TONTS. - What It Means To Be A Man with Sandeep Varma

Episode Date: October 5, 2021

This conversation you’re about to hear today is with an old friend of mine who I met through volunteering with kids from tricky back grounds, taking them on camps over the school holidays. This is actually inadvertently how I met my husband man James too but that’s a story for another day. Sandeep Varma is someone I've always admired for his intelligence, tenacity, positivity and kindness. He is someone who knows a lot about advocacy, especially in helping young people and children in his work as a lawyer. Deep also knows about shifting the way we think, about mindsets, changing the way we think about masculinity and the value of aligning your work with your values. Sandeep is a Dad to two little humans who is also the founder and CEO of SAARI Collective a media start up and community for South Asian Australians. He is passionate about amplifying South Asian voices, building community, anti-racism and delivering social change. He has worked across so many sectors with roles such as a speechwriter, lawyer, leader and advocate for children’s rights. Deep is also the board chair at 100 Story Building, a social enterprise for young creative writers and in all his spare time is also the four time Australian Chilli cooking champion for his famous chilli con carne. Settle in for a lovely wide ranging conversation I dare you to not be inspired by Sandeep Varma.Links discussed in today's episode:Man Enough with Justin BaldoniDr Kristen Neff The Artist's Way Morning Pages with Julia Cameron For more from Sandeep you can head to Saaricollective.com.au And you can find me at @clairetonti on instagram or at www.clairetonti.com or subscribe to my newsletter hereAs always thank you to RAW Collings for editing this week's episode. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Have you ever met someone and just thought, I don't know how he does it? Well, that's my guest today, Sandeep Varma. Hello, I'm Claire Taunty and welcome to Taunts, a podcast about feeling all of it. Now, the conversation you're about to hear today is with a wonderful old friend of mine whom I met through volunteering with kids from tricky backgrounds, taking them on camps over the school holidays. This is actually inadvertently how I met my husband, man, James too, but that's a story for another day. Sandeep Varma is a lovely old pal who I've always admired for his intelligence,

tenacity, positivity, and kindness. Deep, as his mates call him, is someone who knows a lot about shifting the way we think, about mindsets, about thinking deeply, and about the value of aligning your work with your values. Sandeep is a dad to two little humans and is also the founder and CEO of Sari Collective, a media startup and community for South Asian Australians. He's passionate about amplifying South Asian voices, building community, anti-racism, helping young people and delivering social change. He has worked across so many sectors in his life. He's been a speechwriter, as I said, a lawyer, a board chair, a leader and an advocate. Deep is also the board chair at 100 Story Building, which is another social enterprise for young creative writers. And in his spare time,

just because he must have so much spare time, he is also the four-time Australian chilli cooking champion for Chilli Konkani. So settle in for a lovely wide-ranging conversation. I dare you not to be inspired by Sandeep Varma. Hello, Sandeep. How are you? Claire, I'm great. I'm doing all right. We're in an extended now lockdown here in Melbourne. So surviving as best we can, I think, in the juggle of everything. Oh my goodness. I know for listeners who don't know you, do you want to explain a little bit about where you are and how your situation is currently? Because we're in Melbourne, obviously, we've just had tighter restrictions put on yesterday. You can hear our dog barking in the background. Yeah. Yeah. So I think the first thing people might hear is my accent and then also see my name and wonder how

those two things connect with being in Australia as well. So I guess I might do to give you a short background on me. So, you know, my family's Indian, but I was born in the U.S. and I grew up in California and then went to uni on the East Coast at a university in Philadelphia. And then I got an exchange program that led me to come to Melbourne because our uni recommended that we all go somewhere abroad to understand the world a bit better, which is, I guess, very progressive for an American institution.

Yes. to understand the world a bit better, which is, I guess, very progressive for an American institution. And I came to Australia and actually the very first day I arrived here, I met Laura, who's now my wife. And we got together not too long after that. And we just celebrated 20 years of that. Our first kiss is yesterday, in fact. But then I went back and I got a scholarship to come back and do my master's at Melbourne Union Media. And the interesting thing is that the thing I did my master's thesis on was, so I'm South Asian, which includes India, Pakistan, Bangladesh. And the reason we use this term kind of South Asian now is because, you know, India and all the countries were colonized by the British. And before that, there was a sense of kind of identity that was across those spaces.

And then there's been political divides, and most of those have been imposed by colonialism that's happened over the last few years, a few hundred years. And so the idea of being South Asian is something that actually came about in the US first and is now slowly starting to emerge in Australia. So it's not to kind of negate the idea of being Indian or Nepali or Pakistani, but it's an idea of something that instead of fighting with each other on differences that are actually just imposed by other people, that we kind of unify and go through those differences. So for example, you know, India and Pakistan have been at it for a long time politically. And so instead of replicating the enmity that exists between those two, we adopt something that's a bit broader.

And it allows a stronger also political base to which to go on. So when I first came here, I did my master's thesis in the media on media studies on South Asian identity in the media across a couple of different countries. And in Australia, there was like hardly anything to be found at the time. And then fast forward quite a while. So I became a media advisor and a speechwriter in government in Australia. I worked in like crisis communications mostly. So the Black Saturday bushfires, tsunamis, floods, et cetera, a number of years ago. And then I took a turn to, I've always had an

interest in kind of law. So I started, I was studying it part-time while working after a few years and thought it'd be great to practice. So I went to practice and I enjoyed it for a little while. And then I had kids. And also I think I got to the point where I realized that the impact I wanted to make with my life was a little bit different than what I was able to achieve with law. And also, the law firm where I was at was a bit more of a kind of a consulting type space where you don't get to kind of see the outcomes through and own that. And so I thought, what can I do with my law degree? And my favorite subject at law school was children's rights law. So, you know, that's how we met, right? Volunteer with kids. I've always loved volunteering with kids and helping kids out. And

so I thought, I'll go into that space and I became a children's lawyer. So I represented young people in court, mostly in criminal matters and helped them out where I could. And as much as I enjoyed that work, I think I got to a point where I was given a project actually to run. And it was sort of starting from scratch, creating a project that helped young kids who were leaving out of home care, which is like foster care arrangements. Because sister ministry is that when you turn 18, you kind of get dropped by the state, and no one looks after you. And so I was working on this project, helping kids in that space out with kind of long term care, and partnering with a bunch of law firms to do pro bono work. And I

realized that I actually love the idea of like getting a blank page and starting and building and creating something. And so I did youth work, youth legal work. I did human rights work. And the funny thing was that it all came sort of full circle. I did a project on human rights and multiculturalism in Victoria for young people. So we looked at like rights and responsibilities and values that young people have. And we worked with like hundreds and hundreds of multicultural young people across the state. And we taught them about project management. We helped fund particular projects that tried to move the needle on issues that they cared about, like racism and climate change and things. And so it's very much back to the roots of helping young people out.

