 Hello there, lovers and friends. Today's video was about change, big, stinking, massive, awesome, frightening, terrible, gruesome, grueling change. And this isn't the kind of change that happens to you. This is the kind of change that you happen to, that you are in the driver's seat for. And that's what the last few months of my life have been like. If you can't tell right now, there is a change of environment. I can't wait to share more of this with you guys. But before we go any further, I got to talk about Mahomi. The collaborator for this video is Ziko Coconut Water. That's how I drink it every single time. This is my like cheat meal in a way. This is me drinking water. It's coconut water, but it's extra hydrating. It's all natural, so there's no sugar added, but coconut water has a bit of sweetness to it. So like this became my saving grace, and I only buy the big ones because the little bottles just won't do for me. And I go through one a day, but I love it so much. Ziko Coconut Water also has an incredible message that I really wanted to elaborate more on and share how this message in particular relates to where I'm at in my life right now. And that message is to help yourself. That's it. In addition, Ziko Coconut Water also wants you to live holistically. And those words might be a little terrifying for you, might be a little off-putting to you. But the best part of all is that you get to define what that means for you. And to be honest, y'all, for me, holistic living is creating YouTube videos like this. When I make these kind of videos where I just strip down and talk to you guys from the bottom of my heart and the tip of my toes, that is me connecting with my healthiest self. And so again, shout out to you Ziko Coconut Water for inspiring this conversation. And now let's get into it. The story of change that I want to share starts in April of 2018. I had just heard that my show for Facebook had been canceled. I was working on that show for eight months. Even though it was heartbreaking, I also couldn't find it in myself to be upset because I was so grateful because we were originally supposed to only get six episodes, then they extended it all the way until 31 episodes, 31 incredible episodes of a show that I was so proud of and super adored and was grateful to go to every single week. But it was over. And that was tough to swallow. And it wasn't as if I gave myself time to grieve that loss. I immediately got thrown back into work. I had been appearing on a really big TV show for like a few weeks now prior to that. And then they asked me to come on like almost immediately after my show ended. And I just sucked like for lack of a better term, I just didn't present myself or my ideas in a very clear way, which just opened the floodgates for me to be attacked on camera, which I was. And it was a difficult lesson for me and an embarrassing one. And then it wasn't as if that was enough. The following week I had an audition for a show that in many ways, guys, was handed to me on a platter. It was someone they were looking for a sex and relationship expert. They were familiar with my work specifically from the Facebook show. There was a lot of people behind me rooting for me to get this job. And I didn't. I would never usually say this, but didn't get this job. But it was a $400,000 a year job. So it wasn't a small loss by any means. But I knew the day of the audition that I wasn't enough. And that's a very difficult sentence to say, that I'm not enough for something. But in truth, I didn't bring enough. I didn't prepare enough. I didn't make any mistakes. But I just knew in my heart specifically because I knew someone else who also auditioned just completely outplayed me. And outplayed in a way that they were better. They were more charismatic. They were more prepared. They offered more insight. They went above and beyond the asks. Like they genuinely were a better fit for the job. And I knew that in that moment. So I called my dad and I was just bawling my eyes out like I just, I think I blew it. And this would have been an incredible way for me to roll out of the loss of my show to get something else within weeks. But it just wasn't going to be that story. And so my dad was like, well, look at this point, you have two choices. You can't win. Like that ship has sailed. But you can either lose or you can learn. And of course, of those two choices, the obvious one is probably that you can learn. But for some reason, I didn't. The next week I went to New York. I was invited on Candy Burrises, Candy Coated Nights. And I bombed that too. I also made a thousand dollars that month. I literally deposited a thousand dollars into my account, which is fine if I lived in a different city and, you know, live with my parents still. But that definitely isn't the level that I want to be achieving at this time. And so there was just a lot of things happening in April, May and around early May. I just came to this place where I'm like, things have to change. A lot of things have to change right now. And of you guys who have watched my videos in the past, I often try and do probably once every quarter, so four times a year. I make a list of three things in this exact order. Things I love about myself because gratitude is the right attitude. Gratitude is the holy grail. It is a secret ingredient. Gratitude is probably the difference between an unhappy and a happy person. Secondly, I write the list of things that I hate. Things that are just really bothering me right now. And then finally, I make a list of things that I'm neutral about. Things that maybe I don't necessarily love. I don't hate, but they're just things that exist. And there's some positives, some negative to them. And so I don't stress about them. And the goal of this exercise is to be able to examine these three things. Look at that