ramble [Music] welcome to best friends back right the show where two high school best friends try the best friend thing again i’m nakeen hawaii fat and i’m stevie when levine and today we are going to talk about identity you know that thing that says who you are yes how i see yourself familiar with identity the thing that really boxes you in and leads you to therapy oh man starting off on a high note this morning or afternoon or evening or whenever depending on when you listen to this maybe it’s midnight maybe it’s 1am you are a bad boy that’s what i think by the way podcasts at 1am they’re bad well if you’re listening to this at 1am it’s probably helpful detail that you have that stevie’s and pigtail braids what is that supposed to mean just add that to your i don’t want that as like a mental like if it’s 1am it’s helpful to note stevie has pigtails it’s helpful to note that my entire left arm is bright red due to the sun it’s all i can really think about right right right actually that’s not true i needed to tell you about something i’m hoping someone out there can relate to what i’m about to say okay i’m scared i recently got a new toothbrush and i sing again yes and my previous toothbrush was just like a normal electric toothbrush or so i thought my new electric toothbrush has a face on it this is a child’s toothbrush no no it is a very adult oral b not for pigtails only electric toothbrush is it on the on the bristles or the back no no no it has a like a digital screen uh-huh like which is overkill and and a face on that like a emoji type of face and then like it has different settings and things and it has like a countdown clock and things like that but the face when i turned it on it had one of those like smirk like winky faces like hey girl like like teeth i swear to you my toothbrush is freaking flirting with me and yes and i can’t read every morning i don’t know what kind of face it’s going to be making at me when i brush for long enough it smiles when i don’t it frowns and i feel like we’re forming a relationship yeah and i brought this up this weekend to a group of people i was like does anyone else’s toothbrush like have a face and no one else’s toothbrush has a face and i’m confused i’ve never eaten i’ve never seen anything like that but i love it do you it creeps me out i don’t know maybe you just feel like a little bit guilty about this relationship you’re starting with your listen i don’t need to open the bathroom door and feel a presence on the other side right you know i’d like it to be a private space but i feel like i’ve let another person into my relationship with this how does cassie feel about your toothbrush she believes the toothbrush is sexually attracted to me um was what the conclusion she came to uh and really and that’s why today we’re talking about identity because because my identity is currently with my tooth with your toothbrush i mean and it’s a vibrating toothbrush which also oh my god really yeah yeah well i just wanted to i just wanted to become clean about it but there’s also no relationship no no no sexual relation people are going to leave this podcast and they’re going to think that i’m having sex with my toothbrush i mean i think they were thinking that already how was your weekend my weekend was super pg i was in greensboro i was back for the holidays no just uh just seeing my parents ask you because it was it’s a it’s a trifecta of holiday weekend yes but i was going to ask like the ramadan celebration in your family like we’re now we’re not religious so there’s no observation at all or is there like correct okay yeah yeah okay we were really good because it’s a be a long one it’d be a long one and not a lot of food not a lot of food no zach and i drove up from atlanta with kishmesh and it was so great i love going back to greensboro because it’s when i get all of my errands run you know i bring my dry cleaning i i mean i know it’s ridiculous but you can get each piece of each like piece of clothing for 250. two dollars and fifty cents is on dry cleaning nowadays i feel like it’s at least triple that per piece really yeah i don’t do a lot of dry cleaning i hate paying for dry cleaning yeah it seems a little ridiculous you’ve already paid for the garment it should self-clean garment my garment has a face on it i wanted to also talk about that so yeah i got my i got my eyebrows threaded i got my third of the price third of the price no that one surprisingly same price huh but quality was great i almost went to go get my nails done but i was like okay nakeen who do you think you are who do you think you are you went up to greensboro and spent zero time with your family you were just like getting my [ ] done all the time yeah um so you so even though zach is jewish or comes from a jewish family you guys also don’t celebrate passover we will celebrate it if there are people that are the traditions and every time there’s a jewish holiday my dad calls zach and he’s like so tell us about what this means he’s so curious he’s like can we can we do something like well like something googled it earlier because i knew you would be calling me well that was like a wikipedia entry zach didn’t know it was passover yeah until my dad told him yeah so do you guys celebrate no but we got invited to a seder this year which is really fun because you know there’s like a ceremony to it okay so there is a book that’s called the haggadah that is like the prayer book for pesach or passover and a seder is is like a dinner and there’s like a symbolic plate that has different things on it that like represent different things about the jews fleeing egypt or or slavery and so all of the different uh things that you do during that meal symbolize different things