Are you feeling overwhelmed with the shaming happening online? Are you terrified to speak up in fear that you will be canceled? Are you worried about censorship and the possibility of being de-platformed for speaking to certain topics? These, my friend, are all legit worries. The shaming is no joke. The censorship is no joke. The digital mob that I discussed in my last bonus podcast episode is real. And it’s concerning, it’s worrisome, it’s shocking, it is hard AF to navigate. I understand what this feels like because I have felt it, too.
This is a conversation that I have been wanting to have for a while, so I invited incredibly outspoken and powerful leadership guide and also one of my personal friends, Ruby Fremon, onto the Wealthy Coach Podcast. Ruby is a leadership coach, mentor, and speaker who helps ambitious entrepreneurs grow their movements with integrity.
In today’s episode, we discuss:
How to know when you should speak up versus stay quiet,
Why we are seeing an increased amount of shaming online,
What the shaming tells us about the ones doing the shaming,
How to navigate censorship without muting yourself,
The dangerous place humanity currently finds itself in and how to create positive change,
How to handle receiving hate online, and
How we can move forward as a collective.
Connect with me on Instagram: @kendraperryinc
Connect with Ruby on Instagram: @iamruby Twitter: @iamruby and Youtube: iamruby
For all resources mentioned, see full show notes at kendraperry.net/episode52
Join my Rock Your Sales Calls 2-hour Workshop! Find out more at: go.kendraperry.net/sales
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Speaking Out In Times Of Censorship With Ruby Fremon
Are you feeling overwhelmed with the shaming that is happening online? Are you terrified to speak up in fear that you will be canceled? Are you worried about censorship and the possibility of being deep platformed for speaking up on certain topics? These, my friends are all legit worries. The shaming is no joke. The censorship still no joke. That digital mob that I discussed in my last bonus episode is real. It’s concerning, worrisome, shocking and it’s hard to navigate. I understand what it feels like because I feel it too. This is a conversation that I’ve been wanting to have for a long time. I invited an incredibly outspoken and powerful leadership guide, and also one of my personal friends, Ruby Fremon onto the show. In 2019, I had heard the term thought leader for the first time. I was intrigued, so I Googled it and I ultimately came across Ruby’s podcast, which I highly recommend that you subscribe to, Today’s Thought Leader.
I listened to one episode and I was hooked by her unfiltered and empowering way of speaking. At the time she was enrolling for her group program, the Thought Leader Collective, I suddenly found myself applying the same day. A few days later, Ruby reached out to me and told me she had seen my application. She was blown away and she wanted to make sure we spoke personally. That my friend is history. I joined the Thought Leader Collective and had one of the most powerful and connected experiences of my life. I’ve learned so much from Ruby over the past years. I was able to form deep and meaningful friendships with the other leaders inside the program. I could not have navigated 2020 without them.
Ruby Fremon is a leadership coach, mentor and speaker who helps ambitious entrepreneurs grow their movements with integrity. A catalyst for change, Ruby has helped hundreds of thought leaders build their confidence and crystallize their message, landing them on podcasts, stages, television, and the front pages of newspapers across the country all through a process she calls the inner work. She’s the Founder of the Thought Leader Collective and the Host of Today’s Thought Leader podcast, which was rated number 38 on iTunes for entrepreneurship. In 2019, she was named an Icon of Influence at the 2018 New Media Summit and an Inspirational Woman by Huffington post in 2016. As an expert on leadership, personal growth and entrepreneurship, she has spoken on stages around the globe. She has also been featured as a guest on over 75 podcasts, among them, Addicted 2 Success with Joel Brown, which fetched over 3.2 million downloads.
When she isn’t leading her six-figure business, Ruby can be found hiking with her husband, Kevin or deep in nature at their sanctuary in Austin, Texas. In this episode, we discuss how to know when you should speak up versus stay quiet. Why are we seeing an increased amount of shaming online? What does the shaming tell us about the ones who are doing the shaming? How can we navigate censorship without muting ourselves? The dangerous place humanity currently finds itself in and how to create positive change, how to handle receiving online hate and how we can move forward as a collective, and all that and so much more in this potent episode. I know you are going to love it. Enjoy.
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Welcome to the show, Ruby.
Kendra, I am so excited to be here and super stoked for our conversation.
