Building Self-Trust and Self-Love with Najwa Zebian

To me, an important part of learning to trust yourself is to see yourself as your own home, because when I wrote Welcome Home, one of the messages I wanted people to walk away with was: you can't build a home within if you don't know who you are. Because you need to know the person who you're coming home to. You need to know the person who you're spending time with. You need to know the person.

And not just know as in who are you and what's your name and where were you born but what are your triggers?

What are your patterns of behavior? What have you fallen for in the past? Have you noticed, this is the way I behave when something happens in my life?

Being able to write Trust Your Heart: Lead Your Journey to Self-Discovery from Within really allowed me to just focus on that part of like truly getting to know yourself so that you could say, I trust this person. I trust myself because I know myself. If I don't know myself I don't know who I'm trusting.

That self-awareness is so key, right? Like you said, I saw a lot of similarities between these two books and I feel like they go together really well. So let's get into it. So I don't know if you want to do a quick introduction just like a couple sentences of who you are, what your background is and then I have a bunch of questions. We could go for hours I won't force you to but we could I have enough questions for it so I'd love to just get going with it.

So for those of you who don't know I was just reading some of the comments but my name is Najwa Zebian. I'm an author, a speaker and a poet. I'm a teacher by trade but now I teach in the bigger classroom of the world.

I would say my biggest struggle since I was very young was feeling like I didn't belong, like I wasn't a priority, I didn't deserve to be loved the way I saw everybody around me being loved and being just given so much care and attention. And I internalized that to mean that something about me meant that I deserved to be excluded and that I deserved to just you know be on the margins of life.

It's not like you hit a certain age and you hit a reset button and you're like now I know everything there is to know about life. So even into my adulthood I carried that belief that I didn't deserve what I saw everyone around me get. And what I needed the most was somebody to truly see me and to value me and make me feel like I was worthy of love.

When I started writing, I self-published my first book, Mind Platter. Any person who knows me probably knows Mind Platter. That was like the first time in my life that I put out my feelings, my thoughts, as raw as they were. They were journal entries.

And I all of a sudden realized that I'm not the only one who feels and thinks this way like this whole time I'm sitting here thinking something's wrong with me for thinking and feeling this way.

And then when I put my writings out there people from all over the world were like "Thank you for putting into words what I've been trying to say for so long."

So that's what pushed me to continue to write even more not just the freedom and liberty that I felt when I put my writings out there. Because it's a very vulnerable thing to do to say this is who I am and this is how I think and feel. And there's a level of indifference to what people think about you that you gain once you actually put yourself out there like we always have this fear of like what are people going to think of me?

And I remember at the time many of the people around me were saying things like those are private things don't put them out there like don't post writings on social media that show your heart and show the way you think and the things that you struggle with or that show any sign of vulnerability. But once I was able to just focus more on the beauty of doing something like that and then seeing the number of people who were like I feel the same way there was no turning back for me.

I gave that internal validation to myself by putting the writings out there and then I got also external validation from the people who loved my writings.

So a few years later and a few books later I started off writing you know short poetry and prose and the reflections that were in Mind Platter. One thing that I and those around me noticed is that even though some of these writings were super short they would always make you stop and think and there was a big impact behind them.

So we were like why not write something in longer format something like a self-development book because that's really what your writings are about that's what everybody said.

So Welcome Home was really the first time that I put something out that had chapters that had longer stories, longer reflections, practical strategies. And it was such a huge success that you know to this day it's still doing so well there's so many people from all over the world who are reaching out because of it.

And then Trust Your Heart also came afterwards as a way for me to guide any person who was having a difficulty truly and genuinely trusting themselves after being heartbroken or after having their trust broken by someone. Like you know how do I get to a point where I'm able to trust other people again?

And to me the answer begins with trusting yourself. Because no amount of trust that you put in other people is going to compensate for the amount of trust that you need to put into yourself because when someone else breaks your trust or breaks your heart who needs to pick up the pieces?

You do. What we usually do is we rely on the person who broke us in some way to heal us or to pick up those pieces. Or we rely on another person to come in and really prove to us that they deserve our love that they deserve for us to take another chance that they deserve to get our trust. But as long as our focus is on the external world we're always going to be a victim to that or a hero of that but it's not for ourselves it's in other people's eyes.

I narrated Trust Your Heart.