about the plagues and [Music] other stuff and usually so there’s like jewish jewish where it’s like this is taking an hour and a half i want to eat and i don’t understand half the things that you’re saying right now and then there’s like the in-between which is mostly in english and like there’s songs yeah diet jewish uh abridged as the host called it um this particular host uh we knew the host and we didn’t know anyone else at this dinner which sometimes i kind of like because that means like you don’t have to care about like there’s there’s not you’re going in for seconds no it’s just like oh who am i going to be today because no one else knows me here type of thing are you a shape-shifter yeah but anyway um so part of the passover seder is that usually you each person like reads a paragraph and you go around and so i said to cassie before we went i was like do you think she’s doing that whole thing because even though i do a lot of reading for a living on on camera that intimidates the crap out of me really i it makes me so anxious to publicly read like in a circle and everyone’s listening to you and judging how you read yeah it’s like other people you’re good with strangers listening to you or people like on the internet yeah you don’t want to see people listen i get enough [ ] of things that i mispronounce every day i don’t need it in my immediate life are you reading something in hebrew well okay so there is like an english um what do you call it when they say translation not translation they spell it out so like the phonetic yes yes so uh of course i was the first one that had to read a paragraph and um yeah and there was the word mishnah in it and and these people don’t know that like also i went to jewish day school like i’m not going to [ ] up saying mishna but i say mishna and uh everyone at the table is like wow like i you know i was a little intimidating but intimidated by that word but you did a great job and i was like huh and then i continue reading and i’m like oh i’m gonna purposefully [ ] something up as a joke and so the phrase middle ages was coming up so i read it as middle lodges and like clearly as a joke and there was this pause and i looked up around the table and i could tell that everyone was like is this [ ] or is she making a joke and like the turn like you could see the wheels turning in everyone’s head before they all started laughing really hard because they were like we don’t know this person right she looks kind of dumb does she think it’s middle ages and so uh i felt like that was an appropriate actual identity story over the toothbrush to bring into this conversation because um i wanted to firmly establish my identity at the passover seder as a person who could make middle ages jokes jokes but uh you know the perception that people have of you is very much a part of your identity as well and the perception they had was she’s stupid and she knows mishna but not middle east what does mishna mean i don’t know okay okay sorry sorry sorry i did not that was not to that was not to to embarrass you you’re breaking the facade damn it okay well let’s talk about identity i think that you know it’s a huge part of kind of coming of age and figuring out who you are but i think it’s still coming it’s still coming and i do feel like as i’ve gotten older i’ve felt more comfortable questioning how people see me and not being either so intimidated by it or boxed in by it but seeing it as like i feel or judged by it yeah yeah because i’m like oh i’m you know i’m changing as i as i age i used to find identity a really limiting thing yeah and now i’m questioning that like and so like in terms of like who you were supposed to who i’m supposed to be exactly people’s expectations of me yeah so that’s been a really interesting thing for me to think about but i feel like one of the the the first things i think about with identity is name and your name missy is something that we have not talked about actually my name is missy and this is the reveal and now you know why i go by stevie well yeah so the last time we were really hanging i was calling you stephanie yeah steph stephanie stephanie yeah and fast forward a few years later and i see that you’re stevie yeah and i had all sorts of questions but i didn’t feel like it was appropriate for me to actually ask you about it interesting i felt like that’s a private thing like who why should i ask her why she’s changing her name well now you’re confident in yourself and you’re asking me the questions i’m like we finally have a reason to talk about it yeah i mean i’ve kind of how did you change your name i’ve kind of revealed pieces i think throughout you know the past decade on mythical programming but yeah i can kind of go back and tell the full story i have not watched uh those pieces oh god of programming i’m so offended you haven’t watched our thousands of hours you know that your name is programmed into my phone still as stephanie levine huh i have not changed it because i felt like i one should have been maybe invited to call you stevie i didn’t know if it was like a nickname like a like a pet name oh okay that just your friends called you consider this your formal invitation but also who’s time to change their contacts in their phone well it’s really [ ] me up now when i’m like going to text you and i’m like steve [ ] oh yeah so are you still having that like that switch of calling me stevie yeah it is an issue it’s not an i’m no it’s no pretty normal but i yourself i catch myself oh yeah interesting yeah okay yeah we gotta feel like this yeah okay so if you go all the way back to eighth grade um and man i didn’t realize i was gonna be talking about so many jewish adjacent things but in eighth grade uh we had a