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Guest:
Japman Bajaj is an award-winning, transformational leader and a true polymath, recognized in 2012 as a Global Shaper of the World Economic Forum. A force in technology, entrepreneurship, policy, culture, and service, Japman seamlessly bridges human potential with the systemic structures that support it. He is a passionate storyteller, empathetic leader, and lifelong learner with a unique ability to balance left- and right-brain thinking, creating meaningful impact that nurtures human potential and fulfillment. Japman has contributed to several industries creating an impressive and diverse portfolio: He served as a senior leader at Long View Systems, where he led the Managed Cloud and Infrastructure Services, co-founded and served as Managing Director for Soshal Group, an award-winning digital media agency, and served as a Senior Leader at TELUS, one of Canada’s largest telecom conglomerates. Japman has also made significant contributions to social innovation, managing the Ottawa Innovation Community Challenge, curating at the Global Shapers Community, advisor to the Calgary Arts Development, and sat on the Board for The Trans Canada Trail Project. He also co-led the WeView DEI podcast, and is a published author. Currently, he is the Executive VP at Vametric, where he is redefining human ability, testing, and assessment. The list goes on, spanning both the corporate and social innovation sectors. Whether it’s building businesses or fostering deep social connections, Japman has a rare ability to focus on the big picture while also zooming in on the nuances that make a lasting difference.
Japman Bajaj is an award-winning, transformational leader and a true polymath, recognized in 2012 as a Global Shaper of the World Economic Forum. A force in technology, entrepreneurship, policy, culture, and service, Japman seamlessly bridges human potential with the systemic structures that support it. He is a passionate storyteller, empathetic leader, and lifelong learner with a unique ability to balance left- and right-brain thinking, creating meaningful impact that nurtures human potential and fulfillment. Japman has contributed to several industries creating an impressive and diverse portfolio: He served as a senior leader at Long View Systems, where he led the Managed Cloud and Infrastructure Services, co-founded and served as Managing Director for Soshal Group, an award-winning digital media agency, and served as a Senior Leader at TELUS, one of Canada’s largest telecom conglomerates. Japman has also made significant contributions to social innovation, managing the Ottawa Innovation Community Challenge, curating at the Global Shapers Community, advisor to the Calgary Arts Development, and sat on the Board for The Trans Canada Trail Project. He also co-led the WeView DEI podcast, and is a published author. Currently, he is the Executive VP at Vametric, where he is redefining human ability, testing, and assessment. The list goes on, spanning both the corporate and social innovation sectors. Whether it’s building businesses or fostering deep social connections, Japman has a rare ability to focus on the big picture while also zooming in on the nuances that make a lasting difference.
About the Episode:
In this episode I touch base with ELC Board Member, Japman Bajaj, for a thoughtful and wide-ranging discussion, exploring how spirituality can drive service, and influence our daily lives. Scratching the surface of what the Sikh religion means to him as an individual, we talk about how his faith continues to inform how he navigates leadership, trauma, trust building, and so much more. We discuss the personal and communal challenges he faced as a Sikh after 9/11, and how those events have shaped his views on service and wellbeing. Japman confesses that he came to understand the full gravity of his father’s work as a public servant relatively recently, and shares his evolution from believing that policy was in the way, to seeing it as the way in moving the needle forward. We contemplate the hard choices to be made and commitment needed to pursue an elected position, all while battling a system that favors blame, rather than extending grace. Plus, we touch on the transformative power of meditation and journaling in healing trauma and processing life's struggles.
Key Topics Discussed:
· [00:01:05] Guest/Episode Intro
· [00:05:33] Learning Yourself via Experience
· [00:09:07] It’s Your Story: Listen to Yourself
· [00:10:57] Japman’s Throughline
· [00:12:11] The Unexamined Life w/ a Service Lens
· [00:13:03] Contemplating a Life of Elected Politics
· [00:14:52] A Little Background
· [00:18:43] To be a Sikh is to be a Learner
· [00:20:03] The One God is Us
· [00:20:55] The Saint-Solider
· [00:24:04] Being Political by Default
· [00:24:32] Violence against Sikhs after 9/11
· [00:27:50] Coming From Trauma
· [00:29:10] Success Born from Struggle
· [00:30:18] (Pause for a Crazy Cute Story)
· [00:33:55] We’re More Alike Than We are Different
· [00:35:55] The Religious Atheist
· [00:38:18] How Does Faith Show Up?
· [00:41:37] Rejecting Institutional Policing, not “Doctrine”
· [00:45:10] Learning from Mom & Dad
· [00:45:48] A Life Long Public Servant
· [00:49:45] Understanding the Gravity of Service
· [00:52:27] From Target Turban to Strength in Numbers
· [00:55:55] Understanding the Gravity of a Lonely Kid
· [00:58:27] Owning up to Ego is part of Leadership
· [01:00:35] Some Ego Keeps Your Jug Full!
· [01:05:00] Modern Politics’ Focus on Differences
· [01:08:15] ELC Foundation donors (https://www.electedleaderscollective.com/donate)
· [01:10:40] A Traumatic Event Sets the Tone
· [01:15:18] The Universe Demands the Headphones Come Off!
· [01:17:17] Isolation as a Path, Not a Pathology
· [01:20:25] Everybody Had Something to Offer
· [01:21:08] Hukam, Accepting Reality
· [01:23:25] The Practice of Processing
· [01:25:48] We are Dynamic Beings
· [01:27:] Japman’s Bullet Point Practices
· [01:27:16] Find Self Inspired People
· [01:27:55] Journaling (Identifying Core Questions)
· [01:30:04] Meditate
· [01:30:43] Meditation Can Be Fluid
· [01:35:03] Wandering Thoughts Could be the Gift
· [01:37:37] Journaling is Data
· [01:41:07] Left Brain - Right Brain Balance
· [01:44:47] Policy Can Be The Way to Innovation
· [01:49:30] Distrust Towards the Private Sector
· [01:55:31] Contemplating Rebuilding Trust: It’s Work
· [01:57:00] Mistakes Are a Non Partisan Issue
· [01:59:53] Don’t Be Angry, and Inactive
· [02:01:25] Open Aggression Towards Public Servants: New Territory
· [02:03:32] A Simple Question
· [02:06:15] Internal Lessons: Extend Grace
· [02:08:49] We All Have Trauma
· [02:10:00] A Wish for Positive Politics
· [02:11:38] What is True?
· [02:14:22] Final Question: Start At Home and Seek Home in Others
· [02:16:45] “The Leader’s Handbook” (https://www.healingourpolitics.com/#newsletter) Newsletter
· [02:17:45] Sponsor: ELC (https://www.electedleaderscollective.com)
Key References and Resources Mentioned:
· [00:20:55] Sant Sipahi
· [00:37:37] Tikkun olam
· [02:16:45] “The Leader’s Handbook” (https://www.healingourpolitics.com/#newsletter) Newsletter
· [02:17:45] Sponsor: ELC (https://www.electedleaderscollective.com)
Where to Find Japman Bajaj:
Where to Find Host Skippy Mesirow:
- Receive Support at the Elected Leaders Collective ElectedLeadersCollective.com
- Follow on Instagram www.instagam.com/skippymesirow
- Book a free Clarity Call https://calendly.com/skippymesirow/elc-clarity-call to see if coaching is right for you
Episode Sponsor:
Helping You Heal Our Politics
The Elected Leaders Collective (ELC) organization is the leading US-based provider of mental well-being training for public servants, conducted by public servants and the world's best mental health and human optimization professionals. With ELC Training, you will learn to rise above and become the political healer you were meant to be, improving your well-being in the process.
Contact the HOP Team:
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Creators and Guests
Host
Skippy Mesirow
Skippy Mesirow is a prominent leader, certified Master Coach, and founder of the Elected Leaders Collective (ELC) and ELC Foundation. ELC leads the US in mental health and well-being training for public servants, recognized in The Apolitical Foundation's Mere Mortals report, and named as one of 26 worldwide political well-being "Trailblazer Organizations." A transformational leader in political innovation and wellness, Skippy serves on Gov. Polis’s Natural Medicine Advisory. Skippy’s work has been featured in numerous podcasts and publications, as well as main-stage speaking engagements for organizations NLC, YEO, CML, MT2030, Bridging Divides, and Fulcrum, highlighting his significant contributions to mental health, community, and policy reform. Alongside his professional achievements, Skippy lives in Aspen, CO. with his partner Jamie where he enjoys running ultra-marathons, road biking, motorcycling, international travel, culinary arts, Burning Man, and lifelong learning.
Producer
Aaron Calafato
Aaron’s stories are currently heard by millions around the globe on his award-winning Podcast 7 Minute Stories and on YouTube. Aaron is a co-host of Glassdoor's new podcast (The Lonely Office) and serves as a podcast consultant for some of the fastest-growing companies in the world.
Editor
Jesse Link
Jesse is a strategy, research and partnership consultant and podcast enthusiast. A 2x founder, former Goldman Sachs Vice President and advisor to 25+ businesses, Jesse brings a unique and diverse background to HoP, helping to elevate the range, depth and perspective of HoP's conversations and strategy.
What is Civic Courage Lab?
Hello,
I’m Skippy Mesirow, host of “Civic Courage Lab”, the show that shows you, the heart-centered public servants and political leaders, how to heal our politics by starting with the human in the mirror.
Civic Courage Lab, “CCL,” is a first-of-its-kind show that provides tools and practices for mental well-being, health, and balance, specifically for public servants so we can do good by feeling good and safe in our jobs.
CCL brings together experts, scientists, doctors, thought leaders, healers, and coaches to share their insights in practical, tactical, actionable ways specifically tailored to the public service experience for you to test and implement with yourself and your teams. Episodes feature intimate conversations with global leaders about their self-care practices and personal challenges, providing insights for a more holistic, connected approach to leadership. Whether you're a Mayor, teacher, police officer, or staffer, this podcast will guide you to be the best version of yourself in service to yourself and the world!
Sign up for our once-per-month Leader’s Handbook newsletter to receive an actionable toolkit of how-to guides on topics discussed on the podcast that month to test and implement in your life and with your team: https://leadershandbook.substack.com/
Welcome to the Healing Our Politics podcast, the show that shows you how to heal our politics by starting with the human in the mirror. My name is Skippy, Mezzereau, coach, former elected official, and lifetime public servant. It is my job to sit down with the best thought leaders, coaches, therapists, authors, scientists, and more, and to take the best of what they have learned and translate specifically for the public service experience. Warning, this is a postpartisan space. No policy, party, or partisanship here because well-being belongs to all of us.
Speaker 1:This show is about resourcing you and trusting you to make up your own damn mind about what to do with it and what's best for your community. So as always, with love, here we go. Welcome all to the Healing Our Politics podcast, the show that shows you, the heart centered leader, how to heal our politics by starting with the human in the mirror. In today's episode, I sit down with public servant, Jatman Bajaj. Jatman is a multi hyphenate leader.
Speaker 1:He is literally the center of the Venn diagram between technology, policy, culture, and entrepreneurship. A VP at Valmetric, he is reinventing hiring in public service to prioritize the human being. Jackman is a published author, an accredited global shaper, a public speaker, and serves on more boards than one can count, including the elected leaders collective. In this episode, we dig into growing up with a father in a national position of public service, the Sikh religion, if you are familiar or not, and how he was personally and communally impacted following nine eleven, how faith and spirituality can influence service and improve well-being, his journey from the belief that policy was in the way to the way, how to balance the left and right brain functions for success, his meditation practice, and how you can use journaling to process trauma, loss, daily challenges, and so much more. I hope you enjoy this inspiring, diverse, and wide ranging conversation with my friend, Jackman Bajaj.
Speaker 2:We're here.
Speaker 1:We're here. We're here. Welcome to a brother, a board member, a friend, a fellow summit, chapman, Bajaj. Welcome to Healing Our Politics, the show that shows you, the heart centered leader, how to heal our politics by starting with the human in the mirror.
Speaker 2:I love that. Thanks for having me, Skippy. It's a it's a joy, man. I've seen you start this. I've seen you grow it.
Speaker 2:I've seen you bring it to where it's at, and I'm excited to see you take it to where it's gonna go. So it's a joy to be a part of the team. Thanks, bro.
Speaker 1:Just to draw a little bit of connection, I just wanna disclose that I have some frostbite on my left foot at this moment because I was very recently in your country, which is very far north and very cold. So I got a little bit of Canada with me.
Speaker 2:Attaboy. So everybody should have a little bit of Canada with them. That's good.
Speaker 1:The warmest temperature for the week was negative 17, and most of the week was negative 35 and under.
Speaker 2:I'm guessing you were in Banff or somewhere around
Speaker 1:there? Somewhere around there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, excellent. Well done. Yeah. You came at the best possible time.
Speaker 1:That is what I learned. So for people listening who are not familiar with Chapman, he has a diverse background. And as I see it, and he may agree or disagree, we'll find out, really is the connective tissue in the Venn diagram between technology, entrepreneurship, policy, culture, and service, which I think is a really beautiful and interesting place to be. He is a lifelong learner and polymath, and he exemplifies in his work and my interactions with him a balance of left and right brain, sort of humans and system focused, that I don't come by often and I really, really admire and look up to. And just as a short partial list, when I say like polymath, multi hyphenate, these are just a couple of the things that Jetman's been into over the last, let's call it decade and a bit.
Speaker 1:He was the manager at the Ottawa Innovation Community Challenge. He was an ambassador for leveraging global media and creating strategies for social change for leaders. He's a co founder of Gen Y Ottawa, a managing director of the social group digital agency, which was an award winning agency, a curator at the global shapers community. He was an adviser at Calgary Arts Development, was on the board of the TransCanada Trail project. You you get the idea.
Speaker 1:Director of relations at Telcos, one of the largest conglomerates and communication companies in Canada, co lead on, We View DEI podcast and media. It goes on and on. I literally have another 10 or so bullets, and this is just a piece of the pie. So looking at this kaleidoscope of things, what are you on this earth to do?
Speaker 2:If you ask me that question on different times of my journey, it's different answers. But I think fundamentally, I better know myself. I don't have control over too many other things. If I'm gonna accomplish any one thing, it's gonna be the accomplishment of of actually figuring out what this whole thing is. Who am I?
Speaker 2:What am I? So I think, you know, the bullet points, they're they're nice to hear. And then on the flip side, it's, like, bouncing around constantly. Right? And I think that's just the way I'm wired.
Speaker 2:And I've learned from me that I learn more about myself through experience. And so constantly doing a number of different things of service to myself, most of the time, if not all the time, they are anchored on things that are good for many, many people. But at the core, it's I'm doing them for myself to better learn about myself, to better understand myself. And if there's any one thing that I was here to do, you know, if I were to be imagining what my deathbed looks like and I'm lying there and sort of saying, yeah, that was a life well lived, I think a life well lived fundamentally starts with saying I really understood myself. I have a deep self realization experience that whatever number of years I end up getting on earth, you know, that that gave me that self realization experience.
