On Purpose with Jay Shetty - Humble The Poet ON: Quitting His Job to Become an Artist

Episode Date: April 15, 2019

It’s so easy in the world that we live in where everyone sees quotes on Instagram, motivational sayings everywhere, to think you’re deep...without being deep.So today we’re going to do some unlearning with our wordsmith of a guest - Humble the Poet.We talk about becoming conscious of and taking ownership over your unconscious biases, unlearning old habits and ideas that may no longer serve you, and how to not only survive but thrive.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hi, I'm David Eagleman. I have a new podcast called Inner Cosmos on I Heart. I'm going to explore the relationship between our brains and our experiences by tackling unusual questions. Like, can we create new senses for humans? So join me weekly to uncover how your brain steers your behavior, your perception, and your reality. Listen to intercosmos with David Eagleman on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Our 20s are often seen as this golden decade. Our time to be carefree, make mistakes, and figure out our lives. But what can psychology teach us about this time? I'm Gemma Speg, the host of the Psychology of Your 20s. Each week, we take a deep dive into a unique aspect of our 20s,

from career anxiety, mental health, heartbreak, money, and much more to explore the science behind our experiences. The Psychology of Your 20s hosted by me, Gemma Speg. Listen now on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I am Yumla Van Zant, and I'll be your host for The R Spot. Each week listeners will call me live

to discuss their relationship issues. Nothing will tear a relationship down faster than two people with no vision. Does your all are just flopping around like fish out of water? Mommy, daddy, your ex, I'll be talking about those things and so much more. Check out the R-Spot on the iHeart video app Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. So instead of saying, can I get out of this rut? I said, how can I get out of this rut?

My goal became I want to be grateful that this is happening. What do I have to do to be grateful that that guy screwed me over on the steel? What can I do to be grateful that that girl left me and broke my heart? What do what what have to happen? What does life have to happen? What does life have to look like?

Hey everyone, thank you for coming back to On Purpose. Thank you for trusting me, allowing me to be someone who can share new ideas, insights, experts, and thinkers with all of you. One of the things I'd love to talk about here is last week we had Chelsea handle on the show And the reason why I reached out to Chelsea is because we actually met each other at a meditation conference Where we were both speaking and when I saw her there I was pleasantly surprised and completely amazed that she had actually taken a

Meditation and when I called her on last week a lot of you love that episode if you haven't listened to it Make sure you do and there were a few people and only a few but I wanted to raise this point a few people who Actually were judging her based on something she's done in the past now my approach to everyone is How can we have a genuine Conversation with someone and give them an opportunity to share their growth and share their story if people want to grow If people want to change if people want transform, and this isn't just about Chelsea, it's about all of us, we have to recognize that every saint has a past and every sinner is a future. Everyone who has made mistakes in the past, whoever that may be, needs to have the opportunity to improve, to grow and to be able to share their

story. So I love it when we welcome our guests with non-judgment and we seek to learn from anyone and everyone. And that doesn't mean we have to model our lives on them, it doesn't mean that they're perfect and we have to become like them or we have to adore them or any of that. But when we keep an openness, we grow more. So thank you so much and I can't wait for you to meet our next guest. Make sure you've subscribed, rated and reviewed. You're going to love this episode. to meet our next guest. Make sure you've subscribed, rated and reviewed. You're gonna love this episode. He's a comedian-born rapper, spoken word artist, international bestseller of his book. He's an author too.

And he's also a really, really dear friend. Someone who I've had so many incredible conversations with, we have what we call roof talk. We literally sit on a roof for a couple of hours and catch up about life, philosophy, experiences. They've been truly meaningful to me, and I wanted to share that meaning with each and every one of you. And he's also launching a new book and the book's

called Unlearn 101 Simple Truths for a Better Life. So if you enjoyed today's conversation, you can grab a copy of the book as well. So humble, thank you for being here, man. Thank you for having me, man. Excited to be here. Humble the power is great to have you here because we've had a couple of conversations. We're always talking online messaging and I've always found them so insightful. I always learn something every time we speak. I feel like I need a notebook just hanging out with you. You just have to have a notebook taking all these notes.

So get your notebooks out, guys, because I feel the same way about humble. I think he's someone who really, really unpacks and thinks about life. And I love people like that because I truly believe that it's so easy in a world we live in where everyone sees quotes, everyone Instagram, you see motivational sayings absolutely everywhere. Everyone captions their picture with the latest inspirational quote that if you don't think it through, you can think you're deep without being deep. Oh completely. It's like this whole full woke idea.

And it's all woke. I like that. And it's like, because a lot of the stuff that you read and inspire in quote, and it feels good in the short film, and you don't take a deep dive to be like, well, is this a sustainable idea that's going to make me feel better past this five minutes, like a little dopamine drop. So yeah, definitely, I think for me, my whole journey came from me looking and searching for meaning some level of fulfillment and not accepting the fluff.

I usually call it the Tumblr quotes, and I think now it's just become that faux woke stuff that you see all over social media, where it's just like, you know, things that you hear that, again, it'll make you feel great for about five minutes, and then when you're really kind of unpack it and try to live it, you just like, you know, things that you hear that again, make you feel grateful about five minutes and then when you're really kind of unpack it and try to live it, you're like, this is not pragmatic at all. Interesting. Yeah, whenever humble comments on one of my quotes on Instagram, yeah, this is a good one.

I feel good. Well, you're so, so good. I want to make sure I don't, like, just send you a fire emoji. You want to make sure that there's some value to what I got to say. You want to have it as a fire emoji? Yeah, yeah. No, yeah, or like the hundred. Yeah. Or like the hundred percent.

Or like the hundred percent. My favorite, yeah, my favorite is so true. So true? Or so deep. Yeah, so deep. My favorite comments. No, I do believe that you genuinely lived that. And obviously used to be an elementary school teacher.

Elementary school teacher. Elementary school teacher. Elementary school teacher. The third grade in Toronto in a neighborhood called Rexdale. And it was a heavy immigrant area, you know, a lot of kids whose parents were overly educated, you know, back home there were doctors, lawyers, engineers, and they came to Canada and their education wasn't converted. So now they're working in donut stores and gas stations and factories and they had a really

strong priority for education, but they may not have had the means. It was such a really interesting dynamic and just trying my best to communicate with these kids because I really kind of felt like they were meat. You know, my father had a master's degree in economics, came to Canada, had no opportunity to use the education. So instead, he became a cab driver. Drove cab until he retired in 2015. And he always stressed education because he never got the opportunity to kind of realize his own.

Yeah. What did you learn about how humans learn by being a teacher? I think the first thing that I learned, and I even mentioned it in the introduction for the book, is the fact that we all are almost completely empty vessels when we start. And I titled a story about telling a child to, you know, put on your boots and put on your snow pants.

And the kid will put on his boots and then struggle to get the pants on because they will take what you say literally and say it the way you did. And it really made me become very self-aware of how many gaps I fill in every day where my own biases and my own context when somebody speaks to me.

And these children empty vessels, so when you start to see them and you communicate to them, there's so much opportunity to kind of mold and shape them to think a certain way. And that can go either way. That can be a great thing or that can be a negative thing. And I was really trying to, instead of teaching them a specific thing, really try was really trying to, instead of teaching them a specific thing,

really try to get them to fall in love with the idea of learning, the idea of exploring and kind of taking things to where they needed to take it for their own natural journey. Now, this book unlearned. I love the title because it's so funny. Around the time we met, I was giving a lot of talks and I kept using the word unlearn as well and I got fascinated with that word because everyone's talking about like in this age you've got to be a continuous learner and you've got to consistently learn and to stay up to trends and all that kind of stuff. It's all about learning, learning, learning and here you are going counterintuitive and saying no, no, guys, I've got 101 simple truths to unlearn. Tell me about that.

I think what happened was, again, I was an elementary school teacher, which is a very safe government job. All my colleagues are on my team. There's no competition, you know, and it was, and I came from being in the school system to working in the school system. And, you know, I had a creative itch, and when I got into the entertainment industry, you know, I just got torn apart. I got ripped to shreds.

The first people to recognize my talents were there to exploit me. I lost a lot of money. I got ripped off a few times, betrayed by people I cared about. And what I realized was I didn't have to learn new things to navigate in this world. I had to let go of a lot of ideas and biases

and idealisms that I carried. That, you know, I could afford to carry in my previous life that were now weighing me down kind of in this. So, you know, living in the structure, I kind of look at it as leaving the zoo and going into the jungle. You know, and now you're definitely a lot more free, but, you know, no one's bringing you your food, no one's there to keep you safe. I realized I had a lot of biases and I had a lot of expectations for how I thought the world was going to treat me and I had a lot of entitlements

and I had to kind of shed those and it was kind of the idea of letting go to gain more. Tell me about one of those powerful biases that you had and tell me about a moment when you saw it not serving serving you, and then when you had to switch it, when you unlearned it. I think definitely, ignoring words and paying attention to actions, you know, and I think what I was doing was the opposite.