middle section and see if you can move it up or down. Because sometimes on the list of things that we hate are things that we genuinely can't change. So when I made that list, there were a few things that I knew were in my control that I wanted to change. Number one was my education, my performance level. Obviously, as a result of my lack of exceptionality in the previous jobs I just had, I just felt like something had to change where I distinctly understood when I had to bring it and what I had to do to make that happen. My future, I honestly couldn't go on making $1,000 a month. And the lifestyle that somebody who works in media is that you have your ups and your downs, but I don't really want to live like that. And I'm not your standard performer. So I should be creating a sustainable future for myself, a base level income so that I'm never dipping below a certain amount and that I'm never having rough months to that extent. So that's something that I knew I could change. My relationship status, where I lived. My body hair, elements of my body, my car, and lastly my relationship with my mom. So I look at this list in hindsight now because we're now in September. And this is a result of me helping myself because there's probably, there's one thing on this list that didn't work out. That I actually had to file into things that I'm neutral about, that I just don't have a strong feeling because it just is what it is at this present time. So we'll start with my performance level. No, we'll start with my future. I am a writer. That is like actually what I am. It is my base love. It is my first love. It is what I think my strength is. And so because I love it so much, I think I do it the least. I think when people say they're afraid of success, like they're afraid of what it's going to be or how it's going to change their life. I think what they're really saying is I'm afraid to try my hardest at the thing that I care about the most and only to find out that I'm not good enough for it. And that's how I feel about writing in many ways. My first book, Laid, just wasn't the experience I wanted it to be. I tried to pursue writing specifically like a sex and relationship columnist before I started doing YouTube. That didn't really take off the way that I wanted it to. And so I feel like I filed this in the back of my brain as something that I'm amazing at. But I don't really try. So I never prove if I actually am or not. And so I get to protect that delusion in many ways that this is my true talent because I don't challenge myself in it. So when I got to this place of all these failed opportunities, not knowing what's next, knowing that the summertime in the media industry is a very slow time, the obvious answer is write a book. That's you're going to have the time to do it because you don't have a job. You're going to have the knowledge and information because you've been working so hard for so long. So try. And honestly, I was able to sell an idea for a book to my dream publishing company and get to writing a book. And that happened pretty quickly, like freakishly quick because it took me two years to get Laid published. Probably, yeah, three, three to four years, actually, two years to write and then three years afterwards to actually get published. And so I know how hard that process can be. So when I was able to receive that back, I was like, oh my gosh, like that was the jumpstart I need to know that, OK, this is we're going in the right direction. We'll go an easy one. My body hair. This is just one of those things that I wish I didn't care about. And I'm ashamed in many ways that it does bother me so much. Many of you guys know my dad is Guyanese, so I am half Indian. Not that all Indian people are hairy, but my particular brand of Indian happens to be. And so I just always been a really groovy person. Like I said, my nails grow, my hair on my head grows, but that's not it. That's everything grows really quickly. I have the kind of legs that if I shave them in the morning by the afternoon, they're spiky again. So I just don't even know what it feels like to be smooth, like to not be conscious of that. And I'm so grateful because I have had relationships before where my hairiness was a problem. Like they brought it up all the time. They commented on how spiky I was. And when I got what Jared, he doesn't care at all. Like he's just so embracing and loving and accepting of who I am, no matter what state that I'm in. And sometimes I make this joke a lot with you guys that he doesn't give me compliments. He also doesn't give me insults. So it's almost like it doesn't matter. There's no, there's no like difference. If I look like totally glammed up and hot, he's going to treat me the same. If I'm spiky and hairy and I've got BO and my glasses and my sweats are on, he's going to treat me the same. So it's like a catch 22 with that. Like he just always just has like such a loving nature. It doesn't really change depending on how I look. Nonetheless, it bothered me. Every time that we were intimate, I just felt self-conscious. Like, oh, he's touching my legs or hairy. And that thought would cross my head and get me out of the moment. So I decided to invest in laser hair removal. And I have no updates on that. I've done one session so far. I'm paying for it. So it's not a sponsored thing at all. So I'm not going to shout them out, but I will say that it felt good for me to go to that session, to know this is something that's bothered you. And now you're doing something about it. You're making that investment in yourself. And so even though I don't have like the results from that yet, I still get to check that off of my list of things that I hate. My relationship status. I want to talk about that. So the show that I was on that didn't go so well was the Steve Harvey show. And I brought this on