There is no body, no person, who deserves your unexamined loyalty. Not a physician, not an educator, not a political pundit, not a politician. There is nobody who deserves your unexamined trust. You cannot just be blindly loyal to any individual.
Today we have with us an amazing guest, Sharon McMahon. I am such a big fan of Sharon and so excited to dig in with her today. If you don't know her, you should. She has a great presence online, best known on Instagram at Sharon Says So and also known as the leader of the nerds as they charmingly call themselves. She is also known as America's government teacher. She has a number one New York Times bestseller. She's also an educator, a podcast host of Here's Where It Gets Interesting. She has an amazing newsletter known as The Preamble that you can subscribe to for free. And today she's here talking with us about how even small actions can make big changes. I am so excited to share this episode with you. It just is such a wonderful conversation about how we can reach out in our communities and be involved, and in a social climate that sometimes feels really stressful or chaotic or overwhelming.
Sharon helps us break it down into really simple, actionable steps that help us to feel like we're really making a difference. You don't have to wait for an invitation. You don't need somebody to tap you and tell you you're next. You don't have to even wait until the end of the day. You can just do the next nearest thing and then the next needed thing and the next.
And you have to understand that throughout history. That is one of the primary ways that people have changed the world is by doing the next needed thing.
Sharon, thank you for coming on today. I am so excited about this conversation. It's my pleasure. Thanks for inviting me. I've shared with you before. I'm a big fan. I have followed you for years now on Sharon Sesso, as you're known on Instagram, so I'm really excited to get some first hand questions answered. Yeah, Mark. I'm excited. It's always fun to be able to see people in real life.
You know, like when I'm on Instagram, I'm talking to myself alone in a room. So it's nice to see actual people that actually follow me. Yeah. For sure. I talk about you with my sisters and with friends, and it's like you're our best friend because we're like, well, you know what Sharon said. And so you're well known as Sharon.
Thank you. Well, tell us, how did you get into this space? You started as a teacher, and now you're this super well known podcaster and author and speaker and tell us a little bit about your journey. Yeah. I mean, I really honed all of those skills, you know, like public speaking to explaining difficult concepts. I honed all of that in a school classroom.
Yeah. I have always said that teachers make great public speakers because what are you doing all day except talking to an audience that by and large does not want to be there, especially to rap audiences? Yeah, especially in high school, especially in high school. So yes, as you said, I started out as a teacher and I pursued other sort of, entrepreneurial, opportunities that at the beginning of the pandemic, I was working, doing those things.
I had moved back to my home town and was running a business. And during the pandemic, which was not anybody's idea of a good time, nobody wants to go back to that situation. Lots of things were closed. Kids were home from school. And that was certainly true for me. And I also had a very, you know, additional confounding factor, which is that my husband had stage five renal failure.
That happened very suddenly. He went to a doctor's visit one year. He was fine. The next year he needed a kidney transplant. So, yes. And this was at the height of the pandemic, when even transplant programs were closed, because transplants are actually considered elective surgeries, even though they are life saving surgeries. They're considered elective, as you would know.
Right? Like how things are. Yeah. How things are categorized is weird, but it's true. So, a lot of transplant programs were shut down, but this was before any treatments or vaccines for Covid were developed. And Covid , especially at the beginning, was very, very hard on kidney patients. People who caught Covid and had stage five renal failure had a 30% chance of death.
I think those are not good odds. You would not get into a car if I told you you have a 1 in 3 chance of dying. Right. Like that's really not a risk. Most people would be willing to take it. So that made us very, get me as tremendously isolated as a family. Because even if our kids would have been fine, which I'm sure they would have been had they caught Covid.
They could have unknowingly given it to him. And he, you know, good chance. Would not have been fine. So we were very isolated, and the whole country had already watched every episode of Tiger King. And we were bored in the house. In house bored? You know what I mean? Like we were all online sniping at each other and I started noticing some people being really confidently wrong on the internet, saying, now that that doesn't happen.
That's not real. You're making that up. Just literally making things up, but saying it in an authoritative voice so that it sounded believable. And I know that you know this from like a medical perspective to people. If you just say it in authoritative voice, people will believe you. We say it often enough. People will start to believe you.
And they were saying things like, the Electoral College is a universe city that you can graduate from. That's just not real. You know what I mean? That's not a matter of opinion. That's not a like who should you vote for Trump situation. That's just not real. There's no you you electoral college University. I so I actually fun fact I actually told this story to the, Idaho secretary of State about the Electoral College thing, and he thought it was so funny that he mailed me a diploma from the Idaho Electoral College.
Congratulations. I have it behind me. I you can't see it right now, but. Yeah. So now I am, one of two graduates. Me and the Idaho secretary of state were the two graduates of the Idaho Electoral College. It's amazing. What a privilege. I it's a big privilege. So I started making some little, nonpartisan and explainer videos about things like how the Electoral college worked.
And long story short, they started becoming popular and I started getting requests to appear on lots of local news stations and local radio stations to explain, you know, how things were going to unfold in the run up to the 2020 election. And the rest is history. Oh, and it's such good history. I think one of the things that I appreciate most, and I'm sure most of the people who follow you appreciate most, is that you do take such a middle ground.
