The Rich Roll Podcast - How to Unlearn: Humble The Poet On Simple Truths For A Better Life

Episode Date: August 19, 2019

We craft our identity around story. And that story is comprised of beliefs. But you are not your beliefs. And that story isn't just incomplete, it's generally wrong. The path to self-actualization requires deconstructing that story. And disentangling your beliefs from the truth of your highest self. To do this we must unlearn much of what we reflexively accept as truth. And open ourselves to a more expansive perspective. My guest for this exploration is the Toronto-based, rapper, author and spoken word artist, Kanwer Singh, known broadly as Humble The Poet. Covered in tattoos, a thick beard, and Sikh head wrap, Humble commands attention with his silly smile and warm, inviting presence. A former school teacher turned artist, he challenges conventional wisdom with dynamic live sets that simultaneously entertain while questioning the status quo. Humble shares his distinctive style and point of view on his wildly popular blog. He's been featured on a multitude of media outlets, including CBC's Canada Reads, as well as on Apple's first Canadian ad spot for their #ShotOnIphone campaign. He's the author of Unlearn: 101 Simple Truths for A Better Life* and the upcoming book, Things No One Else Can Teach Us*, hitting bookstores everywhere October 15, 2019 and available for pre-order now. Flipping the script for happiness, Humble's point is simple — our hardest moments are our greatest teachers, because they invite us to change our perspectives. We can't control the setbacks in life but we do have the power to control how we react to them. It's a process that begins with unlearning what we think we know. And being open to a new story — about ourselves, others and the world we share. This is a fun and wide-ranging conversation about that very shift. Sharing raw and honest stories from his own life — from his rocky start to becoming a rapper to nearly going broke to his worst breakups — it's an exploration of how a change in mindset can radically alter our outlook. It's about arresting our negative impulses to see the positive opportunity in everything. It's about the power of gratitude and mindfulness. It's about art, creativity, and authenticity. It's about the difference between paying attention and getting attention. But mostly, it's about the power of story. How you are not your beliefs. What we all may need to unlearn. And how a change in perspective about one's own story can transform everything. The visually inclined can watch our entire conversation on YouTube here: bit.ly/humblethepoet461 (please subscribe!)  Humble brings great energy. I loved learning about his life and experience. And I sincerely hope you enjoy the listen. Peace + Plants, Rich

Many of us have a lot of tools and personality traits that were probably beneficial to us at different times in our lives. You know, I grew up in a challenging neighborhood. The way I had to act, the way I had to maneuver back then doesn't apply where I am now in my life or even apply when I was a teacher. You know, I grew up in a high school where making eye contact meant you wanted to fight. And by working as a teacher, you're supposed to make eye contact and you wanted to fight and but working as a teacher you're supposed to make eye contact and say good morning to everybody so learning certain things and realizing that hey you have to let go of a lot of these things and understanding that these things many of them you know were socialized into us and we have to not simply look at this debate of nature

versus nurture and see how they both work together so for me unlearn was the idea that we can let go to really gain more from our lives as opposed to acquiring some new mystical skill that people have yet to tell us. And it's a secret, but we are constantly growing, evolving beings and we can't remain stagnant. So unlearn for that, I took it from a perspective of not to make it about myself, but to help people, you know, use my abilities to put words together to help other people figure out their own situations. That's Humble the Poet, and this is the Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast.

Hey, everybody. What's happening? How you guys doing? My name is Rich Roll. I am Based in Toronto, Humble is a former teacher turned rapper, spoken word artist, and author who's known for his very distinctive style. This is a guy who rocks lots of tattoos. He's got a long beard, a head wrap, this infectious, silly smile, and he's constantly putting out into the world positive, uplifting messages. And this point of view that I think is fair to say at times challenges conventional wisdom, shakes convention, and once in a while goes against the grain. Humble has been featured on popular television programs such as CBC's Canada Reads.

He was featured in Apple's first Canadian ad spot for their Shot on iPhone campaign. He is the author of a book called Unlearn, 101 Simple Truths for a Better Life, which is really a great read. And he has a new book coming out in the fall entitled Things No One Else Can Teach Us, which you can preorder now. Humble came on my radar, I don't know, a year or so ago. I got hip to his Instagram. I just loved what he was putting out in the world, and I thought he would make a great podcast guest, and I think I was correct in that intuition. So, a little bit more about him coming up in a couple few, but first. We're brought to you today by recovery.com.

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is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. Okay, Conor, humble the poet. So this is a really fun conversation. We talked about lots of stuff. We talked about the cost of being we discuss gratitude mindfulness the difference between paying attention versus getting attention and the dark side of social media and we talk about how you are not your beliefs and of course what we all may need to unlearn i really dug talking to humble there's so much wisdom here so so much to learn, so much to unlearn. So, without further ado, this is me and Humble the Poet. Tell me what that is on your wrist.

So, it's a kata. So, I mean, in Sikh heritage, there's different articles that people rock. And the kata, historically, they'd wear multiple, you know, going into battle. It served as a weapon protection and everything else. And then from a spiritual context, I mean, it all depends on who you ask. Everyone has their own context for it. But I've been told when I was a kid, it was your handcuff to the divine. I was also told it was your reminder to be self-aware.

I've also been told it's a source of iron because it's made out of iron, so just rubbing in your skin um it's a a reminder of infinity because it's a circle no beginning no end like creation is that specific to the sick tradition yeah yeah yeah it's part of the so normally it's usually what most people you know it's kind of become the cross in some senses. But why only one? I used to rock a whole bunch. I mean, I started making a lot of noise and move around. It's in the way. Yeah.

And then I used to have one on this arm as well. Then I think when I first got a tattoo, I think I took it off just for the healing. And then I never put one back on after that. Well, listen, man, really excited to have you here today. I'm so grateful to be here, man. Delighted to meet you. Been following your stuff for a long time. And you're somebody, you're just one of those people that is kind of out in the ether and I'd see your stuff from time to time. And I'm like, that guy's cool, man. Like he's like rocking like an awesome vibe and

kind of made a mental note, like he'd be awesome for the podcast. But for whatever reason, like I just didn't, I didn't know you or I didn't i didn't i wasn't i mean our friends circles like overlap like we know tons of the same people but that only got revealed after we connected yeah i know right it's like oh you know so and so i know so i think it was well it was neil past richa who basically then connected the dots for us he's a good friend of mine who i ran into on the airport or something yeah we ended up sitting beside each other on a plane and then he's just like, oh, you need to talk to Rich. Yeah, he's cool. I want to get Neil on the show too. Amazing author. And then just the other day, you shared our mutual friend, Utkarsh, a little clip of him on stage at TED with Freestyle

Love Supreme. So, I texted Udkarsh yesterday and I was like come on man you gotta come over like Humble's coming over he wanted to come and hang out but he had to work this afternoon so

but he's the best man I've known him for like five or six years okay and he's been on the podcast we just met at TED oh you did so you were there

were you there in an official capacity were you did you give a talk I didn't give a talk I went there as a guest and trying to figure out how to stand beside the stage and see if they let me on. Spontaneously? Yeah.

Just one of the speakers just wasn't cutting it, and they just grabbed a hook and just hooked them off stage. And I would just run on and be like, hey, guys, this is my impromptu TED Talk. So I was hoping for that to happen. It didn't happen. But I think it's just me. I'm obsessed with learning communities. So whether it's TED Talks, Google Zeitgeist, I think World Domination Summit is going to be the next one I attend. Just anything and anywhere where just people are open to learning new stuff, and I can just sit there and just have my biases challenged here, an idea I haven't heard before. So I try to wiggle my way into all of this.

So this is my second year at TED. Cool. I had a mutual friend with Utkarsh, and they're like, hey, you have to take his number. You got to find him when you're there. So this is my second year at TED. Cool. I had a mutual friend with Garsh. And they're like, hey, you have to take his number. You got to find him when you're there. And then we hit it off. He's the dude, man. He's the dude.

He's super talented. And World Domination Summit, I spoke at that event a couple years ago. It's pretty cool. In the world of big conferences and the like, Chris really runs an amazing show. You'll enjoy that. But I'm surprised you haven't done a TED Talk. I've been invited to a couple of TEDx's, and I think just trying to wrap my head around how the culture works.

And I think understanding as well as in addition to my own personal ambitions, what it represents for me having a turban and a beard, wiggling my way slowly into the mainstream ethos and how I need to kind of navigate that. So I've been really trying to figure out the best way to make that happen and have an impact and learn the, I guess, the subtle nuances of that community and what they're looking for. Because apparently it's not just as straightforward as, hey, let me just do a TED Talk and just give you 20 minutes. It's a little bit more curated than I thought.

So I think I'm learning about that. I applied to be a fellow last year i didn't make it i'm gonna play again this year and see what happens well on that subject of of kind of being conscious of your your roots and you know your your heritage your ethnicity and your heritage and all of that like how conscious are you of that in the process of you know creating the art that you create like is that uh is it is i guess what i'm getting at is sort of like you are who you are and your ethnicity doesn't um it permeates what you do but it's not the sort of top line subject matter like in a very you know express, express way. Does that make sense? I didn't say that very articulately, but, you know, it is who you are and it's the ethos behind

like everything that you express and your sensibility, but it's not like, you're not using it as a weapon, I guess. Yeah, definitely not. I'm not. I mean, I feel like the times have continually changed to kind of make that happen by itself. I think having Donald Trump as president definitely threw me into a whole different direction as people started to view me superficially as, oh, this would be a great guy to put front and center. This guy represents everything that we're trying to promote to fight that certain energy and me being cognizant of that and being like look um i don't want to just simply become the benefactor of reverse racism now because all of a sudden everyone's looking for quote-unquote diversity and inclusion you know i

there's substance to what i'm trying to put out there but i think what i also started to realize is now kind of being in my 10th year as an artist, starting to actually see the cultural impact of my existence for my community, which I wasn't thinking about when I first started. I was just a guy with personal ambitions trying to make it in music, trying to impress a couple of girls and have fun. and now 10 years later meeting artists and coming across other creatives and them giving me very specific stories about oh when you made that song or when you wrote that post or when you first released this book how it impacted me and changed stuff and starting to see it in the way you know people are tying turbans the way i tie it i met a i met a kid in new york that had copies of my tattoos there's a guy in india that has my face tattooed on his neck so you start to realize like there's an impact there and i was heavily influenced by hip-hop culture that's what helped me find my foundation and my self-confidence so now being more mindful of it

not trying to assume some role model role or ambassador role but more so being like hey this is an opportunity because 15 years ago when people thought turban and beard, they thought enemy combatant and they thought terrorist, they thought certain things. And now it's an opportunity where I might not be able to do anything with the older generation, but kids are growing up and if Humble the Poet's their point of reference, then I think that's something very healthy. Yeah. I would imagine as inspiring as that can be for you and as energizing it can be for your art, it also poses the risk or the danger of causing you to get too much in your head and get overly calculated about what you're doing. You know what I mean? Like there's a kid in India and I need to appeal to him or it needs to hit these sort of demographics, then you're sort of losing the thread of what makes you, you know, you.

of what makes you, you know, you. Yeah, absolutely. Whenever anything works, whenever I put something out and it works and that gets stuck in your head and that little voice in your head, like you should do more of this. You know, whether, you know, the first song I ever released

that passed a million views on YouTube, all of a sudden you're like, oh, I should make more of that, even if it was a happy accident. That's my personal, you know, challenge that I've enthusiastically approached where it's like, hey, I've enthusiastically approached was like hey I have to be more free thinking I have to let go I have to be less analytical and less strategic and

be more of a creative and an artist I also kind of feel like I see where the energies are headed and things are really kind of heading in the direction I wanted them to head so when I first published unlearn I had swearing in it when i independently published it and that wasn't something too too common and then working with my first publisher in canada you know they were trying to double down on the swearing and they wanted to change the title to put swearing on it and you're like whoa this is a lot different than when i the resistance i first got so i feel like the the authenticity authenticity is what people are hungry for. It just becomes a challenge when people are manufacturing their authenticity. Authenticity has been co-opted and now it's manufactured. Yeah.

I think for me, for my mental health, I realized that I have to focus on paying attention, not getting attention. Because getting attention is this peakless mountain that I can continually chase. And now it's like, oh, look at these beautiful flowers. Oh, let me take a picture beside these beautiful flowers to document them. Oh, these beautiful flowers didn't give me the likes I wanted to get. And I think I realized for me, it was like, no, you know what? Instead, pay attention to what you're putting out there and now challenge yourself to outdo your own work from a craft perspective.

So it's like, okay, I wrote that. Oh, I had to, I edited that because I didn't want my mom to read that story about myself. Well, now that's what I have to lean into, that discomfort and that fear. Or, hey, people might misinterpret these words and get offended. Well, you know what? Let it happen. To be a free thinker, you have to run the risk of offending some people. And I think for me, I've been focusing a lot more on that and the craft. And I mean, I'm very fortunate to be one of the few people on Instagram that doesn't have to post pictures of himself to have a loyal followership. Meaning you share your words. I share my words. Yeah. I share my words and I got plenty of words. There's a couple of pictures. If someone's taking a picture of me and they send it to me and it looks okay, then I can definitely post that.

It's kind of that Jay Shetty formula of like, quote, image, quote. You mix it up a little bit. Yeah, the grid. The wellness grid. Is that what it is? Is there a term for that? Well, I'm coining it now. If you're on wellness, you better get on that grid.

I don't know. That just makes me want to go in the other direction. Yeah. But then you start to ask yourself that question, right? Which is like, why do I need to be different for this? And when I was an elementary school teacher, that was one thing they really put in my head, which was stop trying to reinvent the wheel. Right. But you have to counterbalance that against there's this formula out here and this is what works and if you want to you know be seen in this way this is what you do and as an artist isn't it your job to question that and to deconstruct that and and and say well what is my own personal way completely completely and i know for me like when i started to see a lot of those videos which was like um you know if heartbroken, you need to watch this. Right.

Or the- I didn't know how much I needed to see this until I woke up. Yeah, those- You see certain things and you're like, really? All right. Yeah, and it's a little bit click-baity. And then it's also kind of like, it turns... And I'm also an influencer, so I work with brands and I work with agencies.

And then they send you these white papers that give you all the tips and tricks to like ensure you have maximum engagement. And yeah, and then all of a sudden you start to get these little tips as well. And then I guess that nonstop balancing act of trying to be like, okay, well, I'm existing in this attention economy and we're kind of governed by these Greek gods known as the algorithms who don't care how dope our words are. They just care about are we feeding them content, content, content, and then deciding to yourself, okay, how much of this matters? Because this is a never-ending journey. You're never going to have enough. The word enough doesn't exist in that space.

And I think for me, the question has just been like, are you having fun and figuring it out? So for me, I've been able to kind of participate in that world but kind of working with other people like i have an assistant now so now when i write my content it's an email i'm taking a quote taking an idea i type it out an email i hit send i don't get any immediate gratification because it doesn't go up maybe for like two weeks so i don't get any gratification knowing if people like so it goes into some queue and your assistant puts it together and posts it. So it goes into some queue and your assistant puts it together and posts it for you? It goes into a queue and then my assistant just makes sure there's no spelling mistakes. She makes sure I didn't repeat the same word too many times.

And then she ensures that the grid stays the grid. Wow. How do you balance the commerce aspect of what you do with the creative aspect? I think now, as of lately, taking this as my responsibility and not as something I want to do and hope people will allow me to do. Realizing that, hey, I don't know how to swim. I love to dance, but I'm not a good dancer. I love to sing, and I got a decent singing voice, but when I put words together, it helps people understand their own stories.

This is my responsibility. This is how I contribute to this grand scheme. And from that, you need resources. And if you find ways to get those resources, it'll help you amplify this. And I live a super simple life. I don't own a car. I float around. I don't really buy clothes.

I make my own stuff and people give me stuff. around. I don't really buy clothes. I make my own stuff and people give me stuff. So it's like, I kind of know my struggling artist days, which was a solid five years, really made me an involuntary minimalist. And I haven't let that go now that my bank account's in a better situation. Well, there's a freedom with that. Once you realize you don't need all of these things, you're liberated from that. And if you can kind of maintain that sensibility, it just opens up doors and possibilities for you because you're not constrained by your material relationships. Exactly. And it's kind of like now, how am I going to use these resources to either amplify the message or further this or take six months off and isolate myself and work on something? And a new idea I heard recently was go somewhere where your ego has nothing to do.

