- Just ahead on Black Issues Forum, every January we're told to think bigger, do better, be better, set new goals, and become new versions of ourselves.

Well, today we're stepping away from quick fixes and looking at what it takes to actually build a future that lasts spiritually, emotionally, and mentally.

Coming up next, stay with us.

- Quality public television is made possible through the financial contributions of viewers like you, who invite you to join them in supporting PBSNC.

(upbeat music) ♪ - Welcome to Black Issues Forum, I'm Kenia Thompson.

What does it mean to vision forward when you're still carrying old wounds that keep you in the past?

And how does healing alignment and confidence shape the future we say that we want?

Joining me are two people who approach growth from different perspectives, but deeply connected places.

Our first guest is Amber Richbook.

She helps others align with their inner truth, spiritually, emotionally, and energetically, so their lives reflect who they really are.

And joining her on the couch is therapist, Dr.

Jason Phillips, whose work centers on confidence, imposter syndrome, and healing, particularly for those taught to be strong instead of whole.

Welcome to the show.

- Thank you for having me.

- Yes, you've both been here before.

You have given so many nuggets of wisdom to our guests, and I figured with the new year, you know, a lot of people set resolutions.

And I know I've stopped setting resolutions 'cause it felt like I was just setting goals that I wasn't really committed to.

Amber, I wanna start with you.

What does it mean to actually understand ourselves when we're trying to goal set?

And how do we define what we need versus what we want in our lives?

- Okay, so I'm gonna answer it in two parts because I feel like that was a two-part question.

- It was a two-parter, yeah.

- The first thing is understanding ourselves.

I live my life this way.

This is a quote I tell people I live by all the time.

It is, "Wisdom, love is knowing I am everything, "and wisdom is knowing I am nothing, "and in between the two, my life moves."

And that's by Naj Garada.

And when you move that way, when you start to really understand yourself, you're going to learn and realize that you're never really going to understand yourself because you're going to keep changing and evolving.

- And it's okay to change.

- And it's okay.

And it's like the consistency of change and leaning into that.

So that's the part on understanding self.

When it comes to needs and want, I believe and what I teach is the symbiosis or symbiosis between need and want.

We try to separate need and want as, I need this, but I want this, so this want isn't as important because of this need.

But if all of our basic needs are met, all of our wants are easy to bring into our life.

So it looks like, okay, if I have this want that I want, that will allow me to undergird my need because if I want this, then I'll provide for my needs.

So it just becomes this ebb and flow of needs and wants.

But the longer that we keep them separate and say, "I need to do this," you're putting this pressure and you're also pushing yourself away from what it is that you actually want.

- Yeah, they should actually complement each other.

- They should complement each other.

- Jason, when you hear that, what are your thoughts when it comes to getting our mind to work in that way, right?

Because we get challenged so much with past trauma or past experiences that just didn't work out and we keep hitting roadblocks or barriers.

How do we approach that from a mental health perspective?

- Yeah, so when I hear Amber's response, I think of less anxiety, letting things come to you naturally, not forcing it.

And by then you can relax and actually lean into your goals, whether that be a need or a want, but now you're manifesting it and you're taking the pressure off of yourself.

- That word manifesting, right?

It's become a new thing.

Back in the day you said, "Pray on it."

Right, and now we're talking about manifesting on it.

What's the difference or is there a difference?

- I think that we're in a 2025, like the thesaurus of prayer.

Like it's the same thing because like when they say, faith without works is dead, manifesting without action is pointless.

So in anything, the manifestation, in my reality, the manifestation and the prayer are synonymous and the action and the faith, like in the work that you have to do is how you bring it into your reality.

Like it's not gonna fall out the sky.

- Jason, when you have a client that comes to you and says, what did I say here?

I want to change my life, right?

What are they really saying?

- They're really saying, "I don't like where I'm at.

I'm stuck.

I need help.

And what I'm doing has not been working."

And it takes a level of vulnerability and transparency.

- Self-awareness.

- And awareness to get to that point.

- Yeah, and so how do you guide someone that says, I don't like where I am.

I don't wanna be here, maybe literally or mentally.

How do you get them past that point?

- First, I give them credit for just acknowledging that they're stuck and they need some help.

And then we work on accepting where you're at, taking accountability, because oftentimes we'll blame our world, our parents, our situation.

And then once we take awareness and accountability, now we can work on the actual action steps.

And that can be challenging because our brain, when it comes to setting goals, we like the beginning, like the planning out, we can anticipate it coming, but then the work that goes into it, that can be discomforting.

- And sometimes people think it's a quick fix, right?

Okay, I've acknowledged that I'm here.

I've acknowledged I don't wanna be here.

All right, so this should fix it now.

That doesn't happen that way.

- So can I piggyback on it?