You're not afraid of nuance, where so many people want to speak in the black and white, and so many people want to speak to the extreme, either for their own benefit or just because that's the way that social media and media thrives, right, is by talking in the extremes. And you're so willing to say, hold on, let's not talk in extremes.
Let's understand the nuance. How do you help people to get to that place when so much of the vocal world is saying, no, go to the extremes. But so much of us as average Americans are a little uncomfortable with the extremes. It's a great question because, the extreme rhetoric on either side actually is not particularly helpful in the world of public policy.
It's very helpful if your goal is clicks. It's not helpful to actually get things done right. The idea that, you know, most Americans agree with the idea that the, the United States immigration system is broken. It is broken. And there is nobody with any knowledge of the system that would disagree with that statement. Now, what we should do to fix it is a different question, right?
But we can both we can hold the tension of America is a nation of immigrants. We need to streamline the system. We need to make it not cost so much money and take so long for people to come here legally. We need to make it so that the backlog is not ten year. Do you know that some people wait ten years for an initial hearing in an immigration court?
Crazy. An initial hearing. So that's ridiculous. Nobody thinks it should take ten years. Ten years? I mean, if you really stop and think about that, that's like a major portion of your life just waiting for an appointment date. One appointment. Exactly. What if I needed a medical appointment and it was like, in ten years, we'll get you in for an initial consult.
We're not even going to make a decision at that appointment. We're going to just see you for the first time. It's an intake appointment, essentially. And that's an average wait time in some places that that's not even an outlier amount. So everyone agrees. That's ridiculous. That should not be happening. So why can't we, make a system?
I'm just using immigration as an example here. But why can't we have a system that makes it easier for people to come here legally and also keeps criminals out? Most Americans would agree with that. Yes. Let's do that thing. But that is not what drives clicks. That is not what gets campaign donations. What gets campaign donations are the extremes.
And you can't actually make legitimate public policy by saying everyone who hasn't been in the country for 300 years should be deported. And also, you can't have a system where it's a complete free for all with no monitoring. Everyone can come. Yeah, neither of those work. So I think when people actually hear it explained like that, I think your reaction reactions like, yeah, that that's actually that's not right.
It does make sense. It makes sense to me. That's that's common sense. But that's not that's not what they're being presented with as the choices. So I am always trying to help people understand. I'm always helping to I my hope is that I can provide education so that people can make educated decisions. It's very difficult. Again, as you would know, to make an educated choice for your for your own self, for your own family with absolutely no knowledge about what's happening.
If I have a if I'm deciding whether I should undergo a medical procedure, I need education on what that medical procedure aims to do, what the risks and benefits are, the likelihood of success. Like I need education before I can make an educated decision. And yeah, it's what lots of people in professions like yours are doing every single day, but apparently not so much on the internet.
No, definitely not on the internet. And I love this because a big part of what I wanted to hopefully bring to our listeners is a feeling of, for women, this feeling of empowerment and this feeling of hope, and how do we get to a place of empowerment and hope as women in this somewhat chaotic society and political culture?
And, and a big part of that is exactly what you've just said is really educating and understanding. And with that, then we have to be careful where the education is coming from, because so many people doing the educating, I think have, ulterior motives perhaps as well is the gentlest way to say it. You know, not everyone is out there to say, do you know what?
I really just want you to get a clear understanding. There's so many people who want you to have my understanding, like, I want to educate you in a way that makes sure you end up on my side. I want to make sure that you see this in a way that you agree with me. So how do we as consumers, you know, there's so many people who are just we're just the average American.
You know, I think that of myself for sure. I'm just the average American and I'm just trying to understand things. I'm just trying to understand so I can have an opinion when I go vote. And I can have an opinion when something comes up. How do we screen that? How do we make sure that the information we're getting is coming from the right direction, that it's not just trying to sway us to a side?
Yeah, that's it's a great question. And I know lots of people, lots of really, well-educated professionals are trained to deal with this issue in every single field in the medical field, in the political and the political space. Pick a pick an area. And people are like, we people need education so that the actions they take in the real world are rooted in reality, because the the repercussions of consuming nothing but disinformation in the real world, repercussions in whatever field it is, impact all of us.
They impact all of us. So I think one of the things that's important to think about is understanding, number one, that there is no body, no person who deserves your unexamined loyalty. There is no person who deserves your unexamined loyalty. Not a physician, not an educator, not a political pundit, not a politician. There is nobody who is deserves your unexamined trust.
And so. And that includes me. I encourage people all the time. Go ahead and fact check me. Go ahead and look that up. Confirm I'm telling you the correct information. Then we can move on from here. I don't want you to, assume that everything that comes out of my mouth is true. I want you to check for yourself.
That's actually an incredibly important life skill, that we can all carry forward with us. So, first of all, understanding you cannot just be blindly loyal to any individual. And I just want to stop you there, because I just want you to shout that from the rooftops. Not just in politics and in media and in news, but but like you mentioned it in health care, and it's such a good example.
You know, I think a lot of women can relate to that idea of being suppressed in the medical system, you know, of saying like, hey, I think I might have PCOS or I think I might have something else. And the doctor says, no, I know, I know. Don't Google it like you came in with this Google information. Like I'm the doctor I know.
