"How This 33 Year Old Bestselling Author Figured Life Out "

What is one thing that when you were younger you put a lot of importance on and as you've gone older you realize it wasn't that important? Being accepted by friends. My definition of myself was always in relation to everyone around me. I was so alone and lonely and I had to ask myself, who am I? This summer I interviewed Najwa Zebian, a 34-year-old best-selling author. A few years ago, Najwa quit her teaching job to go all-in on becoming a self-published author. And today, Najwa's books and words have touched millions of people, especially when it comes to dealing with the number one mistake that we hear on our channel, caring too much about what other people think of you. Everyone around me would say, you'd be stupid to leave this. I continued on that path because it felt like breathing to me. Today, Najwa will be sharing some of her greatest insights on how to live a more fulfilling life and I guarantee the wisdom she's about to share will have an impact that will last on you for weeks to come. How old are you? 33. What does it feel like to be 33? Great. Thinking back to 23, I'm so happy that I'm here right now. I was stuck, really, or feeling stuck and suffering quite a bit. So that's why this age is enjoyable, because of all the knowledge and wisdom that has come with it. What is one thing that when you were younger, you put a lot of importance on, and as you've gone older, you realize it wasn't that important? Being accepted by friends. I struggled with that so much when I was younger. No one really put effort into trying to make me feel like I'm important or special. I just kind of always followed and hoped they would invite me to stuff, which they rarely did. And that carried into my adult years. I just wanted to be included so that I could feel like I'm enough. And now I'm like, I'm enough. When I fall back into focusing on the people who didn't prioritize me, or include me, or invite me in, or whatever, I remind myself that those aren't all the people. I do have many people around me who I just need to knock on their door, or text them, or call them, and, Hi, beautiful. Hi, great person. I love you. You're great. You know you're going to hear those words. So think of the people who do include you, and who do love you, and give them your time investment. Change is very important. A very important concept for me and for Sprout. Where I used to work in banks, I experienced all the problems and all the stressors that come with change. This is something that you mentioned in the caption, when we're talking about the only constant. Sometimes we fight so hard for things to stay the same in our lives because we are so afraid of what it would mean for things to be different. We would rather stay in the same miserable familiar certainty than risk a new unfamiliar and uncertain reality. I'd love to know why. Sometimes we fear all the bad things that could happen if we actually take the leap to change our lives. And our mind tells us, our body tells us, based on our survival mode, that if we do change the course that we're on, that's the most terrifying thing. The worst thing could happen. If your biggest fear is abandonment, then your body and your mind are telling you, if we take this change, everyone in our life is going to abandon us. Everyone being the people who we've told ourselves, we can't live without them. So we like to stay with what we know is certain because at least we know how to survive. We've survived our entire lives. When you see someone in a really bad relationship and everyone around them is looking at them saying, how could you stay? Like there's so much better out there, but they can't see it. And they say, well, you know, I'd rather have the evil that I know than the evil I don't know. I always talk about two different kinds of safety. There's a safety that's protective, where it's like, I just want to stay safe. I want to protect myself. I want to make sure I'm not hurt. And there's the safety that's expansive, where I get to be myself. I get to be vulnerable. I get to live a whole authentic life and I'm feeling safe in expressing myself and my needs. I'm not pretending like I don't have certain needs or certain wants or whatever. So what kind of safety do you want? I love that. It's tough to stand alone against all that you've ever known in your life. I was so alone and lonely and I had to ask myself, who am I really? Who am I and what do I stand for? And I had never asked myself that question before because my definition of myself was always in relation to everyone around me. It was in relation to my culture, to my religion, to my family. And so to ask myself, who am I outside of all of that? It was one of the best things, if not the best thing that happened to me. I became immune to people's opinions of me. And I talk about this in The Only Constant quite a bit because one of the points I say is break the bonds that hold you to a past version of you. So you have to make that choice. Do you want to live a life where you have to leave your true authentic self when you knock on someone's door and you walk in as a past version of you that you really didn't enjoy being? Do you want that life? Or do you want a life of I can be fully myself? I don't have to share everything about my life with you, but I'm not gonna change the core of who I am so you can love me or welcome me or treat me properly. I interview people all over the world, which means that whenever I'm coming up with most of my questions or if I'm uploading videos, I'm likely in a coffee shop, a hotel or a public space on public Wi-Fi. Now, I've been using a VPN for over four years to keep all of my accounts safe because it's really easy nowadays to get your information hacked into if the Wi-Fi that you're on doesn't have any sort of encryption to protect you. Thankfully, the sponsor of today's video, ExpressVPN, keeps me secure on any Wi-Fi network. And it does this by wrapping all of my traffic in a secure encrypted tunnel that Wi-Fi hackers cannot get into. ExpressVPN is available in over 100 different countries and using a VPN allows me and could allow you to access shows or streaming services like Netflix or HBO that are usually only available in certain parts of the world. Get three months of ExpressVPN for free by scanning the QR code that's on the screen or clicking the link that's in my description box below or by going to expressvpn.com slash sprout. So I have friends, for example, that I love but we don't have the same ambition or direction in life. They don't bring me down, but they don't lift me up. Should we have the same approach to both of those or is there leeway? There's a toxic positive culture out there where I hear people say things like if you don't gain something from the people around you, then remove them from your life. And it's like, are you saying that people only have value when you get something from them? Yeah, then life is purely transactional. Exactly. So from my perspective to what you were saying earlier, I have supportive parents and have always had supportive parents. It changes the game. It's a huge advantage. I'd love to know from your perspective what you were saying earlier about asking yourself, who am I? How did you get to the point where you finally did give yourself permission to ask that question? I think it's important to say that your parents are also living their life for the very first time and they are figuring things out for the very first time. They come with their own traumas, with their own histories, with their own parents who