class that was taught by the cool rabbi in town they’re two rabbis both very nice rabbis sure they’re both listening today and i don’t mean to offend either one of them but one was played the guitar okay if you know what i mean so and i remember he said did you know that stevie nicks’s name is stephanie and i was like oh like there’s a way out because i always like i think that oftentimes people don’t like their own names like the grass is always greener type of situation i think the older you get perhaps the more confident you become in your name like my middle name is win w-y-n-n-e and when i was a kid i was like that is embarrassing like who what that’s not even a name like who has that name and now i’m like oh it’s unique and cool and i’m i’m confident in the uniqueness of it stephanie not so much a unique name so he said that and i was kind of like oh okay that is awesome and also i love stevie nicks i have a neighbor neighbor that does not like stevie nicks and she also doesn’t like capers and she’s slowly climbing down my list of favorite neighbors because i like capers a lot but also stevie now burning her house down for sure i mean fleetwood mac but i didn’t change my name at that point and yeah i think most people called me steph uh and throughout high school as well but at the end of high school i kind of like it’s funny because there’s a facebook album yeah that’s called stevie on my facebook and it was a photo shoot that i did and i can’t remember who it was with but it was like me popping around elm street downtown with like my guitar and like trying to be a cool girl and it was called stevie and so i kind of like almost created this character this persona of like who i wanted to be and uh i think that the [Music] more i found out who i was the more i was like stevie feels right and stephanie never did and maybe it was a little bit of gender identity mixed up in there because you know stephanie’s so feminine and that didn’t really feel like me right but i don’t think so i think that was probably buried down because that wasn’t that wasn’t top of mind for me at all it was just i wanted something that was a little bit more unique that captured my personality a little bit more so yeah i think it was like college-ish time where where i just went by you just introduce yourself as stevia yeah and and um i think it’s it took my parents a little bit i never said like you have to call me stevie it wasn’t it’s not one of those things okay like i think that if there’s a slip up like it’s it’s interesting when i hear someone say call someone else like stephanie or steph like how i react inside and what is it do you kind of look cuz now i don’t okay now no part of me identifies with that name so i don’t look up but it it there was like that period of time where i was like oh that that is my name and so now my parents call me kind of whatever they want on the day my dad calls me stevie nguyen or stephanie nguyen or you know so i will answer to any of those things yeah but that’s kind of the origin of my name it was it’s basically like the representation of growing up yeah and picking my own that’s really cool can you equally change it no which is interesting when they’re booking flights and such for me because i’ve had that happen before where someone doesn’t know that my legal name is stephanie and then you get up to the security line and you’re like well this is fun you’ve always had an unique i’ve always had a unique name yeah and it’s like you said like having a unique name doesn’t feel cool when you’re younger yeah it just doesn’t it’s because everyone’s awkward all the time and it is a burden for others to say my name and so part of it and everything is an interesting that’s how it is that’s how i perceived it as like a young person like oh they’re struggling they’re struggling and i am definitely like the nurturing like i don’t want you to struggle let me do whatever you were annoyed you never you i was never annoyed i felt bad or i didn’t care so i don’t get pissed off when people say my name incorrectly but i have become more vocal or more comfortable just telling them how to say it the right way like oh there’s an alternative roll call situation like elementary school middle school like what’s the worst people would say my name also we’re in the south yeah right so there’s a there’s a twang there but i’ve gotten um nagin that’s not that’s not so bad that’s that’s like a southern twist yeah okay um noggin nagging nugging yeah and then my favorite was just nadine just ignoring the letters in the middle forget what’s there okay nadine and the worst were the scantrons [Laughter] [Music] that was actually the time that’s when i would get upset is because we everything we had like sixth grade on was a scantron test at the end of the year real personalized real personalized and everybody in class but me would get a scantron that was previously filled out so it was like um like if it was you okay you would um and maybe this this was when we were taking like the state tests at the end of the year okay you would get a pre-filled out scantron that already had your name written and all the bubbles filled out the bubbles the bubbles for your name so the scan triangle oh okay you know you had to pick okay you had to write your name and then all the letters were bubbled okay i was the only [ ] that had 16 letters i had to write in and because they were because they just assumed it was a typo yeah my name was 100 a typo yeah and so i took like 10 minutes before everyone else to fill it out and i’m left-handed so everything was smudging you know you’re left-handed yeah i didn’t know that about you that’s cool also kind of unique yeah that that’s the that’s creative people are left-handed