 Hello and welcome to Pookie Ponders, the podcast where I explore big questions with brilliant people. Today's question is, how important is creativity for wellness? And I'm in conversation with Zohab Z. Kahn. Hi, I'm Zohab Z. Kahn, I am a performance, poet, motivational speaker and life coach, as well as a workshop facility. I'm really excited to be here with you, Pookie. Thank you ever so much for joining me today. I'm excited to talk to you too. You've done many different things. So the question for the episode today is, how important is creativity for wellness? So that's our jumping off point. Do you want to give us a bit of an overview on why that's the question and some first thoughts to get us going? I think it's everything. I think creativity is wellness. I love the topic of today's chat. I think creativity is one of those things that is overlooked, particularly in times like this. We're all assumed to be in lockdown and we're giving all these important aspects and important, putting all these influence on the important aspects, on the key workers and the creative arts has been considered. Okay, we can leave that to the side. However, I found that creativity, particularly in this time, is absolutely integral to making sure that I stay in line, stay balanced and my services are being well and truly needed in this particular time. So that's been something great that's come out of all of this. So tell us a little bit about what you do and how you use creativity and support other people with their wellness. What does that kind of look like in practice? I do workshops primarily. So I do a lot of workshops within high schools and primary schools, getting children to think outside of the box, using writing, using meditation techniques, primarily poetry. Poetry is my main trade and using poetry to get kids to think in different ways, just writing exercises, free writing, utilizing poetic techniques in ways that they usually wouldn't do. So talk to me about poetry. How did you come to start, like, first of all, writing poetry yourself and then beginning to workshop it with other people? What's been your kind of... I'm a big poetry fan. So yeah, I'd love to know a little bit about your kind of journey there. Yeah. Like the cliche, you know, I started writing when I was a young child and I was lucky enough not to stop. There was something about creativity that really anchored me and grounded me and I found a lot of solace in it. To this day, I play imagination games and from that, from poetry came hip hop and I want to be a hip hop artist and I do a little bit of hip hop here and there. And I discovered this little competition called the Australian Poetry Slam Championships. And I was founded by a complete accident perusing YouTube one night when I should have been doing my assignments for university. And I realized that the very next day in my humble town of Wagga Wagga New South Wales, which is Mac Bang in the middle of New South Wales, the very next round of the Australian Poetry Slam Championships was going to be on. So I entered it. This was back in 2009. And I wanted to win the national championships. It took me about five years of failing and getting this close and losing by 0.1 and forgetting my words a couple of times on stage. And in 2014 at the Sydney Opera House, I won the national championships. And from there, an entire career happened to just, you know, just come out of that. There's something special about being able to say hi. My name is Zohab Zekhan, the Australian Poetry Slam Champion. It sounds super cool. I have to say, yeah, yeah, I was like, I said to my husband this morning when I liked, I'd looked you up on Twitter and everything ahead of our chat. And I showed him like who you are. I'm like, I'm definitely not cool enough to be talking to this guy, but you know, I was looking forward to it. So what is a poetry slam? So I love poetry and every now and then I come across these kinds of things too. But what is it? What's the difference between poetry and poetry? Just tell us more. Poetry slam is just the competitive aspect of performance poetry, performance poetry. It's in the name, it's poetry that's performed usually on a stage need not be always on a stage. And poetry slams are when you get usually two or three minutes. You've got some judges, you've got 10, 15, 30 other competitors go through the various rounds. And supposedly the best poll wins, not always the case. But we have a saying amongst the Poetry Slam scene, the point is not the points, the point is poetry. So about getting, getting poetry in a competitive aspect out there is the main goal, you know, people love competition. So is it, do you prepare the poems beforehand or do you, is it improvised or how, how, how does it work? Yeah, yeah, you prepare the poems beforehand, get it really etched to your brain. That's why sometimes I have literally stood up on stage and went blank. Not so much nowadays. Nowadays, I'm a seasoned veteran of the performance world and if it does go blank, I've had, you know, dramatic pauses for 30 seconds. It's all part of the performance. They never the wiser. But yeah, you do prepare it beforehand. And do you get like, do you have to do it on a particular topic or anything? Or is it just kind of completely, oh wow. Yeah. So what makes for a good performance poem or like a poem, a poetry slam, like what you obviously honed your art over those years in order to win. It sounds like you didn't just turn up one day and win it, you learn how to get better and better. Like what was that about? Is it about the poetry, about the performance, about the, what, yeah, what's, what's a winning poem? Usually something that the cliche would be to do something social justice wise and, you know, speak, speak the truth in regards to that. I'm not necessarily a believer in that. I think a good poetry slam winning poem is just a poem where you're, when you're authentic. I think life is just better when you're authentic, when you're showing your true version of yourself. And that's what poetry slam allows, you know, just to present one authentic version of