And so like you just said, to not give that doctor the full, loyalty to do the work for yourself and to trust yourself. And we can expand that then to politics and to media and to history and to making a difference in your community is you decide for yourself. And we need individuals to be in tune with themselves.
We need individuals to come not from a loyalty to a to a, you know, famous person, but from their own selves. And that's when we get really this beautiful community, with all of these varying opinions and varying voices, is when we are each true to ourself, instead of just committing and saying, I will follow this person no matter what they say.
So I just want to second that because it's so important. Yeah. And and that's not to say that some people don't have more expertise than you, right? I don't know how to do the surgeries. Right. So don't ask me. It does not mean I think there's an important nuance here. It doesn't mean that all opinions are equally valid.
Don't ask me for my opinion on how to do surgery. My opinion does not matter in this regard. But your knowledge of your own values. Yes. Own body. Those are things that, as an expert, cannot, interpret for you. Your own values, your own, you know, like you were given the example of PCOS. If you know something is wrong, you cannot just let somebody pat you on the head and be like, you're good.
You know, like, if, you know, deep down something is there's millions of stories of people like that, right? And so the same thing is true. When it comes to politics, don't let somebody pat you on the head and say everything's fine. Just look over here. Don't pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Yeah, I like this.
Don't worry about it. I'll take care of it, little girl. Yes. Don't pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Don't ask any questions. That's a great recipe for how you get the wool pulled over your eyes now. But listen, I have four kids. My time is limited, as is everybody who is listening to this. I don't have unlimited time to spend all day fact checking people I see on the internet.
Yeah, nor do I. I also don't have the expertise to fact check everything I see. I can't fact check whether it's better to use a certain blade of a scalpel. How do I know? Do you know what I mean? Yeah. So there there are I I'm acknowledging that there are limitations to our ability to do our own research.
But what you would tell somebody, a patient to do if they, want to make sure they're making their own decision is get a second opinion, right? Get a second opinion. Get a third opinion if you need to. No human is infallible. Your training might have, you might have a lot of training in a really unique field that allows you to quickly diagnose something that your colleagues maybe have never seen in their career.
Right. So getting a second opinion is actually a good idea in some cases. And the same is true when it comes to understanding what's happening in the world. Don't just listen to me. Get some second opinions right. Find other reputable places. Not random sketchy blinking cat websites. You know, like they you know, where it's obvious that the the things are not real.
Find some reputable sources to get second opinions from, and acknowledge that your ability to the amount of time and energy you have to spend on any one topic is limited, and that is a normal human experience and understanding that you have to measure out your time. Figure out where you need to spend your time. You might spend more time on these topics right before an election deciding who to vote for.
And then once somebody is newly inaugurated, maybe that research begins to wane because there's nothing to vote for, really, unless you have a local special election until November of 2026, right? So maybe it's cyclical. It ramps down during certain times of your your life. I feel like I'm rambling, but my but my main point is that it's important to get more than one perspective on an issue.
That's true of politics is true of medicine. It's true of a variety of a variety of topics. Get more than one perspective on an issue and be true to your own values. Yeah I love that. I love that. So let's move on now to this idea of we as women being empowered, being hopeful, making a difference. This is what your book is all about.
So your book is the small and the mighty and it's so wonderful. It's I highly recommend it as a read. It was very uplifting and filled with female examples, filled with examples of women through history who started with what they had and made a big impact. Now, whether that impact was felt through all of history, or whether that that impact was made just in their local community, it's such an inspiring book.
So I want to talk really about how we can be the small in the mighty. You know how we right now can make a difference in our community or make a difference in our family, or the tiniest community, or the largest community, as especially as you were doing the research for this book. And I'm sure you had many other examples of the small in The Mighty Who you didn't include.
How? What are some commonalities that you can share about these people, especially women who can kind of start where they're at and just make a difference right where they're at. I love this question. And it's a question that a lot of people are feeling right now. It's a really common way to feel like I want to do something.
What am I supposed to do. All I have to do is scroll social media for five minutes, and it feels like we're all going to hell in a handbasket, and it's like, I don't even know where to start. Yeah. And, the first thing I will tell you is that you will not be able to do it all.
And that is good. Yeah, that's good that you cannot do it all. It's good for a couple of different reasons. One, anybody who is trying to do it all wants to be a dictator. Okay? So be it. Doing it all actually is not at all desirable. This is a this is supposed to be we the people, not me the authority.
Right. So you can't do it all. But that doesn't mean you can't do something. Nobody can do it all. But everyone can do something. And one of the commonalities that people who have changed the course of history have is that they just kept doing the next needed thing. Some people, I would say, in fact, even most people did not write out some giant business plan.
They did not set out of like in ten years, I'm going to have impact to 20,000 people. They just kept doing the next needed thing in front of them. And over time they found that their knowledge and their capacity grew, and their community that they were able to impact grew over time. So the idea of doing what you can, where you are with the resources available to you, is an important mindset shift, in my opinion, because we cannot do it all, and it's not desirable for any single one of us to do it all.