so from scantrons to people it’s okay but you wear braids i do pigtails pigtails i hope you’re having a good time so i feel like right now it’s about 1 30. we’ve we’ve made our way through oh i love how i was like i’m gonna keep time on my phone nope nope but fine yeah sure it’s 1 30 a.m so i i feel like i americanized my name so that people could say it and i it wasn’t until recently that i started saying my own name correctly what is the yeah what is it so the way that i would the way that i would uh introduce myself let’s say 10 years ago okay or even in school with nagin nagin okay right and that this is confirming for me personally that’s what you called me because i thought that was correct yeah and it’s funny when we reconnected i noticed that you slightly changed the way you said your name because you say it much more nagin yeah yeah instead of nick yes yes i remember that difference and i noticed that but i didn’t know which one was correct correct but it’s more like it’s spelled now yeah yeah but i mean my name is sp my name the origin my name is spelled strangely too most naked is this not a it’s not it’s not okay no most naggings in the united states would spell their name like any gin that’s a very common spelling and egi which is i think a little bit more difficult yeah n e a g h e n i don’t think there’s any other negan that spells her name that way which is why all of my social media stuff is like just my name yeah i don’t have any i don’t need anything but my parents so my parents were in tuscaloosa alabama in 1980 eight no one they wanted to name this little baby this girl negin but they didn’t know how to spell it so my father’s an engineer and all all he knew was like if we want to know how to spell this name we gotta bring together other scientists oh because scientists will know how to spell a name right his answer to everything is science i like that nothing else i like it okay so like so there was like a council there was a council over dinner where they discuss the most logical way to spell my name and n-e-a-g-h i believe they came to the right conclusion it kind of works when you think of like megan i that’s what i’m saying like your name is spelled it makes sense now but but in high school it was the lack of like kind of like that a sound at the beginning the [ ] that was was the person yeah well well okay that’s really interesting that you say that because i’m still working through how do i say my own name yeah and i’ve been listening to my parents say it my whole life and they’ve never changed the way they said it and they would never correct me either i think they kind of so you introduce yourself for like it’s easier for people [ ] i would just kind of repeat back what they would say and it wasn’t until i was at minerva we had tons of international students and all of them are coming to the united states some of them for the first time and they’re also struggling with how do i introduce myself to people that can’t say it yeah so i was pretty inspired by them insisting on like you know you learn how to say my name the correct way that i started saying my name the correct way so st stevie winleby savey stevie wayne levine i would like you to try to say negin negan negin i’m going to close my eyes and hear you saying that’s this is what i’m saying it’s equal emphasis on both syllables beautiful so and but in high school it was negan it was totally opposite yeah so total evolution i have way more told you i was like oh they yeah okay also different people can do it when you now you’re laughing we will get to that we will get to that in a later but uh so i’ve learned to say differently and i’m curious i’m curious how people with like unique names non-american english whatever names how they go through that because a lot of people iranian people would not a lot but some with just nicknames no changes a lot like negin could be like i would just become like nicole or something else it would just be an american name yeah um and that was one way yeah i was gonna say our shortening but the shortening of negan never worked never had a lot of good nicknames growing that was that that that was the worst lucinda melvin i guess called me lavini beanie because that’s in my yearbook really yeah that’s the video so the best example sorry of this name stuff is zach my dear husband okay it was like maybe one month ago that i sat him down and i was like honey we’re gonna say my name differently we’re going to say my name differently and the reason for that is i was on set again it was about a month ago and and like a white american man said my name perfectly oh okay surprise surprise perfectly with an iranian accent it was like an outer body experience he is married or he’s with an iranian woman all right so he has he has some exposure but he said it and i remember being like what it’s possible you’re like i’m gonna talk to zach immediately it’s huge i like the way this white man is saying we gotta trade and i told him and zach of course was like thank you tell me like i’ve been struggling with what why what was he saying he was saying it like like nagin again he was he was it was not equal emphasis it wasn’t wildly off okay but and now my baby keeps saying it the right way every time and so i’m like i don’t like it when cassie says my name i don’t know what it is it like when she says stevie or when she doesn’t collect she says or something um we were talking about on the show a few months back you’re supposed to like it when someone says your name if it’s like a uh someone you’re pursuing romantically because it like signals that like they’re super interested in you but i’ve always like i just don’t like it like i’m immediately like oh this just feels formal