You Are Who You Are Looking For: A Guide to Owning Your Humanness
In this episode of Quick Before You Forget, host Ty Schmidt engages in a meaningful conversation with Ruchi Shah, industrial-organizational psychologist and author of We, Humans, for a deeply grounding conversation about what it means to come home to yourself when you feel burned out, lost, or disconnected.
Ruchi shares why so many of us learn to hide our humanness, how we “play peekaboo” with parts of ourselves (our emotions, our light, our shadow), and what it looks like, practically, to own your humanness and stop outsourcing your inner authority to the outside world.
You’ll also hear powerful reflections on grief, self-doubt, and why growth can feel intense (even “G-force” intense), plus a memorable story about fear turning into aliveness in real time. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, uncertain, or like you’ve forgotten who you are, this episode is a reminder: you’re still in there.
Topics include: burnout recovery, self-awareness, self-trust, big emotions, masking, grief, fear vs excitement, community/tribe, and coming home to yourself.
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Meaningful Moments
00:00 – Welcome + intro to Ruchi Shah
02:45 – “I was perceived as oversensitive” + hiding humanness
05:06 – How We, Humans was born (legacy, son, experiential format)
07:28 – The “cards” concept + choosing a chapter
09:45 – “We humans play peekaboo with I” (light, shadow, emotional cues)
12:06 – What it means to “own your humanness” (only expert on you is you)
14:30 – What she’d tell her 22-year-old self (no regrets, unfolding)
16:48 – Megaphone message: “Wouldn’t it be lovely to be human?”
18:55 – Music as a way home (YAIMA “Gajumaru” + old stories)
21:16 – The 80th birthday question: legacy without needing to be present
23:42 – “What if you’re not a student—what if you’re a teacher?”
25:45 – Why growth feels intense (G-force metaphor) + becoming present in real time
27:38 – “We humans thrive when we tribe” (two-way streets + internal relationship)
32:16 – Grief + the “unique wiring” of emotions (crying = rage insight)
36:07 – Vocabulary for hard emotions + expressing the living human
38:34 – Quick Before You Forget rapid-fire answers
40:37 – Fear vs excitement + roller coaster story (“I’m alive!”)
42:53 – Closing gratitude + where and how to support the show
Ruchi Shah's Song of Survival: Gajumaru, YAIMA
We, Humans book: https://a.co/d/0aFSukIU