So in Trust Your Heart I really wanted to get any person who reads it or listens to it to get to a point by the end where they feel like okay I am ready to take this journey and I laid it out in steps. I know the exact steps to get to a place where I can say I trust myself.

I know for sure there is no way to guarantee that someone else isn't going to break my heart. There is no way to guarantee that someone else isn't going to break my trust. The only guarantee I have is that I can tell myself, we can get through this.

Yeah and it's a perfect encapsulation of something we talk about here constantly this idea that I discovered from the stoics this idea of externals and internals right. The externals are anything that happens to you like you know someone breaking up with you cheating you know what the weather is whether you get a job or not. And you know the second part of what you're talking about is the internals you know in those situations what do I do?

How do I go inwardly and build myself up so it's not affected by the externals or the effect is minimized as much as possible? So I love that and I want to get we're going to get much deeper into Trust Your Heart because there's so much goodness in it. But before that, I like that you started talking about how you were feeling when you were young because I watched an interview you did with Ed Mylett.

So you said in that you started writing at age 13 because you didn't feel like you belonged. You said there was an amazing line you said "I felt like a zero, a nobody, invisible."

And then in Trust Your Heart you wrote that you still have these vivid memories of being a child and needing to repeat things multiple times before you were even looked at. So I'd love to hear a little bit more about that because for me the most inspiring thing for me is the origin stories so I want to know how you dealt with all that inside your head. How did you think about what was going on and then how were you able to overcome and accomplish all the amazing things you've already accomplished?

It's interesting that you asked me about that one moment in particular where I said I have vivid memories of needing to repeat myself more than once before I was looked at. Because as I was in the studio recording the audiobook for Trust Your Heart that was the part that I had to repeat at least five or six times because of how emotional I got. Every time I would start reading it, I would immediately start tearing up and just like start shaking my head because of how painful it was to think of those memories.

And it's not to say that I'm not healed. I mean I don't think you ever truly get to a point where you're like I'm fully healed and that's it. Because to say I'm fully healed I think probably means that I'm not fully healed but I believe that I've done the work of detaching what it means about me that I went through something like that I've done the work where when I am triggered or when I do go through a moment where I'm reminded of those moments I can sit with myself with all the compassion that I need and walk myself through it.

When I say I believe I'm fully healed from that, I mean I now have the tools so that when those memories come up, I can soothe myself through it, walk myself through it. And at any moment where I get a hint of like well you must have deserved it or wow like that really hurts and how could you get through this? We all get too stuck on pains of the past and it's like our ego truly wants us to identify with those memories.

But I'm at a point where I truly have developed the internal tools to be able to see a memory like that and just remind myself that wow like that was really bad and you know I wish that we could go back to that moment and be able to speak to little you with the compassion that you have for yourself right now.

And so it's a lot easier to get through those moments.

In Welcome Home, I discuss the why can't I have that story so I see a lot of people here are saying I have Welcome Home I have the audio book so I want to make that connection. In Trust Your Heart, I talked about you know repeating myself more than once before I got someone's attention. And what that taught me as a child was if you speak loudly enough you will be heard. If you make enough of an effort to get someone to hear you then maybe they will hear you. If you try to convince someone of why you deserve to be heard or looked at then maybe they will.

I learned from a young age that I needed to earn being heard and being seen, that I am what I do. My worth is based on how hard I try, not on who I am.

Throughout my adult years, and this still seeps into my present, our bodies remember patterns that maybe our mind has already resolved. Really, Najwa, you don't have to work so hard to be heard or seen. But my body remembers certain patterns. I have to catch myself sometimes and say, oops, we're falling into that people-pleasing behavior again.

That memory truly made me a walking people-pleaser: what can I do to get your attention? What can I do?

But it wasn't what can I do to get your attention in an exaggerated kind of way. What can I do to get the basic human needs of just you treating me like a human? So I was like overly doing to be treated with the bare minimum. And that's because of memories like that and my childhood experiences like that because that's truly what shapes for us how we think.

Like I get people sometimes say things like well you're just too stuck on things that happened way too long ago like everybody's gone through stuff in their childhood.

Yeah I do agree everybody's gone through stuff in their childhood. But if you don't resolve it like again you don't get to a certain age where a switch happens and you all of a sudden forget everything you learned from your childhood You are a growing being.

So those little moments in your childhood grow with you. They shape for you how you see the world and how you see yourself. So if you don't do the work to detangle to like take yourself out of like this means something about me the fact that this happened to me means something about me—if you don't do that detachment work then it continues to rule you consciously or subconsciously.

