Latest / Math Therapy / How to change your life by changing your story w/ Gorav Menon

Transcript

How to change your life by changing your story w/ Gorav Menon · Math Therapy

• 0:03
  Gorav Menon: The first step with storytelling is just understanding how important it is.
• 0:06
  Gorav Menon: That it is everywhere.
• 0:07
  Gorav Menon: The way you talk to other people.
• 0:08
  Gorav Menon: It's the way you talk to yourself.
• 0:10
  Gorav Menon: It's the stories you interact with.
• 0:12
  Gorav Menon: We consume these stories And it makes us feel like, oh, we should be doing this.
• 0:16
  Gorav Menon: And then we get into shoulding on myself, where I'm constantly saying, I should, I should, I should.
• 0:21
  Gorav Menon: if you reframe that to, could you get a much better understanding of, I'm making decisions for what's best for me, not what's best for everyone else at all times.
• 0:33
  Vanessa Vakharia: Hey guys, it's Vanessa, and welcome to another episode of Math Therapy.
• 0:37
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 0:38
  Vanessa Vakharia: I love when this happens because it's only happened a few times, and every time it does it's extra special.
• 0:43
  Vanessa Vakharia: Today's guest is an old student of mine.
• 0:46
  Vanessa Vakharia: And another thing that's extra special, this podcast isn't specifically about math, but about the stories we tell ourselves about who we are when it comes to math.
• 0:57
  Vanessa Vakharia: I'm not a math person.
• 0:58
  Vanessa Vakharia: That's a story.
• 1:00
  Vanessa Vakharia: This isn't even just about math stories.
• 1:02
  Vanessa Vakharia: This episode is about the stories we tell ourselves, period.
• 1:06
  Vanessa Vakharia: The ones that empower us to follow big dreams, the ones that strip away our power by convincing us we don't have what it takes to follow those dreams, and the ones that hold us down, stuck and stagnant because they tell us we can't change.
• 1:19
  Vanessa Vakharia: That we don't deserve to change.
• 1:22
  Vanessa Vakharia: My guest, AKA,
• 1:23
  my old student, Gorav Menon, is the host of the Linen Suit and Plastic Tie podcast, which explores
• 1:29
  Vanessa Vakharia: the power of storytelling.
• 1:31
  Vanessa Vakharia: Our conversation was unbelievably fascinating because we didn't just talk about stories, but about how the stories we consume become the stories we tell ourselves about what we are and aren't capable of.
• 1:42
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yes, of course we talk about math stories and the labels that come with them, but this
• 1:47
  episode will affect you far beyond the math classroom.
• 1:50
  Vanessa Vakharia: This episode is honestly gonna change your life.
• 1:52
  Vanessa Vakharia: It definitely changed mine.
• 1:54
  Vanessa Vakharia: Gorav shares three steps, everyone including you can take right now, like the second this episode ends to change any story that is no longer serving you.
• 2:04
  Vanessa Vakharia: And if you're already thinking about that friend who has like that story that keeps them stuck in a loop.
• 2:10
  Vanessa Vakharia: Do them a favor and send them this episode right now, it might be what they finally need to hear to kick that story to the curb.
• 2:16
  Vanessa Vakharia: I also can't help but think that like this is the perfect episode for this exact moment because this is the week when the year of the snake came to a close asking us all to embody the snake and shed the stories that are no longer serving us.
• 2:29
  Vanessa Vakharia: So are you ready to understand where your stories even come from and how to truly shed them?
• 2:34
  Vanessa Vakharia: Let's get into it.
• 2:38
  Vanessa Vakharia: hello, welcome.
• 2:40
  Vanessa Vakharia: You have a podcast that's about storytelling.
• 2:42
  Vanessa Vakharia: I love the way you talk about storytelling, and such a big part of my work is, you know, as you know, math trauma, math therapy, our math identities are based in the story, our stories.
• 2:52
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like it's, and I've never had anyone on to really talk about storytelling.
• 2:56
  Vanessa Vakharia: So like, I think my first question is, can you tell us like, what inspired your podcast?
• 3:01
  Vanessa Vakharia: What's the vibe of it other than like, it's a storytelling podcast.
• 3:03
  Vanessa Vakharia: What does that mean?
• 3:05
  Gorav Menon: The Linen Suit and Plastic Tie podcast is about unlocking the power of storytelling as a skill that everyone can and should develop.
• 3:14
  Gorav Menon: And it came about because uh, my co-host, Kevin and I, we had just graduated UCLA.
• 3:19
  Gorav Menon: I was interning, he was starting his grad school program, and we were having a lot of conversations, a lot of interviews, and we were, we were seeing more and more how important storytelling was and we realized, man, we are bad at it.
• 3:30
  Gorav Menon: So this idea was, okay, so we are bad at this thing.
• 3:33
  Gorav Menon: How can we get better?
• 3:34
  Gorav Menon: Let's talk to a lot of people that are great at it.
• 3:36
  Gorav Menon: So that's what we have been doing for a long time.
• 3:39
  Gorav Menon: We actually have been doing this since 2020.
• 3:41
  Gorav Menon: We just haven't improved as much as we should, but we've, we've improved in the important ways.
• 3:46
  Gorav Menon: Like we have gone much better at asking questions, having conversations.
• 3:50
  Gorav Menon: And every season we start off by saying, Hey Kevin, are you an expert storyteller?
• 3:54
  Gorav Menon: Every season he says, no, same with me.
• 3:57
  Gorav Menon: are not experts at this.
• 3:58
  Gorav Menon: We are learning this with our audience.
• 4:00
  Gorav Menon: We actually both think we're quite bad at it, but the first step with storytelling is just understanding how important it is.
• 4:07
  Gorav Menon: That it is everywhere.
• 4:08
  Gorav Menon: It is the way you talk to other people.
• 4:10
  Gorav Menon: It's the way you talk to yourself.
• 4:11
  Gorav Menon: It's the stories you consume and the stories you interact with.
• 4:15
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 4:15
  Vanessa Vakharia: I'm getting goosebumps.
• 4:16
  Vanessa Vakharia: I mean, I love, just that final line.
• 4:18
  Vanessa Vakharia: It's the way we interact with people.
• 4:20
  Vanessa Vakharia: It's the way we interact with ourselves.
• 4:21
  Vanessa Vakharia: And my, my, I have a question because you're saying, you know, we're not expert storytellers and we realize we were bad at it.
• 4:27
  Vanessa Vakharia: What makes someone a good storyteller?
• 4:30
  Gorav Menon: I think confidence is a lot of it.
• 4:32
  Gorav Menon: We've asked that question hundreds of times in hundreds of different ways, and the thing about it is that there's no, and this is the beauty thing about this as a craft.
• 4:40
  Gorav Menon: There's no one clear answer.
• 4:42
  Gorav Menon: Storytelling is so unique to all of us I think we, we live in this world where we believe that it's for extroverts or it's for confident people, even though I just said confidence, but it's for confident people, it's for extroverts, for loud people.
• 4:55
  Gorav Menon: These are inherently untrue kind stories in themselves we're telling ourselves, right, that it's for someone else.
• 5:02
  Gorav Menon: In fact, storytelling is so diverse and so different, and so individual that we all can become better story tells and we all should.
• 5:11
  Gorav Menon: So I do wanna say confidence, but not in the loud, boisterous way you think.
• 5:17
  Gorav Menon: It's more just the belief that you are a storyteller.
• 5:19
  Gorav Menon: It's the essential skill that makes us human, and it's something we can get better at.
• 5:23
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah, but like I've heard really confident people tell the worst fucking stories.
• 5:27
  Gorav Menon: Yeah.
• 5:27
  Vanessa Vakharia: Do you know what I mean?
• 5:28
  Vanessa Vakharia: So like it can't just be that you're confident.
• 5:30
  Vanessa Vakharia: And you earlier said, I realized I was bad at it.
• 5:33
  Vanessa Vakharia: So what made you bad at telling stories?
• 5:35
  Vanessa Vakharia: What was it?
• 5:36
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, what did you perceive?
• 5:37
  Vanessa Vakharia: What was the story you were telling yourself about your storytelling?
• 5:40
  Gorav Menon: Yeah.
• 5:40
  Gorav Menon: It is honestly such a meta question.
• 5:42
  Gorav Menon: It's an amazing question.
• 5:44
  Gorav Menon: It's funny'cause I don't, I don't see myself as bad as it now, but I don't know if, think that's because I've kind of learned how diverse this is.
• 5:53
  Gorav Menon: It's not about being Steve Jobs.
• 5:55
  Vanessa Vakharia: Is he a good storyteller?
• 5:56
  Gorav Menon: He is one of the best.
• 5:57
  Vanessa Vakharia: Oh,
• 5:58
  Gorav Menon: But he is not actually the example I use most often.
• 6:00
  Gorav Menon: I use Gordon Ramsey.
• 6:01
  Gorav Menon: The reason I use Gordon Ramsey is because you stop a hundred people on the street and say, is Gordon Ramsey a good cook?
• 6:10
  Gorav Menon: They will say yes.
• 6:11
  Gorav Menon: Like most of'em will say yes.
• 6:13
  Gorav Menon: I love talking about Gordon Ramsey because many people have never tasted his food, but will name him the best chef in the world.
• 6:19
  Gorav Menon: And it's because he has such an intense brand, right?