But also it was something that I saw a lot of South Asian young people because there's so many Indian and South Asian migrants in Australia. Like Victoria has the number one population of Indian migrants in the country and also Sri Lankan. And if you add up all the numbers, roughly, there's over a million South Asians in Australia. Wow, that's huge. That's much bigger than I thought. Yeah, it's bigger than people thought. Some estimates have it up to 1.2 million, depending on the day, if you include students. So it's a huge market for the unis. It's a huge

worker base. And especially if you come to melbourne you see like south asians kind of working in so many different spaces you know and the interesting thing was in like i heard from those young people the same thing i'd found in my research like 15 or 20 years before that which was like you know where is the representation in the media where is the representation of us in like politics in you know in senior roles in the arts for example or even in business of you know there's a few here and there how do we support each other how do we find visibility how do we find a space that we can be seen and kind of own and tell our own narratives so this is a very long-winded explanation but i'm loving it i haven't had to

ask a single question i'm just listening because it's such an incredible story, really, where you started. Long explanation for the idea that I guess was relevant to me in terms of my own identity and the expression of that and seeing that kind of play out or lack of that play out in various spaces in Australia and wanting to do something about it, but not really doing anything about it for a long time. And then hearing about it and saying, well, actually, maybe there's something we can do. So a mate of mine and I took the idea to a startup program for migrants and refugees, actually, which is called Catalyzer. And we just had the idea and they accept us on the basis of the idea.

And we kind of put it through the paces and did some research and found the numbers in terms of how many South Asians there are. But the other interesting fact was that there was a paper that research paper that was published that suggested that based on the rates of migration I mean once you have like a big Indian type family somewhere like all your relatives will be calling you up asking if they can you can get them a visa literally that's happened to me a few times like hey can you hook me up and get me into Australia and so I mean it's no surprise that like once there's a ground soil of people here and you have a kind of a family base and they're doing okay like that other family members will follow or cousins or you know community will start to build and that's been happening here

that's why there's so many South Asians in Australia you know safe place good education system good health care etc good working prospects and it just, it just played out that way that the research paper says, well, this is actually documentable. And we can see that in the next like eight to 10 years, the number of South Asians in Australia would probably double. And this was pre-COVID of course. And so if you look at that, like, I mean, so that means South Asians will be a huge percentage of the Australian population. And like, and so that is, you know, like, I mean, that means South Asians will be a huge percentage of the Australian population. And like, and so that is, you know, so the startup we started, Saudi Collective, which is now the organization I run every day. And that is, our mission is to amplify South Asian voices, but not just talk to like really well-established writers and journalists, but find the ones who are saying, who say to themselves, like, I don't, I'm not really a writer, or I have some things to say, but I'm not really sure. Or maybe they're

content creators across different platforms. They're kind of doing it on their own, or they have great ideas. They're doing really smart things. Or maybe they have a career in something, but they want to scratch that creative itch and don't quite know how because of both their own inhibitions and also the cultural barriers that exist to going down that path in our communities and so we are a space for that um we have over 100 writers who've worked with us across australia and we're trying to be we're almost national so which is really exciting we're kind of a media platform so we we write stories um and create um content and comment on issues that are going on, but also represent people's experience here in Australia as migrants and what they're doing, what they're talking about, what they're interested in, culture they're creating. So, for example, recently had Vinnie Lunar, who's like an R&B artist out of Sydney.

Ah, cool. Who's produced this really cool track called Prema, which means love. And yeah, we just wanted to feature him as like a really up and coming, very young, very new kind of South Asian artist who's getting notified. So I think he got on his track, got onto the Spotify, like bedroom kind of nighttime R&B jams kind of list. And he was pretty excited. So, you know, equally, we talk about all kinds of issues within the community. So, for example, we've written on like mental health is a massive issue, family violence, which is like not talked about at all in our communities because of the shame factor.

We've talked about like geopolitical issues that have come up. We had a really cool and it's not just i think so younger people who are coming to us and saying hey i'm not really sure if i've got an idea here can i write something and we kind of are just a really supportive place that helps put them you know i guess through a process by which they get you know to work through it to structure an idea or a piece or a video or an audio file, and then make something of that, help edit it, help produce it, you know, help put visuals to it, and then put it out in the world through our platform. And just the sense of pride that they get never having done that before, or never having had that experience that I've seen from the writers

that we've had. And we've published people who've never been published before, many of them. Wow. Why are you the way that you are? Because you do so many things. You do this and you also do 100 Story Building, I wanted to ask you about. You have such a strong social justice bent. I know you touched on it before, but why do you think you have such a drive to do so many things and make the world better? I think the idea of social justice comes from exactly the uniqueness of people who are kind of immigrants and how their kids have to sort out like juggling things. So like, for example, my parents came from India and the places that they grew up were very poor. So, you know, and going back there a number of times as a kid, having my grandparents stay with us numerous times when we were growing up in the States,

you know, we saw that like disparity that existed. We were fortunate enough that my parents had done their professionals and so they were able to do well for themselves. So we saw that, and my mom especially was very strong on, you know, trying to give back within her own community, you know, to look out for the people that were less fortunate because those people had helped her find her way through. There was kind of a faith element to it growing up Hindu and being part of that community and understanding the principles around karma and duty and the idea of looking after,

being connected to that sense of community. So we grew up around a really strong Indian community. Could you explain what karma is to someone who sort of has heard it as a term that we just throw around? Yeah. From the perspective of the Hindu faith, what do you mean by karma? So I'm by no means any kind of expert. I'm just a lay person who likes to read a lot. I think, you know, the common understanding of karma is that it's energy that is recycled. So any action that you take has a consequence. And the consequence of that is either good or bad.

So there's almost a scale. And you then own that karma. What is different about the actual roots of the concept is bigger than that, which is really cool. But people don't usually get that. So they often think karma is like the scales that are balanced. i do something good then something good comes my way if you do something bad then it'll catch up with me down the track um something bad will happen so it's kind of like there's this destiny map and you know you're scoring good things and bad things and they kind of weigh on you um and they maybe they catch up with you and maybe they don't the the bigger

hindu concept if you go back and read the mythology, which I kind of do sometimes, which I like, is actually like it goes across lifetimes. So you not only are paying for your own, like you're not only trying to figure out your own karma, you're trying to figure out exactly the question you asked me, like, why are you this way? And it actually comes not just from, like, the existence you've currently had, but previous ones. It might even go back a fair way, which is really interesting. And actually, like, there's a number of cultures, including, like, Native Americans, that have the concept of, like, your elders or your ancestors.

Indigenous culture has this too, right? Indigenous Australian culture. And, you know, your ancestors and, like, your elders and your family tree and the legacy that comes from that and trying to unpack and understand like where that comes about so i mean some of the old like hindu stories you know there's the bhagavad-gita the mahabharata the ramayana they have like family lineages that go back generations and then at the start of like there's one king or there's one prince or there's one person. And they have a cascade effect that goes on for hundreds of years across multiple families and breaks things. And they're paying the price for the actions or reactions of those people.

And so if you look at it in like a much bigger picture, you're kind of an agent of karma that is way beyond your perception. And so karma then becomes not only a matter of faith, but it becomes a matter of like how you choose to uncover it. And part of that is a learning process and part of that is a surrendering process. And the surrendering process is that you'll never know all the reasons why your karma has come to you. I think that the common understanding of karma is that like, oh, I did something six months ago or three years ago or 10 years ago. Yeah, now it's come back to me.

It's just, hey, it's great. You know, like I helped that old lady cross the road. So today I found $20 on the ground. I think it's more, it's deeper than that. I think it's bigger than that. Because if it is something that is a balance that happens in the kind of the idea of the universe then the energy is coming and going all the time and in like lots of different ways that you might not perceive and it might be connected like in a broader sense to your family which is why this idea of like indian families and hindu families

living together intergenerational like stuff happening together um the idea of community and commonality in our culture, which is like defined more circularly than individually, is really strong. Wow. What do you mean by more circularly than individually? Can you unpack that a little bit more? Yeah, there's a book that talks about like different ways that cultures stand. It said that like Western and Eastern cultures are different because in Western cultures, there's said that a like western and eastern cultures are different because in western cultures there's like time is a straight line you know things happen in progress and it's also much more kind of individualistic in that your actions stand wholly on yourself

it's kind of like that idea of karma being it doesn't exist right so you just stand on what you've done and that's it and And you also are responsible for yourself. So I think sometimes when you need people, around people that I know listen to families and like parents kick out their kids, that's a weird concept for us. It still happens in our community, not to say that it doesn't, but it's a weirder concept.