Somebody asked me here, how do you know? Are you okay with me answering a question?

Yes, of course.

How do you know it's a trigger? So obviously for each one of us our triggers are very specific to our experiences.

For me I know I'm triggered one of my signs is I start getting shortness of breath.

And it reminds me of moments in the past when I was really anxious really stressed out and feeling exactly the same way. And so that shortness of breath it's like my body's telling me we're being reminded of something that happened in the past like we're being put in a certain kind of danger that we felt in the past.

If you were to look at the present moment as this flat line, this is when you are fully seen and fully heard this is the peace that you feel when you can be fully yourself when you're not triggered where you're just existing in your authenticity. A trigger is anything that's going to bring you down or up like way too much or a little bit from that state of I can fully be myself I don't need to work hard to please someone.

Anything that is giving you the urge to either do something differently or say something differently or snap back into overly negative or overly positive ways of thinking and feeling, to me that symbolizes you are being triggered by something.

But you all know it you can tell when you are being triggered because it almost feels like you are stepping outside of yourself.

So this flat line that I was talking about the peace the authenticity that I don't have to do to deserve this you know to exist as I am. Imagine this as a solid line and anything that goes down or up imagine them as dotted lines like those are truly transient states that you're going to go through.

You're not gonna stay there all the time it's gonna go up and down up and down. But truly what you're aiming for at the end of the day is to be fully yourself. So anytime that you feel like you've left yourself a little bit whether it's for something that feels overly great. And I know this sounds a little bit abstract so I'll give you an example.

Say you're in a relationship with someone and I know many people can relate to this. And for example there is complete lack of affection. And you have one moment with that person where they give you a big hug out of the blue and that feels so great like that could symbolize that upwards positive dotted line that I'm talking about. And when you really think about it afterwards should it really feel that great?

Or did it trigger for you older beliefs about maybe I don't deserve that kind of love so when I get a little tiny bit of it I'm going to just be so euphorically happy. To me that's also being triggered when you're allowing something that's external to you to affect you that much. Yeah I hope that answers your question.

I wanted to read a little piece from Welcome Home because I think it does. I usually am not a big affirmation person especially in books I feel like they're often very disconnected like just like a string of platitudes. But yours so resonated so deeply it felt like almost like a little short story. So I wanted to read that and then maybe you give your thoughts on it and where they came from and why it's so important.

So I'll read: I am the only person in charge of loving myself.

This is for anybody who has the book this is page 81. I'm the only person in charge of loving myself. I will see evidence of love throughout my day. I am my number one priority. I deserve my own love. Loving myself means being at home with myself. My whole power is inside of me. Today I will answer my own call for love. I understand that I might have moments of falling back into old habits rooted in self-hate or unworthiness. But I promise myself to practice self-love any moment I become aware of my own negative self-talk.

And that just feels that's self-healing simplified right there. So I'd love to know where that came from and why you think it's such an important collection of ideas to instill?

The affirmations that you just read are in the self-love chapter. I began with self-love after talking about building a strong foundation of self-acceptance and self-awareness.

To me, self-love was so important to begin with because love is one of the first things that we think I need to get it from the outside. Love is one of the first things that I'm gonna go to another person for because it feels so good to receive it from someone. It feels good to be chosen especially when you never felt chosen throughout your life. It feels good to be given attention when you were made to believe that you don't deserve attention. It feels good to just feel that somebody else sees in you what you wish everybody saw in you.

And one of the saddest realizations I had was that I was expecting people to see things within me that I myself didn't see.

And let me clarify it's not that I didn't know my worth it's not that I didn't know that I was a good person.

I didn't treat myself like I knew. And that was such a powerful moment and sad moment for me. I look at love as treatment. Love is through action, not just words. And so the affirmations that you normally read where you're like, "I love myself." It's like you can say that to yourself all you want but if you're not truly putting it into action those are just words.

In Welcome Home, just like I do in Trust Your Heart, I pose the question: if you love someone, how do you show them that love? And people will list what they do for that person. And then I say if you love yourself, how do you show yourself that love?

And that's when like that big revelation happens like oh I just tell myself that I love myself but when it comes to action, I put myself last.

I always think that being a good person means putting everybody else ahead of me. Because like subconsciously the reason we do that is we think that if we give enough then we are going to be given back.