Me too. It feels so good to have you on the show. You were one of my favorite people, I’m so excited to be hanging out with you. We’re going to be talking about a topic that is on a lot of people’s minds now. We’re going to be talking about censorship and using your voice and fear of speaking out, all those good things, but before we get started Ruby, I would love to give us a little snapshot of your story, so people know a little bit more about your background.
If you were to look at my social media now and judge me upon that, you’d be like, “She’s super-duper outspoken and says what she feels.” The truth is I wasn’t always like that. I grew up in a culture where we were taught to suppress our true feelings and trained to show up in a certain way in order to be liked and accepted by our culture and our family in fear of putting shame on our family. At a very young age, I learned how to keep quiet, how to hide my truth, how to bite my tongue in fear of bringing my family shame, but also in fear of not being loved and accepted. This put me on a journey that was self-deprecating. I started experiencing anxiety and depression at the age of eleven and continued to build all the way through my twenties.
I was an addict. Western medicine is what turned me into an addict with their over prescribing of benzos when I was diagnosed with anxiety disorder and they never questioned why I was refilling my prescription every week. From there, it turned to drugs and alcohol, it was me doing everything possible to numb the pain of not feeling free to be me, not feeling free to speak up, not feeling free to express myself fully and constantly questioning who I was and if people liked me or if I was accepted. I hit a few rock bottom moments, the last one would be in 2012. I hit rock bottom at the ending of an abusive relationship. That was when I was a full-on addict, fully numbing out every single day of my life.
I realized that it was me who got myself to that place, I started owning my shit, I started to turn my life around, but didn’t fully let go of some of my bad habits. The universe knocked me over and I ended up with a concussion, a massive head injury from being super high at the nightclub with nerve damage in my brain, post-concussion syndrome, all the things. I slipped into a manic-depressive state. I was in that state for two months until they found the nerve damage in my brain and put me on some medication to heal that. When I came out of that concussion, it was like my entire brain had rewired and I felt the cloud lift and I had a new determination to live life differently. In combination with knowing that, the universe knocked me off my feet for a reason.
I started to sober up, seek holistic support, get off all my meds, turn my life around. That turned me on to personal development. Through that journey with personal development and my healing, I began to express myself and use the internet almost like a live journal. I was using Tumblr at the time and journaling what I was feeling for the first time in order to hold myself accountable. What I didn’t know is that those Tumblr entries were helping other people. When I started sharing those on Facebook and my actual friends were seeing them, I started hearing from people in my DMS like, “Thank you. I feel so seen. I feel we’re going through the same thing. I realized that my entire life, I’ve been told that if I speak my truth, I’ll bring shame onto the family. When I speak my truth, I create connection and I’m able to feel seen and help others feel seen.”
That was my practice of learning to use my voice and learning to express myself. That was in 2013. Since then, it’s been a constant evolution and unraveling process of diving deeper in words, uncovering more of my potency, dismantling all the programming and the training that was bestowed upon me as a child and feeling more and more comfortable in my own skin as a fully expressed human being. That is my journey in a nutshell, there were a lot of detours along the way. I feel like that’s what our readers need to know to grasp the concept of what we’re going to be sharing.
I got a wash over of goosebumps when you told that story. I’ve heard it before, but it still feels as powerful hearing it again. Even in the time that I’ve known you for several years now, I’ve seen a big evolution too, in the way that you’re using your voice. I’ve been so impressed by how you’ve shown up in 2020, because you’ve spoken out about a lot of things that are hard to speak on an uncomfortable, and people probably disagree with you and send you hateful things. I’m curious, can you tell the readers what gives you the courage to be so vocal, especially in the most polarizing year of our lives.
It didn’t come down to finding courage. It came down to what it is that I cannot keep quiet about. There are certain things that I’m okay not talking about because I don’t feel ready or I don’t know enough, but there are certain things that rub up against my personal values, the things that are most important to me. It would cause more pain for me to not speak up than it does to speak up. That’s what it comes down to. When you value something so much, the courage is there.
I’ve appreciated that so much. I found it quite inspiring because I feel that way too, about certain things. I feel like truth is elusive these days. It’s disinformation everywhere. It’s hard to know what’s up or down, but there are certain things that I know a lot about, and I feel very passionate about. In the end sometimes you just can’t shut up. A lot of our readers, who are primarily health and wellness coaches, practitioners feel the same way about a lot of the things that are going on, but they have a lot of fear because they’re seeing other people get censored by these social media giants. Can you speak a little bit to that fear? Is it justified? What are your thoughts on the censorship in general, but maybe around health and wellness as well?
