Hit rock bottom 2 years ago
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.
Snapshot · On Purpose with Jay Shetty
CAMILA MENDES: "Perfectionism Was Ruining My Life"
Explore episode
Jul 27, 2026
Where this was said
Why Saying 'No' Feels So Hard
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.
Perfectionism Made Even Coachella Feel Like Work
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.
Rock Bottom and the Road to Hoffman
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.
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