Trevor Noah ON: How to Turn Bad Experiences into Healing Experiences & Finding Calm in Chaos

Now you know that one of my favorite ways to learn is by learning people's stories, by diving into their hearts, their minds, their souls if they're willing to share that and try and understand what we can learn, what we can hear, what we don't understand. Maybe there's a part of their journey that we didn't know enough about. And I've found stories become a huge compass for me in my life, and that's why I try and share those

with you here. And today's guest is someone that I've actually wanted to talk to for a long long time. I would say I'd probably trying to book this podcast for like two years in the making, so I'm very very excited this evening. And just so you know, he's had a crazy busy day. It is officially seven forty five pm on a Monday night when we're recording this in New York City. I'm talking about the one and only someone who needs no introduction, Trevor. Noah, Trevor, thank

you so much for doing this. Thank you very much. I'm very grateful to have you in the seat. Finally, it's good. I'm grateful to be talking to you in person. Most of the time I see you, I'm watching a clip of yours online, so this is nice. No I really appreciate this. And my interview with you that we did when I was out talking about Calm was my favorite interview from that whole experience because I felt that

the questions you asked me were the most reflective. They were pushing me, they were challenging me in a healthy way, and I was just like, oh, well, you know, I want to sit down more and have more of those conversation. Thank you for you so anyway, but I want to start with you. But you know, your book Born at Crime is brilliant, brilliant work, and I don't want to go through the whole book. I'd love for people to

read it if they haven't. But I guess what I'm fascinated by is human experiences when we were children or early on in our lives that shaped us today. And I know you've reflected on that a lot, But now, when you reflect on it today, what are some of the examples of human experiences that you had that you think shaped who you are today? Was one of the earliest memories. Maybe My mom is a Bible scholar, and she reads the Bible every day, not all of it,

but she moves through it every single day. What I've found fascinating is that she's been reading the same book for decades now, and every day she'll send me an email or a message about a scripture and how it pertains to her life as she sees it now in this moment, how it has been, and how she thinks it will be. And what I found particularly fascinating about that is the fact that it's the same book and yet it keeps meaning so many different things to her.

The same story, but it keeps meaning so many different things. And I sometimes think about my life in that way. Is depending on where I am depending on the moment, depending on where I've been and where I'm going, The same experience reveals a different parts of me. The same experience reveals why I am who I am, or why I'm doing what I'm doing, or why I even have an idea of who I am or why I am. And so recently, maybe since you know you're asking me,

what is one of these things? What is something I think back to how not having shaped how I see the world, shaped how I move in the world. You know, not having food, sometimes, not having money, sometimes not even having luxury items sometimes you know, whether it be clothing or cause, whatever it may be. But but recently I've I've found myself going man, so much of how you define yourself is through the lens of having or not having,

particularly because of how you grew up. And so it's it's not about having or not having now, but it's in the small things, you know, It's like how I order food or why I order the food that I do, in the way that I do it is partially because of having or not having. And so I would say that's maybe one of the biggest experiences that I find has um Yeah, has recently been like just shining and

lights on how I grew up. Yeah, that's fascinating. I've often reflected on something similar, and I've called it gifts or gaps they're having or not having. Interesting. So certain gifts that I had growing up, like be handed to me by my parents or by my family. Oh wow, okay, right, then all of the gaps, well, there were gaps, like

there were things that you didn't have. So whether that would be a present parent or a I didn't have the latest Nike sneakers or Nike shoes as we would call it, yeah, exactly, like yeah, ye American, sound like an idiot exactly, Nike and Adidas yes, as I say, added as not Adidas. And so those kind of gaps And obviously those are very crude examples. But and do you find yourself editing those now, Like do you find yourself saying, Okay, I didn't have this, and therefore I

have this behavior. I did have this, and therefore I have this behavior. Do you feel like your behavior today wants an upgrade because of your new lifestyle or a downgrade or you kind of think, no, I'm happy living with the same beliefs and values and systems. That I had from back then. All I'm constantly trying to do is acknowledge them. I try my best to eliminate good

or bad. I really do. And the reason I do that is not because you know, I exist in a spiritual world, although I think we all do, but not because of that. I think of it more because I realized everything and everyone is going to have a good or bad you know. So I have yet to meet a person who doesn't think some parts of their childhood were tough. Yes, but now it's when we compare the toughness that that people then say, oh, actually, I didn't

have it tough. You had it tough and and you know, like people will say to me, oh, man, you grow up so poor in South Africa and you know, growing up in the township and whatever. And I would say to them, I didn't feel like this because I would see, for instance, the slums in India. I got like, man, yo, And and maybe I was lucky, funny enough, because in South Africa we had news that was was global, and because it was, it was so I think it was so broad. I had an awareness, so I didn't think

what I was living through was the worst possible thing. Yes, but now relative to how many other people lived, they've put me down at the bottom of a list. Yes, yes, yes, and yeah, And so I often don't think of it as good or bad. I just try and go, oh, that happened, that didn't happen because of that, I adapted accordingly. You know. So you know there's there's a lot of rainfall, so then this plant will start growing in that way there isn't as much rainfall, the plant will grow another way.

Is it good or is it bad? That's oftentimes something that's subjective because of who runs the world or who tells us how the world should be or isn't or you get what I'm saying. Yeah, no, And I love that you've simplified it as awareness, because that awareness or acknowledgement of keeping it that way is often quite sacred to be able to say no, I'm just observing. I'm just saying and yeah, it's hard. And you reminded me I was. I was nine years old when I first

visited India. I was born and raised in London, but my mum I was actually was born and raised in Yemen, and my father was born and raised in India. But my parents are in what part of India. My father was from Mangalore, which is like southern India, and my mother is from Guda, which is northern India. But she was born and raised in Yemen, so she moved to

London when she was sixteen. But when I went to India for the first time, when I was nine years old, I remember we were in a car and we were not well off, so we weren't staying in a fancy hotel or whatever, but we had enough money to visit, which is significant for the air flight. And I remember going in this car and you just sparked this, and I remember like stopping at a traffic light and just looking out, and I saw these slums, and I mean,

I'd never seen something like that in London. And I saw these little legs poking out of like a barrel of a trash can, and I was just and the legs looked little like of someone my age like around and then slowly I saw her whole body come out and it was this girl and she didn't have any hands, and she'd just been like trying to scrape the bottle.

And I remember being nine years old, and she was probably like maybe the same age maybe a little less like and I remember just looking at her and feeling like totally helpless because I was in a car on the other side of the highway and I can't go and help or I want to, but I also don't know what helped means as a nine year old, and there was one of those experiences that you know, and

then I went back. I remember to my hotel and I remember hearing like someone was arguing about not enough menu options on the buffet, and it was just it was as it was like connecting the dots, as you're saying of like, you know, when you see your experience and then you see someone else's experience, have you found that what you did go through that you ever needed to process it or heal it, or because you had that perspective since day one, that you never needed that

that it was just like, no, this is my experience and I'm used to it. Or were there moments of where you had to revisit and I work on healing every day. You know. I grew up in a world where we almost didn't have the time and all the resources to heal, and I think for a long time I was very comfortable in accepting that as just being my world. Oh that happened, you know, I shrug it off and you keep on moving. Yeah, you shrug it off.

That happened, that happened to you, you know, domestic abuse or okay, poverty, whatever it may be, violence in the community or at home, whatever. Yeah, that happens. You keep it moving. You shrug it off because it is happening, and funny enough, you can grow up. And I knew. I grew up in a world where I created this narrative in my head that it was not bad because

it was happening to everyone. Wow. So now most of my life, you know, is spent acknowledging that it was bad, and then spending a lot of time acknowledging how the bad created coping mechanisms or tools that I then use in my life every single day, and how I can accept those parts of myself whilst also not glorify find the things that happened. Just sometimes I fight with a lot of people when they do this. I fight with

all my friends, by the way, anyone, anyone. I fight from friends with friends back, I fight with anyone, j anyone. I'm never grateful for suffering. I'm never grateful for pain. I'm never I'm not grateful for those things. What I work to be grateful for is the resiliency that makes us in my family and our ability to adapt. But I'm not going to be grateful for a horrible thing that happened to me or the people in my life. Yes,

because we learned how to deal with it. Yeah, you know, I would like to live in a world where my child doesn't have to develop that tool. Let them, yeah, let them, let their tool be. I had to figure out, you know, how to feel good about myself when I couldn't get as many TikTok followers as I want to. Let that fine, let that be their tool. But I

