Lizzie Velasquez: How to Make the World a Kinder Place

Hey, it’s Marie Forleo and you are watching MarieTV, the place to be to create a business and life you love. Now, if you ever feel different than everyone else and you suspect that that holds you back from making the difference that you were born to make, this is the episode for you.

Lizzie Velásquez is a motivational speaker, anti-bullying activist, social media personality, and author. She was born with an extremely rare disease that affects her heart, eyes, bones, and prevents her from gaining weight. Her TEDx talk has over 13 million views, and her story has been featured on Katie Couric, The Today Show, and The View, among others. She’s an executive producer of the award-winning documentary based on her life, A Brave Heart, The Lizzie Velásquez Story, and her latest book, Dare to Be Kind: How Extraordinary Compassion Can Transform Our World, is available now.

Lizzie, thank you so much for making the time to be here.

Absolutely. Thanks for having me.

I love that, you know, we were gonna do this interview on Skype and they were like, “no, no. We need to do this in person.” So, first, congratulations on Dare to Be Kind.

Thank you.

I loved it.

Thank you.

I underlined so many things, and you can see my little tabs here from some of my favorite parts. So for anyone watching that doesn’t know your story, take us back to when you were 17 and you saw that video that changed everything for you.

Yeah. So I was born with a syndrome that doesn’t allow me to gain weight. I was undiagnosed up until the time I was 25. So when you’re a teenager and you’re in high school, all you really want is to fit in and be cool, but adding this condition that doesn’t – no matter what I do, I can’t put on a nice shirt or change my hair color and be that popular version of whatever it was in my head at the time.

And it was hard. It was really, really hard. But I knew I had to sort of stop whining in a way, and figure out a way to make myself feel better. And so I started joining different things in high school and things started looking up. And my friends were great, my family was great, and it all sort of came crashing down when I accidentally found a video someone posted of me calling me the world’s ugliest woman. And there were millions of views on it and so many horrible, horrible comments, and I felt like I had worked so hard to get my confidence up to a certain level, and then all of a sudden within 2.5 seconds it was just gone.

I remember watching the documentary about your life and that particular section where your mom is wanting you to not watch it, and you couldn’t pull yourself away. And it’s that feeling that I think so many of us experience when we start to hear negative things about ourselves where there’s like a deeper part of you that goes, “I shouldn’t pay more attention. I should move away,” and then there’s some part of us that wants to like absorb the whole thing. And it’s so painful.

What’s funny is I didn’t know everyone’s, like, genuine reactions to that video until I saw the first cut of the doc, because I didn’t want to be in anyone’s interview because I wanted them to feel like comfortable and open, and then when I watched it I realized how much everyone was hurting, but then I also realized that they had worked so hard to put such a positive front when they were around me, so much so that years later I still never knew that they were really hurting as much as I was.

So one of the things that you write in this book, which I love, and I highlighted this and I wrote it down here, is that you get to decide how you want to define yourself to the world. And I think that this is so important not just from an external perspective, like your brand or your business, but ourselves. So I’m curious, how has your definition of yourself evolved over the years?

Oh, my gosh. I feel like I’m in a whole other book every year of definitions. I think it’ll forever be changing with me. I think with age comes experiences and wisdom and all these other little life lessons that you sort of bring into your life without necessarily realizing it. And I used to think that I would define myself as someone who would work really hard and I would accomplish all the dreams and the goals that I had set for myself, and that was it. That was gonna be – like, that was it. That was gonna be, you know, everything for me.

Yeah.

And now it’s just so different, because now I define myself as someone who’s able to help other people, and I feel like everything else sort of just falls underneath that umbrella. And I don’t – I don’t want to say it’s like a label I’ve given myself, but it’s something that I feel is more of like a gift that has come to me. And instead of me just like keeping it, I’m so appreciative that I’m able to sort of give that gift away every day.

Yeah. I mean, and your talks, from seeing the doc, from seeing your TED talk, from reading your book, you’re just an amazing force of nature.

One of the other pieces about the book that I loved was about misconceptions. I feel like misconceptions are so prevalent in our society, and I love this story that you told about the quinceanera.

Mmhm.

And that you were looking at your cousin’s life and having certain ideas about what it would be to live their life. Can you tell us about that experience?