Speaker 2:And part and parcel with that is, at least for me, that journey has been the more I learn about myself, the more I end up learning about others, which is why most of the initiatives that I try to attach myself to and where I get a lot of fulfillment from are initiatives and experiences that involve trying to make other people's lives at least somewhat better in some capacity, some way.
Speaker 1:It's interesting. I wonder So I have a similar CV in its length and perceptible randomness. To me, it's never been random. For me, when I look at it, I see the connective tissue and I generally understand what the various options of next actions might be that would relate to a larger goal. And for me, that's always been public service.
Speaker 1:I see myself as a public servant first. So when you look at my resume, you might say, Runs a vacation rental company. That's weird. That's over there. Or did consulting for a ski club.
Speaker 1:That's weird. Right? Like, you could say, how do these things fit in? But for me, I was at the ski club because it was part of the community that I love and am invested in, and was a way for me to give back to not one or two, but three generations of people here and stay connected through an activity. I have a vacation rental company because that was and continues to be my greatest public service subsidy.
Speaker 1:It's the thing that pays the rent that allows me to be here and do those. So I get to see that connective tissue, but to a random passerby picking up the CV, they might not see that. And so I wonder, do you have an orientation to public service in that way? Or what might be a through line in your CV that would be clear to you, but not clear to others? And it may just be learning about yourself.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I'll pick up on a couple of things. Like I try to be careful about, especially increasingly as I get older, making sure you're living your life for yourself. Right? Make sure you're not living other people's lives.
Speaker 2:So know what? There's a part of me that says, look, if other people can't see the line of consistency through the things that you do, I don't know how much swearing is allowed on this podcast, but fuck it. Like, it's not for them. It's it's not their story. It's not their story if they can perceive how these things are connected.
Speaker 2:It's not really it's really nobody's problem. So the other thing is though that when you look back on things, the story often tells itself. Right? Like, the story makes so much more sense in reverse than it does going forward. You take pretty much any major national or international event or crises, and you look at it and you go, that's not really random.
Speaker 2:You can sort of look back and say, oh, that's how we got here. You can do the same with people's individual careers and their career paths and their leadership journeys and things like that. The question then is also, you know, the question is like, okay, well, how do you choose the next thing to do? And I'm deviating from your question a bit, but it really has to be the call from within, right? Like it has to be a call from within that compels you and says, yeah, this is in line with the things that you're supposed to be using your energy for.
Speaker 2:That only comes, that call will only come to you if you're actually listening to yourself. And so when you talk about the thread, yes, there's a piece here where in my early twenties, used to say yes to everything. In fact, that's still the advice I give a lot of younger folk. You know what? When you're in your early, especially early twenties, say yes to everything.
Speaker 2:Get your feet wet in a lot of different directions so that you know what resonates with you from a skills perspective, from a career perspective, from a soul perspective. Get your hands and feet and your mind wet in a lot of different ways. Mhmm. And then when you hit your thirties, you start finding yourself in a position where you get to say no to things because the opportunities come to you because you've spread yourself out. You've spread your wings.
Speaker 2:You've shown the world what you're capable of in a lot of different directions. You can either keep saying yes to things or you can start saying, you know what, I've got, you know, I've got the four things I wanna really focus on or two things I wanna focus on and that's where I'm gonna go. So then back to your question, know, the thread I think is like, it really just ends up being self discovery. It really ends up being a combination of self discovery, a healthy dose of opportunism, and service. Mean, I know that the experiences that have fueled my own self realization journey the most have been service oriented.
Speaker 2:I mean, you can pick apart any of any of the bullet points, the ones you chose in particular, I can pull back and sort of go, yep, that's why I did that. And because I thought I could bring value to conversations that would impact many And again, for me, what I've learned is I have to be careful about that.
Speaker 1:I love that because when I look at you, I do see a servant or someone who's oriented to service. I also know that you would and do describe yourself with many other titles, entrepreneur, technologist, etcetera. I see that thread, but it's cool for me to know that you see that too, because I can also be guilty, like everyone, of looking for what is normal to me or what I orient towards. And what I'm super excited about over the course of this conversation is to unpack that journey of self discovery, because, as it is frequently said, the unexamined life is a life not well lived. And in particular for public servants who are under stress and overwhelm and public criticism, it can be the norm or the default to put that in a cabinet and say that's for later.
Speaker 1:I don't have time for that. But in my experience, it is precisely because of the focus on self development and self knowledge that leaders are able to far more effectively serve. And so I think it's gonna be really fun to kind of dive into that journey with you and just learn where you've been and people can, you know, take what's interesting to them or not. You know?
Speaker 2:Twenty twenty three was a year where I evaluated whether or not I should and, you know, when you use the word public servant, I think we could talk about the bureaucratic public servant, but there's the elected official, the one who's constantly in the spotlight, the one who's constantly being sort of bombarded with media this and and photo op that and opening events and all those types of things, the the really public the very public leaders in the political system. 2023, I took as an opportunity to ask myself whether or not that was a life I wanted to pursue, a life of elected politics. Gratefully I have dozens of people who have served and who are, have been very close to those who have served and whether they were spouses or they worked as staffers, whatever. You know, the ones ultimately that I think that we end up admiring the most, I'll say I end up admiring the most are the ones who equally knew when to call it quits as it was to get in there. Because again, to your point, there is a sense of self awareness of like, what am I here for?
Speaker 2:What are my values and strengths? I think when you don't know those things, end up, whether by design or by accident you end up becoming one of those elected officials that seemingly just can't give up their chair because it's all they've ever known and they can't imagine what they would do outside of politics and then you know you start thinking about the power and the money and the sort of toxicity that comes with some folks who are literally just doing the job because they couldn't possibly fathom themselves doing anything else. You get a lot of toxicity when you don't. This is true for every discipline and every type of person. You don't know yourself, you're setting yourself up for quite a bit of failure.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Unfortunately, think a lot of people haven't taken the time to listen to what I like to call your little voice. Your little voice actually saying?
Speaker 1:Let's go back in the timeline. And, you know, you even talked about, you know, envisioning your last day on this planet, but let's go back to before there were stories written, before you had the inclination or were being trained to live someone else's story or someone else's life. And take us back to kind of day one for you. Like where do you come from? Where did you grow up?
Speaker 1:What was your family experience like?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So my folks moved to Canada in 1968, well before I was born. So if this was present day, my dad would current would have been born in what currently is known as Pakistan, but was pre partition day, so it was all India at the time. Mhmm. So ironically, if a partition had never happened, I wonder if we would have ever moved to Canada, but that's neither here nor there.
Speaker 2:Came to Canada in '68. My mom came from Singapore. She was born in India, but her family moved to Singapore when she was pretty young.
Speaker 1:So in modern day Pakistan, previous India, but this was before the border switched, before the war and conflict, what what inspired him to leave?
Speaker 2:Oh, he was he was one year old. It was partition that inspired. So when the colonizers left the imaginary line that got drawn between Pakistan and India, he was 18 kilometers on, quote, unquote, the wrong side, and they had to walk. So it was him, his older sister who was two years older than him at the time, so a one year old and a three year old and their parents. Although he, you know, honestly, he admits that he doesn't actually remember anything from it.
Speaker 2:He has a lot of stories from Sure. You know, the eleven days or nine days it took them to actually cross because there were soldiers everywhere. There was military everywhere. You were, you know, they were hiding in ditches for hours at a time just to make sure they didn't get shot at.
Speaker 1:Anyone who's listening who doesn't know the history, this is like one of the greatest and fastest mutual mass migrations in human history where individuals of and correct me if I'm wrong, but, primarily Muslim descent who were on the India side had to flee to Pakistan, And those of, I guess, primarily Hindu descent or Buddhist descent, and there's Tibetan Buddhism up in like that area as well, fled south to India, and the violence was severe. And it continues to be one of the most militarized places in the world.
Speaker 2:Yes. And in Punjab, in particular, it would have been Sikhs, which is who I am. I come from a Sikh family. Before the colonizers came, here's a history lesson for everybody. Prior to the colonization by the British, there were simply just a series of emperors who ruled over the area, most of them coming from the subcontinent, and the most recent empire was the Sikh Empire.
Speaker 2:Fantastic stories from the Sikh empire in terms of, like, the freedom of religion, actually, Judaism's presence in the Indian Subcontinent only happened because the Sikh empire actually allowed it in, first of all, and then secondly, created, safe spaces and communities for Judaism to be practiced safely in pockets all around India, and Judaism is still there to this side. I was gonna wait a
Speaker 1:little bit later to get into this, but let's let's do it because I'm I'm super interested in this. I learned a very small amount, a great number of years ago when I was in this region about the Sikh religion, which I knew pretty much nothing about. My memory is very hazy. This was like 2013, I think. I was on a trip in primarily Northern India, but sort of all around the border regions.
Speaker 1:So can you outline a little bit of the Sikh traditions and belief structures? It doesn't have to be super long, but just to familiarize people who are like, I don't even know what that word means.
Speaker 2:Sure. Okay. So we'll start literal. The literal translation of the word sick is learner. And you can extend that to seeker.
Speaker 2:You can extend that to explorer. You can extend that to so but the idea is somebody who is, constantly on a learning journey. So that's sort of the literal the literal translation, philosophy wise. There's so many things I could share. I'll share one or two.
Speaker 2:The entire book of scriptures, which we actually sort of revere as our prophet to this day, if you will. Prophet's the wrong word, but it's an English word that we'll use. That scripture is fourteen thirty pages long but the first word is the number one and the number one signifies a you know oftentimes people will say that Sikh so in english words we'll say Sikhism the word is Sikhi, Sikhi is a way of life, Sikhism is a western word, but Sikhi is a way of life. The first word of the scripture, the number one, generally implies this idea of oneness of all living beings, of all creation. So generally people will say, oh, Sikhi is a monotheistic religion.
Speaker 2:They believe in one God. That's not untrue. The problem with the statement is that it's a monotheistic religion, except that you are a you are a proportion of that one god, and the mountains are a proportion of that one god, and the trees are a proportion of that one god. And so that monotheism is a little bit blended into a pantheism, in that god is of everything and in everything and also between everything. And so there's nothing less divine about you than there is some magical man in the sky figure who may or may not exist.
Speaker 1:So this development of self was really gifted to you?
Speaker 2:Yeah. It was I was I was cursed with it. The other key thing I might share in skipping hundreds of years of spiritual learnings is, the notion of, saint soldier in Punjabi. This is the sant sipahi. And so the idea is that Sikhs pursue a lifestyle of both saintliness and and soldierness and there is a priority, it's the saint soldier, it's not the soldier saint, it is the saint soldier, the saint has to be first and foremost.
Speaker 2:The soldier must always be ready. There's a real effort and focus on discovering your inner warrior. That could be the warrior of the pen. That could be the warrior of the sword. Could be the warrior of whatever.
Speaker 2:But the ability to stand up for yourself and and equally as importantly for those who are underprivileged, underrepresented, who are abused, assaulted, oppressed, whatever that word is. So So so that's the other key tenet I think that I would share with the audience here is is those are the two the key ones, right? The oneness, the idea that we are all one and not the same, which then really actually, fundamentally and obviously translates into this idea of saintliness and soldierness, saint soldier, again, the soldier being there to ultimately protect not just oneself, but all those who might be oppressed.
Speaker 1:And if my memory serves, there are a few core practices Well, not practices, but behaviors and or like, physical things that a sequel do. So for example, what is the name for what you wear in your head?
Speaker 2:The English word that is acceptable is turban. Okay. I use the the Punjabi word is dastar, and we can dive into a little bit of philosophy of it. It's a crown. It's it's meant to be seen as a crown.
Speaker 2:To put this in context, only emperors and their closest entourage were allowed to wear turbans. And when the Sikh faith was established, our spiritual leaders, our gurus basically said, that's a little bit of horseshit. Like, why are you so special? We're all gonna wear turbans. So we all wear turbans.
Speaker 2:Now there's a lot of practicalities. There's a bit of a social justice piece there. Alright? There's a sort of, you know, screw you. We're gonna do it.
Speaker 2:Nothing special about you. That's not special about this homeless person. We're all gonna wear we're all gonna wear turbans. The other thing is that part of the part of the equation here is, we don't cut our hair. Many Sikhs do cut their hair.
Speaker 2:It doesn't make them bad Sikhs.
Speaker 1:Sure. There's a gradation of following like every religion.
Speaker 2:Correct. And so when when you keep your hair, you have to be mindful of context. You know? You go back into those days of the fourteens and fifteens and sixteen hundreds. We're talking about, you know, India.
Speaker 2:There's dust. There's dirt, there's whatever. You're often working in the farms. If you're keeping long hair, you probably need a system to keep it hygienic, to keep it in control, to keep it orderly. And so now a turban makes a lot of practical sense.
Speaker 2:And then the long and short hair has been studied by Buddhists, it's been studied by Hindus, it's certainly been studied by Sikhs. The idea that it can be a gift from God, it can have significant benefits to your own spiritual mindset, some of those studies on MRIs of people who keep long unshorn hair when they meditate versus those who don't like it's really fun to you can sort of see some of the signs catching up to some of the ancient wisdom so we keep her long hair, keep it uncut, we keep it covered, we keep it covered practical, but b, because also it's a bit of a screw you, I'm here. And it's interesting because as we talk about politics, policy, and those types of things, when you look as different as I do and as many people do in their own way, your life becomes political whether you want it to or not. That was a lesson I don't think I really learned until the last five or seven years, which is I always considered myself politically apathetic that I didn't really particularly care. Ironically, that was just how I saw it.
Speaker 2:The fact of the matter was that by virtue of just being the way I am was a political statement in and of itself.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, I remember very sadly, after nine eleven when violence against Muslims upticked, there was a particular likelihood of being randomly murdered if you were sick, because there was a misassociation of an obviously visible person with a turban on. And so people would walk into a job site and just shoot someone and not recognize that they were, A, not Muslim, but that this religion, this tradition in many ways, and correct me if I'm wrong, but there are a number of tenants or elements in it that kinda, like you said, that warrior, that fuck you, that were really stood up in the face of, you know, maybe some of the things that were less lauded about Islam or some of the other religions in the region at the time.
Speaker 2:There's so much about that time frame that is, like, so interesting from a from a Sikh and a Muslim experience. So first off, let's just say no random innocent stranger should have been murdered in the streets. Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, Christian, whatever. And one of the things I'm very proud about my fellow Sikhs who have spoken out about this, it's just like the question should not be, oh, we got it wrong. We thought we were hurting a Muslim.