I really wanted to believe something. So I would ignore actions, I would ignore patterns and I would really cling on to words. So like, well, what they said, they said they would do this for me, or they said they meant it, they said I mattered, even though their actions completely contradicted that.

And when things blew up in my face, and you said they're, they always say, hindsight is 2020, that was the moment I wanted to take ownership. And I was like, okay, wait, I should have seen this coming because now playing

it back, here are all the pieces that this person revealed to me through their actions. So I think at that point, I said, you know, action screen was whisper. So now, you know, I'm always paying attention now for patterns and behavior even for myself. So I might say, you know, a lot of things, but if my actions contradict that, my actions are what matters. And, you know, that, that's a very important idea whether it comes to our relationships with other people, but also for ourselves, you know,

instead of us telling people what's important to us, we could just simply show them our schedule because our schedule will show our priorities on a subconscious level. And that's the deeper stuff that actually really represents who we are. That's such a practical thing everyone can start doing today. And I think that goes back to it.

I needed the practical stuff. I didn't need the motivational stuff. I didn't need the fluffy stuff. I needed the stuff to make me feel better. Now, I also needed the stuff that helped me turn my life around now. Because I was in a very difficult situation. I had left my job as a teacher to become an artist. And I wasn't in the best financial situation as a teacher,

because I was a young kid making money and not knowing how to spend it. When I became an artist, I had no idea how my creativity was going to pay any of the bills, and I needed to figure, I needed to get my mind in the right place to figure this out. And that really meant shedding my entitlements, shedding many of my expectations, not being so idealistic and really trying to find the source of where did all this stuff come from?

Why do I believe these things? And is it okay to let go of these beliefs without losing who I am? And I think that was kind of the premise of this journey of unlearning. And I realized that, you know, to be a lifelong learner is also be a lifelong unlearner. Absolutely, absolutely. There was, I can't remember who said it now, you might even know that they said the illiterate of the 21st century. Modern literacy, I think, is Bertram Russell. Was it Bertram Russell?

Learning, unlearning and relearning. Yeah, that was the, yeah. I think the Bertram Russell. Yeah, the illiterate will be the ones who can't learn, unlearn and relearn. Yeah, for the 21st century. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and I love that statement. I think it's so powerful because it's so strange how, and I'd love to hear your thoughts

on this. Why does it feel harder to let go than it does to add? I feel like we as human beings will always gravitate towards the familiar. Familiarity is more important to us subconsciously than happiness or anything else. What is it come from? From your opinion, that you're perspective. I think it's a survival tactic. I think going back from when we were, you know, nomadic. I think we, our brains were designed

to really notice things that stuck out. So we would really be in a familiar safe situation and you know, if you walk into somebody's home, you can smell things that they can't smell. Cause their brains been trained to shut off that smell, cause they need to notice things that are out of place. I feel like that's the reason we always know notice was going wrong and not was going right. Because we're trained to figure out what's out of place. I feel like that's the reason we always know notice was going wrong and not was going right

because we're trained to figure out what's out of place. And I feel like it's the same thing when it comes to familiarity. It's we grew up in a household and we saw a certain dynamic between our parents. That's our first experience of an observation of love. We're gonna naturally subconsciously kind of lean towards that in our own relationships. If we don't have that self-awareness to kind of want to break that cycle, even if it's

an unhealthy situation. So I think the familiarity of it, it what kind of trumps everything. And I know even on a positive note, I, for me, to improve my quality of life, I really lean back to nostalgia. I really try to, you know, I wake up in the morning and go for a walk and I enjoy the walk, not just because it's exercise,

but it reminds me of being in the fourth grade, walking to the bus stop. And they had a little bit of the chilly air in Toronto. And, you know, when the sun's out at that angle, just the feeling in the vibes. And I think a lot of us always, we feel happy is when we feel like we're children again. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that, that I totally agree with. Yeah. I've been playing a lot of us always, we feel happy is when we feel like we're children again.

Yeah, that, that I totally agree with. I've been playing a lot more recently. You've been playing a lot? Like trying to engage play into my life. The feeling of playing. Completely. And so whether that's playing a sport, which without the pressure of competition or winning,

but still playing a sport without the feeling like, oh yeah, we've got to win. Always some still playing to win, but not with that pressure. Completely. Or even if it's playing more video games again or whatever it is, like just feeling like a child again without doing things with rigid structure force. Completely. I don't think we should never lose that.

I think we should never lose that childhood curiosity and the excitement. And I think what ends up happening is when we don't actively seek it, then I think we should never lose that childhood curiosity and the excitement. And I think what ends up happening is, when we don't actively seek it, then I think subconsciously, we just take to the familiar. And that's where the danger is, because we start to mistake our beliefs and our values for ourselves. And now we're like, well, if I abandon that belief,

I don't know who I am anymore. And I think that's where we get in a lot of trouble, because now we're, some of those beliefs and values are still and outdated. Or they're not practical for the new lives that we live. And I think, you know, if you were in a difficult childhood and you had to put on a brave face, or you had to have a certain level of emotion

to deal with that. And now you're an adult and you're in a safer environment, you don't need to carry those same strategies over. Now, what helped you then could be hurting you now. And we need to be constantly reevaluating ourselves, being aware of it and trying to figure that out. And I mean, I'm picking it up on every way, shape, or form from the way my mother used to punk me off

or not clearing out the lint in the dryer and realizing that I say that to other people to picking out my flaws, you know, based off what people told me when I was a kid to, you know, I think recently when I was when I was in high school, I didn't feel like I was, you know, good looking enough to get girls or what have you. And then when it became a public figure, I started leaning towards modeling. And it wasn't because I cared about modeling, it was because I wanted the validation. Like, oh, look at me now, I wasn't cool enough in high school.

And then you realize, you're like, hey, I'm trying to, I'm speaking to an invisible audience, a bunch of people who don't exist, you know? And whoever has said those mean things to me when they were 15, they probably grew up, and they're probably nice people now too. And I actually had an experience with that. I was, when I was about 10 years old, there was this boy

who would always, he was younger than me and he would always just try to start trouble with me. He'd say a lot of racist things to me. And it really, I was always on edge around him. And then, you know, I thought he moved away. And then I ran into him at a party in university. And I don't know at a party in university. And I don't know if he recognized him or not, but he was the kindest, sweetest, most accommodating

person at the party. He was like, hey, welcome. Can you get you something to drink? What's going on? And you realize you're like, he wasn't a, he was a 10-year-old kid, being a jerk, because it's what we all do. And now he's an adult, and he grew out of it as well. And really being able to

let go of that and realizing how often that situation created tension for me moving forward. And you know, specifically with a ginger. So I remember it's like not being aware that any time I was around other gingers, there would be a little, a little bit of tension. I think that's what my journey's been now is being like, okay, well, why do I feel the way I feel now? And what do I think the root of is? And it's exploration. It's just kind of looking inside this universe

within us to try to better understand ourselves. And when we do that, we can better understand the world around us. Hey, it's Debbie Brown. And my podcast deeply well is a soft place to land on your wellness journey. I hold conscious conversations with leaders and radical healers and wellness and mental health around topics that are meant to expand and support you on your journey. From guided meditations to deep conversations with some of the world's most gifted experts in self-care, trauma, psychology,

spirituality, astrology, and even intimacy. Here's where you'll pick up the tools to live as your highest self. Make better choices. Heal and have more joy. My work is rooted in advanced meditation, metaphysics, spiritual psychology, energy healing, and trauma-informed practices. I believe that the more we heal and grow within ourselves, the more we are able to bring

our creativity to life and live our purpose, which leads to community impact and higher consciousness for all beings. Deeply well with Debbie Brown is your soft place to land, to work on yourself without judgment, to heal, to learn, to grow, to become who you deserve to be. Deeply well is available now on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Big love, namaste. This is what it sounds like inside the box-paw. I'm journalist and I'm Morton in my podcast, City of the Rails. I plunge into the dark world of America's railroads, searching for my daughter Ruby, who ran off to

hop train. I'm just like stuck on this train, not where I'm gonna end up, and I jump. Following my daughter, I found a secret city of unforgettable characters, living outside society, off the grid, and on the edge. I was in love with a lifestyle and the freedom this community. No one understands who we truly are. The rails made me question everything I knew about motherhood history and the thing we call the American dream. It's the last vestige of American freedom. Everything about it is extreme. You're either going to die or you can have this incredible

rebirth and really understand who you are. Come with me to find out what waits for us in the City of the Rails. Listen to City of the Rails on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Or cityoftherails.com. I am Mi'amla and on my podcast, the R-Spot, we're having inspirational educational and sometimes difficult and challenging conversations about relationships. They may not have the capacity to give you what you need. And insisting means that you are abusing yourself now. You human!