I understand the you know, the esoteric idea. I understand what people are saying sometimes, but I'm I'm almost allergic to it because I think sometimes what it does is it justifies what people are going through, or it justifies the idea that we we don't need to do more, or people aren't going through something bad. Because it creates the best. It makes diamonds, it makes it can create diamonds, and I'm like, yeah, but what it can also do is pulverize a lot of people into dust. Yeah, you know,

and so diamonds are the exception. I'm often careful to think about. You know, Yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure you understand what I mean. Yeah, I mean hearing you. Actually, what I find is that it, at least what I took away from that is that it's the same thought. It's just a deeper level of the same thought, like

it's with more clarity. Like it's like, I think sometimes we hear that idea of be grateful for everything or be grateful for the suffering, and if you don't really think that through, you can try and artificially put that band aid. Maybe that's yeah, yeah, and you just kind of try and like, oh yeah, put the band aid on, and put the band aid on of gratitude gratitude. But

it's like when you internalize then you process it. That's when you can what you're doing, which is like clearly sectioning it off and saying, I'm not grateful for the act of violence, or I'm not grateful for the suffering, as you said, but I can be grateful for the

quality that resilience, etc. Helped me push through. But I think that's to me, that's just a deeper, more refined thought out of practicing gratitude almost Do you think like I've always always wanted to know as, like you know, as a monk, are you forced to just be grateful for everything regardless of what it is. No, I think what you were saying is farm or aligned with what

I would think like as. And I think that there's two parts, right, One is what the philosophy tries to share or state, and then it's what you learn in the practice of that philosophy. So if you try and be grateful, like I just had this, this literally just happened, hence I'm talking about it. I just had a double ingunal hernia surgery, which means that both my hernias, which are on either side of my groin, had to have

incisions in my stomach mesh. Pretty it's not life threatening, but it's massively inconvenient, and I was I didn't work for three weeks. This is my first week back at work and I'm feeling much. The funniest is when you try and you have like a sneeze or a cough. The first time have you had this? Yeah, and then you don't. Funny is when it happens and the first time you don't realize how painful it would be. And now your body doesn't allow you to cough or sneeze

or But it's amazing. It's almost funny to what we're talking about. This is what I mean, right. It is amazing how quickly your body responds to trauma or pain. Yes, it's amazing at how quickly it works to protect you from it. Because if I said you don't sneeze or don't cough for three weeks, it's impossible. Yeah, but one cough and one sneeze when you've had your hernie or any surgery that's abdominal, your body goes. I never want to experience that again. Never. And then you don't you

know exactly exactly. I know exactly what you mean. For the first I was scared that I was going to pop my HARNI yes, yes, exactly, Yeah, you go. Yeah. And so I'm walking around with a pillow, like halfway through the day. My wife's like, what are you doing. I'm like I might laugh, and she's laughing at me and like you can't make me laugh either. Like I was like, I couldn't watch comedy for three weeks because

you can't laugh. It hurt so much. But the reason I brought that up was like, am I grateful I got a hernia? No? Like, why would I be grateful. I've been working out, I eat helped me. I'm like, you know, I'm very I'm a mindful individual, but I ended up with this from whatever, from working out everything. I'm not grateful for the hernia, but I'm grateful for the journey I chose to take during the experience that

has helped me have new appreciations. And so I think the point of at least, I mean, going to what you suggested, like, how would a monk think about gratitude. I don't think any quality or value was embodied by force or by prescription without reflection. Okay, if that makes sense, that anything without reflection is practically okay, yeah, not the right way to right, that makes sense. No, I like that.

I really do fight with a lot of people about this and no, and I you know, I obviously when I say fights, I mean that's how we're using in the South Africa. Funny enough in India as well. I'm sure you know this. When I was in India, I went recently, and when I loved is how people argue about everything and like one of the guys who is there's a friend of mine now and you know, we're arguing back and forth. We're arguing and then like his friends steps in and he's like driver, He's like, I'm

so sorry, driver, please whip I apologize. You know, he's not fighting with you. This is how we do it in India. And I'm like, oh, I was like, this is idea I want to live in this country. Yeah, let's let's get into it. But this is what I I argue with people about sometimes where I say, yeah, I don't have to be grateful for it, yes, because I often say and maybe I'm maybe I'm wrong here, so I see it I have found for myself and

maybe for others. Times we are so attached to the idea of who we are, the story that we've told ourselves, the story that we continue to tell ourselves, who we are, who we wish to be, who we should be. You know, whether it's designed by what our parents always said about us. You're such a quiet child, You're such a lovely person, You're so kind, you're so polite, and you go that I am I should be, then I you know, whatever

it may be. But sometimes I find, I would get so attached to that that then I would be afraid to let go of the things that may be holding me back, because I don't want to lose me, Because who is me? If I don't have the pain, who is me? If I don't have the trauma, who is me? If I don't have the mistrust. I don't want to lose me me? I know me? What if I'm not me? I love me? And if I want to lose me, do I love me? And that's what I find the thing.

So what I've found helps me, you know. And I'll say to some of my friends as I go, I do not need to live my life believing that I would not be me or I do not love me. If I wish for these things to not happen, but I rather go, I would have learned something else. So I learned a different part of my body. I learned how to work through pain. I learned how to move differently because of a hernia. Fine. Oh, I'm grateful that

I can learn. I'm grateful that I can recover. I'm grateful that maybe I even learned how to rest a little bit. Yes, take some time, slow down, jay. But I also sit with it and go. But if I didn't have that hernia, if I didn't have that trauma as a child, I would have had the opportunity to learn something else. So maybe my tool wouldn't have been used on this, it would have been used on something else. And that doesn't diminish me or who I think I am.

It just allows me to almost exist infinitely and go, Well, then I can try to be whatever me exists, you know. And you it's like skin It's like, hey, it's like we're always losing us, is what I think. Yeah, yeah, I mean the cells in our bodies are changing all the time. Yeah, I'm always trying that. And it's scary, that's yeah, it's scary because I think humans look for

certainty as safety, yeah, and security and stability. But I was going to ask you that, like what you started to touch on there, which which which I love, is like identity belonging and these are the things that you talk about so much in your past as well. And what you're basically saying is that, well, if we're open to our identity changing and we're open to our home changing, I mean, do you still feel attached to a sense

of home, like what is home to you today? Like, how would you how do you think about the word home? For me, the true definition of the world home is familiar of the family. It's a repeated interaction. That's all home is to me. You know. The reason you call it my home is because you go back to it every single day. If somebody flipped all the furniture and the house every day, you find you wouldn't if you'd

say it doesn't feel like home, but it is your home. Yes, you know I think the house, yeah, exactly, my friends or my home. The languages you know, I speak on my home, the food I eat in South Africa as my home. But my home starts to grow, it starts to change. You know. I said this to a friend of mine when I got back from India. I said, man, it felt like home. And he's like, what do you India? I said, it's crazy, but it felt like home. You know.

There are parts of daily ways like this feels like home. You know. There are parts of Bangalore, Bengalau where it's like, this feels like home. Do you know what I mean? It's like and people like, how can it feel like home? It's like, well, maybe because part of it is reminiscent, you know, it reminds me of South Africa. We have an Indian population, it's huge, one of the biggest in the world. We have Indian culture. But also it's just

it's it feels familiar. It feels like home, and so for me, that's that's what home means, is a sense of the familiar. You know, you can even experience randomly, if you travel a lot in a hotel that you always frequent, it feels like home. Yeah, so that's what you know, that's what home means for me. Yeah, it's just that you know, and you feel that in New

York too. When you're here, you find that you have that because of that familiarity, you feel like I've always see you, and always it seems to me like you're always home. I don't know why. That's that's a nice thing for you to say. Genuinely, it always seems like I never feel like you. You're uncomfortable, I never feel like you. But I don't know if that's just what you put out, No I would. It's I was going

to define it. It's contextually sharing now, but my definition of home has always been where I feel I'm living my purpose. So that's always been my purpose. So and I genuinely feel like that where I could wake up and be in another city or another country or another seat. And as long as this is my like I feel this, I'm doing my purpose tonight with you. And that's why I'm here. Help me understand. So how would you because I can try to understand about what? What would you

say you feel your purpose is? So my purpose is to help other people find their purpose, Okay, And to me, my purpose is to be a vessel of being able to expose people to a number of different ideas, insights, paths, stories, walks of life so that they can find theirs. I

don't think everyone's purpose looks like mine. I don't think everyone's path looks like mine because I think one of the best things I got when I was a kid, and again it goes back to my childhood experiences, my dad was really worried that I didn't read enough and I would never be interested in reading fiction books at school. So we'd get the fiction books like goose Bumps and then later on Harry Potter and all these books, and I would never read them and I wouldn't have any

interest in them. So my dad was worried and my mum was worried that this kid's not going to read. And now I was back about thirteen going on fourteen, and I still wasn't reading a lot, and so my dad started giving me biographies and autobiographies, and so I read like by the time I was sixteen, I'd read Malcolm X Martin, Luther King. Wow. I was also reading like David Beckham and Drada L. Johnson because I was a massive soccer football fan, and so I started just

like collecting all these stories. And then, as I told you when I said on your show, like I met a monk when I was eighteen, and that was the story that my purpose felt connected to God. And so now I feel I'm like, well, someone's going to listen to Trevor story and feel far more connected interest and that may spark this kid out there to say, hey, maybe that's the kind of direction I want to go in.