Okay. Because you're a collective, you're a community that is always, you're connected to each other. You're circular in your thinking. You always think around in relationships, in how things come full circles, kind of the idea of karma. And in like society being interconnected in a kind of broader circle of life kind of idea. Yeah. And then you do, I'm a solo person and that's it um in this world i have no obligations

to anything and there's nothing that i have to fulfill by being me and look that's also secretly like the wish of a lot of brown kids who are raised with pretty strict parents because like i just wish i could just walk away from all of that burden and societal obligation and that wanting to service my family's expectations of me and all that. And that's part of the work that we do, actually, is helping people be supported to take a leap into their own creativity or their own opinions and voices. But yeah, so it was a loose theory. That guy wrote a book about it, talked about Asian cultures more broadly than Indian culture

being kind of circular, communal, really relational in that way. And then Western cultures being much more. And one of the clearest examples is even in language, so it filters down. So the word kal in Hindi means tomorrow or yesterday. So even at a linguistic level, like there's a blurring of how time is perceived. Wow. So that time becomes this idea that's a little bit more like where have you come from and

where are you going? And that's all connected as opposed to like time being like, okay, the past is closed and this is what I'm doing tomorrow to advance myself. And it doesn't matter what I do to the people around me. It's for me and my life and it just ends and then that's it. There's not that lasting thought process. It strikes me as a lot of pressure in some ways. It is.

It is. And, you know, I think the problem with, I mean, people might have heard about arranged marriages in the past. My parents, for example, had an arranged marriage. Many of my relatives, cousins, et cetera, have heard about arranged marriages in the past. My parents, for example, had an arranged marriages. Many of my relatives, cousins, et cetera, have had arranged marriages for good and bad. And the funny thing is that one of the people that administered those was my grandfather. So he did palmistry and astrology. He was a trained engineer. And then he retired and got into palmistry and astrology so he used to arrange marriages so people would come to him and that he'd look at their hand he'd ask the time and

date of birth there's this entire mathematical like world of you can dive into about how this all works but in in some like there's the lines of your hand which tell you certain things and there's also the position of the stars on the date and time you were born and you're supposed to look at the handprint and ink it and put it on a piece of paper there's all these lines and then you map the stars on and little boxes on the day that you were born and then there's angles where lines connect and intersect and the angles tell you things like your preferences for behaviors and supposedly like whether you'd be successful how many kids you're going to have whether they're going to be married um your like personal tendencies and things and

the funny thing is that he wrote a whole book on my life uh it's called a janam pathari in hindi but um he wrote a whole book on your life i mean he writes that's what he does he writes these books yeah actually while he was alive um he's passed now but he writes these books. Yeah. Actually, while he was alive, he's passed now, but he writes these books on, this is what will happen to you. And so also the same thing with arranged marriages, like you're a match because your stars align and good things will come. And so the concept of like underlying that's right. Fate or destiny is really strong,

right? It's like, okay, this is what, this is who you are and this is what's going to happen to you. And your, or your karma is catching up in this way or you're you have good luck or bad luck or whatever and and that's terrible like as a concept like it's terrible because what does it do to you it just

makes you resign to whatever's happening in your life someone's told you you're gonna work turn out unsuccessful or not as successful as someone else or have a failed marriage, then you will. You'll make that happen because it seems to have been planted in your mind. And for me, it was great when you hear good things, you're like, oh yeah, good things. It's like reading your horoscope in the newspaper and you're like, oh yeah, cool. It says something good's going to happen. When it says something bad, you kind of ignore it. But he kept telling us these things about our life and it was so, the good things were great but then also it was confining right and i think there's this cultural element of like parents it's very patriarchal culture and so in south asia so people like parents telling their kids what to do you know

like parent the dad is like the big figure in all families you know and many families um there's an idea of like destiny or your character your character is your destiny and vice versa so you're kind of this person that's set on a path um and the more you illuminate that path the better it's clear to you um but i don't buy that idea at all because i think it's so limiting and it's so great so much pressure and stress and like mental health anguish amongst south asians that are railing against something that is not who they are because they were told that that's what they either should be or in fact in some cases that's what they are and so I think like many things that idea should be challenged

and that's not like the basis on it's you know it's mythology even my grandpa like before he passed away said you know his line line was that astrology is bunkum. He told me that the National Congress of Astrologers predicted that Bill Clinton would lose his bid to be president. And then he won two terms. He's like, we don't get it right. We don't know what we're talking about. But then so many people culturally just have so much faith and so much stock in it that it becomes kind of a real thing. I mean, he told me for example that

i wouldn't have kids um or he said no no he never says that if he knew he says you may or may not have kids and i was shattered when i heard that because i was like i really want to have kids and i had two kids and i had two kids i was like wait a minute like that's totally wrong you know was the reason i had kids was like because I rushed to it so like I wanted to counterdict the fate you know like and then you get into that whole discussion like did it happen because I didn't you know the like you go down those like yeah those rabbit holes yeah and it's a terrible idea so what's the what is the conversation around mental health for South Asian Australians or just the South Asian community, I guess, is there a strong

support network around mental health or is it something you don't discuss very often? I think there's an emerging conversation around mental health only because it has to happen, because there's so much mental health anguish in our community. There is actually no data, which is one of the things that people are working on at the moment, which is fantastic. There's no real data on how many South Asians are seeking mental health support services. A corollary is there's very little data on South Asians with family violence in certain scenarios. We know that South Asians are seeking mental health support, and we know that there's a massive need, especially in the younger generation who's more vocal about it.

But there isn't really a language. It's not encouraged. There's a shame need, especially in the younger generation is more vocal about it. But there isn't really a language. It's not encouraged as a shame factor to it. Many people won't talk about it. And there is a stigma attached to still seeking that support, which a younger generation is combating. We are, you know, it's already kind of making efforts to try and illuminate that it's the thing i think but i think if you talk to the average south asian more broadly like seeing psychologists mental health although covid i believe has changed that a bit and made people recognize like the burdens of isolation and loneliness and and cultural gaps to like addressing some of the the bigger issues that mental health is a real thing but

there's many people that believe mental health is not a real thing. Or if it is, that it's not. It's a thing that you only access when life is terrible and you're in a hospital or something. Rather than a daily thing. Yeah, a daily thing, a preventative thing, a support mechanism. And I firmly believe that mental and physical health is not really a difference because they affect each other so much. And so I would say that in South Asianian cultures like many other cultures the idea of

health is physical health and the idea of mental health is like way lower than that and they haven't caught up to each other right and so what's interesting about that is that there's cultural barriers to addressing it but there's also cultural sensitivities that you want addressed when you seek mental health support, which is really interesting, right? And so what we did at SARDI, for example, was last year when the lockdown started, we put together a list of South Asian psychologists up and down the East Coast of Australia, which is now free on our website. And the reason for doing so was we wanted people to have access to kind of culturally appropriate support services in mental health, to them to talk to someone who understood about the

cultural nuances, you know, family dynamics, things like, you know, pressure and karma and where that comes from, from a point of view of understanding that. And it's not to say every South Asian psychologist is amazing, but I think there's accessibility to the culture that can come from that which is which is useful and there's actually like i've heard people requesting day in and day out do you know i said i just like college you know south asian male psychologists you're not south asian female psychologists and not being able to find or the ones that are out there being like completely booked out because there's such a need and i know one is in fact, who I spoke to,

who's been working in this space for a long time, she said our community is still like badly needing these services but also not recognising the importance of them. At the same time, there's still not enough, you know, supply of South Asian psychologists. So that is an ongoing current and big issue in our community and I think it's really important. Yeah, what's your own understanding around men's mental health particularly?

