Humble The Poet ON: Quitting His Job to Become an Artist

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

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jay Shetty?

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• 0:43Jay Shetty?

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• 1:26Jay Shetty?

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• 2:01Jay Shetty?

  This episode is brought to you by AG1. Are you feeling September reset too? Shorter days, longer to-do lists, earlier alarms, all those routines you promised to yourself you'd pick back up. It can feel like your whole life is recalibrating. And when everything around you is changing, it helps to have a few things you can rely on. AG1 Next Gen is one of those easy habits to keep. It's the clinically-backed, comprehensive daily health drink that supports your gut health, energy production, and foundational nutrition all in one scoop. AG1's ingredients are sourced from quality partners for absorption, potency, and nutrient density to deliver the foundational nutrition your body needs. And alongside a proper diet,

• 2:45Jay Shetty?

  AG1 Next Gen meets 94% of nutrient requirements and is clinically shown to enrich the gut microbiome. For a limited time, save 20% on your first subscription order of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro at drinkag1.com/onpurpose. That's drinkag1.com/onpurpose.

• 3:09Speaker 01

  So instead of saying, can I get out of this rut? I said, how can I get out of this rut? My goal became, I want to be grateful that this is happening. What do I have to do to be grateful that that guy screwed me over on this deal? What can I do to be grateful that that girl left me and broke my heart? What has to happen? What does life have to look like?

• 3:35Jay Shetty?

  Hey, everyone. Thank you for coming back to On Purpose. Thank you for trusting me, allowing me to be someone who can share new ideas, insights, experts, and thinkers with all of you. One of the things I'd love to talk about here is, last week, we had Chelsea Handler on the show. And the reason why I reached out to Chelsea is because we actually met each other at a meditation conference where we were both speaking. And when I saw her there, I was pleasantly surprised and completely amazed that she had actually taken a meditation. And when I called her on last week, a lot of you loved that episode. If you haven't listened to it, make sure you do. And there were a few people, and only a few. But I wanted to raise this point, a few people who actually were judging her based on some things she's done in the past.

• 4:16Jay Shetty?

  Now, my approach to everyone is how can we have a genuine conversation with someone? And give them an opportunity to share their growth and share their story. If people wanna grow, if people wanna change, if people wanna transform, and this isn't just about Chelsea, it's about all of us. We have to recognize that every saint has a past and every sinner has a future. Everyone who has made mistakes in the past, whoever that may be, needs to have the opportunity to improve, to grow, and to be able to share their story. So I love it when we welcome our guests with non-judgment and we seek to learn from anyone and everyone. And that doesn't mean we have to model our lives on them. It doesn't mean that they're perfect and we have to become like them or we have to adore them or any of that.

• 5:00Jay Shetty?

  But when we keep an openness, we grow more. So thank you so much and I can't wait for you to meet our next guest. Make sure you've subscribed, rated and reviewed. You're gonna love this episode.

• 5:14Jay Shetty?

  Hey everyone, thank you so much for joining us again. Today's guest is someone who is truly, truly insightful. I can't wait for you to hear his profound thoughts. He's a comedian, born rapper, spoken word artist, international bestseller of his book, is an author too. And he's also a really, really dear friend, someone who I've had so many incredible conversations with. We have what we call roof talk. We literally sit on a roof for a couple of hours and catch up about life, philosophy, experiences. They've been truly meaningful to me and I wanted to share that meaning with each and every one of you. And he's also launching a new book and the book's called Unlearn: 101 Simple Truths for a Better Life.

• 5:59Jay Shetty?

  So if you enjoyed today's conversation, you can grab a copy of the book as well. So Humble, thank you for being here, man.

• 6:04Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me, man. Excited to be here.

• 6:06Jay Shetty?

  Humble the poet, it is great to have you here because we've had a couple of conversations. We're always talking online messaging and I've always found them so insightful. I always learn something every time we speak.

• 6:17Speaker 01

  I feel like I need a notebook just hanging out with you. You just have to have a notebook, taking all these notes.

• 6:22Jay Shetty?

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

• 6:50Speaker 01

  Oh, completely. It's like this whole faux woke idea.

• 6:52Jay Shetty?

  Faux woke, I like that.

• 6:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's like, because a lot of the stuff is you read an inspiring quote and it feels good in the short term and you don't take a deep dive to be like, well, is this a sustainable idea? That's gonna make me feel better past this five minutes, like a little dopamine drop. So definitely, I think for me, my whole journey came from me looking and searching for meaning, some level of fulfillment and not accepting the fluff. I usually call it the Tumblr quotes and I think now it's just become that faux woke stuff that you see all over social media where it's just like, you know, things that you hear that again, it'll make you feel great for about five minutes. And then when you really kind of unpack it and try to live it, you're like, this is not pragmatic at all.

• 7:36Jay Shetty?

  Interesting. Yeah, whenever humble comments on one of my quotes on Instagram, like, yeah, this is a good one. Like, that's how I feel.

• 7:41Speaker 01

  Well, your stuff's all good. I wanna make sure I don't like just send you a fire emoji. I wanna make sure that there's some value to what I gotta say. You know, hands up, fire emoji.

• 7:50Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, yeah, or like the hundred, right? The hundred percent.

• 7:54Speaker 01

  The one hundred.

• 7:54Jay Shetty?

  Or my favorite, yeah, my favorite is so true.

• 7:57Speaker 01

  So true.

• 7:57Jay Shetty?

  Or so deep.

• 7:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, so deep.

• 7:59Jay Shetty?

  Those are my favorite comments. But no, I do, I do believe that you genuinely lived that. And obviously, you used to be an elementary school teacher.

• 8:05Speaker 01

  I teach the third grade in Toronto, in a neighborhood called Rexdale. And it was a heavy immigrant area, you know, a lot of kids whose parents were overly educated. You know, they, back home, they were doctors, lawyers, engineers. And they came to Canada and then their education wasn't converted. So now they're working in donut stores and, and gas stations and factories. And they had a really strong priority for education, but they may not have had the means. And it was such a really interesting dynamic and just. Trying my best to communicate with these kids because I really kind of felt like they were me. You know, my father had a master's degree in economics, came to Canada, had no opportunity to to use the education.

• 8:46Speaker 01

  So instead, he became a cab driver, drove cab until he retired in two thousand and fifteen. And he always stressed education because he never got the opportunity to kind of realize his own. Yeah.

• 8:58Jay Shetty?

  What did you learn about how humans learn by being a teacher?

• 9:02Speaker 01

  I think the the first thing that I learned and um I I even mentioned it in the introduction for the for the book. Is the fact that we all are almost completely empty vessels when we start. And I titled the story about telling a child to, you know, put on your boots and put on your snow pants. And if the kid will put on his boots and then struggle to get the pants on because they will take what you say literally and say it the way you did. And it really made me become very self-aware of how many gaps I fill in every day with my own biases and my own context when somebody speaks to me. And these children are empty vessels. So when you start to see them and you communicate to them, there's so much opportunity to kind of mold and shape them to to think a certain way. And that can go either way. That can be a great thing or that can be a negative thing.

• 9:46Speaker 01

  And I was really trying to, instead of teaching them a specific thing, really try to get them to fall in love with the idea of learning, the idea of exploring and kind of taking things to where they need to take it for their own natural journey.

• 9:59Jay Shetty?

  Hmm. Now, this book, Unlearn.

• 10:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:02Jay Shetty?

  I love the title because it's so funny. Around the time we met, I was giving a lot of talks and I kept using the word unlearn as well. And I and I got fascinated with that word because everyone's talking about like, in this age, you've got to be a continuous learner.

• 10:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:17Jay Shetty?

  And you've got to consistently learn and to stay up to trends and all that kind of stuff. It's all about learning, learning, learning. And here you are going counterintuitive and saying, no, no, no, guys, I've got a hundred and one simple truths to unlearn.

• 10:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:30Jay Shetty?

  Tell tell me about that.

• 10:31Speaker 01

  I think what happened was, again, I was an elementary school teacher, which is a very safe government job. All my colleagues are on my team. There's no competition, you know, and it was and I came from being in the school system to working in the school system. And, you know, I had a creative itch and when I Got into the entertainment industry, you know, I just got torn apart. You know, I got ripped to shreds. The first people to recognize my talents were there to exploit me. You know, I lost a lot of money. I got ripped off a few times, betrayed by people I cared about. And what I realized was I didn't have to learn new things to navigate in this world. I had to let go of a lot of ideas and biases and idealisms that I carried. That, you know, I could afford to carry in my previous life that were now weighing me down kind of in this.

• 11:16Speaker 01

  So, you know, living in the structure, I kind of look at it as leaving the zoo and going into the jungle. You know, and now you're definitely a lot more free, but you know, no one's bringing you your food. No one's there to keep you safe. I realized I was like, I had a lot of biases. And I had a lot of expectations for how I thought the world was going to treat me. And I had a lot of entitlements and I had to kind of shed those. And it was kind of the idea of, you know, letting go to gain more.

• 11:44Jay Shetty?

  Tell me about one of those powerful biases that you had. And tell me about a moment when you saw it not serving you. And then when you had to switch it, when you unlearned it.

• 11:54Speaker 01

  Um, I think definitely ignoring words and paying attention to actions, you know? And I think what I was doing was the opposite. I really wanted to believe something. So I would ignore actions. I would, I would ignore patterns and I would really cling on to words. So like, well, what they said, they said they would do this for me, or they said they meant it. They said I mattered, even though their actions completely contradicted that. And, you know, when things blew up in my face and you sit there, you know, they always say hindsight is 2020. That was the moment I wanted to take ownership. And I was like, okay, wait. I should have seen this coming because now playing it back. Here are all the pieces that this person revealed to me through their actions. So I think at that point I said, you know, action scream, words whisper.