Speaker 2:The question should be, why are you trying to hurt anybody to begin with? What what is your what is your what here? I will say that what's what was really interesting about that time is, you know, naturally, you looked on TV and you saw the pictures of the Osama bin Laden's and so whatever. And when you looked at the pictures of the 19 terrorists who actually committed the atrocity, none of them were turban wearers.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And this the stats the statistics for hate crimes against Sikhs for I wanna say it was up to six years following 02/2011, was higher than any other group, any other group, whether it was Muslims Yeah. Jews, Hindus, Christians, Those hate crimes committed against Sikhs were statistically and absolutely, not just like on a proportionate, there were more hate crimes.
Speaker 1:That had literally nothing to do with what the people were angry about.
Speaker 2:Correct. Which is wild. It's, you know, it's part and parcel. It becomes part of when you start folding in identities. I'm like, okay.
Speaker 2:Well, hold on. There's a oneness piece. There's a saint soldier piece. There's all sorts of stuff that I could go on a diatribe about about who Sikhs are. And you fold it into, like, there's all this external, like, this is how the world is perceiving.
Speaker 2:And it's not even the world. This is how some a couple of nut jobs are perceiving us and how do we navigate that with a country or countries, let's call it Canada and The US and The UK and some of these other places where we've established ourselves quite nicely, you know, you start asking yourself, like, how are the ways in which we can keep ourselves safe? Because we already left one partition ridden state with, you know, the political unrest that happens in India. We've already come from there to come to this place to live freely, safely, build ourselves, and build our communities and our families. To every end, I think most minority communities, many minority communities, especially those from the Indus Subcontinent have done very well, which is they've started establishing institutions in North America.
Speaker 2:And, again, linking this back to what you're talking about and what the importance of of the work that you're doing is that you need that soulfulness when you're building communities up because most communities that are contemplating how they further advance their agenda in a in a in a nation state like The US or Canada, they're coming from trauma. Yeah. Which is the story for a lot people fucking all across the board. Like, a lot of people bring their trauma to their politics. They bring their trauma to their And whether that's, you know, Skippy Mesero, city councilor, former city councilor in Aspen, or, you know, minister of x y zed who happens to be a Muslim woman or whatever, like, we're all bringing our traumas.
Speaker 2:And so when those traumas are being sort of set out, lived out and created in real time, if you don't have that strong rooted sense of like listening to your own self again, it just comes back to this idea of like, have to really know who you are. You have to really have a good sense of like, what do you stand for? What are your values and principles? Because otherwise, you get into the you go down the path of toxicity so fast, so so fast. And I think I you know, nine eleven coming out of nine eleven, the Sikh community, I would say, has done an enormously positive, like, in a great job.
Speaker 1:You were also a freshman in high school then?
Speaker 2:I was a sophomore.
Speaker 1:Like very impressionable time and moment. I have a question. It's not a non sequitur, but it's a little off base. Are sick communities that have immigrated to Western countries, Canada, America, are they disproportionately successful?
Speaker 2:Great question. So like every community, there is a continuum. Sure. The newer I'm gonna call it so I'll say in the Canadian context, we have a lot of recent immigrants to Canada, and I'm guessing it's true in The US too. And they they largely take the form of international students, and they're struggling.
Speaker 2:Right? There's a very real and and look. I mean, the Canadian political dialogue on this topic is nuanced. To use a diplomatic word, it's nuanced. Canada's made some choices to, like, absolutely, you know, exponentially increase the number of immigrants we've been taking in largely from Punjab.
Speaker 2:Like, there's a lot of Punjabi immigrants who look like me who have come to this country in the last three months.
Speaker 1:The first person that I met was from, like, Srinagar area just outside. So, yeah, and we had a great conversation. He's like, You're on a motorcycle trip in my hometown? I guess I was. I just have to
Speaker 2:say this because this is
Speaker 1:the craziest story. So this man had no intention to immigrate to Canada, was living his life in a suburb just outside of Srinagar, basically, in Kashmir, and meets a Canadian woman randomly at a popsicle stand where he's just hanging out. He's a teacher. He's like there with all of his kids. He meets her.
Speaker 1:They strike up a conversation. They decide they're going to get together. He doesn't tell her that he lives in a town that's a little bit far away. He doesn't have a car. It's going to be hard to get there.
Speaker 1:But he like makes a solid effort. And I think he said over the four weeks he was there, they had like six in person meetings. I don't know what you call them, dates or whatever. And then they talk on the phone every day for like six years, but never see each other. And he proposes on the phone, moves to Canada, and they've got five kids.
Speaker 2:Come on. Isn't that a beautiful story? Isn't that amazing? That's off the charts. Cool.
Speaker 2:That is a great story. I love that. I mean, you know, there's and this is the thing is like, to your question, you know, that's a success story. I don't know how well he does financially, but that's success right there. A lot of people in the Sikh community broadly successful using financial metrics.
Speaker 2:Like, yes, there's a lot of entrepreneurialism. There's lot of, like, you know what, get shit done attitudes. And when you've seen events like partition
Speaker 1:The reason I'm asking is like, I I come from a Jewish tradition and I have really fought that in many ways in in myself and in my upbringing. And I wanna talk about how your faith tradition has influenced your upbringing and comes into high school, and we'll we'll get there. I've really struggled with it, but I read a book a good number of years ago. I think it was called The Triple Threat, and it looked at disproportionately successful communities. So Jewish Americans were one of them, Iranian Americans were one of them, you know, there's Cuban Americans in Florida, a number of them.
Speaker 1:And there were kind of three overlapping characteristics that defined all of them. And they were one, a intense focus on education. Two, a belief, a strong held and historical belief in your specialness, which I mean, I heard the first in your CV and in your experience. I heard the second in we wear a turban because fuck you, we all get to wear a turban. And then the third is the fear ongoing fear of persecution.
Speaker 1:And it's like this collage of both feeling self important, for lack of a better term, doing the work of educating, but also having something to fear as a motivator. And I believe I remember that one of the things that a sick will carry is a knife of some kind, and that strikes to the warrior. It just struck me of like, is this is this fitting that mold? Do we have an experience to share or talk about?
Speaker 2:Absolutely, it does. And look, that's where I sort of was going. When you come from when you come from the trauma, right, when you come from partition, you come from the economic the political unrest, and that's putting it mildly in 1984 where effectively it was a genocide of sex. Like, you know, pretty much every institution in the world that documents the definition of genocide agrees this was genocide. India is the one of the only places that doesn't agree largely because it was committed
Speaker 1:Can't imagine why.
Speaker 2:I know. So when you've been through that, you can imagine that the I'm not going back there fear or the like, it's both a chip on your shoulder as well as, like, I've seen way worse this, like, this, like, inflation ain't gonna hurt me. Look at what I came from. Like, there's a certain there is a certain spirit. And when you were we're listing out the communities, you know, I got to go to Israel and Palestine in 2023, and I saw so many parallels in both communities with the Sikh community.
Speaker 2:And I just it just, it really a, it warmed me because it was like, yeah, we really are just the same. And that, you know, that is a highly, oversimplification of, obviously, what's, like, happening in The Middle East right now, and it's too bad because we're so much more alike than we are
Speaker 1:this Yeah. And we're seeing a like response as well. I mean, most US Jews do not wear physical indicators anymore, but many do. When they do, they become targets. And as if all Jews, regardless of their degree of piety, on every continent share culpability with the decision of a particular leader in a particular country in a very particular set of events is like insane.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Look, it's complicated, right? You're touching on that piece. One of the things that really struck me as a shared reality between Judaism and Sikhi, there is really a continuum. Right?
Speaker 2:Like, there is the secular Jew or the atheist Jew.
Speaker 1:I think it's over a third of self identified Jews in The US are atheists. It's like, makes sense of that. And it makes sense to me. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:It totally and now that I've been there and experienced it, it makes total sense to me too. And I realized, holy smokes. Like, we're kind of not entirely different that way. I mean, when you peel back this idea of God is like, again, man in the sky living in the clouds, looking down upon us and judging us. Right?
Speaker 2:Like, when you look at that, it's like, that's a really linear sort of like, know how to be an atheist in that context. And there's a lot of that sort of Western influence, I'll call it Western influence in in Tzakki over the last hundred and twenty some years. But, like, some of the root definitions of what is divinity when you start talking about, like, look, this woman sitting next to me is part of the divine, and I you and I are part of the divine, etcetera, etcetera. It's like, well, how do I not believe in that? And so but this idea that you might not believe in man in the sky god, right, and classifying that as atheism, but also still being sick is like a very real thing.
Speaker 2:Like, that makes total sense. So now after and then it was actually the trip to Israel that helped me understand that, like, actually being secular and belonging to a faith group are not different things.
Speaker 1:My partner, my girlfriend, Jamie, comes from Oklahoma, Christian, you know, it's typical US as you're gonna get. Somehow she's decided she wants to start reading Kabbalah, which is like Jewish mysticism, which, you know, half the Jews that I know would roll their eyes at. But what I remember is after her first day of reading, she came to me with like eyes wide being like, we're all God. Yeah. And it's like, it's right there.
Speaker 1:And I find that to be beautiful. And I'll out myself. I identify as Jewish for sure. I went to a bilingual day school for nine years, where half my day was in Hebrew. But I I mean, I I never say never, but I I'd be very surprised to find I ever become a deist like that.
Speaker 1:But the tradition, like you said, with the chip, after everything that we've been through, I couldn't disidentify or abandon that community. And as much as that community has given me, has passed along a lot of those traumas and neuroses and anxieties and those things, it has also given me the absolute gifts of education and mindset and perspective that have allowed me to transmute those negatives into positives in the self development journey. There's a word I came across when doing some research here. I'm gonna mispronounce it, I'm sure, but is it langar? Is that how you say it?
Speaker 2:Langer, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And I wondered about, like, so for me, I think the equivalent in Judaism is tikkun olam. I'm not sure if you would see those as pairs, but tikkun olam basically means to repair the world. And so it is the belief and practice of giving back universally and leaving the world better than you found it. One of my favorite quotes, which I'm gonna butcher is, This is not my responsibility to finish the job, but neither can I desist from doing my part?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a long bridge tie, but I'm really curious, like, how does this faith tradition show up on day one? How does it influence, you know, Little Jap Man? And yeah, start to walk us through.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So in every way, right? There are a few different words that strike me as resembling so langar just for the listeners the institution of langar it's effectively the free kitchen so if you attend if you if you visit whether it's a sick or a non sick whoever you are you show up to a gurdwara, a sick place of worship, you get a meal and you sit on the floor and everybody sits on the floor. I don't care if you're a millionaire or the poorest dude on block, you're sitting on the floor together side by side, you're eating together, you're eating the same food, right? You're not, you know, you're all participating.
Speaker 2:Again, sort of this idea of equality, equity, we're all the same. Doesn't really matter what your wealth or success in the social context is. In the eyes of the Lord, you're, you know, in the eyes of the divine, you're the same. Right? In in the eyes of humanity, you're all the same.
Speaker 2:So that's the langar piece. The notion of seva. Seva is like service. Seva is loosely translated to service, but it really is a concept of, like, a selflessness, a selfless service to benefit, kinda like the campfire rule that you sort of said. Look.
Speaker 2:Leave something better than it was when you found it. Again, interlinking with the saint soldier piece from before, like, to offer your service to those who actually really need it and to find ways to uplift whoever you possibly can through the act of seva. So how how did it influence, like, little Jutman? So I grew up in a spiritual community within the Sikh faith, and I feel very lucky because in a lot of ways, I was I was taught sort of these sort of more mystical interpretations of Sikhi from a young age. And like in every community, not every community is like that.
Speaker 2:So there's a lot of doctrine based communities, you know, do the thing or else or do the thing because, you know, God will be mad if you don't. Right? So I luckily, I didn't grow up with any of those sort of like guilt based relationships to spirituality, to religion, to faith, to divine divinity, which I think has also been why I've been able to foster, I think, a loving relationship with it as I've gotten older because it's not like the ideas of atheism. You know, I sometimes jokingly say I'm the most atheist religious guy you'll ever meet because there's a lot of aspects of institutionalized religion that I'm just sort of not convinced on. And I think part of the way that that can both live, that can all live together is because I was brought up in a way to to view faith from a more mystical perspective by default.
Speaker 2:And so it was a part of my upbringing every day. We would sit together. We would talk about ideas, spiritual ideas as kids and, like, with my two older sisters and my parents. And I learned scripture from a young age and and, singing Kirtan. Kirtan is like, the singing of hymns in a religious context.
Speaker 2:These are effectively spiritual songs from our scriptures, but I like to think about them as love letters. They're effectively love letters between a soul and the pure the pureness of, like, pure soul. Right? Like, the there's love letters between a person navigating their way back to their soul. And so each you know, I grew up singing bad.
Speaker 2:I still sing to this day. I play instruments that that are typically used in a religious setting. I also now play them outside of religious settings. Honestly, there's not there's very little in terms of parts of my life that are not directly and almost absolutely influenced by my faith.
Speaker 1:When you say that you rejected some of the more doctrinal things, what would be an example of that?
Speaker 2:Really, it comes down to so much around institutions, attempts to assert control. Again, we're talking about politics. Mhmm. We're talking about, the same things that we would identify in political systems in our general broader demographics. We're talking about institutions that are meant to be faith based institutions, but for some reason, you know, policing how you live aspects of your life where there's really no room for them to have that voice.
Speaker 2:Right? Using, call it, the church to then also exert control and power over people's lives outside of the church, so
Speaker 1:to speak.
Speaker 2:The same is true, I think, most institutionalized religions struggle with this sort of relationship.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So your rebellion is not against necessarily the practices or beliefs that are in the doctrine, it is against the way that they are leveraged within the human condition.
Speaker 2:My take on doctrine is, again, because I was fortunate enough to grow up in a non guilt based relationship with God. I just I don't fathom a divine entity should there be external divine entity. I just don't fathom one that's sort of like, if you don't do that, I'll be upset with you. It's like, it doesn't make sense to me. It doesn't, it doesn't line, like that doesn't line up for me.
Speaker 2:So somebody who wears an even larger turban or wears, you know, whatever is like extremely doctrine oriented is also beautiful. It's so beautiful, especially if it particularly if it's coming from a place of love. Like if it's inspired, if it's an inspired act, I'm all for it. I don't care.
Speaker 1:Is that a thing? The size of the turban correlates to the degree of the piety?
Speaker 2:No. It's not. I'm using it as sort of a an easy physical distinction for our conversation. Thank you for asking that. It's a good clarifier.
Speaker 2:It's not. It's just to say that, like, you know, the doctrine piece of it, I struggle with it when it's fear based, when it's guilt based. And I feel like oftentimes institutions are those who push that, that you have to do this because or else, or if not then. Whereas when it's something that's self inspired or inspired from your community or it's like it's a it's a again, love based, not dissimilar to the work that you're trying to do. Right?
