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.
Anxiety is not fear. Fear has an object — a wolf, a threat. Anxiety is the vertigo of standing at the edge of infinite possibility and knowing that choosing any one thing closes off all the others. Kierkegaard argued that the depth of your anxiety is proportional to the depth of your potential.
AI nailed Andrew Huberman's vertigo-vs-low-blood-pressure diagnosis because that pattern has been reported millions of times. But every patient's liver is different and data on liver surgeries is scarce worldwide — making solo robot surgery dangerous. The rule is simple: data abundance means AI can help; data scarcity means keep the human in the loop.
Fei-Fei Li's father had liver surgery performed by a da Vinci robot guided by a surgeon. The result: 10 times less blood loss than a typical procedure. This isn't replacement — it's the gold standard of human-machine collaboration, where the human's judgment and the robot's precision combine.
US drug overdose deaths fell from 110,000 to roughly 70,000 — the biggest CDC-recorded single-year drop ever. Men's rates fell 27% in one year, and the steepest decline of all was among 15–24-year-olds, down 37%. The crisis narrative around young men needs to make room for signs of genuine progress.
Kessler thought his grief expertise would protect him. It didn't. When his son David died unexpectedly, he found himself on the floor — and eventually realized that acceptance alone wasn't enough. That unmet need became the sixth stage: finding meaning.
Grief isn't just death — it's any unwanted change. Kessler lectured at Coca-Cola and General Mills not because they had lots of funerals, but because change management is grief management. People who grieve well live well.
Witnessing someone's grief isn't just emotional support — it's an essential act of healing. Kessler argues grief is a severance and connection heals it. But real witnessing has two steps: seeing the pain AND affirming the person's capacity to recover.
Avoiding grief isn't free — it's exhausting. Kessler's beach ball metaphor nails it: pushing a small balloon down is easy, but holding a massive beach ball underwater takes constant, draining energy. Unattended feelings don't disappear; they just consume you.
Most people try to control their environment to avoid triggers. Kessler flips this entirely: triggers aren't problems to manage around — they're a detailed map to your pain and your healing. Every trigger points directly to what needs attention.
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.