That means that you're crazy as hell, just like the rest of us. When a relationship breaks down, I take copious notes and I want to share them with you. Anybody with two eyes and a brain knows that too much Alfredo sauce is just no good for you. But if you're going to eat it, they're not going to stop you. So he's going to continue to give you the Alfredo sauce and put it even on your grits if you don't stop him. Listen to the art spot on the iHeart Video app, Apple Podcast,

or wherever you listen to podcasts. I love that man. We're speaking to an invisible audience. It really isn't a real body. That is so powerful. That is so powerful man. I love that because what you're saying is we're basically creating a reality based on something that's subjective and almost unreal to a certain degree. Very unreal.

I think you know, I had another friend. She went to some psychotherapy for an experience she had and what they realized the root of the issue that she went through was when she was like seven years old, her mother left her at her aunt's house to go run an errand. And she felt abandoned because a seven-year-old mind to process that, it felt like abandonment. And she had, as an adult, the exercise required her to go and speak to her seven-year-old self., as an adult, the exercise required her to go and speak to her seven-year-old self. And as an adult, she was like, listen, mom left us, not because she doesn't love us,

she left us because she trusts us that we could be by ourselves with her on. It was a sign that she trusted you and that you could be responsible. Because from the adult lens, we can see it from different contexts. And she's like immediately I felt my shoulders drop

Wow immediately I felt lighter moving forward and we don't realize how much of the stuff we carry throughout our lives until You know we face it. Yes, and in the moment we face it It usually hits us on a physical level where you're like oh, I addressed it in my shoulders drop I feel lighter that weight on my chest isn't there as much. And I think I've put myself on a journey to find out how much of that I can do. And as I learned it for myself, and I began sharing it on social media, the top comment kept being, you're telling my story, how are you living in my head? And it made me realize that we're all in the same boat. We're all dealing with the exact same things. And me as a writer and somebody who can put words together, I think it's my job now,

but it's my pleasure to help people figure out their thoughts, feelings, and emotions and simplifying it. I talked grade three for a long time. I know how to take ideas and simplify them and make it digestible. Yeah, absolutely, man. You do it so well when I was reading through the book. Yesterday, I was just like, everything so well articulated. And I loved what you talked about. Even if you repeat yourself twice, you're still presenting it through a different angle.

Completely. And, you know, like you said, if anything's worth saying, it's worth repeating. And I love that because, but even when you're repeating it because you are a writer and a wordsmith, it doesn't sound the same. I'm, you're unpacking it a layer deeper.

And that's what I love about what you're talking about right now that this unconscious bias that we all experienced, mine, big one, last year was all around wealth and money. So I grew up in a household where we always believed we had enough. Like that was our language. So I never had a lot of money growing up, but I wasn't broke. And so we always grew up with the language, we always have enough, like enough to get

by, enough to survive, enough for Christmas, enough for this. And so I had always grown up with that mentality, I'm always going to have enough. And it was just so interesting to me how I'd program myself unconsciously to see money as negative, to see money as an aspiration as negative and not realizing that actually, yes, it didn't have to be my aspiration, but it could be a tool or a resource or it could be a powerful element that could be used for a higher purpose too. Completely. And the feeling around enough, like that word enough was just so limiting and so

de-ability. And it's so abstract. So abstract. Like enough, what is enough? Enough in London might end up being a very different definition than enough in New York than enough in Hollywood. You know, one day, you know, you're hanging out with your buddies and you know, you have more than enough to go out to dinner at the local pub. But then you come out here and you start going to some of these bougie spots and all of a sudden enough isn't enough anymore. Yeah. And you start to realize how much of this is, we create the definition. And we have so much power to redefine these things, depending on who we hang out with,

what values we chose to hold dear to us, and also how we view ourselves. Because sometimes if we don't feel like we're enough, then now we're trying to consume all this external stuff to try to compensate for that. But it never works. So what's a good practical step for someone to take? To first of all, identify their biases, their unconscious biases or the biases that you may,

how do you first identify them? I think the first thing is, there's gotta be ownership. I think in every single situation, no matter what it is, there's always what somebody else may have done to us, what the universe or what our environment, what external factors, how they impacted us, but there's also a level of responsibility that we can take,

what decisions we made, what expectations we had going in, what values and what things that we found take, what decisions we made, what expectations we had going in, what values and what things that we found are important. I think when we start taking ownership for those things, we then we realize that's where our power is. If I have a lunch date with you tomorrow and you just don't show up and you don't call, you don't do anything, I can start to start putting

a lot of blame on you. I'm like, well, Jay stood me up. Jay's not a reliable person. I can say all these things, but that is just putting all the power blame on you. I'm like, well, Jay stood me up. Jay's not a reliable person. I can say all these things, but that is just putting all the power in your hands. Wherever we give the responsibility to, we give the power. Or I can be like, hey, what are my responsibilities in this? What could I have done differently? And when we take ownership, I think we empower ourselves to make our situation better.

And then it's no longer when or lose. This becomes when winter learn. And I think when we start looking internally at every situation, and I have a friend recently, he went through a very challenging breakup. And I can see now that he's kind of dug himself some light to the end of his tunnel. And he's it because what he's saying is, you know, I don't talk about what she did to me anymore. I talk about what she did for me. And I'm realizing he's taking a lot more ownership. He's doing a lot more self actualizing. And I think that's always the first step. I think I'm really big on no complaining. I don't see a lot of value in it. Tony, I don't see a lot of value in venting to other people repeatedly. I think,

you know, obviously get some stuff off your chest. As an artist, I'll take my stuff off my chest through my art. But I think we all need to feel connected. We all need to bond to something. And self-pity is a very easy fast food way of doing so. And I encourage people to kind of take that out of their diet and start taking a little bit more responsibility because when you take the responsibility,

it's not simply about blaming yourself, it's about when you start taking responsibility, you have power now to start changing things and you can't obviously rewrite the past, but now you are better equipped to start to write your future. Self-paint is like fast food, you need to take it out. Yeah, it feels good in the short run Yeah, it feels good in the short run. It really feels good in the short run.

I love that. And I don't wanna hold it against anybody from fulfilling it. And it took me a while to kind of pick up on it. It's convenient, it's quick, and it's cheap, just like fast food. And if you do too much of it, it's gonna bite you in the ass, just like fast food.

So just be mindful of it. And I think just with a lot of the people I'm speaking to, and hearing that is always the one thing I try to encourage. And people don't like to be told, oh, I can't feel sorry for myself in this situation. And there is a very, in my opinion, a very defined line between self-pity and self-compassion. What is that?

Yeah, I was going to ask that. That was my expression. I think self-compassion is kind of recognizing if you've been hurt that you require time for that injury to heal. You know, let's say you break your leg, you have to understand that it might take you six weeks of not putting any pressure on it to heal. Self-compassion. That's self-compassion. Knowing what's necessary, knowing the patient was necessary for you to get better. I think self-pity is kind of picking at your cast and picking at the scabs and really wanting to define yourself through your injury and wanting other people to feel sorry for you because you start to feel connected.

It makes you feel less alone. You also feel more connected with yourself. You're like, well, nobody understands me, but me. Nobody else gets it. And I think when you start to realize, hey, I get it. It's your first heartbreak. But there are a million heartbreak songs. Clearly, you're not the only person who's gone through this. And that doesn't mean your heartbreak is any less intense.

It just means this is a common thing. And you can actually learn from others who went through this as well. And if we address this as a community, it'll be a lot easier versus isolating yourself from other people and kind of going through a negative downward spiral. Yeah, absolutely, man. No, I love that. It's super powerful. Yeah, I read it.

I called the other day that said, it takes a village to deal with mental health. Right? And it was just that whole principle about community and the principle of that you've just raised now. I think your relationships matter. I think your relationship with yourself definitely is the most important and it sets the tone for the type of relationship we can have with other people. But we definitely can improve the relationship with ourselves through our relationship with other people. I had a friend recently just bring that up as well. You know, they work with a lot of people and they said, they had this self-awareness to be like, it's easier to stand up for other people

than it is to stand up for myself. I avoid conflict. I don't wanna shake things up, but if I see someone being disrespectful to somebody I care about, I no longer care. I can get in there, I can be assertive, I can be aggressive, but I can't do it for myself. I think that's something worth exploring too. Sometimes we don't think we're worthy of being stood up for, we're worthy of love, but everybody else is. The truth is, we are worthy of it as well. We're all working in progress, we all have. You know, we're all working progress.

We all have flaws. And obviously we're going to like other people more than we like ourselves because we know ourselves more. Yeah. You know, obviously we see them as smaller doses. But we're all worthy of it. And how you treat yourself will set the tone for how other people will treat you. Absolutely, man.

Yeah. A good way to learn about a place is to talk to the people that live there. There's just this sexy vibe and Montreal, this pulse, this energy. What was seen as a very snotty city, people call it BOSA-Angelists. New Orleans is a town that never forgets its pay. A great way to get to know a place is to get invited to a dinner party. Hi, I'm Brendan Francis Newdum and not lost as my new travel podcast where a friend and I go places, see the sights, and try to finagle our way into a dinner party.