Speaker 2:We're trying to inspire this like love, right? If it's love based, I don't care how you do it. It's really not for me to care about anyways. It's not my place to pass that judgment in a faithful But for me, the institutionalization of things when I talk about sort of my critique of it, it's like, why do you care how I spend my money? Why do you care how I, you know, do any sort of number of things in my personal life that actually are outside of your scope of control?
Speaker 2:And so that's where I sort of knock on institutionalized faith. The sort of those the institutions and the the the people who run those institutions who once they occupy power sometimes extend that power beyond what they should do. And again, this is, like, entirely parallel to American politics, Canadian politics.
Speaker 1:Just human systems.
Speaker 2:Human systems.
Speaker 1:%. How do mom and dad, in addition to the faith tradition, imprint on you? You talked about breaking out of living other people's stories. And so I'm wondering what stories, good or bad, helpful or harmful, did you learn from mom and dad early on?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I always say I feel like I hit the parent jackpot. Like, I have the best parents, and they're with they're not without fault, but they're amazing. They're they're honest. They're kind. They're well intentioned.
Speaker 2:They've got amazing hearts, and they make mistakes like we all do and so what are the things that I've learned from them in a positive sense? My mom is the closest thing I've met to somebody who understands universal love, like who just knows to start from a place of love at all times and sometimes that's like the most magical thing and other times it's like, mom, are you kidding? And for my pops, he was a lifelong public servant and his work has frankly, it's built very important parts of this country. In Canada he ended up becoming a pretty senior public servant bureaucrat and his work has really molded a lot of what Canada is becoming and so the example of sort of you can do big things, right, sort of lives in my house in that regard.
Speaker 1:What are some of the projects that he worked on?
Speaker 2:Canada's relationship with its indigenous people has is is a is a fractured one. Yes. A lot of systemic discrimination, racism. There's a really great quote by a senator, Canada's first indigenous senator, and the senate in Canada is very different from the senate in The US, but nonetheless, this senator, Marie Sinclair, made the comment, you know, systemic racism is what happens when you remove all the racists from a system. And in in effect, my dad's sort of life's work had been trying to unpack some of the things that the constitution had baked in that were actually systemically discriminatory towards indigenous communities.
Speaker 2:And one of the key things around that is fiscal policy and how northern communities and indigenous communities could self govern in the context of a country. And so he dealt with a lot of land claims. He dealt with a lot of the fiscal policy and how money can and should flow with good governance to minimize corruption to ensure that people were winning across the board from across, you know, dot so in in other words, not just, like, elected band officials or or whatever, like, just making sure that that there was fiscal transparent fiscal and economic pathways for indigenous communities to thrive. We had a big announcement this week, work that my dad started but retired and didn't finish but he started this work where, we have three territories in Canada, one of them is called Nunavut and Nunavut, is largely home to Inuit people and this week we're officially they signed an agreement that again my dad started to give them some self determination over their own budgets because, up until now they were effectively treated as wards of the state, if you will, as a territory. And so they actually didn't have full control over their own budgetary process.
Speaker 2:It had to sort of go through it's it's far more nuanced than that, but at its at its high level, it's this idea of self determination that now the territory of Nunavut largely, Inuit population can now actually make decisions for and by themselves, of themselves that can help propel them into, you know, their own
Speaker 1:destiny. I don't wanna get into the policy, but just because I can't help my curiosity, is it not the case that, well, I guess, do the other two territories have different, until recently had different budgetary ability?
Speaker 2:No. So my dad's work was across all the North, so all three territories now have that status. My dad was there to see and finish and witness and complete the first two territories. He was only there to start and sort of push the ball forward on the third one before he retired, and so he just wasn't there to see it to its completion. But all territories as by virtue of being territories, so in Canada As opposed to provinces.
Speaker 2:Correct. So provinces are constitutionally protected, and they are their own entities. And in fact, confederation very to some degree like The United States. It's an agreement that all provinces will participate in this confederation.
Speaker 1:Alberta and British Columbia have control over their own budgets in the same way that Alabama and Illinois did, but the territories did not in the same way that and this is not what what's going on, but if if Guam, for instance, was budgeted by The US.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Exactly. Without getting into the details of the nuances of the policy, there are certain things that are federally, mandated. There are things that are then provincially mandated. Education and health care, right?
Speaker 2:Are they're delivered at the provincial level. Health care is funded at the national level, etcetera, etcetera. Like, so it's it's yeah.
Speaker 1:So how old are you when you first really become aware of what your dad is doing? Do you remember?
Speaker 2:Oh, like shamefully late, shamefully old when I come to think about it. Like, when I joined the board of the TransCanada Trail, I think was one of the first times where I was like, holy shit. I get to nation build this country. This is what my dad's been doing for fifty forty years.
Speaker 1:Right? Like,
Speaker 2:it's and it's such a small microcosm, the work that I was able to do on the trail compared to what he's done for the country. So
Speaker 1:you knew his title, but you didn't really understand the gravity of what he was doing.
Speaker 2:And the gravity might not have happened till 2023. Like, got to go to Yukon and witness what was happening in in many communities in the Yukon, and they were talking about this agreement, the federal transfer agreement, which was a huge part of what my dad worked on and how it was revolutionizing the way that they were able to make decisions as a First Nations community and then as a as a territory. And because I'd never been up north and I certainly hadn't talked to many people up north, I wasn't aware of like, again, to your word, the gravity of the work that had been done until last year. You know, I knew that he had won the, you know, he won the highest award possible in the public service in Canada for the work that he did. I saw it as an award.
Speaker 1:So when you were younger, was your life affected by his role in any way? Or if someone had asked you in, you know, fourth grade, what's dad do? You're like, I work for the government.
Speaker 2:He works for the government. Well, you know, my dad, very humble, right? Like extraordinarily humble. Like, there's a few different occasions where he has had colleagues who've wanted to nominate him for what we call the order of Canada as the highest civilian honor for his work that he's on the North. He, like, objectively refuses to be nominated.
Speaker 2:He just is not interested in that type of limelight or that type of recognition. It's just not how he's wired. So there's a high sense of humility. This can either be a good thing or a bad thing. Back to your question, you know, what are the goods and the bads that, you know, humility is a beautiful thing.
Speaker 2:Excessive humility sometimes I think maybe in the world we live in today can be harmful in some ways, but he he's very humble about it. So, yeah, my dad worked for the government. That's what I used to say. And and frankly, you know, like, seeing the gravity of what he was able to work on and and how it's contributed to this amazing country is is I think I'm still unpacking.
Speaker 1:So you're you're kind of imbued with this sense of love and openness and exploration. You are soaking in service even if you're not really, you know, fully grasping or contextualizing what it means. How does this present in you as like middle school, high school, college version of you? Like how would you describe yourself?
Speaker 2:So I was like, I was heavily bullied as a kid. I actually, until high school, I can tell you I had one friend every year, and it was not often. It was the same friend. So at the schoolyard, like, at the playground at school at recess and all that, pretty lonely kid. And it bred a lot of, I was a chicken shit.
Speaker 2:Like, I was a chicken kid. Right? Like, I was, like, I didn't have a lot of courage. I didn't have a lot of, like, feistiness in me. I was constantly doing the fight that a lot of kids fight.
Speaker 2:Right? Just trying to fit in. I often just got bullied because bullied because of the way I looked. I was the one brown kid, certainly the one turban kid in you know, on the playground, and that was always an easy target having my my my, like, my turban as a kid, my little turban, like, ripped off by other, you know, kids and things like that. So I I I was not the most popular kid in going into from elementary school into middle.
Speaker 2:But when I got to high school, things started changing and I started seeing more people that looked like me and I started thinking like, do you people come from? Like, where were you all?
Speaker 1:Is that because it was a feeder high school and there was, like, other districts coming in?
Speaker 2:That's right. Exactly. So just a lot of different schools came into that. That elementary schools came into that high school, and there were so many more Punjabi kids, not necessarily many who looked like me, but there were just more brown kids. And, we found each other.
Speaker 2:We sort of like, you know, it was a safety in numbers piece. I think many of us had come from schools where we were the one of five kids or one of 10 kids, but all of sudden there was a hundred of us in one place. And it's like, woah, this is kind of interesting. And that started some of the more, institutional pursuits. Like, I I wanted to be on students council.
Speaker 2:I was
Speaker 1:grade nine rep. Right? My first year in
Speaker 2:high school, I found I've just found confidence because I had friends, you know, it was I don't know if there's any single single answer to that question, but, like, for the first time outside of my spiritual community, I found community in a way that, like, felt really positive.
Speaker 1:Do you remember what you, like, quote unquote, ran on or what some of your accomplishments were on that group?
Speaker 2:I don't even recall, man. I, grade nine. Okay. I don't even remember. I don't remember.
Speaker 2:I'd be lying if I remembered. You know, I ended up running the multicultural club after that I ran for a student council president my my junior year didn't win but that's okay, ended up finishing out I think I was grade 12 rep as well So how did how did all this sort of show up to your question? Like how did this all show up? Like, you know, not perfectly. I mean, as a kid who is constantly without friends at school, there was a lot of loneliness and there was a lot of like yeah.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of tears. Right? There's a lot of like just sadness that I couldn't be a part of friend groups and I think one of the really interesting things was I remember asking my mom, I never asked her can I cut my hair for example, like that question for whatever reason, never crossed my mind? It would have been the easy out, right? But for whatever reason, the question I just kept on asking is like, why can't they just like me for who I am type of thing.
Speaker 2:And I think, you know, that is probably a big part of why I've become who I am or why I try to be who I'm trying to be which is like seeing people for who they are and like letting you know accepting people for who they are, how they are, how they feel like they need to be like I just wanted to be accepted that way. You know? What kind of a shit ass human being would I be if I didn't then accept other people for just trying to, you know, be themselves?
Speaker 1:Did you get to share with mom and dad? Like, did you talk to them about your sadness and isolation?
Speaker 2:I did. I had they were very good, I don't think they understood the gravity of it. So in, 2019 2018, '20 '19, I got to participate in a book. So I got to author this book called diversity matters. I wrote a chapter, and it was it it was it was the first time that I had actually put everything down in one sort of piece of text.
Speaker 2:And so my mom and my mom and dad remembered, like, little pieces of it, but seeing it all sort of written down in a book chapter because part of it was part of the part of the task was tell your story about DE and I, like, the diversity, equity, inclusion. And my story has to include all of those years as a kid where I was a diverse kid and had very little equity or inclusion. And so when I when the book was published and I gave my parents their copies, there was a lot of tears. I don't think it was they did not realize
Speaker 1:What year was that? It was like '19 or something like that?
Speaker 2:2019 was when the book was published.
Speaker 1:It's interesting because in some ways, ships passing in the night, right? Like the parents were there, they saw it, but it was like, Oh, student, kid. And you're like, Oh, government worker. And then, you know, more or less in the same era within four years, you guys both kind of wake up to the wholeness of the story.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's cool. I mean, you know, they knew aspects because oftentimes they'd be the ones who'd have to go into the principal's office and, like, talk about stuff, but they certainly didn't know it all. And then to your point, you know, I lived in so I lived at home until I was 25, 20 six and then I left, I went to Alberta, stayed there for seven years and I came back to Ontario to Toronto where I am now in 2019, right around the time the book got published actually. And the last four years of living through the pandemic with my folks has brought us a lot closer for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But yeah, there's like a lot of learning about like actually, yeah, who are we as like, who are we as humans? Like, we don't often know our parents, especially in immigrant communities. I say. We don't often really know our parents as people. We just sort of know them as parents and, you know, their roof, their rules and like those types of relationships.
Speaker 2:But like to actually know who they are as humans is like still a
Speaker 1:So you shift from this place of, you know, really being picked on and isolated. And then when given the opportunity, you shift into all these different positions of leadership.
Speaker 2:So this is where I'd say part of it was not very authentic. Right? Part of it was I saw all these people, these hundred people, for example, these non brown kids in my high school. And I was like, cool. Like, there's more like me.
Speaker 2:You know, maybe if I was maybe if I had titles that made me That's exactly what
Speaker 1:I was thinking.
Speaker 2:Like, oh, now I'm more popular. Now I can have more like, so the the influencers were not internally mode. Like, again, this goes back to what we talked about at the offset outset. Right? It's like the influencers for why I became the grade nine rep and things like that.
Speaker 2:Like, I think the reason I can't remember anything about what I ran on is because it was probably all hocus pocus. It was probably all externally motivated bullshit. It was the desire to want more friends and feel like what like,
Speaker 1:feel what that feels. Yeah. This title will create a dynamic in which people will have to like me or want to talk to me. I'll have something to offer. Will Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I love that you can own that because we all have intrinsic and extrinsic motivations, and we benefit from owning and recognizing our shadow side as well as our light side. That's
Speaker 2:part of
Speaker 1:the leadership journey. You know, there's ego in it for everyone.
Speaker 2:And that's a loaded word too, but props when you can realize that your shadow side is equally as valuable as your sunny side, your light side. Right. Like, your shadow side is, like, deeply valuable. I mean, most of us, all of us have deep rooted insecurities. Like like, I you know, it is what it is.
Speaker 2:And you can either confront them or accept them or have a loving relationship with them, or you can pretend that they don't exist and sort of become a bit of an animal and a monster and all the other things that you never have to show your insecurities. But like we're, you know, the deepest connection. And I think part of the reason why you and I got along within thirty four seconds of talking to each other is our willingness to our willingness to just sort of see ourselves and see each other as as you know, know, fallible human beings who are just trying their best to be meaningful contributors to those we love and beyond. And, you know, even on the ego side, right? It's like I'll share another quick sort of faith based anecdote, which is ego is not in and of itself a bad thing, right?
Speaker 2:Like there's sort of the war on ego, which I think like there's a good intention behind like the war on ego, but like some level of self esteem, self worth, self determination, right, is, like, very it's super important on a leadership journey. Like, you need that. And, I'm reminded of a story. So it was wartime. So you had the Sikh soldiers and you had the Mughal arm, the Mughal emperors.
Speaker 2:And so we'll use the word Muslims, but I'm not sure I'm comfortable just calling them Muslims. We'll call them a And so largely speaking, if you were living under, as as a resident during Mughal rule, if you chose not to convert, you had to pay a higher tax or you were killed or your kids were taken from like, there was all sorts of tyranny, associated with those rules. Anyway, so we're you know, the fight's on, and and one of the soldiers on the Sikh side was seen to be offering, like, water and bandages to wounded soldiers on both sides, not just the Sikh side, but also on the Mughal emperor side, the Mughal army side. And so some of the Sikh soldiers got really annoyed and really upset with this, and they went back to our tenth guru at the time and said, hey. Your guy one of our guys, he's a traitor.
Speaker 2:He's he's helping dress the wounds and take care of the wounded soldiers on the other side. And so he calls him in, the guru calls him in and says, what are you doing? And he goes, what do you mean? What's wrong? He goes, I've heard you've been, you know, dressing the wounds and feeding, water to the wounded soldiers on the other side.