Go places where your ego does not have an opportunity to shine and do something, and that's by yourself, where no one's watching. And now all of a sudden, once your ego decides to take a nap because there's nothing there for it to do, you can start that journey of self-discovery. because there's nothing there for it to do, you can start that journey of self-discovery. And being a realist and focusing on pragmatism, that requires resources as well. Right. But it's also your obligation and your responsibility as an artist. You need that solitude and that reflection and that ability to distance yourself from culture

and kind of the gestalt of society in order to have perspective that you can share well and it was neil that shared me with one of his great ideas is he devotes two days a week to just spending going on long five-hour walks i know that's what he does like i'm like i don't know how he does like he'll send me these long texts and i'm like i don't have time to respond to this but he seems to have a lot of time and he's unbelievably productive like turning out these books and he's like like, I was walking through Toronto today and I had this amazing conversation with a shopkeeper. And I was like, this is not my life. Oh yeah. He's efficient.

And it's beautiful. Yeah. He's efficient. He's efficient with the way he set up his life. And he's a dad. He's got kids. It's not like he's living, he's some single dude. Yeah. He's got three kids and he's earning money and he's working. But he set it up in a way where he sees the value in these two days a week and he makes it happen. And that makes his work better. That makes his work so much better. Yeah. And I think, so I'm taking a lot of cues from him and other artists that I'm seeing who have doubled down on the craft more so than the pursuit of attention and kind of playing the popularity game. Because very quickly, this can just become a bigger example of middle school where everyone's

just chasing for attention. And it's not only exhausting, it's unsustainable. And ultimately, it works at cross purposes with the ultimate... Like if your goal is to really create a legacy and have impact, you're just burning yourself out. In order to really create something of lasting import, you need that time away and that reflection that we were talking about. Completely, and you need three days just to let go of some of those inner bullies in your head

that are just saying a bunch of stuff like, no, you've got to make this a hit. You've got to get on the New York Times bestseller list. You've got to prove that person who didn't return your text wrong. Now they're going to feel bad when they see you on Jimmy Kimmel. But then you're just a ping pong ball reacting to your environment all the time. And I say that as somebody who does that. I'm not saying that I've exempted myself from that. Oh, and I think we're all guilty of it. I think that's where it just takes time for these voices to subside. And I've become very cognizant of the people I hang out with now. Because in the beginning, very superficially, people are like, well, don't be around negative people. It's like,

all right, I'm not around negative people. Well, also, be around people with purpose and who are productive. Like, all right, cool. Some of my sweet, nice friends that aren't really doing much with their existence i'm gonna spend less time around not that i don't like them i just need to feed off the energy of others now i'm around you know ambitious productive people but now amongst them some of them are a little bit too caught up in the game and i'm like oh this is this is rubbing off on me because now they're making me think about things that i was never thinking about they're making me self-conscious about things i never thought about you know had friends worried about being seen sitting in coach

on an airplane or friends talking about, oh, we're going to this event. Oh, we got to get the Uber Black. I'm like, why can't we just get the Uber X? No, not this one. They can't see this. And I was like, okay, there's nothing wrong with this person, but they're getting lost in the sauce. I have to find people who might not be doing that as much, and I have to kind of control my dosage accordingly. And it's just, it's a never, there's always levels to this and always being cognizant of it. And it does lead back to just much more alone time, which so many people avoid because they don't have that relationship with themselves. Yeah, well, I think it, I have a little bit of a countervailing opinion on that, which is that your ability to kind of navigate those different types of people in those circles is contingent upon your spiritual fitness.

If you have a porous boundary and you're around negative people or people whose priorities are at odds with your own, then yeah, that's going to seep into your consciousness and impact your behavior. But if you're like a Jedi master, you can go anywhere. It doesn't matter. And every person that you see or you encounter is a learning experience, a mirror to help you reflect on your own behavior and kind of sharpen the sword of what's most important to you. And how do we approach Jedi Master from your experience?

I don't know. I was going to ask you that question, man. I feel like the way I always look at it is we, the longer, my mom always always say, you know, you don't have to be in the fire to get burnt. You'll still feel the heat and, you know, be mindful of your company. And we have an idea called Sangat, which is the congregation. And they always talk about Satsangat, Sat meaning true, being around a true congregation. My mom always looked at it as be around people in the

temple who are praying and worshiping. I took it more holistically and being like, you are a product of your environment, no matter where you are. If I spend more time in New York, I'll probably pick up the accent. So I guess for me, my boundaries may be rigid, and then slowly they become more porous, and slowly they get chipped away at until I realize that. And I think BoJack Horseman said it well. It's like the LA Tar Pits is a big analogy for the whole city. It's that you stand in one place long enough, you slowly sink in without realizing it. So that's why I've been doing the 50-50.

The moment I catch myself saying something, the moment I catch myself describing a dilemma as a problem, then I have to go home. And that's what I see out here because when I go home, then I encounter people with real problems, whether it's health issues, whether it's dealing with certain traumas or what have you. And out here, sometimes people are like, oh, this person didn't acknowledge me enough and they're losing their stuff over that or this girl didn't text me back. And I was like, okay, if I start to validate these as problems, I need to get out. I need to go back to some of the realness and just hang out with my high school buddies. LA is very weird that way. And it's an easy target. It's an easy destination for a takedown for all of those reasons, which are all valid.

I found that, as somebody who's lived here for a very long time, that there's a lot of beauty here, too, that gets overlooked. You have to be a lot more intentional about what you're doing. You go to New York, life happens. It's right in front of you. You can't escape it. You fall into the flow of, you know, whatever's happening just by virtue of being present there. But here you'll just be, it's easy to be incredibly lonely here. And it's easy to fall in with a crowd that you don't resonate with. You have to really spend enough time here to figure out where are my people, where's the place that I like to hang out and seek those people out and exert a lot more energy and effort to cultivate that community. And it takes a lot longer, I feel. Yeah, completely.

And I think people out here have really forced me to ask myself the question, what are my priorities? I think all relationships depend on priorities lining up. And the challenge is, A, if I want to have a relationship with you, whether it's business, whether it's friendship, whether it's romantic, I have to know what your priorities are. I have to know what my priorities are and see if they line up. And that is the whole dance, just trying to figure out what's really important to you. And that might not come out through your words that might only come through your actions and then doing the work myself to figure out what's really important to me and um i think coming out here that that was one of the big challenges because it was a situation where um my my i came out here

as a struggling artist i came out here with with not much uh promise to everything i was working on not picking up any traction and then kind of like like a chicken without his head just running in any direction when i saw something working for somebody else oh this person's dropping a video every other day i should just drop videos every other day oh this person's getting involved in this type of project i should do do that. And then having to stop back and being like, is this you? Do you want to do this for the next 10 years, the next 20 years? Are you just trying to do this now because you feel like you need to make a quick buck? And that's when taking that step back, slowing down, and then really paying attention to the people that was around and being like, oh, well, this person is doing very well,

but they're doing something that was fun for them eight years ago, and it's not fun for them anymore, but their audience won't let them do anything else. Right. They become a prisoner of their own sort of system that they set up for themselves. Exactly. And then I realized that's more important than adding another comma to my net worth. That's more important than getting recognized by peers or acknowledgement by some award show. And that really started a journey for me. And now, and I got dropped off here by my book agent, I had said, I said, listen, now everything I'm going to say to you comes from the idea that I want to have fun.

And this is the first time I released a book with a major publisher. And some things were completely amazing. Some things were banging my head against the wall and being like, if this is not going to be fun, then we're going to have to explore different routes. And these are the ideas I think that will make this more of an enjoyable collaborative opportunity. And none of these involve getting a bigger advance. These involve more collaboration, more transparency, you know, them being more open to some of my ideas, them presenting less roadblocks when I try to do things on my own.

And I think chasing the fun, and a big one that I learned that from was Jay Shetty, just really reminding me, screw the pot of gold, it's all about the rainbow. And if the rainbow doesn't sound enticing, then that pot of gold won't make up for it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think you're seeing a lot of that

in the creator community right now, especially with the vloggers, like all these kids that kind of came up doing daily vlogs. And at some point, this is not a sustainable lifestyle. At some point, you're going to just flame out on that. And kind of that moment has arrived for a lot of those people. And you can see them wrestling in different ways with how to find the best way forward from that still maintaining their connection with their audience but not being you know chained you know indefinitely to this kind of expectation around their output that is just bananas yeah because it's never ending like you know back in the days the first generation of youtubers was like drop a a video once a week, make some good money and get some great opportunities.

And then people came in, disrupted that by dropping two videos a week. And now all of a sudden it's like three videos a day. And they're getting better and better and better. And the pressure, it's just like, yeah, you can chase that forever. And, you know, so then mental health becomes an issue with a lot of these people then they're coming out and talking about that which is healthy obviously for the ecosystem but but that in itself can turn be turned into a commodity like oh commodifying like you know the confessional culture of like you know what i mean it's crazy man yeah like this is like yeah

hey i just want to let you guys know that i'm going to be taking a break because of my mental health this announcement was brought to you by audible you know and you start to see it like you know and now it's like everybody has to come out with that but and at the same time i know it's not all disingenuous and i'm starting to see now where people are existing in the space where the lines are blurred like i had a friend passed out from like heat stroke at a concert and he was a larger dude and he fell on top of me and then like i caught him but i fell with him and then we got him down and everybody was really kind and then while you know he was he was waking up one of the first questions he asked was like did you guys get

it on camera oh man and i and i don't take anything away from him as a person i think he's a wonderful person but i think it's the culture out here has kind of normalized it to the point where everything needs to be documented and nobody questions why anymore and i have a friend who's a model in sydney australia and she came out here and she's like oh my god it's so acceptable to just like carry your tripod around and take pictures anywhere. Like when I'm in Sydney, they look at me funny. And I was like, I don't know if that's a great it's probably a great thing if you're a creative consultant and a stylist and you were too scared to share your stuff when you were in Sydney and here people are OK with it. And it's just really trying to find that because everything can be documented and everything can be used as currency our vulnerability can be currency you know if

something happened to us we can we can lean on that and that gets people interested people we as human beings want to hear stories and as we should stories are what pushes us forward it just got to a point now where it's like okay well how can i pepper these stories in or add some spice to these stories to make them more interesting? And then you get to yourself to a situation where you're like, well, the last story I told was amazing. What's the next one going to be? Well, maybe if I don't have a story, maybe I can create a story. And then I think that's where we get to this manufacturing of authenticity. Yeah, it's a pathology, really. You really become a victim of your own life

because you're unable to ever be present in the experience that you're having. You're always calculating your next move when everybody is the star of their own personal Truman show. Yes. I mean, really, the litmus test for me is like, why am I sharing? What is the purpose of sharing this? Is it. Yes. I mean, really, the litmus test for me is like, why am I sharing? What is the purpose of sharing this? Is it sharing it to share it? Or is there some message that I'm trying to convey or some experience that I have

that could be a benefit to other people? But if I don't run that mental calculus and you're just doing it for the purpose of doing it because you think that's what's important in order to be relevant, then you've lost the plot. Yeah, I completely agree. But I also feel like each individual is going to kind of have to go through it themselves and kind of hit that breaking point, hopefully. I mean, I used to, you know, casually take a picture of myself in business class and try to make it look like it wasn't about me being in business class, but it was me taking a selfie, but just making sure the

audience kind of knew because I'd get some validation from it. Because in the early years, your fan base is, they're celebrating you like family and friends. So like, oh, our boy made it, oh, our boy's, you know, getting recognition from the mainstream. Oh, our boy is getting paid to sell Nestle chocolates. chocolates you know in the beginning you know it was them watching you kind of grow and then me realizing that hey is this the message i want to put out there is this you know i got a 14 year old nephew is this what i want him to aspire to is these things that matter um you know getting getting to go to the all-star game and him being really excited because you know he's playing basketball he's like six two you know young kid and him being like oh man i wish i was there with you and i'm and

me realizing hey i'll be more excited when i get to watch you play you know and letting him know that that's more important to me than getting to sit courtside this year and being like hey those are the things that are going to matter in the long run for me and that's the idea i want to put with you that despite all these things that that 1% of each of our lives that we show on Instagram carefully curated, the stuff that really matters are our relationships, the people that we connect with, these new experiences, the opportunities that we have to lean into our discomforts and be guided by our, let our fears not dictate our actions. And we find some growth and some validation that we can continually evolve as people. I think these are the more exciting things, but you can't capture that in a photo, you know, without kind of still sharing this story and having the same narrative of like, you know, people taking pictures and being like, I'm so grateful to have this opportunity to be here.

And it's like, are we grateful to be here or are we grateful to be able to document it and give the impression that we're grateful people? Well, I think there's a difference between, for example, if I was to take a picture of myself sitting courtside at the All-Star Game versus you, I mean, I saw that photo. You're like sitting next to Spike Lee, right?

It's like right on the court. It's insane and for a community of young asians like that's very impactful to see somebody who looks like them in a situation that they you know that they can relate to as being embraced by mainstream culture has you know a sort of, you know, downstream impact on how young northern Indians or Sikhs or anybody from, you know, the part of world from where you come to think differently about their own personal potential. Yeah. And it eventually turns into becoming, you know, children of the diaspora where it's just like, hey, my family came from another place and they came here. My parents still think the ways of their old country. I grew up in North America with completely different priorities.

I want to do X, Y, Z. My parents want me to do A, B, C. And there's always this clash. Now, here's a guy that still hangs out with his mom all the time. And she still wanted him to get married, have kids and be a doctor, lawyer, engineer. And he went and did a whole bunch of other different stuff, but without conflict. And I think that is, as I said, the cultural part of it. And that core side picture to me is no different than the grid. It's giving them something familiar,

something they value. And I learned that after going to a movie premiere and the only you know and wanting to be wanting to acknowledge that i was i was invited to this movie premiere and give a shout out to the movie but the only thing that they had uh the only signage they had was on a lamborghini so they had their so i took a picture with the lamborghini i don't that's not quote unquote on brand for me i don't take pictures with nice cars. But the engagement blew up. And realizing that people, like most people, they dig that stuff. They dig fancy stuff. They dig pretty things.

They dig shiny things. And really trying to deciding, okay, well, how do I put the pill in the applesauce? All right, I took a picture. I was given a picture of me at courtside with a bunch of very influential individuals. Now, that's the applesauce. What's the pill? Well, let me write it in the caption. Let me share my stories. Let me share stories about things that I've experienced and now how hopefully this can create an impact and culturally show people, because we're going to get to a point where I won't be the first to do anything anymore. And for South Asians in general, we won't be celebrating the first South Asian to get

our own NBC show, the first South Asian to win an Emmy, the first South Asian to win an Oscar. Once we pass that and my nieces and nephews generation grows up and they're just like, well, we can do anything. And that's embedded in the subconscious. The same way a young child of color can believe they can be president because they saw Obama. So I think for me, that cultural impact is important. And that does require recognizing how these mechanisms work, whether it's considered playing

the game to change the game or whether it's considered respecting your environment accordingly and not being too disruptive. But I think it was Scott Adams that said, in the beginning, you have to give them what they know before you can give them what they need. Yeah. Super interesting. Let's take it back. So you grew up in Toronto.

Born and raised. Yeah. Your parents are Punjabi. Punjabi, yes. Your dad had an engineering degree but was like a cab driver? He has a master's in economics. He got a master's degree in economics.

Came to Canada in the early 70s and came to Canada to get married. Their generation didn't really have a lot of choice in the matter of what they did with their lives. So his parents said, like, you got to move out to Canada.

We found a girl for you. You're going to get married. Arrange marriage. So the purpose of the move was to have an arranged marriage. Yeah. So the purpose of the move was most likely we found a girl in Canada. And I think my mother, before they got married, was already doing the paperwork to sponsor him over. And then once he was over, he'd be able to bring all his siblings over.

So it was very transactional and strategic. So then he came out and then as soon as he came out, he got married and then he started working. He had to start working immediately. And I think he worked in a factory for a bit, a furniture factory, while he was taking the course to get his taxi license. And then once he got that taxi license, he drove that for the next 30 years. And you're the only child? No, I'm the only boy. I have two sisters, two older sisters. So you grew up with that sort of educational pressure, expectation,

engineer, doctor, lawyer, this is going to be the path for you. That's the path. Very often my father would always say, as long as you're in school, you don't have to worry about anything. He would always say that. You don't have to worry about money. You don't have to worry about whatever you need. I will give you as long as you're in school.