But we have to remember that we are our number one priority not everybody else and then us. If we fail to give to ourselves then we can't truly say that we've actualized self-love.

I'll never tell a person you're lying when you say you love yourself. I think any amount of being able to say I love myself is just beautiful. And even if you don't like right now as people are watching if you don't feel like you are showing yourself love in action but you can still say I love myself, that's beautiful. That's progress.

But let's move towards actually showing that love to ourselves.

Those affirmations came from that place of really wanting the person who's reading these affirmations to transform these words I love myself from just words to action.

And there's such a power in affirmations and also in questioning ourselves. As you were reading those affirmations I remember the part in Trust Your Heart that I wrote that was just super powerful.

And it's about giving yourself closure after somebody has broken your heart or broken your trust. And I gave a list of questions and I can read a few of these. But for me the goal has always been with these affirmations and with these questions to go a lot deeper than the surface of just logic. I want the emotion part to be part of it. I want the person reading this to have an inner revolution, an inner: oh my God, how am I still continuing this way when there's so much that I'm not okay with?

So if you're okay with it I'm gonna read some of these questions. Of course.

So in Trust Your Heart this would be in chapter for anybody who's interested it's chapter three learn to rebuild yourself after someone else broke you. So here I said giving yourself closure after heartbreak is part of the discovery process so that you can learn to trust within before moving forward. Being able to narrate the closure yourself increases your validation of your story and truth which leads to deeper self-conviction and self-trust.

If this is still a struggle ask yourself the following questions instead of asking the person who hurt you for closure:

Do I want to be with someone who is inconsistent in their love for me in their respect for me and in their prioritization of me?

Do I want to be with someone who weaponizes my pain against me?

Do I want to be with someone who treats their friends colleagues or anyone out in public better than me?

Do I want to be with someone who breaks their promises?

Do I want to be with someone who says words that don't match their actions?

Do I want to be with someone who takes advantage of me in any kind of way?

Do I want to be with someone who takes every attempt at communication on my part as an invitation to a fight especially after I've expressed over and over that I do not want to fight?

Do I want to be with someone who showed me that they were a certain way as a person and then after things got real changed drastically to the point where I questioned whether I ever really knew them?

Do I want to be with someone who I don't feel safe and secure with as a direct result of their actions?

Do I want to be with someone who consistently minimizes my feelings and undermines my struggles?

Do I want to be with someone who actively doesn't want to celebrate me or my accomplishments?

Do I want to be with someone who treats me in a way that I wouldn't accept for someone I love?

Do I want to be with someone who isn't sure about me?

Do I want to be with someone who gives more attention to other people of the same gender as mine than they do to me?

Do I want to be with someone who doesn't see me, hear me and sit with me in a present way? Once you go through these questions and answer each one with no, you can be sure that knowing the reason why any of those things happened isn't a requirement for you not to be okay with them.

So this was one of the most like powerful messages that I wanted people to walk away with after reading Trust Your Heart: looking for why someone behaved a certain way. We do that as a way to try to understand like well maybe if I know why they did what they did, I can then decide if I have the right to be hurt by it or not.

Because if it's not really about me then maybe I shouldn't be hurt by it. And I want everybody listening to know that the reason doesn't matter. When somebody aims an arrow at you, you can't say oh they did it by accident so it doesn't hurt like there's an arrow in your heart you're still gonna have to deal with the pain.

You have the right to say, I am not okay with what happened. This hurts, and I need to heal from it. I need to honor how I have been impacted by somebody else's actions, regardless of what the story is.

Many of us especially in relationships we look for that person's childhood memories we look for that person's like past relationship experiences. Why is it that they are shutting me out? Why is it that they are minimizing my feelings?

Why is it this or that? But we're skipping the part where we say, this minimization of my feelings hurts and I'm not okay with it. If I'm asking for something, asking for my needs to be met, and I'm being treated as if I'm asking for too much, instead of just contemplating, am I asking for too much, don't skip the part where you give yourself permission to say, these are my needs and I have the right to express them.

Don't quickly jump to the other person's view. Another thing I talk about in Trust Your Heart is: don't leave your story to be in someone else's. You can see their story, where they're coming from and what they've gone through.

But that doesn't mean that you have to leave your story and what you've gone through and what your intentions are to be in theirs. Because when you are in their story you've left yours. Now it's all based on them what they think what they feel.