So when I went to my therapist, 'cause I got a therapist too, and I was just talking about the change, the changes that we all go through, and he shared that 80% of people that come to therapy want to change, but less than 10% of those 80% actually do the work that is necessary to change, because I know that I'm stuck.

I already know this about myself, and I know that I need to do this work, but how do I do this work?

But the work is scary, so it's like-- - How do I get, so that takes me to the next question.

So part of that to me sounds like this intuition, right?

This deep down connection to who I really wanna be, what I really wanna do and see in my life, but there's fear around that.

And so how do we eradicate that fear, or do we eradicate the fear when we're envisioning our future?

- Yes, this is so good.

So many people teach us and tell us to get rid of fear.

There's false evidence appearing real, like all of these quotes around fear.

I teach my collective, give your fear to love.

Love on that fear.

When it comes to our intuition, and is it our intuition or is it fear?

Many of us as adults, we've been programmed by way of the lives we lived to listen to fear so much.

So when our intuition is guiding us, that's scarier than actually listening to the fear.

And it's not actually about being afraid, but more so about your comfort.

And I'm sure you can speak to this from the therapeutic side, our commitment, our habits, our patterns, our brain, like resonance to that fear.

So it's like, you have to exercise your intuition in order to fully leverage it.

If your intuition says, leave at this time, leave at that time.

- And we hear stories like that all the time.

- But fear will say, no, now don't leave at that time because you always leave at this time and now you're gonna be late or something.

- Or you're being crazy.

- You're being crazy.

Fear causes you to negotiate.

Intuition causes you to assess.

- I like that.

- Yeah.

- Your thoughts on that.

How do we execute?

- Yeah, I teach my clients to lean into the fear because oftentimes we like to avoid, let me set a boundary and not do something when actually that something is something that you probably want and you can accomplish.

And when you start to do it, now you have more evidence that you know what, I thought I was scared to do this, like public speaking.

But then I get up and do it and you crush it.

So now you have evidence that you can do it because you leaned into the fear.

- So what happens when we have evidence that confirms our fear?

How do we push past that?

- Try again.

So let's say for instance, with public speaking, you fail a speech miserably.

- That was me like the first 15 years of my life.

- And look at you now.

- I know, right?

- Not only speaking, but teaching others how to speak.

So look at where you're at as opposed to where you started and where you're at now.

- Can I speak to that?

Okay, so when I was in, I did cosmetology when I was a young, when I was a youngster.

(laughing) And so they tell you, don't cut past your second knuckle.

I was the last person on the practicum floor because I kept cutting past my second knuckle.

I cut in between these two fingers so much, but at the end, I was the best, the best person to do cuts, to do layers, to do frames, to do all these things because I didn't take your failure.

It's when you submit to your failure and you accept your failure as your reality other than, okay, what do I need to learn from here?

Okay, smaller sections, smaller bites, hold it this way.

So failure helps you to build upon it because 15 years, people might be like, oh, Kenia, this is overnight with you on TV, but they didn't see the 15 years of your palm sweating when you had to speak.

- Jason, I know that a lot of your passion centers around the healing of black men and you have created a documentary and we have that, well, a preview from this documentary.

We wanted to share it, Man Enough to Heal.

It really captures the tension between strength and vulnerability and we just wanted to share this clip.

(upbeat music) - Overworking, outbursts of anger, isolation, irritability.

These are some of the ways that issues present as well as how black men have coped with their mental health.

In this documentary, we're gonna sit down with therapists, educators, engineers, corporate professionals, entrepreneurs, pastors, and definitely barbers to talk about black men's mental health.

- I was brought up in a very, in some ways a very traditional male dominated family and so it was, you know, be a man, suck it up.

- So from a psychological perspective, it was seen as a sign of weakness for you to get help.

- Therapy isn't about fixing what's broken, it's about unlocking your full potential.

So if you've been on the fence, here's your sign.

You deserve to heal.

- So Jason, you felt the need to create this documentary.

What do you hope comes from this storytelling movement?

- That black men can see themselves in the different people in the documentary.

In the therapist, in the educator, going to the barber shop, talking to pastors because these were the people who were our therapists before we went to therapy.

And oftentimes we don't know how to seek help, what it looks like, and there's not enough black clinicians, particularly black male clinicians to go around right now.

So I wanted people to be validated and know that, you know what, I've been struggling with something and this person shared their story, I can have the same success because now I see it.

It gives me a little bit more hope.

- Yeah, so tell us the name of it again.

Where is it at?

Where can we find it and watch it?

- Yes, Man Enough to Heal, Black Men in Therapy, and it's gonna be on YouTube.

So I'll send you the link so you can put it in the show notes.

- Awesome, awesome.

So Amber, when we're thinking of, this is the new year, 2026, we're sitting down at that in our journals.

I know I'll write a list of things that I wanna see.