And he was saying this to me when I was like eight. So I was thinking about like pizza lunches and stuff like that. Were you a good student? I was a very good student, but I wasn't a hardworking student. It was just I had the – we all have different learning abilities and learning styles. So I'm an auditory learner and a visual learner, so I can see and learn and I can hear it and learn. Most people who struggle in traditional schools are kinesthetic. learn. Most people who struggle in traditional schools are kinesthetic. They need to have an opportunity to work with things and manipulate things, which isn't always available in the

classroom. So I was doing very well all the way up through high school, but not really working hard until I hit university. And university requires a little bit more effort than simply brains. And that's when I started to see that I had to step up my work ethic. But yeah, I did very well in school. Got into university, did a degree in IT, coding, doing all that stuff. Right. So then how do you end up becoming an elementary school teacher? So at that point, it was like, hey, let me just do what... There's one guy in our family or a family friend, he went and did an undergrad and did an MBA and got a job at Nike and then got a job at Ford. And we're like, oh, that's how you get a job. Like, you know, he said.

So I was going to take that MBA route. And I was actually watching that television show, Boston Public, and seeing, you know, it's a TV show about a high school in Boston. And just watching one of the episodes and being like, whoa, this is so cool. It must be so cool to be a teacher. And I was always attending youth camps since I was a kid, you know, camps inspired by Sikh history, Sikh philosophy, and just kind of where you learn how to read Punjabi, whether you learn the history, you're learning how to sing hymns. And they were fun.

There was like, you know, 30% class, 80% going canoeing, skating, skiing. So it was like, they were fun things. I grew up in them and then I used to volunteer for them. So like by 16, 17, I was already. Like a counselor. Like a counselor. So I had a lot of experience with kids. And I had a really good repertoire.

So it was my sister that said it. She goes, why don't you become a teacher? She goes, you're actually good with kids, and you probably have more fun than trying to get your MBA. And then I didn't know anything about it. Then I, through mutual friends, found somebody who was a teacher. He kind of schooled me to the, well, this is what you're going to have to do to become a teacher, apply in a teacher's college, going through the whole process, forged a bunch of volunteer hours to get it

because it was like two months before the application process. And then I got in. I got into York University's teacher's program, which is a very difficult one to get into. I didn't know how difficult it was to get in. I do suspect a little bit of reverse racism helped me there as well, because they started to recognize representation mattered. And then went to teacher's college, finished that, got hired right before I graduated in elementary school, and taught the fourth grade for a couple of years and the fifth grade and then the third

grade before I left. Wow. So how many years did you do that for? Five years. Yeah. Yeah. Those are really interesting ages. They are interesting ages, but it taught me a lot.

It taught me a lot about how to communicate. It taught me a lot about my own biases because I started to realize that these kids are like literally empty vessels. At that point, whenever they say anything remotely critical or ugly, you can hear they're just parroting their parents. Exactly. And that really made me start to question like, well, how much of me is me? And how much of me is what other people taught me? How much of me is my neighborhood? How much of me is the media? And that's kind of the premise behind Unlearned.ed right those are the initial seeds behind

that that were planted that birth unlearned yeah because once i had left and i i i had left assuming i got a record deal so i was like okay um you know i was all right well let's slow down here all right yeah i mean the first question i have is when did you did you have were you a kid who was making music all along and kind of repressing this artistic sensibility that you had because you felt like it didn't fit you know familial expectations or was it something you kind of discovered in yourself later in life no i was i was definitely a kid who was writing uh stories i was the kid who was writing music in my head um but definitely saturday morning uh tv, Nickelodeon, Disney Channel,

none of the kids looked like me. So that was enough for me to just be like. It just never felt like it could be a possibility for you. Yeah, like I didn't see myself on Home Improvement. I didn't see myself on Mickey Mouse Club. I didn't see myself on any of these TV shows. So I was just like, this is. This dream is not available.

Yeah, this is not what people that look like me do. So you just pushed it down? Pushed it down and stayed to what was more quote-unquote realistic. And then what ended up happening was when I started working, in your evenings, you had a lot more free time. You don't have homework. So I took a second job as a high school math tutor. I was really good at math. I'm still pretty good at math.

So I was tutoring high school kids in math for extra cash trying to you know live a life beyond what teachers were getting paid and I'd be going out to concerts going out to shows just doing whatever I could to just you know be social enjoy life and I saw a spoken word artist perform and I had never seen that before and then that was the time that I realized I started digging into spoken word poetry realizing that hey these guys this is a reaction to how boring people think poetry is. Like you pick up a book of poetry and you're like, this is very bland. And then realizing because you're missing 90% of the magic, which is the poet. When the poet recites a poem, it's completely different. Yeah, the performance, the feeling.

So I fell in love with it there. And I started writing. But again, just writing in a notebook, just keeping it to myself. And I eventually, a friend, we went to like a coffee shop and they had like a spoken word competition. And then a friend said, you should enter, you know, try it out. A lot of pretty girls in the audience. Let's see what we can do. And then I entered and I won. And then that was kind of my first foray into it.

And then finding a spoken word collective in Toronto, they had a website. They had like monthly events. I started going to those. And then from there, wanting, seeing things that were happening in my immediate community. And at that point, speaking to other adults and them kind of being like, the kids these days, they don't listen to anybody. The kids these days, they're all messed up, you know, whether they're talking about drugs, violence or whatever. And me, I grew up in a challenging neighborhood and as well as I taught in a challenging neighborhood. And I said, violence, or whatever. And me, I grew up in a challenging neighborhood, and as well as I taught in a challenging neighborhood. And I said, look, it's not the kids, it's our messaging. So I'm like, let me take a stab at it. And so I was trying to write a spoken word poem called Voice

for the Voiceless, which was going to be about the various stories that were happening in our community. And I put some music in the back. It was Jay-Z's Minority Report. And in the moment there was music in the back, the words just started to snatch onto that. And then that's the moment I realized, oh, I can rap. And then from that point, everything started coming out as poetic rap. And the name Humble the Poet was kind of the reaction realizing that, hey, rap is such a high level of literary art that doesn't get that respect that it deserves. And started just releasing music, lyric videos. This is like 2008. Right.

Like, it's not that long ago. Not that long ago. DIY vibe. DIY vibe. Who were your influences? Like, who were you looking to? Andre 3000, Lauryn Hill, Common, CeeLo. High Vod.

Yeah. Jay-Z. I think Jay-Z probably a little bit less because I knew he didn't write. So it kind of felt like he was a little too gifted for me to look up to. He was just like a natural talent. There's an artist out of Carson City, California, Ross Koss. out of Carson City, California, Roscos. He really had that juxtaposition of being from the hood but getting a very high level of education.

His mother taking him to museums, teaching him his own personal history. So the way he delivered his message was very educated but not coming across that he's smarter than anybody. Became obsessed with his work and the whole ruckus movement, most deaf to live quality, dead prezz all of that is really connected with me um and it was probably seeing andre 3000 and outcast atlians they had that one track uh elevators 13th floor that track um and one of the music videos he's wearing a turban and that just like as it blew my mind as like a 14 year old kid seeing this feeling like whoa like i ain't never seen a cool kid with a turban before

at that point the coolest kids i knew with turbans were just the ones that fought you know that's that was the thing like there was a rough neighborhood so the ones that fought back were were the ones that had respect and they were the ones that kept guys like me safe at that point and falling in love with putting words together. And then that just evolved in itself. So then I was releasing music, just putting out lyric videos, not showing my face, still scared if the world knew what I was trying to do. And eventually people recognized my voice somehow. And then that voice for the voiceless.

In Vancouver, there's a big drug trade over there. And they have a lot of gang violence in the South Asian community. And over a couple of years span, about like 200, 300 young men were murdered at this violence. So what I ended up doing was I told that story in song, and then I listed every single one at the end of the lyrics video. And then people just reached out, like, that's my brother. Nobody's ever spoken about him in a positive light before. He's only just considered a criminal, or that was my cousin, cousin or I knew that guy or I used to date that guy. And not realizing that I would have ever had some kind of impact and not even showing my face at this time.

And so slowly that just kept evolving. And I think in 2009, I was like, hey, I should take this a little bit more serious. And by more serious, I mean buying humblethepoet.com. Right. And at some point, some people take some interest in cultivating this, right? Like you have this opportunity to record an album. Like I've heard you kind of talk about it, but you dance around the edges of it. So I'm not sure I really understand kind of what happened. So I thought people took interest in cultivating it. What it was is i had connected with a producer a local producer but he was definitely the most passionate artist i'd ever met at this point

and he really put a battery in my back where he was like this wasn't like we can make it it was like you need to be heard like you should not be doing anything else why are you working your job like the world needs to hear this we can make this happen and me at this time not being you know i had i was working a school job but at the same time you know i had made some investments in 2008 happened and we all got our asses kicked so i was like hey i got debt man i'm i gotta work and like pay that off but you know it wasn't anything that was stressing me out because i had a salary and he's like look man we'll figure it all out i can help figure it all out i worked in japan i worked with all these artists you know's a lot of markets, a lot of ways to make money in

this game that you don't know about. You don't have to get discovered by Puff Daddy. And then we really developed an intense friendship and a brotherhood. And he came from a very challenging family situation. And I, on the opposite, had a very warm, safe, kind family situation where I didn't even realize other people didn't have it as good as I did. And then I welcomed him into my home. And I said, listen, where you're living as toxic, just come stay with me. And really just embraced him. And I didn't have any brothers. So I realize now I was just really chasing this feeling of having a brother for the first time.

And then he said he had secured us a record deal which was going to involve actually writing for other artists so he sent me videos of these other artists young kids being like oh see this kid right here his dad's rich he just wants to help his kid become a popular rapper the kid sucks we can write for him we'll get paid in the back end it'll be great and it was offering more money than I would have made in two years as a teacher. And I was like, this is a no-brainer. Obviously, I love this lifestyle of just getting inspired and writing stuff. And now you're saying you're going to give me a lot of money to do so.

So there wasn't any due diligence done on my part. I really felt like he was somebody that wanted to cultivate my talent. I realized that instead he didn't have something set up. And he was kind of, I don't want to say nefarious, but I think he was trying to set things up where he felt like he was going to find the money somehow. Yeah, he's just like too, there's a fine line between hucksterism and effective producing because part of being a producer is kind of being ahead of the game a little bit.

It's like sort of holding yourself out like more is going on than actually is, and that's how deals are put together. But you extend yourself a little bit too much, and it's big-time trouble. That's exactly what happened. And on my part, I went all in. Because at this point, I have to – You've developed faith and trust. Faith and trust in him, but as well as I fell in love with the lifestyle. I spent the summer in the Bay living with another independent rapper and just living

his lifestyle and falling in love with it. And he was a one bedroom out of a house that he was renting, sleeping on a couch. But every single day he got up and like, all right, where's the money? Where can I perform? And sometimes it was performing on street corners. Sometimes it was taking $20 gigs at a a local club but kind of just really falling in love with just like the energy the vibe every day being different meeting new people and just kind of being like hey i want this for myself too and now somebody's offering me an opportunity to

do this with some upfront money and um it at the same time my actual career as humble the poet was still working out well people were discovering me I was getting gigs and flown out to different cities to do shows, none of which were sustainable enough to pay my mortgage and none of them were sustainable enough to not have a second job, but things were still happening. And I got mixed up with that at the same time, thinking any moment when I got home from this trip, that new check that I'm waiting for will be there. The check's always like 10 days away. The check's always 10 days away, yeah. And I mean, I've since learned, especially working with legitimate publishers,

the check can come in 24 hours. There's overnight mail. If the check hasn't come, it's not coming. And learning it the hard way. And I believed a lot of his lies because I wanted to. I take ownership for that. I wanted to. He wasn't a master manipulator.

I wanted what he was selling. And I wanted so hard to believe it. And so many people started to show me the real situation and I pushed them away. I looked at them as unsupportive. And I'm like, any moment, this is going to all start to make sense. And then a whole year went by, by the time I realized this is not going to make sense. And he had since disappeared. And now I caught myself in ridiculous debt with a mortgage, living by myself, not knowing what I was going to do, feeling super sorry for myself, blaming everybody, including the people who were trying to help me. And just thinking it was everybody's fault, really trying to elicit people's empathy for me. I wanted people to feel sorry for me. I wanted people to feel my pain.

I wanted it to feel as if nobody had ever experienced what I had just experienced before. And having my heart broken by women in the past, being like, ah, I only thought women could break my heart. Now a homeboy broke my heart. Oh, poor me. Just really sinking deep into it and just turning to substances and

turning to inactivity and just really taking that downward spiral. Well, this dismantling is your divine moment. Yes. You know, and a big part of your work is helping people understand the holistic nature of the human animal and this idea that nobody is all bad and nobody is all good. And together we're flawed and beautiful and in pain and the whole spectrum of what it means to live a life.

And when you look at this producer, it's very easy to put yourself in the victim mentality and to blame him and to, you know, sort of paint this, you know, picture of a not so good person. But ultimately, this guy gave you a gift, which is he jettisoned you out of a life that you might have lived for the rest of, you know, your days, and set you on this journey that has been difficult, that forced you to meet your maker. But that crucible, I think, is what,, is what formed the person that's sitting across from me today. Oh, 1,000%.

And I am grateful to him from afar. I hold no ill will towards him from afar. So this all meaning that there's no bad blood, but we're not reconnecting. There's a difference between resentment and discernment or boundaries. Yes, exactly. And that's been my story with a lot of people in my life, which is like, look, there's nothing there, but at this point, good luck to you. And that's kind of probably my approach to this as well. Most recently, and the other thing too in that situation, the friends that I met from his ethos, from that situation, when this all went down, he lost them.

So I ended up inheriting all his friends. And then when one of those friends recently passed away two years ago, I think he tried to reach out to reconnect because I think he had also done that friend dirty. He had borrowed money from a lot of people and thought he could just take from here and give to here and just continue this going on. And he was operating out of fear more so than some sort of well thought out plan. He's just trying to make it all happen and keep afloat and thinking short term. So there's no ill will there. And I definitely, when I was at my lowest and I finally hit what was rock bottom at that time, I promised myself, I said, you have to figure out a way to be grateful that this happened for you to look back. Because at that point, just even thinking about it impacted me physically and it hurt me.

And I lived in a condominium. I had to sell it. I had to sell all my possessions. And I had to move back with my mom and my dad. I couldn't drive by that condo. I couldn't go. And that was on a popular road to go downtown Toronto. If I saw it, it would give me an involuntary reaction. Just triggering a sense of failure. Triggering a sense of failure, triggering a sense of what I gave up because I was

short-sighted and I was saying things to myself like, you're so stupid, you're so dumb, you're so naive. That that self-bullying, that self-talk. So what triggered you out of that? I mean, a lot of people would just continue to dig that hole ad infinitum, but for you to have the faculty, the facility to realize you were going to have to find gratitude somehow in order to move forward. I think it was a combination of many things. I mean, the simple romantic story was being in bed and hearing some J. Cole lyrics and just like popping out

and J. Cole has some lyrics about, you know, will you allow this to let you turn bitter and cold or will you flip that fucking dollar and turn it to a dream? That, I remember,

was the moment where I actually got out of bed but I do think the two weeks of me isolating myself and just laying in bed doing nothing, hoping to be saved, hoping that check would still come. I feel like that might have actually been some self-compassion that I needed to heal because I was hurt and I needed

to take some time. So I think it was a combination of that. It was a combination of knowing that I did not want to be what he was. He found himself in a difficult situation and ran. And I was not just in debt to the bank. I was in debt to friends, very good friends, people I cared about. I didn't want to be that guy who had to run from them. So I didn't want to be what he was. So I got to this point where I was like, I have to bite the bullet. I have to call these people and say, look, I owe you 10 grand.

I don't have 10 grand. I don't know how I'm going to make 10 grand, but I will. I'm going to figure it out. I'm not going to avoid you. And at the same time, you're not going to see me spending any money on anybody else. So I think once I got out of bed, it was just, okay, this is all, what's in your control. And when I realized I had to take responsibility to find power and stop blaming the world, stop blaming other people, stop feeling sorry for myself, because none of that was giving me any power or helping me recognize what was in my control.

Yeah. There's an evolution there. I mean, in order to jumpstart you out of your teaching career, you needed a guy who believed in you, right? And that guy came in a very flawed package. Very. But he served that purpose. Yes. But in the process of working with that individual, you divested your personal response. You invested your personal responsibility in him and just said, this guy's going to do it for me.

Man, where were you back then? When that exploded, you then had to take responsibility of that for yourself. And I would imagine there's some epiphany that comes with that also, which is he didn't take away your talent or your ability to write. All of those things remained intact in the same. And the truth is you had some momentum, right?

So you had to get a new prism and start perceiving your world through your own, you know, your own abilities rather than relying on somebody else to kind of do it for you. Exactly. I always had the wings. He pushed me off the cliff. Yeah. That's a much more concise way of saying it. Well, you know, I dabble. That's why you're the poet. Yeah. You know, I dabble in the poetry once in a while.