You have the right to continue walking in your story while still seeing someone else's. But it's like the idea like on planes where they tell you put your oxygen mask on first otherwise you can't be of service to anybody else.

Exactly. I love that. Everybody's asking where those questions were from. It's from her new book, Trust Your Heart.

But yeah I wanted to read those questions because to me even writing them myself it was so powerful for me to take all of the questions that I would have had for another person and instead of saying like why did you do this, the question was: do I want to be with someone who does this?

It's so powerful like it's such a big shift in perspective shift in thinking. Because now you're not so focused on the reason that somebody else did something. Because truly what are you looking for with the reason? We're always looking back to confirm what we already believe about ourselves.

So stop looking for the reason yeah look for whether you're okay with it.

Look for how it impacted you. Look for how it hurt you. Look for am I okay with it or not. Yeah practicing putting yourself first yes I love that

I have a lot of passages from Trust Your Heart that I'd love to get to. Unfortunately this first one I didn't write the page down. But I loved it it said let the pain through let it hurt, let it overwhelm you. It's not that you are being overly sensitive or dramatic. You are sensitive which makes you human. You are reacting to a massive pain which also makes you human. That heartbreak hurt it broke something inside of you. Accept that break so it can heal. If you continue to walk or run with a broken leg the damage will linger and is more likely to leave permanent long-term effects.

And then last month in our book club we looked at The Power of Now which I felt like this philosophy fits really well with it this idea of just accepting the moment as it is sitting with it but not allowing it to overwhelm you.

If you could tell me a little bit more about your perspective of how can we do that and why it's so important?

Yes so this is in chapter one I actually have it highlighted right here too yeah.

A lot of times we get the wrong message that being present means not allowing anything to get to you just you know. Yes you want to be the observer you want to be the watcher you want to be the one who's like oh it's interesting that I'm feeling this pain. Absolutely but a big requirement of that is that you are sitting with whatever it is that's visiting. You're not allowing it to have power over your present moment you are sitting with it as if it's a guest.

You're the one with power. Taking it back to the analogy of building a home within: this feeling, this pain, this hurt is visiting. You're the one who's able to say, come on in. Let's give you some compassion, some love. Let's hear you out. But there comes a point when I'm going to tell you it's time to leave. Maybe you can visit again tomorrow, but I am the one who gets to tell you to leave.

In practical terms, when I say let the pain through, let it hurt, let it overwhelm you, it's not that you're being overly sensitive or dramatic. You're sensitive, which makes you human. This is an invitation to treat yourself with the compassion you would give someone you truly love.

Think of your most loved one. If they came to you and said, "This thing happened today, and it really hurt me," would you tell them, "Go away. I can't deal with this right now"?

Or would you say, what do you need from me? Let me make you a cup of tea. Let's talk about it. Tell me what hurt.

That's what you're doing when I say let the pain through, let it hurt: sit with the version of you who first experienced that pain, instead of shaming them for having gone through it. When I say you're shaming a past self of yours, it's not always using the words, "I'm so ashamed of you."

When you don't allow yourself to sit with that past self, hear them out and sit with them in their pain, you're indirectly saying, "I want you out." That's shaming, that's exclusion.

Put the self-compassion into action. Say, I'm going to sit with that past version of mine who went through this pain and tell them all the things I wish someone had told me in that moment.

Don't be so hard on yourself. Somebody is breaking your heart right now, and that's really painful. I can't imagine what it feels like to go through something like this, but know that you didn't deserve this. Know that you were right when you asked for clarity on this.

Being present with the pain, with a past version of yourself knocking on your door saying, "Hey, I'm still here. I haven't resolved these big feelings," is all part of being present. It's telling yourself, I forgive myself for my past. I don't judge myself for what I went through back then.

I forgive myself for doing what, in the moment, I thought was for the best, but what I now see wasn't for the best. I understand why past me was so desperate for love and why she accepted this and that. When you do that, you're giving that past version of yours, and that pain, the resolution that they're clearly seeking, that they're clearly desperate for.

So for me that section we just read is from chapter one. It's under Break the Dam of Strength That You Have Within You.

So I gave the analogy of like what we are doing when we push the pain away it's like we put a dam in its face. And imagine that water that's like the pain that's you know coming up against it and it's creating this intensity it's creating this resistance.

And just imagine that dam falling apart and just let the pain flow through you let it peacefully flow through you it's not going to sit with you forever. It just it's looking for you to hear it and see it and validate it and not continue to be ashamed by it and really not continue to be ashamed of yourself.