• 6:23
  Gorav Menon: He goes on these television shows, he talks about this stuff.
• 6:25
  Gorav Menon: He reminds people that he's a cook every single day.
• 6:30
  Gorav Menon: That's storytelling.
• 6:31
  Gorav Menon: It's your brand.
• 6:32
  Gorav Menon: It's the way you communicate the world.
• 6:33
  Gorav Menon: It's the way what you're passionate about.
• 6:35
  Vanessa Vakharia: Oh my God.
• 6:36
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 6:37
  Vanessa Vakharia: Wow.
• 6:37
  Vanessa Vakharia: No, because now you're making me think about, I mean, I'm thinking about storytelling like I tell you a story about what happened to me yesterday and am I good at it?
• 6:45
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like me and David, for example, like I'm clearly the superior storyteller.
• 6:48
  Vanessa Vakharia: The reasons I would say why he's, he's nodding in agreement, by the way.
• 6:52
  Vanessa Vakharia: The reasons I would say why Even though this is hard to believe,'cause I'm not that coherent when I tell a story, I feel like I have a pretty good through line and it doesn't take me that long to get to my point.
• 7:03
  Vanessa Vakharia: And I can be like descriptive and illustrative and like there's different tones in my voice.
• 7:08
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, you know what I mean?
• 7:08
  Vanessa Vakharia: I can get someone engaged in this.
• 7:09
  Vanessa Vakharia: This is how I'm thinking about stories.
• 7:11
  Vanessa Vakharia: How, however you've just flipped that to say, this Gordon Ramsey example is actually throwing me for a loop,'cause you're kind of throwing it to say, well, storytelling is kind of like you having a strong brandand, like the way you're speaking about yourself is, almost consistently pointing to something.
• 7:33
  Vanessa Vakharia: Is that,
• 7:34
  Gorav Menon: Yeah,
• 7:35
  Vanessa Vakharia: am I onto something?
• 7:36
  Gorav Menon: Uh, for sure.
• 7:37
  Gorav Menon: I think there's two sides to this coin, and we call it internal and external storytelling.
• 7:41
  Gorav Menon: We did not come up with that.
• 7:42
  Gorav Menon: I'm sure that's a thing.
• 7:43
  Gorav Menon: Uh, but we call it internal external storytelling.
• 7:45
  Gorav Menon: And the show started as external storytelling.
• 7:47
  Gorav Menon: So the Gordon Ramsey, right, the building the brand, reminding yourself, this is the story I'm telling you about myself, I'm the hero of this story.
• 7:55
  Gorav Menon: If my goal is to be, for me, it has a lot to do with tech and consumer tech and making an impact in that realm.
• 8:01
  Gorav Menon: So how do I add things to enhance that story, whether it's through branding on LinkedIn for the classes I take, whatever.
• 8:07
  Gorav Menon: The other side is internal storytelling, and this came up on the show by accident through bringing on psychologists.
• 8:13
  Gorav Menon: Right.
• 8:14
  Vanessa Vakharia: Oh.
• 8:14
  Gorav Menon: Through me, I've been in therapy since I was 17, right, it's a huge part of my life, and in therapy, we talk a lot about the stories we're telling ourselves, right?
• 8:23
  Gorav Menon: And when we brought psychologists on the show, we started talking about, okay, how are we communicating ourselves?
• 8:27
  Gorav Menon: How are we talking to ourselves?
• 8:28
  Gorav Menon: How are we dealing with our own trauma?
• 8:29
  Gorav Menon: And so there's two sides of storytelling.
• 8:32
  Gorav Menon: One is the external branding, the more obvious side.
• 8:34
  Gorav Menon: And then the other is like, okay, what are the conversations we're having with ourselves?
• 8:38
  Vanessa Vakharia: Oh my God.
• 8:39
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 8:39
  Vanessa Vakharia: Well we, that's what I really wanna talk about, and I love that you were.
• 8:43
  Vanessa Vakharia: You're, you're open to sharing that you've been in therapy because I also have been in therapy for years and years, and I feel like this is something we don't talk about enough because we all obviously have these narratives.
• 8:55
  Vanessa Vakharia: And when I started talking to students when I was tutoring them math, I would notice they would make these statements like, oh, I've always been bad at math, or I'm just not a math person.
• 9:04
  Vanessa Vakharia: This isn't this thing I can do, or, you know, that kind of thing.
• 9:07
  Vanessa Vakharia: And I started realizing.
• 9:09
  Vanessa Vakharia: There is an entire storyline that has preceded this, that has led up to this point and has led to, I mean, I would call what they're doing negative self, self-talk, right?
• 9:18
  Vanessa Vakharia: They're saying it to me externally, but they're saying it internally.
• 9:21
  Vanessa Vakharia: So would negative self-talk be a type of internal story?
• 9:26
  Gorav Menon: Yeah, it's one of the most prevalent types, and we've had so many amazing psychologists on the show talk about this.
• 9:32
  Gorav Menon: Like we had, there's a psychologist from Berkeley, Dr.
• 9:36
  Gorav Menon: Saha Yusef, who talked to us about this productivity issue we have where we are telling ourselves we always have to be productive.
• 9:43
  Vanessa Vakharia: Oh my God.
• 9:43
  Vanessa Vakharia: Talk to me about this.
• 9:44
  Vanessa Vakharia: This is so my issue.
• 9:46
  Gorav Menon: It, I, my issue too, and I deal with this every day, I still deal with this, but it's this thing where we get to such a state where we're always trying to quantify everything, where it's the worst thing you can do for productivity, right?
• 9:58
  Gorav Menon: Because we end up just being productive on things that matter, not at all.
• 10:02
  Gorav Menon: Right?
• 10:02
  Gorav Menon: And it's, the point is you have to schedule, do nothing time where we're breaking that story.
• 10:07
  Gorav Menon: And this is negative self-talk, right?
• 10:09
  Gorav Menon: Because we are ourselves these stories and they become true because we're telling ourselves these stories, right?
• 10:14
  Gorav Menon: That's the only reason they are becoming true.
• 10:16
  Gorav Menon: You tell yourself you're bad at math.
• 10:17
  Gorav Menon: For me, it's always been, I'm bad at languages.
• 10:21
  Gorav Menon: Right.
• 10:21
  Gorav Menon: I've always told myself, I, I grew up in Toronto as you know, um, and took French for 10 years and it was always this,
• 10:28
  Vanessa Vakharia: Mm.
• 10:29
  Vanessa Vakharia: No one likes it.
• 10:30
  Gorav Menon: This last year or so, I've been really trying to learn.
• 10:34
  Gorav Menon: I'm learning Italian, but it's'cause I lost a bet.
• 10:36
  Gorav Menon: But I'm learning Italian, but I'm trying to learn languages again because I've told myself I can't do it'cause I'm bad at it.
• 10:44
  Gorav Menon: And when you start doing things like that, it's, it breaks that narrative.
• 10:47
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 10:48
  Vanessa Vakharia: I have a, a bunch of questions here.
• 10:49
  Vanessa Vakharia: The first one is the psychologist that came on, do we all have that productivity story or it was just like you have it?
• 10:55
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, is this a common thing?
• 10:57
  Gorav Menon: Yeah.
• 10:57
  Gorav Menon: She was mostly addressing us because Kevin and I are both very, very type A people.
• 11:02
  Gorav Menon: We are very productive people and we often, when psychologists come on the show, we use it as an excuse to for free therapy.
• 11:08
  Vanessa Vakharia: Of course.
• 11:09
  Gorav Menon: This is something we do, but a lot of people do a lot, a lot of people deal with this productivity hack and it's this really messed up narrative where, so you feel like, oh, I'm not being productive enough, so I'm gonna clean my email inbox.
• 11:21
  Gorav Menon: Right?
• 11:21
  Gorav Menon: And
• 11:21
  Vanessa Vakharia: Oh my God.
• 11:22
  Vanessa Vakharia: This is me.
• 11:23
  Vanessa Vakharia: This is me.
• 11:24
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yep.
• 11:25
  Gorav Menon: And this is toxic.
• 11:26
  Gorav Menon: It's extremely toxic, right?
• 11:27
  Gorav Menon: Because we're like, I'm gonna do this thing that seems productive in this moment to make me feel better when doing nothing would actually help you much better.
• 11:34
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 11:34
  Vanessa Vakharia: But that productivity story, let's like dig in here the story, because this, this ties into anyone's math story, but we're gonna go with productivity.
• 11:41
  Vanessa Vakharia: 'cause I actually bet a lot of people listening have this same story.
• 11:44
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 11:45
  Vanessa Vakharia: It's like, I just need to be doing something.
• 11:46
  Vanessa Vakharia: I feel guilty if I'm not doing something.
• 11:47
  Vanessa Vakharia: I need to be productive.
• 11:49
  Vanessa Vakharia: Now I listen to a whole episode on this and then on the Mel Robbins podcast, and that's why I feel confident that every what, like most people feel this way.
• 11:55
  Vanessa Vakharia: And my question here is.
• 11:57
  Vanessa Vakharia: That productivity story that is in your head that you're telling yourself, yeah, it's only true because you're telling yourself that story.
• 12:04
  Vanessa Vakharia: However, doesn't that story come from somewhere?
• 12:09
  Vanessa Vakharia: Doesn't it come from, for example, school where we were actually taught that if we weren't being productive, we were lazy?