Speaker 2:Are you a traitor? What's the story? And he goes, I didn't even see it that way. Every face who every face I looked into, all I saw was the eyes of you, like your eyes. All I saw was the face of my beloved.
Speaker 2:I was just serving my beloved at every point. And so it's a beautiful story about how service is like, you know, he doesn't know any limits and no boundaries and yada yada yada. That's a great part of the story. The other part of the story is that if he was giving water to everybody, but his water jug was empty, he would be a sociopath. Imagine you're on your last breaths and somebody says, oh, I'm here to give you water.
Speaker 2:Let me fill your glass. The the jug is empty and he goes, here here you go. Here's like, that's sociopathic behavior. And so you have to you have to have your jug full. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:There's a certain amount of self selfishness and ego that you actually need to feed in order to be a servant. Mhmm. Because if you are empty, you're not very good to anybody. So even on the ego side, everything has to be a healthy relationship. What's your healthy relationship with your ego?
Speaker 2:Enough to fill yourself up, not so much so that you're a piece of shit. Like, there is a healthy balance.
Speaker 1:Another way to think about this is when I had my first experience of sort of unification, where I noetically felt that I was you, you were me, we are the plants, we are God. I mean, whatever your language is. Yep. The question that emerged from that state for me was, well, what is then the point of separation? If everything is one, what is the point of separation?
Speaker 1:And that's the function. Right? You don't have to have a religious belief. You don't have to have a spiritual belief. You don't have to have any belief in it all to know that we are all the same stuff, that the photons coming from the sun eight light minutes away enter my retina and affect my brain, that when I go for a run and get on a subway train, cause I was gonna miss it.
Speaker 1:And I sit down, the person next to me picks up the heat without touching me, that we are all exchanging the fundamental particles of the universe all the time. And so we are all truly the same thing. And in order to do those things, in order to have the eye to see, to have the legs to run or the butt to sit on the train, there must be separation between my physical self and your physical self, or the world outside. And so that's like the framing for me is the ego is the necessary separation that is required to keep us safe, moving and active in the world. But the deeper truth is the unification in all of it.
Speaker 1:And so being aware of the reality that you have both, but choosing which gets to drive the car.
Speaker 2:Again, drawing it back to modern day politics in the broader sense. Right? It's like, what are most of our campaigners doing 99 times out of a hundred? They're focusing on the differences. They're focusing on the division, the divisiveness.
Speaker 2:Right? They're they're calling out the why you are unsafe at the, you know, at the benefit of some other. Mhmm. It's there isn't inclusive communal look language. It's it's very, you know, individualized.
Speaker 2:You are at risk unless you vote for me Mhmm. Types of language. And we know this from psychological science that negative news triggers yeah. It's super effective. What are you gonna remember when you go to the polls?
Speaker 2:What kind of character are you gonna vote for when you've got all those news imprints and now the social media impressions and all those types of things? Right? Like, we are incentivized to forget our communalness. Yeah. And that sucks.
Speaker 1:It's effective, but it's not always true. It's not never true.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's almost never true.
Speaker 1:It's not it's not never true. And it's important to not overstate it, right, because then that provides credence to the argument, but it's almost never true, in the same way that random acts of violence against people that look like other people very rarely hit the intended target. So I want to dig into your response to persecution as a kid. So yes, there's the ego side that decides to run that says, I'm going to be important, I'm going to be special, fair, it's there. But there's also the part of you that seemingly doesn't respond in the way that it could have, which is now that I'm here, I'm going to use this position to subjugate or oppress or harm you, to pull your proverbial turban off your head, other person.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That's not what I see you do. I see you do something different. And I'm very curious if you have a sense of why in that moment you didn't take that path.
Speaker 2:It's just not the value system. Like, look, I'm far from perfect. Like, it's not don't wanna pretend like I just this noble thing that makes no mistakes. I'm sure I'm sure I have definitely used various positions to somehow benefit, like, myself. But the idea of actively hurting somebody else because I now have the position of, you know, pseudo power, like, doesn't I don't know.
Speaker 2:Just never part of the psyche. From a family lens or a faith based lens, the idea of, like, this notion of, like, restorative justice. I'm not I'm not gonna pretend I knew what that was when I was 14 years old. But to have a label like that now and sort of look back on it, it's like, you know, there's no benefit to I don't see the benefit on striking on somebody else just because you now have the role and you were subject. Like, this is the problem I sort of think about when we talk about boomers.
Speaker 2:It's like, well, no, you have you have to do it this way because that's how we did it. It's like, don't know if that makes any sense. Like, it'd be kind of hypocritical for me to apply that to my leadership roles and my leadership positions when I don't even subscribe to that myself. I don't know. I don't have an answer for you.
Speaker 2:I don't I don't have a satisfying answer as to why I didn't it's not who I am, I guess, or it's just not how I was raised or it's just not, you know, what influenced or inspired me.
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Speaker 1:So you you've taken on some of these leadership roles. You mentioned maybe some athletics as well. Like, keep walking us through.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Played some sports since in both elementary and high school. Played soccer and basketball. Probably had a career. I had I had an opportunity in soccer, but I hate running.
Speaker 2:Sort of important for soccer.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, was Not so important.
Speaker 2:Slightly less important, but, you know, fitness is always important. But I, anyways, I remember, after a game, a high school game, we lost two to one, but I I could make the case it should have been 11 to one. And, I had a really good game on the opposing team. One of the players is like uncles or whatever had come up to me and was like, listen, if you can just work on your fitness, like, you have a path. Like, there's a path here for you.
Speaker 2:Later that year, I broke my foot. The following year, I I hyperextended my elbow and was up for twelve weeks. And, like, I lost two years of training basically in the height of puberty when all of my peers were just, like Yeah. Going up. And so, anyways, by the time it was done, I, I was a a step behind the other soccer players.
Speaker 2:So I played some sports, went into university, and just prior to my first week of university, ended up in this, like, really brutal car accident with one of my best friends. And, luckily, we're both walking away from it, and it could have been a lot worse than it was. It could have probably been a lot worse than it was, but that really set off, like, sort of a whole mental health piece where for about a year and a bit, I really pulled back from the student politics and the student engagement and the leadership and all that type of thing. It was a sort of healing and restoring, for a couple of years.
Speaker 1:Physically? Like, you just didn't have the energy or ability or
Speaker 2:It was yeah. I fell asleep at the wheel of a high speed in a high speed collision. There's a lot of, like, worthlessness feelings that came with that. Right? Like, how could I possibly like, what kind of idiot am I?
Speaker 2:Like, those types of, like, you know, those types of, real thoughts that sat with me for a while, especially, you know, this friend of mine, she remains one of my best friends to this day, and she's like I remember from the corner of my eye, her body just, like, flinging. She had fallen asleep, as well. It was it was just a weekend, so she was asleep in the passenger seat. And, you know, I remember flinging my head up just before the point of contact, and out of the corner of my eye, we make contact. Out of the corner of my eye, I see her body just, like, fling into the airbag and then, like, little memories and things that are imprinted forever.
Speaker 2:And it's like, wow. That's one of my best bestest friends. Like, how could I do that to her? How could I do this at all? How could I put my parents through the stress of their kid going through an accident like that?
Speaker 2:Yada yada. All those, like, how could you?
Speaker 1:Yeah. And the story about yourself is all kinds of things.
Speaker 2:So unpacking that took a couple of years to see, right, and is indicative of a lot of the insecurities in my life. Right? It's like, am I good enough? Am I valuable? Am I you know, what am I worth?
Speaker 2:Right? And and so that, for better or for worse, really shone a light on those questions because it physically hurts somebody I love. Again, would say for better or for worse. There's a really great side to that question of like, you know, am I being am I am I am I valuable? What is my worth?
Speaker 2:Which is good for self sort of reinforcement. But the flip side of that is like, what can I be doing better? What can I how can I improve? So I feel like in a lot of ways, journey for, like, continuous self improvement started because of that accident.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And it's, generally, we find that the bigger the challenge, the greater the spotlight on the opportunity for the work. And it can be hard for people to hear that horrific events can actually be used for good, but it's true. It's a % true. So what did that process look like for you?
Speaker 1:Like, how did you work through that over any number of years?
Speaker 2:So most of my best friends are from the spiritual community, including this girl I just talked about. So I didn't have, you know, when I left high school, one of the reasons I chose the university I went to, I went to so I I was born and raised in Ottawa. Ottawa has two good universities, the University of Ottawa and Carleton University. And many of my friends were going to the University of Ottawa, and I had for some set of reasons, I sort of decided I actually needed to bridge off from that friend group and like so I actively chose the university partially because I was like I don't think I will I don't think I can become my best self if I stay attached to this friend group but I was like now I was entering a whole new place with none of my friends from school So the whole journey of starting and making new friends and there's actually an old buddy of mine from university who I owe, so much to because I used to walk into my calculus class. I used to have my headphones on.
Speaker 2:I'd just be listening to my music and didn't engage with anybody for the first couple of weeks of my first year following the accident. First year uni. And, probably in month two, this guy was sitting in front of me at calculus, and he turned around. He just, like, knocked his hand on my table. Like, he, like, slapped the table in front of me because, like, I I had my headphones in, so I was, like, not paying attention to anything.
Speaker 2:He just, like, slapped the table in front of me. And I was like and I was like, sorry. Like, have headphones. I'm sorry. I was trying to I was trying to, like, you know, ignore him.
Speaker 2:And he goes, take your headphones off, basically. I was like, fuck. Okay. Fine. So I take my headphones off.
Speaker 2:He goes, yo. What's your name? Anyways, he became, like, one of my best friends through university.
Speaker 1:Why were your headphones on all the time? Like, what was the story in your head? Why were you trying to actively stay disengaged?
Speaker 2:I was just in a low place. I just didn't wanna engage with people. I didn't see the point. I don't know if this is the story I was telling myself back then, but certainly I can see that story being true, which is like, I don't want to get too close to anybody. What if I hurt them?
Speaker 2:Like, I hurt. Right. Like that whole thing. Right? So, yeah, it's there's a lot of unpacking in that phase.
Speaker 2:Like, there's a lot of, like, like, really shitty insecurities and irrational questions that came out. But again, like, it helped me confront irrational questions. It helped me, like, tell better stories to myself because in those days that there were some pretty bad stories I was telling myself. And so this guy pounds his hand and, like pounds his hand on my desk and, and forces me to basically be his friend. Turns out he lives three streets away from me.
Speaker 2:And so then we started commuting back and forth to school together, and all of a sudden, was like, oh, shit. Like, this and he was like a very outgoing, introduced me to a whole bunch of, like, different things and people. And I sort of slowly started getting, like, myself back.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And sometimes you don't have to open every door. Sometimes the universe knocks. And I could imagine that at the time, should a dispassionate observer fly down and see, you know, you young in your college career having chosen to I mean, this would be their judgment, not necessarily the truth, but like abandon your friend group, go over here, disengage socially, you know, be isolated. There's a tendency to pathologize that, to say that this is depression, or this is wrong, this person needs help.
Speaker 1:It's like, actually were responding to what is, and that isolation provided you the space to do some really deep internal questioning and processing that now I'm guessing was really necessary so that when you emerged out into the world, you actually emerged from that metaphorical chrysalis in a much better place, more able to connect and serve. Is that true?
Speaker 2:I think that's pretty bang on. Again, especially in hindsight, like, I'm not too sure if that's what I
Speaker 1:was
Speaker 2:thinking during the But in hindsight, bang on. Like, what can I learn from this situation? How could I become a better person? Like, at one point in my mid to late twenties, I went through a pretty devastating heartbreak. And and I remember just asking myself, like, how is this?
Speaker 2:Like, how could this and I I hit this point of, like, nothing is sacred. So when I make that joke of I'm the most atheist religious guy, you know, one of the things I was unpacking was my relationship with my faith. Nothing is so sacred that it can't be questioned, which is actually part of the baseline story of a Sikh. The idea of constantly being a seeker and explorer is actually exploring preconceived notions of what we think truth is and asking questions. So, yeah, question everything and and and find answers.
Speaker 2:And if you don't have the answers yet, the answers will come. But nonetheless, going back to this dialogue, one of the other things I like to sort of think about myself is, like, my only principle is that I have no principles. Meaning, when I was finishing high school and this is actually really important to the story I think, one of my friends, a good close friend of mine, she died in a car accident a year before my car accident actually and she was from Vancouver, Surrey and she was on her way to Calgary with a group of young sick people who were going to be participating in a volunteer capacity for a really important religious event. Long story short took a wrong turn went down the wrong highway they were racing to come back And overnight, middle of the night, the the van flips over, three people die. She's one of them.
Speaker 2:17 was one of my close friends. And that's, like, the first time I experienced, like, really major loss of a loved one. I was 17 in grade 12. And that also helped me become a bit more of a clues. Right?
Speaker 2:Because it's like, wow. The like, whole fragility of life thing. Like, she's 17. If she can go yesterday, I could go tomorrow. Right?
Speaker 2:So probably one of the first points where, like, we're so full of ourselves on our, like, on our perceived immortality and our perceived invincibility. This shit is so fragile. Like, this shit is so fragile. I think that's probably the first data point where I was like, that was a big part. And so then I had my accident a year later.
Speaker 2:Anyways, I bring this because one of the key I remember I was driving with my eldest sister one day shortly after my friend had died. So between the two accidents, I forget what she asked me, but I remember sharing with her, like, one of the key things that I really took away from as a learning lesson from that whole experience was the idea that everybody has something to offer. Like, there is nobody at all, nobody I can't learn something from. Yeah. Like, there's nobody who doesn't have something, whether that's a billionaire running a conglomerate or a homeless guy, like, picking up bottles.
Speaker 2:There was, like, there's everybody has something to teach me. And if I'm willing, I can learn from all of them. And so when you when you talk about, like, the going through the struggles and, like, the the the way that the story can be told that, like, yeah, hard things can teach you things. Like, there is a and and accepting what is, I think, is how you said it. There's a there's a term in Sikhi called hookam.
Speaker 2:Hookam is effectively the present reality. So it's just it just is what it is. Like, there's a certain level of, like, this is where it is, so operate from this place. Don't operate from fanciful and wishful thinking. Don't operate from a fictional place.
Speaker 2:The reality is what it is. And you may define that reality slightly different from the way I define that reality, but that's okay. We're two different people. Our realities are probably different. Our ideas of truth are probably different.
Speaker 2:It's fine. But when you start living in a dream world, your level of satisfaction, contentment, happiness, whatever word you wanna use with the world around you and how you're operating within that world will dwindle and, you know, you'll just constantly be angry with the way things are when because you're operating from a dream land. So if you can escape the dream land and just say, look, this is what it is and call things sort of as they are and operate from that place, then you can really push through. And I think this is when we talk about these communities, identify, they be, Jewish Americans, Iranian Americans, certainly I can speak for the Sikh community in this regard. Like, there's a certain element of just saying, you know what?
