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Carlee
Shit has certainly been hitting the fan, but that's nothing new when it comes to racial injustices in America. Many of us have found ourselves in emotional turmoil. Many more of us urgently want to help. But simply put, we just don't know what to do. We don't know where to start. Hi, I'm Carlee Myers, your friendly stress management expert. Now, some of us are afraid we are going to say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing. We feel like we're walking on eggshells and quite frankly, it can be really anxiety provoking. Today, I've brought on a friend and colleague of mine, Shalena Diva, to talk about this very issue. I hope it hits your soul, opens your heart, and from it, we can create more love in our communities. Welcome to the show, Shalena.
Shalena
Thank you so much, Carlee. Thank you for having me.
Carlee
Absolutely now. Shalena Diva helps her clients to discover, invest value and appreciate their lives and business. She educates, equips and helps her clients to start a profitable, profitable, more profitable. I'm just going to say that it for a few more times. Virtual coaching business by packaging their knowledge into digital information products. Through her company, Best Selling Year LLC, She helps new coaches, consultants and experts with personal branding, content marketing and digital product creation, such as webinars, e-books and online courses, a.k.a. She has been busy since we've entered quarantine. I can tell you that. So I wanted to bring Shalena on the show for you guys because quite frankly, Shalena has been I don't know if it's brave enough or loud enough or stands up enough. I don't know. But she's shared an incredible video on social media a few days ago and it said, white coaches listen to this. And I was like, oh, shit, that's me. What's she going say? What does she have to say? Now, Shalena that I actually met during quarantine. We met at a virtual networking event and we immediately hit it off. We were just like, you got great you got great energy. I got to talk. But this video that she shared a few days ago just struck me. It resonated. I had seen a lot of it happening in the white coaching community. And I was like, I need to have you on the show. You need we need to hear what you have to say. So I'm so excited to just welcome you to the show again, Shalena, and hear what you have to share.
Shalena
Well, thank you. Thank you. So let's get to it.
Carlee
Let's get to it. OK. So I you know, I intro the show with, you know, a lot of a lot of us are feeling a lot of emotions. Right before we hit record on this episode, we talked about how last week legit was traumatic. And we're recording this a few about a week or two out. So a few weeks ago, for you guys, listening now was pretty traumatic. And a lot of us really are feeling the urgency to take action. And I want to start by acknowledging that a lot of us don't know where to start. And we're nervous and we're scared. And so, Shalena, I would love to hear your thoughts on, like, OK, I'm here. I'm nervous. I want to help. I don't know how. What are your thoughts on that?
Shalena
OK, great. I'll just hit it and quit it because you want to. I want to maximize the time. I'm going to tell you what not to say and what not to do. OK. Do not say all lives matter. Of course we know that all lives matter. However, in this moment in time, it's black lives that we're talking about. So if someone if they create a post. They're talking about Black Lives Matter. Please don't say well all lives matter or blue lives matter. Because then you will get attacked and people will say that you're tone deaf. They may even call you racist. So just don't say it. We and the thing is, we know that all lives matter. It's like someone said, a great metaphor is that, you know, if if there's a block and there's one house that's on fire and like, we really need to put this fire out. You know, you go to that house and you put the fire out. You don't say, well, wait a minute, I'm going to go and spray that house over there. It's like but it's not a fire. It's this one. So that's kind of what is equivalent to. So in this instance, don't say all lives matter because that's like to us is like, OK, either they're racist or they're tone deaf. The other thing that that's it's like a really big thing there. The other thing is this I like no one likes you know, no one likes the looting. No one likes the property damage. But if the only time you have spoken out during this time is to voice your opinion on the property damage, you're going to get attacked because people are saying, well, do you understand why? You know, the protest started and of course, there are agitators. But do you understand why if you've never spoken out on what happened to George Floyd, if you don't see the just how he was degraded as a human being and the only time you're speaking out is against property damage, Do not do that because then it's seen as you're being insensitive. And once again, tone deaf. So, you know, we you know, no one likes the looting. No one likes that. But that might be the funny thing is it's gotten your attention enough to make you speak up. So it does serve a purpose, but really try to find. OK. Why are they looting? And like have you said anything about George Floyd and also. Two, if you're the kind of person who say, well, what did he do? Listen, it was over tw- it was over 20 dollars come to find out the 20 dollars wasn't fake. What was his? Was it worth him losing his life over 20 dollars? So you have to see the humanity in this situation and how he was robbed of his humanity. So if you skip over that, that you just jumped to the property damage. You're going to get attacked. And you probably won't like it.