• 12:39Speaker 01

  So now, you know, I'm always paying attention now for patterns in behavior, even for myself. So I might say, you know, a lot of things, but if my actions contradict that, my actions are what matters. And, you know, that, that's a very important idea, whether it comes to our relationships with other people, but also for ourselves, you know, instead of us telling people what's important to us, we could just simply show them our schedule because our schedule will show our priorities on a subconscious level. And that's the deeper stuff that actually really represents who we are.

• 13:09Jay Shetty?

  That's such a practical thing everyone can start doing today.

• 13:11Speaker 01

  And I think that that goes back to I needed the practical stuff. I didn't need the motivational stuff. I didn't need the fluffy stuff. I needed the stuff to make me feel better. Now, I also needed the stuff to help me turn my life around now. Because I was in a, I was in a very difficult situation. I had left my, my job as a teacher to become an artist. And I wasn't in the best financial situation as a teacher. Because I was a young kid making money and not knowing how to spend it. When I became an artist, I had no idea how my creativity was going to pay any of the bills. And I needed to figure, I needed to get my mind in the right place to kind of figure this out. And that really meant, you know, shedding my entitlements, shedding many of my expectations, not being so idealistic.

• 13:54Speaker 01

  And really trying to find the source of where did all this stuff come from? Why do I believe these things? And is it okay to let go of these beliefs without losing who I am? And I think that was kind of the premise of this journey of unlearning. And I realized that, you know, to be a lifelong learner is to also be a lifelong unlearner.

• 14:11Jay Shetty?

  Hmm, absolutely, absolutely. There was, I can't remember who said it now, you might even know. That they said the illiterate of the 21st century.

• 14:19Speaker 01

  Modern literacy, I think it was Bertrand Russell.

• 14:21Jay Shetty?

  Was it?

• 14:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, learning, unlearning and relearning.

• 14:23Jay Shetty?

  It was, yeah, that was.

• 14:24Speaker 01

  I think it was Bertrand Russell.

• 14:25Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, the illiterate will be the ones who can't learn, unlearn and relearn.

• 14:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, for the 21st century.

• 14:31Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and I, I love that statement. I think it's so powerful because it's so strange how, and, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Why does it feel harder to let go than it does to add?

• 14:46Speaker 01

  I feel like we as human beings will always gravitate towards the familiar. Familiarity is more important to us subconsciously than happiness or anything else.

• 14:58Jay Shetty?

  Where does that come from? From your opinion, like your perspective?

• 15:01Speaker 01

  I think it's a survival tactic. I think going back from when we were, you know, nomadic. Um, I think, uh, we, our brains were designed to really notice things that stuck out. So we would really be in a familiar, safe situation. And then, you know, if you walk into somebody's home, you can smell things that they can't smell. Cause their brain's been trained to shut off that smell. Cause they need to notice things that are out of place. I feel like that's the reason we always know, notice what's going wrong and not what's going right. Because we're trained to figure out what's out of place. And I feel like it's the same thing with, when it comes to familiarity, it's. We, you know, if we grew up in a household and we saw a certain dynamic between our parents,

• 15:44Speaker 01

  you know, that's our first experience of an observation of love. We're gonna naturally, subconsciously, kind of lean towards that in our own relationships. If we don't have that self-awareness to kind of want to break that cycle, even if it's an unhealthy situation. So I think the familiarity of it, it what kind of trumps everything. And I know even on a positive note, I, for me to improve my quality of life, I really lean back to nostalgia. I really try to, you know, I wake up in the morning and go for a walk and I enjoy the walk, not just because it's exercise, but it reminds me of being in the fourth grade, walking to the bus stop and like a little bit of the chilly air in Toronto. And, you know, that when the sun's out at that angle, just the feeling and the vibes.

• 16:25Speaker 01

  And I think a lot of us always, we feel happiest when we feel like we're children again.

• 16:30Jay Shetty?

  Hmm. Yeah, that, that I totally agree with.

• 16:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:32Jay Shetty?

  I've been playing a lot more recently.

• 16:35Speaker 01

  You've been playing a lot?

• 16:35Jay Shetty?

  Trying to engage play into my life.

• 16:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:38Jay Shetty?

  That the feeling of play.

• 16:39Speaker 01

  Completely.

• 16:40Jay Shetty?

  And so whether that's playing a sport, which without the pressure of competition or winning, but still playing a sport without the feeling like, oh yeah, we've got to win. Obviously, I'm still playing to win, but, but not with that pressure.

• 16:52Speaker 01

  Completely.

• 16:53Jay Shetty?

  Or, or even if it's playing more video games again, or whatever it is, like just feeling like a child again, without doing things with rigid structure force.

• 17:02Speaker 01

  Completely. I don't think we, we, we should never lose that. I think we, we should never lose that childhood curiosity and the excitement. And I think what ends up happening is when we don't actively seek it, then I think subconsciously, we just stick to the familiar. And that's where the danger is because we start to mistake our beliefs and our values for ourselves. And now we're like, well, if I abandon that belief, I don't know who I am anymore. And I think that's where we get in a lot of trouble because now we're, some of those beliefs and values are stale and outdated, or they're not practical for the new lives that we live. And I think, you know, if you were in a, a difficult childhood and you had to put on a brave face, or you had to have a certain level of emotion to deal with that,

• 17:45Speaker 01

  and now you're an adult and you're in a safer environment, you don't need to care. Carry those same strategies over now. What helped you then could be hurting you now. And we need to be constantly reevaluating ourselves, being aware of it and trying to figure that out. And I mean, I'm I'm picking it up on every way, shape or form. From the way my mother used to punk me off for not clearing out the lint in the in the dryer. And realizing that I say that to other people to, you know, picking out my flaws. Uh, you know, based off what people told me when I was a kid to, uh. You know, I think recently when I was, uh, when I was in high school, I didn't feel like I was, uh. You know, good looking enough to get girls or what have you. And then when I became a public figure, I started leaning towards modeling.

• 18:27Speaker 01

  And it wasn't because I cared about modeling, it was because I wanted the validation. Like, oh, look at me now. I wasn't cool enough in high school. And then you realize you're like, hey, I'm trying to, I'm speaking to an invisible audience. A bunch of people who don't exist, you know. And whoever has said those mean things to me when they were fifteen, they probably grew up. And they're probably nice people now, too. And I actually had an experience with that. I I was, uh, when I was about ten years old, there was, there was this boy who would always. He was younger than me and he would always just try to start trouble with me. And he'd say a lot of racist things to me and it really, I was always on edge around him. And then, you know, I thought he moved away and then I I ran into him at a party in university.

• 19:10Speaker 01

  And I don't know if you recognize him or not, but he was the kindest, sweetest, most accommodating person at the party. He was like, hey, welcome. Can I get you something to drink? What's going on? And you realize you're like, it what, he wasn't, he was a ten year old kid, being a jerk. Cause we all do and now he's an adult and he grew out of it as well. And really being able to let go of that and realizing how often that situation created tension for me moving forward, you know, uh, specifically he was a ginger. So I remember like not being aware that anytime I was around other gingers, there would be a little, little bit of tension. I think that's what my journey's been now is being like, okay, well, why do I feel the way I feel now? And what do I think the root of it is?

• 19:55Speaker 01

  And it's exploration, it's just kind of looking inside this universe within us to try to better understand ourselves. And when we do that, we can better understand the world around us.

• 20:06Jay Shetty?

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• 20:49Jay Shetty?

  That's indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. We talk a lot about intentional decision making, and that extends to the practical stuff too, like making sure your coverage actually works for your life. State Farm is there to meet you where you are, and they know how sweet it is to feel good about your decisions. Talk to a State Farm agent today to learn how you can choose to bundle and save with a personal price plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings, and eligibility vary by state.

• 21:32Jay Shetty?

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• 22:07Jay Shetty?

  I love that, man. We're speaking to an invisible audience.

• 22:09Speaker 01

  It really is an invisible audience.

• 22:11Jay Shetty?

  That is so powerful. That is so powerful, man. I love that. Because what you're saying is we're basically creating a reality based on something that's subjective and almost unreal to a certain degree.

• 22:23Speaker 01

  Very unreal. I think, you know, I had another friend, she went to some psychotherapy for an experience she had. And what they realized the root of the issue that she went through was when she was like seven years old, her mother left her at her aunt's house to go run an errand. And she felt abandoned. Because a seven-year-old mind to process that, it felt like abandonment. And she, as an adult, the exercise required her to go and speak to her seven-year-old self. And as an adult, she was like, listen, mom left us not because she doesn't love us, she left us because she trusts us that we could be by ourselves with our aunt. It was a sign that she trusted you and that you could be responsible. Because from the adult lens, we can see it from different contexts.

• 23:07Speaker 01

  And she's like, immediately I felt my shoulders drop. Immediately I felt lighter moving forward. And we don't realize how much of the stuff we carry throughout our lives until, you know, we face it.

• 23:19Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 23:19Speaker 01

  And in the moment we face it, it usually hits us on a physical level where you're like, oh, I addressed it and my shoulders drop. I feel lighter. That weight on my chest isn't there as much. And I think I've put myself on a journey to find out how much of that I can do. And as I learned it for myself and I began sharing it on social media, the top comment kept being, you're telling my story. How are you living in my head? And it made me realize that we're all in the same boat. We're all dealing with the exact same things. And me as a writer and somebody who can put words together, I think it's it's my job now, but it's my pleasure to help people figure out their thoughts, feelings and emotions

• 24:00Speaker 01

  and simplifying it. I taught grade three for a long time. I know how to take ideas and simplify them and make it digestible.