What we can take action to do is something in our immediate sphere of influence. Do for one person what you wish you could do for everyone. As a longtime teacher, I care a lot about children. I care a lot about, childhood poverty. If we could, if we wanted to radically change the United States of America in, it would be unrecognizable in 25 years.
We would throw all of our all of our eggs at childhood poverty, the health outcomes, the educational outcomes, the list, the crime outcomes, the list of what would be radically transformed if we worked hard at eliminating childhood poverty. It I can't even begin to tell you how big of an impact that would make. However, I don't have the governmental power to pull the trigger on huge, sweeping social programs to impact childhood poverty.
I'm not an elected official. I don't have untold billions of dollars with which I could address, say, food insecurity for children. I'm a normal person who lives on a dirt road. What I do have is a larger than average social media platform, and I work every day to use that platform for good. And so I am always looking for ways like, how can I do for one person?
What I wish I could do for everyone. And that is something that is available to each one of us. It doesn't mean that I solve a child's, you know, a child's family's, poverty situation single handedly, and I give them $100,000 and buy them a house. But what it does mean is, if I want kids to go home for the weekend and make sure they have enough to eat, the number of children who experience food insecurity in the United States is really staggering and unacceptable.
That is something I can help move the needle on at my child's school. I can do for one kid in my child's classroom. What I wish I could do for every child in America. And over time, my ability to impact these kinds of issues has grown. It's bigger than what it was when I was at home with a newborn.
It's bigger than what it was when I was, teaching 37 high school students in a in a classroom in California. It's bigger than what it was when I was a college student volunteering for various things. My capacity and knowledge has grown over time, but that that ability to do the next needed thing. You don't have to wait for an invitation.
You don't need somebody to tap you and tell you you're next. You don't have to even wait until the end of the day. You can just do the next needed thing, and then the next needed thing and the next. And you have to understand that throughout history. That is one of the primary ways that people have changed the world is by doing the next needed thing.
And if you want to go even further, if you're like, but I, I, my kids are older now. They're in school all day. I have more time. I can do more. If you want to go farther, then you can start working with other people to do the next needed thing. You can start, you know, look at the equivalent of like, say, the Montgomery bus boycott.
That was people, individuals working together, doing the next needed thing. So if you are like, hey, I can handle more. You can start working with an organization that works on the issues that are important to you. Those organizations often have connections, know how, fundraising abilities, the infrastructure to do even bigger things. But we cannot let the enormity of the world's problems paralyze us into indecision and inaction.
That is what the people who benefit from the world's problems want you to do. They want you to feel like I cannot fix it all. I am just paralyzed here. I'm stuck in freeze. You know I'm stuck in freeze mode or I'm in flight mode. I cannot possibly move into fight mode or move into even. Just like a place of of resistance.
You know, like I they don't want you to be able to do that. So we cannot allow ourselves to be so bogged down in the enormity of the world's problems that we do nothing.
Hey, friends, I have something really exciting to share. Uplift for her will be at the upcoming Be Healthy Utah Conference on April 11th and 12th. We'll have a booth where you can stop by and meet our team, and I'll also get to be one of their expert speakers on Saturday, April 12th. I would love to see you there and meet you in person.
I've loved going to this conference. It's packed full of vendors all focused on integrative health and wellness. There are always really great speakers, fun freebies, and lots of new brands to discover. And here's something special we're doing just for you. We are offering an exclusive discount on labs and lab reviews, but only for attendees at the show. Plus, stop by our booth and enter to win one of our amazing wellness gift baskets, each valued at over $200.
Most of all, this is your chance to connect, learn, and have fun with a like minded community. Mark your calendar, grab your tickets, and come say hi. We can't wait to see you at Be Healthy Utah at the Mountain America Expo Center in Sandy, Utah on April 11th and 12th. Tickets available on Be Healthy utah.com. I love all of this so much.
And there's a couple things that I want to follow up and ask you some questions about from a like geeking out neuroscience moment. It's really interesting because the brain can't be in fight or flight and solve math at the same time, like it can't be in fight or flight anger. You know, the world's going to hell in a handbasket like you mentioned, and then come up with nice things to do.
The brain doesn't incapable. And so that is exactly what the media and the inflammatory side of, of history will say, as people want us to stay in one of the things that I love you said is, if we do have a little more time. And from your book, there was one part in your book that talked about these meetings, right?
Women met in clubs and meetings, and they ended up accomplishing so many good things through these just club meetings. Club meetings. Yeah, yeah. And they weren't even like big fancy formal clubs. They were just random gatherings. It sounds like you mentioned they established a juvenile court system, organized kindergartens and playgrounds. They fought for labor laws and women's suffrage.
Well, you just talk about that a little bit more of like, what is our equivalent now? Because I think sometimes it's a set organization like the PTA or, you know, something that has an infrastructure and a leadership and sometimes it's not. Well, you give us some ideas of just that. There's so much power in gathering. And I think there can be I think it's a big problem right now because we're all just on social media.
Yeah, we're all just one to screen. We're and we're so afraid to talk to our neighbors about anything political. Because if you say one thing, someone's going to say someone's going to assume that you're in this camp. And if you say something else, they're going to assume that everything you believe is in this camp. How do we gather and and begin to have these conversations where we can find this shared ground and accomplish good things, but also just feel hope that like, hey, someone, someone's on my my side, like someone believes the same thing that I do.