• 12:15
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, doesn't it come from like a society that values hustle over everything else?
• 12:19
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like our stories come from somewhere, don't they?
• 12:22
  Vanessa Vakharia: Or do we just create them out of thin air?
• 12:23
  Gorav Menon: We definitely don't create things out of thin air.
• 12:25
  Gorav Menon: One of the central concepts we talk about on the show is that, we are what we consume in stories,
• 12:31
  Vanessa Vakharia: okay.
• 12:31
  Gorav Menon: So when we're consuming a lot of social media content, right, where you see 1% of someone's life, probably the most productive part of their life, constantly, right?
• 12:40
  Gorav Menon: And then you're not watching this one person's life.
• 12:42
  Gorav Menon: You're jumping between different people's most productive moments, right?
• 12:46
  Gorav Menon: And then you are feeling, you're creating this thing in your head where it's like.
• 12:50
  Gorav Menon: Okay, so I just saw this person being super productive.
• 12:52
  Gorav Menon: Then I saw this person being super productive.
• 12:54
  Gorav Menon: And even with TikTok where you see more fun stuff, it's still value, right?
• 13:00
  Gorav Menon: So this is the thing where you feel like everyone around you is being really productive.
• 13:03
  Gorav Menon: Because we don't hear the billionaires talk about the six hour Netflix binge.
• 13:08
  Gorav Menon: We don't, and it happens, and this is something in therapy I deal with a lot with.
• 13:12
  Gorav Menon: You know, they're sleeping too.
• 13:13
  Gorav Menon: Right?
• 13:14
  Gorav Menon: And it's just, it's that reminder that that's not what we see.
• 13:17
  Gorav Menon: So we consume these stories that everyone else is doing this.
• 13:21
  Gorav Menon: And it makes us feel like, oh, we should be doing this.
• 13:24
  Gorav Menon: And then we get into what my favorites called shoulding on myself, where it's just such an essential story where I'm constantly saying, I should, I should, I should.
• 13:32
  Gorav Menon: When, if you reframe that to, could you get a much better understanding of, oh.
• 13:38
  Gorav Menon: I'm making decisions for what's best for me, not what's best for everyone else at all times.
• 13:45
  Vanessa Vakharia: Oh my God, I am getting so much free therapy right now.
• 13:48
  Vanessa Vakharia: These are all my issues.
• 13:49
  Vanessa Vakharia: I'm always shutting myself.
• 13:51
  Vanessa Vakharia: I should is like the, the worst.
• 13:52
  Vanessa Vakharia: It's the four letter word that isn't four letters.
• 13:54
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like we have to stop saying that.
• 13:56
  Vanessa Vakharia: And I, you know, so it's interesting.
• 13:57
  Vanessa Vakharia: So okay, we're saying that our stories, we are what we consume, that's part one.
• 14:02
  Vanessa Vakharia: But aren't we also like what we've previously experienced?
• 14:05
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like what determines whether or not something that has happened to us once or maybe a few times, makes it into our permanent internal story about ourselves versus other things that don't.
• 14:18
  Vanessa Vakharia: And let me just, that sounded very vague, but for example, so much math trauma is legitimately caused by poor negative experiences in math.
• 14:26
  Vanessa Vakharia: You know, you were shamed in front of a classroom, you couldn't answer a question, and you know, people in the class laughed at you.
• 14:31
  Vanessa Vakharia: You were yelled at by a parent for not getting something as quick as your sibling.
• 14:35
  Vanessa Vakharia: So the the actual experience, this isn't consumption now, right?
• 14:39
  Vanessa Vakharia: The actual experience makes its way into your own personal narrative.
• 14:42
  Vanessa Vakharia: But then you might have experiences that counteract that.
• 14:46
  Vanessa Vakharia: Maybe you do really well on a test, or maybe you have somebody congratulates you on doing something, but that doesn't make its way into your personal narrative.
• 14:53
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like your internal story remains.
• 14:55
  Vanessa Vakharia: I can't do math.
• 14:56
  Vanessa Vakharia: Do you have, did, did that make sense?
• 14:58
  Gorav Menon: No, it makes perfect sense.
• 15:00
  Gorav Menon: I mean, I will clarify.
• 15:02
  Gorav Menon: I'm not a psychologist,
• 15:03
  Vanessa Vakharia: No, I know, I know you're not.
• 15:04
  Vanessa Vakharia: I know you're not.
• 15:05
  Gorav Menon: but, uh,
• 15:05
  Vanessa Vakharia: But in the stories you've heard and like the story, the power of storytelling, like is it, is it because of our brain's negativity bias where we are just more likely to focus on those negative things and we need to like really put in the effort and do work around seeing those positive things as part of our story as opposed to exceptions to the rule that is our story?
• 15:27
  Gorav Menon: Yeah, and I think, you know, it's funny, we joke a lot on the show about this idea of like it, imagine if when we were three years old we were told we were good at dancing.
• 15:38
  Gorav Menon: Right.
• 15:39
  Gorav Menon: We'd all be dancers, right?
• 15:40
  Gorav Menon: It's this thing where we are told the story when we're young and we latch onto that'cause we don't
• 15:45
  Vanessa Vakharia: yep.
• 15:46
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yep.
• 15:46
  Gorav Menon: reinforce it, right?
• 15:47
  Gorav Menon: We
• 15:47
  Vanessa Vakharia: Hmm.
• 15:48
  Gorav Menon: passionate about.
• 15:49
  Gorav Menon: And it's, it's funny'cause we're like, well, I wonder what we were
• 15:52
  Vanessa Vakharia: David.
• 15:53
  Vanessa Vakharia: Oh my.
• 15:53
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 15:54
  Vanessa Vakharia: This is such a good point.
• 15:55
  Vanessa Vakharia: No, no, no.
• 15:56
  Vanessa Vakharia: This is.
• 15:57
  Gorav Menon: something?
• 15:58
  Vanessa Vakharia: Well, yesterday we had this whole debate about natural ability or natural affinity, and David and I were arguing, and again, we are not psychologists either, and we're not neuroscientists, but you, what you're saying is very interesting.
• 16:10
  Vanessa Vakharia: I wanna put a storytelling lens on this.
• 16:12
  Vanessa Vakharia: He was saying, well, some, you know, like I just naturally gravitated towards puzzles.
• 16:17
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like there must be some like innate biological, natural affinity or ability towards let's say puzzles or math or whatever, and yes, maybe it's so small and we can overcome it with nurture.
• 16:29
  Vanessa Vakharia: And I was saying, I just dunno how true that is because exactly what you said, when we're very young, you are what you consume.
• 16:35
  Vanessa Vakharia: So number one, our stories are what are we watching on tv?
• 16:38
  Vanessa Vakharia: What are our friends saying?
• 16:39
  Vanessa Vakharia: What is a teacher doing in class?
• 16:41
  Vanessa Vakharia: What are the people around us doing?
• 16:42
  Vanessa Vakharia: Or exactly, an adult hands us a story.
• 16:46
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like says something like, oh, I noticed you doing this.
• 16:49
  Vanessa Vakharia: You are so good at solving puzzles.
• 16:50
  Vanessa Vakharia: Here are more puzzles to solve, and now that behavior reinforces the story you were literally given.
• 16:56
  Vanessa Vakharia: Right?
• 16:57
  Gorav Menon: Yeah, no, I, that happens.
• 16:59
  Gorav Menon: Genetic's a huge part to play in a lot of things, obviously, like, uh, if you're tall basketball, things like that
• 17:05
  Vanessa Vakharia: Fine.
• 17:06
  Gorav Menon: all the time.
• 17:06
  Gorav Menon: But no, it does much more nuance in like.
• 17:10
  Gorav Menon: way we encourage kids, right?
• 17:11
  Gorav Menon: Because we are, if you find something you're good at, especially as a kid, you latch onto it and then you reinforce it, then you practice it, right?
• 17:17
  Gorav Menon: No one, no one wins anything because they were naturally good at it, right?
• 17:21
  Gorav Menon: It's a lot of work between natural ability and actual success and the sy, that storytelling, right?
• 17:28
  Gorav Menon: Where it's like we get into a space where I've always thought I was good at this, so I've always focused on this.
• 17:34
  Gorav Menon: it becomes just what we spend our time on.
• 17:36
  Gorav Menon: Labels are really important to us because labels have this ability to empower us and limit us.
• 17:43
  Vanessa Vakharia: Oh my God.
• 17:44
  Vanessa Vakharia: You're like, that's exactly what I say all the time.
• 17:46
  Vanessa Vakharia: Wow.
• 17:46
  Vanessa Vakharia: 10 years later and we're just like on the same page.
• 17:49
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 17:49
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah.
• 17:49
  Vanessa Vakharia: Tell, tell me more.
• 17:50
  Gorav Menon: labels are often seen as bad'cause there's so many terrible labels.
• 17:53
  Gorav Menon: But you can label yourself as like bad at math.
• 17:55
  Gorav Menon: So you're not gonna go out and try to be better.
• 17:57
  Gorav Menon: That's just what you are, which is a terribly limiting label.
• 18:01
  Gorav Menon: But you can also label yourself as saying, um.
• 18:05
  Gorav Menon: I am an kind person, and then I'm gonna go out in the world and try to be kind.
• 18:09
  Gorav Menon: Right?
• 18:10
  Gorav Menon: Or I am an economist.