I feel like today where we're exposed to the same people online and on TV and streaming, and we're also exposed to the same parts of them, that's true. And my hope is that this podcast, even if you're seeing someone who's famous and popular like yourself. Hopefully people get a deeper insight into someone famous and popular, or they get to meet someone random who's not famous and popular, but it's interesting. So anyway, that's that's my purple. So I feel like if I'm doing that in a city,

in a country, I'm home. And it's because one of the famous scholars and you two about your mother being a scriptural scholar and like such an avid reader. I never met this scholar, but my monk teachers would often quote him, and he said that the only place higher than like the spiritual realm, and he would be poetry, but also you know literal as well, that the only place higher than being in heaven or the virtual realm

is a place you live your purpose. And that idea always like connected with me, because then I was like, oh, so I could be in the middle of chaos but still feel at holds and so it gives me a sense of comfort, and you know, that's what keeps me going when the day is tough, when things are going whatever they are, it's something that comforts me and it

works for me. If you're spending time with loved ones for the holidays, chances are you're going to hear a lot of stories, the ones you love to hear and the ones you've heard too many times. But have you ever wanted to help your loved ones document these stories. Story Worth makes it fun and easy to basically write a book of life memories. Every week, story Work will email your loved one a life related question that you picked from their collection, like what's the bravest thing you've

ever done? What are you most grateful for today? Or what's your happiest memory this year? All they have to do is reply with the story, and then after a year, story or Worth compiles everything into an exquisite hardcover book. The whole process is so simple. Get started with your loved one for the holidays, and before you know it, you'll both be cherishing those timeless stories for generations to come.

If you've been listening to our recent Friday episodes, you'll know how much of an inspiration my mom has been on me for my entire life. So when I heard about story Worth, I was fascinated with how fun and simple it is to create a keepsake book full of all your loved one's wisdom. Story Work is the perfect Christmas gift for all of your elders, and I'm very excited to sit down with the family next Christmas to share each other's stories. Help your family share the story

this holiday season with story Worth. Go to storyworth dot com Forward slash jay today and save ten dollars on your first purchase. That's st o r y w rt dot com. Forward slash jay to save ten dollars on your first purchase storyworth dot com Forward slash jay with you as the one thing. The thread that I've heard in you, which I really appreciated, is like literally three

times you've responded, You've said my friends, my friends. I was talking to my friend, Like this person talks a lot to their friends, which which is really beautiful because you're thinking, wow, that you're a busy person. You're back to back. I mean, I remember I was in I think we were both speaking at the Charger Book Festival. You landed. One night, I message you and I said, Trevor, let's do breakfast. You're like, dude, I leave. I was there for eight hours. You were there for like six

or four. And I was like, I thought I was there for not enough to like I was there for eight hours and you were like, dude, I'm literally leaving tonight. And so you're a busy person. But in this conversation, so many times you said friends friends friends friends, friends, Like yeah, Like how a, who are the friends? What are you talking to them about? Like what's your consistent? See I'm fascinated by that, because so who are the friends?

Predominantly my friends are from South Africa, friends I met doing different things, all all organic meetings, which I'm a sucker for. I'm terrible at making friends, partially because I don't trust people easily. I exist in the world where I can be friendly with many people, but you know, it takes me a while to accept that this person

is actually a part of my life. And I think for a long time it was because and still is sometimes because a I have an idea of putting something on that person where I may need them means that they may disappoint me. And then on the other side of it, them needing me means I could be in the position to disappoint them, you know. And And so as we learn people, I find, we learn what they can and cannot do, we learn who they are or are not. And it's always situational for me, you know,

That's that's when I'll call you like a friend. Is that I know how you are in most situations. Yeah, you know that that that for me is the definition of a friend. So you know, I can be we use it loosely obviously, but you know I can be friends with you and we always meet for lunch, always me for But but then I only know you in one way. My friends, I start to be able to I almost almost store in a vault in my mind. I can say, for a fact, if we're friends. If

Jay was here, this would bother him. He would like that. He would probably say this, and that's why he would act this way. And that's you know, that's that's how I think of my friends. Yeah, so they've been a major part of making me feel at home. You know, my my my job, stand up comedy is a really

lonely career, you know. And I remember talking to a comedian, it was a few weeks ago, talking about how there was like a period where all the stand up comedians we're committing suicide, you know, and would be you'd hear this devastating story of a comedian that everyone loved. They were in a hotel room and then they committed suicide and I was petrified because I always think it can happen to me. You know, I go that if that happened to them, why did it happen? How If I

don't understand, then what is it? Another comedian, another comedian, Another comedian, another comedian. I think being a stand up comedian is a really lonely job in that we're traveling oftentimes alone. We don't have a band, we don't have backup dancers, we don't we don't, we don't travel. Can you imagine? And yet every night you're going out there and you're making people love, you're having fun with them. They come with their families, they come with their friends,

they come with their loved ones. You leave alone and and it's this constant exchange of energy. And what I learned was my my friends became that hub. My friends became my recharge. My friends became the couch I could lie on and say nothing or everything. And thanks partly to technology, I've been able to keep in touch with them.

There's no there's no catching up for us. It's literally a running We've got a WhatsApp thread that is now I'm gonna say, fifteen years old, Like literally I can go back and search something from maybe ten years ago. Sometimes I can go back on the WhatsApp there and go what happened, and I can search and I can find it. That's how long we've had the same group and the same friends and the same everything. And obviously it's grown over time, but that core has kept me.

You know, I always think, did you end up reading Harry Potter? I didn't ever read it. I've watched all the movies. Yeah, oh, do you watched it? Okay, I watch till movies. I know. I'm a big fan act Okay, okay, So I feel like your friends in life or your Hale cruxes. Oh interesting, Okay, you know, yeah, I think that's people. What we do is we break ourselves into parts, and whenever we meet people, we give them a part of ourselves. And some people we give more than we

give others. But we give everyone a different part of ourselves. No one in your life has the same part that another person has. They may seem similar, but they're not. Your mother and father hold different parts of you. Your uncles, your cousins, your brothers, sisters, your friends, whoever it is, they will hold a different parts of you, and the same way Voldemort could use that to come back to life. I feel like we can use that wow to come back to life. Wow. You know what I mean? Yeah,

you're watch a different movie. Yeah, the Book of my Friend. Yeah, And so I always think that is I. I man. Sometimes I can be at my worst. I can be sometimes I can be lost. Really Jay, there will be times when I'll be like, what am I doing? Or why am I? I'm stressed, I'm tired, I'm burnt out, I feel lost. And I can call a friend and no joke. They can say to me, well, the Trevor I know, you know, and and I love that they say that. They don't say this is who you are

or not. They go the Trevor I know found his joy here. Hey. You know, I've noticed that you're always happiest when you do it this way. Hey, I've noticed that you know you stress more when you're in this person. Hey, can I go man? I didn't know that about myself. Well, I didn't hold myself that way because I'm always experiencing all of me still through my lens. But thank you. You freed me, you encouraged me, you held me, you

loved me. And what then happens is I start to find what I need to get back to my purpose, to my passion, to whatever drives me. And that's why my friends are a big part of that. That is that is the core of my world, you know. And and it's funny. My mom even used to say that to me when I was growing up, you know, at a certain age, she said to me, she'd say to me, my friend, you know, and I'd be like, I'm not

your friend, You're my mom. And my mom would say, just because I'm your mom doesn't mean i'm your friend. She said. There are many mothers out there that I'm friends with their child. And she said, I'm your mother and I will always love you as your mother, but you are becoming my friend. And that stuck with me. I realized that friendship is a choice. Every other relation we have isn't, and so even your your relatives can

become your friends or may not be your friends. And I think understanding that illuminates a lot of how you interact with people in the world. Yeah, I really resonate with what I mean, everything you said, But one of the things that stood out was that kind of performance loneliness and my work mainly started with coaching and working

with people. And I work with a lot of musicians and people who tour and travel, not comedians, but artists, and you know, they're performing to like one hundred thousand people, eighty thousand people. And then they would always talk to me about this and I didn't I didn't really have a empathetic experience of it. I could understand it theoretically. And then because most of the events I used to speak out with, like corporate events or like a business

event or things like that. And then a few years ago when I did my first ever event with my audience, and it was in La people who came because they followed my work, not because of anything else. It was only about two thousand people in the audience. And I finished the event and I got into the car and it hit me and I was like, oh, like, this

is chemical. This is definitely a chemical, because you've just had thousands of people shouting your name and like loving everything you say and all this validation and everything else as well you were saying when you were coming, like the dopamine that everything. And then all of a sudden, I was like, wait a minute, this feels weird, Like why do I feel like, you know, a sense of loneliness.