And I know obviously gender is a spectrum and things, but I am really interested in men's mental health and the challenges that they're facing. Yeah, I mean, I think for me that's an area I've had a lot of life experience in as well and also read and researched about. So I think in my own experiences of having mental health challenges, having depression, not even knowing what that register looked like, I think in my life, a couple of times, and then realizing that sort of, as you put it, mental health is an up and down thing that you

kind of have to just keep, be mindful of sort of like your physical health too. It's like, you know, eating and your diet, like it has effects over time. And so for me, like men's mental health is tied up to concepts of like masculinity and what that means, what it means to be a man. And I think that that is something that is tied to a concept of like being connected to something else than connected to yourself and so that the way that takes out is like and the way it played out for me the first time I experienced depression was in relation to work I was I had gone to and it often happens and I've been told in transition right so I was doing great in one job and then got us to come into another job and tried that out in a different space.

And I didn't know what I was doing. And I struggled to find my footing in that space. And I kind of ever since abroad that I could do anything because I've been doing okay. And then I jumped into a space where I didn't know how to do something. And it really shook me. I remember going to a music concert, like Splendid in the Grass or something, and bumping into an old mate, and then talking about like some sort of spreadsheet project that I had to do like a good amount of the time. And then I realized that like, I was kind of,

I got stuck on this idea of this work thing, and it made me feel less valid in my own self. And that put me on a spiral of like just you know downward and negative thinking and and that that is tied to this idea of like unless you're got a great card you know dating someone incredibly beautiful that everyone else thinks is is attractive for external reasons unless you're like financially successful, or unless you're like a great athlete and have a great body, unless you're X, you're not man enough. And I read Justin Baldoni's book recently, I talked about this, it's called Man Enough, actually. And I really buy into that idea, because I think it's so true that men set up a connection to something and that reduces the kind of emotional processing you have to do.

And so I think men's mental health, like the way men can approach mental health, like that idea of connecting to what you're feeling, that's like you ask a man, what are you feeling? Like, that's not it's not just an idea. Like, you have to learn the vocabulary for how to say those, like, say those things. Right. It's like you ask a medical, what are you feeling? It's not just an idea. You have to learn the vocabulary for how to say those things, right? You have to not just pick up the words and the language and educate, but you have to kind of do the work to figure out how you work out what you're feeling and articulate that. Yeah. And it's like a sublimated, it like a like the pressure push down thing in the

book he like just melody mentioned some research that says that they didn't or an experiment where they measured in your brain the emotional reaction to stimulus and men were actually faster to respond so their emotions were lit up right away the the emotion was like kind of stopped or slowed down and then it kind of faded away. Whereas women's brains like lit up maybe just a couple seconds later, but then it just kept going. I can relate to that. And it was like, oh yeah, like it kept going. And I was like, oh, that's so true. Because like initially at the start, that's how we're, you know, maybe we're all raised in that society and like ideas of masculinity, especially in our culture like south asian culture is really constrained and really

tight and really sort of rigid um and so you you know what's often been called a man box right and you're trying to unpack all that and you don't know how people know you have no role models in an old generation the old generation is less literate in this idea than the younger generation is yeah so what's a man box it is the the definition of what it means to be a man confined to like particular like a little box so it's like saying okay you are a man if you are tall you know if you have good facial hair if you are like can lift weights or run fast or be good at sports or drive an awesome car really fast um if you you know it's just like these it's it's a boxed version of what it means to a man like a man

and also the corollary is right a man shouldn't be these other things that are outside of the box so a man i mean i've heard that you know back in the day it was like men shouldn't wear pink men shouldn't express their femininity at all, that there's none within you even to begin with, that men shouldn't be stay-at-home dads, that men shouldn't – there's all these things that men shouldn't do because that's not what a man – Be emotional or cry or acknowledge when they're feeling afraid or worried about something, that they should at all times be just like strong

and brave and yes exactly and you should shut out your emotions and the emotions are outside of the man box right or you close the lid on the box of your emotions and there's just a box inside of you and that's it and maybe you want to open that box and let some stuff out but someone keeps shutting the lid and the really interesting thing is it's not people like men alone who do it it's not women who put men in a man box for damn sure that's not what happens it's actually other men that police the notion of what it is to be a man and reinforce this man box to men so like the one number one person will call you out for something in a locker room or if you're going to date is another bloke and they'll be like oh like that

ain't right or like you know oh you know like she ain't that or you know you should just sleep with her or whatever it is you know um or you know they'll make a joke about um a woman at a woman's expense and and no one will stand up for it and so the it becomes like an accepted notion of just that's what we do as blokes and so then if someone after that calls it out and goes, hey, I don't think we should talk about women like that, they'll laugh at you or they'll call you out or they'll make fun of you. And so it's men policing other men's behavior that reinforces the idea of a man box. So the great thing is that there's a lot of people talking about this concept. There's an organization that works with young men called Man Cave in Australia, which is doing a lot of great work in that space with schools and young men. There's a lot of people doing this work, especially the younger generation.

And the younger generation is rising up to say, hey, we want to not be defined in these ways that people have previously been defined because it's harmful. And so I think coming back to where we started, men's mental health is intimately tied to this idea of the man box. And addressing your mental health is like confronting like deep-seated beliefs about what you have, what it is to be a man. And what you're performing and enacting to your own detriment. And what you can let go of. And then when you can like find it and how you go about a process to do that. And then the more you do that, the freer you are a little bit. And the freer you can perhaps make different choices

and also kind of show up for not only women but other men and show up in your communities and your families and things like that as well. Yeah. I think as well once you – because sometimes people can start to just turn off when you say all this stuff about how it's important to be able to name your feelings and talk about it and let yourself out in that way. And sometimes you can hear people saying, oh, just suck it up. You'll be right. Move on. Oh, that's very fairy. But I think at the core of it, it's vulnerability,

right? It's being able to actually show people who you are. And when you do that, they then meet you and meet you as you really are and your relationships are stronger and deeper. I think happiness is obviously something that comes and goes, but a feeling of deep connection and contentment can come from actually being real about who you are and being able to show those emotions rather than bottling them up. I spoke to a friend of ours, Marty McGoran, his sister Carly is a psychologist. And she was saying the danger of continuing to keep pushing

all of that stuff into that man box is that you then eventually have to let the lid off somehow. And if you don't just open it, it explodes and it explodes in negative consequences either for the people around you or for yourself and it can have really, really difficult, challenging, you know, long-term effects. Plus it's stopping you from actually building those connections with your partner or your kids or your friends. Yeah.