when she says my name i don’t it freaks me out okay but you like her to recognize you just with a pet name no yes you let her break her she likes to fly under the radar i appreciate when we don’t talk to each other at all and don’t acknowledge each other you like the heart yeah oh really yeah and i have one bathroom nice i don’t you’re two people that’s actually it’s fine totally normal it is small though we had uh well maybe some contacts i was gonna say we had a bunch of kids over to our house which we we did it was you know for for easter we had like some of the neighborhood kids like stop into our house for a moment this weekend and oh my god the chaos a three four and five-year-old caused in a five-minute period of time there’s not a single toy in our house but everything’s at home everything the dogs ringo’s toys are perfect for children but my house has never felt smaller than when those kids were in the house we’re in the house and this is why you don’t want to have children yeah because you love that house so much well no i just realized how many ways little kids could hurt themselves like there’s piles of rocks in my house inside the house inside the house uh cassie is a collector of rocks feathers oh uh shells any like sticks okay um earth tools yeah and uh i do not know the organizational methods but all i know is i pick up a rock from one pile and i put it in the other pile the rock is back in the other pile the next time i look because that rock didn’t belong in that pile okay there were rocks everywhere oh my god everywhere there was an atlas i didn’t know we had an atlas there was an atlas spread across the floor there’s like a a pom-pom like uh i don’t even know a decorative poof that just sits in the corner for some reason right oh no it was a ball it was actually oh my god globe like who knew i was so interested in maps apparently that was the case kids find everything yeah i don’t know how i don’t know how we got here oh here’s a here’s a segway the globe the world that’s right you know oh yeah oh my gosh speaking of identity anytime i say my name somebody inevitably replies with oh where are you from yeah it’s just like you gotta know that everyone’s gotta know the origin yeah the way you pronounce it the everything and that’s normal for me yeah when i see it happen to other people i’m like oh wow well people don’t ask me where i’m from but they do ask like oh how did your parents like because they think stevie yes so then that conversation happened do you like having that conversation i don’t mind it yeah i think it’s any time that somebody has a unique name it’s either oh where did you like where is what’s the origin of your name yeah essentially what they’re yes are you are you a u.s citizen one time one time i got my hair cut and i was it was a bangs period and i love my hair stylist but she just talks more than paying attention to what she’s doing oh no she cut my bangs like a good you know at least inch higher than they should be for the next month three people asked me if i was from the united states i was like oh my god that’s amazing you have like a scandinavian yeah fringe yeah oh my gosh but yes i always get the question where are you from or what’s your heritage and so then we talk about iran yeah but like my entire life i’m also i’m not only telling people or accepting the way people are saying my name but also hearing people mispronounce iran all of the time okay oh my god girl we got iran iran iran iran iran iran is very george bush yeah so i get that it’s like the iraq of it all of it all yeah it’s the whole incorrect of it all yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah correctly with the southern twang the correct way to pronounce iran is iran ee ron yeah iran howard iran it’s easy it’s easy you rock it’s the same thing i was like who’s iran run out okay so you you do you get in to it like you’re like i like to answer like oh well my my family is from there and it’s also i’m also like you know there’s this thing with iranians in the united states or iranians outside of the outside of iran where they will either say they’re persian or their iranian okay what is that difference to you is it a cultural verses i’ll tell you what it is to me growing up i think for the most part i would say i’m persian persian m is feels like it’s more cultural that’s what i was wondering um also it sounds sexier persian it sounds cooler it’s a little bit mysterious persian empire is like you know sexy as hell you know math iranians like to claim that like math was invented and a lot of things were invented by the persians okay i hear your dad here but yeah yeah iran is what the country is called now and it’s not associated with a lot of great things it’s a very political thing to say iran in the same way that it’s pretty political to say you’re from the united states now when you travel like yeah always go with canada canada yeah or like for me i’ll say i’m from iran when i travel because in the last few years it’s not so cool yeah other countries don’t like us so much yeah so i think it’s the same thing with persian and iran but i started just saying i’m iranian after a while because i realized like if people are meeting me if i can’t say i’m iranian and have people associate iran not with what’s going on in the news of like you know what people think of as like dictatorships and just iran iran and religion and all of that then like what am i doing to furthering furthering people’s like understanding of what it really is yeah looks like to be iranian yeah and so that’s my small rebellion i think is to say i’m i’m iranian i ran iranian for where i mispronounced it how would somebody say you said correctly yeah if you said iran people say iranian