• 18:11
  Gorav Menon: That's a incredibly empowering label because it's a title that makes you feel valued in certain rooms.
• 18:18
  Gorav Menon: So the labels we use for ourselves is really, really important.
• 18:21
  Gorav Menon: We're learning because it, it's how we shape and how we move through the world,
• 18:26
  Vanessa Vakharia: I would add that labels that could seem quote unquote good can also be really harmful.
• 18:32
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like there's so much research right now that, it's been out for the past decade that the label gifted.
• 18:38
  Vanessa Vakharia: It seems like a good label.
• 18:39
  Gorav Menon: Mm-hmm.
• 18:40
  Vanessa Vakharia: Many kids as adults have come out and said it was the worst thing that could have happened.
• 18:45
  Vanessa Vakharia: Because what happens is when you label a kid as gifted, they think they have a gift.
• 18:49
  Vanessa Vakharia: So their math ability is the result of a gift, not a result of their effort, not a result of their hard work.
• 18:55
  Vanessa Vakharia: So somewhere along the line, when they fuck up at math or like they don't know the answer to something, the perception isn't, oh, I made a mistake, like I could work on this and that.
• 19:03
  Vanessa Vakharia: The perception is, oh my God, have I lost my gift?
• 19:06
  Vanessa Vakharia: Has my gift expired?
• 19:07
  Vanessa Vakharia: And it actually becomes very limiting.
• 19:09
  Vanessa Vakharia: Or they never wanna show that they don't know something or don't understand something.
• 19:13
  Vanessa Vakharia: So they don't ask that question because they're the gifted person.
• 19:15
  Vanessa Vakharia: They're supposed to be naturally good at math.
• 19:17
  Vanessa Vakharia: So like, I actually think like in that way too, that labels can help or hinder us, right?
• 19:22
  Vanessa Vakharia: It's like.
• 19:23
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah, obviously like, you know, the label ADHD can be helpful because now we have a diagnosis, let's say.
• 19:29
  Vanessa Vakharia: However, it can also be limiting if you identify it with it so much that you don't see that.
• 19:35
  Vanessa Vakharia: You see it as like, well I have ADHD, so I can't do this.
• 19:38
  Vanessa Vakharia: I was just listening to this podcast about anxiety.
• 19:41
  Vanessa Vakharia: And when we identify as being like I have anxiety, we use that as a label.
• 19:46
  Vanessa Vakharia: It actually is the most limiting thing because anxiety is not a diagnosis, it's a symptom of an underlying problem.
• 19:51
  Vanessa Vakharia: It's like me being like, I'm a Gemini.
• 19:53
  Vanessa Vakharia: It's like, I'm always like, well, I'm such a Gemini.
• 19:55
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like that's just the way it is.
• 19:57
  Vanessa Vakharia: My question is like, let's bring it back to somebody who has a story about their math ability and their story might go something like.
• 20:04
  Vanessa Vakharia: Well, when I was young, like I really understood math and I did really, really great.
• 20:08
  Vanessa Vakharia: But then, you know, I got to fractions and things just really fell off the wagon there.
• 20:11
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like I could never quite understand it.
• 20:13
  Vanessa Vakharia: My teachers put me in the lowest level in the classroom.
• 20:15
  Vanessa Vakharia: It was so clear that I couldn't do it.
• 20:17
  Vanessa Vakharia: And from that point on, I just never really got it.
• 20:19
  Vanessa Vakharia: It didn't really click.
• 20:20
  Vanessa Vakharia: I was just more of an arts person and that's what I gravitated towards.
• 20:23
  Vanessa Vakharia: And now the sight of numbers just freaks me out because I'm just not meant to do it.
• 20:26
  Vanessa Vakharia: You talk about the power of storytelling, is there a way to change our stories?
• 20:31
  Gorav Menon: Change is such a big word'cause it feels like something we have to do,
• 20:35
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 20:36
  Gorav Menon: we're constantly changing, right?
• 20:37
  Gorav Menon: We're changing our stories every single day.
• 20:39
  Gorav Menon: The way we do everything, right, so we are already changing our stories, so it's like, how do we change it in a good way
• 20:44
  Vanessa Vakharia: What do you mean?
• 20:46
  Gorav Menon: Because when you, for example, talking about negative self-talk, like if every day I'm telling myself I'm bad at math, so I'm not doing math, that's reinforcing the pathways, that's reinforcing the story.
• 20:57
  Gorav Menon: So you aren't changing that story.
• 20:58
  Gorav Menon: You're just reinforcing it, right?
• 21:00
  Vanessa Vakharia: So you're making it like stronger, like more salient.
• 21:03
  Gorav Menon: This is too, is you can know this intellectually and it can be incredibly hard to fix
• 21:08
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah.
• 21:08
  Gorav Menon: You have to do the effort of like, okay, why don't I do something mathematical today?
• 21:14
  Gorav Menon: Like, why don't I take this course?
• 21:16
  Gorav Menon: Why don't I try this thing?
• 21:17
  Gorav Menon: And it's like me in languages, right?
• 21:19
  Gorav Menon: I'm trying to learn Italian because I've always told myself that I'm bad at languages.
• 21:23
  Gorav Menon: So I'm trying to learn a language, I'm
• 21:24
  Vanessa Vakharia: What are you doing?
• 21:26
  Vanessa Vakharia: What are you doing to learn it?
• 21:28
  Vanessa Vakharia: Duolingo?
• 21:28
  Vanessa Vakharia: Well, and it's the perfect thing to say because guess what, language?
• 21:31
  Vanessa Vakharia: Duolingo now has?
• 21:32
  Gorav Menon: Math
• 21:32
  Vanessa Vakharia: Math and now has math.
• 21:35
  Gorav Menon: And I love Duolingo'cause it's a game.
• 21:37
  Gorav Menon: It's a game.
• 21:37
  Gorav Menon: And it's this thing where it's like, it's fun and, and I'm not trying to move to Italy, right?
• 21:42
  Gorav Menon: I'm literally learning Italian because I lost a vote and then everyone else quit.
• 21:46
  Gorav Menon: And I was like, well, I'm not gonna quit.
• 21:49
  Gorav Menon: I lost a vote.
• 21:49
  Gorav Menon: I wanted to learn Swedish.
• 21:50
  Gorav Menon: 'Cause I thought it'd be so funny if we knew Swedish.
• 21:53
  Vanessa Vakharia: Why?
• 21:53
  Vanessa Vakharia: Just'cause the language is like hilarious,
• 21:55
  Gorav Menon: I just thought it'd be funny if like me, and my two friends randomly walked into a bar and just started talking Swedish.
• 22:01
  Gorav Menon: I just thought that would be hilarious.
• 22:03
  Vanessa Vakharia: But like that's funnier than Italian?
• 22:04
  Gorav Menon: I feel like a lot of people know Italian now.
• 22:06
  Gorav Menon: I think it's just
• 22:07
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah.
• 22:07
  Vanessa Vakharia: I get what you're saying.
• 22:07
  Vanessa Vakharia: It's more, it's definitely more common.
• 22:09
  Gorav Menon: It's one of the popular languages.
• 22:11
  Gorav Menon: It'd be very funny if three people have never been to Sweden, were just talking Swedish.
• 22:15
  Vanessa Vakharia: So you're learning it on Duolingo.
• 22:17
  Vanessa Vakharia: Has it changed your story about your language ability?
• 22:20
  Gorav Menon: Yeah, because I feel more confident with certain words and certain phrases, things, ways I never felt with learning French.
• 22:27
  Gorav Menon: Right.
• 22:28
  Gorav Menon: And it has to do with the fact that I, I think I'm doing it with a different purpose.
• 22:34
  Gorav Menon: Right?
• 22:35
  Gorav Menon: Before it was about, in the beginning with French, it was about getting the grade, doing well.
• 22:39
  Gorav Menon: And then it became getting it done, getting it over with.
• 22:42
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah.
• 22:43
  Gorav Menon: These are really negative feelings I have towards French to a fact where when I, in college needed to take a language, I did, I passed out of like the first two French and I still didn't do it because I had all these negative feelings.
• 22:55
  Gorav Menon: French is a beautiful language.
• 22:56
  Gorav Menon: It is.
• 22:56
  Gorav Menon: It
• 22:57
  Vanessa Vakharia: You have to say that as a Canadian actually, so.
• 22:59
  Gorav Menon: That and like I do know some of it, but I just, the way I was taught it in the, the years of kind of trauma I had around me feel like I was bad at it.
• 23:08
  Gorav Menon: I never felt French was bad.
• 23:09
  Gorav Menon: I felt like I was bad at it, like I was bad at languages.
• 23:13
  Gorav Menon: But I realized that that's just something I was telling myself and it's, I can, I, I believe I can learn French.
• 23:21
  Gorav Menon: I, I believe that now.
• 23:22
  Gorav Menon: And that's because I'm trying, you know, that's it.
• 23:26
  Vanessa Vakharia: You're hitting on such interesting points, like the idea of, you've been through, you're, you know, you're in therapy, so I'm assuming part of this, like, has come from that, is that correct?
• 23:37
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like this, this, this idea, like when did the idea get born of being like, you know what, I've been telling myself this story about languages and I want to change that.
• 23:45
  Vanessa Vakharia: Where did that, what was that spark?
• 23:48
  Gorav Menon: That actually probably is more of the podcast.