• 24:06Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, absolutely, man. No, you do it so well. When I was reading through the book yesterday, I was just like, everything's so well articulated.

• 24:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:13Jay Shetty?

  And I loved what you talked about. Even if you repeat yourself twice, you're still presenting it through a different angle.

• 24:18Speaker 01

  Completely.

• 24:19Jay Shetty?

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

• 24:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:32Jay Shetty?

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

• 24:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:51Jay Shetty?

  And so we always grew up with the language, we always have enough, like enough to get by, enough to survive, enough for Christmas, enough for this. And so I'd always grown up with that mentality, I'm always gonna have enough.

• 25:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:03Jay Shetty?

  And it was just so interesting to me how I'd programmed myself unconsciously to see money as negative, uh, to see money as as an aspiration as negative. And not realizing that actually, yes, it didn't have to be my aspiration, but it could be a tool or a resource, or it could be a powerful element that could be used for a higher purpose, too.

• 25:24Speaker 01

  Completely.

• 25:24Jay Shetty?

  And the feeling around enough, like that word enough was just so limiting and so debilitating.

• 25:29Speaker 01

  And it's so abstract.

• 25:30Jay Shetty?

  So abstract.

• 25:31Speaker 01

  Like enough, what is enough? Enough in London might end up being a very different definition than enough in New York, than enough in Hollywood. You know, one day, you know, you're hanging out with your with your buddies and, uh, you know, you have more than enough to go out to dinner at at the local pub. But then you come out here and you start going to some of these bougie spots and now all of a sudden enough isn't enough anymore.

• 25:51Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 25:52Speaker 01

  And you start to realize how much of this is, we create the definition and we have so much power to redefine these things, depending on who we hang out with, what values we chose to to hold dear to us, and also how we view ourselves. Because sometimes if we don't feel like we're enough, then now we're trying to consume all this external stuff to try to compensate for that, but it never works.

• 26:15Jay Shetty?

  So what's a good practical step for someone to take to first of all, identify their biases, their their unconscious biases or the biases that you make? How do you first identify them?

• 26:26Speaker 01

  I think the first thing is there's gotta be ownership. I think in every single situation, no matter what it is, there's always what somebody else may have done to us, what the universe or what our environment, what external factors, how they impacted us. But there's also a level of responsibility that we can take. What decisions we made, what expectations we had going in, what values and what things that we found are important. I think when we start taking ownership for those things, then we realize that's where our power is. If I have a lunch date with you tomorrow and you just don't show up and you don't call, you don't do anything, I can start to start putting a lot of blame on you. I'm like, well, Jay stood me up. You know, Jay's not a reliable person.

• 27:08Speaker 01

  I can say all these things, but that is just putting all the power in your hands. You know, whoever we give the responsibility to, we give the power. Or I can be like, hey, what are my responsibilities in this? What could I have done differently? And when we take ownership, I think we empower ourselves to make our situation better. And then it's no longer win or lose, it becomes win or learn. And I think when we start looking internally at every situation, and I have a friend recently, he went through a very challenging breakup. And I can see now that he's kind of dug himself some light to the end of his tunnel. And he's, because what he's saying is, you know, I don't talk about what she did to me anymore. I talk about what she did for me. And I'm realizing he's taking a lot more ownership.

• 27:53Speaker 01

  He's doing a lot more self-actualizing. And I think that's always the first step. I think I'm really big on no complaining. I don't see a lot of value in it. Totally. I don't see a lot of value in venting to other people repeatedly. I think, you know, obviously get some stuff off your chest. As an artist, I'll take my stuff off my chest through my art. But I think we all need to feel connected. We all need to bond to something. And self pity is a very easy, fast food way of doing so. And I encourage people to kind of take that out of their diet and start taking a little bit more responsibility. Because when you take the responsibility, it's not simply about blaming yourself. It's about when you start taking responsibility, you have power now to start changing things.

• 28:37Speaker 01

  And you can't obviously rewrite the past, but now you are better equipped to start to write your future.

• 28:44Jay Shetty?

  Self pity is like fast food, you need to take it out.

• 28:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, it feels good in the short run. It really feels good in the short run.

• 28:51Jay Shetty?

  I love that.

• 28:51Speaker 01

  And I don't want to hold it against anybody who are feeling it. And, and it took me a while to kind of pick up on it. It's, it's convenient, it's quick, and it's cheap. Just like fast food. And if you do too much of it, it's gonna, it's gonna bite you in the ass, just like fast food. You know, so just be mindful of it. And I think just with a lot of the people I'm speaking to and, and, and hearing that is always the one thing I try to encourage. And people don't like to be told, oh, I can't feel sorry for myself in this situation. And there is a very, in my opinion, a very defined line between self pity and self compassion.

• 29:23Jay Shetty?

  What is that? Yeah, I was gonna ask that, that was my expression.

• 29:25Speaker 01

  Um, I think self compassion is kind of recognizing if you've been hurt that you require time for that injury to heal. You know, let's say you break your leg, you have to understand that it might take you six weeks of not putting any pressure on it to, to heal.

• 29:41Jay Shetty?

  That's self compassion.

• 29:41Speaker 01

  That's self compassion, knowing what's necessary, knowing the patient was necessary for you to get better. I think self pity is kind of picking at your cast and, and, and picking at the scabs and really wanting to define yourself through your injury and wanting other people to feel sorry for you because you, you start to feel connected. It makes you feel less alone. You also feel more connected with yourself when you're like, well, nobody understands me but me, nobody else gets it. And I think when you start to realize that, hey, I get it, it's your first heartbreak. But, you know, there are a million heartbreak songs. Clearly, you're not the only person who's gone through this. And that doesn't mean your heartbreak is any less intense.

• 30:24Speaker 01

  It just means this is a common thing and you can actually learn from others who went through this as well. And if we address this as, as a community, it'll be a lot easier versus isolating yourself from other people and, and kind of going through a negative downward spiral.

• 30:39Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, absolutely, man. I love that. That's super powerful. Yeah, I read an article the other day that said it takes a village to deal with mental health. Right, and it was just that whole principle about community and the principle of that you've just raised now.

• 30:52Speaker 01

  I think your relationships matter. I think your relationship with yourself definitely is the most important and it sets the tone for the type of relationship we can have with other people. But we definitely can improve the relationship with ourselves through our relationship with other people. I had a friend recently just bring that up as well. You know, they they work with a lot of people and they said they had the self-awareness to be like, it's easier to stand up for other people than it is to stand up for myself. I avoid conflict, I don't wanna, you know, I don't wanna shake things up. But if I see someone being disrespectful to somebody I care about, I no longer care. I can, I can, I can get in there, I can be assertive, I can be aggressive, but I can't do it for myself. And I think that's something worth exploring too.

• 31:36Speaker 01

  Sometimes we don't think we're worthy of being stood up for or we're worthy of love, but everybody else is. And the truth is, we are worthy of it as well. You know, we're all a work in progress, we all have flaws. And obviously, we're gonna like other people more than we like ourselves because we know ourselves more.

• 31:54Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 31:55Speaker 01

  You know, obviously, we we see them in smaller doses. But we're all worthy of it and how you treat yourself will set the tone for how other people will treat you.

• 32:03Jay Shetty?

  Hmm, absolutely, man.

• 32:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:07Jay Shetty?

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• 32:49Jay Shetty?

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• 33:11Speaker 02

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• 33:28Speaker 04

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• 33:32Speaker 03

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• 33:35Speaker 04

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• 34:13Jay Shetty?

  You're like dropping, dropping them in this.

• 34:15Speaker 01

  I'm literally the book right here. You guys can't see it, it's off camera. I'm just rereading the book.

• 34:19Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, he's just reading them out of the book, guys. He's just, he's just reading them out of the book. Don't watch the video. No, it's, no, it's amazing, man. I love it. I love it because it's, you're not just, you're not just quoting stuff. It's, when you're sharing, it's real. So, okay, first step is ownership, and I love that.

• 34:35Speaker 01

  Ownership, yeah.

• 34:35Jay Shetty?

  I think that's a great first step. Second step, now that I've identified it, I've taken ownership, what do I do now?

• 34:41Speaker 01

  I think recognizing that you are, you know, you are not, your identity is not your absolute choices. So if you made a decision that you're no longer proud of, that's okay. And I think, you know, we learn from that. I think, in the book, I talk a lot about belief. I think a lot of people identify themselves through their beliefs. Especially, you know, in today's age with the tribalism, you know, everybody's taking sides, whether you consider yourself left wing, right wing, what have you. And when somebody challenges your side right now, it actually encourages people to dig even deeper onto their side. So now, the gap is expanding and the distance between people is getting farther. So I think what has to happen is we have to let go of the idea that we are not simply our beliefs.

• 35:25Speaker 01

  And we have to question, where did the beliefs come from? And I think for me, the moment that I really saw this was when I was a teacher. I taught in a community where we had a very large Muslim population. And we had, we had kids from Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Iran, a lot of, a lot of the other smaller Middle Eastern countries. And so during Ramadan, the, the ongoing joke is everyone had to celebrate Ramadan. Because so many kids would, would stay home that day, it wouldn't be fair to teach. You know, if I had a class of 28 kids, about maybe 11 would show up.

• 35:59Jay Shetty?

  Wow.

• 36:00Speaker 01

  Because those are non-Muslim, so we, it'd be the ongoing joke that, hey, everybody gets to celebrate Ramadan. Whoever shows up that day, we will, we show movies and, uh, well, for Eid, uh, for that. But during the fasting, I, I witnessed, you know, one girl, uh, kind of, uh, making another girl feel bad for having a snack.