And I probably would have never done it. And I have other friends that, you know, have extraordinary talents and ambitions and ideas that won't pull that trigger. Because every single year they hold off on it. That salary that they're working on their day job is getting more and more comfortable. And they're creating a lifestyle that's more dependent on it. He took me out of that situation. Right. And I'm completely grateful for it. And you're like, I'm still here, man. It's all gone.

And I got to that point where I was like, all right, you're in $80,000 debt. You have zero ways of earning any money. There's nothing happening right now. Did you think about going back and becoming a teacher again? 1,000%. 1,000%. So initially, again, at this point, I i'm still thinking like i'm going to die like i'm going to starve to death or i'm going to just go nuts and jump off the balcony what's mom

and dad doing yeah what's mom and dad and at the same time because it was like oh they're going to judge me they're gonna they're gonna you know they're gonna think i'm a failure people are gonna think i'm a failure and then that voice in my head's like look your worst case scenario is embarrassment your worst case scenario isn't death this isn't a problem and i went back home and they did like it wasn't open arms it was we told you so why did you do this where's all your money how did you spend all your like we don't like they were like poking at me like explain this like what did you do and me having to be like eat this eat these consequences you you put yourself in this situation. You don't get to run from this.

You have to eat it. And it was a very uncomfortable couple of years and me figuring things out. And there was nothing magical happening. I didn't win the lottery or anything. I slowly started looking around, talking to different artists and being like, well, how do you guys earn money? What's going on? And it was like, hey, I applied for a grant. I got five grand to do a project.

Hey, I sell t-shirts at my shows. Hey, I use crowdfunding to book shows. I use, hey, I sell products. And I read an article from James Altager about self-publishing. And he was like, hey, this is how you self-publish in doing this. And I was like, hey. And at the same time, music, I was like I'm gonna keep making music and maybe I'll start getting gigs and then music was moving slow because it's such a

collaborative process working with other people and I was full-time and they couldn't keep up with my pace now because they all had jobs and lives and wives and stuff to do so then I had to figure out what could I do by myself that didn't require collaboration and that was writing so I was free writing and finding images that inspired me and writing stuff on Facebook and writing stuff in different places. All of that ended up being my personal therapy to get through these situations because what I was doing was I wasn't telling my story, but I was telling what I was learning from these stories.

I was like questioning because realizing that, hey, I was idealistic. I believed that anyone who saw my talents wanted to help me. You know, that was my crash course into the entertainment industry. Realizing that that's not how it works. Most people that see your talents want to figure out how they can profit off of it. But that's my responsibility to manage my expectations accordingly. Understanding that, hey, if I'm kind to somebody that doesn't necessarily mean the contract is they'll be kind back to me

and understanding the nature of people and the nature of how things work and learning that you can't simply pull on people's heart strings and get them to do what you want people are in it for themselves as well and understand this and don't get all sad about it and say the world sucks and there was a lot of this i was i was a student in school then i was a teacher in school i was in this insulated safe environment the school is the safest environment the most idealistic if yeah if there's you're taught as a child like if someone does something bad just go snitch on them to the teacher and the teacher will handle it you know that's the lesson i was teaching the kids like run to the authorities

they will save you but in the real world that's not how it is i have to leave that zoo and go into the jungle and there's a lot more freedom but it's way harder and it's a lot more work and a lot more danger and you know a lot less security there well perhaps the most devastating is realizing all these adults that you think had it all figured out and know how to handle shit don't really know what they're doing. At all. At all, yeah. When I passed that age where my mom had me, I'm like, holy crap, I don't know what I'm doing. And maybe they don't know what they're doing. So, maybe their words are no longer the gospel. And I should also kind of be forgiving that they're not these flawless human beings.

Which brings it all back to the subject of unlearning. Yeah, it all goes back. And that's what I realized. And that's the title of the book is Unlearned because it wasn't that I had to figure out something very specific. There was a key or a secret to success. It was, hey, I'm carrying a lot of baggage and ideas that are no longer relevant to this new life that I have. And I have to ask the important and uncomfortable questions to let them go. And I have to say to myself, you know, what hand did I have in this mess? And the bigger hand that I had in this mess, the bigger hand I had to clean it up.

And that was a really big one because I don't think up until that point I ever had to take any responsibility for anything on this level. You know, why can't I drive by these buildings? Why is this shaking my heart as if, you know, I just saw somebody step on a puppy? Like, why is this really hurting me? And it was regret. It was a reminder of my failures. And it's like, well, when is this going to go away? And it was a combination of, well, it's going to heal with time, but also it's going to heal when you find a lesson out of this, when you find the value from this. And like, all right, I learned my lesson.

And then as time went on and I slowly earned some more, and I'm talking about over four to five years, I got my, you know, this all happened at the end of 2011 i got my bank account to zero at the end of 2014 um and it was okay you've you've hit that point and now you've learned a whole bunch of skills on that way and this was me simply being like all right calgary i want to come to to play at your city but we got to sell 50 tickets before i even started organizing this can we sell 50 tickets and then the people rallying and getting those 50 tickets sold. So now I got some seed money to throw the show in Calgary and then realizing, hey, I can sell my book alongside that.

Hey, I can sell some t-shirts alongside that. Okay, learning the business of it as well. And even that came at the sacrifice of the art. I went a whole year without creating because I was on my laptop being administrative and making flyers and throwing shows. But it added up and it gave me a lot of tools and tricks. And at the same time, continually putting other work out and the book never going away.

Anybody who found the book and opened the book connected with it. So it went from an independent release to two years later getting picked up in Canada by Canada's biggest bookstore, Endigo. So it initially came out self-published 2011, what year was it? 2014. 2014, okay.

Yeah. And it's only now coming out in the United States under Harper Collins. So this book has had like an unbelievable life that I want to kind of deconstruct here in a minute, but I don't want this point to be missed, which is it all began with you taking responsibility over the one thing that you had domain over that didn't cost any money, which is this discipline of writing every single day. Yes. And I think it was Lilly Singh who was the first person who was like, you don't need money.

You have this thing that you do. Just start doing it and show up for it every single day. Yes. She was like, listen, everything I create, I do by myself. And she was like, figure out a way that you can create by yourself. Right. And I was like, I don't know how to make music myself. She's like, then don't make music. Do something else. And she's like, what a way that you can create by yourself right and i was like i don't know how to make music myself she's like then don't make music do something else and she's like

what else can you do by yourself i'm like well i can write she's like then just do it and then obviously i started being but i don't i don't know how to write where to look she's like just stop making the excuses and just get started yeah you're already making excuses and you haven't even started yet yeah and that's the thing with all of us we're either making progress or we're making excuses right and not to like underscore the point or anything, but Lilly Singh is now getting an evening talk show on network television, right? And I mean, you can still put your money on her

because she's just getting started. I'm not that against that person. Yeah, she's still just getting started. And again, it's so clear cut with her as well. She's going to continue to rise because there is just this work ethic that I've never seen in any other human being. And I'm sure we can deconstruct her drive and her history and how it came to be. But I met her friends from high school that said when she worked at the fast food joint, she was this much of a nerd as well. And like making sure she was cooking the burgers perfectly, making sure all the straws were lined up, all the forks were lined up.

She's always been about give everything. How you do anything is how you do everything. How you do anything is how you do everything. And it was such a gift that we crossed paths. Because at that point, she had not been doing anything. She was just starting YouTube. she had not been doing anything she was she was just starting youtube and i was one of three south asian guys who knew how to use youtube because i was releasing a music video like once every three months that's great so she had reached out to me for that but then she she took the

comedy route and and and again applied her talents with her work ethic and took it to a whole new level and she yeah she saved my life in so many ways by, by giving me that kick in the ass to, to start writing every day, but also continually not allowing me to stray to the, to, to the path of least resistance, knowing that, Hey, this is who you are. You, you're not, you're not, you're here for the slow cook work. You're not here for the quick fast food content. You're not here to simply win. You're here to have a bigger impact. And she started creating an environment for me to do so, which is like, all right, come out here to L.A.

And now I have a place. Here's a room for you. Here's a space for you. I'm not, you know, and being like, make what you make. And if it takes six months to make it, take six months to make it. But make sure you make. And if it takes six months to make it, take six months to make it, but make sure you're working. And don't fall into these traps that you see all my colleagues doing,

which is just chasing the new trend, looking up the next thing that's popular because that's not gonna be sustainable and that's not why you're here. And that put me in a situation where it allowed me to plant a lot of seeds and years later, now everything's starting to sprout. Yeah, so whereas that original producer was the guy who promised you a fish, she's saying, let me help you learn how to fish.

She's giving you these lessons that allow you to kind of create this foundation. Yeah, completely. And as well, she's saying, look, this is how I fish. Take what you can from it, but figure out a way. Figure out your own way of fishing. Figure out your own way of fishing that works for you. Because if you start copying me, you're going to lose yourself. And being able for us to have open, naked communications.

And then we worked on music together. And then I released a few songs with her. And then those songs did very well because she's got a great platform. And she took me on her world tour, and I got to travel the world and perform on stage with her. And they did a documentary, and the documentary people hired me to be one of the filmmakers for the world tour because I had the ability to turn on the camera during some of the more uncomfortable situations that they wouldn't have been welcome into. So just a lot of opportunities were created from that. And it really taught me a lot about how much power we had.

Again, I think being very successful in school without having to put in a lot of effort almost robbed me of the importance of work ethic. I didn't realize how hard I could work, let alone the importance of it. And then getting into her environment, into her world, and seeing how she did it was like, this is all work. None of this involves talent. This is all work. And now all of a sudden, you've written so many scripts

and you've written so many posts or captions or pages that you know that's your 10 000 hours are coming because you're doing the work and all of a sudden your stuff sounds good but it didn't you weren't some naturally gifted individual it was the baby steps were adding up you know and you can't see it while it's happening but looking back and be like oh i've been doing this for six seven years years, and I'm getting really good at it. People just look at the results, and somebody like that, it looks easy. It looks very easy, but it's not. I don't even tell kids that they can grow up to be like her because I'm just like, I still don't.

I mean, we just had a Game of Thrones premiere party, and even the process of decorating the house and putting the whole thing together was harder work than i enjoy doing and i'm just like i'm like why do you like why do you enjoy doing this and i even said to her i was like why do you enjoy doing it and then i i sent a picture to one of my friends of like the decorations we had like heads on stakes we had banners flags we painted an entire tree just all these characters and things from the thing and my friend's like oh it's what you rich people do and i was like no rich people hire other people to do

this we spent the whole day doing this this is obsessed crazy people who loved me and this and and that's throwing parties is considered her my art that i do for myself that doesn't have an audience like it's not going to go on social media that I threw this party. This is for my personal satisfaction because I think she's baked cakes in a previous life. But the work ethic behind it is just so intense and I'm just like, this is banana. So I realized that just being in her presence and even having a fraction of her work ethic puts me ahead of most people in the game because people don't realize how much work it is. i know will smith just posted something recently where it's just like

everybody says they want to be an actor they want to be this but they're not willing to do the work that it takes and it's an unhealthy amount especially if you want to be a good person and do it well i think social media has put a lens on on that in a new and interesting way. You have guys like Kevin Hart and The Rock and Will Smith who share, like, look, this is what it looks like behind the scenes. And you just see this just incredible work ethic that goes into what they're doing. Just relentless. Or Mark Wahlberg getting up at like 2.30 in the morning to go to the gym. This isn't just – it doesn't get like rolled out in front of them. And it's not for display purposes.

We, you know, The Rock is a mentor to Lily and we were hanging out, his daughter came to hang out with us, Simone. She's awesome. And I asked, I'm like, is he really waking up that early? She's like, yeah. I'm like, even in like different parts of the world, she's like, yeah, I don't even know how he does it. He like flies in, he goes straight to the gym. Yeah, he flies, yeah, I don't even know how he does it. He flies in. He goes straight to the gym.

Yeah, he flies. I don't know what time it is. I mean, I could do that if I'm in Toronto for three months in a row, or I can do that out here. I buy the gym memberships. But the second I get a little jet lag, I make the excuses not to go to the gym. And it's just like these people are doing it, and they're constantly making themselves uncomfortable. They're constantly leaning into the discomfort and the new, and that's where all the growth exists. And it's in the beginning, as what I experienced, it was involuntary. Life just smashed me in the face and it was either stay down or get up.

And after some time I got up and I learned a lot from it, but now I'm in a position where I have to lean into these uncomfortable situations if I want to continue to grow. Because life doesn't happen on autopilot. There is no happily ever after. Is that part of why you decided to write a book rather than do an album or try to find a way to pursue music first? The music never stopped. And I'm very fortunate to have still a very good music career. I released an album in 2017 and passed a million spins and streams and a couple million views

on YouTube for my self-directed videos. I think what I realized was when I was in that phase where I had to earn, earning money was essential for my survival. It was spilling into the art and I didn't like that. So I kind of made myself a promise that, hey, we have to figure out a way to earn and not let it impact the art. And I was really liking Mos Def. Mos Def had crashed the MTV Video Awards. He rented a flatbed truck and performed outside the Radio City. Yeah, and I just thought to myself, like, he can do this because he was just in the Italian job. And, like, he's getting those movie checks so he can afford his bail money and he can afford to just make the music he likes. And I always thought that was super cool.

So for me, again, i wrote the book as an independent thing and i'm like this is better than selling a 20 t-shirt people will find more value and then just slowly it went from you know a lot of young young gentlemen coming to my hip-hop shows putting their hands up you know and having fun to a lot of girls showing up with book in hand thinking that they were attending a reading because i would just be like humble the poet live in vancouver and they were just like hey you're not going to read from the book and i'm just like oh i never thought people were interested in that and then you know that in combination with my affiliation with lily gave me an even bigger female audience and you know as an educator understanding that most books are geared towards the learning styles that

females have and more females read books and uh than males just based on how we kind of present books to them. So that really kind of shifted things. And again, it just didn't go away. I finished the book and then the moment I got out of debt and found different streams of revenue, I went straight back into music. And then when I got my first offers for book deals in 2017 in Canada, I said no to all of them. And I said, no, I'm going to just focus on music and have fun. Because at that point, I had just done an Apple commercial, an iPhone commercial. And I got – I tried to find that online.

They, like, stripped it from the internet. Yeah, I have it. I couldn't find it. They had it living on YouTube. They took it down. It's gone now. Yeah, so it was for Canada's 150th birthday so I think they probably just played it

for that month but I'll send it to you I have it but that put me in a good situation as well so then I was like okay well this publishing deal doesn't sound because when they offered me a publishing deal it was like hey we want it for the next book and I was like well this book that I have

on Learn has been doing very well independently. You guys are a bigger trampoline. Can we bounce it off that? I really think it's going to work. And at that point, all the traditional publishers, the big three, said, oh, we don't traditionally do that. Yeah, it's pretty rare that they do that. Yeah, they don't. And I think at this point, I was already kind of warned, hey, anytime somebody says we don't traditionally do anything, run the other way.

At this point, those aren't the kind of people you want to work with. So I left. And then Indigo, which is, I guess we can kind of say the Canadian equivalent to Barnes & Noble. But they found their space. They're doing well in Canada. They sell more than just books. But they're the biggest bookstore in the entire country.'re like we're starting a publishing wing we'd love to take that first book that you wrote and and and republish it and at that point they literally just wanted me to

email them the the files so i sent over that was it yeah just a pdf that was it had you been selling a lot of books up to that point i know you had like a television appearance that kind of that's where it clicked in. Yeah, Canada Reads. You had a book. Yeah, I was on a show where we debated books. And then I debated a book called 15 Dogs. And that was just a fun, they had four other public figures.

And we all picked books that were near and dear to us. And we had to debate which book we felt the whole country should read. And I had picked the book called Fifteen Dogs, which was about 15 dogs that were granted human intelligence by these two Greek gods who were in a bar having a bet about whether human intelligence makes us miserable. So they gave these 15 dogs in Toronto human intelligence and we just followed their stories until they die to see if any of them can die happy. So for me, the show runners had sent me boxes of books to pick from.

And all the books were about the immigrant experience, the South Asian experience, like very superficial. And I was like, well, the things I actually love are I love dogs, which you probably noticed. I love dogs. I love my city of Toronto. And I love this idea of is being intelligent more of a gift or a curse? And this book, and it was short. And then, so I picked this book and I was probably the only person who didn't have a personal stake in his book where his book wasn't telling his story. And I ended up winning

the debate very easily over the week. And yeah, that put me on the map with quite a few things. And you have a book? Yeah, and that also helped me get that Apple commercial. That's also what helped me get that. I had never heard of the show before, but it was a very popular show, and they also played it on the radio. It really got me very popular with an older demographic, which is very refreshing.