I don't know that I make goals anymore, but if we have someone who wants to get out of that habit of just goal setting for the sake of it, how do we start?

- You start by living.

You start by living.

I find that when you have an attachment or a practice of goal setting, it's also some things that can be good can become bad because you can leverage it to avoid what you actually need to do, which may be to just sit down, which may be to just rest.

And so not having a goal, if it causes you to feel shaky or like, oh my gosh, I should have something, then maybe you struggle with silence.

Maybe you struggle with sitting alone.

Maybe you're afraid to just be.

And so I would say, okay, well, what brings you joy?

What makes you smile?

Those would be the things that I would encourage you to make a goal.

Do more of the things that bring you excitement in life.

- One thing, so I was privileged to be at a recent TED Talk that you were a speaker at.

And one thing that resonated with me, I mean, before the TED Talk and still today is, I'm gonna say it for you and then you can say it again.

Life doesn't happen to me, it happens for me.

What do you mean by that?

- So life happens for me, never to me.

Always for my benefit and never to my detriment is a perception shift for your life.

To really live a desirable life, it does not absolve you from the pain, but it does alleviate the suffering, right?

Because I learned early on in life, while pain is inevitable, suffering is a choice.

So when I see life happening for me, then I get to say, okay, what was the lesson here that I was supposed to learn?

And you realize everything in this world, I say, I don't have any enemies, I don't have any lovers, I don't have any friends, all I have is our teachers.

Everything is here to teach me.

And I know that my experiences with others teach them something.

So our life situations, okay, if I'm cutting my fingers, what's happening for me, it wasn't happening to me, it made me better prepared to become a master stylist while I'm in my early 20s paying for college.

That's what that did.

But if I gave up and I was like, oh, this is happening to me, nothing's ever working, I would not have had the ability to keep growing and expand on those failures.

So that's what that really means.

It looks like taking your failures and allowing them to work for you, allowing them to be the seeds of investment into-- - Into the next phase.

- Yeah.

- Jason, any thoughts on that?

- And then I wanna tackle the idea of imposter syndrome.

- Okay, let's do it.

- That's a big one, right?

A lot of people on paper look great, but we see them walking around almost as a shell of themselves.

What contributes to that and how do we get past it?

- A lot of times when you're experiencing imposter syndrome, you're used to everybody telling you, you're great, you look good, your resume's there, the credentials are there, but you don't see it.

So you see self-doubt, fear of failure, it's hard for you to take compliments, and behind closed doors, you're experiencing burnout, exhaustion, anxiety.

- Anxiety, yes.

- So you're drowning, but everybody else sees you winning.

And then you second guess yourself, do I really belong here?

- How do we, what's the first step of being honest?

If we are drowning, I am anxious every day, I'm stressing, but there's a smile plastered on my face and I look like I got it all together, but I need help.

What's the first step?

- The first step is saying, I need help and taking the initiative to get the help.

Because with imposter syndrome, oftentimes you are great, but so there's a disconnect between you saying, I need help and then what everybody else sees.

So it can be hard for you to even submit and let somebody help you and be that honest about where you're at, because you don't wanna seem as being weak.

- Amber, when we go back to the idea of praying or manifesting, right?

I know in my life, the times that I struggle the most, I kind of just vision what it is that I need and then it seems to just meet me where I'm at.

Is that just me?

- Yeah, no, that's real life.

Okay, did you see my excitement?

- I saw your excitement, yes.

- No, that's exactly it, because I tell people all the time, if you wanna control your life, you have to surrender.

So those moments when you have those experiences, you're literally surrendering.

You're like, I'm not trying to control this situation.

This is what I need.

And now I'm gonna expect what I need to come to me.

That's the surrender.

You stop trying to help.

You stop trying to force the things that you talked about earlier about the force.

You stop trying to, every time I try to make something happen, it falls apart.

Versus too, if I'm being led intuitively to something happen, because when we try to make things happen, that's fear that it won't work out how you want it to work out.

So let me just help it.

Let me just put my two cents in and help get what it is that I need.

- We're all parents on this set, right?

And we know we're cultivating the future.

Obviously we work with adults and we help them navigate a lot of this, but our kids need it too.

Jason, how do we help our children?

Especially, I have a black boy, 15 years old.

How do I help him see himself for who he is at such a young age?

- I would say have a mentor, a therapist, a coach.

He needs a support system outside of you in what you bring because he needs to see it.

And I'm not saying that he doesn't have that, but the more he can see himself, he can get wisdom and nuggets from somebody outside of you.

- Well, and it's interesting you say that because he's got his dad there, he's got me there, but he doesn't listen to us.

I mean, he does.

So I'm not gonna say he doesn't listen, but he seems to take the wisdom from those elders in the community a lot more.

- Yeah, often I work with teenagers who have both mom and dad, but they need somebody else so that they can give them wisdom and they can hear it differently.