myself. Sometimes what ends up happening is whenever people talk about a top, whenever people talk about my relationship, I sometimes expect they're going to bring up the fact that it's nontraditional. Even if they're not, like, I've definitely been in situations before people are like, how is it with you and your man? You and Jared seem so happy. I'm like, yeah, it's great. He's like my life partner. He's like my love. Like, we work so well together. They're like, and yeah, and we live together. We were actually, yeah, we were doing well. We were going back to Toronto. See my family recent soon. And and we both want a puppy one day and our relationship is not traditional. Tell me more about that. Like, that's the thing that they've been like trying to ask this whole time. And so for that reason, sometimes I get into situations assuming that's what people want me to talk about. And so on the Steve Harvey show, this particular case, I ended up kind of round about in a very weird way, talking about our relationship style. And because I forced it on a topic that it didn't necessarily suit, it came out weird. I presented it weird. It was a very weird experience. And, you know, Steve is a traditional man in many ways and has traditional values and so kind of tore into me a little bit. And then on top of that, too, what bothered me about that, it was a lot of questioning on how we felt about each other. It was a question on our relationship or the strength of our relationship. You know, because if we're not married and we're in an traditional relationship, what is that saying about how we feel about each other? Side note here, I have no questions. That is the most incredible thing about my relationship with Jared. I've we've never broken up. We've never been off and on. We've never been like, I don't think we've ever even had a fight that's lasted more than three hours maximum. So I never have these questions about myself. I know where I sit with him. I know where he stands with me. I know we want to spend as much time as possible that makes sense for the both of us together. I know that we're dedicated to building together and that we have no qualms giving all that we have to one another because what we receive back is enough. I already know that, but the fact that people, people got so caught up on what our relationship was called, that they bypassed all the beauty of what it was really did bother me. And the fact that I put myself in a position to be an expert in relationships and in sexuality, it's just, I don't want what is so sure for me to be questionable to other people. So I came to Jared and I was like, I want to have that marriage talk now. And it kind of came, I guess, out of left field in many ways for him, but I explained to him like, look, as a man, there is certain pressure for you to have assets to mark where you are in life. So a dude, for example, has a dream from when he's four years old of driving a nice car. He gets the nice little Ferrari truck and plays with it. And like, as he grows older, that dream is affirmed that one day when he makes enough money, he's going to have this car. With women, the same thing happens with relationships. We're told one day when you're with the right person and you're in your dream relationship, you're going to be married. The car is meaningless. Doesn't mean anything. Marriage, I think in many ways, this doesn't necessarily make a relationship room, isn't a goal in itself. A healthy relationship is the goal. And marriage is like a way to celebrate that. A successful life and abundance is the goal. And a car is a way to symbolize that and celebrate that. So I said to Jared, imagine that you're now, your song is number one on iTunes. Like you are killing it. You are doing incredible. You're touring the world. Like we're doing this together. We're so happy and you want to go buy a car and you're not allowed to. Like all you can get is a civic, like a Honda Civic. And don't get me wrong. Like you're still successful in doing great, but you just don't have the car to show it. You know you're happy, but when you pull up to somewhere, people look at you like, well, he's still in a Honda Civic. And I'm like, that's kind of what happens for women when it comes to marriage. That's kind of how I feel right now. I did not expect for him to take that conversation, act on it so fast. And so that was a surprise. And you guys watched the engagement video and the surprise and shock that experience was really how quickly he took that and understood and like so grateful for that partnership. Where I lived. OK, so confession time, as you guys probably know, I am a little crazy when it comes to live moving. I've moved a lot. I have lived in LA for four years and this is my sixth spot. Mind you, when I first came here, I was actually my seventh spot. Technically, I was sleeping on couches. I lived in a maid's quarters in a sub lease. I was sub leasing like this awful apartment. Like I honestly worst time of my life. But nonetheless, I just spent a lot of time at home. I work from home. I do my counseling calls at home. I now write my book from home. I make videos from home. And so where I live is really a massive part of who I am and how I feel about myself overall. So I liked my apartment. I was happy. And when the year came up, I had to check in with myself because I immediately want to move. And I'm like, OK, Miss Booty, are you trying to move because you've created this habit of forcing change when it doesn't make sense? Or have you genuinely outgrown this place? And I tried to tell myself that it was me, that I was just being just too uncontent with what I had, unsettled with what I had. Was this in many ways? I'm like, is this representing a part of your personality when you're not happy with what you have and that you can't enjoy what you have because you're