You meet them on the street, and they're not asking for selfies. They just want to have real conversations with you. So that was a super dope change of pace. And yeah, publishers hit me up. They all did not want to publish the book. I moved on to music. And then while I was making my music, Indigo reached out, sent them the PDF, forgot about it again, kept working on the music.

And then when they dropped the book, it hit the bestsellers list. And before that, independently, I probably sold about 5,000 or 6,000 copies over a couple years. But, I mean, independent, I was probably making eight, nine bucks a book. American and in Canada, that's even more. So it was enough. I think I was averaging two, three books a day. It was enough to help me keep afloat with my my simple lifestyle and then once i started doing very well with them uh i started

speaking to some folks out here and then they connected me with mark who you just met and then he uh he got me coming out in the u.s now it's crazy it's this is five years later and yeah it's just being introduced to an American audience. This is a book that's had this long, crazy life. And in publishing, there's so many books that come out. And books come out, and they do really well, but then they're gone. They disappear. They'll hit the New York Times bestseller list, but then it was yesterday's news.

And it's pretty rare that you find a book that withstands the test of time, continues to sell over the long run. I mean, that's the thing that I'm most proud about with my book. Like, it's still – and that's because of the podcast. Like, there's new people being introduced to it. But the fact that you have this book, it's coming out now, and you just get these continuous bites at the apple of introducing more and more people. And it's interesting, as you said, it's not common in publishing. So, the book dropped about a week and a half ago, and we're on a third print. Wow.

And, I mean, I love to say that they printed a whole bunch, and that's why we're on a third print. But I think it has to do with their managed expectations. And then all of a sudden I got the email, like, oh, Amazon just indicated to us that they're running out of stock, so we're going to be doing more prints. So I'm happy that I'm exceeding their expectations. And I'm still learning that space as well. Again, coming from digital, things move a lot quicker. So I was like, oh, we peaked at 37 on Amazon of all books. And I hit number one on poetry, even though it's not a poetry book. 37 of all books? Yeah.

Is that right now? That's happened on Amazon? The first week, yeah. I think now we probably slipped a little bit but um you know that's amazing yeah and people a lot you know sent it out to a lot of influencers a lot of them posted about it but then it started reaching outside my grasp and then people that i had never met before started posting about the book people were big following sharing it um and again and i always believed it and it's to the point for me now is just i don't even take personal ownership of this book it's it's it's what saved me it's it's it's it was the process of getting me out of the hole i was in and i tell people like this book saved my life in so many ways and it will help other people and you know

i've had to let go of my my my canadian sensibilities and my quote-unquote humbleness to be like, no, no, this book, this one has legs and you just have to open it. You can open it to any page and you will connect with it. And that's the thing that I've been really pushing on people. It's working. And I'm really excited now that it's out on the biggest stage you can be out on and it's being bounced off the biggest trampoline it can because I feel like it's going to be around for a long time. And it's being bounced off the biggest trampoline it can because I feel like it's going to be around for a long time. Well, like any piece of art, once it's released to the world, it becomes the public domain. Yes. Right?

It's not yours to define. Yes. Absolutely. It's for the audience to decide what it is. Yeah. And to make it their own. Completely. And I feel like my only job right now is to do the work to get people to just want to check it out.

Yeah. See if they can make it. Well, explain this concept of unlearning a little bit more. It's the idea that many of us have a lot of tools and personality traits that were probably beneficial to us at different times in our lives. You know, I grew up in a challenging neighborhood. The way I had to act, the way I had to maneuver back then doesn't apply where I am now in my life or even apply when I was a teacher. You know, I grew up in a high school where making eye contact meant you wanted to fight. But working as a teacher, you're supposed to make eye contact and say good morning to everybody.

So learning certain things and realizing that, hey, you have to let go of a lot of these things and understanding that these things, many of them, you know, were socialized into us. And we have to not simply look at this debate of nature versus nurture and see how they both work together. So, for me, unlearn was the idea that we can let go to really gain more from our lives as opposed to acquiring some new mystical skill that people have yet to tell us. And it's a secret that... We're so hardwired for that, though. We just want to accumulate and accumulate.

Accumulate, yeah. And we live in an additive frame of mind. But I feel like that's on this side of the planet. I'm not sure how... I feel like it is a consumeristic religious experience to kind of experience it that way. And I feel like in other parts of the world, people aren't acquiring as much and they're kind of just going through the motions or existing and not doing the 40, 50, 60 hour a week work grind

the way we do it. And I think just being mindful of that, having to travel and be like, oh crap, people live differently. People have different priorities. Being in India once and seeing these two kids knocking, I was in a car and these two kids were knocking on the window saying, you know, I'm hungry, I'm hungry.

But at the same time, they're both laughing uncontrollably because they've just been trained to beg. But they were having a good day and they were just laughing at something that they were goofing around with and being like, these kids are happier right now than most other people I know and starting to disconnect the relationship between our circumstances and our happiness. And, you know, it's difficult for someone to be like, hey, money won't make you happy and say that to somebody who doesn't have money. Because somebody who doesn't have money is going to be like, well, give me all the money then if it's not making you happy. But then slowly growing into a situation where you're like, well, I was struggling and I promised myself to feel great when I'm no longer struggling.

And then realizing, hey, I just dealt with one challenge and new challenges opened up because of that. Whether it was having a relationship with the taxman or whether that came with having family members that have expectations of you now. Certain things, people finding out I'm going to be on certain podcasts and being like, oh, I better be there when you're on that podcast. And I was like, that's not how it works. I can't just have my family sit here when I'm with Rich Roll or somebody else. They can come. Oh, I appreciate that for here. And then, you know, maybe just kind of being like, oh, I didn't know that these are new challenges and kind of really owning this idea that, look, you solve one problem. Life is a series of obstacles and challenges. You're not going to overcome the last one and just write out your days like we used

to see on television. Yeah. Well, this idea that permeates your work also is this idea of cycles and life being cyclical instead of this. We've set ourselves up to you know adhere to some perfect upward trajectory of happiness and prosperity that's you know obviously unattainable and just makes us feel ashamed and terrible about ourselves when in truth life and all its natural systems work in these cycles and the more we can embrace the natural aspect of that then the happier

and the more content we can be with those obstacles that we face when they arise. Completely. And I think that's, you know, you hit it on the head. And I think that's the idea where we have to be like, well, why do I think it's that way? Why am I thinking in a linear sense to begin with? Why do I believe that just over the horizon, everything will be better? Why do I say I'll have some fun after I'm done my work? Because the work's not going to end.

Why do we believe in these happily ever afters? And then starting to recognize the sources of our influence. And then being like, okay, well, if I want to let go of this idea and make room for a new idea or go back to how I used to view life when I was a child, which was full of curiosity and confidence and risk-taking. What was piled up on top of me to get to this point? And really trying to take the rust off. At the back, I say this book is the sandpaper to take that rust off and take some of these old ideas away. And also recognizing that, hey, I had to have some of these qualities because they were important at one point in my life.

But we are constantly growing, evolving beings, and we can't remain stagnant. So unlearned for that, the idea behind it was to let go of these. But I took it from a perspective of not to make it about myself, but to help people use my abilities to put words together to help other people figure out their own situation. So you'll learn about me through reading this book, but not a lot. This book is not about me. This book is about us and the fact that we're all in the same boat. This book is not about me. This book is about us and the fact that we're all in the same boat.

The fact that this book was only written because people read my writing, repeatedly said, you should write a book, because they connected with it. Because we all have regrets from our past. We all have worries for our future. We all have expectations that we don't know where they came from. And then we all get very unhappy when those expectations aren't met. We all make decisions to avoid failure. We all make decisions to avoid heartbreak. You know, we all can get, start thinking in hyperboles and saying that this always happens.

This is never going to happen. We all do this. And I think if we recognize that we're all in the same boat, then we can all find something new to connect upon with each other and start that process of letting some of these things go especially if they're just holding us back in life we all hold grudges you know we all are carrying around a lot of baggage that is not serving us any purpose other than it weighing us down so unlearning was this whole idea that you already have what you need. And there's just a lot of stuff that needs to get unclogged. And I'm not

here to promise you some sort of secret other than forcing you to ask yourself some uncomfortable questions and being completely honest with yourself to go through this process. I don't want you to read this book and think I'm a self-help guru because I'm definitely not. You kind of look like one, though. You could be one if you want to be one. Hey, you know, I think with the popularization of Osho and all these Netflix documentaries and people thinking I'm wise because I got a nice beard. Yeah, my beard is my source of my wisdom. But I think the big thing I just want the world to understand is I'm a flawed human being that enjoys making mistakes because I'm going to take the time to learn from those mistakes. And the more of a public figure I become, most likely those mistakes are going to become more public.

And I want y'all to just hear about them and be like, yeah, that's our boy. He got himself into some dumb shit and we're excited to see what he learned from that, as opposed to me trying to be all high and mighty. And, again, the goal here was I taught eight-year-olds, and I was aiming to speak to everybody's inner child here and use language. Or were they teaching you? They taught me so much. They definitely did.

And I think that's the process. That was the big pull for me to get into education was wanting to be a lifelong learner. Sick means student. I don't like the idea of the years going by and being like, where did the time go? I wanted to be like, hey, who I was in 2017 is so far from who I am now because the time didn't fly by. It's just all these new experiences and challenges brought a whole new side of me out. And that's exciting. And like going to TED, learning certain ideas that I never thought of before.

Also, this sick idea of oneness and unity. You mentioned unity a minute ago. Yeah. Kind of informing your perspective and your writings and all of that. And I'm curious about how you then take that perspective and how that informs how you think about your own cognitive biases and what separates you from your fellow man and how you kind of navigate the toxic, treacherous waters of dialogue breakdown

that we see in social media or in any kind of like political dialogue that's happening or with respect to the, you know, the daily news. Yeah. I think for me, you know, my heritage specifically being Punjabi and specifically being of Sikh heritage is Sikhs are very martial. We have a history of mobilizing, forming armies, fighting oppressive regimes, never being passive. And I mean, that goes back from the founding gurus of Sikhi all the way up to, you know, Punjabis representing 2% of India, but making about 40 to 50% of all people who died fighting the British for our independence. We've always had that. So I think my, I grew up having a certain relationship with conflict, which was, it's okay, it's normal. And for me now, as an adult, that's not really

manifesting itself in terms of violence, but it does manifest itself in terms of just like having uncomfortable conversations, having a little bit of friction, being OK, being challenged, being OK to challenge other people, not enjoying any type of passive aggressiveness. And I think for me, enjoying being challenged. being challenged. So, you know, even in this conversation, when you state an idea that is, you know, say, I have a counter idea to what you have to say, like me getting excited to hear that and knowing that, oh, at this age, I'm about to learn something new. Because so, you know, so few of us are putting ourselves in these positions to continually learn new things. So I think my biases on that point, I keep them very, I don't plant them into my identity. I am not my beliefs. You know, I am, I am, I heard a very good quote that there is no generation gap.

There are just people who are open to new ideas and people who are not open to new ideas. And I've definitely seen that. I've definitely seen very young people who are, who have been raised a certain way and they're not open to an idea different than them. I myself have the fondest memories. I used to be homophobic. I used to think it was wrong to be gay. I was allowed to have that opinion. And I got to have beautiful experiences meeting people and seeing the human side of all this and being like, who was I to make these judgments? And being grateful that I was open

to changing and evolving and becoming a better person. And I'm excited to continually grateful that, you know, I was open to changing and evolving and becoming a better person. And I'm excited to continually do that, whether it's realizing my priorities or my values, they might not be what they need to be. Even today, meeting with my agent and having a discussion about, okay, well, you know, what leverage can we, you know, for a next deal? What type of leverage? He goes, I don't think you should look at this in terms of leverage. Look at this in terms of collaboration. I'm learning that there are people that,

he sees this in a much more mature manner than I'm seeing it right now. And this is a business meeting. And I like that. I like being proven wrong. I like knowing that I'm not going to be stuck as who I am. So I think for me, there's excitement there. And there isn't a challenge when there is friction with that. And I also feel like I learned something new this past week when dealing with conflict. And it was enter conflict with a question, not an answer.

So give me an example of that. If we went political, right now people are like, Trump is the devil. And other people are like, no, he's the savior. Everyone's coming in with an answer. And maybe just going in and saying, let's have a healthy dialogue. Well, what is it about this candidate that's making you so excited and hearing? And most likely you'll probably hear a bunch of answers of somebody sharing the same values that you share which might be like hey i feel like my job is more secure with this guy in

charge hey i feel safer with this guy in charge hey i feel like my voice matters and you might start to hear things and then a healthier discussion can can can arise from that and i'm not saying everybody will join your team, but there might be a healthier version of agree to disagree out of that. Me personally, looking the way I look, in the beginning, I felt it so frustrating that I could never just blend in. I could never be a fly on the wall because people were constantly either challenging me overtly, like, why do you look like that? What is that on your head? I remember being nine and being told, a woman saying, I'm offended that you came to my country looking like this.

Not knowing what the word offended meant. And then somebody else, you know, learning the term at probably eight, you know, when in Rome, not knowing what that meant. Someone was like, why do you look like that? And I was like, well, you know, this is how my people look. They're like, well, when in Rome Rome and they didn't even finish the sentence. And in the beginning, I hated it. I just wished I could just be invisible and not be noticed and not be seen by anybody.

Now I've seen the value of it, you know, and I grew up in Toronto. I grew up in one of the most multicultural places on the planet. My brother-in-law grew up in a small farm town outside of Toronto and, you know, his family owned a corner store and people stopped doing business once they took over that corner store. And he'd get chased by kids who were trying to like beat him up with a baseball bat after school. And you can see the resilience that that built in him and the value. So I think I see the value in conflict. I see the value in that. Historically, sick people being a minority everywhere that they exist, we've never been able to, we've never even heard this term safe space. That's never been something there.

200 years ago, the ruling king of the area was paying people to bring our heads. You find a sick, you cut off his head, I will pay you for it. You know, and these guys had to decide, hey, should we hide or should we just tie bigger turbans? And be like, all right, come try to get it. Stand taller. Stand taller. Yeah, but always being the minority among the minorities. Always being the minority.

Exactly. And I think that's where, you know, there isn't, I don't have a homeland where I fit in. Even as me as an individual, you know, I'm exotic when I'm out here. I'm exotic over there. I can't blend in in India. I can't blend in in Punjab. They see the tattoos. They see the way I walk.

They see the way I dress. They know I'm not from there either. But you just double down on it by putting on just like crazy sweats and like, you know, just rocking the super bright turban and the whole thing. You're like, I am here, dude. I am here. I mean, there's definitely moments where, and I'll be completely honest, because I think when I was younger, I used to see these very eccentric dressed people and I thought they were weirdos. And there have been moments where I'm walking down the street and then like I'll pass by a mirror and stop like oh i didn't even realize how weird yeah i looked and how bright i looked and it might be la because in la this doesn't even stand out nothing stands out in la everybody

there's some notable like waris right who's the guy in the waris yeah he's always impeccably dressed he's a he's yeah he's an artist he an artist. He's such a brilliant artist. And I just recently connected with him a few years back and learned his story. And it was kind of the same thing. He was like, man, I just wanted to make cool stuff and find cool people to make cool stuff with. I didn't think about my relationship to the community. I grew up in a neighborhood where there weren't any of our people. So for me, now it's kind of like I'm always chasing chasing community and I'm chasing people that I feel would understand me.

And it ended up being these, you know, like these pants are from a Toronto designer. You know, she gifted them to me. That's why I'm wearing them. I designed this shirt. You know, this was given to me as a gift, too. So I'm wearing I'm wearing the shoes were gifted to me. So I'm wearing stuff that was given to me. And I think I definitely got so used to standing out regardless and then once it became a public

figure even independently i started standing out amongst my own people so that was no longer a place i could just blend in even in toronto so if i'm in a high benjabi community you know in you know the bramptons and the maltons which are west of the city you know they all know who i am so i so i'm stares for different reasons. And then if I go an hour outside of Toronto to the hockey towns, they're all staring at me for different reasons. And you just get used to being stared at. And then you're just kind of like, okay, this is my reality. It's no longer uncomfortable.

