantly comparing themselves to the beautiful, perfect lives of everyone there. Comparison is not just the thief of joy. Comparison is literally destroying people's mental health. We have got to be able to get in there, hopefully early before the bad things happen, but then afterwards also we have got to be willing to allow ourselves to be angry, to be frustrated, to be sad, to be all of the things, but then still not allow ourselves to be the dehumanizer. The more we dehumanize all those that are struggling and doing bad things in the world, the more we dehumanize ourselves. We are all cut from the same miraculous cloth. Some of us are just in conditioning that makes them very troubled and doing very rible things. But again, there are people to go to prisons now that are going and seeing the human being even in the murderer, and saying, I refuse to believe that you are a monster. Instead, I will hold you accountable. We will all hold you accountable because that was not what you should have done. But I will still try to do my best to see the human in you. Because before you leave this earth, you should feel that you should know that. And I think that if we do that, we infuse that kind of love, there'll be less and less and less and less and less of this that we ever need to deal with, because people will ultimately be more healed and more whole. And that's why I think that if we can get to everyone there, if we get heal every head, every every heart in every mind in this world, all of our other problems go away. These are the source of all of the rest of the issues, of all the murder, of all the rape, of theft, of all the wars, of all of the greed, the amount of greed that is killing this world right now. All of the CEOs and leaders of industry that all value profit over people, that all value money over what that money is ultimately doing to this world, to the planet, to the animals and the life in it, and we all just kind of rationalize it. We all say, yeah, but you know, I mean, everybody needs to make money, so I guess I don't know, no, those people. The reason why we all do this is because we are all still afraid that if we don't have enough, we are not enough. And that is one of the greatest lies and the CEO is to get to the tops of these companies. Though, if we can get to them instead of what so many people want to do, which is dehumanize and vilify them and say you're the one percent and you don't care. Maybe maybe all that is somewhat true on some level, but guess what, They're still also a child of God. They are also still a divine, miraculous life. And I guarantee that if we want to actually help them to change their ways, pointing fingers and yelling at them is not the way to do it. If we want to actually change their hearts, We've we've got to lead with We've got to go to the Jeff bezos Is of the world. And this is hard because I really have big problems with people like, you know, like it's like, dude, you have all the money in the world, Why where's all the altruism? Why can't we give back? Like you can't take it with you? You know, one of one of my favorite quotes, you don't see a U haul in the back of a hearse your grave? Is it? That's all? You know? Now, some of these people I think they think well about I'll be remembered as one of the richest people in the world. No, you won't, not one hundred years from now, not two hundred years, not a thousand years from now. There are emperors that were ruling over massive empires, that that commanded millions and millions of lives, that could literally kill a person in front of God and everyone and do it scot free. Nothing would happen to them at all. Do you know all of their names, because I don't. I don't know all of these people. Nobody does. They're all forgotten. They're all forgotten in the annals of history. Very few of them ever get written down. And if they are written down, it's a little footnote. It's like, oh, yeah, and that person existed, but nothing of really any value. They're not looked at is like, oh, these were the great people of the world. They're not if they're even remembered at all. So if we can get to the ultra the ultra wealthy of the world, these leaders of industry and say hey, hey, hey, listen, there's nothing wrong with going and taking care of yourself, you and yours and making money. Fine, go do it, but don't do it at the expense of other people's lives. Don't do it at the expense of your entire workforce. Don't do it at the expense of the environment. Don't do it at the expense of this miracle of a world that we have. But we can't do that to hate. We can't hate our way to a better future. We can only love our way there. That is the bottom line. And so and it takes this radical love. We struggle as human beings to allow two things to exist at one time. So the idea, as you said, is you can love someone but not like what they do. That's allowing two opposite, separate ideas to exist at the same time. Or the idea that I disagree with this person, but I have to connect with them and communicate with them in a way that will help them shift. And I may have to be more patient. It may take longer, but guess what, if it takes me longer, it will probably last longer as well. If you shout at someone, they may change their behavior right now, but they will go back to doing what they were doing a few moments later, just like you do with a child. Like if you shout at a child and it may stop playing the video game or whatever. It is because it's scared, but then a few moments later, it still wants to play the video game. Whereas if a child is engaged with and connected with and communicated within educated in what may be a better use of