Yeah, I think the the existence of clubs when it comes to women's history is a really overlooked part of history. And it's so interesting to me, that a number of the women, in fact, at least 3 or 4 of the women in the book that I profile were what they referred to as club women. So if you're if people who are listening are not familiar, during the sort of progressive era of the United States that towards the end of the 19th century and rolling over into the turn of the 20th century, where women had very little political power, they had not been given the ability to vote in most places.
Yet women's primary mode of civic engagement was in club. And there were clubs of all different types. These were they could be referred to today as an affinity group. You know, Latina women of Southern California or the Women's Christian Temperance Union was a popular club during the time there were, you know, all all different types of clubs that people could belong to.
They would publish a little notice in the newspaper saying, the WAC to you is meeting Tuesday at 11 and the First Presbyterian Church, and, you know, you could go to these little meetings and you would have coffee and probably eat a little pastry of some kind and talk to some of your neighbors and talk about some of these issues that matter to you.
And this was how women passed information to each other, because they did not have access to the traditional political organizing that actually would move the needle. This was how women organized. And I also talk in the book about how there were over 30 different clubs that participated in the effort to get women's suffrage in the state of Oregon, and they were Jewish groups and Asian American groups and, you know, Christian groups and all all different type.
They were not all religious, all different types of groups who certainly would have differed in many ways, had different political beliefs about a variety of things. But they all cared about one issue, which is women's suffrage. And they were willing to come together on that issue. So I don't I think we're sleeping on small group meetings. Yeah. We don't need to have we don't necessarily we we certainly can.
But we don't necessarily need to think about like the Million Man March when we're talking about groups. That's one way to do it. It's not the only way to do it. You can literally go to your neighborhood Facebook page and say, I am forming a Moms of Preschoolers group, and it's going to be at the library at, you know, blah, blah, blah.
Pick a pick anything that interests you. I love to like, knit and do needle crafts and old ladies, stuff like that. I would love to go to a group that was like, let's, let's get together and eat bars and do any kind of bar bars and knitting and we'll, we'll organize from there. I would sign up for that, you know what I mean?
That also helps fill in our need for community. Exactly. And that was so damaged by the pandemic. Yes. We were so isolated. And it really shut down this spontaneous gathering. And I think it's been really difficult for women is is all I really know. But it's really been difficult for women to come back from I. Yeah, I totally agree.
We have gotten into the habit now of interacting mostly online. And again, I am chronically online. I this is not coming from a place of judgment like, this is just reality. We only exist online. But by and large, and, our interactions with people face to face is greatly diminished. And this has a variety of negative impacts downstream negative impacts.
I once I read an article not long ago about factors that help people live a long and happy life. And of course, one of them is like, don't smoke. Another one is walk 30 minutes a day. The impact of walking is extremely important for your health. And some of the study authors in this interview said, when we do a health screenings, we should not just be asking, do you smoke?
Do you exercise? What's your diet like? We should be asking people, how much do you socialize? Because in-person socialization is one of the long term determinants of a long lifespan longevity, quality of life as you age, the people who have close relations chips with family and friends, live longer and live happier lives than people who do not. So the I'm also like as I my kids are starting to get a little bit older.
That's something that's been on my mind too, of like, it's actually important for us to make time for in-person socialization that that is good for our health. It is not just for funsies. It's not just to eat bars, although that is a fun aspect of it. It's not just to do crafts it. If we want to live a long life, we need to start reorienting ourselves towards having friends.
It doesn't even have to be a group, but we do need to get together with other people. And this, I think, talking about building a building, a playground or you know, whatever it is that is in our immediate circle, that gives us an excuse to do that. It gives us an inroad to meet together in person and to get to know other people, and yes, and a place to have conversations.
And for these things to come up somewhat or organically. There is a story you shared, in your book and I'm, I'm terrible with names, but it was someone who was helping Rosa Parks and Claudette Colvin. Yes, Clyde Colvin. And she was the activator right? When they were in prison. She was one of the ones who really helped organize the boycott.
And what was her name? Are you talking about September Clark? Yes. Yes, I talked to my clerk, so she was she was able to do that, it seems, because she was so socially connected. She was already in a community already in these meetings and already having these social connections. So she was able to go about then and do so much good because she already knew who her people were, and she already knew that they were like minded.
So she was able to go bring about these amazing things using those resources that she had, which was her people. And and I feel like where the more divisive politics become, the more we lose our people a little bit. I think there are some people who are finding their people in this extremism, you know, like, finally, someone who agrees with my extreme views and, and on either side.
But for a large majority of us who live a little more, you know, in the middle, I think it can feel like we've lost our people a little bit. Is I, I agree, and I hear that from so many people where there are I would even estimate that the majority of Americans feel in this moment a bit politically homeless.
Like, I cannot cosign everything that's happening with this candidate or that candidate or this leader or that leader. I don't know where to go. And this, you know, like two party binary that we have in the United States, we can that's a topic for another day. I'm not a fan, but most of what the the ultimate result is that most Americans don't feel particularly well represented in government.