Yeah. So my family is Hispanic and we were at my cousin’s quinceanera, her sweet 15. And there was all of these round tables in the room and I was sitting at a table with my parents and my siblings, and in front of me I saw one of my other cousins, who were all the exact same age. And she was sitting with her son and her boyfriend. And then at another table on the other side was our other cousin with her son and her son’s father. And I was looking at them and thinking we’re the exact same age. I’ve always, since we were little, I’ve always felt like I was – I felt like our milestones were something that we should all hit together.

Yeah.

Which looking back is just silly. But I kept thinking, “I’m their age. Why don’t I have that?” I’m sitting here and I feel like I’m looking into a window of their life and I so desperately want in. And I was just sitting there just thinking about it to myself. And one of my cousins came over and sat down next to me and we randomly had this heart to heart in a crazy loud room, and I told her that I was looking at them and I wanted that. And she was telling me “I look at your life and I see that you’re traveling and doing everything you set your mind to, and I want that life.” And it was that instant realization that the grass is always greener I guess. Or in a way like we’re always wanting what we don’t have.

Yes.

And that’s sort of where I think things get really tricky.

It’s hard too, I feel like because both of us, you know, you make videos online, I make videos online. We’re out there in the public, so to speak. And everyone watching each other on social media, you can so easily just assume that this other person’s life is perfect or so much better than yours, and I feel like what people – what we all have to realize, is like no matter who you are, what you’ve accomplished, like we’re human and all of us are a mess inside from time to time. We have our strong moments, we have those moments when we want to cry. And I just loved that story, because it was so illustrative of that very salient point. All of us can think the grass is greener, and it’s just not the truth.

Yeah. I couldn’t agree more.

So another favorite passage from the book is: “the world doesn’t need you to change yourself, to be more normal either. What is normal, anyway? The world needs – what the world needs is people who truly embrace differences, physical and otherwise.”

Yeah. I mean, normal is another – I think I just have this weird thing with definitions because I feel like I tie definitions to labels, and labels is something that I don’t really like. And I think what’s most important, what I’ve learned in all these years that I’ve been in my body and having the opportunity to go out and travel and meet people – what I’ve learned is no matter what experience we’ve had or what language we speak, we all have this underlying same battles that we’ve all had to fight together.

And acknowledging that and just listening to that I feel is way more important than saying, “Well, why didn’t you do this?” or, “I have this problem. I have this problem. But mine is bigger than your problem, so mine’s more important.” And it’s just so wrong. Like, why can we just say “we all have these struggles, this is what’s going on, let’s sort of work together to get through them.”

Yeah. And connecting on a more humanity level versus the boxes and the labels that we put ourselves in.

Absolutely.

So this leads perfectly into the time, the really challenging time, after the documentary when everything changed. And you shared that “all of my dreams are coming true. So why am I not happy? How can I possibly help inspire other people if I can’t help myself?” I thought this was so awesome that you shared about this in the book.

Thank you.

Because once again, it’s so easy to assume folks that are so inspired by you going like “oh, my goodness. Lizzie is so strong, she’s so inspirational, she’s so motivated, she’s going out there, and she’s changing the world.” And yet on the inside you were having this very new struggle. Can you tell us about that?

It’s still something that like whenever I think about it and I’m talking about it I still like get this instant feeling of like, “oh, my gosh. I can’t believe I’m talking about it.” But I want to talk about it.

Yeah.

And it is something that after I went through it I knew this was going to be the anchor of the book. I knew having this breakdown, what I did have it, was going to be for a reason. And hitting rock bottom and really having – I think, you know, I think what was so – what led to that was having the time alone to not only just like rest and recover, because I needed like two weeks to do that. Once that time was up, I still had so much time alone.

Documentary time was up.

Right. Yeah. We stopped filming. And so I had my break of like recovering, and then I started realizing I have so much time to just think and I have so much time to Google things or to sit down and doubt myself. And I was allowing myself to sort of be attacked by my own thoughts. I knew what I was doing, but I was still letting it happen. And it kept happening and it kept happening. And I thought, “well, if I take one like anxiety pill that I had and I can just take a nap and I won’t have to worry about anything.”