Yeah, and I think it's really such a powerful message and that's so important then. And it strikes me as well when you mentioned domestic violence rates in our country and in the South Asian community as well. There has to be a link, right, between those two things. Do you agree? Completely. It's exactly what you just said. I mean, you put it really well, like, the lid will explode off the man box in an emotional way, right? So that's often, you know, that's anger, that's fury, that's violence, that's shame that leads to those things. You know,

I was told by my psychologist, which is really insightful, that anger is actually in some circles seen as a secondary emotion. So there's something under it. And that's really hard because it's such a powerful feeling, right? But maybe you're angry at yourself. Or maybe there's something underneath it, like hurt, you know, or sadness or shame or feeling une, or not being able to express yourself properly. And so, like, the sense of purpose that you can try and find about who you are lets you connect to others, lets you be you, but also prevents all that, you know, that blows out

into societal level with men upon men. I mean, the structures that exist now in a society that is built by men, largely for men, which is being challenged on many levels, is that it doesn't help men either. It helps a few men, maybe, but it doesn't really help men either. So if you're a man and you're listening and you're like, oh yeah, okay, that's great. I get it it what do i do about it like step one is is learn like learn about how you learn about what it means to be you and and the things and and where that comes from like that's it's not a wasted exercise it's it's a simple thing to start like just reflecting you know buy yourself a notebook and just start writing stuff down or you know read a couple of

the books just know that johnny's book is a great starting point. As a parent, like it came really to the fore for me. I have two boys. And so I'm like, ah, you know, like all the shit I was raised with, like, you know, good and bad, like, but the difficult things about the masculinity I was presented with that I've kind of tried to rail against, it never served me in the way that I wanted it to. And I was raised on a steady diet of comic books and graphic novels and Star Trek. And so I saw in, the thing was, I saw in those people that were different. Patrick Stewart playing Captain Picard was like a different style of man than I saw before, willing to be open and sensitive.

And I was like, whoa, that's super cool. Pa Kent, like Superman, Clark Kent's dad, Superman's dad, different, you know, encouraging his son to go do something with his super abilities that helps people, not just cash in on them, you know. And you see these kind of stories and examples, and they're powerful to you, especially when you're a teenager, about what that means. Yeah.

So how are you parenting your boys then now? Do you have a particular approach to it or is it sometimes a daily proposition? Yeah, I think it's just it's daily. It's being in the moment with them. I think it is about also helping them articulate how they're feeling. I think the schools now are really well literate, so they do a great job. Like our kids are getting education about what is indigenous culture and the language is there they they have like this um i don't know if at kinder they do like a blue zone red zone

green zone thing where they talk about their feelings like oh i'm in the green zone i'm in the red zone they're stomping around they're actually angry and like it's a it's a beautiful like traffic light metaphor to explain at a kid appropriate level like what they're kind of feeling and how they articulate that and we always ask them like how are you feeling so they can learn to like verbalize and articulate that and you know i think you're just steering the ship about you know when they do something that is harmful but also that um i think the idea of like raising boys and i get out read about this to try and be informed about it but i think the idea of like raising boys and again i read about this to try and be informed about it but i think the idea of raising boys is not replicating too much i mean one of my sons came home the other day like a while back maybe a year ago um and was like oh

that's uh that's pink that's a girl's color i'm not gonna wear that and and so we had the conversation we're like pink is not a girl there's no such thing as a girl's color. I'm not going to wear that. And so we had the conversation. We're like, pink is not a girl. There's no such thing as a girl color. And you can wear whatever you want. My other son loves dance. Like you turn on music and the kid is just dancing all the time, everywhere. He actually started doing a performance at like,

you know, just a couple of months ago in front of the charity where I help work on Hunter's Story building, closed off street on a bench, like putting on a performance for a bunch of people, just because he likes to put on a show. So we enrolled him in like the closest dance class that was near us was a ballet class.

And so we enrolled him in ballet and he loves it. Like he loves the dancing. He sits there zoned in whether it's on video or in person, you know, depending on lockdown situations. And he will just like zone in and he'll, every time there's music on, he will start moving his body and start dancing. Like he's a kinesthetic person, you know, depending on lockdown situations. And he will just like zone in. Every time there's music on, he will start moving his body and start dancing. Like he's a kinesthetic person, you know, that's his skill set, like moving his body.

Like he loves it already, you know, and whatever else he grows into. But instead of like putting that down and saying, oh, that's for girls or, you know, you shouldn't wear a tutu or, you know, don't be the only bloke in a ballet class. Like, you know, we just encourage, that's him. And we just encourage him to be him. And there's no kind of barrier or box around that version of what he wants to be. And there's no gender construct that ties to that, that you can be a ballet dancer and be masculine as anybody else, you know? And there's no kind

of response to that. So those are kind of practical examples, I guess, and the rest is just kind of communication style and talking and modelling, you know, as best we can despite parental flaws and arguments you get into and things like that, you know. Yeah, there's a really great writer called Maggie Dent who writes about boys' education who I love and just parenting in general and I just love her advice. And also Carly and I talked about this too in a recent episode of Tons.

What your kids want is not a perfect person with no flaws because that's intimidating and that isn't real. What they want is to get to know you as a person and so your relationship with them, it's not a friendship in that you just want to make them happy all the time, but it's in that relationship between the two of you and that open communication. And if you can just keep that open and when you make mistakes,

as we all will, it's not about pretending it didn't happen. It's about when you have done it, acknowledging it, right, and talking it through and being like, whoa, I got so angry then. I felt so angry. I should have gone outside and spent some time by myself. I'm really sorry that I got cross that you left the Lego out and I stepped on it or whatever it was. Yeah.

And she was saying that like something like 60% of the time, we're not going to get our kids' needs met in exactly the right way in a perfect world. But what matters is after each time we have an interaction like that, we can kind of come back from it and apologise or talk it out, talk it through, make it right. And that's, I guess, how you build a marriage too, right, or a relationship, a partnership.

Yeah, a partnership. Any relationship, yeah. Yeah, it's just that like building one on top of the other and that made me feel so much better. She said, takes the pressure off. They're not looking for you to be perfect. They're just looking to get to know you. And that, you know, and that's such a beautiful thing. Yeah, that's so true.

A million things that jump into my mind as you say that. Like it's so beautiful. Yeah, that's so true. A million things that jump into my mind as you say that. It's so true. And also, I think for boys, there's a couple things. The first thing is that I read this article years and years ago in the New York Times called Family Stories. And it was based on some research, but the premise of it was that the stories that we tell in our family are really important and they help us like learn how to cope with like storytelling is a story that we tell that we tell ourselves too right we internalize it after a while so like the stories that we tell in our own family really define kind of how we work and I think about you know the idea of like man box and

patriarchal culture and some South Asian cultures there's a versions of family stories that are told that for example don't include failure because a man shouldn't be seen to be failing or be wrong or know how to apologize properly like you see in early bollywood films too like the they build up for three hours until a man has to say sorry you know like um that's like a big in fact one of the most famous movies kabi kush kabi gum called k3g with amitabh bachan and sharu khan the entire movie builds up until the dad like apologized to his son for being an absolute joke um it's it's three great song and dance numbers and big emotional crying and everything else and you know the kid moves across the world and then he comes back and

finally the dad like embraces him and i was like it's too much work to just you know it's too much like to have to put effort to put in for like your entire life and three hours of a film whether you're in the movie or you're the person watching it to get to that point like um but the family stories bit is so true because it's like if you are not told a story about how to fail and learn to cope and be resilient and bounce back to it, that you don't have the language and the mechanism and the pathway to understand how you do that within a family context, which is like for us, you know, that circle, but also someone who's like you very much close to you and in your world or intimate world that might be able to do that. So if you talk about, you know, some family stories where there's like a war hero or someone who survived something or someone who, you know, in our kind of world, like who are migrants who moved to a

country and start over and build something together or people who didn't get it right. Often there's an idea that you have to just tell good stories about what happened and you shy away like the dodgy members of your family, you know, but it's those stories that are the most important because, you know, if you talk about people who have not gone right, then when kids have a instance in their life, when things haven't gone right, they can draw on that story. And the research was like those families that are more resilient,

the kids are able to cope, the families that have the language of these family stories that they can tell is like other families that are more successful in the end, but also more resilient and more emotionally literate and more able to cope with different difficult circumstances that happen. And I love that. And I was like, oh, I wish we'd had more family stories about my own family, about, you know, things that tanked, like things that went wrong. Like there was, there was, there was a bit of it, but not that much. It sort of came out in more angst than it did in just sitting down and talking about it. So I think that part of it is really true. But also the other part that you were talking about, which is really cool is like that modeling, right? That you as a parent are modeling this kind of behavior and you're kind of working out how you are better by going through this process and kind of doing it on the fly and then working out if it's right.