• 36:18Jay Shetty?

  Hmm.

• 36:19Speaker 01

  You know, and you can kind of hear it in, in the girl's tone of voice. She's just regurgitating whatever her parents were telling her.

• 36:25Jay Shetty?

  Right.

• 36:26Speaker 01

  Uh, because they're too young to kind of be this judgmental. And I think as we grow older, we don't realize that this stuff was taught to us. Like, we didn't come out the box believing in these things. And, um, that forced me to continually challenge my beliefs and be like, well, where did I, where did I pick up that belief? Whether, you know, it is something on a spiritual level, or whether it's my relationship with consumerism, the idea that buying stuff's gonna make me happy, or whether it's the idea that we can live happily ever after, or whether it's the idea of soulmates or anything, whatever we believe.

• 36:57Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 36:57Speaker 01

  I think the, the number one question is, where did it come from?

• 37:00Jay Shetty?

  Hmm.

• 37:00Speaker 01

  And.

• 37:01Jay Shetty?

  Great question.

• 37:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, and is that belief, and, and not to, you know, if, if, if my parents, you know, indoctrinated me with a bunch of ideas, that doesn't make them bad, it doesn't mean I was brainwashed, it was, you know, they had whatever tools they had. Uh, they were taught by others and we're passing it down. But if we have that self-awareness and we're like, okay, well, that belief, you know, still for me, a good example was, uh, when I was a teenager, I believed homosexuality was a sin. I believed it was wrong. Um, it took meeting a person who was homosexual and hearing their story and realizing that they're human, just like me, looking for love. And then going back and be like, well, where did I learn that? And it wasn't from somebody saying homosexuality was wrong. It was from the religious belief that pursuing lust is evil.

• 37:48Speaker 01

  And me taking that and re-appropriating it, what have you. And not holding against anybody who taught me that and realize that, hey, everybody was taught what they taught, but now that I have the self-awareness, I can let go of this. This is no longer serving me. This is closing me off to a lot of amazing, beautiful people. So I'm gonna let that go. This is not my identity. And I think a lot of people, they take their, the, the flag of their identity and they shove it into something to like, that's me. And now if you insult that idea, you're also insulting me. You know, if you insult conservatism, you're insulting me. If you're, you know, if you insult the, the LA Lakers, you're insulting me. You know, if you, you know, if you're, if you insult Manchester United, you know, I, you know, people,

• 38:32Speaker 01

  they, they get very, they, they find value in that. And I think for me, it, it meant that I had to start looking around and exploring, well, where did I plant my flag? What did I believe? And that's an ongoing process. It's a lifelong thing. You don't just pull your flag out and now you're free. It's, there's layers to it. Once you, you jump one fence, you know, you can run a couple of meters, you hit another fence.

• 38:53Jay Shetty?

  Totally.

• 38:53Speaker 01

  And it's really about this continuous journey and cycle of kind of shedding these old ideas, adding new ones, and then maybe having to shed those soon as well.

• 39:03Jay Shetty?

  I love it, man. Great advice, really practical. Anyone who's listening or watching, make sure you're taking notes because, yeah, super practical tips. I love it, man. But when I listen to you and anytime I'm with you, I feel like you've really dug deep and done the work. Like genuinely, like when I talk to you, I feel like you're like, I don't know how long you've been doing it, but you've really been like going inside. And like breaking it down and figuring it out and reflecting. I wonder who was supporting that journey for you? Like who was helping you pave that way now that you're helping others? Through your writing, through your books, through your social media, through your video. Was there not just specific people, but what was guiding that process for you? Or was it really just self-reflection and introspection?

• 39:47Speaker 01

  I think a lot of it was, was art. So I mean, I think, you know, Remembering the first time I heard OutKast. And, you know, hearing Andre 2000 say, "I came into this world high as a bird, secondhand cocaine powder. I know it sounds absurd." And being like, "Whoa, this guy just said, you know, this guy just explained that his mother was doing cocaine when she was pregnant with him." And like, "I've never heard that level of honesty in a hip hop song." And hearing Lauryn Hill, you know, sing songs and, you know, she has that Unplugged album and the song "Get Out." And, you know, she's like, "If everything was gold and gold, that's how I choose to live." And just kind of thinking, thinking that and being like, "Okay, how does this, what does this mean to me?" Because sometimes you hear this stuff before you're ready.

• 40:29Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 40:29Speaker 01

  And then 10 years later, those lyrics just pop into your head and you're like, "Whoa, this is, this mattered to me." I think, I think there was a combination of that. I think there was also a combination of, you know, my mother, she injured herself. She, she used to work at a factory. We had moved to a neighborhood in Toronto that was around the corner from a factory, Kellogg's. Kellogg's cereal company. She worked for them. So we had moved, we had moved there so she could walk to work in about five minutes. After about a year, she got hurt and she could no longer work. And I think she kind of fell into a, a very dark place because she felt like she wasn't contributing to the family. I, I feel like, you know, my

• 41:10Speaker 01

  father didn't have the tools to kind of help her go through it. And she, she found, well, she, she spent more time at the Goddard, you know, the, the institutions for SIKI. And she really took a deep dive and started bringing that into the household. SIK means student. And so I think the, the one good thing was that she would, she'd send me to various camps and youth camps. And in the beginning, they were very superficial, but she started, the deeper she went, she started taking me places where we started having deep discussions. So I remember being like 11 years old, prepubescent, girl still had cooties, but we were talking about lust and the downfalls of lust and me not even understanding

• 41:53Speaker 01

  it at that point. But everything was there and it was going to make sense eventually. So I think that the deep thinking was always there. And then I made a boatload of mistakes, just a boatload of mistakes. And I got to the point where I literally was taking muscle relaxers and drinking NyQuil every day and just lying in bed. Literally waiting for someone to save the day. And just being like, okay, I'm gonna wake up and this stuff figure itself out. Because that's what happens on TV. Sure. Within 22 minutes, something's gonna happen, some, you know, ex Machina type situation where someone, the Calvary is gonna come in. And, you know, if you watch The Pursuit of Happiness with Will Smith, that's one of the things that, you know, that was said to him that, that, that turned on that switch was,

• 42:37Speaker 01

  the Calvary's not coming. Nobody's coming to save the day. And for me, that moment was listening to J. Cole, "Dollar in a Dream", and hearing him say, "Listen, are you gonna, you know, things weren't working out for me. Are you gonna grow bitter and cold? Or are you gonna flip this and, and, and make this your defining moment?" And I think that, that was kind of the kick in the butt that I needed. And I think that was the point where I was, I started rejecting everything that wasn't giving me real world value. You know, no longer was I gonna listen to the fluffy stuff. I, I was rejecting the ideas of someone said, "Oh, God's got a plan. Just trust it." I was like, "That doesn't help me become a better person." I started rejecting, you know, anything that just kind of sounded nice.

• 43:22Speaker 01

  And I was like, you know, so it became, and for me, you know, I, I was already kind of a little bit rough around the edges with my communication. So it was like, you know, I started posting up, the quotes I would start posting up in, in my place at that time was like, "Sink or swim." "You want a vacation? Go get a day job." You know, "You, you missed the shots you don't take." You know, and just very straightforward, you know, no nonsense, no sugar coating, and, and it really helped me a lot. And then when I started sharing that on my Facebook at the time, immediately people started gravitating towards it. And that helped me realize that I wasn't alone in what I was going through. And that we were all going through this. And my, sharing my journey as I was figuring it out was adding value to other people.

• 44:05Speaker 01

  And it helped me create a community and connect with people. And that's how we, our, our energies found each other. And you realize, and I always used to tell that to people in the world of music. It's just good things happen when you put your stuff out.

• 44:17Jay Shetty?

  Totally, man.

• 44:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:18Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, when you when you're putting out the energy, naturally, certain people get attracted and naturally, certain people get repelled.

• 44:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:24Jay Shetty?

  Because you are who you are.

• 44:25Speaker 01

  Completely.

• 44:26Jay Shetty?

  If you're putting it out there and that broadcast either brings people closer or tells people, actually, I don't want to hang out with that person.

• 44:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's interesting because a lot of people say, oh, do you believe in fate and destiny? And I was like, well, I believe in people paying attention and making action. So if someone says, hey, I want to become a professional dancer. And then somebody might say, hey, well, the place you got to go is L A. So then they moved to L A. It wasn't destiny that brought them there. It was them taking a risk.

• 44:47Jay Shetty?

  Totally.

• 44:47Speaker 01

  And then paying attention. And then somebody says, OK, now you're in L A. Go to North Hollywood. That's where the dancers are at. And again, making that move. And the person that continually pays attention and keeps making those actions and continually faces their own fears and decides I'm going to leave my comfort zone, great things will happen for them. Now, if you meet them 10 years later and they're a world renowned choreographer, you might consider them lucky.

• 45:10Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 45:10Speaker 01

  But they weren't. You know, their baby steps added up. And I and I kind of view it the same way. You've just got to start making the baby steps. They add up. Again, as a school teacher, I realized that, hey, like, there's a 12, 13 year plan to get a child to read. You know, we don't just take a four year old and throw Harry Potter in their hands. It's first we show them the letters, then we start with the sound. It's very slow.

• 45:32Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 45:33Speaker 01

  Structured, but it adds up. And then, you know, it creates, you know, the greatest literary artists in the world, the the system. And if we implemented that to our self improvement, if we implemented that to our our physical health, our diet, you know, the sky is the limit.

• 45:49Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, absolutely. So if someone's feeling like you were beaten down, trodden down, you know, lying in bed, waiting for something to happen, and they feel like they've been in that place multiple times. I loved what you did practically, like you were putting up all these like harsh, straight up.