And it was really interesting because I felt like that pretty much the whole and I felt like calling someone yes, and I couldn't because in London it was too early. None of my friends would be away, and so they're eight hours ahead because I'm in LA and I'm going, oh God, wait the hour for my friend to wake up. Two hours. I'm not going to wake him up in

the middle of the night. So I'm waiting there. And then all my friends in LA were just at the event, so I just saw them, and so they're probably like going home, and it was a week night, and so maybe then I'm like, I don't want to And then I get home and my wife would organize a surprise party for me with all my best friends, my closest friends in law, and it was like a relief. It wasn't even a celebration. I was like, there's a sense of relief. I was like, oh, thank God, because I

don't know what. I don't know what I would have done tonight. Man, Like, you know, I understand why people turned to drugs. I understand why people turned to I understood like it was the first time I was like, because you need to numb its. Yeah, you need to numbage because you just don't know what to do with that feeling. And that was the first time I'd felt that way. And I can't imagine, as you were saying, for someone who's on tour and traveling every night. Drug

as I said, my drug was chocolates. I love to up. That was like my I couldn't. It's like my team knew, my people knew. It's like I'll do the show and immediately. And you probably relate to this more because coming from the UK in America, they don't really do it. In South Africa. Our petrol stations, our gas stations, right, they have amazing stores attached to them. Like here, every gas station looks like it's already been robbed. You don't want to pour gas. I don't like it looks terrible. They

all look abandoned. Yeah yeah, yeah, they all look like a ghost. They really did. Yeah. Whereas where we're from, it's like, oh, you go and you buy a pie, you buy some you do buy a few dreams. It's like cooked exactly. It's like, oh, this is life. You can get some groceries on though it's a very normal concept, and that would be me. After every show I would drive, there would be the silence. I couldn't listen to music. I couldn't. My mind would just be It's like I

could hear everybody, but they were gone. And then I would go in and then I would buy chocolate would be my thing, it immediately, and then I I you know, over the years, I would read and I'd started learning that you know, chocolate, the dopamine, the sugar, one of these things. I was I was correcting a chemical thing without realizing it, because it is a it is a shock on your body. Everyone nothing. Yeah, it's it's so

fascinating that that that experience. And I'm sure people have that in different ways in their life, Like you don't have to be a performance two thousands of people to experience that. I think people experienced that in lots of different ways. It's beautiful that you've been able to continue this tenure WhatsApp chat like that's you know, that's like a brilliant achievement. How did you do in such a

way that when you became unrelatable to people? Like, how has that affected your friendships, your life, your relationships, Because at one point. I'm guessing. You know, when when you come to America, you crush on the Daily Show, things are going great, you know, times one hundred most influential people like, crushing took some time. But yeah, okay, no, no, of course, no, no, no no, no, it tooks it. I mean it too, like it actually goes into your goes

into your question. Yeah, And I just think that there's an interesting thing about being so grounded and like, I'm enjoying this conversation. It's it's fun. We're like just having a real conversation. But at the same time, to a lot of people externally, you can start becoming more unrelatable. So what's interesting is the reason I the reason I put it in, the reason I say the crushing wasn't instant.

When you're on a journey, people oftentimes will remember the beginning of the journey and they will define the journey by the way it currently is or how it ended. You know, you lived a good life because of how your life ended. If somebody is, you know, really poor for eighty years, then they win the lottery at eighty and then they buy their family stuff and they have a good People were like, man, it was tough body. We had a good life, did they? Though it's more like, oh,

we remember that. That ending is what we often remember. And to your point of relatable, My journey was really interesting, particularly in America, because for many months, maybe even a year and a bit, I was hated, you know, by many people. Don't get me wrong, there many people who loved me, but it was such a visceral understandable, but this will response to me as a concept, who are you? How dare you? You? On the show what you know?

And you're trying to establish imagine trying to meet people for the first time, but they have an idea of you, and they've already decided what the idea of you is, and so you you you can't even relate or make yourself relatable to them, and then overnight, all of a sudden, people go, are you crushing it? It's a it's a it's a really weird space to be in because it's it's terrible, and then it's not. But your brain doesn't

shift that quickly. I remember learning once that the human brain and the human body aren't necessarily always on the same page. If you're running from danger, if there's if there's a threat and you run from the danger. Even when the danger subsides, your body's still in the danger. And yeah, I think I think they talk about something similar in the book The body keeps the score, but your body's still there, and your mind goes, hah, all right, oh okay, I'm done. Your body's like, oh hot, pumping,

you know, veins, throbbing, everything is still happening. And you know that that was part of my experience. But what was interesting was to your points of relatable. I didn't even have a moment to exist in relatable. It was stranger. You know, don't like different, weird? Why do you say words the way you do? You know? What is aluminium? All these things coming together and then oh, yeah, our guy,

you know which I'm grateful for internally grateful. I was telling my people everyone, I go, yo, do not forget, Do not forget how hard this was, Do not forget, Do not take it for granted. But what happens is it's not that you don't become relatable or you aren't relatable, or it's it's it's how people relate to you. They have one idea of who you are, they have one idea of of how you are, and It's understandable because

of how they interact with you. You know. I I have two younger brothers, both, in my opinion, far wiser than I'll ever be. Always, always, you know, I'll custom out and say, you guys, you guys cheated because you like took what I did and then you just like you leap frogged me, you know. And and my youngest

brother said one of the most beautiful things. One day, we were trying to have dinner as a family, and we're taking a quiet moment, and you know, someone came over to the table and they're like, hey, can I get a selfie? And and this is happening in the dinner and you know, and and and someone who was with us said, oh, man, that must get annoying. And I was like, well, I get it. And I said, I just don't understand the familiarity and the I don't understand it truly. And my brother said one of the

most interesting things. He said, No, what you're not understanding is a disconnect in your relationship, in the relatability. He said, You've met them, and they've talked to you, and you've had a conversation with them, and so they've built up a relationship with you, but they don't understand that you haven't been building up the same relationship with them. And so they, he said, they're reacting to you as naturally as they would had you been conversating with them constantly.

And so he said, if anything, they're acting normally, you're acting weird because they go, hey, Trevor, and You're like, who the hell are you? And I'm like, what do you mean? We've been friends for seven years? What's you on TV? Every day? And just through that Lens he helped me understand that it's it's that they were misrelating, yes, And that's sometimes what happens to us, I think as

people is we're misrelating. We have an idea of the thing that isn't incorrect from our point of view, yes, but is incorrect from the other person's points of view. And so that's what creates the conflict, That's what creates the disconnect, and that's what creates the loneliness, that's what creates the isolation, that's what creates the you know, yeah, it creates an environment that doesn't lend itself to familiarity,

to trust, to relaxation. I think that's where it becomes even more important to find your grounding, to find your space, to find you. Like my friends know me in the group, I'm notorious as the vacation guy. I'm the holiday guy. Really, I'm like, where are we going? What are we doing? We're making this happen. I shoot out a list and everything because I don't live back home. Yes, they all do.

So I've learned they can take for granted the fact that we will see each other, and they might go like, oh, did we plan anything for December? Oh we didn't. Oh, well, well we'll do. No. I can't take it for granted, and so they know I go every year, I'm like, guys, what are we doing? And what are we doing here? Three times a year we have to be in the same place. And doesn't mean we're going somewhere fancy. No, we might just find a place a house and we

sit together and that's what it's going to be. But I make it happen because of that relats ability, because that is where I can exist. They can exist. I can exist, they can exist, you know. Because sometimes what's funny is it can go the other way for me. Sometimes I will completely be myself with people and they won't know what to do with it because they only have one idea of me. Yeah, you know. Yeah, so

they'll meet me and travel, hey how are you? Hey, hey buddy, gayboll And if I say something back and they say, hey, wait what was that, I'm like, oh, this is all of me. Yeah, they don't have a reference point, and I get that, and so I yeah, it's it's it's really interesting when you exist in a one dimensional space in terms of you know, you know, I guess it would be unidirectional, just like you know, it's just going in that one direction as opposed to

it coming back and going you know, yeah, definitely. That's such a great answer. I'm one of those people that like, generally, if I get enough time to meet someone, or if I know someone's going to be in my life for an extended period of time, i I hire a new person on my team or something like that, I try and show them all of me very quick. I don't know one of those people that are like, Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna be as jokey as I usually am. I'm gonna expose you to how I choked

to my wife, Like interest. And I do that not as a not as I definitely do it as a conscious It's not like it happens. It's a conscious attempt at trying to figure out whether this person actually wants to be around me or lifting, because I'd rather quickly figure out whether I feel chemistry with someone yes, as opposed to wait to reveal my full self for them to what you said to then let them down and then they're like, oh, George, I didn't know you liked it.