Where kind of trying to get invited to a dinner party, it doesn't always work out. I would love that but I have like a Chihuahua who is aggressive towards strangers. I love the dogs. We learn about the places we're visiting, yes, but we also learn about ourselves. I don't spend as much time thinking about how I'm gonna die alone when I'm traveling, but I get to travel with someone I love. Oh, see, I love you too.

And also, we get to eat as much. And since here, I love you too. My life's a lot of therapy goes behind that. You're so white, I love it. Listen to not lost on the iHeart radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Our 20s are seen as this golden decade. Our time to be carefree, full in love, make mistakes, and decide what we want from our life. But what can psychology really teach us about this decade?

I'm Gemma Speg, the host of the psychology of your 20s. Each week, we take a deep dive into a unique aspect of our 20s, from career anxiety, mental health, heartbreak, money, friendships, and much more to explore the science and the psychology behind our experiences, incredible guests, fascinating topics, important science, and a bit of my own personal experience. Audrey, I honestly have no idea what's going on with my life. Join me as we explore what our 20s are really all about. From the good, the bad, and the ugly, and listen along as we uncover how everything is psychology, including our 20s.

The psychology of your 20s hosted by me, Gemma Speg, now streaming on the IHOT Radio app, Apple podcasts, or whatever you get your podcasts. I'm Danny Shapiro, host of Family Secrets. It's hard to believe we're entering our eighth season. And yet, we're constantly discovering new secrets. The depths of them, the variety of them continues to be astonishing.

I can't wait to share 10 incredible stories with you, stories of tenacity, resilience, and the profoundly necessary excavation of long-held family secrets. When I realized this is not just happening to me, this is who and what I am. I needed her to help me. Something was annoying at me that I couldn't put my finger on, that I just felt somehow that there was a piece missing. Why not restart? Look at all the things that were going wrong.

I hope you'll join me and my extraordinary guests for this new season of Family Secrets. Listen to season 8 of Family Secrets on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or's rereading the book. He's reading the mother book, guys. He's just reading the mother book. Don't watch the video. No, it's it. No, it's amazing, man. I love it. I love it because it's, you're not just quoting stuff. It's when you're sharing it's real. So, okay, first step is ownership.

And I love that. Ownership, yeah. I think that's a great first step. Second step, now that I've identified it, I've taken ownership, what do I do now? I think recognizing that you are not, your identity is not your absolute choices. So if you made a decision that you're no longer proud of, that's okay. And I think, we learn from that. I think in the book, I talk a lot about belief.

I think a lot of people identify themselves through their beliefs, especially in today's age, with the tribalism, everybody's taking sides, whether you consider yourself left wing, right wing, what have you, and when somebody challenges your side right now, it actually encourages people to dig even deeper on their side. So now the gap is expanding and the distance between people is getting farther.

So I think what has to happen is we have to let go of the idea that we are not simply our beliefs. And we have to question where did the beliefs come from? And I think for me, the moment that I really saw this was when I was a teacher, I taught in the community where we had a very large Muslim population. And we had kids from Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Iran, a lot of a lot of the other small and middle Eastern countries. And so during Ramadan, the ongoing joke is everyone

had to celebrate Ramadan because so many kids would stay home that day. It wouldn't be fair to teach. You know, if I had a class of 28 kids about maybe 11 would show up because those are not Muslims. So we, it'd be the ongoing joke that, hey, everybody gets to celebrate Ramadan, whoever shows up that day, we, what we show movies and, uh, well, for, for, for that. But during the fasting, I witnessed, you know, one girl, uh, kind of, uh, making another girl feel bad for having a snack. You know, and you can kind of hear it in the girl's tone of voice. She's just regurgitating whatever her parents were telling her. Because they're too young to kind

of be this judgmental. And I think as we grow older, we don't realize that this stuff was taught to us. We didn't come out the box believing in these things. And that forced me to continually challenge my beliefs and be like, well, where did I pick up that belief? Whether it is something on a spiritual level or whether it's my relationship with consumerism, the idea that buying stuff is going to make me happy or whether it's the idea that we can live happily ever after or whether it's the idea of soulmates or anything. Whatever we believe, I think the number one question is, where did it come from? And it's question. Yeah. I think the number one question is where did it come from? And the question. Yeah, and is that belief, and not to, you know, if my parents, you know, indoctrinated me

with a bunch of ideas that doesn't make them bad, it doesn't mean I was brainwashed. It was, you know, they had whatever tools they had. They were taught by others and we're passing it down. But if we have that self-awareness, we're like, okay, well, that belief, you know, so for me, a good example was when I was a teenager, I believed homosexuality was a sin, I believe it was wrong. It took meeting a person who was homosexual and hearing their story and realizing that they're human just like me looking for love.

And then going back and be like, well, where did I learn that? And it wasn't from somebody saying homosexuality was wrong. It was from the religious belief that pursuing lust is evil. And me taking that and reappropriating it, well, have you. And not holding against anybody who taught me that and realized that, hey, everybody was taught what they taught, but now that I have this self-awareness,

I can let go of this. This is no longer serving me. This is closing me off to a lot of amazing, beautiful people. So I'm going to let that go. This is not my identity. And I think a lot of people, they take the flag of their identity and shove it into something to like, that's me. And now if you insult that idea, you're also insulting me.

If you insult conservatism, you're insulting me. If you insult the LA Lakers, you're insulting me. If you insult Manchester United, people, they find value in that. And I think for me, it meant that I had to start looking around and explain, well, where did I plant my flag? What did I believe? And that's an ongoing process. Life's long thing.

You don't just pull your flag out and now you're free. There's layers to it. Once you jump one fence, you can run a couple meters, you hit another fence. Totally. And it's really about this continuous journey and cycle of kind of shedding these old ideas, adding new ones, and it may be having to shed those soon as well.

I love it, man. Great advice. Really practical. Anyone who's listening or watching, make sure you're taking notes because, yeah, super practical tips. I love it, man. But when I listen to you, at any time I'm with you, I feel like you've really dug deep and done the work, like genuinely, like when I talk to you, I feel like you're like, I

don't know how long you've been doing it, but you've really been like going inside. And I'm breaking it down and figuring it out and reflecting, I wonder who was supporting that journey for you, like who was helping you pave that way now that you're helping others through your writing, through your books, through your social media, through your video, was there not just specific people, but what was guiding that process for you or

was it really just self-reflection and introspection? I think a lot of it was art. So I mean, I think remembering the first time I heard Alcaste and hearing Andre's E-1000 say, I came into this world, high as a bird, second-hand cocaine powder, I know it sounds absurd, and being like, whoa, the sketch just said, you know, the guy just explained that his mother was doing cocaine, which he was pregnant with them. And I'm like, I've never heard that level of honesty in a hip-hop song and hearing Lauren Hill sing songs.

And she has that unplugged album and the song get out. And she's like, if everything was gold and gold, that's how I choose to live and just kind of thinking, thinking that and being like, okay, how does this, and what does this mean to me? Because sometimes you hear this stuff before you're ready. And in 10 years later,

those lyrics just pop into your head and you're like, whoa, this is, this mattered to me. I think there was a combination of that. I think there was also a combination of, you know, my mother, she injured herself. She used to work at a factory.

We had moved to a neighborhood in Toronto that was around the corner from a factory to Kellogg's, Kellogg's, a serial company. She worked for them. So we had moved there, so she could walk to work in about five minutes. After about a year, she got hurt and she could no longer work. And I think she kind of fell into a very dark place because she felt like she wasn't contributing to the family. I feel like my father didn't have the tools

to kind of help her go through it. And she found, well, she spent more time at the Goddard, the institution's F Sikhi and she really took a deep dive and Started bringing that into the household Sick means student and so I think the the one good thing was that she would she'd send me to two various camps and youth camps and in The beginning they were very superficial, but she started the deeper she went she started taking me places where we started Having deep discussions, so I I remember being 11 years old, free, pure, best-send, girls still had kudis, but we were talking about lust and the downfalls of lust and me not even understanding it at that point.

Everything was there and it was going to make sense eventually. The deep thinking was always there and then I made a boat load of mistakes. Just a boat load of mistakes. And I got to the point where I literally was taking muscle relaxes and drinking night quill every day and just lying in bed, literally waiting for someone to save the day. And just being like, okay, I'm going to wake up and this stuff can figure itself out. Because what happens on TV? Sure.

You know, within 22 minutes, something's gonna happen. Some, you know, ex-maconus type situation where someone, the Calvary is gonna come in. And, you know, if you watch the pursuit of happiness with Wilson, that's one of the things that, you know, that was said to him that turned on that switch was the Calvary's not coming. Nobody's coming to save the day.

And for me, that moment was listening to Jay Cole, dollar in a dream, and hearing him say, listen, are you gonna, you know, things weren't working out for me because I'm gonna grow bitter and cold. Or are you gonna flip this and make this your defining moment? And I think that was the kind of kick in the butt that I needed.