Yeah that's a great metaphor the water one.

And kind of everything you just said really reminded me of something that Michael Singer of The Untethered Soul if you've read that one talks about that he tried to kind of lock up his past self he wanted to get rid of the voice in the head. And so he locked up himself. And it wasn't until years later that he had this epiphany and had this visualization of going into that cage where he locked his past self and kind of giving him a hug taking him by the hand and saying no we're supposed to do this together. It wasn't that you're supposed to keep that part away. You're supposed to integrate it into your current self and do it together this journey of life. It wasn't until he did that that everything started to really change.

Yeah I did read his book and I believe that wholeheartedly.

I actually uploaded a video the other day where I said I had a podcast interview and the interviewer asked me if little you was sitting beside you right now what would she be thinking and feeling?

And as soon as she asked me that question because I'd never asked myself that question or imagined that scenario, it hit me that little me was looking at me admiring me the way that I used to admire confident women when I would see them when I was younger. And it brought tears to my eyes. Like wow I'm at a point where my little me is in awe of who I am today that must mean that like I have her with me everywhere I go you know.

Like I never thought about it that way but for me it's like she is with me everywhere I go. Because like as I was answering that question I was like the other day I went out to the mall and I said I'm taking little Najwa on a date. I do stuff like that.

And also like any time I'm going through any kind of triggering moment or like big overwhelming feelings and decisions that I have to make or go through I'm always aware of how little Najwa is feeling in a moment like that and how it is now my responsibility to make sure that she's feeling safe to make sure that she's feeling like she's in good hands like she can trust me you know.

Edith Eger, in The Choice, talks about that a lot: actually visualize little you. Actually do stuff with them, not just go in there and give them a hug, but really experience them as being part of you.

That's amazing. I love that.

In chapter four of Trust Your Heart here you write about something I thought was super cool. When people ask you how are you really and add that really at the end of the sentence. You point out that when there's a really there you're much more likely to give an honest answer. And so you then turn that around and ask the reader to ask themselves who are you, really?

Yes. And again it's something that came up in The Power of Now this question of who am I if I'm not my past, I'm not my experiences, I'm not even my thoughts?

So what would you say to someone whose answer is, "I don't know. I don't know who I am if I'm not those things"?

If you don't know who you are, at least that is a level of awareness that you can begin with like we've all gone through so many tough periods in our lives where we feel like we've lost ourselves and we've lost sight of who we are I've gone through that some moments I still go through that because again, you fall into old patterns.

You need the awareness. If your answer is, "I don't know who I am without all of my labels," then you can decide to start the journey of self-discovery.

That's what Trust Your Heart is about. If you read the stuff in the little heart, it says, "Lead your journey to self-discovery from within." This whole guide is about figuring out who you are. If you're at a point where you're like, "I don't know who I am," that's the perfect place to start.

If I can prompt you with something to walk away with: begin by writing out all the things you've defined yourself as up to this point. Then answer the question: what do you wish people saw within you? That's going to open a door for you to discover who you are.

What do I wish people saw about me? Because those are the parts of you that you feel hurt that people don't see about you or that you feel like maybe if they saw that they would see me differently. So then maybe those are parts of you that truly define who you are and they need to be embraced by you.

So I would begin with that.

Also if it's okay with you for us to do just one more question because I don't have that much time. But we can do another live another day too because I feel like there's so many people who joined. And I have a little surprise gift for you. And it's a person and she has to get back to work so I just wanna. She doesn't have enough followers to do to come on live with us so I'm going to call her okay just give me a second.

I think you'll really enjoy the surprise. Okay and then we can do one last question okay. Hey, Noelle, are you there? Okay this is a friend Noelle from our book club. And she has something to share with you that I thought was amazing and I wanted to give her credit for it okay.

Hi Noelle. Hi thank you so much it's an honor to see you. Thank you, Will, for allowing this opportunity to participate in a conversation.

But yeah so first I wanted to say, Najwa, I was inspired by your book when you vocalized your authenticity and vulnerability, coming forward to millions of people with your healing journey, and identified that you're still in that process of healing. And I think that's very powerful because I feel my purpose is to empower others.

And I felt like an imposter for a while because I too am still continuing on my healing journey like you said we're not always fully healed.