And so I usually warn people I'm like, hey, I make a lot more jokes in person than I do on Instagram. And so if I'm like and I'm banned to a lot because of Britain, and me and my wife will ban to a lot. So most people think me and my wife are going to get a divorced every other day because it is like the one we talked to each other because we're both from England. I want people to be exposed to that, not because I want them to appreciate you or like, I just want

to know quickly whether whether you vibe with you. Okay, but but aren't you ever concerned going the other way? Because you may go this is me, this is all of me. Yeah, not, depending on your position in life. The person may be a certain way to you. Sure based on that Sure, because they feel they can't and then they reveal themselves, Then what do you do when they reveal themselves in a positive or like a challenge

challenging way. In a challenging way, then well, that's what I'm saying that it's people that I think are going to be in my life for a longer period of time. And then if it's if it's a team member where we don't get along, then we can both move on and go out separate ways. I wouldn't do it with someone that I am not getting enough quality time. Does a monk fire someone? How does the monk fire as well? I'm not a monk anymore. I'm I'd love to know how it's a monk fight it is? You know what?

The thing about it is so uncomfortable? Oh it is okay. I thought maybe as a monk it was like super chill and you just come in and you go. In life, everything is happening to you. You know, everything that seems bad could be good, and so this as me letting you go. But rather think of this as me setting you free. Yeah, I think maybe it would be something more surrender then you have to end it. That would be brilliant, But it isn't comfortable. It's so as in I've also been let go, so I know what it

feels like. Like I've in in a position where I think I've been let go poorly, where it hasn't been handled well where and I'm very clear on how like having one skill set doesn't just naturally apply to everything. Being a monk doesn't make me good at recruiting people or letting go of people. Those are not transferable skills. There's certain elements of compassion and empathy, but it doesn't make you good at the start that it will cover everything,

and it doesn't. It doesn't right, Like I think, to give you a very practical example, I felt for a lot of a long time that people needed love. Like I felt for a long time that I believe that if you love people then they will be happy and they will feel good about stuff. And I used to believe that. And after trying to express love to people even in the way they want it so, not even unconsciously, but I would try and figure out, how does this person receive love? Okay, let me give them love in

the way they want to receive love. I've realized that so many people were not even operating on that level. Yeah, that all they needed was safety, like they just needed a base level of safety. They weren't They couldn't even accept or receive love because that was such a lofty, deep idea. It's like they didn't understand how someone who doesn't know them very well could express deep love for them because they've never experienced that before. How do you

find the correct safety to convey? And what I mean by that is we all have a different idea of what safety means, you know, going back to your idea of you know, when you were saying stability and stability earlier in the conversation. One of the wildest discoveries I made in therapy was where I was speaking to my therapist and I realized I am particularly comfortable in chaos.

That is where I'm most comfortable. You know, if you're in an airport and you know flights are being canceled and you know everything's being delayed, you want me rolling with you like I'm that is me problem. I solve it. I genuinely I find a beautiful hum of peace that comes over me when there is chaos, traffic, everything caused. That's where I'm comfortable. And yet the flip I also discovered was true is that when there's calm, now I'm

in chaos. Wow. You know. And so I learned that I felt safest where most people didn't, and I felt the least safe where most people would know. And I learned a lot of that came because growing up in a home where there was domestic abuse. You you know, the silence meant you didn't know anything could happen at any moment. What's going on? What's happening? You don't know, you don't know. But when something is happening, all you have to do is deal with it. Yeah. Wow, I

mean that, do you get? Yeah? I mean I mean, but that's like, that's such a challenging, difficult idea for people to grasp because what you're saying is that I can hear gunshots at least I know, well, I know who is coming from, correct, Yeah? Yeah, exactly, I know where to run away too from exactly. You get what I'm saying. Yeah, No, no, I fully get what you're saying.

But I'm just saying that that is a challenging concept for people to get around because if you've not been brought, if you've not been raised in a space like that, like, that's so much to do with your upbringing. Yeah, but that's what I mean by safety. So that's why I'm a yeah. Yeah, So how do you even find that? Because you know, I understand what you mean by love, because again, how we process it, what our languages are,

et cetera, or so specific. But even safety, you know, my my idea of safety isn't the same as your idea. Of course, you know whether it will be in a personal relationship, in a romantic relationship. You know. Some people's idea of safety is hey, you you text me every day, and you exactly you call me to make sure I got home and you. Another person's idea of safety is you leave me alone when I'm busy. That makes me feel safe. You take care of yourself, makes me feel safe,

you know what I mean. So how do you then find what the person's idea of safety is? Well, I think it's what you just said that there's a hierarchy of needs, right, and everyone has their different like you said, like the base level, and I'm looking at the vaders, which is what I studied as a monk, and it says that the base level of anyone's motivator is fear and anxiety, right, Like people get motivated by fear and anxiety. So the lack of fear and anxiety is a sense

of safety. Right. Higher than that is someone who's motivated by results or goals, so they feel safe when they're moving towards something. They feel safe when they're driving towards

a deadline that is clear and active. Another level is tranquility and calm, And it's like someone feels safe when they feel clarity, okay, right, and so in similar what you're saying, like, there's so I think what I realized though, was that safety was such a base need of human right that until you fulfill that need, it love just and this is just experience, right, I'm saying this from

my experience. I just felt like opening my heart to people, or like trying to give love to people in a very genuine way, I just felt that it couldn't fully be received because I realized most people have probably never received love, even maybe from their parents or their family, or from the people they expected to love them. So when someone unexpected comes along and tries to show you love, it's like what is it? What does he want? Or what is this going on? Or you know, where does

this land? And so I was like all right, like real it back, you know, real it back it just figure out safety first. Anyway, that was at least a personal experience. But but but why did we get there? We got there because we're talking about this idea with you of like you know, talking about relatability. Yeah, and we're moving through to you know, safety and love and then meeting people, and you're talking about how you will reveal all of yourself early on that so that the

person I guess is in the safest space. Really yeah, and that's only my method. Again, I'm not saying that's right or wrong. It's just kind of and even what you said earlier, like you said, like Jay, you always feel safe. I think I feel the opposite too. I feel most unsafe when I think I'm somewhere and I

don't have a purpose there. Okay, So if I get invited to a place where I don't feel I have any purpose, you will see me just like I will last like thirty minutes and then I will leave because I'm just like, what am I going to do here? I'm not just going to shoot the breeze? So do you purpose them not doing being in my purpose? Yeah? Yeah, So when I'm in a space like that, I will, I will look at I will be there. Of course I can. I can have conversations and I can talk

and everything else. You're not crying in a corner. No, No, yeah, I say do you do? Then what I'm asking is do you have to work on that? Yes? Absolutely, Yeah, because it's a discomfort. Yes, it's a discomfort that I have to work on, which is, well, I don't know why I'm here, I don't know what my purpose is. And then and then sometimes my way of talking to myself is you never know. There may be something here, and you have to be open today if if if I live, if I sit here and I'm close to that,

then I may never discover anything. If I'm open to it, maybe I'll discover something. Maybe I won't. How do you find the balance between knowing when to walk away and when the opportunity may present itself. I feel like that's the greatest challenge in life, because sometimes you find yourself at an event, whatever it may be a work event of friends, whatever it may be. You go, ah, man, i'm not having fun here. I'm not having a good time.

I'm not. And then as you say the one idea, maybe hey, stay in this discomforts and what may come from it is something special, which oftentimes can happen. The flip is true as well. I stayed there for too long. I stayed in that relationship for too long. I stayed at that job for too long. I stayed in that environment for too long. It was discomfit, and I thought

I was going to get something out of it. I often hear people saying that even you know, they'll they'll you know, friends, colleagues, strangers, Sometimes I'll meet they'll say, yeah, but I've just I've been doing it for so long now and I just feel like maybe there's there's there's something and you know. And then I will say and I don't know if even if if I'm right, So I go, maybe the lesson you're learning is when to walk away or how to walk But I don't even

know this myself. You know, you may leave the thing that that's makes me uncomfortable because of that, you have a certain er bit of experience totally, and you go, oh, that's why I left, because this was supposed to happen. You were always confirmed the confirmation bias absolutely, or you stay and then something happens and you go like, ah, I was always supposed to stay. So how do you how do you? How do you know? Or do you

accept the fact that you don't know? I think that's I think you literally just answer you to us on the our journey, all right, just yeah, yeah, no, No, You're spot on. You don't know, you don't know, right, like, and you can only you can. I think it's also a matter of time, right I think if I was and this is again personal, but there's a difference between like if we got here on this beautiful setup that we have that you're admiring and you're saying you like

the energy, and how I do too. If we got here on Friday, which was when we first started filming here, if I didn't like it on Friday, if I didn't like the energy, and I could tell the guests in like the energy, I would have shifted the room immediately because I'm not going to wait around. If I'm clear

on something or I'm sensing it. I think jobs are harder because they probably exactly and so I think when things are tied to your survival, we tend to spend longer in them than we probably should because that safety again and security is so tied to that. And I think that's why relationships, as you've rightly pointed out homes, like I was just talking my uncle and aunt, like, you know, my grandparents have passed away. They've moved on, and you know they've been wanting to move home, they've

said for many, many years, but now they don't. They live in London and they have a house and they want to they want to move to a different environment they've always wanted. But now they're like, no, no, but all our memories in this house, right, And so there's that, there's that familiarity, and they're like, no, I don't want to leave, even though I don't love this house as a structure and as a space, I don't want to leave.