• 23:49
  Vanessa Vakharia: okay?
• 23:50
  Gorav Menon: Has been more targeted, I would say, because it's more about like the shoulding on myself comes from therapy where.
• 23:56
  Gorav Menon: Uh, I was talking to Kevin about this, and then he challenged me to count how many times I said in my head, should in a day.
• 24:01
  Gorav Menon: And I did for like a week, and I was so proud of myself because like, oh, it's not that many.
• 24:04
  Gorav Menon: And I told them the numbers, like Kevin and another of my friend, and they're like, that's a lot.
• 24:09
  Gorav Menon: I'm like, what?
• 24:10
  Vanessa Vakharia: You have such good friends.
• 24:12
  Gorav Menon: They're like, that's a way too much.
• 24:13
  Gorav Menon: And so I was like, okay.
• 24:15
  Gorav Menon: So the podcast and therapy kind of really play off each other now.
• 24:19
  Gorav Menon: It's so interconnected.
• 24:21
  Gorav Menon: It is hard for me to distill what therapy has done for me'cause I've been doing it for so long now.
• 24:25
  Gorav Menon: I started at 17, it's been almost 10 years.
• 24:27
  Gorav Menon: Right?
• 24:28
  Gorav Menon: but I think the podcast was the more of like, okay, acknowledging my stories, acknowledging these labels I'm putting on myself.
• 24:35
  Gorav Menon: And seeing which ones serve me and which ones don't.
• 24:37
  Vanessa Vakharia: Ugh.
• 24:38
  Gorav Menon: And that helped me drop the ones that don't.
• 24:41
  Gorav Menon: It's hard to be very, very clear.
• 24:44
  Gorav Menon: I work on this every day of my life.
• 24:45
  Vanessa Vakharia: It's extremely
• 24:46
  Gorav Menon: hard, but at least I'm cognizant of it now, which is kind of a big game changer.
• 24:52
  Vanessa Vakharia: Well, and we can't just drop our stories, can we?
• 24:56
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like we, we, like you said, it's worked.
• 24:58
  Vanessa Vakharia: So, so let's go to this language one, because I think this is what a lot of our listeners are going to want to be doing with math, or I, we, me and Gorav have want you to do this with math.
• 25:06
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like we're gonna teach you how to do it.
• 25:07
  Vanessa Vakharia: So first was acknowledging, Hey, I have this story that I've been telling myself that I'm bad at languages.
• 25:13
  Vanessa Vakharia: Did you pause to say, where did that story come from?
• 25:17
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like you said, you mentioned something about how the way you were taught you were, uh, looking towards grades and getting a good mark, and then it was just getting it done and getting it over with.
• 25:27
  Vanessa Vakharia: So that's a part of what added to that whole negativity around it.
• 25:30
  Vanessa Vakharia: You said there was, you had some trauma in the way you were taught.
• 25:33
  Vanessa Vakharia: Is there anything specific that stood out?
• 25:35
  Gorav Menon: Yeah, no, and I, it is really important to go to sources and try to find those because it can help.
• 25:40
  Gorav Menon: But I think with, for French, it, it's hard because I think I just, I think I just did badly early on
• 25:47
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yep.
• 25:48
  Gorav Menon: and then I just reinforced it because
• 25:50
  Vanessa Vakharia: Grades.
• 25:50
  Vanessa Vakharia: Grades.
• 25:51
  Vanessa Vakharia: So grades were a source of trauma.
• 25:53
  Gorav Menon: like I am, I'm a, I'm a high achieving
• 25:56
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yep.
• 25:57
  Gorav Menon: like I'm, I'm a high achiever and like grades obviously is a really big part of being a kid and like being a high achiever and doing well, and I think French was just always my worst one.
• 26:10
  Gorav Menon: I don't even think it was that bad if I probably look back at, but because it was my worst one, I reinforced that belief, and then it got anxious because I wanted to be better, but I struggled with it and I did tutoring and I did all the things.
• 26:22
  Gorav Menon: And I just wanted it done at the end.
• 26:24
  Vanessa Vakharia: You're really speaking how so many people I bet, would describe their math story.
• 26:29
  Vanessa Vakharia: Honestly, like, I'm really happy you're sharing this because that idea of grades being almost the first thing you know, I hear from so many of the students, I'll hear from their parents and they'll say, well, she gets good marks everywhere else, but math is, it's always about the grade, right?
• 26:45
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like when, when they're, um, trying to explain to me why math is a quote unquote problem or why their kid is not good at math, it'll be because their grade in that is the lowest.
• 26:55
  Vanessa Vakharia: And the kid the same thing.
• 26:56
  Vanessa Vakharia: My grade, it's like the goal is my, to get my grade where everything else is.
• 27:01
  Vanessa Vakharia: What a source of math trauma that can be.
• 27:04
  Vanessa Vakharia: Right.
• 27:04
  Vanessa Vakharia: Because for you, you're, you're basically saying it kind of started with that once you got this impression because of this number that you just weren't, it wasn't as good as everything else.
• 27:13
  Vanessa Vakharia: You were like, well, there must be a deficit in this area.
• 27:16
  Gorav Menon: Yeah, for sure.
• 27:17
  Gorav Menon: And it's this, the thing of math that I, I love math and I'm like, I'm an Indian male.
• 27:23
  Gorav Menon: No one never told me like, oh, you don't look like you could do math.
• 27:26
  Gorav Menon: Right?
• 27:26
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah,
• 27:27
  Gorav Menon: I, I never got that negative, terrible story of certain people that they're.
• 27:34
  Gorav Menon: suited
• 27:34
  Vanessa Vakharia: look like math people.
• 27:35
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah,
• 27:36
  Gorav Menon: an insane thing to say or think about.
• 27:39
  Gorav Menon: Like who, what does the math person look like?
• 27:41
  Gorav Menon: That's
• 27:41
  Vanessa Vakharia: no, we, we don't have time for that in this episode, but.
• 27:43
  Gorav Menon: but.
• 27:44
  Gorav Menon: so with math, I mean it, it's always been one of my favorite subjects.
• 27:48
  Gorav Menon: It's always been, I think, my best instructors and educators with math because math's problem solving, right.
• 27:54
  Gorav Menon: I think the biggest thing we have issue we have with math too and with all courses is we have to not have to, but we are assigned grades.
• 28:01
  Gorav Menon: Right.
• 28:01
  Gorav Menon: And that's just kind of how we value ourselves and where it's like, how do I get into this school?
• 28:05
  Gorav Menon: How do I get to college from here?
• 28:08
  Gorav Menon: Great.
• 28:09
  Gorav Menon: Right?
• 28:09
  Gorav Menon: That's a huge part of it.
• 28:11
  Gorav Menon: It's this thing about math is that I remember I was in like high school and one of my friends like asked professor, well, when am I ever gonna use X, Y, and Z in my life?
• 28:20
  Gorav Menon: Right.
• 28:20
  Gorav Menon: It's a very classic question.
• 28:22
  Gorav Menon: I think, I didn't really even realize till college that, we were learning math more so we could learn logic, There's certain levels of math I don't use every day, but I definitely use logical thinking.
• 28:34
  Gorav Menon: And when I actually took my first Logic course, I was like, oh, this is what math has been teaching me for 10 years.
• 28:40
  Gorav Menon: And this is the thing about math that I love, is that we are teaching kids how to think logically, how to make trade offs, how to decide between two options, how to see a problem, break it down and figure out how to solve it.
• 28:51
  Gorav Menon: And all of that is math, but it's not math.
• 28:54
  Gorav Menon: I dunno if that made any sense.
• 28:56
  Vanessa Vakharia: Well, I mean, you're just making so much sense because I, I just, I'm just more stunned.
• 29:01
  Vanessa Vakharia: I'm more just listening to this being, I'm trying to process because I'm like, this is what I talk about all the time.
• 29:07
  Vanessa Vakharia: And this is what, you know, my math teacher friends talk about a lot of the time and, and probably so many people listening to this podcast will be nodding vigorously in agreement saying exactly.
• 29:15
  Vanessa Vakharia: You know, I like to call them math adjacent skills.
• 29:18
  Vanessa Vakharia: That's my own term.
• 29:19
  Vanessa Vakharia: It's like, I think the most important skills adjacent to the content we're learning, right?
• 29:23
  Vanessa Vakharia: We're almost learning these skills through the content.
• 29:25
  Vanessa Vakharia: I, I'm more surprised because you're not a math educator and I'm kind of listening to you thinking, wow, did you really feel like you, l I'm curious, do you feel you learned those skills in your high school math classes?
• 29:37
  Gorav Menon: In the 11th grade.
• 29:38
  Vanessa Vakharia: And that's really cool.
• 29:39
  Vanessa Vakharia: Your teacher must have done an incredible job actually.
• 29:42
  Gorav Menon: Teacher was, uh, Mr.
• 29:44
  Gorav Menon: Stevens in the 11th grade cent school in Toronto.
• 29:47
  Gorav Menon: I genuinely believe that was the first time I learned how to learn.
• 29:50
  Gorav Menon: Um, and I think up until that point, I knew how to memorize real well, and I think that's why I learned how to learn, because you learn how things are connected.
• 29:59
  Gorav Menon: You're not just learning how fun, how to memorize things.
• 30:01
  Gorav Menon: You learn how, okay, so if I have this problem and I, there's three ways I could solve it.