They feel like my only choices are like this crazy guy or that crazy guy. Why? Why do I have to choose between two different kinds of crazy? Why? Why is that the option? You know, they feel like that is not me. So I think these kinds of organizations, groups, you know, book clubs, whatever it is that you want to be involved in, can help mitigate against that.
The pandemic of loneliness that we're experiencing. It can also help us feel more hope because we can work together to do something, as opposed to sit at our house and doomscrolling, which does not lead to positive outcomes. No. No hope. Very little hope comes from Doomscrolling. Yeah, and no positive health outcomes either. Well, that's also true. Yes, that's also true also for that, one of the questions that that speaking of social media that comes up is one of the thoughts that I've had that I want to hear your thoughts on is I don't think that the human brain and soul was really meant to be this aware of the number of terrible things that are
happening around the world, and you can spend an hour on social media and be be acutely aware with images and with, you know, firsthand account almost of many, many, many terrible things that are happening in the world. And I think that can leave us in a place of conflict where it's like, well, I don't want to shut my eyes.
Like, I don't want to pretend I don't know what's going on. But also, I don't know if we can handle it, you know, to see the destruction in areas of the world, like the conflict in Gaza or the Ukraine war, or even the gofund me of my high school friends husband or, you know, there's so much hard. How do we know how to stay abreast of what's going on versus protecting ourselves and saying, I can't handle that level of sadness is that, you know, I think some of us feel like, well, that's not okay.
I should back up. But from a from a medical perspective, I just don't know if many of us have that level of resilience to be this actively involved in this many terrible things going on. I totally agree with you. The first thing is that comes to mind is that anybody who, can handle the amount of stuff that's happening in the world, probably has some kind of mental health challenge that makes it very difficult for them to feel empathy, and so they can handle the incoming information without feeling distraught.
And I'm certainly in no position to diagnose anybody. But you know what I'm saying? Like, the only way you could handle it is if you were lacking in empathy. And we become numb over time. Yes. So apathetic where you're like, I just I don't I don't care anymore. Another person dies. Yeah, yeah. And you do see the effects of that.
You know, when people are fighting in wars, like over time, they just. You have no choice desensitized to it. Yes. Most of us want to view ourselves as people with empathy, people who care about our communities. And so it's very understandable why we would want to pay attention to everything that is happening in the world. Why would I not care about your cousin's baby with cancer?
Of course I we can't do that. Right? Yeah. So it's very understandable. The second thing is, I agree with you that humans were and our brains have not evolved to be able to handle the incoming amount of stimuli, to process it meaningfully, and then to act on it in a meaningful way. We do not have the capacity to do that.
Humans have always lived in, interconnected, interdependent communities. That's the only way humanity has gotten where it is. And today, our version of this interconnected, interdependent community, we think the community is that the world or the country, right. That has never been anyone's view of what interdependent community looks like. It has always been people in your immediate vicinity.
It could it could have met your family. It could have met people in your town. And the evolution of that is a different story, but I'm very interested in that. That's always something that, like, pings something in my brain. But your community is supposed to be your prime scary place of action. And that does not mean, oh, turn a blind eye to the suffering in the Middle East, or turn a blind eye to the floods in whatever state.
It doesn't mean turn a blind eye and don't care about those people. But when the problems of the world seem too big, I think it's important to make the world a little smaller. And when it seems like I care so much about childhood poverty, but I can't, I can't fix all the childhood poverty in inner city.
Fill in the blank. What we can do is look around our own community. And some of us live in Los Angeles, where the city that we live in is millions and millions of people. And so maybe your community needs to be even smaller. Maybe it needs to be the people in your children's school. Maybe these smaller than that.
Maybe it needs to be the children in your child's classroom. Maybe it needs to be, you know, when the problem seems to massive, make the problem smaller by shrinking down how you define community. And that's not to say don't vote for policies that care about other people's children. I'm not saying any of those things, but our ability to impact is greatest in our own communities.
We can see the results of what we're doing, and that gives us hope. We can see a positive vision for the future with the faces in front of us, as opposed to a theoretical hypothetical, mass of faces that you people you don't know. So think about ways that you can make your community smaller and understand that maybe in the future, your capacity will expand.
It doesn't mean you have to stay in this small community forever. And then in terms of like how to stay informed without getting overwhelmed, I the first thing I would tell you is if you find yourself becoming so overwhelmed with the happenings of the world that it is putting you into this sort of fight or flight mode where you can't make positive change.
Like you just mentioned, I can't do good things when I'm when my nervous system is mis activated. Unfollow those accounts on social media. That's the first thing I will tell you. If somebody is like every time you read their content, even if you like the content, even if you like. I love what they have to say, but I just I can't handle it.
Unfollowing is not saying I hate you. That's not what you're saying. And maybe in the future you can follow them again if you choose to unfollow them so it decreases the amount of things that you're seeing on social media. You can train your algorithm to show you things that you want to see. 95% of what I see on Instagram is animal videos, and that is not an exaggeration.
I work in the politics and news space. I hardly follow anyone who works in politics and news on social media. I because I don't need more of it. I live and breathe this every day. I don't need more. So what I need more of is like people doing really pretty art projects and doing oil paintings and planting gardens and I need ducklings and I need owls and whales and puppies and all those kinds of things.