And I think that's what we do with people. Yeah, but I guess that's a good question for you that you've you've obviously had to find home again and again you've continued to find it in yourself, Like how have you let go of previous identities and personalities and are you because that's where we started. Like I think I've had to do that a lot of times, Like even when you said Monk, and I always say, well, I'm not anymore. And the reason I say that is because I had to let go of so many parts of

that identity that don't serve me anymore. There are lots of parts of that identity that serve me massively, there are lots of parts of that identity that don't serve me anymore. Same with same with anything, like any work I've done. So I guess today when you're deciding who

you want to be. One of the things I've taken away from this episode for sure I'm talking to you, and I've genuinely enjoyed talking to you is we know you're a very smart, intellectual, thoughtful person about what's happening in the world world. But what I find really beautiful and refreshing is that today you're doing the same things internally on your inner world. Has that always been a habit?

You even said today when you walked in before we even started recording, you were like day, when I've been on all day, I need to just reflect and decompress and think about stuff. Has that always been a habit? Is there a method you use, is there an approach or is it just something you naturally just go into

the inner world. Although I'm not particularly religious, I would have to say growing up religious installed within me the idea that I could have conversations with myself and they were necessary in order for me to process what I was going through. You know, That's what prayer is, in my opinion. It's a conversation that you are having multiple

times a day. You are remembering, you are thinking, you are discussing, you are exposing your vulnerabilities, you are whatever it may be you are you're doing in doing that As a little child, you know, getting on my knees and praying. One of my favorite lessons that my mom taught me was that your relationship with God is your relationship with God. You know, she if I was in trouble, she wouldn't say to me, pray in front of me, let me hear you pray. No, She'd be like you

and go and pray. And so what I am grateful for in that experience was that my relationship with God was then always my relationship with God. It was my conversation. It wasn't performative. It wasn't I remember as a little kid, she's like asking random questions. You know. I'd go to bed and I'd be like, oh god, a man, why do I break things all the time? Why? I don't know what it is? Like, I mean, you were there with me, I don't know why. Why don't you stop me? Sometimes?

Like you know, you never stop me. I'll just be there as a kid, and I would I don't want to break things. But then I broke it and I knew it was going to break. And now Mom's angry, and please try and make it not as angry. But I'd have these conversations and I would feel different afterwards. I would feel better. I feel like I processed something. And that is an element of prayer that I think

a lot of people take for granted. Is that processing of the information that's oftentimes just running away in your head, just rarely running away in your head. In that I just try and ask questions. I let's tell people, you know, I go like, I don't know. If I don't think I'm smart, I think I'm I think I am more and more confident in being an idiot to be honest with you. You know, I have friends who I consider smart because I can ask them about anything, you know.

I have friends who know about, you know, quantum gravity and whatever it is, space books. I always got, like you're reading spacebooks again. I have friends who know about, you know, the deepest trenches of football history. I know friends who they're smart in my opinion, but I'm proud to say I'm an idiot. And so when you let go of that, sometimes what I find is I I then enjoy asking questions. Yeah, you know, I and most of my work, that's what I'm doing, is I'm asking questions.

As a comedian, I'm asking questions of how we live in society. Why do we accept certain things the way we do? And I think it's funny that we do. And have you ever noticed how? And that's what a lot of comedians do. They're asking a question about something that everybody accepts as the norm. You know. I do it in my job on the Daily Show. I ask questions about how people see politics and why they see politics, and you know, whatever it may be. I ask questions,

you know. I remember one day someone said to me, some random person who said to me it's like, oh, it's crazy. You know, you came to this country and you know, as a Democrat, you probably say, whoa, wait, what do you mean as a democrat? In my country, we don't have that. Yeah, in many political parties, we're not forced into a binary system that's already. You don't ask a question, you made an assumption, you know. And so even that has helped me. Where I come from,

there is not just this or that. Yeah, in America's it has like a very very play hitting vibe to it. It's like, look what that party is doing. I look at that and it's like, yeah, but what you know what I mean, if you're voting for these things, shouldn't you be concerned about what you're going for? Wow to your party? Yeah, you know. And so but as a comedian, I'm going like, where are the jokes. I'll follow the jokes. I'll tell you that much, because that's what my purposes

in that moment. Yea. And this goes to everything I do in life. You know, I've been lucky enough to work on different projects like yourself. You know, I work in tech and work with Microsoft and things. Funny that I remember the presidence of the company one of the city's like, we're going to call you the chief questions off for stuff that's so good because I've been lucky, and you know, I love tech, and a lot of

tech is asking questions. A lot of what I do in life is enjoying asking questions and becoming less afraid of how stupid you may seem or feel asking the question. Yeah,

that's oftentimes what I see with kids. The reason they learn as quickly as they do, it's not just because of their brains, but I feel like it's because they don't have an idea of who they all aren't supposed to be, and so they ask questions, and they ask questions, and they ask questions, and they ask questions, and they ask questions and they ask questions, and so what happens is a they get answers, but be they discover that the people they're asking the questions off sometimes don't even

have the answer. They just assumed an idea or the way, you know, the way the world was. And I often remind myself that if if I become too tied to the idea of being smart or being informed or knowing, then I'm trapped. I would rather say I try to be smart. I try to be informed. But if there's one thing I know, I am, well, it's an idiot, and there's nothing wrong with that. And I enjoy it, you know, because then I can be the smartest idiot you've ever met, and I can be the most informed

idiot you've ever met. And I'm fine with that because I'm just trying to be the most natural me. That's a that's a good identity. One thing I noticed about the way you ask questions in our interview when you interview me, but also today, and something I appreciate and there is it's rare as I think most people. When you were saying, like someone assumed you're a democrat, I think most people ask questions in order to either agree or disagree with what comes out the other person's mouth.

But we ask our best questions when we simply ask to learn and infer. And so now it's not asking to see whether we are on the same page. You're just asking to know, because I think what we often do is we ask a question and even if the base answer kind of sounds similar, we go, oh, we're on the same page, like oh me, and you you know, we're like we have the same values, and it's like, well, no, we don't. We just haven't dug deep enough. And I

think we're often not patient. And I think that's why in so many relationships, in our lives and everywhere what you said, you said, a friend is someone who I know how they'd be in most situations. And I think when you quickly go oh, yeah, yeah, we have the same values, we have the same belief system, that's often incorrect because we just haven't asked enough questions to infer because we really want to feel that hidden us. Yeah that does. Actually I feel like that when you ask questions.

And so I'm throwing that back at you, saying when you ask questions. So going back to what we were talking about about being an outsider, being an insider, where do I find a home? Where do I find familiar familiarity? You are familiar with this to a certain degree because of moving out of the UK, going to India, you know, going on that journey, and then moving from then then

coming to America. It's another one thing that happens to you when you leave home is that you have to then either find home or you have to understand why this is home, or you have to become comfortable in a new space so that it will be your new home. And the best way to do that is by understanding. Is what I find oftentimes you aren't forced to understand if you are in the majority, If the norm is your world, you're fine. Yeah. If everyone has your accents, well,

then you don't need to understand another accent. If everybody is your skin color, you don't need to understand another skin color. Everybody's your culture, if everybody is your language, if everybody's your you know, socio economic class, whatever it may be, then you don't need to understand. And so what I've grown up with because I grew up with a black woman pass a woman being my mother, white man swissman being my father, family mixed country, broken up,

separated because of class, because of race. Predominantly, I found myself often having to understand whatever it was language, culture, music, food, I did I have to understand. And what I've found is that is often the fastest path to home is just understanding. You know, hammock is a terrible bed unless you understand how to sleep in it. And I think the same goes for everyone and everything. Foreign country doesn't feel like home until you understand the language, and then

all of a sudden things start to work. Yeah, you know, so when I ask a question of you, as Jay, I genuinely do it to understand, you know, because you know with you, I agree, and I'm genuine trying to understand more because the things I may disagree with, Funny enough, more is like how I'm living my life, and I'm trying to understand more about like how you see and then how do I you know, it's not to agree or disagree, but more to be like, oh I needn't

understand this. And then sometimes it'll be with people where I don't agree with them, So I want to understand. I see the world and it seems so clear to me. Can you explain why you don't see what I'm seeing? Yeah?