iranian yeah okay iranian iranian iranian but we should focus on saying it the right way we just couldn’t put it together but yeah it’s interesting somebody says that they’re persian and you don’t have the knowledge you might not uh not know no yeah i think which i guess is yeah you know now you know somebody you whoever it is and you know somebody from iran it’s like okay i can think of iranians as the people that i see on television who are not kind of portrayed in a really positive light or i can see it as like a young woman who seems like she’s like a contributing member of our society who’s carol i live in glendale i like it’s yeah well and armenian yes yeah but yeah yeah yeah there’s good food everywhere your parents were how far back does your family go in the united states my great-grandparents were born in like eastern europe and so i’m i’m mostly ashkenazi and then like some british irish which is i mean evident in my son the furthest people mispronounce my name is the lavon levine yeah which no it’s that’s how it’s spelled have you had levine cookies by the way no i’ve heard of this though this is a this is like a bougie it is i’ve been watching these tick tocks of this girl this comedian who has been she says that she has a lot of hot girlfriends in la and she likes to like pick up on the little things that they’re eating or using product wise and then she shares them with everyone and i don’t know why i’m watching this because it’s like this lip tint it’s the best i’m like i use chapstick i don’t need this but like there’s like a specific cookie that they’re eating right now i’m surprised that these hot girls are eating this cookie because it is no no not that cookie they’re not eating a previous hot girl cookie okay this is like a better freak and i can’t recall what it’s called but is levaine is that a jewish name i don’t know okay but levine is yeah oh so actually is like a very jewish yes because of the the tribes and then like cohen is like the the number one yeah and then levi or levine is like the second oh big tribe did you ever feel any way about having a very jewish name growing up no idea when i’ve picked like the places i want to travel to i’m a little bit conscious of it because it’s not like there’s no one that i know that’s not jewish that has a name like levine or levy or you know anything in that you know yeah area so i’m thinking conscious of it yeah but then i look like a little nazi you know i was wondering you know before the 23andme i was like what surprises are we gonna have is cassie is cassie jewish she’s catholic i mean she’s we’re both not religious and anything okay but she does not have she didn’t dress up as easter bunny this weekend yeah so she was channeling christ through the um ear buddy oh my gosh easter bunny by the way yeah right i looked up the origin of easter egg painting okay and dying and i could be wrong but what i read was it was a tradition started in like the 60s where people were painting eggs red to um like the blood of christ yeah the blood of christ why eggs i don’t know i don’t know if eggs are like you didn’t wake it up hard enough eggs are a sign of like a rebirth you know because isn’t that what kind of happened resurrection i i really shouldn’t talk about religion because i don’t know anything about it but i found the whole idea of like painting eggs red yeah to symbolize blood really strange that is very children now it’s a children’s activity maybe it started as an adult activity well there’s some really [ ] up children in my neighborhood because i think i told you that i got a painting from down the street at like a little art collective and it was a like it was like two little boys who like set up like little 10 by 10 inch canvases that they were painting on they were selling the paintings for like five dollars each and so we were like okay we’ll get one but we were like oh we’d love one and then we turned to look at them yeah and there was a lot of dark imagery and i selected what i believe is the joker from batman hanging on a noose with some blood trickling down his face it’s very cute it goes nicely in the living room area is that the good thing that like you don’t put it out but when the kids come over you put it out look at our decor and i asked him to sign it because it wasn’t signed and he took a pencil and signed it like right on top in the middle so i think it’s going to be a collector’s item wow that’s the type of art that i’d like all right so you know there’s this whole thing about like what our names and heritage say about us what the [ ] did the tests say about you oh okay you did a little yes okay sorry i teased you earlier that when we were we were preparing for this episode i did with rhett and link in january of 2014 um when we had like five mythical crew members we did the gallup strengthsfinder personality quiz test okay which is kind of awesome it takes like i i think it took like an hour to 90 minutes and it asks you questions and there’s a scale where you answer okay and it keeps track of how much time you take per question so every like little thing is weighed into them guessing what your personality is i highly recommend this and and the guys talk about this um enneagram thing all the time uh which i haven’t done and i need to do and i know you guessed it what my number is um but but this is like a little bit more analytical so there are 34 strengths and then they rank your top five strengths and then each there’s like four different categories of strengths so when we did it i recall that i had like an even amount of strengths in each like i was a cross between rhett and link’s results which we were like almost makes sense so if rhett and link had a baby you would i would be their