Speaker 2:Fuck it. This is where we're at. That's right. We are here. So if we're gonna do things, we have to operate from reality and accepting that reality is vital.
Speaker 1:We say all the time in our coaching work, every time you fight reality, you lose. A %. Right? And it's a radical question, but it's like no matter what it is, whether it is a policy not going your way, whether it's frustration over your workload at home, whether it's, you know, the experience of being triggered by someone else's actions, whether it's cancer, The question is like, if this was divinely orchestrated for me, if this was truly working for me, what is this moment here to teach me?
Speaker 2:100%.
Speaker 1:And it's a hard question for a lot of people to ask, but it is the most freeing question because even when you are in the pit of despair, even when you haven't taken off your headphones, metaphorical or otherwise for two years, that's the question that is ultimately gonna get them off and have you step into the world more whole. Yeah. I'm curious just, when you're in these periods of processing, whether it's after your friend dies or after your car accident, I'm sure there are a number of other periods like this in your life, What are you doing? Like, what's the actual practice look like?
Speaker 2:It's probably not the same each time. So let's think. I mean, there's a big focus on meditation and and the sick path. For whatever again, like, don't I can't I don't know what the why or the answer. I think it becomes I think it comes from whether it's parents or community or whatever but I guess I've always felt very comfortable resorting back to guidance from faith as a starting point for how to navigate the hard things in life.
Speaker 2:So the process never looked the same, right? Like you start from that meditative place and I've alluded to this idea of your little voice, right?
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:You try to like, what's the little voice saying like truly, right? Like there's like the narrative that you have in your mind, but even if you quiet that down, there's still a little voice. Right? Like, what's that little voice? What's that little voice looking for?
Speaker 2:What's that little voice saying?
Speaker 1:What does
Speaker 2:that mean
Speaker 1:to you? Is that, like, what people would describe as intuition, or how do you think about the little voice?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Call it intuition or, like, without sounding too cheesy or new age y, it's like, it is your soul's voice. Like, it's like, there's your mind's narrative, which I think is still very conscious, and then there's a subconscious subconscious voice that, you know, when we say things like, you know, deep inside you as a coach, I'm sure you appreciate this more than most, which is, you know, deep inside you all the answers are there. Yes. Like, it's not like the coaches have answers to questions, coaches generally speaking are asking questions to help you find your answers because they, right?
Speaker 2:And so it's sort of a self guided self led process, right? Through meditation to help find those answers for yourself. And so sometimes that subconscious wants you to do X, Y, or Z, and it starts there. Then afterwards, it materializes in different ways. But one of the things that has always been really true for me is coming to that place of meditation, sitting with my instruments, singing and playing instruments, playing music, as far as being a tool to sort of help tap into the process.
Speaker 2:Physically, depending on, like, you know, after my car accident, I wasn't physically allowed to do much at all for fear of injuries and stability. But like after a heartbreak, was, I was in the gym every day, you know, like different different things call for different, you know, different responses. So again, probably an unsatisfying answer, but it started with it always started sort of with like, okay, what does the little voice really need right now? Various times I've chosen to have a therapist, various times I've chosen to really deepen my my relationship with sort of like doctrinal faith, if you will, because that felt like the thing I needed to do to restore some balance or different times it was, yeah, I hit the gym really hard or like, but I think that's very human for me anyways, like we're dynamic. Right?
Speaker 2:One of the things that I was taught early on is every human being is a dynamic being. Right? Like, just because you do one thing one way doesn't mean you have to do the other thing the exact same way. And this is both scary and daunting as much as it is amazing and fantastical, which is that, like, it's not the same recipe every time. Probably doesn't need to be.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna be a different person at the end of this podcast than I was when I started. And so the way I react to things around me could look different.
Speaker 1:So just to put a little bit of a finer point on it for someone listening at home who's having their headphone moment, knowing that it's always a learning and the approach will change over time. But if you were to isolate the two or three practices, just the bullet points, like meditation is a bullet point, that have been most personally beneficial to you over the course of your life and pulling you through challenging moments? What do you think they'd be?
Speaker 2:Strand yourself with inspired people, not just inspiring, but inspired people. You know, have a community, seek out a community of inspired people. They should be self I think you want to seek out people who are inspired themselves because they will live in a way that you can emulate at least to start, right? And sort of discover how can I self inspire so that when I am in these places, can also pull myself out? So it becomes sort of subsistence farming, if you will, like it like the very at the very worst of times when I feel like I have nothing else, at least I have myself.
Speaker 2:Like, how can I learn to find that sort of baseline inspiration just from myself? I think journaling is super powerful. I don't do enough of it. It's my hypocritical statement of the podcast. I don't do enough journaling at all.
Speaker 2:But I think journaling helps you define or, identify the questions you need answers to. Mhmm. And sometimes they can actually be a pathway to the answers, but I think the questions are almost always more important anyways. Like, the more questions you have, the more you're exploring. Answers are great, but the questions are really important.
Speaker 2:And I think journaling helps you under uncover, like, what are actually the core questions that I'm actually thinking about? When I've got my headphones on, going through a tough time, what are the what are the real questions that are are important? You hear this all the time. This is the trope. Right?
Speaker 2:Is, you know, you have to ask better questions to get better answers. But there's a truth to that. Like, you really wanna find, you really wanna find good questions and integral questions. There's a whole movement out there called integral thinking. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:It's sort of fringe. Right? It's sort of like law of attraction y type of idea. What I really took away from it is this idea. Like, I I do have some reasonable amount of belief that once your thoughts are really good, right, you're you can then inspire better actions and actions become habits and habits become right character and all that whole loop.
Speaker 2:But thoughts have to be good thoughts, right? Like they have to be like not half assed thoughts. Like you can't just be like, oh, I want a mansion, you know. If the law of attraction thing is real at all, that ain't it. Right?
Speaker 2:Like, it's the idea that, like, if you ask the right questions and you actually meditate on those questions, you will find your pathway out of the of the headphone state. But the first thing is you actually have to want to get out of the headphones state. Sure. In my case, I did but here's the thing. Right?
Speaker 2:And even that is like this is where sometimes it is the universe that really just has to intervene. Like, my buddy who slaps his hand on the table in front of me forces me to take my headphones. That's the only reason the headphones came off.
Speaker 1:But that's part of why you're finding inspired people as well. Right? It's like you are orchestrating an environment in which someone directly or indirectly is more likely to slap your headphones off.
Speaker 2:%. Absolutely true. Yeah. So, like, I think there's a trifecta there that's really helpful. Find community of inspired people.
Speaker 2:Journal to keep track of your own thinking and how your thinking might be changing over time. Meditate. Sit. Whether that meditation is through yoga and breathing, Whether it's through mantra and chanting, Whether it's through just like stillness of thoughts and measuring your thoughts, fine. Whether it's trying to think of nothing and do this sort of the Buddhist approach of nothingness, fine.
Speaker 2:Who cares? Like, just find the thing that resonates with you. Sometimes one thing will resonate with you on a Monday that's different than a Thursday is keep a pulse on yourself and do the things that help and support you.
Speaker 1:So recognizing and honoring that everyone's different and that there's a different tool for everyone, but to get specific on what works for you so that if people wanted to try it, they could. What is your meditation practice look like?
Speaker 2:It's actually just that dynamic. One of the reasons slipped out those four different approaches is because some days I feel like what's hitting is the chanting and other days that are hitting is just like monitoring my thoughts. So I it's pretty fluid when it comes to sitting down on the cushion. Right? You know, I've got a little defined meditation area in my condo, and it's, I think that's sort of nice and important.
Speaker 2:It's like to sort of set a space that has an intention, even if it's just a corner of an otherwise open room, which is what mine is. It's a little corner next to the window so I can look outside and have natural light.
Speaker 1:It's a dedicated space, or does it ever flex to something else?
Speaker 2:No. It's a dedicated space. So, like, for example, I made a a meditation cushion for myself, and it's a really, really comfortable little pillow. Sometimes the pillow leaves the meditation nook and becomes my couch pillow. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:But it is still my meditation pillow, so it goes back to the meditation nook. And so, the nook is the nook, and I put a couple of pieces of art that I feel like are supportive of that little area. It's a really funky looking area in my otherwise my living room, because my TV is also there and my couch is also there, but, like, the nook is the nook. It's like this little corner. It's not it's not at all subdivided.
Speaker 2:Like, there's no wall that separates it from any other part of the space. It's just that is the corner. So that's also the corner where my harmonium, my instrument is, which is what I use to help me sing. In terms of the tactical, like, how am I meditating on any given day? It really is sort of like, what is it what what do I feel like I need most in that moment?
Speaker 2:Is it a chant? Then I'll chant. If it's just a quiet, repetition of a mantra, that's fine too. If it's, so I really there is no there is no five word answer to your question. It really depends on the day.
Speaker 1:If you wanted to share with the audience one of those, just maybe because they're not gonna hear it from someone else or maybe because it's just, you know, special to you or was there one that you would choose to share in specific?
Speaker 2:I mean, look, I grew up in a Sikh community. The word that we repeat when we meditate or, you know, contemplate is chant. It's Vaheguru. That's the word. That's sort of what we sort of assign as sort of the name of God.
Speaker 2:So you're reciting the name of God. So that's always been particularly special and important in my meditation.
Speaker 1:And you sit on a cushion. Is there a particular duration, eyes closed or open, body position? What does that look like?
Speaker 2:Mostly eyes closed, usually cross legged, but not by any rules. Sometimes I'm stretched out. Sometimes I'm lying down. But most of the time, it's sort of eyes closed, cross legged, sometimes with, like, a musical accompaniment, sometimes without it. I might play, like, a a track, like, a meditation track in the background that sort of has, like, a neutral tone, like those binaural beats types of things.
Speaker 2:Right? If you see them
Speaker 1:Not Or just like some roses or M and M.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Correct. Yeah. And then either I'll chant out loud if I want to or it'll be, I'll be quiet. That's usually that's like the starting point.
Speaker 2:I'll try every day to start with that. And if it's just not hitting, then I'll move down chain to other tactics or techniques.
Speaker 1:Would you be willing to, like, give us, like, a five second of what that chanting sounds like so we get, like, the cadence and that?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Sure. So with eyes closed, it'd be. I mean, the tunes don't matter. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:But whatever sort of resonates in a pitch or whatever, you know, there's physiological thing. Right? Sometimes you sing a little lower, you feel it vibrate in your body a bit more. You sing a little higher. You elevate maybe you elevate your conscience or your your mood or whatever it is.
Speaker 2:Point being is find something that works for you, sit there and chant repeatedly. And again, sometimes that doesn't do it. Right? Sometimes for me, it doesn't quite hit. And then I just move down the chain and try to focus on your breath, focus on your thoughts, focus on this, focus on whatever, Just find something and make that your meditation journey for the day.
Speaker 2:But I I always start with the chanting. That's sort of always step one.
Speaker 1:And then the practice is just even as you're chanting, the mind will wander and you use that to anchor and come back to the chanting.
Speaker 2:I think that's the other thing about meditation that sometimes gets lost is the mind wandering is kind of the thing.
Speaker 1:That's the wind sprint of the practice.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Like, that's exactly it. It's like, you know, I think there's some methods out there that sort of say, oh, your mind shouldn't wonder. I think the point is that your mind is going to.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That's the practice is bringing the mind back because when you're in the world and you get distracted or reactive or angry, it's not to ameliorate anger from your emotional repertoire. It's to recognize when that's driving your behavior and be able to bring it back to a center.
Speaker 2:And also that when people go into meditation spaces and they take their journal and they they share their thoughts or they write if they write down their thoughts, like, there's also moments that come from the wandering thoughts during meditation. So the wandering thoughts could actually be the thing you're looking for. Not just as a thing that you have to control and bring back to center, but actually the wandering thoughts in a context that is sort of like trying to, waken up your subconscious. Right? Like or tap into that.
Speaker 2:Like, the wandering thoughts might actually be the gift.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You don't have you don't have to create an enemy out of your wandering thoughts is the point. Right? Like Right. Wandering thoughts might actually be the gift.
Speaker 1:I I mean, literally this morning when I was meditating, I had a wandering thought came in, which had to do with, you know, my team in this podcast production. But I have to do the mental gymnastics of like, oh, I noticed that. That's interesting. Bring it back. Then the wandering thought comes in of like, oh, shit, what if I don't remember?
Speaker 1:Then I'm not going to do the thing I need to do. And then I have to remind myself, Oh, but that's what this practice is about. It's about letting go and trusting. Okay, I've seen it, I observe it, and now I'm back to, for me, I count to use like a zen, whatever. It's the same as the mantra, right?
Speaker 1:Sort of the same function. At the end, I remembered it, and then in my journal, I circle it and I go back to it later, but sometimes I don't, and that's the practice, you know?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is. It is. That's the point. That is the point. And that's because it's also, like, so emblematic of life.
Speaker 2:Right? Like, you will stumble or what might look like a stumble even to yourself, let alone to other people, actually isn't a stumble. It's actually like the it goes back to everything that you said earlier around have moments of adversity and perceived, you know, depression or perceived weakness or whatever, actually can be catalysts for something greater. They're just microcosms of sort of how you work and walk
Speaker 1:through The journaling, finding good questions, and maybe this is the integral thinking piece, maybe it's something different. But I may have a challenge and say, oh, I've heard about this journaling thing, and I need to ask better questions. What's a good question? So how do you how do you navigate that page?
Speaker 2:Stream of consciousness, honestly, and, like, this is one of those things where, especially if you're somebody who looks in the mirror and you say things like, I'm data driven. This should resonate, which is you actually just have to start. Like, you actually have to create the habit and let the data accumulate the streams of consciousness day after day. And even if it's just for, like, a minute or two. Again, I'm I'm hypocritically speaking about this because I don't do this well.
Speaker 1:Sure. There's two types of people. There's, hypocrites and liars.
Speaker 2:In this case, hypocrite hat is on for sure. Like, when when I have been doing it well, even if it's just for a couple of minutes a day, you write down some whether it's gratitude thoughts or whatever, or it is the stream of consciousness of just where your mind is going on something you've been thinking about all day. And then you allow five and ten and fifteen days worth to sort of build up and you look back on it and you start seeing certain patterns and they start bringing out like those patterns are ultimately like sort of compasses to the questions that maybe are on your mind that you didn't know were on your mind because you didn't think about them in that way.
Speaker 1:What does that review process look like for you? So do do you literally go back and review? Is it is that just also sort of, when I feel like it or is there a particular pattern or commitment of that review? Like, how does that how does that happen?
Speaker 2:Yeah. When I'm doing it well, it can be as frequently as a week, but otherwise, like even every every month. Right? Like just if you're if you've got the habit down, how fast you review becomes less of a concern. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Because you know that you're disciplined at generating the data. So
Speaker 1:So like once a day or Right.