And for boys, and I think men too, like there's a bit underlying that, which is like how you deal with strength and how you deal with power. And I've been finding that already with my oldest son, who's six. Like he'll, like he's, you know you know finding some strength and stuff he can do things he might hit someone or me or just in a lash out you know at a moment and like and as a man as a boy like you don't know how to cope with your own strength and it's a big thing that dads can help with right like a dad who has physical is physically stronger than a mom in most cases, that's because of our genetics, right? Like can help show how to be like a strong person

who is not exploitive with that strength, how to use like your physicality in a way that is appropriate. And so I find that we're doing a bit of that now, which is really interesting. And that most people like, and that's another thing about men like most men they're not aware of their own power and privilege and what to do with it um and they often feel disempowered when they're in power but they're also emotionally not empowered and so it's this weird mix and this mess and like but for me like maybe part of the answer to the origin question really was like, I just thought at one point that like I was given gifts, that maybe I was good at a couple of things.

And I had the resources and support of a family that was, you know, middle class or above that and was able to get a good education. And so what am I doing with all that? Like, shouldn't I be doing something with that? And that makes the world a different place place like a better place and helping others and also that i think for me like the highest calling what i was taught in hinduism is like the idea of dharma which is like what is your purpose but that purpose should be enabled by service and there's some level of service you should give to people um and that can fulfill your purpose. And that part of that is like coming back to your own values.

So for me that, you know, funnily enough, after having a couple of up and downs in my own mental circular idea that people supporting each other as an antidote to lots of things like the epidemic of loneliness that is going on in society right now. The lack of connectedness, the response to like at a neighborhood level, like, you know, pandemic and supporting people. Like the community is not just an antidote, but it's a thing that builds us up. And that a community of men can talk about masculinity and mental health and can help advance those things if we're doing, supporting each other together in a positive, in a different way. And then the other one is creativity, which is why I like working with Hunter Shroy Building,

which is a children's creative writing center in Footscray in the West of Melbourne. And then also with Sardi and helping writers and south asians like kind of scratch and unpack their creativity so i think it comes back to me kind of really trying to put in the work and and working out what my kind of core values are and then doubling down on them there's like the whole you know approach on like strength space thinking and i was like these are the things that i value but these are also my strengths and the more i double down on what I believe in and what's important to me and what the things that I'm good at, the happier I am and the more

fulfilled and the more success kind of starts to roll around in its own way. Yeah, it's so true. Do you find that too? Completely. When we started Planet Broadcasting, just before we did it, because I was a teacher beforehand, I kind of had this idea of trying to burrow into what it was that I loved the most about teaching and I figured out it was the helping people to be creative thing, however that is.

And that's the thing I still love doing now and I do with my husband and with my kids because I believe so strongly in creativity. And so when we launched the company, that was at the core of it, that I want to help people to build their creativity and do that by building a community as well and then obviously trying to make the world a little bit better at the same time. And I think, you know, creativity feeds into so much of this stuff. I mean, with mental health too, I so much of this stuff. I mean, with

mental health too, I really think human beings are designed to create, right? Just constantly, I think we're happiest when we are. And once I nailed that idea that I loved helping people to be creative, everything started to fall into place. And so then you can pick up it rather than it just being like one goal in your life. Like I want to be a lawyer. Yeah. Knowing your own purpose and what you're good at and what you believe in, you can take that with you to wherever you work next. Yeah. But you've got that kind of as a little guiding lamppost or principle that really helps. And if it's grounded in your own values, yeah, there's just so much that leads from that. And then you meet like-minded people like I met you and, you know,

other people through Vinnies and I even met James because of what we were doing volunteering. And so is that how you met your partner as well? Yeah, I mean, we just sort of met and we hit it off, but we realised there was a lot of commonality in terms of what we believed and things we wanted to do. And yeah, I always felt there was a need to enact social justice or give back or do something with our lives

that was more than just about money, but it was about kind of impact and change and solving problems that existed kind of out in the world. Can I ask you a question though about that, about what we were just talking about? So like obviously our own values aren't creativity. So like it's a pandemic, right? And it's been going on and it continues to go on.

And I find that it's hard as a creative, like part of me that is creative draws on the world, right? Like you kind of draw draw like you kind of connected to or have empathy and feelings for what's happening uh around you right you're kind of tuned in and you observe and you pay attention to and you feel where there's feelings and you're talking about things from that emotional place and like and then this type the world we're in is is tough and like it's draining so like how do, as a person who does this all the time, like recharge your creative battery?

Like how do you, what do you do like small or big to kind of refresh that sense of like how do I come back to this world and like create in a space where it's kind of dark sometimes? Yeah. Draining. What a great question. I totally agree with you. It's such a difficult space to be doing any kind of work in, let alone creative work. Funnily enough, podcasting, talking to other people who are like-minded like you, like this conversation is giving me so much inspiration. So that's one of the things that I love about podcasting. I can still turn a mic on and talk to someone who's got really interesting

ideas and experiences. Obviously reading and watching things online helps a little. Music is something that helps me too. But, yeah, I'm not going to lie, I find it really hard. I mean I was writing before we went back into lockdown, I was writing a weekly newsletter and I just haven't had the room just with kids as well, because I think creativity also needs a bubble around it, right? Like sometimes to write, I need a good couple of hours beforehand to noodle around and go for a walk and sit in a

cafe or something before I get to the core of it. So it does, it just looks different. I think we have to be kind to ourselves. It has to look different, doesn't it? But podcasts for me, definitely listening to them as well has really helped while I'm walking. So if I can be by running water for some reason that also helps unlock something yeah yeah but i really feel for you i know it's super difficult to just to keep afloat actually the only other thing that has been helping me are two things really it's so personal isn't it one is poetry for me because I haven't had room in my head or heart for a lot. I mean, the news yesterday was so heavy and so desperately sad on so many levels and the events in Afghanistan are just heartbreaking.