And I think that was the point where I started rejecting everything that wasn't giving me real world value. You know, no longer was I going to listen to the fluffy stuff. I was rejecting the ideas of someone said, Oh, God's got a plan. Just trust it. I was like, that doesn't help me become a better person. I started rejecting, you know, anything that just that just sounded nice. I was like, it became, and for me, I was already a little bit rough around the edges with my communication. So I started posting up.

The quotes I would start posting up in my place at that time was like, Synchro Swim. You want a vacation or get a day job. You miss the shots you don't take. Just very straightforward, you know, no nonsense, no sugar coating, and it really helped me a lot. And then when I started sharing that

on my Facebook at the time, immediately people started gravitating towards it. And that helped me realize that I wasn't alone in what I was going through and that we were all going through this. And sharing my journey as I was figuring it out was adding value to other people. And it helped me create a community and connect with people.

And that's how we are our energies found each other. And you realize, and I always tell that the people in the world of music, it's just good things happen when you put your stuff out. Totally, man. Yeah, when you're putting out the energy, naturally, some people get attracted and naturally some people get attracted and naturally

some people get repulsed. Because you are who you are, if you're putting it out there, and that broadcast either brings people closer or tells people, actually, I don't want to hang out with that person. Yeah, and it's interesting because a lot of people say, oh, do you believe in fate and destiny? I was like, well, I believe in people paying attention and making action. So if someone says, hey, I want to become a professional dancer. And then somebody might say, hey, well, the place you got to go is LA.

So then they moved to LA. It wasn't destiny that brought them there. It was them taking your risk and then paying attention. And then somebody says, okay, now you're in LA, go to North Hollywood. That's what the dancers are at. And again, making that move. And the person that continually pays attention and keeps making those actions and continually faces their own fears and decides I'm going to leave my comfort zone.

Great things will happen for them. Now, if you meet them 10 years later and they were a world renowned choreographer, you might consider them lucky. But they weren't. You know, their baby steps added up. And I kind of view it the same way. It's just got to start making the baby steps. They add up. Again, as a school teacher, I realized, hey, like, there's a 12, 13 year plan to get a child to read. You know, we don't just take a four year old and throw Harry Potter in their hands. It's, first we show them the letters, then we start with the sound.

It's very slow, structured, but it adds up. And then, you know, it creates, you know, the greatest literary artist in the world, the system. And if we implemented that to our self improvement, if we implemented that to our physical health or diet, you know, all the skies are limit. Yeah, absolutely. So if someone's feeling like you were beaten down,

torn down, you know, lying in bed, waiting for something to happen, and they feel like they're building that place multiple times, I loved what you did practically, like you were putting up all these like harsh straight up. Straight speaking quotes around you. What would be advice to them when someone kind of feels like they've been in that place for a while now? So I think one of the shifts for me was I stopped saying, can I do this? So I stopped saying, can I get out of this hole?

And I added one word, word how. So instead of saying, can I get out of this rut? I said, how can I get out of this hole? And I added one word, dored how. So instead of saying, can I get out of this rut? I said, how? Can I get out of this rut? And I think the flame that really worked for me specifically was my goal became, I want to be grateful that this is happening. What do I have to do to be grateful that that guy screwed me over on the steel? What can I do to be grateful

that that girl left me and broke my heart? What do what have to happen? What does life have to look like? And you know, for example, when the business dealings went bad and I was in $80,000 debt and I had no idea how to earn any money as an artist. I had visions of, okay, well, if I have $80,000, it's positive in my bank account. That'll make me glad that I went through this. Tough times make tough people and working

backwards. Now, if anybody's an athlete, that's exactly what you do. If you want to learn to take a jump shot, you work backwards, you start with the footwork, you start with the ball handling. You do a whole bunch of stuff before you take the shot. Yes. And then you take the shot, the exact same shot a million times.

Kobe Bryant still practices the exact same shot, repetition, repetition. So I think for me, again, it was very pragmatic, where it's like, okay, how do I get out of this? Okay. All right, I need to make money. I don't know how to make money. And then having this memory of meeting this real estate mogul

and him saying, the way I got rich wasn't by making a lot of money. It was by not spending a lot of money. And looking around my apartment and being like, okay, wait, I gotta get rid of all this stuff. So I sold everything on Craigslist. Did I sold the place? Then I moved back with my mom and dad,

knowing that I could have been doing that six months earlier, but the only thing that was preventing me from doing that was the fear of embarrassment. Then becoming recognizing that I was afraid of being embarrassed. I had, for me, and for a lot of people, we have lovely families, and being homeless in on the street, wasn't going to ever be an option. It was literally just being embarrassed and then facing that and being open when people were like, Hey, what's going on? Oh, I just saw you do this great gig out here in India. Oh,

you must be living in life and be like, No, I'm not. I'm broke. You know, I'm figuring it out. But things aren't as fantastic as you may say. Yeah, obviously, you know, I got to do a cool, a cool thing and I took a picture and posted it online, but things are not amazing and I'm figuring it out and I will get there. A lot of the other fears I had, I remember I borrowed money from a lot of people that required me to call them and say, listen, I owe you money, I don't have your money,

I'm gonna figure it out, I'm not gonna avoid you, but you're also not gonna see me buying expensive stuff right now. I'm gonna figure this all out. And again, it took me four years to get my bank account to zero. And then also having the self-awareness of every single day I told myself,

when you get that zero bank account, you're gonna feel like a million bucks, you're gonna stand on top of a mountain, you're gonna cheer, and you're gonna feel like, you know, my pursuit of happiness, I mean, that last month, and then you know, it last some month and you got some other problem.

And then you're like, okay, I can't, there is no happily ever after, you know? My movie doesn't end, there's the next day after that. But then also realizing, hey, if I figured out how to go from negative 80 grand to zero, I can keep going, you know? And that, the biggest gift that that gave me was teaching me the value of minimalism.

Because I didn't have much. I was like, whoa, I didn't need any of the stuff that I used to have that I lost. I don't miss any of the stuff that I lost. I don't think anything I sold I rebought. Well, nothing. I think, you know, nothing. I think the one thing I didn't sell because it wasn't at my place at the time with the bicycle and I kept it and it was an overly expensive bicycle. So I promised myself I would ride it every day to make it worth it. Then I fell in love with bike riding. Oh wow. Nice. But I mean, I sold my car.

I still don't own a car. You know, I mean, we're at the point now, we're taking these ride-share services as cheaper than owning a car. You know, I didn't, I sold a lot of equipment. You know, now, you know, I rent studios and stuff like that. I learned a lot that how much I actually needed to live, how much us as human beings get used to our conditions. So you'll get used to very simple conditions, but you'll also get used to very lavish conditions. You can have a beautiful house in the hills and after a year is home is home.

Yes. It'll feel the same and you'll be looking at some other lavish house wanting more. And I think that gave me that perspective of, hey, you can clean climb in this mountain. There is no peak. Totally. So just have fun. You know, there's no part of gold at the end of the rainbow. The rainbow is the reward. So have as much fun as you can. Yes. Stop taking things so seriously. Our time is limited here. So enjoy it while we're here. I love it. I'm all the poet, man. Look to check that out. We're not done yet. But that is just like, wow, man, I, the fascinating thing I find is when I sit down with you, we agree on so much. Yeah. So I'm listening to you. And I'm never trying to debate anyone who knows me and listens to me, knows that I'm not, I'm never cynical. I don't debate people, I, my whole goal is to bring out the best out of someone

and, and serve someone by giving them a platform to share their light and share their truth. But what I wanna do now is I wanna dive into a few things I picked out the book. Okay. Because I love some of the ones I picked out and you've, you've already gone into some of them, but I'm gonna pick these out.

So, I love this statement that you make and I think it's so important for people to realize this because I think it's a huge one. And this book literally bust myths. Like anyone who's listening right now, watching right now, this book bust myths, but in a big way. And so, if you read this book,

it's not just a book of cool stories and quotes, it's gonna help you bust myths in a big way that are so deeply ingrained in our minds. And it's interesting you brought that up, especially with the idea of debate. You said, you know, I don't, I'm not here to debate. And I think what I found was I ended up debating many people, not because I wanted to hear my own voice approve them, right? It was because I was desperate to find the practicality and what they were saying. That's awesome. Yeah, and I would always just be like, well, wait, and I would start challenging them

until we either figured it out. That's a positive debate, that's a lot. Oh, yeah, completely positive debate. And it really came from a place of sincerity. Yes. And I've had a couple of conversations with people where they started to realize that, they're like, hey, you're not just asking me questions.

Like, you don't just want an answer. You want this to work. Yes. And I think that's the reason why, especially in this book, it bus myths because those myths weren't helping me. Yes. And I only wanted to feel better. I really wanted to feel better.