so focused on what you want to get? But when I tuned in with myself, I'm like, OK, maybe I can still be here and be happy. So I redecorated the apartment. We moved things around. We were able to refresh the place. But I couldn't help the fact that three months later, I still just didn't really feel settled there. And a lot of that reason is just the area. It's just Hollywood. And I lived in the smack of Hollywood. Like I could shoot a bow and arrow at where they shoot the Oscars. And I'm not a drinker and I'm not a smoker. I'm not really a party girl. I'm actually not a party girl. I could turn up at a party with some water, with some preferably some zigo water. But I'm just like not that I'm not like downtown Hollywood. And so on Saturday night, I'd be home writing my book, Jared to be at work or something, and I'm alone. And there's like people having a party outside. I walk outside my hallway. It stinks of weed. And I don't have anything against people who partake in those. But like for that to be the environment that I'm placing myself in, when those aren't things that I enjoy, that just became frustrating to me. And the building just became frustrating to me. Like, you know, it's a lot of drama. Like sometimes you go downstairs, the police are outside because there was some fight, we had a hole punched in our hallway. And it's not by any means like a violent building. It's just a building with young people and young people who like to enjoy themselves on the weekend in particular. And I'm just out of that phase. And so I was like, I know that I know it would be smarter for me to stay and save and buy a house in a few years because, you know, I'm new to America. America don't play that. They're not trying to hand me a mortgage anytime soon, especially the fact that I actually tried to apply for a mortgage, to be honest with you guys. And in 2015, I made, I think it was like $14,000 for the year. Like that's what I had on my taxes. And so they were like, you know, like we need to see a bit more proof that you're not going to be making that amount of money again this time next year. So come back to us in like a year when you have three years of proven income. So yeah, that's that's going to be on the horizon. So I knew that I should like wait till next year when I had a chance to get a mortgage and then go buy something and save all that money that I collected from being in my apartment, which I could honestly, you know, afford a lot more than what I was paying. But I just I didn't want to. I stopped looking for a long time. And then one day I just went online again. I saw where I live right now. And I'm like, that's a lot. But I think I love it. And I'm like, I'm going to go knowing I'm probably going to hate it. And I came and I was like, damn it, I love it. So I did what I always do. I don't know who else is like this, but I can't comfortably make decisions without my parents approval, which is weird because I'm in my thirties one. And number two, they don't pay for my life at all. So I don't have to ask them, but I still just don't feel good making even the camera I'm shooting on right now. I like talk to my parents like, I don't think you should buy it right now. I'm like, cool. Six months later, I asked them again. They're like, yeah, go buy it. Why didn't I just do what I wanted to do? Like, but I just I still have that mentality. So I my parents like, I think you should, you know, apply. And I did and I moved and I'm so happy I did. I'm so happy I did it. It's one of those things I don't regret at all. Maybe in six months, I might be like, but I'm so I don't know. I just think having a space that you're proud of that you love coming home to that you feel like is a representation of you is such a big hashtag help yourself. It's such a big like, so yeah, I'm happy to be here. We're going to check that off the list. OK, car is a quick, easy story. I've had the same car since 2012. I bought it using wedding photography money. It was a very proud purchase of mine, something that I don't know, it just meant a lot to me in that car. It was a Lexus IS 250 was really special to me. I drove that car from Toronto to LA and especially during my first year to two years here, when like nothing was stable, nothing was settled. My car was like the one thing I could depend on. I felt like it was me and my car in this city, like we it was us against LA. So this year, I just felt like I think I'm ready to let that struggle side of me go. I think I'm ready to let go of my hard knock narrative. Not that this car is a hard knock car, right? But nonetheless, it was just like a representation of that part of me and I just felt ready to let it go. And so I'm a Canadian, moved to LA. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to get a drop top so that I can enjoy the sunshine even more. I can get the full LA experience. And so that also was an easy one. My dad said that I can make that purchase and that it was fine. My accountant also said that, which again, that's also a part of helping yourself is surrounding yourself with people who you trust and who are on your team. And yeah, so when they both said it was great, obviously, you know, Jared was on board with it. And so we did that and that I got to check off my list. And lastly, the relationship with my mom is something that I wanted to improve and to fix. Me and my mom were really, really close growing up. Like I used to tell my mom all the time that I was like in love with her. And that's natural. You know, as a child, like your first love is your parents. I'll just mean that in like a metaphysical way, like biologically, you are so drawn, like your survival and your approval, your validation, everything is tethered, you know, to your parents. And so that bond is really strong. As you get older, you start to make bonds with friends and