Miki Agrawal On The Power of Permission

Recently, interviewer Kiki L’Italien sat down with serial entrepreneur Miki Agrawal to talk about her books, “Do Cool Sh*t” and “Disrupt-Her”. L’Italien is known for discussing meaningful topics with guests, opening up about different experiences, and allowing guests to create narratives that are open-minded and thought-provoking.

Through her interview with TUSHY founder Miki Agrawal, the duo chatted about the concept of “permission”. Read on below for the chat:

Miki Agrawal On Making Decisions

Miki Agrawal: Well, this book is really about permission. It’s about permission to make a decision in every aspect of your life. Have agency of your own life in every aspect of it and decide for yourself. Does that feel good to me? Is it an integrity with how I feel and think?

Kiki L’Italien: Yeah.

Miki Agrawal: And also if it’s from a good place. Obviously if you’re like a bad mean cruel person you’re like I’m just going to distract everything in a bad way and it’s going to be you know hurt people that’s not what I’m saying.

Kiki L’Italien: Right.

Miki Agrawal: What I’m saying is you have agency over your life and you can decide for yourself what you think about money. How you want to feel about money. How you think about career. What you want to feel about a career? How you think and feel about the concept of acquiring so much stuff? Like we live in this culture where we’re just being bombarded by advertisings. If you buy this, then you’ll be happy. If you buy this, you’ll be happy and it just doesn’t buy, nothing buys happiness except for what’s inside. So, it’s really looking at even the conversations around feminism and patriarchy that are fraud with connotation and you can’t, oh if you talk about feminism then you’re either a man hitting person or you are I don’t know, like whatever or if you are trying to the patriarchy.

Again there’s just all these most men, like the majority of men are victims of the patriarchy too. There’s a few small group of men who decide they want to control and dominate and the rest of the men have to get in line and fight for them.

Kiki L’Italien: Oh I feel that. I feel I like I think yeah.

Miki Agrawal: And so it’s like all of a sudden men have to also live up to these like standards of I can’t be emotional or I’m not a man and it’s just like now you’re bottling it up and guess what? It’s more acceptable in the world for a man to be violent and to be emotional.

Kiki L’Italien: That’s true.

Miki Agrawal: And so it’s like, and so we have to all acknowledge where our biases as women come from too. Why do we like the bad boys? Women love bad boys too.

Kiki L’Italien: Yeah.

Miki Agrawal: The bad boys too and women want to have that dangerous. Why?

On Allowing Ourselves to Be Emotional

Miki Agrawal: It’s just like all these things that are actually hurting like everyone. And so, the idea is that can we give permission to our men to be emotional? Can we give permission to our women to be strong and not to feel like oh you’re man made if you’re trying go after your dreams? There’s just all this stuff that’s all based around indoctrination from years past that should just be erased and you just start over and decide for yourself what you want to be, how you want to think about all the things in your life.

Kiki L’Italien: Well, I think people, I think when they rely on, this is the structure that so many people have grown up and they rely on it. This is the framework. This is the way it is and they don’t question. I think that’s one thing that you do just regularly so well is you challenge assumptions. You say wait why?

The Power of Asking “Why”?

Miki Agrawal: Why are we wiping our butts with dry paper? Right. And we toss about that for a second.

Kiki L’Italien: Right.

Miki Agrawal: No, that is a very important question. I mean we walk into our bathrooms. And it’s like, well let’s before we even get to the bathrooms. We walk into our home. There’s Wi-Fi. There’s no, we know we’ve got our cellphones, smartphones which have more access information than the president did 20 years ago.

Kiki L’Italien: I know.

Miki Agrawal: We have all these technological advances and yet the minute you step into your bathroom poof. You’re back into the 1800s. The way we wipe ourselves with toilet paper, it has not changed since the late 1800s. 1890s is when toilet paper was brought to America. And when you actually stop and think about what we’re doing we are taking dry paper. That you would never use to wipe any dirty part of your body off with just dry paper like I’m clean.

Kiki L’Italien: Well and anyone who’s ever been in a situation where you’ve spilled something on yourself and the only thing that you can find. There’s no, it’s like you’re trying to rub this pieces of paper coming off. It’s not effective, right.

Miki Agrawal: I mean it’s like imagine if you went to your sink that had dirty dishes in it. You just cut up a raw chicken. And then you basically you cut up a raw chicken that has a lot of Salmonella on and then you decide instead of washing the dish you just wipe it with dry paper and you put your fish away.

Kiki L’Italien: Yeah.

On The Effects of Indoctrination

Miki Agrawal: And people are like I think you’re crazy. Same thing if you jump in your shower. You didn’t turn the water on and just use dry paper and you’re like I’m clean. It’s like people would think you’re crazy, right. And we’ve been so deeply indoctrinated to believe that this dry paper properly cleans the dirtiest part of our body when all it’s doing its smearing poop inside your butt. It’s true.

Kiki L’Italien: Yeah.

Miki Agrawal: And it’s causing infections, diseases all these things down there that you’re sitting on all day people there all day long and we don’t think about it. The other thing is we’re killing 15 million trees per year just for toilet paper consumption. Trees that give up give us oxygen. Trees that suck in carbon dioxide carbon monoxide nitrogen dioxide. All these toxins in the air. Keep our planet cool so we can all exist here and then we chop them off and wipe our butts with them. And it doesn’t even clean us properly. There are 30 million…

Kiki L’Italien: People keep using more and more and more.

Miki Agrawal: 30 million combined cases of chronic urinary tract infections, hemorrhoids, anal fissures, anal itching. All these things could be completely eliminated by just using the fresh water.

Kiki L’Italien: The push back is…

Miki Agrawal: It’s cultural. They don’t understand it. Oh they think poop will spray everywhere and you’re like because they don’t know what it is. They’re like, no, no. Poop isn’t going to spray everywhere. It’s a precise strain that goes directly into the toilet.

Kiki L’Italien: Right.

Miki Agrawal: And they’re like oh well are you using dirty toilet water to spray your butt? They’re like no it’s coming from the wall. They’re literally the same water you brush your teeth with. There’re just all these beliefs. They just don’t want to try something different. Until you’re like kind of being like what are you do like do not see like what you’re doing like you would never wipe any journey with that direct paper. So, once you kind of like lift the veil of indoctrination off people, they’re like, you’re right. Oh my God and then they try it and they’re like, I can’t believe I’ve been doing it this way my whole life. When there’s this cleaner, more precise, easier, no mess. You’re saving 80% of toilet paper which means you’re saving 80% of your money. It’s a $69 product so you’re like, within three months, you’re paid back. It’s just, can you believe that.

Miki Agrawal is a renowned public speaker, entrepreneur, and the founder of companies like Wild, Thinx, and Tushy. In addition to this work, Miki Agrawal is also a best-selling author, having penned “Do Cool Sh*t” and “Disrupt-Her”. To listen to her books, check out the Miki Agrawal Audible page.

Summary
Photo ofMiki Agrawal
Name
Miki Agrawal
Website
Job Title
Entrepreneur, Founder of TUSHY, author
Company
TUSHY
Angelee Editor
 

Highly skilled professional with experience within the healthcare industry in network management, facility contracting and quality operations