I didn't want to feel better for five minutes. I wanted to feel better and change the direction of my life. And that was like the origins and the purpose of these words. Amazing. I love it. So this was one that I picked out. There aren't very many straight lines in nature. I wanted to talk about that.

Yes. I agree, I don't like the belief. I grew up believing, well actually, you know, I grew up believing just like all of us did, like the straight line of get a work hard, study hard, get a good job, get married, buy a nice house, buy a nice current life will be perfect. And I kind of got to 18.

And that's when I realized that that didn't work, not because I had done the whole picture because I hadn't, but I saw people who had different things. So I saw someone who had lots of money and they didn't seem satisfied. Then I saw someone who had lots of fame and I was analyzing their life and I was observing and was like, oh wait, they don't have it either. And then I was observing someone who was really good looking or beautiful or whatever it is. And they didn't have it either. And so I was looking at all of these people, not that they weren't good people, but they

didn't have happiness or meaning or fulfillment. And so this straight line just didn't add up. So let's break that down because I think that's such a powerful myth to bust. Yeah, completely. I think what we all have to recognize is irrespective of your religious beliefs, irrespective of your heritage. If you're listening to this interview in English, you probably grew up in a society that was kind of based off Western philosophy. Was it that was Judaism, Islam, or Christianity? And they kind of, they set this tone of a straight line. Do this, do this, do this, do this, do this,

do this. And at the end, there is a reward. You Do this, do this, do this, do this, do this, and at the end there is a reward. You and I both grew up in Eastern philosophy, which is cycles. Everything works in a cycle. So we don't think in straight line, we think in terms of cycles. And when you start looking at life, you're like, well, maybe not in LA. Where I come from a Toronto, we have four seasons, and they continue to go on a cycle. Actually, London only has one season, too. London is miserable. Well yeah, miserable. And when I visit, I bring the sunshine.

And that's a cycle too, because I will continually visit. But I think the realizing that things kind of work in a cycle, you know, everything has a beginning, middle and end, and a rebirth and a death. And what have you? It made me realize that, hey, nothing works in a straight line. There's no straight path to success. There's no straight path to success. There's no straight path to happiness.

Everything works in cycles. That's okay. I love the TV show, Bojack Horseman, and there's a line in there where his agent says to him, you thought winning this Oscar was going to make you happy forever, but it won't. But it will make you happy tonight. So enjoy it. And this whole idea that we want this everlasting happiness. But there's a cycle.

The cycle is that fortunately and unfortunately nothing will last forever. Not our worst day, not our best day. And that's okay. It's a cycle. Summers don't last forever, winters don't last forever, friendships don't last forever. Life doesn't last forever. The great moments won't last forever, winters don't last forever, friendships don't last forever, life doesn't last forever. The great moments won't last forever, the hardships won't last forever. It's always going to be an endless cycle.

We are part of an endless cycle of birth and death. And really to understand that, hey, our society was structured on the straight line and it's okay that we've all been kind of, you know, when we don't know, we're always going to be dancing on the straight line and it's okay that we've all been kind of, you know, when we don't know, we're always going to be dancing on the template that was kind of given to us until we decide, hey, this guy has to be something else. And to be honest, I think the entire world right now is on that template and it'd probably be very disruptive if we all left at the exact same time.

So for me, it was really recognizing that, hey, there's gonna be a lot of twists and turns, there's gonna be a lot of ups and downs, and it's supposed to be that way. And that's the only reason it's interesting. If you take anybody you admire from human history and you wanna read the story of their life, you don't, it'll be a very boring book.

Totally. It'll be a very boring movie. Yes. It'll be a very boring movie. Anything if it was just a straight line and everything worked out. I think Bill Gates said, it's success is a lousy teacher. And from that perspective, it's we have to embrace these challenges.

And recently I was hanging out with a new friend I met and I asked them, what are you looking forward to, what are you excited about? And they said such an interesting answer. I'm really excited about all the chaos in my life right now. There's a lot of chaos and conflict in my life and I know it's here to teach me some stuff and I'm really looking forward to tackling it and learning from it. And I'm like, there's such a refreshing mindset because most other people are like, oh, I'm

stressed. You know, nothing's working. Yeah, I just need a break. And I think for me, I'm also realizing that, hey, breaks don't work. You can, everybody watching, you've had a big project you had to do, you had a big deadline, you had a big paper, you had to get done. And then you promise yourself three days of just relax. And those three days happen.

And then Monday comes again, and you're not rejuvenated. You're back to it. And so what I realized is, hey, you gotta have those breaks every day. You gotta take those naps. You gotta have that meet time. You gotta play the video games. You gotta watch those silly movies.

You gotta do that on your day to day basis. And there are no straight lines in nature. So let's stop trying to have a straight line in our own life. And when we flow the way everything else is flowing, and when we respect the way everything else works, I always say, you can't speed up the snow melting. You can't speed up that broken leg healing. You gotta respect the time these things take.

And when we apply that to our lives, I feel like it reduces a lot more of the tension that we feel that we impose upon ourselves, because we want to get over that heartbreak yesterday. We want to get out of debt yesterday. We want things to happen now and now and now. But it's those challenges that make life interesting, it's those challenges that give us the character

that we need to be the interesting people that we are. And it's those challenges that teach us lessons that we can pass down to other people. So they can start a little bit further ahead of us. And now they can address new challenges, new cages, new levels and depths of biases and context that we may have, that we may not have the time to explore on our own journeys.

And I think that's the cool thing about us as human beings is we can pass forward that teaching and You know the same way our parents started a certain level and we get to start a little bit ahead You know and it makes me excited about if I have children Where where do they get to start and you know generation from a generational level moving forward and it reminds me that let's look We're not the end all be all we are a drop in the ocean But as Roomi says we're not the end all, we are a drop in the ocean, but as Rumi says, we're also an ocean in the drop.

You know, so let's play our part in the grand scheme of things, but I also realized that grand scheme exists all in us. Totally. And it's scary, overwhelming, but it's also extremely liberating. And that's kind of how I look at it. Huge advice, man.

Yeah, I love that. And there's been two ways that I've dealt with it. And I loved yours. My ways have been, every time something doesn't work out, I'm going through a period of chaos or uncertainty or I'm trying to get something that's not working out. There's two things I've always said to myself. One is don't judge the moment because I feel like we try and label and judge the moment as being bad. And I had a lot of friends who were like, it's a bad period for me right now. Or it's a bad day for me right now.

Or it's a bad life for me right now. And you're just stretching out that moment and you're judging that moment, which we know could be the best moment of your life. And so my first thing is never judge the moment because my judgment could be so wrong. And then I'll live to regret it later because I looked at it differently.

And the second thing I've always done is I've always, always said to myself this only makes the story better. Right, whenever I can look at a failure and be like, yeah, I got this failure so that when I tell this story one day to myself, it's gonna feel better because I'm gonna be like, yeah, like,

that, what you just said, like, there's no movie of someone's life, or there's no book or history of someone's life that would be exciting if everything just worked out. And we forget that. We forget that. And for me, one of the best ways I've processed it, those are two questions, or two things I say to myself.

But I've recognized that in life, I feel we're always in five modes, and it's the cycle that you're talking about. Like we're in five steps of a cycle. So we're either learning, we're either experimenting and testing, we're either performing, we're either struggling or we're thriving. That's beautiful. Right, so that's the five modes of our cycle of life. You're either learning something, you're experimenting and testing, you're performing, like you're just making it happen.

You're struggling or you're thriving. Yeah. The problem is we all always want to be thriving. Yeah. So everyone every year is like, why am I not winning the awards? Why am I not making the most money? Why, what you said? Like, what are you saying?

Now, now, now, now, now. Completely. And so we want to be in thriving when actually we're wasting all our energy, pushing ourselves pretending to be in thriving. Yeah. When you could just be learning. Completely. And I've seen that happen in my life so many times. And thriving to everyone who's listening,

thriving is 1% of all of it. No matter how good your cycle is, thriving, like you said, that enjoyed it for one night. That's where you spark this door. And I feel like back to you, even your point of judging, it's not only should we stop judging things as bad, we just stop judging things as good. Yes. We all have stop judging things as good. Yes.

We all have, and I know this without having to echo read your entire audience's mind. We've all had situations where when it was presented to us, we're like, this is great news. Six weeks later, it was the worst thing that ever happened. Yeah. You know, none of us own a crystal ball. We don't know how things are going to play out.

And what we're best off doing is reserving our judgment for saying, oh, that's good news, that's bad news, because we don't know how that's going to play out. And it could be anything. I mean, Kanye West lost his mother because she was getting plastic surgery. You know, he attributes that to him being successful. If he never became an artist successful, she would have never gotten plastic surgery and she would have never died. It can go either way. And we don't know.