• 30:06
  Gorav Menon: This way, I can do this.
• 30:07
  Gorav Menon: If I write it out step by step.
• 30:09
  Gorav Menon: And just logically makes sense.
• 30:11
  Gorav Menon: And then when I really started to get into that is in UCLA as well where, I had this professor named Michael Andrews, again, he's not someone you'd expect as a math professor.
• 30:20
  Gorav Menon: Like he's very young.
• 30:22
  Gorav Menon: Now he has this long beard, he's.
• 30:24
  Gorav Menon: Uh, very surfer blonde
• 30:26
  Vanessa Vakharia: So you're just kind of going back on your statement you just said where you were like, I can't believe we would ever tell someone that they,
• 30:32
  Gorav Menon: No, but this is the point where, where you have, you, he, you wouldn't expect this, right?
• 30:37
  Vanessa Vakharia: okay.
• 30:37
  Gorav Menon: A genius and he was like very young, MIT PhD or something like that.
• 30:41
  Gorav Menon: I would look it up later.
• 30:42
  Gorav Menon: Uh, but he, he was just like, math can be fun and math doesn't have to be what you think it is.
• 30:50
  Gorav Menon: And in these courses, you learn how to think logically and what crystallized it for me is when I actually finally took logic
• 30:57
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah.
• 30:58
  Gorav Menon: oh, this is just math, just without the numbers
• 31:01
  Vanessa Vakharia: Does Mr.
• 31:01
  Vanessa Vakharia: Stevens know?
• 31:02
  Vanessa Vakharia: Have we talked to Mr.
• 31:03
  Vanessa Vakharia: Stevens about how that was the first time you learned how to learn?
• 31:06
  Gorav Menon: in high school.
• 31:06
  Gorav Menon: I definitely told'em that.
• 31:08
  Gorav Menon: Um,
• 31:09
  Vanessa Vakharia: did okay.
• 31:09
  Gorav Menon: to'em in a while, but
• 31:10
  Vanessa Vakharia: We're gonna find him obviously.
• 31:12
  Gorav Menon: Yeah.
• 31:13
  Vanessa Vakharia: I'm, I'm glad you actually told him and this is so cool.
• 31:16
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 31:16
  Vanessa Vakharia: Sorry, I've also lost the thread.
• 31:18
  Vanessa Vakharia: We need to go backwards because we were giving people steps, but this is great'cause I honestly think this is, it's so cool to hear someone who is just a student, not a math educator, say so many of the things that we've, we hope that students get from math.
• 31:31
  Vanessa Vakharia: We really hope, right?
• 31:32
  Vanessa Vakharia: We know that so much of it has been memorizing and we want kids to think, and you walked away with that skill, but it took you until grade 11.
• 31:39
  Vanessa Vakharia: And then it's interesting for you to be like, I only realize that when I took this logic course.
• 31:43
  Vanessa Vakharia: And so many students will never take that logic course.
• 31:45
  Vanessa Vakharia: They never will.
• 31:45
  Vanessa Vakharia: They're never gonna get there.
• 31:46
  Vanessa Vakharia: So as long as they're at least learning these skills along the way, maybe they don't realize they are, but perhaps it's our job to, show them, to prove to them that, that we are giving them something useful.
• 31:57
  Vanessa Vakharia: This not the content, but the skills associated with the content.
• 32:00
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 32:00
  Vanessa Vakharia: Who cares?
• 32:01
  Vanessa Vakharia: Let's back up for a second.
• 32:02
  Vanessa Vakharia: We were talking about the steps to change our stories.
• 32:04
  Vanessa Vakharia: This first step was to recognize that we had this story to maybe go back.
• 32:08
  Vanessa Vakharia: This is what I always get students to do.
• 32:09
  Vanessa Vakharia: I get, or teachers or adults to write their mathography.
• 32:12
  Vanessa Vakharia: I'm like, go back and write your earliest math memories.
• 32:14
  Vanessa Vakharia: Just pausing and being like, I don't love the relationship I have with math.
• 32:18
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay, this is what you did with languages.
• 32:19
  Vanessa Vakharia: I don't love the story I have about languages.
• 32:21
  Vanessa Vakharia: Where did it come from?
• 32:22
  Vanessa Vakharia: Maybe you put a few things together, you found the source of something.
• 32:26
  Vanessa Vakharia: At the end of the day, maybe it was the grade thing.
• 32:28
  Vanessa Vakharia: We don't really know, but at this point in time, you're like, I can tell that this is a story and I'm reinforcing it with my behavior and I'd like to change it.
• 32:36
  Vanessa Vakharia: So the next step is I'm gonna try and learn math.
• 32:38
  Vanessa Vakharia: I'm gonna try and do the thing that I've told myself I cannot do.
• 32:42
  Vanessa Vakharia: And then you said something really profound earlier, and I don't know if you remember this, you said something about, I like learning through Duolingo because it's a game, it's fun, it's not how I used to learn languages, which was for grades and to get it done,
• 32:56
  Gorav Menon: Yeah, the thing about duolingo too, and I don't wanna do a Duolingo ad,
• 33:01
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah.
• 33:01
  Vanessa Vakharia: But Duolingo should be sponsoring this fucking podcast.
• 33:04
  Gorav Menon: I love Duolingo.
• 33:05
  Gorav Menon: I talk about it all the time on
• 33:06
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 33:06
  Vanessa Vakharia: Well save it for when we're sponsored.
• 33:08
  Gorav Menon: I will say this, they, we designed the app a few years ago and they, they talk about this in their product handbook.
• 33:14
  Gorav Menon: Essentially they were approached, by their designers for a kids' version of Duolingo, and they're like, that's great.
• 33:20
  Gorav Menon: Let's just do it for the full version.
• 33:22
  Gorav Menon: And it's because they prioritize joy and fun, and we don't do that enough as adults.
• 33:26
  Gorav Menon: Even in child education, we don't do it enough.
• 33:28
  Gorav Menon: But as adults, why did we stop trying to make things games?
• 33:32
  Vanessa Vakharia: Right.
• 33:33
  Gorav Menon: Why did we stop trying to have fun with things that we're doing.
• 33:37
  Gorav Menon: And that's, that's the thing with learning too, where if I can make it a game, um, oh my God, amazing.
• 33:43
  Gorav Menon: I don't need to be the best at everything I do.
• 33:44
  Gorav Menon: I just need to adjust my stories.
• 33:47
  Vanessa Vakharia: Well, oh my God, I love it.
• 33:49
  Vanessa Vakharia: And know that Gorav was like, okay.
• 33:51
  Vanessa Vakharia: So he recognized he had this story, he did some digging into where it came from.
• 33:55
  Vanessa Vakharia: He was like, you know what?
• 33:55
  Vanessa Vakharia: This is a story I wanna change.
• 33:57
  Vanessa Vakharia: And he didn't say, and now I'm gonna become the best like linguist in the world.
• 34:02
  Vanessa Vakharia: I'm gonna become the best at Swedish
• 34:03
  Gorav Menon: I'm learning Italian, but I wanted to learn Swedish.
• 34:05
  Vanessa Vakharia: Oh, sorry.
• 34:05
  Vanessa Vakharia: Italian.
• 34:06
  Vanessa Vakharia: Italian, the best at Italian.
• 34:07
  Vanessa Vakharia: He was like, okay, so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna just try and do the thing I've told myself I can't do, and I'm gonna see what happens.
• 34:13
  Vanessa Vakharia: I'm gonna do it for fun.
• 34:14
  Vanessa Vakharia: I don't need to be the best, I just wanna see in a low stakes way.
• 34:18
  Vanessa Vakharia: Which is what I always tell people.
• 34:20
  Vanessa Vakharia: Just try to do math in a low stakes way.
• 34:22
  Vanessa Vakharia: And honestly, my number one recommendation is Duolingo.
• 34:25
  Vanessa Vakharia: And I have to tell you, I have over a hundred teachers who this past year has have done this and I get messages every week, oh my God, I never thought this would happen, I'm on day a hundred.
• 34:35
  Vanessa Vakharia: So it works.
• 34:36
  Vanessa Vakharia: So now you've been doing this, you've been, how long have you been at Duolingo?
• 34:39
  Gorav Menon: I think I'm on like 260 or
• 34:42
  Vanessa Vakharia: Oh my God.
• 34:43
  Gorav Menon: I'm big on streaks.
• 34:44
  Gorav Menon: I love a streak.
• 34:45
  Vanessa Vakharia: Great.
• 34:45
  Vanessa Vakharia: We all love a streak.
• 34:46
  Vanessa Vakharia: Honestly, it's human nature.
• 34:47
  Vanessa Vakharia: We don't have to go into that, but it is fine.
• 34:49
  Vanessa Vakharia: So you're on day two, you've been doing this for over 200 days.
• 34:52
  Vanessa Vakharia: What happened at the beginning?
• 34:53
  Vanessa Vakharia: Was there, was there ever a point where your old story was getting reinforced and you thought of giving up?
• 34:59
  Gorav Menon: Yeah.
• 35:00
  Gorav Menon: sure.
• 35:00
  Gorav Menon: And I think what happened was, in the beginning, for the first month, I was doing it with my friends,
• 35:05
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 35:06
  Gorav Menon: and then they, they abandoned it.