I built a resilience because they've been staring at me since I was eight. Yeah, but this sort of acute kind of awareness of different kinds of stares, like is that, you're at the hockey, is that like, I want to kill you stare or like, oh, I saw you on YouTube stare? In the beginning, you know what? So in the beginning, I interpreted literally every stare as I want to kill you. And then I had a- That's the warrior default. The warrior, well, life. The 90% of the experiences I had were violent on some level. There were people yelling at me. And this is even pre 9-11. I mean, just kids teasing me, making fun of me, taking the stereotypes that they saw in the films. You see a guy, you watch, go watch Men in Black,

it's an Indian guy driving a cab. It was a lot of stereotypes. And I'm not the only community who has stereotypes in Hollywood films. And then after that... Sorry to interrupt you, but this is what I spoke with Utkarsh a lot about. And he was talking about just these very same things. And the iconography in pop culture is just deplorable, right? There's the guy from The Simpsons.

What's his name? Apu. Yeah. That's basically it. It's like the guy who works at 7-Eleven. And he works at 7-Eleven. The accent doesn't exist. And going even the idea of being Indian.

Indian isn't a language. Indian isn't a food. Indian isn't a type of music. India is a collection of cultures and foods and languages and faiths. You know, India should be a continent, not a country. You know, and it was created by, you know, the empire. And so for me, dealing with all that experience, but then 9-11 happened. And now when you think of what a beard and turban represents, then it was like, get out of my country, terrorist.

Then it was people thinking, you know, trying to punch you in your face. It helped them score some points. And, you know, Bobeir Singh Sodhi was a man with a beard and turban who owned a gas station in Arizona. And he was just gardening outside his gas station. And somebody shot him in the head. And that man said, I'm doing what George Bush is too scared to do. And then also being in that situation where you're like, I don't want to tell people I'm not Muslim because that's just still throwing another group under the bus

and trying to find ways to deal with that. But getting used to that to the point where you're always on edge. Like, why is that person staring at me? And then having these moments of beauty. There was one moment in New York where I was at a hip-hop concert in brooklyn and from the corner of my eye i could see this red-headed guy who looked very drunk just staring at me very intensely and my my my i went my i heightened i was like shit something's gonna happen and then he got closer and closer and closer and then he was

right beside me and i was like oh crap like like trying to find a beer bottle or something to protect myself and he's like are you punjabi and i was like yeah and he goes i just spent four months in chandigarh which is the capital of punjab and he goes i just landed and i'm flying back to the bay and i'm so happy to see a punj because I lived with Punjabis for four months and you're making me so happy to see you right now and all of a sudden me just like being like holy shit like why you know why did I assume that this guy was coming to me with with with such aggression and it was love there's been times too which is even like women have looked at me and I was like are they judging me or and then coming up to me being like, I love everything about the way you look. You look so handsome.

And realizing that, hey, there are people that look a certain way and have judged me a certain way. But there are other people with open hearts and open minds that don't see that. And they see something completely different. And then, you know, getting out of my own bubble and starting to see that and realizing that different cultures find beards attractive. And now that we have new generations of kids that are growing up seeing this multiculturalism, they've seen Juarez and the Gap ads and, you know, they've seen comedians like Just Rain in different places. They've seen my stuff, you know, Lily has helped, you know, catapult me into a lot of homes and into a lot of people's ESOs.

So now just kind of being open to it being like look they may be approaching with love they may be approaching with aggression trust yourself to handle it accordingly and it's not going to go away either way and i was in peru a couple years back and that was the adults literally in the same minute and one adult walked by and goes hey osama and then literally another child walks by and goes hey bob marley you know and just being like it's all amazing yeah it's all context but i think that's illustrative of of not just how polarized this is right now but how heightened it is i mean with you know politics as they are at the moment and the way kind of, you know, social awareness has grown also kind of in tandem with

regressive ideas around culture. You have a celebration of multiculturalism like we've never seen before and an acceptance and an embrace of it. And we also have this, you know, fear-based relationship with it that is at a you know a peak that i haven't seen in my life so you know i would imagine as you navigate this kind of being at the vortex of it like you're you're you're going to get these extreme encounters on one end or the other and i think that's what is really happening is the fringe the the opposite ends of the spectrum, they have such an amplified voice now, even if they don't represent what most people are thinking. And I think I've had those experiences where, you know, I have been accused of, you know, pushing a far left agenda. I've also been accused of pushing a far right agenda.

I've also been accused of working for the Indian government to pollute my own population. I've also been accused of working for terrorist organizations in the Sikh community to dismantle the Indian government. You got all the bases covered. I got them all covered. And everybody, you know. No one's happy. Yeah.

Because to be Punjabi. Congratulations, you're an artist. Yes, you're an artist. Yeah, because to be Punjabi. Congratulations, you're an artist. Yes, you're an artist. And I'm okay with the idea that my stuff can make people feel uncomfortable, even though I don't really think I'm doing anything too controversial. But I understand that people's beliefs, people have mistaken their beliefs for their identity.

And that's a chapter in the book, you are not your beliefs. And I said, I am here to fuck with your beliefs. What you believe is what you believe. It's not who you are. If somebody criticizes your beliefs, they're not criticizing who you are. And I think that's an important thing to understand. And we need to be open to the idea that we can pull out these flags of beliefs and let them go if they're no longer serving us a purpose. And if that, again, I'm a big proponent of self-responsibility. In a political standpoint, that means, listen, you got to not lean on the powers that be to take care of you anyways. And if you're self-sufficient, most of this stuff is not going to impact you the way it is. And if you're not happy with the way things are, get off your computer, go outside and mobilize and vote somebody new in or organize some sort of campaign to make things happen.

And if you're not happy with the homeless situation in your neighborhood, get involved. Don't call 911. Do things to be involved. Take some personal responsibility. And sometimes that comes off as an unpopular opinion. But it's important to say because it does get people feeling. And that's the purpose of an artist. The purpose of an artist is to introduce ideas that may not have already existed on this planet.

And their number one enemy is always going to be the fundamentalists. And fundamentalism, on the simplest definition, is those who think the past is better. The way we did it before is better. And we're seeing that now. People are missing the good old days and make America great again without defining when it was. Yeah, a core component of fundamentalism in whatever body it finds itself is that close identification of identity with belief, right? If you can't separate those two things, you're going to be unable to not only be able to learn anything new,

you're going to be going through life in a fixed mindset. And I think this is at the core, at the very center of this breakdown in healthy public discourse. You were talking earlier about how you kind of bridge that gap on an individual basis through your own personal experiences with people. But how can we scale this up? Because when I look at the health of conversation right now, it's pretty poor. And I think unless we can address and heal this, we're going to capsize as a culture because we can't communicate effectively because we're so siloed and we're so, our beliefs are so identified with our identity. And any sort of challenge to them is an attack on who we feel we are as human beings. You're absolutely right. And it's the

economy of social media that dictates, hey, Rich likes this type of content. Let's only put this type of content in front of him, which creates these echo chambers. Now, you're not going to come across somebody who says something you don't like to hear because the social media platforms, their business model requires you to stay on their platform as long as possible. So they don't want to offend you. They want to get you engaged. So they might put some outrageous stuff in front of you. They might put some conflicting stuff in front of you, maybe even polarizing stuff in front of you.

But at the same time, they're still curating your feed. And I'm not even sure if the average social media user understands that their feed is curated for them specifically. Your Netflix is curated for them specifically. Your Netflix is curated for you specifically. There's hit shows and movies on Netflix that you're never going to see because it doesn't line up with your viewing habits. And the more we're looking at these screens, the more our respective realities diverge from one another.

But we're unaware of that. We think everyone's looking at the same queue of Netflix movies and shows and don't realize the person sitting next to you is having a completely different experience. Completely different experience. And I think it goes back to that personal responsibility of being mindful of this. So for me, I, again, even online, I try to dip myself into places I wouldn't normally go, whether it's on conservative websites and reading what they're trying to say, understanding how they're trying to say it. I was speaking with somebody yesterday who wrote for The Daily Show, and he's like, the level of education required to just try to decipher the truth out of the news these days, it's so high, and nobody wants to do the work, let alone even read the articles. They just want to read the headlines. And for me, it's recognizing that on a grand global scale to shift that wave, it's only going to be able to happen by holding some of these social media companies accountable.

I had some talks with some of the higher ups in social media companies and they, you know, I think the one honest thing that they keep communicating to me is we can't do anything overnight. keep communicating to me is we can't do anything overnight. I think the other part is kind of like, well, can you change it? Even if you could do it overnight, would you? Because your business model requires the economy of attention. Your business model requires us to pay as much attention as possible. Will it ever be in a situation where people are like, all right, you spent enough time on here today. We're going to cut you off. And me personally, I'm a big Reddit nerd. I love being on Reddit, which is also an ecosystem that we can curate for ourselves. But I've set a timer on my browser for 30 minutes. So I have 30 minutes max on Reddit and my favorite hip-hop websites.

And they're all junk food. It's all quick gratification. I'm not immune to reading up some gossip. I'm not immune to staring at pictures of cute puppies and just all these little drops of dopamine. But it's becoming aware of it and realizing that, hey, this stuff is no different than fast food. It's quick, cheap, easy, convenient, but you keep doing it for a long time and watch what happens. And addictive. Very, very addictive. I think we need to really appreciate the extent to which it creates an addictive response

and I had Jack Dorsey on the podcast and we talked about this very thing with respect to Twitter and he seems he understands the problem and he seems committed to addressing it one of the ideas he had is to

reorganize the feed such that it becomes less dependent on likes and retweets and also less dependent on following individuals and more in alignment with following issues or subject headings that can then be curated so that it contains a mix of perspectives to broaden people's perspective outside of their silo. Now, whether that's idealistic or doable, time will tell. We shall see. But at least these conversations are happening. And I think the more that people can get in touch with the fact that your information diet is tailored specifically to you and to the extent that you can create habits that force you to step outside of that and entertain different perspectives and ask more questions and do more listening

when you're engaged in those in real life conversations, you're at least living more on the solution. Completely. And again, addiction is addiction. And I know, you know, some people will be like, well, I'm not addicted or look at all these people addicted to their phones. And I don't. But I think people have to understand that like addiction is, you know, we might have

made some poor choices to get to this point. But once you're hooked, you're hooked. And we have to view it with some sort of compassion. It just can't simply be like, kick that habit. It's the same thing with alcohol. It's't simply be like kick that habit it's the same thing with alcohol it's the same thing with other substances it's the same thing with self-pity it's an addiction manifests itself you know as a result of some of our poor choices when we might not have had the tools to make the right choices to get here but now that we're here we have to approach it i feel like we have to approach it the way we approach people with diabetes you know we have to We have to look at this as something that, as a health issue now, and we have to approach it with treatment like a health

issue instead of just kind of waving our finger at these people and being like, well, you're hooked onto this stuff now and you're part of the problem. Shame on you. Yeah, shame on you. And I mean, I'm very curious to see, because he also was at TED and he did a Q&A there. Yeah, he got excoriated for that though um it i mean is it like in real life it was um the format was challenging so they all gave us a hashtag to ask him questions and then the questions range from like smart questions to like why haven't you deleted trump's twitter yet right to do you know you're the devil and at the same time these are all scrolling in the back and then i think the moderators are like

okay well we're not going to read these and at the same time everyone's just kind of reading oh my god yeah so he's sitting on a couch with two with two folks and i don't know if this will ever make it to the public ted forum but he's sitting there with the two moderators and then they're the beautiful screen in the back. And then they were putting everybody's tweets on the back, and that's just scrolling. And I guess their plan was to originally read some of these questions, but the questions weren't cute and fun. They weren't like, what's your morning routine? They were just like, why haven't you deleted Trump's Twitter?

How do you feel that you're part of the problem? And stuff like that. So none of the challenging questions kind of made it to him they did kind of poke at him when he didn't answer a question clearly because he did kind of dance around a lot of it um i do kind of feel like a lot of these these these guys who created these just like world denting ideas and platforms, whether it be Twitter, whether it be Google or Facebook, I feel like they are probably looking, they're probably zoomed out a lot more than we might realize. And they're looking at this from a completely different perspective. And I don't know if they can articulate that perspective as well.

But at the same time, I mean, like, who is the priority? Is it the shareholders? Is it the shareholders? Is it the people? Is it the mental health of the situation? Is it the healthiness of democracy? Well, the honest answer is there are competing interests, right? And that's what makes it difficult. And, you know, with respect, you know, I can only speak to Jack because he's the only one I know.

Yeah. Jack, because he's the only one I know. Yeah. But I have kind of a controversial hot take on it, which is that, and this is based purely on my personal experience with him and listening to him in other interviews. My feeling is that he is a very intelligent person who helped create this thing

that he could have never foreseen, would put this dent on the universe in the way that it has. And he's now in an almost impossible to win situation of trying to figure out how to curtail it and, you know, curate it in a way that does promote healthy global conversation. Whether he can succeed in doing that, who knows? But my sense of him is that he really is trying. He's well-intentioned, and he does care because he doesn't have to go to TED and put himself in these situations where he's going to get criticized on that level. And I think he does think about these issues deeply, and he's committed to finding a solution.

And I think that in a culture— How long ago did you talk to him? and I think that in a culture how long ago did you talk to him? I was at his house like a month ago or something like that I spent like a whole afternoon with him how long for you personally before if we don't see any new feature ads

or any new changes are you going to be like okay that was kind of I got played I got played or he's saying yeah I don't know yeah it's. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, it's a good question.

I don't know the answer to that. Was I manipulated or did I see this human being as I want to see him? Yeah. But I do feel like this is a guy who has gone to great lengths to keep his life very controlled and sparse and minimal in some of the ways we talked about. Walks to work every day. He's into intermittent fasting. He's taken a lot of grief for that. There's no entourage at his house.

Everything is very not what you would expect from somebody of that stature. And I think it's done in a way to help him think about these big issues without the clutter of you know the day to day of what it must be like to run like two of the biggest tech companies and in a silicon valley culture of a lot of bros who are chasing the money like he just doesn't strike me as that kind of person like i feel like he's somebody we should root for and he's flawed and doing the best that

he can and doing it very imperfectly but like who would you rather have helming this thing right now? And I'm not so sure I can think of somebody I would swap out for Jack. Yeah. And I feel like a lot of these top impactful people who have impacted multiple lives on this earth through their ideas, I think oftentimes they were just simply people who were obsessed with solving a problem. And none of us remember the fact that the invention of the ship was also the invention of the shipwreck. And it's like Twitter solved some problems and created new problems, and whatever new feature gets added in tomorrow to try to promote empathy, whether it's – I saw one woman do a presentation.

It wasn't this year. It was last year. Whereas as you type up your comment, a second window pops up and it shows, is this what you mean? Are you meaning to say this person is ugly? Just to give you that extra moment to reflect before you post. Do you actually understand what you're about to say to somebody and thinking that that might promote some more stuff? And who knows what can happen with that? And being in the YouTube universe and seeing all the challenges that they're having with censorship, AI censorship, learning machines, trying to figure out how to catch inappropriate content or violating content before it happens.

And seeing people game that system, you know, watching somebody post a video that said, what was the video? Hanging my gay pride shower curtain, you know, and then knowing the words hanging and gay pride together, we're going to get flagged. Right. You know, and now the news will pick up on that and then be like oh you know signs of homophobia and and youtube and always realizing that someone's

trying to there's always somebody there just kind of shooting shooting an arrow at you and maybe being okay with that so part of that is good though because it pressure tests these systems and helps refine them and at what point are we taking responsibility? At what point? I think for me there definitely was, especially with Twitter it was like, alright, well I'm going to decide who I follow, who I don't follow. And then one day you start seeing posts from people that you don't know and you're like

oh, Rich follows them. Because somebody liked something. No, sometimes it's not even liked. I'm getting features where it's like Rich follows so-and-so and and I'm just seeing their tree. Right, yeah, I see that as well. And I think it's them going back to that, doubling down on that idea that we need to keep your attention. And if you like his stuff, then you might like the stuff that he likes.

And it's just kind of like, hey, here are multiple endless rabbit holes that you can fall into. We just need you to be here. can fall into. We just need you to be here. And at the same time, the cost of us all being there is we're constantly exposed to too much stimulation. We're constantly identifying the gaps in our own life in relation to whatever we're seeing. So if I'm watching you hiking with your shirt off and now all of a sudden I'm just like, oh man, I got to stop eating carbs. I got to get my body weight down. Or if I'm seeing somebody publishing a book or doing a book tour, I'm like, oh, I published my book, but I haven't done a book tour or I haven't done a signing in New York yet or I haven't done a signing in South Dakota yet. I need to make that happen.