yourself up on a stage. And that's the secret. If there's any secret to winning, if you're real and raw and authentic up on stage and it sounds nice whilst you're doing it, there's no reason why you won't win. There's never a risk when you're being like real and raw in your poetry that, like in terms of kind of safeguarding yourself, I guess, if you go kind of deep about your own feelings and things, I just reflecting on a time. So I wrote a book about using poetry to promote healing, and it has a lot of my own poems in it just as examples not because I think that they're good but just a sort of starting points for discussion but off the back of that many years ago I was asked to go on a workshop with a bunch of psychiatrists about using poetry with patients who had eating disorders. And so we looked at some of my poems around eating disorders and honestly, I mean it was really powerful and they went off and used it, but it was deeply uncomfortable going there with them in that room when at the time I was evidently not really well. Yeah, just remember like thinking I had to think really carefully in future about if I was going to share my own poetry face to face with people about what it was okay to write a poem at any given time I just wonder if that's something that you've experienced to all the other poets have to safeguard. Before I answer that question may I flip it back at you and ask you whether or not you consider yourself a poet. Do I consider myself a poet. No, I've written a lot of poems so I wrote a poem every day for about three years. And just because I wrote one for a funeral and I've never written a poem since I was a child. I was writing it and I basically wondered if I did this more could I get good at it. And so I think in rhyme and I love to write poetry but I wouldn't consider myself a poet because I don't know how to write good poetry I just, you know, put words on paper. But I do encourage people to write bad poetry I always say it doesn't matter what you're writing and what the level is, you know, it's about engaging with it and the other thing I always found. And I'd be interested in your thoughts on this was that when I shared my poems in a public space so I always had a blog. And then it was really interesting I never wrote anything about what they were about or why I'd written them I just shared the poem, and I loved hearing other people's interpretations. And people would interpret them different ways and sometimes I find when I read back on my old poetry I read it with different. Yeah, with a different lens than I wrote it. Absolutely. Well, just to bounce off the question that I asked you, absolutely from everything that you said, regardless of whether or not you consider yourself a poet from my perspective you are 100% a poet, especially considering you've written a poem every day for three years and you've performed it at funerals and that kind of stuff and you've captured a moment in our life in our collective experience, you know. And that's what poetry is for me it's it's about capturing one aspect of yourself going back to being authentic and capturing something that's in our zeitgeist or catch capturing common human experience be that death or birth or love or hate or war or whatever it is. So a I definitely think you're a poet be to answer your question. Yeah, it is it's extremely daunting sometimes to get up on a stage and share something and something that's raw and you've told me your poems have been in books in your book. And you felt very vulnerable about that and that's such a common experience amongst creatives and when we create and human beings, particularly in my workshops. There's this vulnerability, and I found I do workshops from five years old kindergarten all the way into university students and adults but you know my when I'm working within schools. I find five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 primary school kids. Oh yeah you want me to write a poem, let me write a poem, but whatever it is, the older they get. But sir I'm not a poet, you know, and we hold ourselves back because of this idea that what are other going other people going to think, and it's not my. It's not my business. It's absolutely none of my business what anybody else thinks about my poetry. I do it because I do it. I do it because it is a wellness technique for myself. It's just a wellness technique that other people happen to enjoy. That's a really nice way of looking at it and certainly when people talk to me about, you know, should they write or any kind of a creative endeavor should I start a YouTube channel should I write should I whatever then usually my starting point is do it for yourself. And if you're enjoying it. That's great and if other people want to come along for the ride perfect but I think for me personally those kind of creative endeavors you need to do them really from a point of your own personal kind of yeah enjoyment and passion. And creativity actually I've said the same to people who asked me about should they pursue a PhD and it's like, if you really want to if you really enjoy the process and you're passionate about it yes if it's because you want to call yourself doctor. No. What's the, what's the difference between hip hop and poetry so you said you've kind of done both what's the line. I think poetry is an overarching aspect I think that it's if there was a diagram over it, there would be overlapping aspects obviously whenever I'm in one of my workshops I define poetry. As one or more words, you know this is this conversation is is poetry as far as I'm concerned some poetry is better than other poetry. So far, this has been great poetry. This has been our conversation so far. It's been great poetry pooky, but here with hip hop hip hop is just an aspect of poetry I find lyrics, song lyrics be the hip hop or balance or whatever they are. It's poetry right hip hop just happens to be a particular genre of music and you know, has its attributes of using vernacular terms and you know comes from a particular zeitgeist. And do you think that there are kind of rules to what makes like better