• 35:07
  Gorav Menon: But, I was doing it with my friends.
• 35:09
  Gorav Menon: We made it fun.
• 35:10
  Gorav Menon: We were traveling together at the time and we, we liked just repeating some of the sentences over and over again in fun ways.
• 35:17
  Gorav Menon: it's like a, because I am such a maximizer in my life where like I try to be the best in so many ways and it's, it's, it's a struggle I'm working
• 35:26
  Vanessa Vakharia: Sounds exhausting.
• 35:28
  Gorav Menon: It, my therapist was legit said to me that your thought process sounds exhausting.
• 35:33
  Gorav Menon: And I'm like, amazing.
• 35:34
  Gorav Menon: Um, but that's kind of the beauty of it too.
• 35:38
  Gorav Menon: When you do something that is just for fun and and just has nothing to do with your future career prospects.
• 35:45
  Gorav Menon: Like I'm not choosing a language that's related to my job at
• 35:49
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah.
• 35:49
  Gorav Menon: There are languages because I worked in global capacities, but I'm picking one that's, I don't think it's gonna make me monetarily better, but that's kind of the beauty.
• 35:58
  Gorav Menon: 'Cause it's so low stakes.
• 35:59
  Gorav Menon: It's so fun.
• 36:00
  Gorav Menon: You can do it for like five minutes a day and you feel productive, you feel good, and it feeds productivity
• 36:05
  Vanessa Vakharia: It's feeding the productivity story.
• 36:07
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay, in with one addiction out with the other.
• 36:09
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 36:10
  Vanessa Vakharia: So now, so there are points where you were like, Ugh, whatever.
• 36:13
  Vanessa Vakharia: You were doing it with your friends, it was fun.
• 36:15
  Vanessa Vakharia: At this point, 200 days later, how has it changed?
• 36:19
  Vanessa Vakharia: I want you to give me in two sentences, what your old story was about learning languages and what your story is now.
• 36:25
  Vanessa Vakharia: It doesn't need to be different.
• 36:26
  Vanessa Vakharia: I'm just curious how the story has changed.
• 36:28
  Gorav Menon: I think I would've used the word can't.
• 36:30
  Gorav Menon: I think I would've said, I can't learn a language
• 36:32
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 36:32
  Gorav Menon: I'm bad at languages.
• 36:33
  Gorav Menon: And I think now it's more just I can learn to be better at things.
• 36:41
  Vanessa Vakharia: Oh my God.
• 36:43
  Gorav Menon: I do, I am a person who likes being bad at things like trying things like I, I started kickboxing like two years ago, not two years ago.
• 36:50
  Gorav Menon: It's been a while now, but I started boxing and I, I don't get in rings, like I don't fight people.
• 36:55
  Gorav Menon: The way I describe it's, I pay someone to let me hit him.
• 36:57
  Gorav Menon: Um, but I train with, I train with this amazing coach, James Doyle in Los Angeles.
• 37:04
  Gorav Menon: And he just taught me, just go through them, you go through the skills, you're developing the skill not to do anything, and this is the beauty thing about this too, languages, it's so much fun to learn something for no purpose
• 37:18
  Vanessa Vakharia: Mm.
• 37:19
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah.
• 37:20
  Gorav Menon: You see the progression.
• 37:21
  Gorav Menon: When you can see a progression of anything, it reinforces the story that's possible.
• 37:26
  Vanessa Vakharia: Ugh.
• 37:26
  Gorav Menon: The one story with boxing was when I started jumping rope, I was absolutely terrible at it, like just jumping rope.
• 37:33
  Gorav Menon: I couldn't do it like I
• 37:34
  Vanessa Vakharia: So hard.
• 37:35
  Vanessa Vakharia: I hate that.
• 37:36
  Gorav Menon: And then I just kept doing it week over week, week over week.
• 37:38
  Gorav Menon: And I took a rope on vacation with me and now I can jump rope.
• 37:42
  Gorav Menon: And it seems so simple, but every time you do one of those things, you see progression and you see, oh, I can learn hard things.
• 37:49
  Gorav Menon: It might take time, it might take days, but that enforces that story.
• 37:53
  Vanessa Vakharia: Dude.
• 37:54
  Vanessa Vakharia: This is so good.
• 37:55
  Vanessa Vakharia: Honestly, I started this by being like, I don't know what we're really gonna talk about, how much could there be to say.
• 38:00
  Vanessa Vakharia: I am.
• 38:01
  Vanessa Vakharia: This is just one of my favorite conversations ever because
• 38:03
  Gorav Menon: God.
• 38:03
  Gorav Menon: Thank you
• 38:04
  Vanessa Vakharia: It really is.
• 38:05
  Vanessa Vakharia: It's so beautiful.
• 38:05
  Vanessa Vakharia: You're like, I just wanna say something.
• 38:08
  Vanessa Vakharia: 'cause I don't know if you heard what you just said.
• 38:09
  Vanessa Vakharia: I asked you to tell me your story from a year ago and your story today.
• 38:13
  Vanessa Vakharia: Your story from a year ago was, I can't learn languages.
• 38:17
  Vanessa Vakharia: Your story today was.
• 38:20
  Vanessa Vakharia: I can get better at things.
• 38:22
  Vanessa Vakharia: It wasn't even about languages.
• 38:25
  Vanessa Vakharia: When you started changing your story around languages, you changed your story around your entire self and your capacity to do anything.
• 38:32
  Vanessa Vakharia: I have full fucking body goosebumps.
• 38:34
  Vanessa Vakharia: I'm not kidding.
• 38:35
  Vanessa Vakharia: I'm like, and this is, you've just like, I, I love when also someone proves you, right?
• 38:39
  Vanessa Vakharia: I'm like, you've just, you without me paying you or, or even telling you anything about what this is about, you've kind of proven me.
• 38:45
  Vanessa Vakharia: So Right.
• 38:45
  Vanessa Vakharia: Of like when you can show yourself you can do math after your story for so long has been, I can't do it.
• 38:51
  Vanessa Vakharia: When you can just show yourself, Hey, you know what?
• 38:53
  Vanessa Vakharia: I'm not as bad as this is, I think, and wow, I can get better.
• 38:56
  Vanessa Vakharia: That's it.
• 38:56
  Vanessa Vakharia: I can get a bit better.
• 38:57
  Vanessa Vakharia: All of a sudden you start saying, what else can I get better at?
• 39:00
  Vanessa Vakharia: What other stories can I challenge if I can get better at this thing?
• 39:04
  Vanessa Vakharia: I've, I've, I've for so long told myself I can't do?
• 39:06
  Vanessa Vakharia: And I think you have just illustrated the power of storytelling.
• 39:10
  Vanessa Vakharia: The power of storytelling is.
• 39:12
  Vanessa Vakharia: Our stories don't have to have power over us.
• 39:15
  Vanessa Vakharia: We can have power over them by taking control of the narrative.
• 39:19
  Gorav Menon: It's a skill.
• 39:21
  Vanessa Vakharia: It's a skill and you're, you've given us a three step, a two step process.
• 39:25
  Vanessa Vakharia: I would say, I'm gonna say three steps.
• 39:26
  Vanessa Vakharia: Step number one, recognize your story.
• 39:28
  Vanessa Vakharia: What is the story you've been telling yourself?
• 39:30
  Vanessa Vakharia: Look at where that story came from.
• 39:32
  Vanessa Vakharia: It didn't appear out of nowhere.
• 39:33
  Vanessa Vakharia: Look at where the story came from.
• 39:35
  Vanessa Vakharia: I, I had, I just listened to a therapist or a, a neuroscientist say, the mind, your mind is not the same as your brain.
• 39:42
  Vanessa Vakharia: They're two different things.
• 39:43
  Vanessa Vakharia: Your story is not a part of your brain.
• 39:45
  Vanessa Vakharia: It's not hardwired into your brain.
• 39:47
  Vanessa Vakharia: It is your mind.
• 39:48
  Vanessa Vakharia: So the story came from somewhere.
• 39:50
  Vanessa Vakharia: It is living in your mind rent free, and you're doing be behaviors that reinforce it.
• 39:54
  Vanessa Vakharia: And I think it's helpful to actually look at what those behaviors might be.
• 39:56
  Vanessa Vakharia: Oh, I'm avoiding doing math.
• 39:58
  Vanessa Vakharia: I'm always giving the bill to someone else.
• 40:00
  Vanessa Vakharia: I'm just like avoiding talking about math.
• 40:02
  Vanessa Vakharia: Great.
• 40:03
  Vanessa Vakharia: Step one.
• 40:03
  Vanessa Vakharia: So you recognize it.
• 40:04
  Vanessa Vakharia: Kind of dig into a bit.
• 40:05
  Vanessa Vakharia: Step two.
• 40:07
  Vanessa Vakharia: Take one simple small action to do the thing that your story has been telling you you can't do in a low stakes way.
• 40:13
  Gorav Menon: Mm-hmm.
• 40:15
  Vanessa Vakharia: And step three, stick with it and observe the progress.
• 40:19
  Gorav Menon: Yeah.
• 40:20
  Vanessa Vakharia: Did I do that?
• 40:21
  Vanessa Vakharia: A good job?
• 40:21
  Vanessa Vakharia: Anything else?
• 40:22
  Gorav Menon: That's amazing.
• 40:23
  Gorav Menon: Honestly, you should host my show.