its time, it just starts to transform. And that requires love, and it requires empathy, and it requires patience. And I think because we've never received that ourselves, we find it so hard to go out there and give it to others. I mean, in the first section of your book, the first chapter, you call it stop running when we bring this back, because we've talked a lot about like the most big extreme global macro issues of how this idea cascades across the world. But when we look at it, as you said, it a start like it starts from us. And so what do you think, Za, what are we running from? And what are we running towards? Or are we just running nowhere? You know? In my case, and I think this is the case probably for a lot of people, but in my case, it was running from the pain and I didn't even know it. I mean, that's you know, that's that's part of the tricky thing about this, you know, like you can give somebody advice that absolutely applies to their life. But if they don't recognize that they're doing that thing, they think, no, I'm good. I mean, for so long in my life I had been given certain pieces of advice like maybe do this or maybe do that, but in my mind I was I was cool. I was like, I get that for somebody else, but for me, I'm I'm okay. I didn't realize until I had this massive breakdown that I had been running away from so much of what I had been trying to survive. And I do think that's pretty applicable to most people. You know, as a child, your ego is essential. It is your survival suit. It it is your life raft. It is the thing that protects you from all of the trauma that you experience. I mean, it's a thing that you know particularly like, not particularly, but using again an extreme example, there are people that are able to disassociate from themselves when they are sexually abused as children, because how else is a child supposed to process that. So many of these cases, the ego steps in. The ego is there to protect the psyche, and it says you're not here right now, You're good, You're not here right now you're somewhere else. This isn't really you. And then that child learns how to now disassociate. Well, that was great for then, but that becomes a massive problem later on in life if you don't ultimately heal from that, if you don't learn that that's what you're doing and heal from that. So the ego ultimately is this incredible gift, but that becomes an incredible hindrance. It becomes an incredible weight on us. You know, in the in the book, I talk about it's almost like this exoskeleton or this you know, this suit of armor. It's this incredible thing. You're walking around and people are swinging clubs and things at you, and it's the armor is taking all the hits, but the armor is getting dented and chinked and cut up, and you know, so you end up walking around by the time you're thirty five years old, if you're still depending on this suit of armor, you don't realize how malformed you are. You think you're walking smooth and straight, but you're really with a limp and you're doing this all because you're stuck in this contorted armor and that armor is only supposed to service up to that point, and then you know, we can argue or are you a debate about you know, some people, you know, they like to use wording like, you know, death to the ego or kill the ego, and other people are like, no, befriend the ego or whatever that is, however you want to word it. I think at the end of the day, it's something that we all need to realize as a beautiful necessity in our lives as we are children particularly, and then eventually it does not serve us in a positive way that it once did, and ultimately being grateful for it, but allowing it to not be the armor that we need anymore, because we are doing the work on healing ourselves and enlightening ourselves so that when things do come at us, we're able to evade. We're able to you know, judo them by us. We're not just hitting they're not hitting us anymore because we're we're now more mature in our thought process and in our feelings. I was constantly running because I was constantly trying to survive as a child. I didn't realize just how traumatic it was to me. You know, like, if you're growing up in chaos, you just kind of assume that's normal, that the standard is what it is. If you don't grow up in chaos, you assume that's normal. Now, I thought, when I would go to normal you know, friends, homes and things, I just assumed, well, people are putting on errs or they're putting on appearances. But when I'm not here, it gets crazy, Like it gets crazy at my house, not realizing that I was really in a massive, massive survival mode, I mean, my sympathetic nervous system, even to this day. I mean, it's something that I have to work on very constantly because we want to be in our parasympathetic We want to be in a relaxed rest and digest in a mode most of the time. We don't want to be in this again, incredible gift that our bodies were given, which is the sympathetic, which is to survive, which is to run away from the sabertooth tiger, which is to not be killed by a trampling elephant, or or you know, go running, going and running after an antelope to go hunt it and bring it back to your camp. These are all things that we are our bodies evolutionarily have these beautiful, amazing gifts, but they're constantly activated now, almost more than ever, because survival is no longer running away from the beast, or chasing the thing to hunt, or getting out of you know, the elements. We all have a roof, not all of us, but a lot of the world, more than ever before in humanistry, have some kind of a roof over their head, some kind of clothes on their backs, some kind of food in