And just our minds going in all these different places and the toll it takes on the machine that is our brain. Yeah, we don't even have any grip, I don't think on the long-term impact of this because you have like a a strategy for dealing with this right now well i have to you know i have to exert a lot of energy and to create boundaries around it because i'm as i'm an i'm an addict through and through dude like if i don't you know If I don't really create boundaries, then I'll get lost in this kind of thing in the way that I can use anything to try to take me out

of whatever emotional state that I'm in at the moment. So yeah, it's problematic for me. I have to put it away and try not to check it in the morning and especially as somebody who is a creator in different ways, you can just occupy all of your free time scrolling or passively consuming other people's creativity. And now, more than ever, for perhaps the first time in history, like, you have to really go to the end of the earth to, like, remove distractions so that you can do what you're

here to do and i'm finding it i find it hard yeah um so you don't check it in the morning that's one i guess that's like yeah i wish i could say i'm perfect about that but i certainly am not everybody by an alarm clock rules yeah you know yeah you have to have rules for me um i got a second phone and then i learned from neil uh make make your main phone black and white uh-huh um take all social yeah take take take social media off that first phone and the second phone let that be your junk food phone but don't carry it around with you um it works and then all of a sudden i gotta go on a trip and i don't want to carry two phones i put everything on one and then back just kind of doing that well and that's the thing there was a

there was a good j cole interview where he took a whole year and a half off social media and he's like i thought when i came back i'd come with this new perspective and he was like literally like eating a potato chip again it's just like it's as if you never left and just start to see the power like it's so salty and addictive and it's's such a challenge because everybody's in on it and everybody's doing it and it's shaping it. And then for us to exist, you know, for people to know this podcast is coming out, you know, they're probably going to find it on social media

or in an email list or somebody else reposting it. And it's like there's a beauty to it and then there's a challenge to it. It's a weapon and a tool in so many different ways. Just like what you were talking about with oneness and unity. Yeah, with one, exactly. Nothing is all good or all bad. Nothing is all good or all bad. We are, I mean, we're a piece of the puzzle.

We are also a puzzle within the piece that we are. And it's just, you know, infinity on the outside, infinity on the inside. And it's remembering that perspective kind of helps us. In the next project I'm dropping, both those concepts are being explored. The fact that the importance of zooming out from where we are, the game perspective, and the importance of zooming in. Knowing that you don't just do it once. Like, you don't just achieve balance and now you're unbalanced and you can just walk the tightrope forever. It's, you got your balance, then you lose it.

Then you have to regain it, then you lose it. And obviously, the longer you focus on your balance, you'll strengthen your cores and you can do it for longer. But it doesn't get easier. We improve,'t get easier. We improve. We get stronger. And seeing that and sometimes thinking about it gets daunting. And then we have to just remind ourselves that this doesn't all have to get accomplished in a day. This can be a lifelong journey.

And we overestimate what we can get done in a day, underestimate what we can get done in a year. I say that all the time. Totally underestimate what we can do in five a day, underestimate what we can get done in a year. I say that all the time. Yeah. Totally underestimate what we can do in five years, in 10 years. Perfect example being this book. So 2014, we're now five years later. Five years later. And you're really just starting to reap the fruits of this labor. It's been a five-year journey.

And I feel like I want to stress that you know now i'm i'm really doing the push and really advocating for people to check it out and open it and connect with it um when i wrote it i was my my mind was somewhere different it was oh if we're done yeah it's now five years later you're like wait i gotta rewrite this this and this did you revise it from um i i wrote a new forward uh which helped encapsulate it i i read it because i was when when i realized it was going to get such a much larger audience now i was like okay this five years ago does that does that guy even know how to write compared to like who i am now do i agree with these ideas and I went through it and I was like oh this is this is there you know there's a damn timeless wisdom well timeless wisdom but I think more so like damn like you did a really good job of trimming the fat like you didn't you didn't

over you didn't over explain yourself you kept it simple short and sweet and I mean this actually represents a time when there was uh the freedom of of obscurity, which I want a lot of artists to embrace. If you are a brand new artist and nobody knows who you are, there is so much freedom in being obscure. Because nobody is looking at your stuff with a magnifying glass and finding reasons to critique it or to be offended or finding holes in your story. And there was a lot of freedom in writing this because that guy who wrote this was in such a different space. And my only goals was to continue writing until I felt better because I wasn't feeling good about myself and everything that I was coming across wasn't working for me. So I'd read about the author of Harry Potter. Her name just slips me

right now. J.K. Rowling. J.K. Rowling. And, you know, her commencement speech where she talked about, you know, rock bottom was a foundation that I built myself up upon. And in my head, I'd be like, well, how do I know when I've hit rock bottom? How do I rebuild? What was your rock bottom? How did you figure this all out? You're skipping steps in the story.

I'm hearing was on welfare, wrote a universal international bestseller. Time and perspective. Time and perspective. But when you're feeling the pain, you're just like, give me something for the pain right now. Give me an injection of validation. Give me an injection of attention, dopamine. Give me anything. Give me some muscle relaxer. Give me a shot. Give me something to make it go away right now. I can't stand this anymore. And I think now the perspective has changed. I do dead hangs at the gym. And from zero to 10, it's just getting there. And then from 10 seconds to about 30 seconds, it's like, something's wrong with my

lung. I can't breathe. Oh my God, I'm going to die. I better let go. I better let go. And then telling my mind, let's just see what happens. Just like relax. And then passing that 30 second threshold and then like 30 to a minute, it's like I'm not even aware of pain all of a sudden. And it's like kind of going through this like dark tunnel. And normally I would just give up when I hit that first piece of resistance. And now realizing that that's what it was. It's what happens once you pass that resistance, you know, and the resistance is the essential part of all of this.

It's a beautiful allegory for the dismantling and kind of thing that you went through. Oh, completely. Deconstruction, your divine moment. And that's what I'm bringing to the table. I spent the time deconstructing this because so many sources that I was chasing was leaving me not feeling satisfied. Like reading the quotes of, you know, like, don't worry. God has a plan. God doesn't close a door without opening a window.

Fuck you. Yeah, like, fuck off. Like, what the fuck does that mean? How is that going to help me pay my mortgage? You know, how is this going to help me get out of debt? How is this going to help me find the courage to call my buddy and be like, I don't have your money? And then I got to the point where I was realizing that, you know, I had already given other people this advice, which was like, as I said, you're making progress. You're making excuses or sink or swim.

Or you want this to be easy? Go back to your job. You want results, but you're too scared to take a shot. Movement is your medicine. These weren't revolutionary ideas. I had already heard them. It was easier for me to tell them to other people and not apply them to myself. And I took all these quotes and I plastered them up in my room.

And my wall was just full of non-inspirational inspirational quotes. And they were just kicks in the ass. Like, suck it up. Deal with this. You know, your problems may not be your fault, but your problems are your responsibility. And take ownership. You have the power for this. Anybody else you blame, you're just giving away

the problem. Pretty much saying, do this until you die. And I think that was the big one for me, deciding that I'm going to be humble to poet because I've already been humble to poet long enough at this point where I don't want these constant reminders when people recognize me that I failed this. And that's what the apartment building was. Seeing the condominium was a reminder of my failures. And now realizing, no, that was tuition. I paid tuition to get to where I was at. So what's the experience now when you drive by that building? Oh, we're good now. There's a little bit of like, oh, that would have been worth a lot of money if I still had it. But I had to give somebody back some money when I sold it. And they were very big on appearances. I remember they told me like, hey, if you need more money, I'll give you more money.

Don't sell your car. We don't want people to know you're struggling. I didn't take more money from them. I got rid of the car. And then I didn't take more money from them. I got rid of the apartment. And then I paid them back. And they said to me, I'm sorry you had to that you know and really kind of reminding me of how embarrassing

it was and i just cock i cockily said at that point i'm like don't worry eventually i'll have enough to buy two and um i'll be honest i had to get to that point before it became comfortable to look at that right and now it's like okay well yeah i might not be buying that one now but you know i can i can afford to you know buy one of these pre-construction ones that are going to open in 2024. And I can afford two of those, no problem. And now I'm just starting over. And that's okay because I'm starting wiser. And I'm more patient, more resilient.

I've seen the story play out. The seed that I planted, I didn't get to decide when it was time for it to grow. The seed that I planted, I didn't get to decide when it was time for it to grow. And it's the same thing now. Even being super fortunate to be on your podcast and meet your platform and your community of open-minded learners who are trying to better themselves. This isn't something that every author gets an opportunity of. So focusing on the gratitude and being like, it's cool. And this time around,

the book dropped on April 9th. This time around, it wasn't, I need to drop this book and I need to hit the New York Times bestsellers list for me to feel good about myself. What it was, was I need to make sure when April 9th hits, there isn't a voice in my head that is telling me what I should have done that I was too scared to do. So this time I reached out to every single person. I poked people more than my Canadian sensibilities normally allowed me to do. I asked for the favors. I tried to make the deals. I sent the book to people that I would have been too scared to bother. I wasn't afraid to burn bridges.

I just did everything I could to make sure that this did whatever it could do without expectation of what it was going to do. And knowing that everybody at that point that I partnered with had a very cautious optimism towards it, but me knowing in my heart and learning from other people, you know, The Rock told Lily this and she told me, you know, he said, listen, don't ever expect someone to give a shit about your work as much as you do. This is your baby. Don't expect them to care and don't hold it against them if they don't, because this is yours.

And me being like, okay, this is not my agent's job. It's not my publisher's job. It's not my friend's jobs. It's my job. And I think it's the same idea. Like,

you know, if your car is, it's broken down on the side of the road, you know, putting on your flashers and waving at people might get you a certain result, but you'll get more results if they see you pushing it and trying to make something happen. I think a lot of the support I've gotten, the immense, immense support beyond what I thought was going to happen came from people seeing me work and showing up and being wherever I needed to be and telling everybody, hey, you need me in your city? I'm there. I don't need you to buy my team. You can't expect them to be excited about it if you're not demonstrating that level of excitement. And I think a lot of authors fall into this sense that the publisher is going to do all this stuff for them. And I could tell you that that is not the way

it goes. Like, you really have to take complete ownership of it. And I think because you came from that DIY self-published, you know, experience, you were well-equipped to, you know, really take ownership of this new phase of what the book presents for you. Completely. It was, and it definitely, had I had this opportunity arose two years ago or even the year I published this book, this would have just fallen into obscurity. I wouldn't have been prepared. I would have sat back and thought, oh, you're with the majors. The majors handle it all. This is going to be this is going to be a hit. This is the next Eat, Pray, Love. This is going to be the next subtle art. This is going to do that. And I think now this time it was like, no, what you were given is a trampoline. That's all you're given. And the trampoline doesn't do anything unless you got the legs to bounce it off.

And your only rewards on this journey are opportunities. They're not outcomes. They're opportunities to work even harder, opportunities to do things. So work on things that you care about. Work on things where the challenges are exciting to tackle, not things where you're just like, oh, now not another thing I got to deal with. Work on things where the resistance is exciting, where you're coming out of this a better person. And the personal growth I experienced through, again, writing this book, when I self-published it, I had to build the book. I had to choose the fonts and I had to set the margins and I had to learn Adobe InDesign. That whole process is the real reward from this, not the money I made from this.

Getting the book to the main stage and getting it with one of the three major publishers in the world and having them say, hey, we've been following you for a couple of years and we were waiting for the right time to make this happen and being like okay you know this is great but this is also why is this touching upon my uh why is this touching upon my uh anxieties or why is this touching upon my uh um what's that called when people think that they're they're phony um imposter syndrome you know why why you know why is this either validating or feeding my imposter syndrome? And then that becoming, okay, well, this is something I have to write about. And realizing that, hey, you don't write to publish books to sell books in the world. You write because you're a writer. The same reason why Bird saying.

You have something to say. Well, we all have something to say. And that's the important thing. We all have important stories, each and every one of us. And our species has only benefited from people sharing their stories. And every single human being is a potential innovator when provided with experience, wisdom, access, and education. And now all these tools we have can make that grow at an exponential level. And you don't have to publish a book and get

validation from a major publisher. You can carve it on a cave like our ancestors did. You can put it in a dance. You can do it through your photography. You can do it in a poem. You can do it in any way, shape, or form, never knowing the impact that that's going to have. But not view it even as a privilege, but as a responsibility. And I think I got to that point now where I was like, this is my responsibility. This is what I do.

I'm not here for the validation of other people. I'm here to live out my duty and my service. And in Sikhi, we have the concept of Seva, which is service. And learning that, you know, even every successful business that ever existed was because they provided a service to the people that they found value in. And that had me changing my language. So, I stopped saying, please support. I'm not here to look for support. I'm not here to... Like they're doing you a favor. Yeah. Don't do me a favor. Do yourself a favor and get this book. I'm not here to tap into

people's empathies and care about me. This is a collection of what we've all been going through. And my contribution to this is my ability to put words together. The wisdom that exists in here already will exist in the reader. It will already be there. These are reminders. This wisdom you're going to find written by Guru Nanak Devji in the late 1400s. But you're also going to find this in Confucius. You're also going to find this in some Kanye West lyrics.

You're going to find this everywhere. Kanye West lyrics. You're going to find this everywhere. This isn't some secret mystical stuff. This is the stuff that has to get repackaged for our generation in the way we speak. Every chapter is only two pages because I recognize attention spans. The book doesn't have to be read in- For the Instagram generation. It is. And that's also been a challenge working with the publishers and them saying okay well we're here to to reach out to the people you know who appreciate the wellness space and let's connect with people who do yoga and let's connect with people and i was like i want to connect with people who don't know that this stuff matters yet yeah everybody you know

not some people don't realize that social media is impacting them negatively on their on their mental health not everybody is realizing what why they have anxiety. They may not even have made that simple connection that your anxieties relate to your future. And maybe some of the older folks have, but some of the 18-year-olds and 19-year-olds I'm talking to, or sometimes the ones that meet at my shows or the ones I'm meeting at these YouTube conferences, they don't know that yet. And the quicker we can get them to recognize that and promote that self-awareness, then the quicker they can move with more health and the quicker they can pass that down as well. Because if it took me 10 years

to figure something out, it should be my duty to help somebody figure that out in five and exponentially create that growth. And yeah, so I said every chapter in this book is two pages max. You don't have to read it in order. I wanted it to be something where you can just flip it open to any random page. You'll find a quote that you dig. And you'll find something that resonates with you. It's not going to be a long read because books become investments. No, it's so easy to digest.

I mean, just looking at the table, you have like 71 chapters. 101. 101? Wait, 71. Oh, it goes to the next. Yeah, it goes a lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I mean, yeah, just like there. You just open it to a random page, there's a quote.

Right. Let's enjoy what we have while we have it and not spend it worrying about a future we may never see or an ending we can't avoid. It's another way of saying worry is praying for the negative outcome. Yeah, or worrying is like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do but takes you nowhere. And that's what my goal is, is to really help people open themselves up. What I was taught as a teacher is the best teachers teach themselves out of a job. My goal isn't to keep you coming back. My goal is to help empower you.

And then the challenge for me is going to be, okay, I can't do the same thing with the next book. The challenge for me is I got to go deeper. So now I have a community that I can go on this journey. I'm very fortunate that I finished the other book before this came out because the success of this book would have totally crushed me with the pressure and made me write something completely different. So, I'm lucky. I like that perspective that you have that the gift is the opportunities that come in the wake of it, not like any kind of measurable material outcome. Because the material stuff lasts for a couple of hours. It literally, the happiness that comes from it lasts for a couple of hours. If you're going to spend your money on anything that you think will bring you happiness,

at least make it an experience. Travel somewhere. You'll still get some dopamine when you relive those experiences. But you buy yourself a Ferrari, you might enjoy it while you're driving it. But if you're sitting at home just thinking about it in the driveway, it's not going to give you that value. And eventually, you're going to be used to it. It's just the car you drive. It's just the car you drive. And I operated with a lot of chips on my shoulders, especially having

a father who was a cab driver and knowing that he was overqualified for that job. And most cab drivers in the city of Toronto are overly educated and had no other opportunities. And one of my goals was to put a Mercedes on our driveway. And I did. I worked a second job and I bought a nice C-class Mercedes. And the goal was like, it's going to make him so proud and so happy. He never sat in it once.

He refused. To this day, I still don't know why. And I caught myself after being broken up with a girl crying in the car and being like, what good is this? I'm still having my good days and bad days, but I'm just having it in this luxurious car. And the big point for me was I was working extra hard to afford. This wasn't in my means when I purchased it. Yeah, if you can afford it and it's not a big deal, then by all means, go for it.