poetry or starting points like when you're running your poetry workshops can you talk to me a little bit about what do you tell the young people or people whoever you're teaching like so they can create something what what what are the rules or the guidances. Two ways to answer that question the initial foundation that I give to anyone that's in my workshop is number one to take the pressure completely off when we take the pressure completely off and it's what we were talking about before this oh what are other people going to think and we hold ourselves back. I don't care who you are whether you are, you know, the extreme eccentric, you know, hippie that lives down the road that's considered artistic or the canary wharf accountant you're you're both creatives, you know there's there's this creative fire within both of both of those human beings we as human beings are creative it's the same reason why, you know, all the brain structures to so many other species on this planet and now close primate cousins and all of that, but we're the ones that are going to the moon we're the ones that are digging holes in the ground and seeing what comes up. And the reason we do that is because we have this. What's this this internal desire inside of us to to create and find out what's behind that door and find out what's behind that rock. And I think that's what it comes down to when we're creating so take the pressure completely off because it's well and truly within our nature to to want to find amazing things and to answer the other part of your question what makes good poetry. When you've taken the pressure off completely and you're being a more authentic version of yourself only then do I encourage students to learn about poetic techniques and different structures and different rhyme schemes and all of that can wait. I'm a forever student for poetry and forever learning a different style of poetry or different structure and a different poetic techniques and, you know, literary devices. Yeah, of course, with anything you get better at Hello, you get better at any, any aspect of, of any craft and you come down to the fundamentals you're going to get good at it you know metaphors and similes and all that and then all the way up to to as a remers and all that. I think sometimes the different techniques and the structures and things can be fun. Like I think if you embrace them with the spirit of fun so I always remember writing. I think it was a golden shovel where you took a poem you previously written or read and you used each word as a kind of it was the first word or the last word of the line of the next part is something like that like really contrived, but like a great challenge I loved it. And that's the thing when I was writing every day I was always and I would write poetry prompts so other people would join in to which was fun. But yeah finding different things to spin off whether it was a question or a word or structure or you know whatever whatever is the starting point so I think it can be a bit scary knowing like if you just, you know, write a poem. Wow, where do I start. Yeah, it can be right I'm I always encourage every single workshop I've ever run. I always start with an exercise called the brain dump it's something I encourage everyone to do listeners that are listening right now or watching. I would encourage a brain dump and my spiel of a brain dump is basically just right. It doesn't matter if you use a pen pencil, textile lipstick I don't care. You know, and it's it's all about just getting things out of your head is about getting everything from your brain dumping it on a piece of paper and not worrying about of the spelling or the grammar or the neatness of the messiness or what other people going to think about this or is this a deep desire that I haven't ever put out into the world. I'm just just letting it be and the only rule is to not let your pen stop moving. And it's amazing that that simple simple exercise with a fancy name like a brain dump has amazing results, the things that come out of brain dumps and I encourage people to share it if you want to share it or throw it in the bin and burn it if you don't want to. And that makes all the difference of taking that pressure off it's a great foundation. So you use that rather than so you don't start with a blank page essentially is that the idea. Yeah, and from that you can pull out ideas if you want. But if anything it allows your brain to start working in a different way. Get your head into that diffuse frame of mind. I like that's a really nice neat way of starting. And so you've taught a lot of workshops so I read on I guess it would have been your website so you've done over 1000 poetry or creative arts workshops like have you got bored at any point I mean did it become samey. Did I get bored at any point that's a good question. No I don't think so. Did I get bored. I've never had that question that's a great question. I don't think so I don't. I tell you what will make a person bored a person will become bored with routine and routine is one of the best things that we can have in our life. And I've never really had much of routine I'm a life coach and routine is something that benefits a lot of people and it's a great structure to have to your day. Creativity is anti routine. You can schedule creativity within your days and you can schedule it within your life. But I also think that there should be time for play and because I've always given myself a lot of play time and my workshops are very tongue in cheek and I jump around. I can't tell on this zoom I stand at two meters tall and I use every single one of those 200 centimeters. Wow. That's all like how tall is that in old money that's like what's six. Six. Six. Wow. Six foot six in old money. Yeah. Oh it's a shame we're not meeting face to face because I'm very nearly five foot three and it would be hilarious. But sorry so you use every every every one of those centimeters. Yeah. If anything to answer your question no I've never been bored because I'm well and truly in the moment with my workshops. You know, yeah. Sorry