baby you would be it yeah that’s how a relationship is actually but there are four different like categories domains i guess so there’s executing influencing relationship building strategic thinking are the four categories and the for the 34 strengths are in those categories and i remember that link was the only one out of the three of us that had any strengths in the relationship building domain i mean we stopped talking for 15 years so that makes sense it’s like the empathy box yeah basically he was the only one of the three nice guys yeah the the the rest of the the strengths were um much more strategic so i was scared by the results i got in in january on january 23 2014 they are very accurate i’ll just tell you what the strengths are so analytical okay your analytical theme challenges other people prove it show me why what you are claiming is true in the face of this kind of questioning some will find that their brilliant theories will wither and die for you this is precisely the point check check it out absolutely yes um strategic is the second one the strategic theme enables you to sort through the clutter and find the best route it is not a skill that can be taught it’s a distinct way of thinking a special perspective on the world at large so we have analytical strategic yeah achiever your achiever theme helps explain your drive achiever describes a constant need for achievement you feel as if every day starts at zero by the end of the day you must achieve something tangible in order to feel good about yourself oh which is so true really like constantly even my weekend like even things like i have the call with my parents on sunday i have like this like ongoing to-do list in my mind where i wake up and i’m like what’s my to-do list for today the day that i’m you know not at work so again all these are making you could be the child of an immigrant is this how interesting you could be the child of an immigrant discipline is my next one yeah your world needs to be predictable it needs to be ordered and planned so you instinctively impose structure on your world which i just kind of said and then arranger is the last one and for some reason this is the one that i had like underlines in back in 2014 you are a conductor when faced with a complex situation involving many factors you enjoy managing all the variables aligning and realigning them until you’re sure you’ve arranged them in the most productive configuration possible which cassie might be with the rocks in our house when you think about it fellow arranger yeah so those are my top five strengths analytical strategic achiever discipline and arranger now this does very much describe me it’s not fun can i i know we talked a lot about your strengths which are which are beautiful i would love to know some of those i don’t think we paid for that for that you can pay a price and find your top five and then you can pay extra and they will rank all 34 but i don’t think we were at a point at mythical where we could afford to recognize the weakness but yeah i thought that when i got these results back i was like damn this test is kind of yeah perfect because it tells you exactly those things it’s imperfect though because i like to think that i’m a little bit more fun than what’s on this page but yeah i mean at my core all these things are very true like even having this buried in the back of my documents and digging it up uh for this episode i was just reminded that a lot of me has not changed from january 2014 to now in the middle of 2022 especially like just hitting me with that first analytical thing about like you know i we i talk about what’s right which is just such a messed up thing to talk about but like it’s a constant form of conversation especially you know with the way that we work here yeah well you have to have a system like i think that it can be shocking that you’re still this way but you’re still this way because i figure you didn’t want to change i think that the the analytical strategic nature is very hard to break from and and maybe one day uh like why but why it’s why is it credibly no no no why would you want to break from it because it’s exhausting okay yeah because there’s a there’s apply it widely if you apply it to like work it makes a lot of sense yeah if you apply it to you know beforehand we were talking about um masks on a plane or like yes you know if you apply it to that world then suddenly it’s almost as if everyone around you that you don’t know becomes a theory that you have to disprove or someone that has to check a certain box to right or control or whatever yeah it’s it’s control i you know i think that um i know that about myself when it when it comes to drugs that are psychedelic drugs i know that like i don’t enjoy them because i like to have a certain amount of control of my environment and uh and as soon as i don’t i’m like no no yeah yeah that is really interesting i great plug for gallop by the way i mean they they’re known for doing it it’s really good they’re really good at it i want it i think i did one of these okay worthwhile investment they’re paying me on the side so go to gallup.com forward slash best friend’s back all right for a non-affiliate [Laughter] don’t do it that doesn’t exist guys so well i wanted to ask you because you mentioned earlier that your confidence has grown maybe your identity has shifted from high school when we knew each other to now what is most representative of that shift to you because from my perspective and what we’ve talked about we were both kind of the expectations were very high they were higher for you than they were for me but like you you kind of had to be the salutator and you kind of had to be the student body president you had to why