The censorship is out of control, let’s start there. It’s insanity what’s happening. At the same time, these are privately owned tech companies. From the very beginning, when you first signed up for Facebook or whatever platform you used, you give them access to your photos, to your microphone, to everything. They can use your photos in their own ads. That’s what you sign up for. People forget that because we’ve become so complacent with the way in which we use these platforms. It’s a good reminder for everyone. What we’re going through right now is a good reminder, these platforms aren’t yours, you don’t own it. They do have a right to do whatever they want. Does that mean it’s okay? Not really, but they valued things differently than we do. They have different values.
Censorship is real and it can be scary, especially in the health and wellness space. That’s the space that is getting the most backlash from what’s taking place. We’re seeing articles like alternative medical reviews being taken down. We’re seeing information that was once readily available, no longer available anywhere. We’re seeing doctors being banned from all platforms. We’re seeing a former president completely banned from all social media platforms, which is insane because if he was a real tyrant, then you wouldn’t be able to ban him.
It’s interesting to see people cheering for that. I know both of us are not Trump lovers but I don’t think anyone should be censored. It interesting to see, if these tech giants can sensor the president of United States, it shows that they have more power over communication than who is supposed to be the most powerful person on the planet.
That shows how skewed power is in our world. It’s not what you think it is. If you’re in the health and wellness space and you want to speak up, or if you want to speak up on what’s going on, it’s a tricky space to navigate. One, because censorship is real, and two, because public shaming has become the most popular thing to do these days.
I recorded a bonus episode where I was talking about this digital mob that has arisen. When I think about it, I think of these old school towns with people with torches and pitchforks running around, driving people out of town. We have this digital version of this now that I’ve seen. I’ve seen this specifically in health and wellness. People want to go out there and they want to go after people who say things that they deemed to be untrue. They also want to go after the brands of whom support these influencers or business owners and try to get them to take away their brand deals. Let’s talk about that because that is crazy.
I recorded an episode and I called it self-righteous activism and super self-righteous behavior. For people who are shaming others, that shame is coming from something that’s unresolved in them. If anyone is a coach or study psychology or personal development, we know that. Our reactions stemmed from our inner shit. At the same time, that doesn’t make it less painful to get, especially on topics such as racism and anti-racism work. That is a touchy, sensitive topic. It’s interesting what happened in 2020 and how that murder of George Floyd turned into this giant, like, “Here’s one of America’s biggest wounds. We’re going to bring it to the surface, but so many people hadn’t dealt with the wound and were projecting their mess.” That’s not okay. Why has anti-racism work become this thing that you now have to declare and prove that you’re doing? Why is that a thing? Why is it that if you don’t speak up, that means you’re a racist?
I have a big problem with some of the terms that people use like silence is violence. I’m like, “No, silence is not violence at all, because if it was then I would be incredibly violent because there are so many issues that require our attention these days and you cannot speak to all of them or know about all of them.” I’ve seen silence is the same as consenting, unlike in any other situation, that would not be okay, especially if you’re talking about sexual encounter, silence does not equal consent, so why in this particular area or topic suddenly it means something different? I remember that and I got a lot of messages that were like, “Why haven’t you spoken out?” I’m like, “I don’t even know what’s going on. I haven’t even looked at the news.”
It’s sad because these types of conversations are not constructive. I continue to say this, at the end of the day, we all want the same thing, but if you are going to lash out on people, blame, shame, push guilt onto people, a constructive conversation can never be birthed from that place. Constructive conversations need to happen with two people who are willing to have a conversation. You have to be willing to dive into a conversation.
Be willing to see and hear each other with empathy and compassion. You’re so right about the shame. It doesn’t create anything constructive. It will turn people off of the cause. I posted at Instagram or IGTV about this at the time, but with the shaming, it’s taking people who maybe want to be allies and making them disappear into the hedge because they’re like, “I don’t know what’s going on.” I don’t want to be shamed into taking on your belief system or speaking out for a cause that I haven’t educated myself on yet. You talked about this on your podcast, the performative activism.