my cat is joining in with the podcast here she likes to have attention all the time. So okay so I saw on your website then maybe this this builds on your workshops not being dull and you using every inch of your many inch body. But I saw a picture on your website of like people with their hands in the air at some kind of workshop or something or yes what would have been going on there what what are you making people do so have. I think I know what you're talking about yeah that's that's just a standard power pose standard power pose but I do it in a particular way of getting you out of your seat moving around get your hands up all that and it's the origin story of that is owning your own name so I'm big on owning your own name. My name is oh and I didn't necessarily like the name so have for a very long time particularly growing up in a very very small country town in the middle of Australia. I grew up in a town called the end up. And there was 900 people in that town. 900 people in that town 85 students in the primary school and only one so hard. Yeah, yeah. And I hear you on the the unusual name thing just to say it's great as an adult though no. Yes, as an adult when you grow into it yeah absolutely it is as a child. It's a little bit different and I remember coming home from school one day absolutely in tears and my mother asked me why are you crying and told it well the kids have been calling your loser at school you know saying about a funny name all of these things is like what do you mean funny name. You've got a great name you've got the same name as your great grandfather when he was a warrior. And you know that's that's who you were named after not a loser. Oh gosh that's that's amazing why didn't you tell me this mom. And tell me this before why are you telling me this now at the ripe old age of seven. And I found out many like I love that story and to that day to this day it holds very very special to me. And a few years later that I was not named after my grandfather completely lie in the moment, but it got my confidence up. Parents are funny things you know tell me he was a warrior though. Oh absolutely he was a warrior come from a long line of warriors but I was not named after him he had a completely different name. What he did do was made me go out into my backyard pull my hands up and just keep repeating my name again and again like a warrior and to a seven year old that's very very special and it's very very powerful. And that's something that I was lucky enough to be exposed to at a young age and my mom played with my brain a lot, you know, for good or bad I think all parents do. And then I got out I got out pretty unscathed and these are the same techniques that I that I teach in my in my work. So what exactly is a power pose. Ask him for the audience. Our pose we can we can half do and we're both sitting which is fine. Would you like to do a power pose right now. I will I've got a cat on my lap but I don't think that should stop me. Never stop you. If anything it just adds to your power right. If we were standing. Those of you listening or watching could stand as well. You stand up feet shoulders with the park really stamp them in the ground give them a little stamp feel like they're in the ground concrete is keeping you down in a good way. Shoulders back chin up and really concentrating on the top of your spine which is this little lump at the bucket back of your head and just getting that nice and straight hands on your hips and you just stand there breathing into your nose. Out of your mouth. Really feeling that power through you. Once you feel well and truly in that moment this is something a lot of business people use I like to take it to the next level and then just put your hands up. And there was this. Oh why is it that you got the power because I feel a bit silly now because we're doing a podcast and everyone's listening. Not at all this and that comes down to feeling it'll kick it it'll kick it keep that chin up for me keep that chin up for me pookie and we can generally that's the thing we can put our arms down. That's a power pose you do it for long enough. I recommend about a minute and when I do this. With my audiences. That's when the endorphins start kicking in that's when the giggles start kicking in and then we yell our name as loud as we can. And there was this great great experiment done where they had two groups of people. And one group of then they took them to the top of a bungee jump and one group of people they got to go up there just normal and put them in the fetal position. They put them in the fetal position right at the top and then said don't get up and do the bungee jump. I think it was something like one person did it and the remaining six of the seven were like no thanks or took it or took a moment incredibly long time to do. And those of them who did the power pose. Jumped. They all jumped under 30 seconds or something ridiculous like that. And that just shows those endorphins that are pumping through your body the chemistry that's happening to you at that particular time is absolutely you know it dictates your future. And that's why I like to keep myself in in in state whenever you can, you know little breathing exercises. And creativity is such a huge aspect of that. The brain dumps a great place to start, but also just taking the pressure off off your brain and that's what I try to teach in my workshops. So when would you use a power pose you're using them in your workshops to get everyone kind of in the zone feeling they can do this presumably but like in you do life coaching as well do you teach these kind of techniques to people. Yeah, definitely. I think there's, I'm so fortunate that I became a life coach, because there are parallels between creativity and having performance arts background and life coaching. Because all life coaching is is your life coaching encouraging you to be more creative with your life when you understand more aspects of yourself and you allow yourself to take the pressure off yourself. You, you learn more about you, about you the human being and you the human