And the smartest thing we can say is we don't know. Totally. And so when you say reserve judgment, I think that's an amazing thing to do is let's stop evaluating what's happening to our lives because when we stop evaluating it, we can start to look for the opportunities and the good that comes from it. And then thriving can be a mindset. Yes. And then it could be no matter what's happening,

whether we're in the dirt or whether we're in the clouds, we can have our mindset is what maintains that. And I think that's the fantastic part about that. Absolutely, man. Thank you for adding to that. No, no. I mean, that's what I do, man. Listen, I want to, you know what it is too., no. I mean, that's what I do, man. That's what I check.

You know what it is, too. So I know I'm learning myself. How do I know I understand it? By regurgitating it, whether making it my own, trying my best to understand where you're coming from. And then also recognizing that I'm extremely privileged to be in your presence. Oh, come on.

There's a lot of people that are consuming your amazing energy, but they don't have the opportunity to just simply be like, hey, what did you mean by that? Hey, how do I apply that to my life? And I'm not lost on that. I'm not lost on being in your company, how do I do it? I'm not lost on some of the professional comedies that get to be around and just hearing these guys talk

and cheer me up. I'm not lost on the amazing singers whose voices I get to hear acoustically. You know, I think, as you said, one thing that I learned from you in our last hangout, which what you said was gratitude needs to be specific. You know, sometimes we're not specific with our gratitude, we just need to be grateful. Or we say, oh, I'm grateful for the oxygen in my lungs, just because people tell us that we should be grateful for that. But maybe that's not what we're grateful for. Maybe we're grateful that it's cold outside today and we get to try on that new sweater

and we never got a chance to wear. Maybe we're grateful that that friend canceled dinner on us today because we really wanted to catch up on that Netflix documentary. Being specific and that's something that stuck with me off our last conversation. And I'm grateful that I get to have these conversations with dope guys like you, Lewis, and all these other people. And knowing that even the other people that I don't know

are a hot-skip jump away through my associates if I really need a task and a question I could. For sure, man. No, me too. And I feel grateful sitting here with you as well, because I like being able to sit down with people where we can really go back and forth on ideas and build and build and build and build and build. It's like playing Lego. Yeah, I can play Lego with a friend. It's like you can keep building something but then that person sees that,

actually that tower could get higher if you did it this way. You're just building, building, building together. I feel like that. And I feel like what you also do is, is like if I shine light on something, you literally just take my hand and you just adjust it like half a degree from a different angle. And I'm just, and I see a completely new picture. It's like, holy crap. And I think that's what it is.

It's, it's, you're saying things that everybody listening to it right now, they agree with it, and they hear it, but they were unable to put it in those specific words. And I feel like that's the, that's the value in the service that I think we're both striving to do. We're trying to figure it out, and then we're trying to make it digestible for people who are also trying to figure out. And that's why they continually say,

like, oh, you read my mind. It's because, you know, that's what we do. You know, and other people in the world are painting it. Other people in the world are putting it in music. Other people in the world are doing different things. And It's what makes this journey so much more fun. Yeah, absolutely, man. They're definitely sharing it by far. Yes. Makes it more of most fun for me, collaborating, connecting, working together on something. It's something I wanted my whole life. And every time I had

make friends, when I was growing up, one of the biggest challenges with me and friendships was that, it always became a competition, not from myself. I've always wanted to be like, on good terms with people and kind of collaborate and be effective. That doesn't mean equal, but in their sense of like, I see the good and you see the good and me less, let's figure this out.

And I always found that friends I had growing up, especially my teens, turn it into competition. It was always like, oh, how many girls can you get? Or like, who's going to have the nicer car? Or who's going to, and I was just like, no, man, like, you know, like, like, why does it have to be that way? And it's interesting because that's always been, I've always been trying to grapple with that. But I find like, as we mature and get older, people start recognizing we have different strengths, but we don't need to compare. You talk about it in the book too.

And I think the irony of that all too is a friend, Maasha Mantano, who's an amazing circus singer, Aditrinodad, he said there's three levels to this. There's, it starts with competition. And then you graduate to cooperation, then you graduate to collaboration. And that doesn't even always have to be a deep thought. Let's talk about, for example, getting girls.

You go to the club with your buddies, and if you guys view each other's competition, now you become, you guys all isolate yourselves from each other, you try to go talk to the women. But if you guys worked with cooperation, for example, now a group of guys will do better speaking to a group of girls. And everybody helps each other and it works a little better. Now, if you graduate to collaboration, where you say, listen, the goal is bigger than the sum of us

individually. You're like, all right, today we're gonna help Jay meet the love of his life. And now all of us are wingmen and we're focused just on you today. And then next time. The next time somebody else, but the success rate will be even higher. Yes.

And it's the same thing with art, it's the same thing with what we do, as we can view each other as competition. And now instead of, you know, deep diving into your work, I'm trying to nitpick it. And I was like, oh, look, this guy's spilling mistakes. Or, oh, what's that idea?

Oh, that doesn't apply. Or let me find the one time that his advice isn't going to work. Yes. You know what? I'm not asking. You know, let's say, for example, you said something like, you know, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. And then I'm like, well, that doesn't apply if you're talking about cocaine.

You know, I could obviously do that. But, you know, I feel like, you know, and you're new to Hollywood as well. And I've been coming out here for a couple of years. Here there's a lot of cooperation. A lot of cooperation. A lot of people say, hey, we will both benefit if we work together. And I'm really trying to find those people

and I'm trying to, with them, move it to collaboration, which is what we're working on is bigger than all of us. And we feel like, and I think we all want that. That's the reason we go to sporting games. It's not about us now, it's about the team. Now we're part of that moment. We're all cheering, we're all chanting together. We're part of something bigger than us.

Now we are that drop in that ocean, that collective ocean again. And I feel like when people recognize the beauty of that, more people will be more likely to collaborate. And say, hey, I'm a part of something bigger than me. Because you can only be a part of something bigger than you when you work and collaborate with other people. And again, that applies to picking up girls at the club. That applies to working on a book.

That applies to being a part of a podcast. That applies to all of that type of stuff. I don't know how practical you make, you know? I have to be practical, maybe. And picking up gals and everything practical. That's the thing also, because sometimes, and I think the people that were doing this generation before us, they always had this whole year than thou,

you know, high and mighty, they always try to keep themselves living up to a certain lifestyle and a standard that was bound to fail. You know, they would have to live secret lives. To, you know, they weren't allowed to be human beings. I think what guys like us is like, no, we're normal, flawed human beings. We're trying to learn it. And as I said, I put words together.

That's the reason I sound smart. I'm taking other people's wisdom, I'm learning it, I'm absorbing it. And I'm putting it into simple words because I taught eight year olds. I learned how to use that. And I always try to remind people that. That was one of the biggest things when this book first came out independently. It was really trying to remind people that I'm not a guru. You want to tell that story?

Yes. So what ended up happening was this book was such an organic process. It was in 2014, as I said, I was trying to figure out how to make money. I'll be completely honest. I was trying to figure out how to make money, and I started in the music world. I'm a rapper. And what happened was when you make music, you're a recording artist, I worked with a studio engineer.

I worked with a couple of producers who made my music and I worked with a film team to make my videos. And what happened was my studio engineer got in a fight with his girlfriend and stopped picking up the phone. And I didn't know how to record. This is before GarageBand. And I didn't know what to do. And I had a new friend at the time

who was the only other full-time creative. I knew by the name of Lily Singh. And we had just started hanging out. And we were hanging out because we didn't know anybody else who was trying to do what we were trying to do. And she goes, figure out what you can do by yourself. What can you do by yourself? You don't have to call your video guy

because if he's not available, cause he's shooting a wedding or your producer, cause he's busy working his day job or your engineer is fighting with his girlfriend, he went, am I, what can you do by yourself? You don't need anybody. And I said, I can write. And she goes to write.

And I go, I'm gonna run out of things to write about. And she's like, well, it already sounds like you're making excuses. Just start writing and see if you run out. And what I used to do is I had a folder on my computer, just really cool pictures. And a lot of them were from ad agencies. And just I love the creativity of how they were putting messages across. So I just took pictures, I'd post them on Facebook, and I'd write about them. And I was so afraid that people can really, hey, we didn't sign up for this. We want to hear your music.

And at that point, I was probably dropping a song once every three months because it took me a long time to make it. But what's this writing I can do it every day? And I was afraid that once I ran out of ideas. So first, I was afraid that they wouldn't embrace it, which they did. They loved it. And then I was afraid I'd run out of pictures

and run out of ideas. And I ran out of pictures, but I didn't run out of ideas. And I just promised myself I would have write every single day and post every single day and try it out for a year. Let's see what happens. And again, the first of top comments were, you know, you're speaking my story, you're living in my head. And then about after three months, the top comment was, you should write a book.