I need things that are coming to my central nervous system. Now, what you find fascinating might be different, and that's great, but start unfollowing people and train your algorithm to show you things you want to see. Stop clicking on rage baity content because it's the rage. Yeah, they want to inflame you. They want to make you mad. And I think even if you're not mad at them, you're mad with that, right?
It's still really dysregulated. So no enough. But I think we follow more and more and more people who are really rage, who are raging after the same things we're raging after. And now I spend an hour scrolling about people who are mad about the same things. I'm mad about, and what what good comes of that? What good has come of that?
Nothing. I like to tell people that, arguing on the internet is not activism, right? That feeling angry. We think that being in an activated nervous state of our nervous system being activated, we think that that means we're doing something about whatever it is. Well, I felt really mad about it. And your brain is telling you that your heightened emotions are having an impact when, in reality, that's not true.
I can sit at home in my office feeling super angry about something for three hours, and ultimately nothing has changed. No children went to bed with food. The water in my hometown isn't cleaner like nothing positive happened. By and large. I'm not saying that there can be no education or anything like that, but by and large you just feeling that doesn't move the needle on anything important.
Imagine if the people who organized the Montgomery Bus boycott just stayed mad. Yeah, they just sat around talking. They sat around and talked about how mad they were, and they didn't actually take real world action. So stop wasting your time feeling rage. The antidote to despair is action. Start doing something small. If you feel like I'm. If I unfollow all of this content on social media, if you feel like I will not be informed enough, I would highly suggest signing up for a couple of newsletters or news digests that are emailed to you at the beginning and end of the day from reputable organizations, where you can read the headlines and click on a
story if you choose to, as opposed to being involuntarily inundated with it on social media, or when you turn on the television. It's such good advice. Reading is different in our brains, like our brains don't allow us to fill in the information that we're not able to handle. Like it's not going to create a bunch of images for you if you can't, if your brain is not able to, like, process that, whereas you're forced to be confronted with it when you're looking at the pictures on social media.
Yeah, that's such good advice, because also, we all have experience. The time that you open social media to go see the news and then two hours later you you don't know what happened. You've just been shown a bunch of other things and you've gone down rabbit holes in all of that. Well, let me switch gears a little bit, because I really want to hear I want to learn a little bit more about you as you've lived in this space and you've studied this, the small and the mighty and the being, you know, an activist in the right ways.
First of all, you are an activist. And the governance as your your followers, I think, charmingly call themselves. Did you come up with that? Did they know they did? Yeah, I think they came up with it. They have raised what's what's the dollar amount of how much that you have facilitated the raising of at this point, $11.5 million.
Amazing. It's so amazing. So you definitely fit in this category of an activist and of the small and the mighty, I think. Two, how has writing this book and doing this research and and really just knowing history, how has that affected your view of yourself? How do you view yourself as the small in the mighty? I mean, you're not small.
Well, by any measure, because you're very tall, but also your following is very large now. But but you started kind of like the average. Is that fair to say, you know, a member of your community, how do you view yourself as the small in the mighty? I don't think about myself in those terms, you know, like I don't think about myself as like, well, I'm really out here being small in my day to day.
But I do try to live the things that I say. I try to, I try to walk the walk and not just talk the talk. I try to do what I can. You know where I am with the resources available to me. You know, one example recently, very briefly, is about a lawsuit that's threatened an important disability, civil rights access for children, section 5 or 4 of the Rehabilitation Act.
As a long time teacher, I'm very well aware of how these 5 or 4 accommodations are impact children in schools and also in medical settings. They make sure that people who have physical disabilities or other disabilities are able to access medical care. You know, just one example would be making sure that people who have visual impairments are accommodated at the doctor's office or a hospital, etc..
There was a lawsuit that was filed by 17 states that asked the federal government to declare this law unconstitutional. They did not like certain aspects of what was happening, and I won't go into the full story today. But the bottom line is, I did my best to provide a bunch of education on why section 5 or 4 is important, what this lawsuit was saying, what people could do about it.
And then my hope was that people would respond to that and, and sort of take up the charge, which they did. And yesterday, the court filings came out that showed that the 17 states, withdrew their request to declare section 504 unconstitutional. And when you look at the news reporting from around the country, interviews with states attorneys general, they're saying things like, you know, due to public outrage, due to public pressure.
And so I'm certainly not claiming credit for all of that. There are other groups who are doing this advocacy work as well. But that is the kind of thing that I feel like this it I potentially helped impact the lives of millions of, particularly children and disabled Americans who rely on these kinds of accommodations to be able to be integrated into their communities.
To me, that was a it's a great example of how I try to not just feel outrage on the internet, but I try to do something, when I can. I can't do something about everything. But I do know about this topics. This is something I know about. You know, I can. That's your set of resources. You know, not everyone has those resources and you're using what you have.
Exactly. I can't help you with the surgeries. So, listen, I can read a lawsuit pretty well. Yeah. So, and I can help you break. We need both. Yes, we need both of those things. So. And we, the world needs exactly what you have to offer. The world needs what you are bringing to it. And I think it's important that people remember that.