being is absolutely worthy of love. You start loving yourself a lot more. And that's the thing right when you is that cliche of do what you find out what you love and you'll never work a day in your life, which I think is a little bit shaky. When you find out what you love, you work a lot harder at it, you know, because you know what that's like, you would know that right we're having this conversation now. And when you when you learn to love yourself a lot more and you have that space to be creative with yourself and the way that you think you spend a lot more time investing in yourself rather than you know trying to make yourself feel good in in all these other aspects. I do teach us things like power poses and like those little techniques, but my job as a life coach in that aspect of my life isn't to teach you techniques, it's to allow you to the space to create your own techniques that work for you. You know, I wake up every single morning do my power pose jump out of bed I give myself a nice 10 second countdown and they're the longest 10 seconds of my day. When I wake up, think about it I meditate I love to recap my dreams of my active dreamer and then I'll give myself a countdown to 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, jump up power pose and kick into my day. And that's not to say that I'm one of those annoying super motive super motivated people. It's that's just what resonates with me and someone else has got their own version of that. So how did you become a life coach and do you enjoy it. Love it. Absolutely love it. Always thought about becoming a life coach. I've been a motivational speaker for about six, seven years now. And that's what it took me around the world. And ever since lockdown I moved to London about I think 15 months ago, because I was a little bit tired of the international travel from Australia I was, you know, so takes a while for a plane just to get outside of Australia you know it gets out. So when you leave you leave for quite some time. And I found that the last five years of my life had been spent completely on the road. And I wanted to be on this part of the world in this part of the world because there was something there's just a lot more happening and there's a lot more concentration of human beings all in one place and I love human beings. So, when lockdown hit all my plans went out out the window. No more traveling to be a motivational speaker. And I finally for the first time in half a decade, had a chance to sit and be in one place. Be that on purpose and be that forceful or whatever you know like with a lot of people. And I realized I had always wanted to get my qualification as a life coach and build upon those skills. So it's it's quite a recent thing to be qualified. It was it was it happened during lockdown and I absolutely love it. It's something that brings me a lot of joy and I've got a session right after this as well. So is it so it's a relatively recent thing but something you've been kind of wanting to do for a long time. I think those are often the best things aren't they that great things come to those who wait, I guess. Yeah, and it's interesting you're saying about the yeah lockdown having that big impact I had thought the other day where I was feeling a little bit edgy about going beyond the end of the end of the road because we never go anywhere now. And yeah my daughter was like, well that's your international speaking career put pay to that isn't it. Yeah. But we can be you know as we chatted at the beginning I didn't know where you were in the world and you could have been anywhere and actually now it doesn't matter does it the world has got so small during during this time. Okay, so your life coaching your motivational speaking your workshopping you're doing a lot of different things. What's your like, do you have a kind of grand plan or do you just take each day as it comes what's what's yeah what's the plan. My super super grand plan is a secret. Very close to my my I keep it very very close. There's a lot of value in letting people know what your grand grand plan is because you're more likely to achieve it. There's also a lot of value to what I call an inner circle. And I've got an inner circle of my most trusted confidants who hear about these plans, but to not take away from this lovely chat that we're saying secrets from you pookie the longer term goal in a soft way is to develop an entire You know, program around myself and my inner circle my favorite my favorite favorite people so that we can make the world better, you know, and not we don't need to make this huge impact but if there's any purpose in life, it is to create something bigger and better than yourself. And, you know, many heads and many minds do that together a lot better. And that's that's the grand grand goal. Where that's going to be done and how that's going to be done. That's that's a secret pookie. I can't help you with your secrets they have you tell me what it is I can help you change the world but if it's if it's if it's secret I can't help. But you talk on your website about wanting to kind of shift cultures in in schools and I guess other organizations so that's your kind of general you basically want to make the world a better place. Yeah, like, like us all right I'm not too preoccupied with things like legacy and what are the how people going to remember we when I'm gone I'm here for such a short short period of time. And I just want to be as creative as I can and allow other people to do that as well, and allow them to, to be happier amongst it you know I think happiness is just a byproduct of creativity. I think creativity is such an important aspect of wellness, because it just allows you to be. And like, I think if there's been a thread throughout conversation pookie it's it's that authenticity and you know allowing yourself to be yourself. And when you do that, you know life just gets easier. We put on so many marks, and we put on so many things that I need to be this and this and this I'm a mother and a father and a this summer son. And yeah we play different roles and there's different