• 46:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:05Jay Shetty?

  Straight speaking quotes around you. What would be your advice to them when someone kind of feels like they've been in that place for a while now?

• 46:11Speaker 01

  So I think the one of the shifts for me was I stopped saying, can I do this? So I stopped saying, can I get out of this hole? And I changed, I added one word, the word how. So instead of saying, can I get out of this rut? I said, how can I get out of this rut? And I think the the the flame that really worked for me specifically.

• 46:32Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, sure.

• 46:33Speaker 01

  Was.

• 46:35Speaker 01

  My goal became, I want to be grateful that this is happening. What do I have to do to be grateful that that guy screwed me over on this deal? What can I do to be grateful that that girl left me and broke my heart? What do, what has to happen? What does life have to look like? And you know, when, you know, for example, when the business dealings went bad and you know, I was in, you know, eighty thousand dollars debt and I had no idea how to earn any money as an artist. You know, I had visions of, okay, well, if I have eighty thousand dollars positive in my bank account, that'll make me glad that I went through this, you know, tough times make tough people. And working backwards, you know, now if anybody's an athlete, that's exactly what you do.

• 47:20Speaker 01

  If you, you wanna learn how to take a jump shot, you work backwards. You start with the footwork, you start with the ball handling. You do a whole bunch of stuff before you take the shot.

• 47:28Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 47:28Speaker 01

  And then you take the shot, the exact same shot a million times. You know, Kobe Bryant still practices the exact same shot, repetition, repetition. So I think for me, again, it was very pragmatic where it's like, okay, how do I get out of this? Okay, all right, I need to make money. I don't know how to make money. And then having this memory of meeting this, this real estate mogul and him saying, the way I got rich wasn't by making a lot of money, it was by not spending a lot of money. And looking around my, my apartment and being like, okay, wait, I gotta, I gotta, I gotta get rid of all this stuff. So I sold everything on Craigslist. Then I sold the place, then I moved back with my mom and dad, knowing that I could have been doing that six months earlier, but the only thing that was preventing me from doing that was the fear of embarrassment. Then becoming, recognizing that I was afraid of being embarrassed.

• 48:13Speaker 01

  I had, for me and for a lot of, a lot of, a lot of people, you know, we have lovely families and being homeless and on the street wasn't going to ever be an option. It was literally just being embarrassed and then facing that and being open. When people were like, hey, what's going on? Oh, I just saw you do this great gig out here in India. Oh, you must be living the life and be like, no, I'm not, I'm broke. You know, I'm figuring it out.

• 48:35Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 48:36Speaker 01

  But things aren't as fantastic as you may think. Yeah, obviously, you know, I got to do a cool, a cool thing and I took a picture and posted it online, but things are not amazing and I'm figuring it out and I will get there. A lot of the other fears I had, I remember I borrowed money from a lot of people that required me to call them and say, listen. I owe you money. I don't have your money. I'm gonna figure it out. I'm not gonna avoid you. But you're also not gonna see me buying expensive stuff right now. I'm gonna figure this all out. And again, it took me four years to get my bank account to zero. And then also having the self-awareness of every single day, I told myself, when you get that zero bank account, you're gonna feel like a million bucks. You're gonna stand on top of a mountain. You're gonna cheer and you're gonna feel like, you know, my pursuit of happiness moment that lasts a month.

• 49:21Speaker 01

  And then, you know, it lasts a month, then you got some other problem. And then you're like, okay, I can't, there is no happily ever after. You know, my movie doesn't end. There's the next day after that. But then also realizing, hey, if I figured out how to go from negative eighty grand to zero, I can keep going, you know? And that, the biggest gift that that gave me was teaching me the value of minimalism. Because I didn't have much. It was like, whoa, I didn't need any of the stuff that I used to have that I lost. I don't miss any of the stuff that I lost. I don't think anything I sold, I rebought.

• 49:53Jay Shetty?

  Wow.

• 49:54Speaker 01

  Nothing. I think, you know, nothing. I think the one thing I didn't sell, because it wasn't at my place at the time, was the bicycle. And I kept it. And it was, it was an overly expensive bicycle. So I promised myself I would ride it every day to make it worth it. Then I fell in love with bike riding.

• 50:08Jay Shetty?

  Oh, wow.

• 50:08Speaker 01

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

• 50:38Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 50:38Speaker 01

  It'll feel the same and you'll be looking at some other lavish house wanting more. And I think that gave me that perspective of, hey, you can keep climbing this mountain. There is no peak.

• 50:48Jay Shetty?

  Totally.

• 50:49Speaker 01

  So just have fun. You know, there's no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The rainbow is the reward. So have as much fun as you can.

• 50:56Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 50:57Speaker 01

  Stop taking things so seriously. Our time is limited here, so enjoy it while we're here.

• 51:01Jay Shetty?

  I love it. Humble the poet, man. Look, check that out. We're not done yet, but that is just like, wow, man. I, I. The fascinating thing I find is when I sit down with you, we agree on so much.

• 51:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:13Jay Shetty?

  So I'm listening to you and I'm never trying to debate. Anyone who knows me and listens to me knows that I'm not, I'm never cynical. I don't debate people. I, my whole goal is to bring out the best out of someone and, and serve someone by giving them a platform to share their light and share their truth.

• 51:28Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 51:29Jay Shetty?

  But what I want to do now is I want to dive into a few things I picked out the book.

• 51:32Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 51:33Jay Shetty?

  Because I, I love some of the ones I picked out and you've, you've actually already gone into some of them, but I'm gonna pick these out. So I love this statement that you make and I think it's so important for people to realize this because I think it's a huge one. And this book literally busts myths. Like anyone who's listening right now, watching right now, this book busts myths, but in a big way. And so if you read this book, it's not just a book of cool stories and quotes. It's gonna help you bust myths in a big way that are so deeply ingrained in our minds.

• 52:03Speaker 01

  And it's interesting you brought that up, especially with the idea of debate. You said, you know, I don't, I, I'm not here to debate. And I think what I found was I ended up debating many people, not because I wanted to hear my own voice to prove them, right? It was because I was desperate to, to find the, the, the practicality and what they were saying.

• 52:21Jay Shetty?

  That's awesome.

• 52:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:22Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 52:22Speaker 01

  And I would always just be like, but wait, how, how, you know, and I would start challenging them until we either figured it out.

• 52:28Jay Shetty?

  That's positive debate.

• 52:28Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, completely positive debate. And it, and it really came from a place of sincerity.

• 52:32Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 52:32Speaker 01

  And I've had a couple of conversations with people where they started to realize that they're like, hey, you're not just asking me questions. Like you, you really, you know, you don't just want an answer, you want this to work.

• 52:39Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 52:40Speaker 01

  And I think that's the reason why, especially in this book, you know, it, it busts myths because those myths weren't helping me.

• 52:47Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 52:48Speaker 01

  And I, and I only wanted to feel better. I really wanted to feel better. I didn't want to feel better for five minutes. I wanted to feel better and, and, and change the direction of my life. And that, and that was like the, the origins and the purpose of, of, of these words.

• 53:01Jay Shetty?

  Amazing, man, I love it. So this was one that I picked out. There aren't very many straight lines in nature. I wanted to talk about that.

• 53:07Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 53:08Jay Shetty?

  I agree, I don't like the belief. I, I grew up believing, well, actually no, I grew up believing just like all of us did, like the straight line of get a. Work hard, study hard, get a good job, get married, buy a nice house, buy a nice current life will be perfect. And I kind of got to eighteen.

• 53:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:24Jay Shetty?

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

• 53:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:54Jay Shetty?

  So let's break that down because I think that's such a powerful myth to bust.

• 53:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, completely. I think, I think what we all have to recognize is irrespective of your religious beliefs, irrespective of, of your heritage, if you're listening to this interview in English, you probably grew up in a society that was kind of based off Western philosophy, whether that was Judaism, Islam, or Christianity. And they, and they kind of, they set this tone of a straight line, you know, do this, do this, do this, do this, do this, and at the end, there is a reward. You and I both grew up in Eastern philosophy, which is cycles. Everything works in a cycle. So we're not, we don't think in straight lines, we think in terms of cycles. And when you start looking at life, you're like, well, this, you know, maybe not in L.A. But where I come from in Toronto, we have four seasons and they continually go in a cycle.

• 54:39Jay Shetty?

  Actually, London only has one season too.

• 54:41Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, miserable. And then when I visit, I bring the sunshine. So, and that's a cycle too, because I will continually visit. But I think the, realizing that things kind of work in a cycle, you know, everything has a beginning, middle, and end, and a rebirth, and a death, and what have you, it, it made me realize that, hey, nothing works in a straight line. There's no straight path to success, there's no straight path to happiness, everything works in cycles. And that's okay. You know, I, I love the TV show BoJack Horseman and there's a line in there where, you know, his agent says to him, "You thought winning this Oscar was going to make you happy to forever, but it won't, but it will make you happy tonight, so enjoy it."