That you don't need to be rich, powerful or famous to change the course of history. Oh my God, that's that's so important. I want to end with one of the things that I've heard you say so many times, which is hope is a choice. And you have been surrounded now by history, by the negative things, through history, by the things going on through the past.
You know, your life's lifetime of, quote unquote bad things happening. Right? How have you seen that in history of how are these small in the mighty? How were they able to maintain hope and how are you able to maintain hope when it it does sometimes feel like, gosh, this is there's just so much badness around us. I think we have I don't I don't know where this comes from.
And I someday may want to look into studying where this comes from, but we have come to believe something that our ancestors did not, which is that hope is a feeling that we will experience, that if we just wait long enough, hope will just fly in the window and sit on our shoulder. That one day will wake up and the skies will be blue and my life will be easier.
And the fact that most often that isn't true leads us to feel more and more and more discouraged. Now. Sometimes, yes, we feel hope based on external circumstances where we're like, oh my gosh, we're going to win this game. I feel so hopeful about it. I understand that, but most often hope is not experienced as a feel, as an emotion.
Our ancestors and by ancestors I mean Americans who came before us, who changed the course of history in a positive way. Our ancestors knew that the only way that we can make positive change is with a positive vision for the future. And that positive vision for the future is the choice to have hope. It is the choice to believe that despite all evidence to the contrary, I still choose to act as though what I do makes a difference.
I still choose to believe that who I am makes a difference. I choose to believe that who I am becoming makes a difference. I'm not waiting for somebody else to tell me that I'm making a difference, or that I'm important, or what I think or say matters. I am choosing to act as though who I am and what I do makes a difference, because it does.
And we can all think of somebody in our lives who have, made a tremendous difference for us that maybe don't even know it. We can all think back to a specific teacher in school where we were like, I just loved Mrs. Mrs. Smith. And she was so nice to me, and she made me feel like I could write anything.
And that teacher probably has no idea. We can think of a million examples in our own lives, of people who have made a difference for us, and they unknowingly changed the course of history by making a difference in one person's life. You would not be the person you are without them, and history would not be the same without you being the person that you are.
So when I say that hope is a choice, it doesn't mean that you choose to feel an emotion. It does not mean like I choose happiness, right? It's not. I choose to be angry right now. It doesn't mean I choose any emotion. It means I choose a set of beliefs that who I am and what I do matters.
That I can make a positive difference for my community now and in the future. So that's the that's the reframe that I know I needed. When I say hope is a choice, I don't mean who choose to feel an emotion. We all know that. That's an exercise in futility, by and large. Right? Right. That we we are choosing to act in a certain way that allows good things to happen.
We cannot grow good crops in terrible soil, and so have our vision of the future is only negative things, only terrible people. Good things don't grow from them. We can only create positive change by choosing the fertile soil of hope. Man, I love that so much. Thank you so much for sharing. I just this is exactly what I have found with social media is I will turn it off and then I will log on and listen to your stuff.
So I read through your stories and then I will get back off because it is it is otherwise so damaging to just live in that soil, as you put it, of of negativity and of all of the bad things going on. And we have the choice to decide to think from a place of hope, but also to recognize our decisions and our lifestyle where it may be getting in the way of what we really want.
If we want to feel hope, then we have and choose hope. Like you say, then we have to do the things that that create that soil of of hope and gathering. And I just I don't need to reiterate it because you said it so much better than I can say it, but I really appreciate it. Is there anything else you want to say as we wrap up?
I think something that maybe would have helped me, especially if I had when I had younger kids and I was feeling overwhelmed by what's happening in the world. Is the world is not made better because you feel angry all the time, or anxious or anxious or depressed that it feels like we're moving the needle when we just drown ourselves in the, you know, inequalities and the tragedies.
And again, I don't want anyone to listen to this and think that I'm saying ignore the problems of the world. I want people to know that you are not making the world a better place by feeling so overburdened by anxiety and anger that you become nonfunctional. That is not how to make the world a better place. It is not just okay, it's a good thing for you to experience joy and laughter and community and to celebrate holidays and to celebrate your milestones and accomplishments.
Sometimes I feel like women don't want to give themselves permission to feel any level of happiness or contentment or joy, given the state of the world that it feels like. Anger is solidarity. That's how it feels like if I'm paying attention, I'm going to be outraged. And I do understand where that belief comes from. But you cannot live in outrage and hope to change the world for the better.
Yeah, yeah. Thank you so much for that. Well, leave us with where we can find you. You've got an amazing newsletter. The preamble. You've got your podcast, you've got an amazing book, you've got your social media. Tell us where to find you. If you go to Sharon mcmahon.com, everything is linked there. But I'm on social media at Sharon Says.
So my newsletter is the preamble.com. My podcast is here's where it gets interesting and everything's linked on the website. Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode. A huge thank you to our guests for sharing their insights and time with us. We are grateful for the incredible support from our sponsors and to all of you listening.
We couldn't do this without you. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing on your favorite platform. You can find us on our website. Uplift for.com, YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you love to listen. And if you found value here today, please share this episode with someone who would benefit from it. Leave us a comment or give us a review.
It really helps us reach more listeners like you. Thank you for being part of our community. Stay tuned for our next episode. Lastly, this information is for educational purposes only and not intended to be medical advice.