do you say had to because i think those expectations were either you set them for yourself or someone set them for you and also like when we when it comes to academics and like what we talked about like being a good kid like those expectations were set for me too yeah if you don’t achieve this then you’re not good you know right so is it that that’s shifted a little bit for you do you still feel like that is a box that you have to play in and some to some extent like what is the thing that’s really shifted okay great questions there are a few of them in there one this idea of like has this need to be great at things shifted no there is no competition about it though for me and i don’t and i there was some competitive everyone else no no but now i am the best so it doesn’t really matter it’s not about other people as much yeah i think um now when i do anything i want to be really great at it dude this podcast is a great example like the first episode i want to kill myself because come on but it was it’s a pretty first step it is but you know when you have yeah you have i impossible expectations sometimes it doesn’t matter if it was great right i’m looking at the achiever strength achiever strength is still there i want to be great at whatever i do and that’s very much a result of the way i was growing up yeah and this idea of like you have to be great either do it the best or don’t do it yeah yeah and you have to because in my case the way that you know i was raised was you have to because we don’t know what else will allow you to succeed in this country there is no alternative that we’re aware of there’s no safety net and so you have to be as good as you can be in school as good as you can be in everything that you do because only if you do you’re 200 will you get on the same level as other people yeah so that mentality was big and and it’s the result of and that’s the reason why i was able to do so much but it was also came at a price and so i think once i became a little bit more confident and being enough and knowing that like i don’t need to be number one in something that i don’t care about i think what i developed was a sense of what i care about yeah and not just being great at what other people that was the biggest difference that makes a lot and that is so freaking empowering to separate the stuff you care about from the stuff that’s like you’d be great at that i don’t need to be yeah this achiever thing really i think this some of these like takeaways or this like understanding for me really came to a head when i went to college where everyone at harvard was the best in something yeah before they came there yeah you had to be to get in but were they trying to be the best at everything some of them yeah and i think seeing that up front was very eye-opening because that’s you’re like i don’t want to miss ripple yeah i didn’t and and it’s exhausting like how because you can never be the best at it all something something is majorly sacrificed for it yeah um also let’s not kid i probably tried and i didn’t succeed at being the best at everything so i’m sure that was part of i don’t need deciding you will never know you will never know buried everything that i wasn’t the best at you’ll never but that totally like i see this in a lot of my peers is this idea that like okay we’re now at this top school and the expectation is that we are the best at everything i don’t like telling people that i went to harvard at all because often there’s the joke of like oh you think you’re smart or like the expectation that you know everything you can only be great and that um that probably factored into like why it took me some time to break free of doing something that was more standard like professionally most people i would say at harvard there’s this track of like you go to school doesn’t matter what you studied you will try to become a management consultant or an investment banker it does not matter okay and you’re like what the hell i’d even study any of this stuff why am i recruiting for goldman sachs but you do it because everyone’s doing and that’s the expectation yeah yeah and so i totally get that i totally get the why you wouldn’t want to tell people that you went to harvard there’s a judgment that immediately yeah yeah yeah and sometimes yeah and and you know now i’m coming to the point where i’m like okay how can all of these identifying factors the fact that my name’s different that i’m iranian that i went to harvard that i do these things how can those actually be my superpowers rather than the limiting factors that i have seen them as and that you know that’s a work in progress [Laughter] thanks for listening to best friends back all right you can catch brand new episodes every friday make sure to follow so you don’t miss an episode and hey speaking of episodes there are brand new episodes of our show on food network called inside eats with rhett and link every sunday at 10 30 p.m eastern and pacific this week the guys go behind the scenes at the cheesecake factory they have the most giant menu of all time and we decided to order every single item on the menu so if you want to see that check it out on food network this sunday 10 30. you are so excited about checking it out yes bring that energy if you guys are enjoying this show please leave us a review if you’re not keep it to yourself you can follow at mythical pods on tiktok for clips to share with family and friends you can follow me remember that’s n-e-a-g-h-e-e-n and stevie levine everywhere at stevie w levine and of course you can hear me every monday through friday on good mythical morning with rhett and link at youtube.com goodmythical morning i’ll see you there and remember it’s negin iran nakeen bye [Music] you