their stomach. And survival has now become money because money can pay for all of those things, and so our pursuit, all of our collective pursuit for more of this is keeping us all engaged in this survival mode. And I was running from all of that, trying to survive and then running two. Where do I find my worth? Where do I find my identity? Where do I find these other things that ultimately give me this purpose and this worth? And how do I survive now in this other world? So that's where I ran from, and that's where I ran too, And ultimately all of that is really unhealthy because you need to be able to sit with yourself and recognize that nothing gives you worth or value outside of the fact that you are, that you are here the fact that you are alive means that you are a miracle. If that alone, if we could get people to the point of recognizing that holy crap, that should be enough, hopefully to be able to say, I love myself. I can't believe what a lucky thing that I got. I'm here, I'm in this existence that will hopefully help us to stop running from things and sit and be present. I think the challenge I see that people have, as you address in this book, and that's why I really appreciate what you've done with this book. Like Zach talks about like how to get help, how to be open, how to share your story right like, the book is a systematic approach in the journey that we're talking about in this very macro way today, because the book lays out the steps that you have to take to If anyone's listening to us right now and going like that's what I want to do, that's what I want to figure out, the book actually walks you through that journey, and Zach, I want to ask you this question because I feel like that journey, as you said at the beginning, to radical love, often feel so far away because we haven't been trained that way. We have an experience that we didn't see, that we didn't have access to that growing up. What's the first step? If radical love is the step, what's the first step in that journey that people could take today, tomorrow, this year in their life that makes them feel like they're on that journey. Because what we both also know is that if you try and imitate radical love, or if you try and pretend to practice radical love, that can actually be detrimental to yourself and others because it's just it's not real, right, So I want to hear about that from you. Inauthentic anything is the opposite of the thing. So if we're trying to put on love, if it's not authentic, it's not love, particularly love. There's a lot there are actually some other things that you could do a proxy version of that. You can. Maybe you're not totally screwing things up, but if you are, if you think you're providing love, if you're loving, you think you're loving yourself. I mean, like like my own journey, I thought I was loving myself, but that was inauthentic love because I was still berating myself unbeknounced to me, I was still all my self talk was the same self talk, though it was the same talk that I got from my parents. My parents, the majority of the way that you talk to yourself is the way your parents talk to you. So if you don't first recognize that, you're gonna have a really hard time understanding how to get out of whatever you're in. Now, if you had great parents that were super patient and loving and kind and empathetic and didn't you know, jump at you, but held firm boundaries and you know all that stuff, there's chances, chids are you have really good healthy self talk and good on you. Me not so much. I had. I didn't. I didn't know that and then I figured it out and I still work on it. But it's a thing that you know. Now that I'm aware of the traps that I fall into. Now I'm able to go, oh, Zach, you're doing it again. You're doing that thing, and you know this is how you end up winding yourself back down. So, but going back to your question, what is the first step, The first step has got to be recognizing that you have a problem, right like that is that's the age old, that's the adage. You know, the first step in fixing a problem is recognizing that you have a problem. Now, that can be very difficult for people. You can't force people to do that. That's got to be something that comes because they recognize the necessity. Now, in my case, I had a complete mental breakdown, and so I knew I don't know what else to do. Clearly I have a problem if I don't want to live anymore. So I have got to go try and figure that out. Now, that was step one, Step two. Now, by the way, not everybody has to come to that dire of a conclusion. Hopefully nobody does. Hopefully we're able to recognize these things far earlier in life. Beyond that, the step is, you gotta talk. You got to talk about it. You got to start with one of your closest friends or closest friends, start with your family if they're the closest to you. Get some of it out. Say I am struggling, I don't know what I'm struggling with. I'm embarrassed whatever. Guess what, there's no reason to be embarrassed. There's no reason to be scared because everybody, everyone, without fail, There is not one person on this earth that hasn't dealt with even the best parents and people still deal with some form of stress, anxiety, depression, you name it. There is something there so everyone can relate to this. Ultimately, we're all afraid. It's getting better, which is great, it's getting less stigmatized as the more we do things like this and talk about it. But everyone still has these reservations and fears because nobody wants to feel like they're broken. Nobody wants to feel like everybody else is good. But I'm somehow struggling and I don't know how, and we all feel like we're