Well, while I was also filming the documentary I was diagnosed for the first time. And finding out that I – finding out my diagnosis was a whole other thing. But knowing that I’m – one of the biggest things that we have to keep an eye out for is my heart. And so knowing that in the back of my head and not fully processing that in the right way, when I had that time to just think about things, I kept thinking, “well if this is gonna happen why don’t I just speed it up? And why don’t I not – why don’t I do my loved ones a favor and not…”

Be here anymore.

Right, exactly. I’ve never, ever, ever no matter what I’ve gone through in my whole life, I’ve never had those thoughts until then. And as soon as people started realizing what was going on, because I got dangerously good at hiding it. Oh, my gosh. I was so good at hiding it.

So so good at hiding the pills or so good at hiding the depression?

Both. Both. I was so good at just pretending I was just fine and I was Lizzie. And I was still posting on social media. And I look back now and I can instantly tell that it wasn’t me. And I’m hoping that other people don’t really notice that, but I can tell that it wasn’t me. And once people started finding out, once my loved ones started finding out and it became a thing, I instantly went into being really ashamed, embarrassed. And that’s when the guilt really hit me. Because a movie was being made about my life, and here I am selfishly wanting to take myself out of this world.

I love you for talking about this and I love you for putting this in the book. Because so many people struggle with depression and they struggle with those suicidal thoughts, and they feel so ashamed about saying anything. And I love that you’re talking about this, because that juxtaposition of like “here’s this documentary about how brave I am and my brave heart, and here’s what I’m struggling with.” And I just adore you for that.

Thank you.

And I want to also say too for everyone watching, it’s like … goes back to that misconceptions idea. Right? It’s like putting labels on people or thinking that their lives are perfect or they don’t go through struggles because of whatever box we’ve put them into. It’s just not true. And it leads perfectly into this idea of vulnerability and shattering the myth of positivity.

Tell us about the decision to post videos, kind of post this, that when you’re not happy, when you’re having a tough time, how has that been for you?

You know, it’s funny because I think posting videos that show my more vulnerable side has kind of become one of my new favorite things. And before I always thought I could never turn my camera on unless my hair was done, my makeup was done, and the lightning was right. Like, everything had to be great.

Yeah.

I had written down what I was gonna say, everything was so staged and planned out, when I was really just wanting to show them my normal life.

Yep.

And I was I don’t want to say censoring myself, but I was stopping myself from saying how I really felt, because I was already thinking about what people were gonna say in the comments.

Yeah.

And I did that for so many years. I started my channel I think at the end of 2007, so I’ve had it for a while, and the journey I’ve gone from when I first started and feeling like it had to be perfect to now, oh my gosh. I’m just so comfortable and I’ll just turn my camera on even when I open my eyes in the morning. And luckily there’s no like smellovision yet. Because it’s like I’m not brushing my teeth yet and I’ve turned my camera on and like talking to my camera.

But it’s now become something that I find so personal. I think it’s like the new diary of 2017 is having a camera to talk to. And I’ve been so nervous to show the videos where I’m not positive all the time, but those have been the videos that have been most warmly received and welcomed more than anything else. And it’s so refreshing. I mean, I recently hosted one about dating.

Yeah.

I was so nervous to even record it. And I was like “what am I doing? Why am I talking about this? Why do I feel shy? Like, I’m an adult. What am I doing?” And after I posted it I felt like it was just so freeing to be able to open up about that and be really, really honest. And I was overwhelmed by the response that I got.

I can relate to this so much. I started MarieTV back in like 2011 or so, and it was just like my webcam. You know, it’s like opening up my Mac laptop and talking.

The white one?

Yeah. And just like there was no lighting, there was no editing, it was like crappy quality or whatever. And as the show has progressed I’ve been really proud that, you know, we can come here and talk with you and have this great conversation. But earlier I think it was maybe like a month or two ago I got this intuitive hit like I just wanted to take my own camera and run around and not have the hair or the makeup or the anything. And all those things are great, because it allows us to actually produce stuff on a schedule and keep things out. But I have been having so much fun similarly like just turning the damn thing on.

And I can say this too for everyone watching, when you see so many comments and you do start to edit yourself in advance. Like, I’m from Jersey, so I curse.

I love it, yeah.

Like, that’s just that something that I do.

And I started, you know, years ago getting notes from moms because they’re watching with their kids. And of course I want to be respectful, so I dialed down my language. Not to try to be a different version of me, but just to take care of more people. But something happened when I’m just running around with my camera like – and it’s been so much fun.