• 40:24
  Vanessa Vakharia: Ah.
• 40:26
  Gorav Menon: I think that's, that's it.
• 40:27
  Gorav Menon: I mean, it's this thing where we put so much pressure on it, like to be the best, to be great at this too.
• 40:33
  Gorav Menon: be the best, like, to make sure everything we do is productive.
• 40:36
  Gorav Menon: And we do that, when we're not the best, it reinforces the story that we can't do things right instead of like just trying stuff and seeing progress.
• 40:44
  Gorav Menon: And then every time you see progress in science, it reinforces that you can do things.
• 40:48
  Vanessa Vakharia: I love it.
• 40:50
  Gorav Menon: I mean, we talk a lot, a lot, a lot about the stories we're telling ourselves and the stories We're reinforcing stories that don't serve us so much.
• 40:56
  Gorav Menon: So that when I'm, like, when I go on a rant to Kevin on, in, on text and I'm just like going through my whole anxiety bubble, he, he will say like, okay, so what story are you saying about this?
• 41:06
  Gorav Menon: Right?
• 41:07
  Gorav Menon: What, how is this serving your story?
• 41:08
  Gorav Menon: Like, and when putting in that turns, we see, oh, oh, I see I'm doing this to myself.
• 41:14
  Gorav Menon: It's so much of like, you're doing this to yourself, you
• 41:16
  Vanessa Vakharia: You're doing it to yourself.
• 41:17
  Vanessa Vakharia: And that is not, I mean, I always have to say this, this isn't to mitigate the fact that real things have happened to us.
• 41:22
  Vanessa Vakharia: You know, and like it, you know, it's not like, you know, past trauma is like you're doing this to yourself.
• 41:27
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, absolutely not real things have happened to us.
• 41:30
  Vanessa Vakharia: I think the, the question is wherever we can to look at, who we are now.
• 41:35
  Vanessa Vakharia: And what stories we're telling ourselves and reinforcing that are no longer serving us, that perhaps we can change and that we can, we can just start to shift.
• 41:44
  Gorav Menon: Mm-hmm.
• 41:45
  Gorav Menon: Yeah, and I'm, I'm incredibly lucky that I've had so much access to therapy in my years of.
• 41:51
  Gorav Menon: Uh, since I moved out of, uh, since I moved out here, so many people can't, and it's, it's really hard, and, but if you have the ability, because you don't have to do it by yourself.
• 42:01
  Gorav Menon: And again, real things have happened to people and people, we need real help.
• 42:04
  Gorav Menon: So if you have the ability to reach out to a therapist or find a way to get some kind of mental health support, I'm a big advocate for that because it's been incredibly helpful for me and it's something that not enough people, I know people with access to therapy and I'm like, just do it.
• 42:20
  Gorav Menon: Like even if you don't feel like you need it, you have this opportunity.
• 42:24
  Gorav Menon: See if you like it.
• 42:25
  Gorav Menon: You know?
• 42:26
  Vanessa Vakharia: Thank you for saying that.
• 42:27
  Vanessa Vakharia: I, I also am a, I am a huge believer in that and I always forget that not everyone is, and so I think it's really important to say, you know, it's hard to do any of these things on our own.
• 42:35
  Vanessa Vakharia: It's hard to even recognize our own stories because we've been telling them to ourselves for so long.
• 42:40
  Vanessa Vakharia: We think they're just a part of us.
• 42:41
  Vanessa Vakharia: And, you know, in, in a pinch, a really good friend can do.
• 42:45
  Vanessa Vakharia: it sounds like you've got Kevin, and hopefully, you know, there's sometimes a good friend can be like, you know, I've known you for a long time and I've noticed this, or, I notice you keep saying this kind of thing to yourself.
• 42:55
  Vanessa Vakharia: So we can also lean on each other a bit more and talk openly about this stuff as much as we can, because I know so many people who would love to just talk about this stuff with a friend, but feel like they can't open up.
• 43:04
  Vanessa Vakharia: And that friend also wants to really talk about it, but feels like they can't open up.
• 43:08
  Vanessa Vakharia: So I think we can all help each other out a bit more.
• 43:10
  Vanessa Vakharia: So thank you so much.
• 43:11
  Vanessa Vakharia: I'm gonna dart over to the final two questions I ask every single guest, rapid fire.
• 43:17
  Vanessa Vakharia: Question number one, if there's one thing you could change about the way math class is taught, what would it be?
• 43:22
  Gorav Menon: I would try to apply it to more abstract thinking and try to show the logic connection more and more, but it's incredibly hard to do.
• 43:29
  Gorav Menon: So I don't know how you do that, but I'm not an educator.
• 43:34
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 43:34
  Vanessa Vakharia: No, no, no.
• 43:35
  Vanessa Vakharia: I love it.
• 43:35
  Vanessa Vakharia: This is, so, hold on.
• 43:36
  Vanessa Vakharia: You would try to, to, you would try to do more abstract thinking or less
• 43:40
  Gorav Menon: would try to find ways to connect it to logic
• 43:42
  Vanessa Vakharia: connected to logic.
• 43:43
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 43:43
  Gorav Menon: yeah.
• 43:44
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yep.
• 43:45
  Vanessa Vakharia: Love it.
• 43:45
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 43:46
  Vanessa Vakharia: And let's say someone listens to this podcast and they're like, yeah, I get what you're saying, but like, it's not a story, like I'm just not a math person.
• 43:54
  Vanessa Vakharia: What would you say?
• 43:56
  Gorav Menon: I would say that's a story.
• 43:57
  Gorav Menon: I mean, it's, uh, it is a story, right?
• 44:00
  Gorav Menon: That's what is it, if it's not a story, uh, it doesn't, it can be super deep.
• 44:04
  Gorav Menon: It can be super light.
• 44:05
  Gorav Menon: Anything you say to yourself is a story.
• 44:08
  Vanessa Vakharia: Bam.
• 44:08
  Gorav Menon: the big unlock for us, for our show.
• 44:11
  Vanessa Vakharia: You rock.
• 44:12
  Vanessa Vakharia: This was so fun.
• 44:14
  Vanessa Vakharia: What a crazy thing to meet up with someone 10 years later not know very much about them.
• 44:20
  Vanessa Vakharia: And so much of where our, our minds are at and what you and I have been learning over the past decade is like paralleling one another.
• 44:28
  Vanessa Vakharia: It's very cool.
• 44:29
  Gorav Menon: very cool.
• 44:30
  Vanessa Vakharia: cool.
• 44:30
  Vanessa Vakharia: Thank you so much for coming on the show.
• 44:31
  Vanessa Vakharia: Everyone go in and listen to tell us where to find you.
• 44:34
  Gorav Menon: I am the co-host of the Linen Suit and Plastic Tie podcast.
• 44:38
  Gorav Menon: You can find us anywhere@LSPTpod on most social media or just Google linen suit and plastic tie.
• 44:45
  Gorav Menon: It's a weird name.
• 44:46
  Gorav Menon: You'll find it.
• 44:47
  Vanessa Vakharia: Amazing.
• 44:47
  Vanessa Vakharia: And Gorav and I would like to know if you try these three steps, if you decide there's a story you wanna tackle, you can text the podcast, tell us the story you've been telling yourself, why you want to challenge that story, and the first step you're taking towards doing it, and we will cheer you on every step of the way.
• 45:06
  Vanessa Vakharia: Thank you so much, Gorav.
• 45:07
  Vanessa Vakharia: It was amazing to have you.
• 45:08
  Gorav Menon: Amazing.
• 45:08
  Gorav Menon: Thank you for having me.
• 45:12
  Vanessa Vakharia: Oh my God.
• 45:13
  Vanessa Vakharia: I'm still so blown away by all that Gorav shared, and every time I listen back to this interview, it feels like I can't stop noticing just how many stories I'm still holding onto.
• 45:23
  Vanessa Vakharia: Stories that have become a part of my narrative, like stories that I have the power to rewrite.
• 45:28
  Vanessa Vakharia: So here's your Math Therapy homework this week.
• 45:30
  Vanessa Vakharia: I want you to do a little detective work and figure out what one story is that you've been telling yourself that's no longer serving you.
• 45:39
  Vanessa Vakharia: That you're ready to shed like a snake.
• 45:41
  Vanessa Vakharia: Actually, I wanna hear it.
• 45:42
  Vanessa Vakharia: You can text it to me by texting the podcast, hit the link in your show notes, it's right there.
• 45:47
  Vanessa Vakharia: DM me on Instagram at the Math Guru, or email me at vanessa@themathguru.ca.
• 45:53
  Vanessa Vakharia: What's one story that you've been holding onto that you are ready to shed?
• 45:57
  Vanessa Vakharia: And if you know someone who's holding onto a story that's holding them back, share this episode.
• 46:02
  Vanessa Vakharia: Send it to your teacher bestie or that friend who thinks they're not ready to go after that promotion or that other friend who thinks they'll never find love.
• 46:10
  Vanessa Vakharia: Thoughts have power, but we have the power to change them.
• 46:13
  Vanessa Vakharia: And the stories we tell ourselves, they make up our lives and changing them can literally change our entire lives no matter what.
• 46:21
  Vanessa Vakharia: Your story is yours to write, and no one can take that away from you.
• 46:25
  Vanessa Vakharia: Until next week, xo.
• 46:26
  Vanessa Vakharia: Xo.