Speaker 2:Generally, once a day. Sure. But reviewing like once a month, once a week, whatever feels whenever you want to. I mean, some of the some of the leaders I've worked for would insist on weekly, like they would like write every night before bed. Sometimes it was to do list for the next day.
Speaker 2:Sometimes it was a contemplation or a unique thought or whatever. It's just it doesn't again Yeah.
Speaker 1:Put something on the paper.
Speaker 2:Put something on paper. Like just put something on paper and then look back and sort of you can then ask yourself, like, I wonder why I prioritize these things or, like, I wonder, you know, I wonder how this thought that I had on Monday actually showed up on Thursday without me even knowing, without without consciously knowing.
Speaker 1:You pick a particular time of day to capture?
Speaker 2:When I'm doing it well, it's before bed.
Speaker 1:Before bed.
Speaker 2:These days, I'm not doing it well, so it doesn't happen almost ever. But I'll write before bed. There was a period of time actually right at the beginning of the pandemic where I was actually really good at waking up at like 04:30 in the morning, five o'clock, starting off with some like workouts and Wim Hof breathing and cold showers and all that and then settling into meditation and a journal. Really beautiful way to start the first two hours of the day, but just for me wasn't sustainable and not the world's best morning.
Speaker 1:The cold showers are tough. I did half of one this morning and it's Congrats.
Speaker 2:Yeah. No. I love me a good cold plunge. I hate cold showers. But cold plunges I'm here for, but yeah, no, it was really good.
Speaker 2:Would journal first thing in the morning, but I think more sustainably for me it's right before bed.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So this is like maybe a good segue to something that I've noticed in your work and maybe you wouldn't even notice it this way, but then I talked about this in the intro, you to me exemplify a pretty rare presentation of left and right brain balance. The way I see that is when I piece apart some of your accomplishments and awards, I tend to see a lot of the sort of method of implementation as being very evidence based, systemically rooted, logical, but the aim or
Speaker 2:the
Speaker 1:intent of that process is very frequently a very human, heart centered, socially oriented endeavor. And I wonder if you agree with that characterization as a starting point, and then could talk a little bit about that orientation and being able to access both sides of that equation.
Speaker 2:You know, it's so beautifully put. I don't think I've ever thought about it or talked about it that way. So I appreciate you verbalizing it that way because I'm gonna need to update my bio now. It's interesting, like, okay, what's the big problem I'm working on right now? I'm totally policy absolutely, like, policy driven.
Speaker 2:When I think about policy, think about big problems. So, like, one of the big policy problems in Canada right now is around workforce. And now I'm sharing a little bit about what I'm working on and how this is showing up. And it's interesting because as you were saying it, was thinking, you know, gosh, there's so many people who are underemployed or there's so many people who, you know, we talked about indigenous people earlier, they're systemically underemployed for a variety of reasons. There's newcomers and immigrants who are if not underemployed, they're certainly underpaid or underutilized for what their skills and competencies are.
Speaker 2:You know, they there are doctors in Iran or engineers in in in India, but they come to Canada and for some reason we can't make them doctors or engineers because whatever. I can give you all the stats. Right? I can do the I'll do the research. I have the research on how ineffective or inefficient or or what the spells for Canada's economy in a GDP perspective and all the data evidence piece.
Speaker 2:And you're right. The thing I really care about is how come a person can't just actually freely become the best version of themselves.
Speaker 1:How can we match a person's experience to their potential?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Because if they do that, they're gonna earn more. They're gonna pay more taxes. My roads are gonna be better.
Speaker 1:They're gonna be happier and less upset with you in traffic.
Speaker 2:They're gonna they're gonna be happier. Our collective happiness will co op like this. You know? So, yeah, there's a real blend of left and right brainedness there that I don't think I've actually necessarily called out. Like, I really do care about humans, especially, like, when I can hear hear and see and feel the individual's stories.
Speaker 2:I also like operating at the system. So that's an example I guess you know it's I saw it actually now that we're talking about it like even on Trans Canada Trail days like when I was on the board I was on the board when the pandemic hit and Canada's Pandemic lockdowns were pretty substantial significant. Like you couldn't go to gyms, you couldn't go to a lot of places, to congregate at all, shopping malls, grocery stores, whatever it was, right? Like a lot of places where people might go just to have social contact were off limits, not the trail though, the trail was outdoors. And we saw what the trail did for mental health, we saw what it did for education, we saw what it did to bring communities that otherwise might not connect with each other together and there's science and data and all the reasons why nature is great But the powerful piece for me was actually seeing it happen in action, the human side of that.
Speaker 2:So, I really appreciate the way you characterize it. I've never put those two things together in that way. I've often just said I'm policy driven because policy affects everybody.
Speaker 1:What's interesting, you also said, and I heard this in, I think it was an interview that you did, but you, you know, you kind of took this journey over the course of your life from policy being in the way to policy being the way. And I thought that was really interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's true. I used to when I first started out on my entrepreneurial journey, I talked about policymakers being in the way of innovation just abjectly because there's this idea that policymakers move too slowly or they don't know how to respond to innovation, all that, which might be true. Mhmm. But at the end of the day, the the policymaker's job is not to be an innovator.
Speaker 2:It's to establish the right conditions for in the right environment for innovation. And I think that's just something that age and and a little bit of wisdom has taught me, which is that policy can absolutely be the way for people to think about things in different ways. Right? Like, where it can go sideways and is when policy establishes artificial constraints that are constraints for constraint sake. But when you create regulation and policy and compliance requirements, Naturally, most of the time, the business sector pushes back on those because it just makes it a little bit harder to do business.
Speaker 2:But a lot of entrepreneurial people or innovators will look at those new constraints and say, What's the next thing that we can figure out with this new set of constraints? Like, it's almost like a game. And so not that I'm an advocate for bad policy, but policy and policy making and policy changing are all avenues for new innovation. Mhmm. You can spend your time and energy being angry at policy or you can spend your time and energy sort of looking at and saying, okay.
Speaker 2:Well, what is this new set of what is this new game? The pieces on the board have changed. So now what's my like, what are the moves? And I think that's what where my relationship with policy has gone because generally speaking in our countries generally certainly not to certainly not absolutely but generally the policies are in place to attempt to protect people, to protect consumer interests. They don't always hit the mark.
Speaker 2:They're not always great. They don't always land that way. But when you start from a place that you actually don't have to be angry at every new policy or regulation or compliance, you can actually be active. You can you can behave a lot more innovatively. Yes.
Speaker 2:So that's helped for me.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Did you find that through experience of of working with policymakers or how did you make that transition?
Speaker 2:So after I sold my first company, I ended up at, TELUS, which is a telecommunications firm, about $16,000,000,000 a year in revenue and I was their director of government relations for Western Canada.
Speaker 1:It's a big job.
Speaker 2:It's a big job, especially because actually I was never political as we talked a little bit earlier. I as I always sort of saw myself as apathetic. And here was this massive firm saying, cool, you should like definitely be our government relations person. And, that was probably the first time, a, I don't know why I said yes to the job and b, like, don't know why they gave it to me. I don't know why I said yes.
Speaker 2:But looking back, it makes total sense going back to it. Right? Posterity makes that story make total sense because when I got into that role, it was absolutely an idea. Okay. How can you leverage a massive institution for influence to get the, outcomes that we as a private sector organization need in order to maximize the profitability and our market share, yada yada yada.
Speaker 2:On the flip side, my primary stakeholder, even more so than my own CEO, was governments of different provinces and trying to figure out what is ultimately what are your goals? Like, what are what are the policy objectives that you have on your whiteboards collectively and individually that we as a massive owner of, know, connectivity infrastructure and investor that we can actually help you achieve? And when you start looking at what are some of the policy objectives of these organizations, it's like, are great objectives. Like, we should have more kids who are escaping foster care. There should be a pathway for them to have mobile connectivity because as soon as they hit 18, they're suddenly without any resources, like we should at least provide them an access point, you know, so it's like we can do that.
Speaker 2:We can do that as a major telco. We can figure out a pathway that both is profitable for us, subsidized for the 18 year old kid and a generally speaking positive policy outcome. Like we can do these things and when you start looking at policy from a point of like we're trying to achieve this thing for this purpose, can you help? As a private sector actor, then policy environments ultimately end up setting not just the rules of the game, but they actually shine a light on the opportunities for you to contribute to a national dialogue, which is where I keep on or or a provincial dialogue, which for me comes back to nation building is really, the core for what I wanna do.
Speaker 1:So I'm wondering if you encountered in that role distrust from government officials or staffers when you were bringing that forward. And that's coming from a place of, you know, when I was last in elected office, our number one goal was around housing. And there were a number of private sector developers who genuinely, you know, lived and cared for the community that wanted to see housing delivered and who had businesses that were very successful delivering housing much faster and more efficiently than government was who would come and say, hey, we'd love to work with you on this. And it was perfectly in line with our goals and something that at least I viewed as a great benefit and opportunity. Great.
Speaker 1:Why don't we outsource the things that we know we're not good at and make sure that the outcomes are still driving towards the impact that we seek? But that was not universally the case. There was a lot of history that I may disagree with, but understand, and there was a lot of distrust, and there was a lot of, well, those are just greedy private sector people. We can't trust them. Shut them out.
Speaker 1:Let's keep the control. Well, the price of the control is you don't actually get the thing that the citizens need, and it's actually very harmful. Did you come across similar perspectives, and how did you work, like you said, accepting reality, how
Speaker 2:did you work with that? The old adage, right? Trust is difficult to create and very easy to break. And trust is also, I think, a byproduct of your track record of integrity. So, you know, in my case, I worked for an organization that was also year after year after year was one of the most philanthropic organizations in the country.
Speaker 2:Massive community investment community investment teams in pretty much every market over 20,000 people that we operated in. Like, there was there was a constant, constant dialogue of how do we show up in these communities? How do we show up in a way that TELUS should as a telco that makes sense, right, and also espouses the values that we think of and care about, which I would I say TELUS did an amazing job at. So to your question around trust, like, I inherited a trusting sort of, position because it's been on Darren's the CEO of TELUS to this day and Darren has always been very clear that if we're not engaged in the communities in which we are offering our services then we're bad actors. And I say we, I'm not there anymore but you know we're bad actors if we're not actually engaged and proving that we're engaged and telling the stories of how engaged, doing the marketing of all that and be able to tell the stories because then when I go into the government office I can say yeah we a) employ this many people and we pay this much in tax and yada yada But also, by the way, you're you're a representative of, you know, Nanten, Alberta, small town Nanten where, you know, Talos invested this much in fiber optic that resulted in this many new businesses starting that also ended up in this festival we had sponsored for 50,000, whatever.
Speaker 2:Right? Like, we we showed up. And so the trust there was probably easier than, say, a oil and gas extraction company in British Columbia where the political climate is different and, you know, energy extraction and and and fossil fuel extraction is just like generally looked down upon in British Columbia versus say Alberta. Society like at a at a aggregate level if you were to pull the numbers. I used to sort of half jokingly say it was really easy for me to go to sleep every because the problems that we were talking to the provinces about were how do we get more connectivity in the hands of people so they can be better educated or they can have better career outcomes or job outcomes and it just it was the trust piece that wasn't inherently a challenge.
Speaker 2:On the flip side, because I I do a little bit of work around housing now as well, and, it's like the developers who actually fulfill their commitments of say, producing a park or a public park or, you know, green space that benefited people or whatever. Like, the things it comes down to, like, are you doing what you say you'll do or do you always come in with a fancy dress and beautiful jewelry and just, like, tell me a good story. Right? Like if you all you do if all you're good for is telling me a good story, then I'm gonna trust you less and less. And like the I think the Edelman trust barometer from last year really speaks to this, which is government is not a trusted entity anymore.
Speaker 2:The institutional big international institutions are not trusted entities anymore because there's just a lot of lip service and there's not a lot of people who don't feel in their experience that they're seeing the lip service actually come to light. And so ironically, for the first time, I think, since Edelman started the trust barometer, private business was trusted segment of civil society above and beyond your own governments and our our international institutions. And that's it's that in itself is, a really interesting development that people trust business today arguably more than they trust their own elected officials who they actually get to choose if you go and vote. Right? But, like, you don't even trust those people as much as you trust the the the the the grocery chain that might be, you know, overcharging you for salon day.
Speaker 2:It's a really interesting shift in trust.
Speaker 1:I wonder if recognizing this is just hypothesis, it's hypothetical, but you talked about considering and deciding against for now running for office. If you had run, you would have faced the reality of entering a position that by default is distrusted, even though it wasn't of your own making. And I'm wondering if you gave thought to how you would have addressed the challenge of rebuilding trust in that position if you had gone in.
Speaker 2:So when I was seriously contemplating how I would do this, if I would do this, and also what level, would I do municipal as you did or would I do it at the state level as technically you also did or would I do it at the federal level and so in each case you have to start with the fact that you represent a constituency. So in Canada we're first past the post, we're parliamentary, we are elected based on our geographical writings, our first and foremost priority as elected officials is to those people. So you have to build the trust of those communities. So even for me, when I was contemplating whether or not I would go into the world of electoral politics, it was a ten year decision. Meaning, if I decided in 2023 that the answer was yes, it doesn't mean that I was gonna run-in 2024 or 2025.
Speaker 2:It was okay. For the next ten years, I'm going to do the things that would make me an authentic genuine contributor to the political dialogue because I will go live in the community that I want to represent. I'll go make the you know the relationships authentic relationships and allies with those community organizations and those people and build the trust there and become a voice and become a representative voice outside of political halls that would have been the path and I think that's how the trust has to go then you win the seat, you're right, you win the trust of the party, you win the trust of your peers both on your party and other parties and then you just you know the bigger the portfolio the bigger the task of trust building. It's work like at the end of the day trust building is not fucking words, It's work. You gotta actually do the work, and you're gonna make mistakes.
Speaker 2:And the mistakes some people perceive as a reason why you're no longer trustworthy because you made a mistake. And that's, I think, part of the whole poison and toxicity of politics right now, which is human beings making mistakes become political points. Right? And so this is a nonpartisan issue. I you see it federally.
Speaker 2:You see it provincially. You see it when it's a liberal leader, an NDP leader, a conservative leader. The opposition is always making and I've been listening to Mehdi Hassan's How to Win a Argument. Mehdi Hassan is the guy from MSNBC, and he talks about the ad hominem argument in sort of a tell of the world we live in at the political dialogue level, which is these are still people. Like, there's still people who are trying to come up with ideas for better, you know, for a better Canada or a better US or a better Nevada or whatever, and they will make mistakes.