uniquely broken. We feel like, well, clearly, no one has felt the way that I feel. No one has gone through this exact thing, And I am here to say that is also a lie because the world is really, really old, and there have been billions and billions of people who have lived on this earth, and even if they lived in a completely different time, guess what they have still struggled with the exact same problems, slightly different details, exact same problems. So talking about it, getting it out, you have got to acknowled knowledge that there's a problem. Talk about that, but immediately as soon as you can go to a professional, don't don't have your friends and family. Don't allow them to be this kind of end all of where you get your advice and your wisdom, because as try as they might, they all have biased They all have agenda, even bias, an agenda that they're unaware of, not even bias agenda like well, I'm gonna take advantage of This's like, hey, I have a certain idea of who I think you ought to be, so I'm going to give you advice when it comes to directing you in that way. Whereas a disinterested, unbiased, unagenda third party. I mean, I guess the only bias or agenda they would have a professional therapist is that they get paid to do it, So I suppose you could say that. But outside of that, I mean, and they should because it's a service, it's a job, and by the way, it's one of the most valuable, so it's so worth the money. Although I do think all of that needs to be worked out too that really I'm hoping that we can keep pushing toward getting mental health services and information and education to people on much more reduced rates, if not entirely free. I wish that there were clinics that people could just walk into right off the street and be like, hey, I'm struggling. I need to talk to somebody. I need somebody this kind of like help click this back into reality. What a beautiful world that will be. But until that day very worth whatever, you know, the money I believe of an investment in yourself. So that's the first step. I really truly believe you got to You gotta acknowledge it, you got to talk about it. And then within that, now you have someone who is guiding you to the various other steps. Because the other steps, though some of them are kind of universal, some of them are not. Not Not every person needs to do X, and not every person needs to do why, And even the people that need to do both don't necessarily have to do them or should do them in that order. You know, it all depends on what your particular personal journey has been in your life with your traumas, how they came about, how they're manifesting in your life now, how you happen to be struggling or not struggling with them, or don't think you're struggling with them. You know, all of that can really you know, with a license professional, somebody really understands these things. It was studied this stuff. They can guide you through the rest. But so that that's what I would tell anybody out there, do yourself the service in the favor and go lug yourself first and foremost by investing in a therapist and being able to talk about and just get out what it is you need to talk about. I love that, Zach. I mean, I'm sure everyone can hear your passion, your drive, the amount of like. And it was the same last time, like even last time. I remember there was this one clip we had and you just went empathy, empathy, empathy, empathy, empathy, empathy, and he said empathy like thirty times. And even today I've heard you say radical love, you know, And it's the message you're asking us to do is hard but necessary. It's challenging but real. It's pushing us because that's the only way we get to our truer selves. And you can see that in you that it's a it's a plea, like you're almost plea pleading with us to say please do this. You know. It's not even it's not a direction, it's not preaching, it's not pushing, it's pleading. Uh. And I just want to say thank you to you for your energy, for the time to put this book together, for just just your ability to speak the truth so emphatically, and you know, with so much, with so much not confidence, that's that's actually an understatement, but but with depth, right, there's a there's a real depth behind these thoughts. And I appreciate you, man, I really do, because it's it's so much harder to talk about the things that you're choosing to talk about than than the software version of a lot of these ideas. So I appreciate you. I'm grateful for you. I'm recommending to everyone, please, please please go and grab a copy of the book Radical Love, Learning to Accept Yourself and others. Like I said today, hey, Zach's taking us on a journey of really understanding the concepts and ideas as these big principles. But the book really goes into his journey, his story, the experiences he went to be on the brink of that position of breaking down and falling apart, and then guides you through this step to step journey, whether it's overcoming your ego, whether it's loving yourself. So please do go and grab a copy of Radical Love, Zach. I'm grateful I can't wait to catch up with you, hang out with you. I miss you, and I'm wishing you all the best for the book tour. I hope he goes exceptionally well and I'm really excited to reconnect man. Thank you so much, thank you, thank you, bless you, love and appreciate you so much. And I hope that I get to see you and your wonderful wife in La or wherever we get to connect somewhere in the world. Absolutely, thank you, man. Have a wonderful evening. Thank you for doing this at your time. I'm sure it's pretty late there too, so nah, I'm good. Totally worth it. Great seeing you. Thank you, litt