The ladies and gentlemen welcome to the What's Essential Podcast. I'm Greg Bacchewin

and I'll be your host. I'm also the author of the New York Times bestselling books, Essentialism

and Effortless. I want you to come with me on an exploration of self-discovery. On this

podcast we decipher what really matters and unravel the non-essential chaos that gets

in the way of us being able to build an essential life. Today is the first ever episode on this

podcast where I'm just going to get the chance to talk directly with you. I've been feeling to do

this for some time but there's a subject that's so important to me. It has I think the power of

relevancy, of urgency for almost everybody listening to this today if not everybody

and it's really the subject of misunderstanding and that subject is the absolute awfulness of being

misunderstood. What I want from you today is to really listen with an open mind, open heart,

not just to what I share with you directly but maybe with something inside of you that resonates

and tells you something even different than the words I'm sharing that can help you get greater

clarity in your own life but also greater clarity with the people that matter most to you.

Let me ask you a question right now. I want you to think of a time when you have felt misunderstood.

In fact, I want you to think of a single word to describe that experience. Recently I went on

social media and I put that question out to everybody and I was surprised by the answers I received

especially by the pure depth of the responses. Listen to these words, betrayed, unjust, isolating,

gut-wrenching, embarrassing. Somebody said where poison creeps in. Another gutted,

fearful, disheartening, suffocating, terrifying, outcast, unworthy, unvalued, unsafe, triggered,

hurt, depressed, debilitated, stupid. I think it would be hard to come up with any words

more serious than those. And so it puts into context something that I have learned through,

let's say, 20 years of thinking on this subject and it's this, that being understood

...