You know, that's that's oftentimes what plagues me as as a person is I think we live in a world now where there are fewer and fewer experiences that we all relate to or that we've all gone through, and so wild it's great for individualism, and it's great for us, you know, living in our own niche, it has robbed us of a collective understanding. And so whether it's in politics or whether it's in society or whatever it is.

You know, I think it's healthy to disagree, Like you know, Jay, I don't think that that's that, But it's another thing to say, you know, that's my parking. No, that's my parking, versus that's my parking. What parking? Wait, you don't see a parking. Well. Now we're in a bigger and that's why I feel like society is moving towards as as everything, entertainment, social media, all these things become more niche. I think

we're losing that collective space to be in. And so because I've always been outside, because I've never been part of I've always been forced to understand why do you do that? Why do you say that? How do you eat this? You know? So, when I'm in India and I'm eating and I go, okay, can you help me, help me understand why you use your hand the way you do? What are you trying to? Okay? Great chopsticks?

For the first time, I have to all these things as opposed to assuming or even not being willing to. So maybe that's why I ask a question the way I do is because I just don't understand why you see the world the way you do, and once I do, I now get to hold two truths. I get to see how you see the world. I get to know how I see the world, and I may augment my way of seeing it, or I'll be able to help you understand why I see it the way I do because I now understand yours. I don't think I can

do that if I if I don't ask. Absolutely, That's exactly what I'm trying to say, is that when I was saying learned, that's what I mean. Understand, Like you're asking to learn, You're asking to understand. There's not an asking to say, yes, we're the same or nowhere not the same. And I've read somewhere when when I was looking at this interview about how you were saying like, because you've never felt of something, you've always felt outside,

you've always been able to see the full picture. And I was literally just saying this today that I grew up in a home where my par 's really agreed on anything, and I was always the mediator. Interesting, and so I would sit and listen to my mom and I would understand how she felt, and then I'd sit and listen to my dad and I always had an equal level of love and respect for them from their individual relationship with me, even though collectively they didn't they

didn't add it together. And I found that when I read that about you, I was wanting to ask you about it because I was like, that's where I feel happier, learning about people and trying to understand people, because I could see both my mom and dad were right in so many ways, Like I would sit with my mom and be like, how does dad not see that? And I would sit with Dad and be like how does mom not see that? Like how are we missing this part of the picture? And I felt miserably at trying

to help the situations. But I think that's partly why I do what I do today, because so much of me was exposed to different opinions. So when I when I read that about you, I was like, I'd love to know how did you deal with that feeling? Like how did you deal with the idea? And I know you're saying it flippantly in conversation, but like, how did you deal with the pressure and the idea that you failed to reconcile? What was happening between the two of them?

I think two me years to accept that and to feel that way, because I think when you're a kid, it's what you said, you just accept that this is normality. So when I was a kid, I didn't even think of it. So this is normal. Parents don't get along. I want to help my mom out. I'm a good son. I want to help my dad out. You know, we're

figuring it out. And i'd probably say I spent a good part of like at least my adult life, so say from well, maybe not even adult, maybe since I was ten, maybe from ten to twenty one, like probably eleven years trying to fix that and trying to think I could fix that or that we could improve it.

And while things got better. Sorry, just ye to your point, because you were trying to create the safety because as a child, I feel like there are a few things that make you feel less safe than your two parental figures. You know. Sorry, but carry on. No, no, no, it's interesting. I'm just saying, going back to the safety that you're saying. You're trying to make your walls because love didn't work. It didn't It didn't matter how many Valentine's Days there were,

It didn't matter how many romantic gestures. It didn't matter saying I love you or a love letter, but it was safety. Yeah, And so I was trying that probably for a good eleven years, and then I think when I went off to the monastery, was still there in my heart. And then I think while I was there, I was like, Okay, I have to let go of this because it's not my responsibility, it's not my ability.

I don't have the powers to fix this, and that's okay, and that if I'm able to let go of this, then not only would things improved there, I can help people who want to be helped as well. And I think that was a whole, like, probably like a fifteen year journey to get to that, because otherwise you hold it as your like, your like responsibility, like this is

my job almost. And I think that's what many of us have done, is we have been burdened with and oftentimes subconsciously a job or a role that our parents

didn't realize they were burdening us with. Wow, you know, oftentimes I find it so interesting how the loudest parents who aren't good at reading a room will have the most shy child, you know, and and then the parents who aren't good at being outgoing, and they'll have kids who are running and screaming and greeting everybody and talking to them because there's this interesting thing that happens in nature where I feel like, you know, the child tries

to correct for what the parent may be lacking. Wow, you know. And it's it's really fascinating that you say that, Yeah, because what happens is, over time, you get to an age where then you have to take off you know, that armor, take off that cape, take off that that designation, and understand that now you've lived that, you've gained the tools from it. It's become a lot of who you

are today, but you have to let it go. And that that I find is terrifying, because the only thing scarier than accepting who we are is accepting that we don't know who we are going to be when we let go of the things that I've made us who we are today. Yeah, And that's that not knowing as simple as leaving a party early. It's that same feeling of discomfort of like, did I make the right choice if I stayed here? Would it have? If I kept

that role? Would it have? And Yeah, I was talking to a client the other day and she said something really interesting. She was saying, I just never grew up with an opinion. She goes, I've just never really had an opinion. And I've known her for some time, so it was a fairly it was a progressed conversation. It wasn't the first time and we were talking about it.

She was saying, well, I've never really had an opinion on this or that, and so when people ask me what I want to do, or when my partner asked me what I want to do, I kind of like go along with it. But now I'm starting the question like am I living my life or someone else's. And it was really interesting because we were really getting into it, and I started talking to her about her parents and family dynamic, and she said something really phenomenal to me.

She said that my brother and my dad always used to argue and I was the peacemaker, and she goes, when I felt pain, I never shared it because it would create more complexity, and so I accept that. She came to the conclusion that the reason I don't have an opinion is because it disturbs the peace. And when I don't have an opinion, the piece is kept and

I was. You know, those are the kind of things that we're saying, Like we take the designation of peacemaker, you take the role in the designation of whatever I was. Sometimes the comedians take on the role of being a comedian because you kind of get her and the laugh and everyone, you know. And so I think these roles that you're talking about are really it's a really beautiful way that you said it. That we adopt this job and this role and this I think I think we do,

and I often think sometimes it is necessary. Of course, I think it may be evolutionary whatever it is. You know. Again, That's why I don't go to it's bad, it's good. I go it is. It just is, And in understanding it, I realize there's nothing wrong with it being as long as you know when to let it go, you know. I often think that about seat belts when I'm in a call on a plane. Sometimes I forget that I'm wearing the seatbelt. I love wearing my seat belts, especially

on a plane. I buckle it long before they tell I'm like in strapped. I don't know what it is. I love it even when you see it go off, that you know when they'll turn the seatbelt like on I'm like, what do you mean on it? The whole flight, I will be wearing the seatbelt, thank you very much. And what will happen? Sometimes I'm so comfortable as been

the whole time. When we land, we chill, I don't rush to get my bags any of that, and then I'll stand and the seatbelt will pull me and it's always, like I love to myself, it always happens because it's because it's really down and it just you know, as I jump, I was like, pulls me back down, ias giggle and I unbuckle it. And I found myself thinking the one that I was like, it's amazing, how this

this device is brilliant. It saves your life. You know, you know, car crash, you know you're you know, plane crash on a runway or whatever. I don't know how much you'll save you a big one, but still, you know, but this thing is it holds you. Wow, it's helping you stay in tech. It's helping you stay in the place you need to be in. But if you don't know how to let it go when you need to,

now you're trapped. And so that's what I'm constantly trying to work on, which is so hard to It's like, man, I go like, okay, all right, my sa my safety belt, my seat belt, all right. It might be my personality. It might be the way I see the world. It

might be how I've learned to interact with us. It might be anything how I eat, how I think, what I do, what I don't when I love what I wore, all these things and I get that, and I'm always just try and ask myself, I, okay, all right, is this still your seat belts or has it now become a trapping? And I always just have to ask myself that question. It's extremely difficult, you know. You just go around and around, and sometimes I do you know, yeah, a lot of the time, I'll i'll, I'll be chilly.