raised them a certain way, their own set of morals and beliefs and values. And so definitely look at that with compassion because I see many people out there who really carry that resentment. My parents have always pushed me to be the creative that I am. But when it came to moving out of my parents' home, that's a big cultural no. Even my brothers didn't move out of our parents' house before they got married. And the way that we went about it was extremely real. You bring up a topic that they didn't expect. They perceive it as this bomb that you dropped on them and it just shattered their whole image of what your life was going to be up until a certain point. And so we talked about it back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And then my dad actually helped me find an apartment by the end to move out. I used to be a lot more closed off from sharing stories like this because I was like, you know, I don't want to make my parents look bad, but they're not bad. They have their own definitions of what it means to be a good mom and a good dad. And I feel like maybe they thought they wouldn't be good parents if they accepted something like this. You are now the one who's leading. Yes, when you were a child, you needed someone to take care of you, but now you are in the driver's seat. Where do you want to go? And what path do you want to take? Are they always going to be sitting in the car with you? Or will you visit them every once in a while and make sure you still have a relationship with them, but you're taking your own path? You're using your own leadership. You have to make a choice because you can be stuck for your whole life and say, I can't do this because they won't let me. Or you can say, I can do this. They will be upset with me. They might get over it. They might not get over it. But what's more important, that you live an authentic life or that you please someone else? I am curious as well, in terms of making the change, there are three types of change, as you were telling me earlier before we started the interview. What are those three types of changes? Let's start there. So in The Only Constant, I broke it into three big themes. Changes we don't choose, changes we choose, and changes we need to make. So the changes we don't choose are when someone that we love dies or breaks up with us, or if we lose a job, or if we get kicked out of our university or college program. Things that we just, we didn't see coming. Changes we choose are ones where, you know, you decide, you want to change your job, you want to change your career, you want to break up with someone, you want to get into a new relationship. Anything that comes from within, I'm making this choice. Changes we need to make, it is all about living an authentic life. What are the things that keep you up at night? Like every single night, you ruminate over a certain life change that you just know you need to make. So what are the changes that you know will align you with yourself? Be the center of your attention. I always thought that that was so selfish to be the center of my own attention, to let my world revolve around me. That's a propeller of change, to make yourself the center of attention in your life. See yourself as the leader of your life and finally radically accept yourself. I would love to know the difference, in your opinion, between a change that we might want to make versus we need to make. How do we know what we need to do? Sometimes a change that you want to make is not actually what's best for you. It could be based on past versions of you that you thought you needed to be. It could be based on dreams that other people had for you. But sometimes the change you want aligns with a change that you actually need in your life. Right before I made the transition between teaching and writing, everyone around me would say, you can't make a living out of writing. Don't do this. Like you have a teaching degree or doing your doctorate. You would be stupid to leave teaching behind to pursue writing. And I continued on that path because it felt like breathing to me. It didn't matter whether I was making money or not. It just felt like a necessary thing. It felt like something I needed to do. You do need to pursue a path of inner leadership and leadership doesn't always mean that you are going to get to a place that's like, that's it. It was the right thing to do. See, I succeeded. It could be leading you to a dead end but you learned something so that the next thing could work out. So don't be discouraged by the difference. What are some things that you did that got you to be this self-aware and this willing to be different and give yourself permission? I realized on my own journey that my issue wasn't with my mindset. It was with my body. Let me explain. I had a therapy session. This was a few years ago where I told my therapist, I know these relationships are really bad for me. Like I know it, but I feel like I can't end them and I can't leave them. And I judge myself every single day for knowing better and not doing better. And she told me something that just felt like my soul left my body and came back into like in full alignment. She said, have you considered that your body also makes choices? It's not just your mind. She was like, maybe your body's choosing to stay because based on the traumas that have accumulated in your body over the years, you don't believe that you can leave, that you can survive without those relationships. And that's really what it would feel like. The door would be two meters away from me, but I'm sitting on the couch feeling like I can't get up. I can't move. So I would fall into the freeze response. And it's obviously protective. My body's trying to protect me from the pain that was my biggest pain my entire life. I don't deserve to be loved. Everybody walks away from me. So she said, maybe you need to honor your body's choices and listen to your body more. See what's going on inside of it that's forcing it to feel stuck and caged. And then maybe when you train your body to trust you and to trust your mind and what you know, it will follow you and it will lead with you. So the biggest thing I did for myself was work on my traumas and releasing them from my body. So I give my younger self permission to release certain trauma responses from my body so that adult me right now feels like I'm done with that. I'm so much bigger than that. I'm not ruled by it. I ask everybody that we interview to share one piece of life advice. I'd love it if you could read out the piece of life advice that you've chosen today. Just explain to us why that's what you chose. The piece of life advice I wrote down is think of yourself too. We tend to think of everyone else around us, their comfort, their happiness. What about you? You have to ask yourself that question. What do I need to feel happy and fulfilled? What would make my life easier today? That this question, it truly transformed my life because I never asked myself those questions. It was always about as long as everyone's happy, I'm happy. And to ask myself if I'm at a grocery store, what would I like? Truly transformational question, not what am I okay tolerating? What would really make this experience, whatever the experience is, whether it's getting through your day, whether it's driving somewhere, what would make this experience truly enjoyable? Do it for yourself because you know very well that you would do it for someone you love. And you should be the number one person that you love. So think of yourself too. I love it. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.