But what Will wanted me to share with you is I am an educator. I work at a high school. And I have not only included actually some of your work in my curriculum but I definitely got your book inside our school library to access and check out which is really exciting.

Thank you so much for doing that.

Of course. With students yesterday, I had a prompt question for them to ask their peer how they can build a home within themselves. and how they validate themselves. It prompts a lot of great conversation. And I just really appreciate your work. So thank you so much for everything that you're doing. Thank you for doing all of that and seriously like I don't even know what to say.

Because it just makes my heart so happy. It makes me emotional like to see that my words have reached that many people. And that you find there's value in your students reading my work and to the point where you put it in your curriculum. Like thank you so much for doing that

I'm definitely going to remember this moment forever. So thank you. Thank you Noel. I really thank you so much it's an honor to meet you on here.

Oh same I will get your info right after this and I'm gonna send you a message. Oh wonderful. Right it was really wonderful to meet you thank you thank you Noel thank you for doing that I love that yeah she's amazing she's put your book in there and now these high school students you know for years to come are gonna have access to it and what a better time in life to learn these ideas.

I love that.

So again this is why I wrote Trust Your Heart. Because it's about discovering yourself through the heartbreak and discovering yourself beyond the heartbreak. So I broke this guide down into talking about how you can take that relationship that broke you in some way.

Take it as an opportunity to learn about yourself and all the moments when your gut told you something was wrong. There was a red flag, but you allowed your trust in them, or your hope for what could come of the relationship, to override what you knew was right for yourself.

That's self-discovery through the heartbreak. Self-discovery beyond the heartbreak is the part where you're like, who am I without that relationship? Who am I without all these labels? Who are you, really, truthfully, without your age, your gender, where you come from, the languages you speak, how much money you make, how much effort you put into other people's lives? Can you come in touch with the essence of that?

For any person who comes to you and says, how do I get over this heartbreak, I say get through the heartbreak.

I know people mean, how do I get through this time? But I don't want anybody to think they're going to get an answer like, "I'm fully healed." It's hard work to get through a heartbreak.

You have to sit and have an honest conversation with yourself in the mirror. What went wrong? Why am I hurting right now? Why am I judging myself so much for going through this? Why am I feeling hopeless about the future? Why am I feeling like I don't deserve love? Why am I feeling like there is no way to get through this?

Have a conversation with yourself as if you're having a conversation with someone you truly and deeply care about. When you do that, you're already getting through it, already healing. But when you're fixated on, "I want this to go away. How do I get over it?"

It's going to continue to control you. What you resist persists and you want to be at a point where there's that flow in your life not that resistance.

So get through it by coming back to yourself by coming back to who you are by going back to all the moments when your body actually showed you that it knew that you were in the wrong place and apologize to that past self of yours by saying I apologize for not listening to you I apologize for trusting someone else over trusting you. And moving forward I will trust my feelings and my thoughts and my judgments over anyone else's. Especially when those two things come at odds.

I know that I said I have to go and I do. But there's one thing that I want to mention is in this guide I actually talk about gaslighting. When I talked about gaslighting, I talked about how it's not a person's fault to go through it.

But what happens when somebody gaslights you is you go through that moment of whose judgment do I trust? Whose recollection do I trust? And at some point whether it's subconscious or conscious we make a decision to trust someone else over trusting ourselves.

So get to a point where you learn about all those moments when trusting yourself and trusting someone else came at odds with each other and instead of trusting yourself you chose to trust someone else. Like going through all of that will not only help you get over a relationship it will help you build a relationship with yourself that there is absolutely no way you could get into the same relationship you got into before.

Now you're a grown version of who you were in the past, a lot more mature.

That grown version knows who they are and will never allow another person to write over their narrative, will never allow another person to have more importance in their life than their own. That's what I would say.

That's a great answer. Use the opportunity to continue evolving, it sounds like.

Yes.

Thank you so much for being here. I'd love to do this again. Anytime you're free, please let me know. I have so much more I want to talk about Trust Your Heart.

Follow her on social media, same name, I think, across all platforms.

Another time where we just answer everybody's questions. I would love to do that.

Yes, I would love to. We can text about it.

Awesome. Thank you again. Thank you so much. That was amazing.

I read Trust Your Heart in two sittings. It was so good.

It was definitely a page-turner. You just want to consume more and more. It was wonderful. Definitely recommend it.

This all came about as part of our book club. This is just the first of what I hope will be many wonderful activities like this.