I get so fired up. It triggers me only because I see it for what it is. It’s a bunch of people projecting their own shit. Performative leadership is easy to do, you just pretend to be something, you say something, but you’re not doing it. You’re not aligned with it. You don’t believe it, or you don’t know enough about it. There is one thing that people could do that would shift you from the performative space to showing up, and that’s humility. Be humble enough to admit what you don’t know or don’t know enough about. We’ll use the anti-racism work as an example, because this was a hot topic for a lot of people. If you do not know enough about this or about the history of racism in America, then it’s okay to not speak up. It’s also okay to admit that you don’t know enough. If you want to say something because you do feel the pain, you do feel like, “It doesn’t sit right to not say anything, but I don’t know enough.” That’s all you have to say. I acknowledge what’s going on. I don’t know enough to speak up about this, but I know something doesn’t feel right. That’s it.
I remember that week I was feeling all this pressure. I had a visceral reaction to the shaming I was receiving for not saying anything, because first off, I don’t like being told what to do, that triggers me deeply. That is one of my big core wounds, being told what to do. I’ve never in my life experience someone being like, “You have to do this, you have to say this, you have to speak up for this,” when I knew nothing about it.
If not, you are a racist.
I was called a racist. I was like, “What is going on?”
Interesting thing happened in 2020 as well is where people started making mad assumptions about things. We had BLM, that was a hot topic. We had Democrat versus Republican, Trump versus Biden, mask versus no mask. People started filling in the blanks, if you don’t believe masks are good, then you are a racist, misogynistic, Trump supporter. “What happened here?” If you don’t believe in the vaccine or this vaccine specifically is effective, then you are an anti-vaxxer, you’re racist, misogynistic, Trump supporters. It doesn’t make any sense. This is the exact opposite of what we all want.
If we want to drive change, then we have to be willing to have those courageous conversations with each other. It’s one thing if you are not open to having a conversation or open to hearing other points of views, which a lot of people are very closed minded about those things at this point in time, but it’s a whole other thing to shut down the conversation from the get go. Instead of seeking to understand one another, people are at each other’s throats. This goes for big tech too, if someone shares something that goes against the narrative that you believe, then it’s wrong, it’s bad, it’s misinformation and you need to be shut down or censored.
It’s dangerous and violent.
That is the real danger here. People keep talking about freedom of speech, “Are you free if it’s someone else’s platform?” That’s not it. What we’re looking at that’s super dangerous is that if you believe differently, I think about back in the day when people were stoned to death, you could be stoned. Whether that’s through public shaming or censorship or being shut down and blocked out of the internet all together. This is happening. This is what’s taking place in our world. That is the real danger. Taking it back to Trump, I don’t care how much you hate him. If you look on Twitter, there are actual tyrants, other country on there that are using these platforms to gather people for actual hate crimes, for actual murders, for actual killings, this is happening. It’s been documented. These terrorists are still on Twitter. They’re still there, but Trump, he was taken down. If he can be taken down, you can too.
The reason why you don’t care, and this doesn’t affect you, for those who feel they’re not affected by this, is because you believe the same as big tech and what they believe or what they’re supporting. The day that you think something different, you’re going to take the chance of being shut down and being censored. That’s not okay. Now we are promoting that we all think the same. That’s what this comes down to now we’re promoting that. We should all think the same thing. If you don’t, you’ll wrong, and you’ll be shunned, stoned and censored. This is a dangerous place for humanity to be.
The start of a lot of more tyrannical communist regimes, they do start with censorship. It starts with not only the censorship of free speech, but also the labeling of a specific group of people. As I spoke about on the bonus episode that I did, this dehumanization, when you label something, you take away their humanity because now they’re an anti-vaxxer, they’re an anti-mask or conspiracy theorist, Trump supporter, whatever label that you want to give them. You’re taking away their humanity. The only reason why some of these horrible things that have happened in our history like genocides and residential schools in Canada or the Nazi stuff in Germany is because of dehumanization because we looked at a group of people and we saw them as less than human. It’s the only reason why we were able to treat them like that. Even in terms of racism with the slave trade, they weren’t human.