• 55:23Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 55:23Speaker 01

  And, you know, this whole idea that we, we want this everlasting happiness, but there's a cycle. The cycle is... That fortunately and unfortunately, nothing will last forever. You know, not our worst day, not our best day. And that's okay. It's a cycle. Summers don't last forever. Winters don't last forever. Friendships don't last forever. Life doesn't last forever. The, the great moments won't last forever. The hardships won't last forever. It's always going to be an endless cycle. We are part of an endless cycle of birth and death. And really to understand that, hey, our society was structured on this straight line. And it's okay that we've all been kinda, you know, when we don't know, we're always gonna be dancing on the template

• 56:06Speaker 01

  that was kind of given to us until we decide, hey, this guy has to be something else. And to be honest, I think the entire world right now is on that template. And it'd probably be very disruptive if we all left at the exact same time. So for me, it was really recognizing that, hey, it's, there's gonna be a lot of twists and turns. There's gonna be a lot of ups and downs. And it's supposed to be that way. And that's the only reason it's interesting. If you take anybody you admire from human history and you wanna read the story of their life, you don't, it'll be a very boring book. Totally. You know, it'll be a very boring movie. Yes. Anything, if it was just a straight line and everything worked out. You know, I think Bill Gates said, "A success is a lousy teacher."

• 56:50Speaker 01

  And from that perspective, it's, it's, we have to embrace these challenges. And recently, I was, I was hanging out with a, with a new friend I met. And I, and I asked them, "What are you looking forward to? What are you excited about?" And they said, "Such an interesting answer. I'm really excited about all the chaos in my life right now. There's a lot of chaos and conflict in my life. And I know it's here to teach me some stuff. And I'm really looking forward to tackling it and learning from it." And I was like, that's such a refreshing mindset. Cause most other people are like, "Oh, I'm stressed. You know, nothing's working out. I just need a break." And, and I think for me, I'm also realizing that, hey, breaks don't work. You can, everybody watching, you've, you've had a big project you had to do. You had a big deadline. You had a big paper you had to get done.

• 57:33Speaker 01

  And then you promised yourself three days of just relax. And those three days happened. And then Monday comes again and you're not. Not rejuvenated, you're back to it. And so what I realized is, hey, you gotta have those breaks every day. You gotta take those naps. You gotta have that me time. You gotta play the video games. You gotta, you gotta watch those silly movies. You gotta do that on your day to day basis. And there are no straight lines in nature. So let's stop trying to have a straight line in our own life. And, you know, when we flow the way everything else is flowing, and when we respect the way everything else works. Um, I always say, you don't, you know, you can't speed up the snow melting. You can't speed up that broken leg healing. You gotta respect the time these things take. And when we apply that to our lives, I feel like it reduces a lot more of the tension

• 58:18Speaker 01

  that we feel that we impose upon ourselves. Cause we want to get over that heartbreak yesterday. We wanna get out of debt yesterday. We want things to happen now, now, now. But it's those challenges that make life interesting. It's those challenges that make, that give us the character that we need to be the interesting people that we are. Um, and it's those that, it's, it's those challenges that teach us lessons that we can pass down to other people. So they can start a little bit further ahead of us. And now they can address new challenges, new cages, new, new, new levels and depths of biases and context that we may have, that we may not have the time to explore on our own journeys. And I think that's the cool thing about us as human beings is we can pass forward

• 59:02Speaker 01

  that teaching and, and, you know, the same way our parents started at a certain level, and we get to start a little bit ahead, you know? And it makes me excited about if I have children, where, where do they get to start? And, you know, generation, from a generational level, moving forward. And, and, and it reminds me that, listen, look, we're not the end all be all. We are a drop in the ocean, but as Rumi says, we're also an ocean in the drop. You know? So let's play our part in the grand scheme of things, but also realize that grand scheme exists all in us.

• 59:31Jay Shetty?

  Totally.

• 59:31Speaker 01

  And, and it's, it's scary, overwhelming, but it's also extremely liberating. And that's kinda how I look at it.

• 59:37Jay Shetty?

  Huge advice, man. Yeah, I love that. And, and there's been two ways that I've dealt with it. And I loved yours. My ways have been every time something doesn't work out, I'm going through a period of chaos or uncertainty, or I'm trying to get something that's not working out. There's two things I've always said to myself. One is don't judge the moment. Because I feel like we try and label and judge the moment as being bad.

• 1:00:01Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:00:01Jay Shetty?

  And I had a lot of friends who were like, it's a bad period for me right now.

• 1:00:05Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:00:05Jay Shetty?

  Or it's a bad day for me right now. It's a bad life for me right now. And you're just stretching out that moment and you're judging that moment, which we know could be the best moment of your life.

• 1:00:14Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:00:15Jay Shetty?

  And so my first thing is never judge the moment because my judgment could be so wrong. And then I'll live to regret it later because I looked at it differently. And the second thing I've always done is I've always, always said to myself, this only makes the story better. Right? Whenever I can look at a failure and be like, yeah, I got this failure so that when I tell this story one day to myself, it's gonna feel better because I'm gonna be like, yeah, like that, what you just said, like, there's no movie of someone's life or there's no book or history of someone's life that would be exciting if everything just worked out.

• 1:00:49Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:00:49Jay Shetty?

  And, and we forget that, we forget that. And for me, one of the best ways I processed it, that was, those are two questions that were two things I say to myself. But it's, I've recognized that in life, I feel we're always in five modes. And it's the cycle that you're talking about, like, we're in five steps of a cycle.

• 1:01:04Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:01:05Jay Shetty?

  So we're either learning, we're either experimenting and testing, we're either performing, we're either struggling or we're thriving.

• 1:01:12Speaker 01

  That's beautiful.

• 1:01:13Jay Shetty?

  Right? So that's the five modes of our cycle of life. You're either learning something, you're experimenting and testing, you're performing, like you're just making it happen, you're struggling or you're thriving.

• 1:01:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:23Jay Shetty?

  The problem is, we all always wanna be thriving.

• 1:01:25Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:01:26Jay Shetty?

  So everyone, every year is like, why am I not winning the awards? Why am I not making the most money? Why, what you said, like, we want everything now, now, now, now, now.

• 1:01:32Speaker 01

  Completely.

• 1:01:33Jay Shetty?

  And so we wanna be in thriving when actually we're wasting all our energy, pushing ourselves, pretending to be in thriving.

• 1:01:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:39Jay Shetty?

  When you could just be learning.

• 1:01:40Speaker 01

  Completely.

• 1:01:41Jay Shetty?

  And I've seen that happen in my life so many times. And thriving, to everyone who's listening, thriving is one percent

• 1:01:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:46Jay Shetty?

  of all of it. No matter how good your cycle is, thriving, like you said, that enjoy it for one night.

• 1:01:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:52Jay Shetty?

  Well, that's where you sparked this thought.

• 1:01:54Speaker 01

  And I, and I feel like back to even your point of judging.

• 1:01:57Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:57Speaker 01

  It's not only should we stop judging things as bad, we need to stop judging things as good.

• 1:02:02Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 1:02:02Speaker 01

  We all have, and, and I know this without having. You can read your entire audience's mind. We've all had situations where when it was presented to us, like this is great news. Six weeks later, it was the worst thing that ever happened.

• 1:02:13Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:14Speaker 01

  You know, none of us own a crystal ball. We don't know how things are gonna play out and and what we're what we're best uh off doing is reserving our judgment for saying, oh, that's good news. That's bad news. Cause we don't know how that's gonna play out and it could be anything. And you know, Kanye West lost his mother because she was getting plastic surgery.

• 1:02:33Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:34Speaker 01

  You know, he attributes that to him being successful. If he never became an artist and successful, she would have never gotten plastic surgery and she would have never died. It can go either way and we don't know. And the smartest thing we can say is we don't know.

• 1:02:47Jay Shetty?

  Totally.

• 1:02:47Speaker 01

  And so when you say reserve judgment, I think that's an amazing thing to do is let's stop evaluating what's happening to our lives. Because when we stop evaluating it, we can start to look for the opportunities and the good that comes from it. And then thriving can be a mindset.

• 1:03:03Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 1:03:03Speaker 01

  You know, and then it could be, you know, no matter what's happening, whether, you know, where whether we're in the dirt or whether we're in the clouds. We can have our mindset is what maintains that.

• 1:03:14Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:14Speaker 01

  And I think that's the fantastic part about that.

• 1:03:16Jay Shetty?

  Absolutely, man. Thank you for adding to that.

• 1:03:18Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 1:03:19Jay Shetty?

  I love it.

• 1:03:19Speaker 01

  I mean, that's what that's what I do, man. That's what I try. I wanna, you know what it is too. So I know I'm learning myself.

• 1:03:26Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 1:03:27Speaker 01

  You know, how do I, how do I know I understand it is by regurgitating it, whether, you know, making it my own, trying my best to understand where you're coming from and then, you know, also recognizing that I'm extremely privileged to be in your presence.

• 1:03:40Jay Shetty?

  Oh, come on.

• 1:03:41Speaker 01

  Where there's a lot of people that are that are that are that are consuming your your amazing energy, but they don't have the opportunity to just simply be like, hey, what did you mean by that? Hey, how do I apply that to my life? And I'm not lost on that. I'm not lost on being in your company, how dope it is. I'm not lost on some of the professional comedians I get to be around and just hearing these guys talk and cheer me up. I'm not lost on the amazing singers whose voices I get to hear acoustically. You know, I think, as you said, one thing that I learned from you uh in our last hangout, which what you said was gratitude needs to be specific. You know, sometimes we're not specific with our gratitude. We just need to be grateful. Or we say, oh, I'm grateful for the oxygen in my lungs, just because people tell us that we should be grateful for that.

• 1:04:24Speaker 01

  But maybe that's not what we're grateful for. Maybe we're grateful that it's cold outside today and we get to try on that new sweater. That we never got a chance to wear. Maybe, you know, maybe we're grateful that that friend canceled dinner on us today because we really wanted to catch up on that Netflix documentary, you know? Being specific and that that's something that stuck with me off our last conversation. And I'm grateful that I get to have these conversations with dope guys like you, Lewis, and all these other people. And knowing that even the other people that I don't know are a hop, skip, jump away through through my associates. If I really needed to ask them a question, I could.