I didn't know how to write a book, but I had a friend who was making signs, brochures, and posters for companies for a local business. He would make the displays for like home depot or whatever. I said, hey, I want to make a book. Do you know how to make a book? He goes, yeah, I get to learn how to use Adobe InDesign. He sat there and he taught me how to use Adobe InDesign. It took me about a year to write the book and collect

the writings and take the thoughts and ideas I believed in, took me a year and a half to build the original book, learning how to format, how to make pages, how to do margins and whits. And that happened in 2014. And what I did was I crowdfunded. I used a site called Indiegogo, which is very similar to Kickstarter. The only difference being a Kickstarter, you don't hit your goal. The whole thing is canceled. Indiegogo, if you don't hit your goal, you can still move forward. I made up a number. The number was 10% of what I had to give up my place for. I sold my home and moved back with my parents. I said,

listen, if you guys help me get this first 10%, I'll figure out the other 90%. I did a crowdfunding campaign for six weeks and I passed my goal. My biggest contributor was a Harvard professor who was doing crowdsourcing. He was doing his dissertation and he was doing his tenure ship in crowdsourcing

and he did it for like NASA. And he was just excited at the idea of an artist taking his career in his own hands. And he gave me the largest contribution and we had never met. I didn't even know who he was. And that taught me that, hey, great things happen when you put yourself out there.

Totally, wow. And I went and asked for help. And it was really interesting because a lot of people I knew didn't contribute. A lot of people I barely knew did contribute. There was one gentleman who had a business and he used to let me work out of his office instead of me going to coffee shops. He gave me a large contribution because he saw me working every day.

It was just a, it was the scariest, most inspiring moment of my life, asking for help, letting people know that I need help, and everything is not all good, and people responding. And yeah, I used that money, and I put the book together, and from that process, I wrote, it was about 300 people gave me money, and I raised about 26 grand. That's incredible. Yeah, it was amazing. And my favorite piece of that was I wrote a thank you card to every single person. And again, I told myself, you always talk yourself out of these things,

like, you can't write a thank you card to 300 people, you can end up writing the same things. But it ended up being the most fun I ever had because writing somebody a thank you card is amazing, receiving a thank you card is amazing. It was a win-win for everything. And it actually got me to launch my own thank you cards. Yeah. I have my own line of thank you, Carter's because of that and really again promoting practical gratitude, finding excuse to say thank you, whether you're saying it to your mailman, whether you're saying it to you the barista at Starbucks, just finding excuse to say thank you. And that process taught me the importance of being vulnerable and not just being vulnerable for currency to connect with people, but being vulnerable so you can address those vulnerabilities and find your strength

and not only find your strengths inspire other people to find their strengths. Because sometimes they think the consequences of being vulnerable are going to be the end of the world. And I thought it was too. And it did not end up being the end of the world. So when this book came out independently, and I was using it to sell at my shows. Instead of selling t-shirts, I would do a performance in a city, and I'd sell the book. And with the print service I was using,

I was able to ship the book to whatever city I was performing yet, and it was great. After a couple of years, I was invited to be on a literary show in Canada called Canada Reads, think survivor for books. Just a bunch of personalities arguing about books debating books. I wasn't debating my book. I was debating a book that I had, I liked called 15 dogs, which is an amazing book about dogs

given human intelligence in the city of Toronto. So I just like, these are all my favorite things. Intelligence, dogs, and Toronto. Yeah. And I debated the book and I won. And because I won that, it was in the literary community and then people figured out that I had written a book. And the biggest book store in Canada,

pretty much the only book store in Canada, Indigo, they were starting a publishing wing and we would love to republish your book. And at that time, I was like, so you guys are going to give me money to email you a PDF. I was like, this is a no-brainer, but once they plugged it into their community of book lovers, it grew very quickly and it became the best seller. It was on the list for about six months. Congrats. And yeah, and then from there, I signed with Harper Collins in America,

and now we're releasing it, and I'm really excited because it's kind of a testament to plant a seed and it grows when it grows. So it was independently published in 2014, and now it's getting its worldwide release and five years later. And again, if I wanted it now, when I first published the book, then I would consider the book a failure.

Because it wasn't the best seller of the day I hit publish. It took five years for this book to grow into what it needed to grow for the world to connect with it the way it did. And I mean, it goes to show that things don't happen on our schedule. We got to trust that process when it happens and to try to have as much fun as we can. And I'm excited to see where it goes with this. Yeah, me too. And I'm excited for you. I think it's a great book. I think it's, I think it's, it's what people need in the format that they need it and in the words that they need to hear it. Yes. And I love that it's an easy read in the format that they need it and in the words that they need to hear it.

And I love that it's an easy read in the sense that someone can pick it up anywhere and start wherever they need to. And I say that in a positive way because I feel like anyone who's not got time to read a book or like, oh, you know, I don't know when I'm going to get a moment or I'm not used to getting through books, this solves all that issue. Yeah. Because you can literally just pick up one a day. Completely. And that was a big thing. I wanted to really make it, I'm not a book reader. And the irony of getting plugged into the whole literary world

is the amount of books that every time you have a meeting with a publisher, they send you home with a box of books. So I have a beautiful library now, I'm not a book that I haven't read. But I realize I'm like, I'm not the biggest book reader. I, it's a time commitment sometimes. And I wanted to design a book that was easy to read.

So every chapter is no longer than two pages. You don't have to read it in order. You can literally pick out a random chapter every single day if you want. You can read it backwards, forwards, skip a chapter, go even numbers, odd numbers, whatever you want. You can make a game out of it.

And I think that was the goal with this, was really trying to make it easy, indigestible, and simple, and practical. And that was really the big thing. And the success of this book, even the canate when it was a bestseller in Canada, there were still spelling mistakes in the book. And I think this was a very important lesson

that I wanted to stress with people, especially my artists who were watching and listening, things don't have to be perfect. Oh, amen. That's an excuse we make. All why I need a professional editor. Oh, no, I mean, I had a proofread by from a girl I was seeing at the time and my sister.

Yeah. And they proofread it, and even then it still wasn't perfect. Yeah. And, you know, this version now that you guys will be getting is professionally edited. And, but even then, yeah, amazing editors are Harper who understood my voice. Yeah. And understood that, hey, where his job here is in sound smart. Yeah. His job here is to be easy to understand and digestible.

And I'm really excited for people to read this and connect with it his job here is to be easy to understand and digestible. And I'm really excited for people to read this and connect with it and give feedback. And there's an interesting activity at the end of the book encouraging people to write their own chapter and send it my way. And just, you know, that's my favorite part. It's because what I realized, the pattern that I've been picking up most recently

is one thing that I was doing subconsciously and not knowing was building community. I think in the beginning, I have two sisters. So I think in the beginning, I thought I was always wanting brothers. So I was like trying to find brothers. But what I realized now more is I want a community because I didn't feel like I fit in with people. Not just as somebody with a beard and a turban, but I also felt like it's creative as an artist with my priorities, with my values. I didn't feel like I fit in. And the moment I found anybody

who kind of was on the same journey as me, it was just like, that's it, you're stuck with me now. And I've been building this community and I felt like what does a book allowed me to do was expand that community and find more lifelong learners, more people who are excited at the idea of having their biases challenged. Because a lot of people don't. You challenge a lot of people's beliefs and values,

and that's a great way to lose a friend. But there are a lot of other people like, wow, I believe this for the last 20 years, and you just, three sentences flipped it, and I love when that happens to me. I'm scared of that ever stops. I want to be 80 years old and still have beliefs that I that I held tightly in dear to me and be able to let them go and learn something new because that's how we know we're alive.

Yeah. Yeah. My as well, man. All the way completely. Guys, I've seen Humble post every day crossing off the date on the calendar because he's been writing and committed to writing this book. So I'm excited to share it with you. Make sure if you enjoy this conversation go grab a copy. It's called unlearn 101 simple truths for a better life by humble the poet guys. So if you are listening, make sure if you enjoy this conversation go grab a copy of the book. If you're watching go grab a copy of the book. if you're watching, go grab a copy of the book. It will just help you take away so many things in your life that are blocking you and help

you find the insights, the wisdom. And more importantly, just like real, true emotion that I really think is going to help people move forward. Completely. And you know what? And if you don't dig it, let me know. That's cool. You know, you know hit me up on social media after you know and just let me know what you didn't like Yeah, and I mean, you know will take that I am open to Construct the feedback and and and I want that to come across and in the next book I release

I love that man. Thank you so much, bro. Thank you for having me. Thank you, man. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you man. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for listening. Thank you so much for listening through to the end of that episode. I hope you're gonna share this all across social media. Let people know that you're subscribed to on purpose. Let me know. Post it. Tell me what a difference it's making in your life. I would love to see your thoughts. I can't wait for this incredibly conscious community we're creating of purposeful people. You're now a part of the tribe, a part of the squad. Thank you for being here.

I can't wait to share the next episode with you. you you you you you The Therapy for Black Girls podcast is your space to explore mental health, personal development, and all of the small decisions we can make to become the best possible versions of ourselves. I'm your host, Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, a licensed psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia, and I can't wait for you to join the conversation every Wednesday. Listen to the therapy for Black Girls podcast on the iHart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Take good care. I'm Danny Shapiro, host of Family Secrets.

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