maybe the relationship and the approval of your friends matter more. And then, of course, as you get into your older age, you start to have that feeling towards a significant other. And then when you have your own kids, I just I feel like that strong love is always there. It just changes roles as time goes on. I remember the way that I felt about my best friend in my like late teens, like the love that I had for her. I used to refer to her as my soulmate. I think about that sometimes as being just as strong as the love in many ways I now have for Jared. So me and my mom had this, this is a super tight bond. And then, I don't know, just as time went on, I think we were always close and we have a good relationship, but just stop being what it was when I moved to LA. It obviously got a lot harder because I no longer was home and we no longer could do things together. And so we had to find things to talk about. And during my first two years and a lot of ways that was easy and for one main reason, which was my toxic relationship, being in a bad relationship can bring a lot of good things into your life. I'd say a lot of it can strengthen other relationships. I'll say that. I recognize that when me and my ex broke up, I had a lot of friends in Toronto specifically who I realized I only bonded with out of misery because we were both going through a negative relationships or both trying to make something work. And once that relationship was dissolved, I didn't know what else to talk to them about because I think that's what we really had in common. And while I was going through this relationship and I was really sad all the time and down and hurt and often in like emotional turmoil, my mom was my rock. Like, that's who I spoke to a lot about that. So naturally when that relationship ended and I got together with Jared and that relationship has been so the opposite, just unturbulant, unstressful. Most of the problems that we have, we I mean, all we've resolved them ourselves. And so it left this gap for me and my mom because in a space where she used to have a role for me and we had something to talk about and something to bond over, that didn't exist anymore. And I think that both of us kind of felt that we felt that separation and we felt that, you know, on the phone that like silence of like, well, what what do we talk about? What do we say to each other? Um, and that we tried to work on that for quite some time. And so that's not something I think that you can actually necessarily there is something you can do. You have to try to find new common ground. You got to find and look and search for that. Sometimes it presents itself to you and sometimes you have to go out of your way to pick up a new interest or a hobby or to engage in conversations that maybe you don't initially care about. But if you did more research, you would find the excitement for as well. I would say luckily what happened for me is the engagement. That's a bit of joy. And that's why I think, you know, marriage in many ways, you guys have a lot of opinions about my opinion on it. But I don't think that marriage is for the couple, per se. I think that marriage is for the outside. The couple, that's the love is for us. The connection is for us. The vision is for us. Marriage is like the title or like the casing that we wrap it in. But the inside is like what actually is the accomplishment. And so the marriage is something for my family to get excited about and something for me, my mom to bond about for us to talk about planning the wedding and my mom is planning a wedding shower for me when I go back to Toronto in like three days. And so that has been a natural way that we've been able to reconnect and make our relationship better. And I am, you know, I'm sorry, mom, if you ever felt that I fell out of love with you. I never did. And it was never about that. I think I think the big changes in a short amount of time. The really big changes in my life in a very short amount of time made it difficult for me to transition relationships as well. So much is shifting and moving. And I have so many moving parts, but does it mean that it's not important to me that you're not important to me or so important to me? OK, this feels like a good place to end the video. What do you guys think? I think it's a good place to end the video. So in the comment section below, as I get my little ship on. Recollect, let's get some energy going in this mother mother again. In the comment section below, I would love to know how you are helping yourself. What are you doing to live holistically? What changes are you making? What is that thing and what do you plan to do for now? I'm taking a break. There's no more list. There is no more things that I want to work on right now. I just want to enjoy. I want to enjoy my new house. I want to enjoy planning a wedding. I want to enjoy writing my book. I want to enjoy my smooth legs that are going to happen sometime soon. I want to enjoy my new car. I want to enjoy my fiance. I just want to enjoy. And you're going to have those times, you know, the pendulum is going to swing in either direction at times that's growing time and sometime it's shine time. And right now for me, I just want to sit in the sun and I can do that because I really, really hustled and worked my booty off and made some massive changes in a short amount of time. And I'm proud. I'm proud of this self. I'm proud of this self for helping this self. Bye, guys. I genuinely put the camera away and then forgot about this one thing. My skin is that too bright? I'm not sure I can see. My skin is something that in April was crazy that I have been able to dramatically fix, which I'm going to go into more depth in in another video. For now, please like, subscribe, share, hit the notification bell and above all else, thank you guys for 400,000 subscribers.