Carlee
Yeah. And what's coming up for me is just thinking about. I read I, I read the exact words that George Floyd was saying to the officers during that moment, and there was nothing but just ple- like basically pleading like, please, sir, I can't breathe. I'm claustrophobic. Please, I can't breathe. Like, it was there was no disrespect. There was nothing. It was just clear communication about what needed to happen in order for him to survive. And I think that. Human like if we go back. This is probably so many social media arguments about this because of the looting and everything. But like we compare a human life that suffered like that. That's legit suffering. That's torture, in my opinion, to looting. Like, I'm gonna choose somebody who was tortured and murdered and put focus my attention on that versus looting, because, quite frankly, that person like that's that's not OK. Like, we cannot they cannot be paired on two levels. And I wanted just to share with you, Shalena, to that I guess everybody that's listening that. It's it's really. It's really it's just I can't even find the words for it, but. I think that so I'm I can't even find my words, words, so I'm going to get over it.
Shalena
I'm going to say this. What we witnessed was a public lynching.
Carlee
Yeah.
Shalena
But they just didn't have the rope. They just didn't have the tree. But it was a public lynching. And my sister challenged me this weekend. She said, kneel down for eight minutes and forty six seconds and you can't hold on to anything. And I had my stopwatch in. I had the luxury of looking like how much longer? But I want your listeners to do that. Kneel down without any props for eight minutes and forty six seconds. That is how long that officer's knee was on his neck. And, you know, I wish we had a longer time, but we don't. But my thing is, I want to bring something to your attention. But I also want to give you tips and tools to help you. So if you're really interested in. OK. What can I do? My first thing is you have to get form a formally educated. That means go to a workshop that is taught by a reputable black person, African-American person who has knowledge about this and who can help you to understand the black experience. So you don't you know, you don't want to go to a workshop that's done by a white person because how can they really teach you? Right. But the thing is, in in that workshop, you're going to be confronted with your biases, because the thing about a bias is you don't see it. It is so ingrained. And in that video Carlee was talking about. I talked about how I went to a LGBTQ plus workshop to better understand. And I had to confront my biases. I had to confront my privilege. So you want to go? You want to get formally educated. You want to have a reputable source. And the second thing is, whatever you learn in that workshop put it into practice immediately. And I told this story about how I met a transgender man. So was a woman really born? A woman. And I learned, you know, the proper like the proper pronouns to use how to ask. And then we had the best conversation ever. But I wouldn't have been able to do that had I not gotten the tools from that formal workshop. So educate yourself. Go to a formal workshop. I'm sure they're going to be a lot coming up. Understand that you will confront your own biases. You will confront your privilege. It's not an assault on who you are. It's just helping you to understand and input whatever you learned directly into practice. And you'll be so glad you did.
Carlee
That's perfect. So there are a lot of resources out there. Thank you, Shalena, so much for coming on. I wish we had an hour and not 10 minutes. That is for sure. But this is absolutely something we can put into practice today. So I want to make this an open dialogue. So I want to hear from you guys who are listening, what questions you have, where do you feel stuck? We are really here to help navigate this conversation, move this forward as much as we can. Now, this concludes this episode of the stress show, if you like. This week's episode. Please let us know by giving us a big old thumbs up and hitting that follow or subscribe button. And if this resonated for you, please, please share this episode. Thanks for listening. And we'll see you next week.