It’s interesting with the racism, I love Dave Rubin, The Rubin Report. For those of you don’t know, he was a Democrat who changed to Republican. His show is super well-spoken. He talks through a lot of what’s happening. He did this episode where he said, “The anti-racist is the new racist.” A lot of people are going to be triggered by that. That’s okay, just get curious about your triggers. As a woman of color, I also took that in. That’s what we’re seeing on all different levels with the world right now. It’s like the poles are shifting, we’re going from one end of the pendulum to the other. I studied the Holocaust extensively and I did a whole school project on this. I was fascinated by it. My dad was best friends with a Holocaust survivor. I interviewed them. I went deep into that history. People hate that we compare what’s happening now to the Holocaust. This is how it started, labeling a group of people, it dehumanizes people. They labeled the Jews, and they dehumanize them.
They started to create a divide through propaganda. Propaganda is what we’re seeing. It’s the censorship of what they’re deeming as misinformation and the promotion of certain types of information, further creating this divide. The bigger a divide, the greater the opportunity for a real tyrant to step in, because when the divide gets big, that’s when someone can step in and say, “I have the solution to this, and here’s what I’m going to do to get rid of these people that we’ve dehumanized.” This is where we’re going. For a lot of people, this seems super farfetched because the Holocaust was an incredibly terrible time period of time in humanity, probably the lowest of the low, one of the lowest amongst many genocides.
However, what we’re experiencing now is the genocide of free speech. Going to lead to something greater. We need to start taking a stand and bringing this back to those readers who are like, “I want to speak up, but I’m scared to.” The way that I look at it is, “Is this something I’m passionate enough about to want to take a stand for it? Is it going to hurt me more internally not to say anything than to say something?” If the answer is yes, great. How can I speak up about this in a way where I can honor myself, honor my energy and honor my space online?
Meaning, if it’s something to do with the Corona, we know that’s being censored left, right and center. We also know that you can talk about things without directly talking about things. If you need examples, go through my feed. I do it all the time. You can talk about things without mentioning vaccine, virus, and people will know what you’re talking about. Instead of being fearful of social media which shifts how you use it, and now you’re using it from a fear-based mindset, to use social media as the tool that it is for you to spread your message, share your voice, connect with your audience, build a community. You can still do these things. You just have to pick your words a little more wisely and also pick your battles. You don’t have to battle everything.
There are ways that you can go around, work around and different words and use emojis and use it in that different way. You can also invite people off to other places where you can have a deeper conversation. Your email list is still not being censored, unless you’re with MailChimp, don’t go with MailChimp, I hear they’re censoring. ConvertKit, which I use, I’ve talked to them extensively about censorship and they’re very much not doing that, at least as of now, there’s probably other great platforms. There are some social media platforms that are popping up that don’t do censorship. You can always invite your people. If you want to go deeper on something like vaccine or 5G or some of these big trigger words for censorship in 2020 and 2021, you can invite people onto a different platform, your website or wherever where you can go deeper.
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That also allows you with feeling a little safer to express yourself fully, because then the people who do move over to, whether it’s your email list, your text messaging list, to your Telegram, or whatever else you’re using, they’re coming for that specific reason. I have a Telegram group, and in there, we talk about the world events. People, when they come into it, understand that’s what’s happening. What a great reminder to build our lists, that was so important at the beginning of all of our careers. We lose touch with that. What an important reminder to start paying more attention on the things that you own, your email communities, your text messaging communities. I second on ConvertKit. I’m a huge fan. I hope that they continue to honor the no censorship because that would be amazing.
When you start talking on social media about things that are a little bit more polarizing, health and wellness alternative alone can be polarizing to people who are coming from a medical or conventional medicine paradigm, I’m sure you’ve received some hate and some crazy messages from people. That can be very triggering, especially to my audience, which is relatively new to their online business and using social media in this way, how do you deal with that, the trolls and the angry messages and all the crazy shit I’m sure you receive from people sometimes?
Eight out of ten times, when I post a picture post-workout, which I tend to do a lot, I will get a hate message from someone accusing me that my “strong body” is a privilege. I posted a picture and I always put the hashtag #StrongMindStrongBodyStrongBodyStrongMind. She was like, “I love everything that you write.” I can’t remember the word she used, but she said, “Not everyone can have a strong body. What about my mom who’s in a wheelchair?” I was like, “You went from 0 to 100 and took this to the next level.” I opened up the conversation. I could have shut that down right away, but when she opened up saying like, “I’ve been following you for a while, I like all your crap, but this rubbed me the wrong way.”