attributes that we bring to the table on those days but when you, when you spend time with yourself and you allow yourself to be creative on the page or wherever it happens to be you. You come with the better self, you know you come with with true you, and that's a game changer. Yeah, it's hard though isn't it to be yourself. You'd think it'd be the easiest thing in the world but I think it's something a lot of people find incredibly hard. And one of the things I was wondering about and wanting to talk to you about really was that question around things like role models so I've spoken to quite a lot of people during the course of the podcast who've talked about the things that have inspired them to pursue the role models that they have has sometimes been along the lines of there wasn't someone like me when I was a child and I spoke to a psychiatrist earlier this week and she's a Muslim female and there were no such people like that for her to aspire to but hopefully the next generation of Muslim females might think that psychiatry is a potential profession for them and you know that I wonder if that you know whether you had kind of role models or whether you see yourself as a role model. Whether I see, I had a chat with one of my best friends in the world earlier this morning, and he's developing a great project in our hometown, and he told me there's you know there's a, there's a role model wall in this particular project that he's doing. And it's you know famous people from you know the past to do the motivational behind is that my pictures going up and I was like oh gosh that was a, I don't know a watershed moment or like I just had to had to really absorb that moment so people can assume sorry some people think that I am a role model so that's very humbling, but yeah very similar very similar there was no one like me and growing up and I'm not sure if there are any one like me, I'm a fourth generation Pakistani living in London that as far as I know there's not another one of those that exists I know all of the fourth generation Pakistani Australians there's like 30 of them, you know, none of us spoken word poets and none of them are living in London, and we've all got this uniqueness to us. It's how you define that that's up to you. The reason I got into spoken word poetry and performance and being a life coach has been an accident has been a big big big big accident. I just really enjoyed being myself on stage. It was a place where I could really shine. And like I mentioned being two meters tall. I've always wanted to be big. But not in a not in an ego way or anything, but be big in the sense that I feel big and I want to show that off. Why not. And when you're young you know this that has different connotations, but growing up in, you know, regional Australia it had a lot more attached to it. So I had to make myself very small, because I was, I was a different one. So I think poetry and creativity and wellness allowed me to be an authentic version of myself and authentic version of myself is absolutely huge. And so, so we all are you know in our own ways and that's what I try to facilitate. And I guess one of the nice things about you've been everywhere but you've chosen London for now at least it is a place I think where you can be yourself there's a space for everyone here isn't there it's very multicultural. And in your I'm interested to talk to you about your so your visa you mentioned in the discussion beforehand, when when we were organizing this that you just received your, your BRP in the mail tell tell us about this what's this about. That's the BRP is the British residency permit little card with my face on it. That says I'm allowed to live here for the next five years. I'm on the tier one visa which is the global talent exceptional promise visa and it's a tough one to get. I looked up the stats of 2019 2020. And I think for literature, they gave 11 visas out. Yeah. So, it was one of the most. Yeah, all God knows how many pages of my application I had to put in. And it was it was one of the most stressful things that I've done in a while. You just basically pick really like massive goals and be like I'm going to do that I love you like purchase ground slam gonna win that impossible visa mine. Yeah, why not. Why not I don't look, I don't believe in what is it what is it the I don't believe in the law of attraction and all of that stuff and like you know set your goals and you'll get it I do believe in, you know, that you set goals and your brain will start figuring out ways to get there. I don't think the universe is going to do it for you. So I do believe in setting your goals incredibly high and you know your reticule activating system will figure out how to get you there you know. Yeah, yeah. I read a book recently called shoot for the moon I think it was shoot for the moon. But it was basically about the. It was kind of a business book, but it was about the American space program and how they achieved that goal, and how you could take some of what went well with that program and use it within your business to achieve incredible things. And it seemed that essentially the you know one of the key things was having a goal that was almost impossible but not quite. And that when you shoot really high that yeah you more likely to get there and certainly that that was something that I've kind of taken on board in terms of our business right now is well I'm gonna I'm gonna aim unachievably high and just see where we land. Yeah, it's so you should. I know it's. I know I'm going to sound like a typical motivational speaker or whatever but it's such a miracle us being here is the odds of us being here is. What was it I did a video on my YouTube the other day I don't recall the number what is it it's the probability of us being here is to in like one in. To the power of 2.65 million so with 10 with 2.65 million zeros is basically zero, you know, and, you know, to keep a PG because I know some kids listen to this but when when we were conceived. There was all these other little fellas that didn't quite get that they were all shooting for