So you're perfect for Los Angeles. Everybody's stretching to meet car payments they can't afford. Yeah, but I don't even do a car anymore. I feel like at this point now, you can take a ride share service if you can afford one of these nice cars and you can afford to have somebody else do that driving for you. And it'll allow you to get other things done but that chip on my shoulder it came from my seeing my father when i was four he got attacked he was robbed and you know for the first time seeing my father with like bumps and bruises and cuts on his

face at four years old and he had to put a uh a shield in between his seat. Passenger. But that was also our family car. So when we went places, we went in the taxi with the shield, and I remember playing with the shield and thinking all this. But the older I got, I had these big chips on my shoulders to like, you know, once I get that Mercedes, it's going to make that worth it. Once I make enough money, I'm going to retire my dad. You were projecting onto him that he had that same sensibility. Yeah, and these weren't things that he—

He didn't care about. Or he never discussed. That robbery is not something he ever brought up again. I think he just adjusted. He was like, all right, got robbed in the middle of the night. I'm not working at night no more. Let me work 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Let me make certain changes and and then he eventually moved from driving taxi uh in the city to driving taxi at the airport which was a whole different level

of clientele who were taking these limos from the from the airport so i think he made his adjustments accordingly um i don't think he really grew up in an environment that promoted much self-pity it's just adjust adapt adjust or you're gonna die how how How are they now with you and everything that you're doing? It's funny. It's evolving. Huh? It's evolving. It's evolving.

I mean, again, when hearing in comparison to other people, especially children of immigrants and hearing their stories in comparison to mine, my parents were great. They definitely did not have the tools to have a son like me. They had never heard, they didn't know any artists. They didn't know any creatives. I still don't know from who amongst my family passed down any creative genes my way. They didn't foster creativity with me. They didn't promote it, but they didn't get- I'm sure there were probably some amazingly creative people that just had to repress that impulse their whole life.

So you're not even aware of where they fall in your lineage. Yeah, 1000%. However, in Sikh heritage, all the hymns rhyme. So like, It all rhymes. So I was force-fed all the hymns as a kid to memorize. like it all rhymes so i was force-fed all the hymns as a kid to memorize that was the not my novelty trick being an eight-year-old kid who memorized an hour worth of hymns and they all rhymed so i was always rhyming and then we would sing them on harmonium so i was also taught how

to sing and i was also taught to play the tabla so i was given all the tools i needed to be a rapper i was taught how to rhyme i I was taught rhythm. I played percussion. In middle school, I played the steel pan because I grew up in a heavy Caribbean neighborhood. So I was playing steel pan. So I was playing instruments, but none of this was, this was all like extracurricular activities or part of my school, part of my schooling or part of my parents' religious education upon me. And it gave me all those necessary skills as well. As I said, the gurus, you know, they, they mobilized, they, they, they ran armies and some of the Sikh temples in the Godwara in Toronto, they post pictures of, of who they considered martyrs, people that fought in the struggles in the eighties specifically. So being a little kid, I'm

looking at pictures of dead bodies hanging on the walls so our you know my relationship with violence was a little bit different so then when one of the kids the local kids in my neighborhood like played nwa for me you know it was like these guys rhyme and they kill and like this is no different than some of the things that i heard interesting connection yeah because for me it was because when i first got into this i would you, you know, people would be like, you're not black. Why are you rapping? Like, do you have an identity crisis? And I was like, this is my heritage since I first started. It's just I'm doing it in English because both my parents had to work when I was a child.

And my grandparents weren't there. So, like, they put me in daycare when I was two years old. So, I wasn't speaking the mother tongue at home. I was speaking English because I was in daycare with everybody else and I had two older sisters to speak English with, whereas they were raised by my grandparents and they were watching the films and everything else. So my upbringing was a little bit different.

So my parents, they never got in the way other than comments. And when I made the leave, when I left teaching, they saw how much I was already kind of working at this. And I think they realized that we can't really stop him if we wanted to. When I came home after, you know, with my tail between my legs and my head down, as I said, they gave me a little bit of a verbal spanking. And I deserved it. I needed it. I needed to be held accountable.

I wasn't blind. As I said, I wasn't manipulated by a master. I wasn't blindsided. But beyond that, it was just kind of like, we'll stay out of your way, figure it out. My mother, much more vocal. So like every year after that, she was like, go back to work, go back to work. Like, why don't you go back to work? You know, are you making any money? Cool things would happen. Like I got on, like my name was printed on the cover of rolling stones india and that was a big deal for me i had them ship me copies and i was like showing my mom and she's like but are you making any money right obviously you're not making any money from me having your name on a magazine and uh don't pay you for that they don't pay you for that or like if i get a gig sometimes you get

a gig where like it'll you know they might pay for your ticket they might give you like a thousand bucks but it's not enough to to make a full living off of. And she'll be like, well, are you saving? Are you making enough? I think you've had your fun. Just go back to your job. Will they take you back? Will your principal take you back?

And I did go back. In 2013, when I was losing hope, I did go back. And my principal just said to me hey you have a spot here it was in July I went and she's like hey you have a spot here in September if you want it'll be very challenging for me to shuffle around the staff it'd be much easier if you came back in January

are you cool with that? and I was like yeah yeah yeah I'm only coming back because I miss the kids yeah I don't need the money I'll come back in January and I left her office being like you're not going back yeah like you you better but now you got to go back and just talk to the kids yeah it's um it's yeah it's that's been a that's been a challenging thing in the beginning i couldn't face that school because again it was another source of failure i felt in the beginning. Now, there was actually one of my more recent music videos. I met this actress and I had her in the music video not realizing that I went to school

with her older sister. And her older sister used to come to the school I taught at to pick up her little brother. So that little brother had grown up and he had recently been murdered. And that opened up a lot for me in terms of like, did I abandon my community? Did I just forget about everyone and move to LA? And then it became a new challenge like that. And then it's kind of like

you stop picking up somebody's calls for so long, you don't know if you can just kind of pick it up and go back. And if you're going to recognize anything. And so that is definitely one of the challenges. Some of the old teachers have come to events that I've thrown and I've stayed in contact with them that way. I think most of the staff is kind of like, where I'm from in Ontario is going through a lot of challenges. We have our own- But that's your growth opportunity.

That is my growth opportunity. And I have to lean into that. but that's your growth opportunity that is my growth opportunity and i have to lean into that and that's something that just recently happened and it was um again it was one of those perspective shifts for me too it was like what are you what are you doing this all for what really is it like you can and that's what i have to keep asking myself like you can tell you can say the nice things for the podcast and you can say oh i i care about helping people i care about this but then why did you extend your trip two weeks? Why did you go to that premiere? Why did you make sure you got that picture with so-and-so on the red carpet?

Why did you do all these things? And how is that helping? Real shit's happening back at home. The real shit that you are extremely fortunate to get out of. My neighborhood, I'm from Rexdale in Toronto. If you're from Toronto, you know the reputation that Rexdale has. And I grew up on, I didn't grow up in the

most challenging part of it, but I went to school and definitely the most challenging part of it. And then I taught in another challenging part of that area. And I was teaching kids who were witnessing shootings. I was teaching kids who were witnessing a lot of violence. And what am I doing to help that? What can I do to help that? And also figuring out whether it's using my celebrity to poke at the local city counselor to make sure the jungle gym is safe. I have scars on my legs from injuries I sustained on broken jungle gyms in the neighborhood

and stitches accordingly. gyms in the neighborhood and stitches accordingly. And I know I can, you know, and thinking out loud, you know, in real time, I know I can do more to have that impact. And it's kind of like, you start to... You look at like Nipsey Hussle and like what he was doing in his community, it's kind of inspiring to think of, you know, the power and the responsibility of someone like yourself with respect to your community. Exactly.

And I had just connected with him in the middle of March. Oh, wow. I had tweeted at him and he had followed me back. And I sent him a long message and I promised myself, because I was flying to India for a show, and India straight here. And I said, all right, you are going to find him and you are not going to take no for an answer. You're going to learn as much as you can because he's very big on ownership and he's very big on independence and taking the slow route.

And I was dealing with challenges with my publishers. And every time I hear him speak, I'm like, man, maybe I shouldn't have went with the majors. He didn't, I need to learn this from him. And now that I have, he follows me, I have at least one direct line to reach out to him. I'm just going to go to his store and I'm just going to camp out. And I'm just like, I'll risk getting beat up to get this knowledge.

And then the flight back from India, it was Mumbai to Frankfurt and Frankfurt to LA. And in Frankfurt, I got the news. And then it was a lot of crying in the bathroom it was it was it was uh that was that was yeah that that really that a lot of I think I do need just some time to like really figure this out and but definitely we as a learning community me as a hip-hop artist me as somebody who embraces that culture um this is our opportunity to magnify who he was. You know, we get to decide now if we're going to just hollowly say, oh, he inspired us, or this is our opportunity to be like, all right, let's do what he did.

Translate that. Translate that. And I think probably, and it was a discussion I had with some of my friends who were Somali, because they're all first generation. They were all born in Somalia, and then they came here at like five, six years old. And they're all like, no, we're just working, making our money, and we're going back. We're taking this all back. And I'm like, what about your kids?

Are your kids interested in Somalia? They're like, no. And I was like, see, I'm your kids' generation. And I'm a minority over there, too. I'm a minority back in India, too. And I'm a minority here. And I don't know over there, too. I'm a minority back in India, too. And I'm a minority here. And I don't know what is my community. And my community actually is the neighborhood I grew up in and having to support that in some way, shape, or form.

And whether that's got to be being on these big platforms and shouting out the city and shouting out artists or whether it's building better jungle gyms or whether it's getting involved in politics on a local level. It's a challenge and it's a tricky thing to do, but I'm working on it. I've gotten a seat at a table. I think Toronto might be the only city right now that will give a guy like me a seat at the table. And I've been given a seat at the table. And at the same time, I'm still going to some of these street guys, mixtape release parties and getting a lot of love and trying to exist in the entire spectrum and trying to pass down the education I'm learning from these top CEOs and business minds and trying to apply that to these young entrepreneurs who are wasting their money on Gucci belts and stuff like that. I'm just trying to figure out a way to share that with them without sounding preachy. Well, I think you've earned your seat at the table, and I feel like you're just beginning. I feel like I've caught you here today, like the very early stages in what you're going to create.

I'm excited to see what that is. Well, thank you. I hope that's the case. I hope for years and years to come you can be like you know i was messing with humble before it was cool but i don't know man i think you're pretty cool out there in the world at the moment you know again i'm i'm nothing but gratitude for you for again sharing this with me you are you're a super dope dude and um as i said i you know i'm i'm a i met your partner at the market angel event right and that's what kind of first introduced me and she was sharing some I met your partner at the Mark and Angel event. Right.

And that's what kind of first introduced me. And she was sharing some of your story. And then that kind of introduced me to this world. And I'm so grateful that this world exists where it's just a lot of people trying to better themselves in real time and sharing their notes with a lot of other people who are trying to better themselves. And I feel like it's just going to be an exponential thing. We're all in this together. We're all in it together. Elegantly trying to figure it out, my friend.

Thank you so much for having me, man. So cool. Really great to talk to you, man. Really appreciate it. The book is Unlearned 101 Simple Truths for a Better Life. And you can find it. Everywhere. You can find it everywhere.

You've got a website for it, though, right? Is it better if people go to your website to get it? I mean, and I'll help them find their preferred spot, so humblethepoet.com slash unlearn. But I mean, we're on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, all the independent bookstores. I mean, now that it's been doing so well on Amazon, from what the publishers are telling me, it's getting on more shelves. Cool. Somebody told me that they went to

Barnes and Noble inside of the front of the store oh yeah nice apparently a big deal so I'm happy about that and even just if you check it out

just literally open it to any page you're going to find a quote this quote right here heartbreaks like any other struggle is essential

for your growth this is my old teacher ways that's how I used to read to the kids yeah that's how you had that dinner pretty good yeah that's right you either read it to the kids. Yeah, that's how you did that pretty good.

Yeah, that's all right. So you'd either read it to the kids and then you'd have to show them the picture. And every once in a while, you'd read it and you'd switch the page and be like, Mr. Singh, you didn't show us the picture. And you'd have to sit there

and just scan the whole room and then just watch them absorb it. And I've been doing YouTube videos now, reading from the book. I saw those. It's cool. Yeah, telling the kids to shut up and sit down. Right.

It's been fun. But yeah, no, thank you so much for, again, sharing your platform for me. I do have a question for you, just for my own selfish personal growth. What is the challenge that you are currently excited to tackle in your own journey right now? I've got a bunch of them right now. Is there one that's- I'm trying to crack another book wide open at the moment and that's been difficult um not only on the ideation aspect of it but also just on the scheduling aspect because my life is so much more full and busy than it was when i wrote

my first book where i had a lot more time and not a lot going on and not a lot of emails and people calling me you know and now it's different so it goes back to what we were talking about about like you know having boundaries around your time and how you're exercising you know those precious hours during the day to make sure that they're channeled in the direction of what can move the needle the most you know and it's been a while since i've written anything so that's my mountain to climb this year that I'm excited about, but also scared and intimidated and all of that. And where are you at right now?

The outlining process? Yeah. Okay. Early days, my friend. Early days. I had for the next one that I'm releasing, I spent a whole summer and I set the goal of a thousand words a day. Because you're like, oh, it needs to be 70,000 words.

I was like, all right, cool. I can get this done in the summer. And then the entire draft had to get scrapped. Did it? But it's easy to look at that and think that that was wasted time. But those are the push-ups. Those are the reps that make you a better writer. And that's me leaving one space, spending more time in the digital world

than the traditional publishing world and realizing, hey, these people aren't impressed by my cute little Instagram captions. They really want to bring out the best in me. And that's actually what, when I signed with Harper, that was the only promise my agent said to me was, I'm not promising you you're going to become an international sensation, but I am promising you you'll leave this a better writer. Because these editors, they're not forgiving. they're really gonna poke poke at you until they get they get the good stuff and um that was a process and a half so it is fun um or maybe i'm saying it's fun because i'm done yeah but it's humbling it is my deadline was november 1st yeah my deadline was november 1st and i finished at the end of February, for perspective. I gotcha.

Yeah. And I thought I'd be done in September. Yeah, here we are. So when that drops, that'll be a fun one, too. Cool. So check out the book. If you want to learn more about Humble, check out the show notes. I'll put a bunch of links up there, and you're an easy dude to find on the internet.

Just at Humble the Poet pretty much everywhere. YouTube everywhere youtube instagram instagram's your main jam though these days right instagram and twitter yeah i'm i like i like being on twitter twitter's fun instagram and uh trying to trying to put some oxygen back in facebook and are you doing any concerts or live events or anything like that where people can learn you know come and see you I'm going to be in New Jersey on the 9th of May at the Indigo store. They've made their move into the States. That's their first location. I'm going to check that out.

And I am currently working on a couple of other bookstores in other cities. But one thing that we'll definitely do is a lot of local media in whatever city. So I think looking at Green Apple in San Francisco, trying to secure a date there, maybe Powell's in Portland, really pushing the independent bookstores because independent bookstores matter. And I really want to get out there and meet some more book nerds and sign some books. All right, man. Well, come back and

talk to me again sometime. For sure. All right. Peace, my friend. Blance. For sure. All right. Peace, my friend. Glance. It's hard not to like that guy, Humble, right? Like he just, I don't know, he has an infectious spirit. So I really enjoyed that.

Hope you did as well. Do me a favor. Check the show notes on the episode page at richroll.com to expand your understanding of his world beyond the earbuds. And let him know directly by sharing your thoughts with him on Twitter or on Instagram at HumbleThePoet. And don't forget to pick up a copy of his book, Unlearn 101 Simple Truths for a Better Life, as well as pre-order his brand new book coming out in the fall,

Things No One Else Can Teach Us. We'd appreciate any help you're willing to lend to help support the work we do here on the podcast. The best way to do that is just tell your friends about the show or a certain episode that you listened to recently that you enjoyed. Share the show on social media. You can take a screen grab of what you're listening to or share a few thoughts. Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on YouTube, on Spotify, on Google Podcasts. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, super important. And you can also support us on Patreon at richroll.com forward slash donate.

I want to thank everybody who helped put on the show today. Jason Camiolo for audio engineering, production, show notes, interstitial music. Blake Curtis and Margo Lubin for videoing and editing this podcast for YouTube. Blake Curtis also doing double duty on audio engineering today. Jessica Miranda for graphics, DK, David Kahn for advertiser relationships, Allie Rogers for portraits and theme music, as always, by Annalema. Thanks for the love, you guys. I do not take your attention for granted.

I appreciate all the support. And I will see you back here in a couple days with another fantastic conversation with none other than triathlon Olympic gold medalist, Gwen Jorgensen. Yes, hot off the presses. From my trip, my recent trip to Glacier National Park. Super excited to share that one.

You're not gonna wanna miss it. Until then, be kind to yourself and to the world. Put positivity out there. Be grateful, all the good stuff. And I'll see you back here soon. Peace, let's almost play. Thank you.