I was like, “Let me talk to her about it.” I said, “When I talk about strength, a lot of people assume that it’s muscles, but it’s not about muscles. It’s about taking ownership and sovereignty of your body. You can do that while in a wheelchair.” I gave the example of my mom, she’s immunocompromised. She has one working kidney. She has lungs that are working at 65%, I believe. She’s compromised in a lot of ways, and she’s doing everything in her power to honor her body. That’s what I mean. She was super open to that conversation and it was great, but people are so quick to react. Another example is the baby Yoda. You remember this case.
I do.
I did a whole podcast episode on this because it was so crazy. I posted at the beginning of quarantine, maybe it was April 2020 when we had been locked up for a month. I posted this meme, and it was baby Yoda. It said something like, “No gym, all snacks make me fatty fat, fat.” I thought it was hilarious, because me who used to go to the gym all the time, I hadn’t been because I was so in this space of like, “I don’t know what to do. I can’t go to the gym. I can’t go for a run outside. I can’t come to the beach. I am stuck in my house.” I was eating all the chips and I was doing all the things eating my feelings.
I thought it was funny. Lots of people laughed. Lots of people were relating to it, and then came two women who decided to, one of them, gaslight me, and the other, go at me in the comments. The one who went at me at the comments was talking about my weight being a privilege. The other one took that post, shared it on her profile and wrote something like, “These so-called conscious leaders are all frauds, and they promote something.” I was like, “What is going on?” That post that was shared about me, got all this hate message.
All those people started coming to me and I was like, “It’s baby Yoda. Have a sense of humor.” I can look at them with love and compassion, knowing that this is coming from their own triggered space because they don’t feel comfortable in their own skin. You don’t know me. You don’t know what my body naturally looks like. You don’t know how well I take care of my body. You don’t know crap. For me, it’s important to remain in that knowing of what I know for certain and what don’t they know, because it’s easy to then let that affect you. There’s always going to be trolls.
There’s always going to be people out there who are out there to “get you” because there are people who, right now, are in a highly reactive state and they’ll do anything unconsciously and consciously to make themselves feel better. A lot of that ends up with them publicly shaming, gaslighting, entering your DM, saying a bunch of crap like this happens. This has to be a truth that you accept. It’s going to happen no matter what. I get bombarded all the time. I’ve been called a racist, a misogynistic pig and the reason millions are dying. “You are the reason millions of people are dying.” I’ve lost friendships. At the end of the day, what causes me more pain, to not speak up or to speak up?
Over time, it’s truly a skill that you work on over time being an online entrepreneur that you get better with the trolls. I remember some of the first times it happened to me online. I was not okay for a week. It messed with my head. I’ve had a few crazy messages, and I was like, “I’m in a good place with this.” I was able to look at it and almost laugh at it a little bit and be like, “Crazy person.” It’s interesting because people are trying to build a world where nobody feels triggered. That is crazy because everyone’s triggers come from within and are their responsibility. I get triggered. I’m like, “It’s my crap.” We can’t know what’s going to trigger other people. People are not taking responsibility for their triggers.
“Why am I all of a sudden responsible for your crap? That’s not my crap.” When I feel triggered, which I do feel triggered, I look at that and I’m like, “Why am I feeling triggered about that?” That’s what I do with other people as well, because it helps me bring more compassion into it, because often when someone is triggered and they come at you, you can react and triggered way back. For me, I wonder why they’re feeling so triggered. That drops me into a state of curiosity which takes you out of the state of reactivity. That’s super important to do for self and with others. It’s a practice. We’re building new muscles here. It ties in with resilience where you are practicing resilience.
This doesn’t mean that you take crap from everyone and anyone and become this doormat that absorbs crap. No, this means that you understand your boundaries, you honor your boundaries, and you do your best within those boundaries. That’s it. You have to understand what it is that you will and will not speak up on and why and understand what type of crap you’ll let slide and what type of shit you don’t let slide. There are some comments in my threads that are hateful or projected reactivity that I ignore, because I can tell from the moment that I read it, they’re just in this super reactive space and nothing I say or do will change this. I’ll see other comments where I’m like, “This feels like there’s an invitation for conversation here.” Instead of reacting back to them, I’ll respond back to them.