Yeah.

And so anyway, I just – I wanted to relate to you on that, because I think it’s hard for anyone watching who has an idea that they want to share whether it’s around vlogging, whether it’s around their own personal brand, or they just want to create art. I think it’s important to hear conversations like this from people who’ve been doing it over time so they can start to see a little bit of the journey and keep watch out for the pitfalls so they don’t have to fall into them.

So let’s talk about another passage that I highlighted. “Let me be blunt. The consequences of not finding the courage to be vulnerable are dire. Emotional isolation, an emotional or physical breakdown, or worse, you risk becoming a hurt person who hurts other people due to your own inner pain.”

That was another one of the big life lessons I guess that I’ve learned along this journey and path of things that I’ve done. I used to – I’ve always hated confrontation. I’m the least confrontational person. I will run away from it. I will avoid it at all costs. It just makes me feel so uncomfortable.

And a lot of that was when I was younger when people would stare at me or say something or whisper about me, and I would either hide behind my parents or whoever I was with or I would see it and just hope no one else heard it so we could just keep walking and not acknowledge it and just ignore it.

And all of that was sort of unknowingly me building up this resentment towards strangers no matter what age they were, because I would think “they’re being so mean.” And I would just hold that with me without realizing it. And even if it was like when adults would do it and I would catch them, and I was this kid looking at an adult who’s saying something about me, the anger that I would get so instantly was just like “what is wrong with you? Look, why – you’re an adult, I’m a little kid. I didn’t do anything to you.”

And my parents – the way that my parents handled every situation was so incredible. I mean, when you’re a parent, I know that – well, I’m not – my kids are fur babies, so I don’t know like when…

Mine too.

… human baby, but I will do anything to protect them. And I’m – I know for a fact that my parents always wanted to do the same thing for me. But instead of making the other person feel bad or to call them out, they would go up to them and say, “Hey, that’s my daughter, Lizzie, would you like to tell her hi?” And even though that was so nice, I would hate it because I feel like that was just drawing more attention to me. But they continued doing that as I got older. I never, ever, ever once saw them go up and be mean to somebody else, even though I knew deep down that’s the road they probably wanted to take.

Sure.

But to be able to watch that, and then me getting older and realizing that whenever you see a situation where there’s a bully and a victim, we automatically just tend to the victim, and the bully is just sitting there like they should be ashamed and we should yell at them and put them in the corner and leave them there. But how can we help this victim and how can we love them, make them feel better?

There’s two parties in this situation, and the only way that we will be able to continue to make a difference or to be able to really teach others a lesson is to realize that there is a bully and there’s a victim. That doesn’t mean one is innocent and one is not. It means there’s two people who need our help in different ways.

And that’s really, really, really important to also remember that hurt people hurt people. So if this bully is going through something at home or in school and they don’t have the tools or the resources to say “I’m hurting someone else but I’m not doing it to hurt them. I’m doing it because I’m hurting. So how can I channel that in another way?” All they see is “I’m hurting, now let me hurt someone else.”

So it’s really, really important for us to be able to say there are two people in a situation. How can we help both of them and say let’s take a step back and realize what’s going on? How can we look at the bigger picture and how can we help both of you in the same way?

It’s such a big, elevated, amazing viewpoint that feels to me in my heart like the true path to healing and to the one real way to start to unwiring, to start to unwire bullying as a cultural epidemic.

So on that topic, feeling compassion for a bully is easier said than done, and you shared a story in here about how you recently turned someone around who left a negative comment on your YouTube video. What are some of the steps? What did you actually do? Because I feel like it’s very instructive for people, because it’s so easy to feel so hurt when someone attacks you, and then want to go right back and hurt them back.

I’ll start at the beginning of this. So back when I was younger, MySpace was the cool Facebook, and that was my first introduction, I guess, to the social media world. And I had to, of course, ask my parents, and the first thing they said was “we will support you getting the MySpace account, but you have to know that there isn’t always going to be people who have something nice to say. And if you don’t think that you can read it without it really getting to you and upsetting you, then maybe you’re not ready for this account.”