Like just I feel like everywhere you turn there's something heartbreaking here locally or abroad but poetry and like short pieces of prose really have helped with me with that still trying to keep my creative sort of juices bubbling away and writing short fragments of things have helped I don't know it's tough how what's helped has anything have you found anything helpful yeah I mean I I struggled with the question because I think about mid-year I was especially this year was feeling a bit drained I was feeling a bit like overwhelmed and going all right now like need to recharge but not really sure how to do that I think it's also being a kind of your own boss and your own entrepreneur and like there's all that on top

of it um for me one of the things that really helped was uh getting the book the artist's way do you know this book i've heard of that book i haven't read it the artist's way there might be people listening who have experienced it or encountered it so the artist's way is like this seminal classic apparently um i actually heard on a a podcast from a tv show writer who's talking about like his his practice and he says that he uses one of the techniques in the book so the artist's way is like a guide to spiritual recovery it's called like spiritual creative recovery so um it's talking about it like in a spiritual sense only in that you know creativity comes from this place outside of ourselves like and they she calls that spirituality but um it is a it's a guidebook and like a 12

literally 12 step program like 12 weeks um of creative recovery so she calls it like the kind of the equivalent of alcoholics Anonymous for creative types. And I was like, this is great when you're down to the drunk. And she's like, and then one of the things she uses is like, you know, alcoholics have to prevent themselves from having that first drink. That's the thing that like working, like the working, I can't have the first drink because then it's a gateway. And she said, creatives have to stop themselves from having the first think. And the first think is like, what I'm making is crap. Like what I making is terrible you know and i was like it's so true it's so good and so it's yeah and so it's this book and it's just got this like it's literally week on week and exercises like you have to be really disciplined there's two core components to it

so the first one's called the morning pages and the second one's called the artist state and the morning pages anybody can do without having a book you just get a notebook or even just loose leaf paper and you as soon as you can after you wake up or even at any point to the day i found is useful um you just get your pen and you start writing and you don't stop until you fill the three pages many a time i've written i don't know what to say or i'm just writing right now or you know i'm breathing like stuff like that and so just it doesn't matter what you put it in it doesn't matter like if it's legible never let anyone read it some people throw them away after they're done and just doing that consistently like if you could do it every day that'd be ideal so i've done that on and off and i found it useful

like maybe i'll do it for a day or a couple days here and there as a kind of a journaling practice right and then i started like i was like i'm just because i'd heard of the artist way but never the book and then i got the book and then i started and it said do you need to do this every day and i was like all right so i bought a notebook and I started just getting up and whatever 15 minutes I had, I got it 15 minutes earlier and I was like, I'm just going to do it. And sometimes I do it a little bit later in the day, but mostly in the mornings.

And I was in a funk. I was grumpy about stuff. And then I did this and a mate rang and they're like, you sound really happy. What's going on? I was like, I've just been doing morning pages. I've just been like processing all the shit I think about myself and everything else in the world.

And the funny thing is I get like two, two and a half pages in and I'll run out. Like I'll run out of rubbish to say. And then I'll like, and then I'll, there'll just be this empty space where I'm like, oh, I might as well fill this with something good. So I'll be like, hey, today I'm going to talk to Claire and it'll'll like and then I'll there would just be this empty space where I'm like oh I might as well fill this with something good so I'll be like hey today I'm going to talk to Claire and be on a podcast like you know um and just it's just amazing like you kind of run out of of that train of thought like it just ends sometimes it takes you know multiple days but like for me now it kind of a couple of times has happened I was like ah and I just I walked away from it I don't even remember what I wrote really but i just remember feeling like clear and lighter

and happier and like just processed and and it was just it was incredible and and so like you know i've been doing it i'm on week two of the recovery and so you know i've been doing morning pages each morning um and god it's just amazing it's incredible like it also it's it frees you to then be creative like i write it before i write anything yeah before i do anything and i just i don't feel that like voice that sits on my shoulder that is both either like the creative devil you know that says like your stuff is rubbish you know or the like male south asian like you should be doing something you know bigger or go be a lawyer or whatever you know um and you're not man enough because who what man does

this you know go you know build a house or something yeah or you know like buy crypto you know whatever it is um and um and the other practice is the artist date which i've only done one so far because i just started with it. And the artist's date is like you're saying, time for yourself and your inner artist. Some people just go on a walk, go to a museum. It has to be some visual component. I'm just saying walking next to a stream or going in nature. But you go, you take yourself on a date, and you just explore your artist.

So the other day I went to like there's a um kind of food truck park near here and i just went and need some factories and i just went to a wander's clothes but i went to wander around i found all this cool like all these cool graffiti sites and just started taking photos went to an american bakery and got a really cool like croissant and you know just kind of took some time for myself and explored and then came back and just took some notes about like what i did and how i felt and and it was really weird because it was a strange feeling like taking myself out yeah and then reflecting on it but one of the things i've read in other places that i use as a kind of a life thing um a life principle there's two actually that are really useful probably to people listening.

And especially in relation to careers. So I mentor a lot of people in their careers. One is called direction over speed. That it doesn't matter what direction like you're on. If you're in the wrong, it doesn't matter how fast you're going. If you're in the wrong direction, you can be running a million miles a second and you still feel like you're going nowhere yeah and so it's so much more important to figure out like what direction like who you are what direction is right for you what you want to be doing um even if it's through trial and error but have a process

around that um to kind of reflect and work that out because if the minute you pick the right direction doesn't matter how slow you're going to go. Everything in your life starts to line up. All the people you knew start to fall in line. All the things start to connect. And I found that with starting my startup is like, all these people from other parts of my life have just like popped up and they've aligned with what I'm doing.

And there's been all kinds of opportunities. And it just feels like that serendipity is very a thing a creative thing right yeah that was a result of like a creative practice in this or i think but also it's direction over speed it's picking the right direction yeah i love that there's a book called big magic by elizabeth gilbert i love that book i love it too because i have such a horrible inner critic and I found creativity so hard I still do and it really I get really blocked and that judgment on my shoulder that inner voice is so mean and really very much you just need to stop everything you're doing is terrible why are you even trying this everyone must think you are ridiculous you just constantly. And I have to put her to the side to be able to keep

going. And one of the things I love about Big Magic is that she says, you just have to do it. You know, you just have to show up on the other state or, and I guess that's what Morning Pages is. I'm going to look up that book now. Yeah. That's the same thing. And I found with this podcast, this new podcast I'm doing, that's the same thing that I don't necessarily always want to turn up to do it. But once I do it and because I've set parameters around it, it's so wonderful and gives me so much. Yeah.

And even when I go to release an episode, I get really anxious and worried and so in my head about it all. But because I've set it up so that no this is a commitment I made to myself to do it every week having that like weekly practice puts in a structure where you just have to release it even if it's not perfect even if it's not exactly how you imagined it's going out there you know and that I think is really great because nothing is ever you know something is better than nothing is another thing I always think to myself when I get really stuck if even if all you sit down and write is two sentences that's more than you did if you did

nothing yeah you know and it's it gives you so much't it? And it's so strange. It's a little bit like exercise for me, creativity. It's that thing that I know is so important for me and I'm miserable if I don't do it, but then I have to convince myself to do it. And until you make it habitual, like cleaning your teeth, you know, and when you're in the habit of it, it becomes so easy and natural. But I guess it's like going to the gym.