• 1:04:56Jay Shetty?

  For sure, man. No, me too. And I feel grateful sitting here with you as well because I like being able to sit down with people where we can really go back and forth on ideas and build and build and build and build and build. It's like playing Lego.

• 1:05:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, completely.

• 1:05:09Jay Shetty?

  Playing Lego with a friend, it's like you can keep building something, but then that person sees that actually that tower could get higher if you build it this way. You're just building, building, building together.

• 1:05:18Speaker 01

  I feel like that. And I feel like what you also do is like if I shine light on something, you literally just take my hand and you just adjust it like half a degree from a different angle and I'm just, and I see a completely new picture. It's like, holy crap. And I think that's what it is. It's you're saying things that everybody listening to it right now, they agree with it and they hear it, but they were unable to put it in those specific words. And I feel like that's the that's the value in the service that I think we're both striving to do is that we're trying to figure it out. And then we're trying to make it digestible for people who are also trying to figure out. And that's why they continually say like, oh, you read my mind. It's because, you know, that's what we do, you know, and other people in the world are painting it. Other people in the world are putting it in music. Other people in the world are doing different things.

• 1:06:02Speaker 01

  And it's what makes this journey so much more fun.

• 1:06:06Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, absolutely, man. They're definitely sharing it by far.

• 1:06:09Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:06:10Jay Shetty?

  Makes it more of most fun for me, collaborating, connecting, working together on something. It's something I wanted my whole life. And every time I'd make friends, when I was growing up, one of the biggest challenges with me and friendships was that it always became a competition, not from my side. I've always wanted to be. Like on good terms with people and kind of collaborate and be effective. That doesn't mean equal, but in the sense of like, I see the good in you, you see the good in me. Let's, let's figure this out. And I always found that friends I had growing up, especially in my teens, turned it into competition. It was always like, oh, well, how many girls can you get? Or like, who's gonna have the nicer car? Or who's gonna, and I was just like, no, man, like, you know, like, let, like, why does it have to be that way?

• 1:06:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:51Jay Shetty?

  And, and it's interesting because that's always been, I've, I've always been trying to grapple with that. But I find like, as we mature and get older, people start recognizing we have different strengths.

• 1:07:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:01Jay Shetty?

  But we don't need to compare, right? And you talk about that in the book too.

• 1:07:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think the, the irony of that all too is a, a friend, Marsha Montano, who's an amazing soca singer out of Trinidad. He said, there's three levels to this. There's, it starts with competition. He goes, and then you graduate to cooperation, then you graduate to collaboration. And that doesn't even always have to be a deep thought. Let's just talk about, for example, getting girls. You know, you go to the club with your buddies and if you guys view each other as competition, you know, now you become, you, you guys all isolate yourselves from each other, try to go talk to the women. But if you guys worked with cooperation, for example, now a group of guys will do better speaking to a group of girls. And everybody helps each other and it works a little better.

• 1:07:47Speaker 01

  Now, if you graduate to collaboration, where you say, listen, the goal is bigger than the sum of us individually. You're like, all right, today, we're gonna help Jay meet the love of his life. And now all of us are wingmen and we're focused just on you today.

• 1:08:02Jay Shetty?

  And then next time.

• 1:08:03Speaker 01

  The next time somebody else, but the success rate will be even higher.

• 1:08:06Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 1:08:07Speaker 01

  And it's the same thing with art, it's the same thing with what we do, is we can view each other as, as, as competition. And now, instead of, you know, deep diving into your work, I'm trying to nitpick it. And I was like, oh, look at this guy spelling mistakes, or oh, what's that idea? Or that doesn't apply, or let me find the one time that his advice isn't gonna work.

• 1:08:23Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 1:08:24Speaker 01

  You know, what, you know, let's say, for example, you said something like, you know, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. And then I'm like, well, that doesn't apply if you're talking about cocaine, you know, I could, I could obviously do that. But, and I feel like, you know, and, and you're, you're new to Hollywood as well, and I've been coming out here for a couple of years. Here, there's a lot of cooperation, a lot of people like, hey. We will both benefit if we work together. And I'm really trying to find those people and I'm trying to with them move it to collaboration, which is what we're working on is bigger than all of us. And we feel like, and I think we all want that. That's the reason we go to sporting games.

• 1:09:00Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:01Speaker 01

  We don't, it's not about us now. Now it's about the team. Now we're part of that moment. We're all cheering, we're all chanting together. We're a part of something bigger than us. Now we are that drop in that ocean, that collective ocean again. And I feel like when people recognize the beauty of that, more people will be more likely to collaborate.

• 1:09:17Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:17Speaker 01

  And say, hey, I'm a part of something bigger than me. Cause you can only be a part of something bigger than you when you work and collaborate with other people.

• 1:09:23Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:24Speaker 01

  And again, that applies to picking up girls at the club. That applies to working on a book. That applies to, you know, being a part of a podcast. That applies to all of that type of stuff.

• 1:09:32Jay Shetty?

  Yeah. I love how practical you make it, man.

• 1:09:34Speaker 01

  It has to be practical for me, man.

• 1:09:36Jay Shetty?

  He's just making dating and picking up girls and everything practical.

• 1:09:38Speaker 01

  It has to be. Cause I think also, cause sometimes, and I think, you know, the people that were doing this a generation before us, they always had this holy, yethin thou, you know, high and mighty. They always, they always tried to keep themselves living up to a certain lifestyle and a standard that was bound to fail, you know? They would have to live secret lives to, you know, they weren't allowed to be human beings. And I think with guys like us, it's like, no, we're a normal flawed human beings. We're trying to learn it. And as I said, I put words together. That's the reason I sound smart. I'm taking other people's wisdom. I'm learning it, I'm absorbing it.

• 1:10:16Jay Shetty?

  Totally.

• 1:10:16Speaker 01

  And I'm putting it into simple words because I taught eight year olds. I learned how to use that. And I always try to remind people that. That was one of the biggest things when this book first came out independently. It was really trying to remind people that I'm not a guru.

• 1:10:29Jay Shetty?

  You want to tell that story?

• 1:10:30Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:10:30Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:31Speaker 01

  So what ended up happening was this book is such an organic process. Is in 2014, as I said, I was trying to figure out how to make money. I'll be completely honest. I was trying to figure out how to make money and I started in the music world. I'm a rapper. And what happened was I was, you know, when you rap and you make music, you're a recording artist. I worked with a studio engineer. I worked with a couple of producers who made my music and I worked with a film team to make my videos. And what happened was my studio engineer got in a fight with his girlfriend and stopped picking up the phone. And I didn't know how to record. This is before GarageBand. And

• 1:11:07Speaker 01

  I didn't know what to do and I had a new friend at the time, who was the only other full-time creative I knew by the name of Lilly Singh. And we had just started hanging out. And we were hanging out because we didn't know anybody else who was trying to do what we were trying to do. And she goes, "Figure out what you can do by yourself. What can you do by yourself so you don't have to call your video guy? Because if he's not available, because he's shooting a wedding, or your producer, because he's busy working his day job, or your engineer is fighting with his girlfriend, he went MIA. What can you do by yourself? You don't need anybody." And I said, "I can write." And she goes, "To write?" And I go, "I'm gonna run out of things to write about." And she's like, "Well, it already sounds like you're making excuses. Just start writing and see if you run out." And what I used to do is I had a folder on my computer of just really cool pictures.

• 1:11:49Speaker 01

  And a lot of them were from ad agencies and just, I loved the creativity of how they were putting messages across. So I just took pictures, I'd post them on Facebook, and I'd write about them. And I was so afraid that people are gonna be like, "Hey, we didn't sign up for this. We wanna hear your music." And, you know, at that point, I was probably dropping a song once every three months, because it took me a long time to make it. But with this writing, I could do it every day. And I was afraid that once I ran it. So first, I was afraid that they wouldn't embrace it, which they did. They loved it. And then I was afraid I'd run out of pictures and run out of ideas. And I ran out of pictures, but I didn't run out of ideas. And I just promised myself I would write every single day and post every single day and try it out for a year. Let's see what happens.

• 1:12:31Speaker 01

  And again, the first, the top comments were, you know, "You're speaking my story. You're living in my head." And then about after three months, the top comment was, "You should write a book." I didn't know how to write a book. But I had a friend who was making signs, brochures, and posters for companies, for a local business. He would make the displays for like Home Depot or whatever. And I said, "Hey, I wanna make a book. Do you know how to make a book?" And he goes, "Yeah, you have to learn how to use Adobe InDesign." So he sat there and he taught me how to use Adobe InDesign. So it took me about a year to write the book and collect the writings and take the thoughts and ideas I believed in. Took me a year and a half to build the original book, learning how to format, how to make pages, how to do margins and widths. And that happened in 2014.

• 1:13:15Speaker 01

  And what I did was, I crowdfunded. I used a site called Indiegogo, which is very similar to Kickstarter. The only difference being in Kickstarter, you don't hit your goal, the whole thing is canceled. Indiegogo, if you don't hit your goal, you can still work, move forward. I made up a number. The number was 10% of what I had to give up my place for. I sold my home and moved back with my parents. And I said, listen, if you guys help me get the first 10%, I'll figure out the other 90%. I did a crowdfunding campaign for six weeks and I passed my goal. My biggest contributor was a Harvard professor who was doing crowdsourcing. He was doing his dissertation and he was doing his tenured ship in crowdsourcing.

• 1:14:00Speaker 01

  And he did it for like NASA. And he was just excited at the idea of an artist taking his career in his own hands. And he gave me the largest contribution and we had never met.

• 1:14:11Jay Shetty?

  Wow.