And I’ve always appreciated that, because I think for parents, and of course I’m only speaking from my personal experience and not like as an expert, but what worked for me was knowing that my parents weren’t automatically saying no, don’t do this. They were open to it and saying “we’re gonna support you doing this, but you have to know there aren’t – it’s not always going to be the best thing in the world.”

There are consequences.

Exactly. Yeah. So going into it I feel like that’s always such an important start I think, especially with younger kids. Because, I mean, first graders have iPads and they now have access to so many people 24/7 versus when we were younger and bullying happened during the school day hours.

Yes.

Now it’s 24/7. It’s when you’re at home, it’s when you’re at school, it’s when you’re in the car. Wherever you are, you have this access to be able to type something and hurt someone else. And yes, as scary as it is and as dangerous as it can be, it’s also a great thing. That’s a whole other thing as well. But for me, the comments is something that I used to fear and I used to hate, and I always felt like if someone said anything really hurtful to me, in my head I’m like, “Well, they don’t know me and they don’t know my story. And I can tell them all this stuff.” And I quickly realized that was just fighting fire with fire and nothing was going to – it wasn’t gonna accomplish anything. Once I said those words and I press send, what would happen? Nothing. I would just wait for them, and then continue the battle back and forth.

Now looking at it I see it and I’m at a point personally where if I see a hateful comment I will either do one of two things. I will either ignore it and let it go or I’ll see it and I’ll say – I’ll comment back and I’ll say, “I respect your opinion. We’re all – we all have this right to feel the way that we want to feel. But here on my channel I really encourage everyone to be positive and support one another.” And nine times out of ten I get the, “Oh, my gosh. I didn’t really mean it. I just wanted you to reply. Hi, Lizzie. Thank you so much.” So it’s so different now versus how it would’ve been years ago. But, yeah.

Yeah. It’s a really – it’s a challenging thing and I love that you teach that, that you take a stand for that, and also just that you share how you deal with it, because it’s not going away any time soon. And I love this approach of engaging from a compassionate and yet still strong and honest place.

Uh-huh.

So the message you wrote in the final chapter of the book really touched my heart. It says “you play an important role in co creating a kinder future. We can’t do it alone. It takes every one of us working together.”

I know for me, I think it’s just not in my nature to – you know, if I see something that I don’t care for, it’s just not my taste, I tend to just click away. You know, but I loved this idea that we can all do it if we work together.

The world that we live in right now is kind of crazy and in real life it’s crazy, online it’s crazy. And we all want this instant gratification of “I’m gonna post something and now I want all of you to like it or say something.” Or they’ll post something just to sort of stir the pot and see what others have to say so they can just go back and forth. And it’s hard and it’s dangerous and it’s negative, and it’s not something that we should feed into.

But with all that being said, no matter if I say it, if you say it, no matter who says it, it’s still gonna happen. And it’s one of those things that we sort of have to learn to live with, unfortunately. And I’ve always, always believed that the power of one person can move mountains. And if you’re able to stand up and say something, and you might think it is the smallest thing, like I just whispered it to someone and you think, “Well, I did that but it’s not gonna do anything because it was just one person.” It will always, always help. If you’re able to not only stand up for yourself but also to stand up for at least one other person, and stand up for them in a positive way, not in a mean way. You have no idea what that road will lead to or what that legacy will look like years and years later because you’re this one person who decided to be kind to one other person.

Lizzie, you’re an amazing human. Thank you so much for taking the time out of your schedule to talk with us today. And I’m so excited for your future books and your future talks, and hopefully we can have more talks as well.

I would love that.

Now Lizzie and I would love to hear from you. We covered so many beautiful topics today. I’m curious, what was the one insight or the one takeaway that really meant the most to you, and why? Leave a comment below and let us know.

And once you’re over at MarieForleo.com, which is where you should leave a comment, don’t forget to subscribe and become an MF Insider. You’ll get exclusive access to an audio I created called How To Get Anything You Want. Plus you’ll get some insider content and personal updates from me that you just can’t get anywhere else.

Stay on your game and keep going for your dreams because the world needs that very special gift that only you have. Thank you so much for watching and I’ll catch you next time on MarieTV.

B-School is coming up. Want in? For more info and free training go to JoinBSchool.com.

There is a bully and there is a victim. That doesn’t mean one is innocent and one is not. That means there’s two people who need our help in different ways.