You can also delete comments if it’s hateful, delete it, but I always ask myself, “Why do I want to delete this?” Sometimes when people post crap in your threads, questioning your motives or what you’re saying, sometimes we feel triggered by it because we have spoken up too soon about something that we don’t know enough about. The comment is triggering because they’ve called us out and we know it. That also is the invitation for you to use your discernment on what you speak up on. Don’t let the fear of being shamed drive you to speak up on things that you’re not ready to speak up on, or things that you don’t have the energy to speak up on.
That’s important. I know we had a conversation. I had an appointment with you where I was like, “I want to speak up, but it triggers me, and it makes me feel crazy.” I spiral out and it resonated last podcast or two podcasts ago that you did where you get addicted to the shock. I was like, “That’s me.” When I go down these rabbit holes, I get addicted to the shock of it, and then I go more and more, and I can’t stop and I’m spiraling. I’ve had to learn to only research and go down rabbit holes when I feel pulled to understand more about something, and only speak up when I do feel like I have enough knowledge and enough confidence in what I’m speaking on. Otherwise, I end up in the shock addiction.
To speak up, we need to be educated. That’s what people are missing. They’ll speak up on things without being educated on what they’re speaking up about. If you have a platform and people are following you, that’s a responsibility. Use your platform with responsibilities. Whatever it is that you’re going to speak up on, do your due diligence to research, to read, to educate yourself, and when you’re ready to share and speak up about it, come from a grounded, educated well-researched space. In that way, if anyone questions what you’re saying, you can remain grounded in what you know and also in what you don’t know.
It’s so important. You’ve mentioned this a few times throughout our chat, energy management, where is your energy best spent? We don’t have unlimited amounts of it.
We do not. I do not.
We were both projectors, then we do not have unlimited energy.
Sometimes it comes down to that, “Do I have the energy for this right now?” It’s okay to say no. It’s okay to take social media breaks and it’s okay to not speak up on everything. It’s okay to admit what you don’t know that I want to drive home. Instead of trying to be an expert on everything, admit what you don’t know. It’s okay to say, “I can’t, everything that’s happening in the world now feels like a lot. This is what I’m feeling, and I don’t know enough to talk about it, but I want to express this to acknowledge it.” That’s all it takes.
Silence is not violence. I hate that too. The shaming, and it’s not okay. If we want to move forward as a collective in humanity, we need to learn to see each other, to understand each other, to hear each other. That’s it. The shaming, the blaming, the pointing the finger, the censoring, the shutting down that’s furthering the divide. I don’t care how good your intentions are or how conscious you think you are. You are furthering divide. It’s happening on all sides. This isn’t just the people who believe the opposite of you. This is you as well. We’re all doing this.
It’s so important. I was listening to a Brené Brown podcast and she was talking about the stuff at the Capitol, and she’s like, “I wish shaming worked. I wish it did. If it works, maybe I would do it, but it doesn’t work. I’ve done decades of research, and shame does not instigate positive change.” I thought that was so powerful coming from someone who has seriously studied the topic. We can’t shame the world into a better place.
We had Martin Luther King Day here in the States, and all of a sudden, that turned into a shaming situation online where people started like, I saw this from everyone left, right and center, “Instead of posting an MLK quote, I am going to show you or prove to you how I’m doing my anti-racism work.” Can we stop with this? Can we start being human beings again? Humans who are being on their journey. Humans who don’t know everything. Humans who were learning every single day. Humans who are compassionate enough to see each other where we’re at, instead of projecting our own anger, our own sadness, our own frustration at each other and shutting each other down for believing something different. That’s not okay.
It doesn’t work. It’s unproductive. It’s making us more divided. We have to sit in these uncomfortable conversations and pay attention to who you’re following online. Why not follow people from different perspectives, even when you don’t agree with it? Work on your triggers. If you’re feeling triggered every time you see someone posts something that’s not what you believe, try to remember everyone is viewing the world right now through their own experience and perspective. There’s no single truth.
We always are seeking out evidence to prove our narrative to be right. Subconsciously we’re doing this all the time. If you believe something, you’re constantly going to be seeking out proof to make that right. Shunning anything that doesn’t match, we all do this. This is an invitation to be uber observant of yourself and how you’re showing up. When it comes to the actual threat of being censored on platforms, just know that there are ways around it. You can use social media. You can continue to use it as a tool. I don’t think that the answer is to completely go off because this is how we’re connecting with one another. Who’s to say that all these other platforms that are opening up that claim to be sensor free are not going to change their minds later down the road because they’re being threatened. We don’t know. Parler was taken down.
