Podbit · On Purpose with Jay Shetty
After two years of burnout, a huge fight with her mother — where she lashed out in a way she hated herself for — became the catalyst that made Camila book the Hoffman Institute. Simply booking it, she says, already felt like choosing herself.
Where this was said
At 14:24 · chapter starts 10:09
Jay asks what rock bottom actually looked like for Camila, and she delivers one of the episode's most memorable stories. Even going to a concert had become a performance metric: know all the lyrics, wear a cute outfit, take the right photos, grow Instagram. She went to Coachella with friends and returned home in tears — not from sadness but from complete emptiness. [1] — Camila Mendes "Camila went to Coachella with friends and came home in tears, realizing she had spent the entire weekend maximizing the experience for Inst…" 11:08 She had no idea how to have fun anymore. Rudy asked her what was wrong and she said she didn't know what joy felt like. That night she started cataloguing: for almost two years, she had been reflexively saying 'things are just really crazy right now' — and suddenly she heard herself and understood it wasn't right now [2] — Camila Mendes "I realized like that for almost 2 years of my life at that point, I had always been repeating the phrase, things are just really crazy righ…" 14:16 . It was just her life. She dreaded mornings. Then Rudy told her about the Hoffman Institute through a mutual friend, and Camila's initial resistance — no phone, no email, a whole week gone — crumbled when the friend said some very big names had done it. She booked it.
Camila went to Coachella with friends and came home in tears, realizing she had spent the entire weekend maximizing the experience for Instagram rather than enjoying it. She had lost the ability to feel joy for almost two years — every event was a task to optimize.
Camila Mendes reached a breaking point roughly 2 years before the interview, repeating the phrase 'life is really hectic right now' for almost 2 consecutive years.
Predictions that AI would eliminate radiologists were spectacularly wrong. Since those predictions, Mayo Clinic's radiology staff grew 55% and the specialty became the second-highest paid in medicine. The reason: AI automated scan-reading, but only 36% of a radiologist's time was ever spent doing that.
Self-help fails because people are sold one universal cure by the hyper-responders who had a transformative result from it. The real problem is context: every method works for the right person at the right time, which is almost never you just because the author says so.
Spencer Greenberg was once so socially anxious his heart pounded just approaching a stranger. His therapist gave him homework: go to a bar alone, talk to 5 strangers. Starting with asking for the time, he worked up to asking men for hugs — and his anxiety fell dramatically in 6 months.
A person who flies regularly but obsessively checks weather forecasts before every flight is not doing exposure therapy — they're teaching their brain that flying is only safe with the ritual. Safety behaviors prevent the brain from ever learning that the feared thing is actually fine.
The worry-time technique assigns all worries to one scheduled slot (e.g. 5 PM). Every time a worry surfaces, you write it down and ban yourself from engaging with it until that time. When 5 PM arrives, most worries feel trivial and the act of batch-worrying exposes how little it actually accomplishes.
In a randomized study of 20 habit techniques, 'habit reflection' stood out: recall a past habit you successfully built, write down what helped you succeed, then apply those same strategies to your new habit. It works because it's self-adapting — it uses whatever worked for YOU.
The tiny habits technique — always having a minimal version of your habit you can do when life gets in the way — keeps the mental machinery of habit formation from breaking. Paradoxically, people given a tiny-habit fallback option were MORE successful at the full habit, not less.
Fears and worries act like playground bullies — they want to ambush you. But when you deliberately seek them out and choose the time of engagement, they lose their power. The volitional act of starting the fight on your own terms is one of CBT's most underappreciated insights.
Most downtime defaults are things you regret immediately after — phone scrolling, binge TV. 'Glad you did it' activities meet the same need for rest but leave you feeling like you spent your time well. The switch from a bad screen to a documentary, a book, or a walk costs almost no extra effort but compounds into identity over time.
We use essential and analytics cookies to run Vuci. To understand how the site is used: Privacy Policy.
Install Vuci on your phone
Add it to your home screen for a faster, app-like experience.
Install Vuci on your phone
Tap the Share button, then “Add to Home Screen”.
A new version is available
Reload to get the latest Vuci.