• 1:14:11Speaker 01

  I didn't even know who he was and that taught me that, hey, great things happen when you put yourself out there.

• 1:14:16Jay Shetty?

  Totally, wow.

• 1:14:17Speaker 01

  And I went and asked for help and it was really interesting because a lot of people I knew didn't contribute. A lot of people I barely knew did contribute. There was one gentleman who had a business and he used to let me work out of his office instead of me going to coffee shops. He gave me a large contribution because he saw me working every day. It was just a, it was the scariest, most inspiring moment of my life, asking for help. Letting people know that I need help and everything's not all good and people responding. And yeah, I used that money and I put the book together. And from that process, I wrote, it was about 300 people gave me money and I raised about 26 grand.

• 1:14:58Jay Shetty?

  That's incredible.

• 1:14:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was amazing. And my favorite piece of that was I wrote a thank you card to every single person. And again, I told myself, you always talk yourself out of these things like you can't write a thank you card to 300 people. You're gonna end up writing the same things. But it ended up being the most fun I ever had because writing somebody a thank you card is amazing. Receiving a thank you card is amazing. It was a win-win for everything. And it actually got me to launch my own thank you cards.

• 1:15:21Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:22Speaker 01

  And I have my own line of thank you cards because of that. And really, again, promoting practical gratitude. Find an excuse to say thank you, whether you're saying it to your mailman, whether you're saying it to the barista at Starbucks. Just find an excuse to say thank you. And that process taught me the importance of being vulnerable. And not just being vulnerable for currency to connect with people, but being vulnerable so you can address those vulnerabilities and find your strengths. And not only find your strengths, inspire other people to find their strengths. Because sometimes they think the consequences of being vulnerable are gonna be the end of the world. And when they say, and I thought it was too. And it did not end up being the end of the world. So when this book came out, it came out independently, and I was using it to sell at my shows.

• 1:16:06Speaker 01

  Instead of selling T-shirts, I would do a performance in a city and I'd sell the book. And you know, with the print service I was using, I was able to ship the book to whatever city I was performing at, and it was great. After a couple of years, I was invited to be on a literary show in Canada called Canada Reads. Think Survivor for Books. Just a bunch of personalities arguing about books, debating books. And I wasn't debating my book, I was just debating a book that I had, I liked called Fifteen Dogs, which is an amazing book about dogs given human intelligence in the city of Toronto. So I just liked, these are all my favorite things, intelligence, dogs, and Toronto. Yeah, and I debated the book and I won.

• 1:16:46Speaker 01

  And because I won that, it was in the literary community and then people figured out that I had written, I'd written a book. And the biggest bookstore in Canada, pretty much the only bookstore in Canada, Indigo, they like, we're starting a publishing wing and we would love to republish your book. And at that time, I was like, so you guys are gonna give me money to email you a PDF? I was like, this, you know, this is a no-brainer. But once they plugged it into their community of book lovers, it grew very quickly and it became a bestseller. It was on the list for about six months. Congrats. And yeah, and then from there, it, you know, I signed with Harper Collins in America and you know, and now we're releasing it.

• 1:17:26Speaker 01

  And I'm really excited because it's, it's kind of a testament to plant a seed and it grows when it grows. So it was independently published in 2014 and now it's getting its worldwide release and you know, five years later. And again, if I wanted it now. Uh, when I first published the book, then I would consider the book a failure because it wasn't a bestseller the day I hit publish. You know, it took five years for this book to grow into what it needed to grow for, for the, the world to, to connect with it the way it did. And I mean, it goes to show that things don't happen on our schedule.

• 1:18:03Jay Shetty?

  No.

• 1:18:04Speaker 01

  Uh, we gotta trust that process when it happens and to try to have as much fun as we can. And I'm excited to see where it goes with this.

• 1:18:11Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, me too, man. I'm excited for you. I think it's a great book.

• 1:18:13Speaker 01

  Thank you so much, man.

• 1:18:16Jay Shetty?

  I think it's, it's what people need in the format that they need it. And in the words that they need to hear it.

• 1:18:22Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:18:22Jay Shetty?

  And, and I love that it's an easy read in the sense that someone can pick it up anywhere.

• 1:18:26Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:18:27Jay Shetty?

  And start wherever they need to. And I say that in a positive way because I feel like anyone who's not got time to read a book or like, oh, you know, I don't know when I'm gonna get a moment or I, I'm not used to getting through books. This solves all that issue.

• 1:18:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:39Jay Shetty?

  Because you can literally just pick up one a day.

• 1:18:41Speaker 01

  Completely. And, and that was, that was a big thing. I wanted to really make it, I'm not a book reader. You know, and, and the irony of, of getting plugged into the whole literary world is the amount of books that I, every time you have a meeting with a publisher, they send you home with a, with a box of books.

• 1:18:55Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:56Speaker 01

  So I have a beautiful library now in my home of books that I haven't read. But, um, I realized, I'm like, I'm not the biggest book reader. I, I, it's a time commitment sometimes. And, um, I wanted to design a book that was easy to read. So yeah, every, every chapter is no longer than two pages. Um, you don't have to read it in order. You can literally pick out a random chapter every single day if you want. You can read it backwards, forwards, skip a chapter, go even numbers, odd numbers, whatever you want.

• 1:19:24Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:24Speaker 01

  Uh, you know, you can make a game out of it. And I think that was the goal with this, was really trying to make it easy and digestible and simple and practical.

• 1:19:33Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:33Speaker 01

  And that was really the big thing. And The success of this book, even even the Canadian, when it was a bestseller in Canada, there were still spelling mistakes in the book. And I think this is, it was a very important lesson that I wanted to stress with people, especially my artists who are watching and listening. Things don't have to be perfect. Totally, man. We, we, that's an excuse we make like, oh, I need a professional editor. Oh, no, I mean, I, I had it proofread by, from, you know, a girl I was seeing at the time and my sister. Yeah. You know, and they proofread it and even then it still wasn't perfect. Yeah. And, you know, it, it, this, this version now that you guys will be getting is professionally edited. And, uh, but even then, amazing editors at Harper who understood my voice. Yeah. And understood that, hey, where his, his job here isn't sound smart. Yeah.

• 1:20:18Speaker 01

  His, his job here is to be easy to understand and digestible. And, um, I'm really excited for people to read this and connect with it and, and give feedback. And, uh, there's an interesting activity at the end of the book, encouraging people to write their own chapter. Right. And, and send it my way. And just recently, you know, that's my favorite part is because what I realized is the pattern that I've been picking up most recently is one thing that I was doing subconsciously and not knowing was building community. I think in the beginning, I have two sisters. So I think in the beginning, I thought I was always wanting brothers. So I was like trying to find brothers. But what I realize now more is I want a community. Yeah. Because, uh, I didn't feel like I fit in with people. Um, not just as somebody with a beard and turban, but I also felt like as a creative, as an artist,

• 1:21:03Speaker 01

  uh, with my, my, my priorities, with my values, I didn't feel like I fit in. And the moment I found anybody who kinda was on the same journey as me, it was just like, that's it. You're stuck with me now. And I've been building this community and I felt like what this book allowed me to do was expand that community and find more lifelong learners, more people who are excited at the idea of having their biases challenged. Cause a lot of people don't. You challenge a lot of people's beliefs and values and that's a great way to lose a friend. But there are a lot of other people like, wow, I believe this for the last 20 years and you just three sentences flipped it and I love when that happens to me. Um, I'm, I'm scared if that ever stops. I want to be 80 years old and still have beliefs that I, that I held tightly and dear to me

• 1:21:48Speaker 01

  and be able to let them go and, and learn something new. Cause that's how we know we're alive.

• 1:21:52Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:53Jay Shetty?

  Me as well, man. All the way.

• 1:21:55Speaker 01

  Completely.

• 1:21:55Jay Shetty?

  Guys, I've seen Humble post every day crossing off the date on the calendar because he's been writing.

• 1:22:02Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:22:03Jay Shetty?

  And committed to writing this book. So I'm excited to share it with you. Make sure if you enjoy this conversation, go grab a copy. It's called Unlearn: Hundred and One Simple Truths for a Better Life by Humble the Poet, guys. So if you are listening, make sure if you enjoy this conversation, go grab a copy of the book. If you're watching, go grab a copy of the book. It's, it will just, it will just help you take away so many things in your life that are blocking you and, and help you find the insights, the wisdom, and, and more importantly, just, just like real, true emotion, uh, that I really think is gonna help people move forward.

• 1:22:39Speaker 01

  Completely, and you know what? And if you don't dig it, let me know.

• 1:22:42Jay Shetty?

  That's cool.

• 1:22:42Speaker 01

  You know, hit me up on social media after, you know, and just let me know what you didn't like.

• 1:22:46Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:47Speaker 01

  And I mean, you know, we'll take that. I am open to constructive feedback and, and, and I want that to come across in, in, in the next book I release.

• 1:22:55Jay Shetty?

  I love that, man. Thank you so much, bro.

• 1:22:57Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me, brother.

• 1:22:57Jay Shetty?

  Thank you, man. Thank you. Thanks, guys, for listening.

• 1:23:05Jay Shetty?

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

• 1:25:30Speaker 06

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' health care to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, theHouseMajorityPact.com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 1:25:59Speaker 02

  Mr. President, my company tore me of the explosion on our rig.

• 1:26:03Speaker 03

  On October 2nd.

• 1:26:04Speaker 02

  Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.

• 1:26:08Speaker 03

  Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Ravenette.

• 1:26:16Speaker 04

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You stop, you freeze to death, that's what.

• 1:26:20Speaker 03

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 1:26:23Speaker 04

  I'm not the first daddy.

• 1:26:24Speaker 03

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a middle without parent.