We saw that with Parler. It is mind blowing. You have these monopolies and they’re putting pressure on these smaller companies. I agree, the answer isn’t just to go off it and disengage, although take your breaks, but everyone in this audience is an entrepreneur and an aspiring entrepreneur. It’s a tool and you’re not going to reach your people without it.
I signed on a new client who’s a health coach, and I told her because she’s so passionate about what’s happening, I said, “In my bones, I believe that this is the year for health coaches to rise. 2020 was tough, because there’s a lot of people who are new to the holistic healing space. People like me and you understand it because we experienced it firsthand. I didn’t heal all things that I had through Western medicine. I healed it through holistic medicine. Me and you have these direct experiences, but there’s a lot of people who haven’t, who are now starting to see, who are now waking up to alternative ways to heal. That’s going to continue to happen. This is an opening. This is an opportunity for you, the health coach to rise, because more and more people are going to be seeking alternative ways to heal.”
“If anything, this is your time to shine. There’s going to be a lot of people who are going to be against what you have to say, ignore them, they’re not going to be your clients, your followers and the people you want in your community. Let them be them doing what they want to do, getting their vaccines. Focus on what you’re here to do, because there’s an opportunity for you right now, and that is to share your knowledge and your expertise and come from an educated, grounded place. Don’t be reactive when you’re sharing what you’re sharing, make it easy for people to want to listen to you, to digest the information that you’re sharing. I can assure you, one, you will grow your community, and two, you will start to grow your business because this is the time for holistic practitioners to rise.”
With that Ruby, can you share with our readers how people can find out more about you? How can they connect with you if they want to work with you or follow you or binge your stuff?
You can binge on my podcast, which is called, Today’s Thought Leader. It’s on iTunes, Spotify, all the platforms, there are 200 plus episodes on there for you to binge. You can start there. If you want to connect with me on social media, my handle is, @IAmRuby, the platforms that I use are Instagram and Twitter. I’m also on YouTube. If you Telegram and want to join in on the conversation about all that’s going down right now, that is RubyFremon.com/telegram. Finally, if you like text messaging, I love text messaging, you can text me #PotentTruth, to (1781)-336-0160. The first message you’ll get from me is automated, but after that, all the messages come from me. You’ll be messaging directly with me. Let me know you read this. Let me know what you think. Also, be sure to share this episode with everyone if you dig it because everyone needs to read it. Drop a rating and review for Kendra because she’s Bomb.com.
Thank you so much Ruby. Thank you everyone for reading. I hope you find this conversation valuable. I’ll see you next time, same time, same place, where I help you become wealthy.
Important Links:
- Thought Leader Collective
- Today’s Thought Leader
- Addicted 2 Success – Episode with Ruby Fremon
- Ruby Fremon
- Facebook – Ruby Fremon
- ConvertKit
- iTunes – Today’s Thought Leader
- Spotify – Today’s Thought Leader with Ruby Fremon
- @IAmRuby – Instagram
- Twitter – Ruby Fremon
- YouTube – Ruby Fremon
- RubyFremon.com/telegram
About Ruby Fremon
Ruby Fremon is a leadership coach, mentor and speaker who helps ambitious entrepreneurs grow their movements with integrity.
A catalyst for change, Ruby has helped hundreds of thought leaders build their confidence and crystalize their messaging, landing them on podcasts, stages, television, and the front pages of newspapers across the country, all through a process she calls ‘the inner-work.’
Ruby is the founder of the Thought Leader Collective and host of Today’s Thought Leader podcast which was rated #38 on iTunes for entrepreneurship in 2019. She was named an “Icon of Influence” at the 2018 New Media Summit and “An Inspirational Woman” by The Huffington Post in 2016. As an expert on leadership, personal growth and entrepreneurship, Ruby has spoken on stages around the globe. She has also been featured as a guest on over 75 podcasts, among them Addicted2Success with Joel Brown, which fetched over 3.2 million downloads.
When she isn’t leading her six-figure business, Ruby can be found hiking with her husband, Kevin, or deep in nature at their sanctuary in Austin.
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