You fall out of the habit of it you know it's that rolling stone that stops again and then takes a lot more yeah you know energy to get it going I'm so glad that you're on your second week and getting back into the group yeah that's so great it's it's really nice it's sort of it's hard to also section off the time to do it but I think you know having, I was like, I needed something to kind of look forward to and like a little structure around something that was kind of positive and reinforcing. And The Artist's Way has definitely been that. this idea of that you like humans are bad at learning about stuff if they guess forward like we're really kind of bad especially about ourselves and so and there's that inner critic preventing us that all that might turn or we might you know sway from a habit of like exercise

but what we're good at what's made every kind of human leap ever happen is like uh our logic right our ability to go back and look at patterns and analyze things and see stuff that comes up um and so equally there's a creative side of like being in tune with stuff and just trusting your instincts there's also an analytical side of our brains that we can use effectively if we kind of shut off that critic and so one of the practices i have is like, I usually try and write down things. Like if I meet with someone, I'll write it down or I have an idea, I'll write it down. I won't, I'll have a space or maybe one notebook

that is not for like any kind of commentary on that thing. And then I'll look back after a set, like two weeks or something. I used to take myself out for lunch when i was working and i'd have a job i had to meet a lot of people so i'd write down like some notes about what i met with that what we talked about or something and then i'd look back and find i try to look for patterns i just look for like i'd look for like i did this after i'd be like was kind of disillusioned with being a lawyer and i was like like, what else do I want to do? And I was like, I'm not really sure.

What's my process for working out what is next? And I was like, I have no clue. And I heard this thing was like, your process should be playing to the strengths of what human brains can do, which is like looking back and figuring out patterns. But in that moment, you're not going to, you're going to have one meeting with somebody,

oh yes, that person said I should do this with my life. I'm going to do that. You don't have enough input. Like you don't have data meeting with somebody oh yes that person said i should do this with my life i'm gonna do that you don't have enough input like you don't have data so i kind of write stuff down and then i make a point to at various points that go back and look so and i kind of do that unfiltered right so i'll write down you know i had four or five coffees with people trying to work out what they do and whether that's kind of a cool job or whatever and then i came and then i look back and it goes, oh, which ones of those was I kind of excited about? What conversations did I have? Like a meta kind of analysis myself.

And I find that that is suggesting this, too, that like often we don't see what we're looking at in any kind of bigger picture or how it like informs us or a pattern or any kind of creativity, unless we start doing a bunch of stuff without that voice, which many people name. I don't know if you name your voice. Yeah, mine's named. Mine's called Maud.

Maud, I like that. Nice. Mine has this like old monster from Indian mythology called Shwetantrata, which is a really hard name to pronounce. Every time I say it, I have to like, well, I call her Swashi. She's like the bad voice in my head. Yeah. So there's this whole thing on like noting stuff down in a place where you can just jot it and then going back and looking at it so that it's removed from the feelings that you have in the moment. So then your inner critic is less fired up. as you're writing one thing you judge yourself a

lot but if you look back and you go oh yeah i wrote that thing three months ago you're not attached to that thing anymore yeah you go look back on it and so and for me that's like a creativity thing too is looking back on on things that i've done, given space. So like I try and plant seeds for the time when I'm going to look back at something. Yeah. It's such a great idea because often what I find that I journal and I'll go back to a journal or a piece of writing I did two years ago and I'll look at it with these sort of eyes of someone

and I can't even remember being in the headspace where I wrote it and thinking, that's not bad, that's pretty good. Yeah. You know, where at the time I thought it was awful and I can't understand why anyone would want to read it, but it is with that distance and removal you look back on it and sometimes I can write things and think or make something and almost be amazed that it is in the world,

not because it's any particular genius, but just because it wasn't there and then I made it happen and now it's there, you know, and it's, it's actually such a magical process and so wonderful that it's so worth all of the angst to get it out. Yeah. Yeah. And they said that the whole point of life is like kind of shortening working to shorten the angst timeline that you're on yeah you know like yeah how long you entertain the voice if you can shorten it even by a few minutes then you start moving to creating stuff and then you feel like wow look what i put out in the world you know yeah exactly and i think that the one thing is i think is that if we can just set up, like you said, processes and structures around habits, like Jerry Seinfeld, I listened to an episode with him.

He's all about that processes and structures around your creativity. And I guess more broadly, your mental health, your physical health, they become kind of neurological pathways and they become habits. So then, yeah, you're spending less time on the setup and more just doing it because you're just doing it. And it's okay. It's a lot of work and that's okay. You're not going to be good at it initially. And I think there's a myth that I think I still struggle

with sometimes that if you're not good at this now, there's no point. You're clearly, you know, not gifted at it where really to be good at a thing takes you know that you know 10 000 hours or whatever but you're never going to get there unless you do this little chip away even if it's 15 minutes a day you know and whatever it is yeah you know that is really rewarding i read a great piece by a startup founder that was like we as a society are not taught how to create something not good like we're just we're not like we have no precedent for creating something like mediocre

or like average you know like we just and he said that a lot of startups like they they're not great at the start they're terrible or they're bad ideas and you have to fail until you get get it right you know and that whole artist journey i think for me like part of my life was also being afraid of that like so much um culturally like personally everything was like being afraid of of just failing and choosing easier pathways or more set pathways should i say not easy but like more set and i realized that that is right like, we're just not as society like, and that's the kind of thing that you talk to your kids about, right?

Like the example you said about, you know, learning how to fail and grow the family stories thing. I think a lot of that around creativity, around mental health too, all that, a lot of that ties into this structure around like, how do we make it a little bit more okay to fail

and be supporting ourselves? I'm a big believer in like the work of Dr. Kristen Nuff on self-compassion i don't know if you've come across that but um that this voice that you have that can kind of soothe you as and be compassionate to yourself it is not a vocabulary culturally we have at all like i talked about a couple people about it who are aware of it like this idea and they have no language for whatsoever and so i you know, if anyone's listening, they look that up.

There's a TED Talk she did, which was phenomenal. It's Kristen Neff is her name. Kristen Neff. I think we should put some of the resources you've talked about today in the show notes. Yeah, happy to send you some links. Yeah, that would be great. Yeah.

Yeah, that piece is really cool. I think as a solid component of like building a toolkit for yourself self-compassion is a great one there's exercise she has a workbook you can get um with a bunch of exercises on self-compassion which is a form of journaling which is great you know for writers and and creative types yeah oh thank you so much steve this has just been so valuable and interesting. And thank you also just for the work that you do. I know that your work means so much to so many people in so many different places in the South Asian community.

But beyond that and the work you've done with kids, it's just really inspiring. So really appreciate it. Yeah, thanks. I mean, if there's people listening who are South Asian and they want to write, you know, or think they want to write and are not sure, like, they can always find us. You know, we take writers from anywhere, really, of all kinds. And whether you're not sure if you want to or not, like, let's have a conversation about it.

Great. And we pay our writers, too. So, like, they can find us on Sari Collective,-double-a-r-i collective.com.au and we the reason we call sorry is it stands for south asian australians representing ideas so we're just a place if you have an idea you can come and we'll help you represent that idea that's fantastic sounds great absolutely well we'll put all of that in the show notes too absolutely thank you thank you so much. Yeah, thank you.

You've been listening to a podcast with me, Claire Tonti, and this week with Sandeep Varma. For more from Sandeep, you can head to saricollective.com.au. That's S-A-A-R-I collective.com.au. For more from me, you can head to at clairetonti.com where all my writing and podcasts and everything is all over there. I also have another podcast called Suggestable that comes out every Thursday with my husband, James, with recommendations for stuff to watch, read and

listen to. So if you, like me, sit down out of a night time and don't know what bloody streaming service to go on and what thing to watch next, listen to Suggestable. We make fun of each other. It's a really great time. But also, come away with some cool stuff to share with your fam or partner or just with yourself. So fun times. Okay, so that comes out on a Thursday. Tons is out every Tuesday. I'm on over on Instagram at Claire Tonti. thank you so much to Collings as always for editing this week's episode. I think that's it. Oh, yeah.

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