Speaker 2:You know, I feel like there is this notion of the good old days where perhaps once upon a time in the good old days, we debated ideas and we didn't, you know, talk about people. But I think there's always been this case where if your opposition, regardless of what your partner what regardless of your partisan stripe. If you are opposition, part of your job is to destroy the credibility of those who hold the power. And in Mehdi Hassan's book, he talks about how, like, yeah, arguably, from a moral or whatever you wanna call moral, like, maybe we should be against the ad hominem argument that by virtue of Skippy making a mistake with an initiative that he and, you know, he really led in in in on Aspen Council, therefore, because the mistake was made, that means Skippy is a bad governor. It's like, that's not actually necessarily true, but the argument resonates.
Speaker 2:If you play the ad hominem well, you reduce the trust that people have in your opponent because all you're doing is constantly kicking at their credibility instead of their results, instead of their actual actions, instead of their strategies. And so you're not debating ideas, you're debating people, which we've always all been taught as kids and, like, growing up is, like, that's not how you do it. Like, you people can have questionable backgrounds, but great ideas. Let's talk about ideas.
Speaker 1:When you talk about the balance of ego versus whatever, essence or unification, this is I think where it really comes back into play is that attempt to destroy your opposition is an ego move because it helps you in the short term, but it it catastrophically damages the system in the long term and ultimately harms everybody of every party.
Speaker 2:And then everybody who wants to participate in the system is then subject to said system, which is
Speaker 1:Which means they don't
Speaker 2:under it. Yeah. And then and then, yeah, and then you have that problem where, like, they say that, you know, the good people never join. And then it almost self selects what kind of people are willing to even put their foot in that sort of shit show to begin with. And then there's that whole negative diatribe of, oh, well, if you're in politics, it's because you're in it for all the wrong reasons.
Speaker 2:Well, that's not true either.
Speaker 1:That's not true either.
Speaker 2:But there is this big behemoth of a system that, like, one of the reasons I took last year to question whether or not the electoral path was one was my path was I was getting tired of being angry about the way things were going. And I thought, okay. Well, if I'm angry, my options are just to stop being angry or do something about it. Mhmm. Like, staying here in a mode of angry doesn't it just doesn't serve me.
Speaker 2:That's for sure. It certainly doesn't serve my loved ones. It probably doesn't serve my work. So I need to do something about it. Stop being angry, which is, you know, its own detach ment process of, like, actually be, you know, outcome independent to, like, which party is gonna do what?
Speaker 2:I'm only gonna be alive for another seventy years. How bad could it possibly get? You know, whatever whatever. Or, you know, shut up and get in. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And be angry if it's angry that you need to be, but more importantly, be active. Mhmm. Like, actually play a role in in being part of the change. But I think part of the reason why I ended up saying no, at least now is not the time, comes to this point that, like, the vitriol, the ad hominem of it all, I know I make mistakes. I know I've made lots of mistakes.
Speaker 2:There is no reason for anybody in my family to be subject to the mistakes that I make. But in a political cycle, it's no holds barred these days. It feels as though if you can attack the credibility of a person at their most personal level, then you're gonna, you know, you're gonna score the points.
Speaker 1:How central is that consideration to your ultimate decision not to do it at this time?
Speaker 2:Probably a top three reason. Yeah. I don't think it's the top reason. Like, as a kid who was bullied, you know, I'm not I'm not a stranger to people saying shitty things about me. It is what it is.
Speaker 2:Like, that that part's okay. The part of it that's problematic is, like, you know if I'm out in public and I'm with a family member or my partner or whatever the random aggressive hollering or yelling at a public event or you know by some random person who's just angry, subjugating loved ones to that feels like a choice I don't wanna make. So that's sort of a top three.
Speaker 1:And that is something that I think is truly new. When your dad was in his position, nobody did that at your dinner table. And although politics, you know, we can have rose colored glasses and think, oh, it was great back then. It wasn't. The eighteen hundreds were, you know, in this country, we had a civil war.
Speaker 1:I mean, it was it was really nasty, but nobody knew what those bureaucrats looked like. There was no Internet. No one knew who they were looking for at dinner. So unless you were in your very immediate circle, that's what didn't happen. The version of your dad now probably does have to deal with that even though they're not the person on the camera.
Speaker 2:Yeah. You're absolutely right. I mean, I and and for the ones who are on the camera, like, last week, I went to an event here in town with the minister of housing, and it was a great event. He was actually pretty candid about the things that his government has done wrong, which is fantastic because you like to hear it and I came down and was about to go go jump in my Uber and there was a group of 15 protesters from sort of a grassroots organization or whatever who were against all the Covid mandates and things like that and they had their megaphones and they had their signs and it's like, are you using your valuable time in your day to do this? I mean, is such an important part of democracy.
Speaker 2:So I'm not knocking the notion of protest, but it's like, yeah, like this guy's not talking about anything that has to do with why you're here.
Speaker 1:And you're inadvertently creating a situation where he's more likely to be closed off, dishonest, not own the negatives, which is actually the connective tissue that you're talking about that made you feel like, oh, I I can trust and listen to this person.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. I remember I was, I had the opportunity to a few years ago when I still lived in Alberta, I had the opportunity to meet, a future leader of one of the parties up here. And I'd asked him just a really simple question when he was doing his leadership nomination work across the country. My question to him is, can you tell you tell me one good thing that the incumbent government has done?
Speaker 2:Yes. You would end up serving as his opposition, but can you tell me one good thing that he's done? It just has to be one. And he goes, no, I can't think of any one thing. I'm like, you can't think of a single good thing.
Speaker 2:Like, you're entering this whole thing from the position that every breath that that person takes is like Yeah. Long for the country. How are we supposed to build
Speaker 1:way through.
Speaker 2:My empathy for policymakers really grew during the pandemic because, like, lots of mistakes were made. So many mistakes were made whether it was around the messaging around vaccines or the way we thought that this was going to be a two week experience or whatever it is like so much was handled poorly and also we were all collectively learning so much so quickly about this stupid little thing right like and history will decide what was right and what was wrong. But in the moments, like, you know, and you would know this better than most people having served in office, but you can't change the rules every week or ten days or every two weeks when you learn something new about a mutation or whatever. You can't just keep on changing the rules. If you think you're if you think what happened eroded trust, could you imagine how little trust there would be if policies were changing every two weeks based on new information about like, I had a lot of I gained a lot of empathy for policymakers during the pandemic because it's like, how are you supposed to direct an entire nation or an entire state when things are changing so quickly, you need to maintain some sense of stability, you need to maintain some sense of trust and consistency, and yet the thing that you're trying to do that around has no stability or consistency.
Speaker 2:That thing is changing all the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And as a policymaker, you're fucked because you're always gonna be wrong. And it's wild because in those yeah. In those contexts, you're just never gonna be right. It was so easy when I was a younger entrepreneur to shit on it and just be like, oh, they're just in the way. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And I think COVID and that whole journey at the end of the day, when you're in charge of directing an entire nation on how to behave in order to keep some sort of social cohesion and social balance, it's fucking hard work.
Speaker 1:At the very beginning, you talked about how your own internal journey and exploration has informed your outward work and service. And I'm wondering, what are the things like what's the one or two things that you've learned and come to accept about yourself that have provided the greatest expansion and empathy or understanding in the way that you're describing it now? Internal lessons that have given you the most expansion of empathy or understanding externally.
Speaker 2:If I can make mistakes, anybody can make mistakes. Right? Like, there needs to be grace for the things that people have done. And, you know, part of part of an extension of that is that you actually you are not necessarily your past actions. You might have been a shitty partner to somebody once and you might have, you know, cheated a business partner once And if you've done the work to change and not be that person anymore, then you're not that person anymore.
Speaker 2:And, like, to be able to see that people are who they are today and not necessarily just the sum of all the things they've done, it's just hard. At the individual level, it's easier. And I get how it's hard when you're trying to elect somebody who has a history of, you know, potentially being a piece of shit. But at the individual level, in terms of finding empathy for individuals, it's like, try to operate from a place where people are trying, when people are trying to be better versions of themselves all the time. I like to think that.
Speaker 2:And so that that starting point helps uncover whether or not somebody actually is or isn't because if you start there, it's like the innocence will prove them guilty, but, like, if you prove yourself guilty, fine. Like, it is what it is. It's actually how I used to navigate a lot of really sticky situations with, especially in small town Canada and particularly small town Alberta where they've never seen any of this before and,
Speaker 1:Points to
Speaker 2:Oh that's right points to face. And one of the things that I I loved about that experience was people were very quick to let you know if they didn't like you, but you could start from a place where you assumed that they wanted to learn. And so you could get into the dialogue. And if it turned out that they were just, like, hateful people, you just walked away. Right?
Speaker 2:You just moved on. I mean, there's a way to start from a place where it's like, you know what? This can be a really great interaction. And when you start for me, when I've started from that place by sort of assuming that people are just trying their best, right, they're not who they're they're they're not anything other than the person they are in this moment, that I found very helpful and it took me a long time to learn that but I found that to be really helpful and I'm still I'm still not great at it but I'm it's it's been super helpful in the last few years. I think related to that as a second thing is and like we've we all have trauma we all have trauma like people are the way they are because of what they've experienced how they've been nurtured what they've been exposed to whether it's called social conditioning or life event.
Speaker 2:We're we're just we're such a collection of the different types of grief and trauma that we've been through. And for me, right, looking myself in the mirror, it's like to not have empathy for people out of the gate would be a pretty shitty way for me to live. I'm not saying other people need to live that way, but for me, it's like I think as I've been through more life events that have, like, really changed who I am as a person. To not have empathy for life events that might change other people's realities, like, seems like a shitty place to start from, but that's just for me. So I think that's just helped us knowing that, like, I can go through these immense amounts of pain or if I can go through these immense amounts of hurt or these immense amounts of insecurity or immense amounts of whatever, other people are probably going through the same shit.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I wish there is a way to I'm sure there is a way. I mean, I haven't figured it out, but I wish there was a way to systemize that, again, knowing what we know about psychological science maybe wouldn't work, but when we, you know, when we talk about positive politics and talk about like unfortunately, don't I don't know if there's a stat about this. I'd be very curious to see how many people have won their elections by exclusively platforming on positive politics. I don't know that it's possible in this day and age.
Speaker 2:Like, the cat's out of the bag, it feels like, on on that. But I wish there was a way to sort of bring that, like, language of empathy in the campaign cycle.
Speaker 1:There's a, there's a business for everything there's a market for. And unfortunately, sometimes we have to hit the floor before we bounce back up. And I think in many ways, these epochs of positive or negative orientation are cyclical. And if we're not on the floor, we gotta be close.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. I like to think so. You know, going back to this, like, the good old days weren't necessarily the good old days, colon civil war or whatnot. And there's a part of me that asks, like, has it in fact always just been like this? It's just now we have so many more mediums and outlets and vehicles to see it.
Speaker 2:Yes. I sometimes think about how life was so much simpler when Canada only had three media outlets because we all had to consume the same three opinions, and so we could have we all have to form our opinions off of the same three sources
Speaker 1:of truth.
Speaker 2:And now anybody can be a media platform, which is amazing on one hand and, like, potentially part of the problem on the other hand. Yeah. You know, this is probably a conversation for a different day, but it even makes me wonder what is this notion of truth and like, no. We need the truth. Like, to what degree is that actually part and parcel of the problem?
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Because of our, you know, insatiable appetite to know the truth about all these things that we actually don't have a lot of control over, how much of that has contributed to how angry we all are at a societal level because we don't have those same three sources of truth anymore, seven sources. Like, we have a million and a half sources of truth truth, whether it's, you know, up here, we got Ravel and the Thai, the Thai, they're both left wing outlets, and then you got, like, Rebel on the right, and then you've got your mainstream as you will, if you wanna call them centrist just down the middle. And when you've got all those options, like, not many of us are trying to read all the publications to sort of make our own opinions or real most of us don't have the time.
Speaker 1:I'm reminded that the last time we had such a major upheaval in the dissemination of information and the resulting question of what is true in the Western world, at least, was, you know, Gutenberg and the invention of the printing press, which was immediately followed by the Crusades and centuries of war, which were really fought over well, which which book is true. And I think we're not in a dissimilar and more more fractured moment now. I'm also reminded that that period of war led to the longest sustained peace, the greatest quality of life behind the veil of ignorance for any human that's ever walked the earth. And hopefully, our period of struggle will through our own efforts, our own integrity, like you said, our own service lead to a better future for the generations that come next and for the rest of this life that we get to live. You know?
Speaker 2:I have that hope. Right? Like, I mean, through all of this tension and through all of this, it's like there are different ways to lead. There are different ways to pick up service. And those different ways can actually end up being great influencers to the people who hold the electoral seats.
Speaker 2:And that's, I think, where I ended up landing for myself as a person, which is I would rather influence electoral politics outside of the system itself. Yeah. Continuing to do the things that I do perhaps with a bit more system or strategic thinking to be able to sort of hold the position. You know, it's this idea that you can influence politics from outside the political system and arguably in a more valuable way even than you could inside of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, it's gonna take all of the above from all the different people serving in the best way for them. And hopefully, those things are mutually reinforcing. I have a question that I like to ask everyone at the end of these. Our audience are not passive observers.
Speaker 1:They're not people on the sidelines. These are the proverbial humans in the arena. And as you've said, the arena has a lot of booby traps and a lot of threats and challenges these days. And so if you were to call on your own lived experience and isolate just one thing that you would want to leave them with, whether it's a practice, a thought, a mantra, an experience, anything at all, that would best resource them to be a vector for the healing of our politics by starting with themselves? What you think that thing would be?
Speaker 2:That key phrase is there. Right? Start with yourself. Keep yourself healthy. Keep yourself strong mentally, emotionally, spiritually, physically.
Speaker 2:Find each other. You're not alone. Right? There's so many people out there like you who are doing incredible amazing things and are seeking to uplift each other and the systems and the communities in which they operate fundamentally start at home and make sure that the work you're doing is authentically true to you Because the the systems need you, the communities need you, and the stronger you are, the stronger those communities will be.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Start at home. I love that. It is all connected. Chapman, thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Chapman, before we leave, anywhere that you would want our audience to get pointed to, whether that online account, a place to reach you, anything at all?
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure. Listen, I just deactivated my Instagram, so you can't find it. But you can certainly look me up on LinkedIn. Love to connect there. You know, the other thing is if you're interested in the work of more equitable workforce development, skills development, workforce participation, if you're, you know, doing work in that domain, I'd love to hear from you because I'm always interested to meet other innovators who are trying to make for a more just and equitable workforce and and a more resilient one because we're pretty up the creek without a paddle if we don't figure out that problem.
Speaker 2:So if you're working on finding ways for more people to participate in the workforce, I would love to hear from you.
Speaker 1:Beautiful. Well, brother, have a beautiful day. Thank you so much for spending time with us here on Healing Our Politics. It has been really a pleasure.
Speaker 2:Likewise, Skippy. Likewise. Thanks so much. Thank
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