the moon they didn't quite shoot, you know they didn't quite get there. The version whatever it was did and we got here and I think we won the lottery and I think we should keep shooting for the moon and some of us make it some of us don't there's all these other people that have achieved aimed for the same goals that I have and having a podcast with pookie right now. It's not like anything away from them and that's not to say that I'm any more or less special than that. It's just that you need to be in it to win it. Yeah, and I think maybe I think there's something important about being open to opportunities as well isn't there sometimes people have asked me in the past about how, you know, they could do what I do and what's the root to that kind of career. So I'm a bit like you actually where it all feels like it's happened almost accidentally but actually nothing happens really I don't think in my life and many people's lives completely by chance it's about putting yourself out there opening up conversations and being prepared to say yes I think even when yes is maybe a bit scary sometimes. You said in in our in the notes you sent me before our conversation to ask you about talking to strangers waterfalls and talking to strangers are in my notes. I feel like so longer that I feel that out yeah yeah yeah. Talking to strangers is one of my favorite things to do. And London's been a little bit different in the sense that strangers don't talk to each other. Not at all. And that was one thing that took me a while to get my head around. And I miss it. I miss it a lot but it pick as I've learned the culture and the layer of the land. Strangers do talk not so much in lockdown and not so much in social distancing times, but I'm scratching the scratching the surface dog. That's the answer to strangers even in London. That's true. I have seen have you seen how many dog babies there are so many dog babies. Everyone got a little bit bored and they either made dog babies or baby babies. You know there's an actual yeah all the baby babies that are being made a definitely first time parents I swear anyone who already had children would not be making more babies right now. I love my kids, but it's been tough times. And the dog thing is really interesting I was reading the other day how there's this like there's a genuine issue because councils are really struggling to empty the poobins because there's loads more dogs and they you know they're down on staff and down on budget and so yeah poobins are overflowing so it's a problem. But yeah get a dog that's the way to talk to strangers in London. Well it's one of the things that I love about London it's one of the reasons I call it home. It's because what you mentioned earlier about how multicultural it is pookie and how everyone can be be themselves and I remember the first time I came here was in 2016. I was performing at Glastonbury and I landed in London this amazing city I'm going to one of my you know bucket list festivals that I've always wanted to perform at. So life is good. And it took me was it took me probably about half a day to realize wait a second. No one's looking at me. All two meters of me I had a twirly mustache at the time. And no one's looking at me. What on earth is going on. And it was one of the most refreshing things that I've ever felt in my entire life because wherever I go I'm. I still I stick out like a sore thumb or I'm the one that has a different skin tone or whatever it happens to be whatever reason it is good bad in the middle. Yeah. And London doesn't have that and I was like yeah allowed me to be quote unquote a normal person. And that was just yeah my favorite favorite thing about this incredible city. That's cool. And waterfalls tell me about waterfalls. I live for waterfalls. I live for that very first moment. Me the poet should have already figured out a word for this. Okay. I'm not sure when I'm going to but my favorite feeling in the entire world. There's a few up there is seeing a new waterfall for the very first time. Oh wow. Waterfall for the very first time there should be a word for it and if someone's listening go on make make your own word. I think that would be a great word. Thank you so much for joining me of I went to Slovenia a couple of years ago so in non lockdown times I learned in the last few years that I need time out from life. Periodically so it used to happen by ending up in hospital but now I proactively plan it so I've done things like go and learn to draw for a week in the valleys in Wales and things like that but this one year I went to Slovenia on a kind of an activity holiday so we did like and canyoning and climbing and all those kinds of things with a bunch of people I never met before and one day we took mountain bikes up a mountain and we were going up up up like five kilometers up a mountain in order to see this beautiful waterfall at the top of the mountain and when we got there it had been a really dry hot summer it was like 37 degrees so it was a very very tricky tricky journey it got to the top and this waterfall was literally like a little dribble so we had to go home and watch videos of what it would look like at other times of the year but it was like such an anti-climax but it was hilarious because we'd been journeying to this destination and when we got there we just literally fell about laughing because yeah besides waterfalls okay I think somebody needs to create a word for the joy of seeing a new waterfall for the first time why do you like them? Oh it's life right it's life falling yeah it's life falling to the ground and like still being okay there's something about that feeling and there's something about that noise and there's something about just you know the percentage of water that is in me having that resonating feeling between between myself and the water there's just something incredibly beautiful about it I love sitting on the edge of them I love you know I've got problematic risk-taking behavior and you know there's something about edges and there's something about water and there's something that really really makes me