It's not that you all aren't giving them great advice in parenting, but as kids, we've all been there.

Sometimes we listen to the uncle, the barber, the older brother more than those who are in our own home and circle.

- Amber, you have three beautiful girls.

- 'Cause parents don't know.

- Of course, we don't know a thing, right?

But you've got three girls, I've got one girl.

Raising girls a little different than raising a boy.

How do you approach it with your girls?

- Okay, so, doctor, you said something earlier.

You talked about the accountability of like, I tell my children, I don't want apologies.

I want accountability.

- Don't you look at the camera saying that.

- 'Cause when they see that, I don't want apologies.

I want accountability because their childhood, the way that I'm raising my children, this is reality, is to prepare them for adulthood.

I tell them, your childhood is preparation for adulthood, and this is what it means.

And there's only one rule in my house, and it is do what you know to do so you can do what you want to do.

I should never say, I should always say yes.

If I am saying no, that means you earned that no.

That's just it.

Now you have to assess, why did I say no?

What didn't you do?

So then someone, I shared this with my community, if I may share, I shared this with my community, and someone responded, like, well, it feels like you take their technology and you give it back when you feel they deserve it.

And I said, okay, well, it's not a reward because if having your cell phone, your iPad, and all these things are your lifestyle, then doing what you know to do should be a part of that too.

And that's no different than us as adults.

Having utilities in our home is not a reward.

But if you don't pay your utility bill, you are not gonna have utilities.

So therefore, I know to pay my bills because I want to enjoy the comfort of my home.

And so teaching my daughters on this scale, this small scale, because when they get older, the responsibilities get bigger.

- I wanna ask this last question to both of you.

Someone's watching and they found some inspiration in this conversation, but they're kind of stuck as to how to start in this new year.

What's the first thing they should do?

Jason, I'll pivot to you first.

- Yeah, first, be honest.

Be honest about where you're at.

If you decide to do nothing, you don't change a single thing about your life, are you gonna be happy with where you're at next year this time, two years from now?

And then also be aware that by not taking action, that's a decision.

- Amber?

- Yes.

- I mean, Doc, you hit it.

And I think I just wanna add the piece about time too, because I also feel like people set their goals and then they set these expectations of time with it that also causes the anxiousness, et cetera, et cetera.

The way that I explain time is it will happen in a line time depending on the work you do and don't do.

So if you are working out and we're both going to the gym, but you choose to eat clean every day, but I'm eating clean every other day, you're going to see results faster than I see it.

There's no right or wrong.

It's just understanding this is my path.

So I would say focus on your own path, focus on your own reality, focus on your own universe and not to compare, especially social media.

- And to find a safe space, right?

Just like you said earlier, find your tribe, find your community and get a therapist or whatever version of therapy it looks like for you.

It doesn't have to be traditional therapy and what we've known it to be, but even if it's just that friend.

How can we find you?

- Social media, J. Phillips MSW or email at jasonlphillips.com.

- Okay, Amber, how can we get in touch with you?

- You can find me everywhere, every social media platform, a.richbook or arichbook.com.

I'm on LinkedIn, Amber Richbook.

Feel free to connect with me.

- Nice, do you guys have any, last quick question.

We still have a couple minutes.

Any tools, like I like to buy journals that may guide you or not to sell anything here, but are there any tools that you've used to help folks goal set?

- Well, everybody's different.

You have to find your way of learning.

So some people listen, some people need to write, some people need to do.

So I would first say, find what your thing is and it could be a puzzle with your hands and that's your therapy, that's your goal setting to a puzzle.

You can find a book, you can find a journal, you can audio book.

So find the way that you learn best and find a tool in that arena.

For me, I'm a writer and a reader.

So I like books and I like writing everything out.

- I'm the same.

Any tools for men out there?

- I would say for writing too, we're 30 times more likely to reach the goals when we write them down.

So that's important.

- That is very important.

- Other tools, my podcast, Peace and Prosperity Podcast.

- How do you say that at the end of the show?

(laughing) - Well you asked about tools.

Yeah, so my podcast, Peace and Prosperity Podcast is on Apple, Spotify.

But I have tons of episodes where I'm breaking down different frameworks on how to set and reach goals.

So I gotta have y'all on there.

- Yes, I gotta cut it.

Dr.

Jason Phillips, Amber Richbook, thank you so much.

I appreciate you.

And I thank you for watching.

I hope you're having a good new year.

If you want more content like this, we invite you to engage with us on Instagram using the hashtag #BlackIssuesForum.

You can also find our full episodes on pbsnc.org/blackissuesforum and on the PBS video app.

I'm Kenia Thompson, I'll see you next time.

(upbeat music) - Quality public television is made possible through the financial contributions of viewers like you who invite you to join them in supporting PBSNC.