feel alive and you know extremely appreciative of this you know. So I definitely recommend the canyoning trip in Slovenia if you love waterfalls and you like risk-taking it's great fun. Slovenia, Croatia I hear there's a lot of like really cool waterfalls in that part of Europe. Yeah amazing and beautiful as well absolutely beautiful. I'm going to bring it back to poetry just because I have a question that came in from my friend Terry on Twitter and so he is an artist and a poet he writes poems and he's sometimes drawn images to go with my poems which is lovely so he says does performance poetry work without an audience and can you use it to make yourself feel better? Yes and yes yes yes okay thanks for your comprehensive answers on that so I'm glad I have. No worries Terry I hope that answers your question. Yeah poetry definitely performance poetry definitely works without an audience I know it sounds counterintuitive but some of my best performances have been alone yeah I've got a vivid imagination and I love imagining a crowd and you know those poems that I perform to my imagination crowd become poems later on but there's still something extremely therapeutic about it. Yeah there's incredibly there's great therapeutic things about having a nice imagination and chilling to the ground. What was the other part of the question? Whether you can use it to make yourself feel better. Oh I think I kind of answered it. I think you probably covered that yeah it does. I found that so one of the reasons why I got in that habit of writing a poem every day so it's partly I set myself this challenge would I get better if I did it a lot but also so in my line of work I end up managing like a lot of disclosures and hearing quite difficult stuff and I don't get any kind of professional supervision or anything like that and I found that I was able every day to put whatever needed to be put into a poem and then it would be done and I could park it and move on and actually it's really important I think when you're dealing with difficult stuff whether it's your own stuff or someone else's for me it was really important to be able to put that stuff to bed before I put myself to bed each day and poetry did allow me to do that. So yeah for me it really helped and then I had a final question and so you integrate Erdo and Punjabi, mess that up, you use different languages in your work and you said you kind of integrate them seamlessly why do you do that and why does it matter like why is that a thing that you're talking about that's not meant to be a controversial question it's a genuine question. Because it's a part of me right it's most definitely a part of me Urdu lives in me Urdu is an incredibly poetic language so too is Punjabi and they're the languages that my ancestors spoke and I believe in you know ancestral energy and you know those those ideas and those concepts that live within inside you you know post-generational trauma is a real thing too you know and I think that the language can be posed you know can transcend generations as well and for me to write in any other language doesn't really make sense my tongue is only twisting around English for such a brief amount of time and I learned Punjabi and Urdu before I learned English. So you go between the different languages in your poems like would a poem have all of those and is it like a conscious thing that you're moving between the languages or is it just that sometimes you find the right word in English and sometimes in Punjabi or yeah um it's it's sometimes I just feel the urge to write in Punjabi and write in Urdu it depends on the mind frame that I mean when I meditate I love meditating before I do a poetry session and when I meditate depending on the mood that I am in on that particular day it means where my head goes and if I happen to be thinking about my grandfather before I do my poetry sessions that's going to take me in a Urdu frame of mind or if I'm thinking about my paternal grandfather I'll think in my Punjabi brain and um that's that's what it comes down to for me if I'm telling the story of myself Urdu and Punjabi have a huge part to play in that. That's really cool and I'm a little bit envious that you have these other languages because sometimes it's about how a word sounds or feels isn't it as well as what it actually means when you're crafting so you basically it's like you know if we were drawing you've got a bigger box of paints than I do but if I can may I make a suggestion yeah talk gibberish it's something I encourage yeah talk gibberish well this last time you talked gibberish because I mean I'm honest but well that leveled the playing field just because I happened to be trilingual and I just very fortunate to have that um doesn't mean that you can't express yourself in ways that I can't you know gibberish I like that I like that not alone driving a car you know speaking to yourself it's there's some value in that yes no I like that I like that a lot okay I I'm we've we've gone everywhere in this conversation thank you so much I've really enjoyed like learning from you and yeah I have about 8000 more questions but you have a life coaching session to get to so what thought would you like to leave people with um personally thank you thank you for allowing this space and thank you for allowing my my lovely brain and your lovely brain to to have a little dance today it's been a pleasure um yeah I felt very comfortable um last thoughts that I'd like to leave people with is you're all creatives every single one of you like regardless of whether you are a doctor or accountant whatever um we're all creatives and take the pressure off yourself it's it's like we said earlier in the conversation it's none of your business what other people think about your creative endeavors and your pursuits it's absolutely none of your business just make it happen because you will feel better for it and if there's only one thing you took out of today take your brain take my brain dump go do a brain dump um maybe right after this as soon as we say goodbye go do a brain dump it's one of the best things you can do