Sometimes I don't think I can watch Harry Potter the same again, I don't. I don't think I can be on a plane the same again. Like, yeah, I love how you think. I think. It's so refreshing to hear that, And I the biggest thing I'm taking about this is just this ability to really question our lives, question things. I think. I think that is the purpose of life is to start asking questions, and what I loved about at least at least the scriptures I started on the

Eastern side. They're all Q and a's, Like, they're all cute question and answer. None of them are like talking or lecturing. Ord is, Yeah, yeah, they're all Q and a's, And I think that was a big part of how we were trained to believe that all inquiry was the birth of wisdom. Like it had to be an inquiry, it had to be a conversation. It couldn't be a

lecture or a seminar. And you know, I think when i'd sit with you, and whenever I've said with you, and whenever I've watched you, which I've admired you for so long, I think that the quality of questioning is really what we should be more focused on than the result and the answers. As you were saying earlier that if we asked questions we were actually interested in knowing the answer to, we'd actually listen to the answer. But Trevor,

we end the show with two segments. These are fast segments. Okay, you've been more than generous with your time. So the first segment is called the Many Sides to Us. Okay, and so this you have to answer in one word, and there's five questions. So are you ready? I'm ready? Okay. What is one word to describe what someone would say about you meeting you for the first time? Friendly? Friendly? Yeah, friends and friendly two different things, but friendly? Okay? Question

number two? What is one word to describe what someone would say about you that knows you extremely well? Consistent? Nice? Okay? Question number three? What is one word you'd used to describe yourself? Mercurial? Okay, all right, now I'm gonna have to ask you expand like that that I was not expecting that word that is a very yeah, tell me why that word? Like? You can now go off one word like I'm consistent in the fact that I'm also mercurial.

Part of it. Funny enough, I think was not created by but as as somebody who has ADHD, it took me a long time to learn in life what that did to my brain, how that affected how I process time, an idea, a thought, an object, any any inquiry that I would have could be in some way, shape or

form affected by that. And I think, funny enough, there's a there's a huge misunderstanding sometimes I actually, you know, hate how we've created a lot of the conversations around the mind is the best way to put it, you know, because because of the some of the terms have become so wrote and some of the ideas have become so simple when they're not. Um. I remember when I was

young and I was diagnosed with ADHD. They made they made it seem like you can't pay attention, when in fact it's the fact that you can't choose what to pay your attention to. Very good at paying attention and so wow, wow, yeah, it's a very nuance, subtle. Yeah, it makes a big difference. It makes a big difference.

And so what what what's been wonderful for me in life is learning again how to be grateful for how I've dealt with something, not even looking at it through the lens of good or bad, but just going it is and then understanding it like that, you know. And that's what I mean by I think we've really hurt ourselves in society with with how we've had some conversations because we've made it seem bad or good as opposed to understanding because it may not be the same as

the norm. You know, so is a short person good or bad? No, they're just short. And the reason we say short is because they're short relative to the general population, the same way someone who's tall is tall relative to the general population. Now, if you're tall, you may be bumping your head a lot more than other people. If you're short, you may not be reaching the things that people have put at an average height. I think the

same thing goes for the mind. If you're blessed enough to have a mind or a mentality that is of the norm, most things will work for you, and most things will make sense in life. If your mind isn't, that's why they use divergent. It doesn't mean there's anything wrong, but you need to understand how your mind will react to a world that has been designed in a certain way. And so that is why I've learned to understand and accept.

I go, I'm mercurial again. Was a friend who taught me that, and I loved it once I understood it. First I was I was like, no, I'm not, I'm not. He's like, he's like, yeah, you're mercurial. And I was like, first of all, explain the word yeah. And then he explained it to me. I was like, I'm not that im and then I realized I could could I could be two things. I'm extremely consistent. Anyone who needs me knows me, they know where to find me, they know

how I'll be. But I'm also mercurial in that how I feel about this on a day and how I feel about that's on a day may be more extreme than somebody else's range. And so in that again, just the understanding and asking the questions of myself, I then exist in a space where I understand it. So it will be funny is sometimes I'll meet people and they'll get distracted and be like, oh, sorry, that's my ADHD and that's not what it is. But yeah whatever, you

know that, like people have done this with everything. Oh I'm sorry, I'm OCD. It's like I don't okay, yeah that's not what it Yeah. And so we have these very limited understandings of these things. Maybe and we've also created an idea of them being a bad, correct, good whatever. It's like, No, it's just understanding the same thing we do with glasses. At some point near Sides said, far Side said, I wear glasses now, and then at some

point it was just that's what it is. Yeah, I think we have a long way to go in the conversations we have around the mind, yes, and getting us to the same place where when you meet someone they can say that to you and you now understand that, oh I wear glasses, okay, great, yes, you know, whereas I'm sure there was a point was like I wear glasses, so you're blind. Now people are just like, oh you do you wear glasses or you wear contacts? Okay, cool,

that's that's who you are. Yeah, And I think that's what it is that our vocabulary around the mind and of psychology is very limited and your spot on and one thing that you said that really struck a Quarde was the idea that if the world is designed for the average yea, then the challenges that anyone outside of it feels broken. And that's where I think we've gone wrong, where it's like there's a weakness or a broken It's like, no,

the world. If the world was designed for right those people, right, then we'd feel broken. And it's just that the world has been designed for this few people. If you created a new planet that was for only people who had attain disposition, then it would be a very different case. Yeah. No, I love that. That's a that's a great that's another whole two hour comp that's another Yeah, we'll save it,

all right. Question number four, what is one word that if someone didn't agree with you or like you, how would they what would they say about you? Not like I'm not talking about like an internet roll or stubborn? Stubborn? Right? Okay, yeah there that's a good way. Yeah, yeah, that's good. That makes sense. I like that, all right. Question number five, what is the word that you're trying to embody right now? Is there like a focus, a presence with a particular

characteristic or value or believe? Mindful? Great? All right, there's a great, there's a fantastic most people struggle with. So you did? You hit it out of the park. All right? These are the final five. These are easy, one word to one sentence. What's the best advice you've ever received? Never assume it's a great piece of advice. Second question, what is the worst piece of advice you've ever heard? Always be yourself? That's really all right times Yeah, to

be you don't just be yourself. People say they'll relax, just be yourself. Yea las, Yeah, you know when to be yourself As a better piece of advice, so I can give you. That's good. Question number three, what is something you used to value that you no longer value? Fame? So there was a time when it was important and yeah, well yeah, I think I I thought that it would give me something that I searched for my whole life,

and that was a certain sense of belonging. No, because there's a there's a familiarity you have with people when you see them. I never cared for through the lens of like I'm better, No, but I was like, oh man, everyone knows that person, everyone likes that was and you know, here I was this kid and I grew up alone for so long. I was like, oh, I'll be familiar the word fame, you know when you look at the root. And I was like, oh, that that thing, I'll be familiar.

And then ironically, as I said, it jumps straight to your unfamiliar and so then I realized. I was like, oh man, you don't think that it will come from something, but rather understand what you're trying to achieve, and then you know, figure out how you're trying to get there. That's beautiful. I love that. Question number four, how would you define your current purpose as being a fertilizer four

everything and everyone I come into contact with. I would hope to be somebody who enriches the soil that I touch. I would hope to be somebody who improves somebody's life in the slightest of ways. Whether it's helping you solve a problem, whether it's giving you directions and the streets in New York, whether it's making you laugh at a show,

you know, talking about politics, whatever it may be. I would hope to do what a good fertilizer does in that it enables the soil to be richer, It enables the plant to grow taller, it it brings all of the pieces together, you know, it becomes it becomes a food, it becomes it becomes a food that creates more food. You know. It's it's not a zero sum game. And so I would say that that would probably be what I'd like to focus on most right now, even for myself,

because fertilizer even makes self bigger. It grows itself, you add more, multitu it and it keeps ongoing. And so I think I think even for me, you know, I look to try and fertilize as much as I can. I love that. That's one of my favorite answers to that question we've ever had. All Right, fifth and final question of the whole interview. If you could create one law that everyone in the world had to follow, what

would it be? Everyone in the world, right or creates a law that said everyone everywhere in the world, randomly, randomly, randomly, could be given the lowest person's bank accounts like that, it could be like that would be the law is that we do this weird system where every whenever, it may be every year, randomly, the lowest person's bank account can just go out and become everybody's bank account. Wow.

The reason I would do that is because I think if we lived in a society where more people felt like their fate was tied to the least of us, they would have a little more compassion and think a little more about how those people may or may not be existing. And that's why I say I wouldn't say anyone can't be rich. I'm not saying that. I wouldn't say anyone can't make as much money as they want. Oh, no, go ahead, we should all be doing that, enjoy it,

go for it. But I would just want us all to know that the lowest bank balance, the lowest amount that someone has could randomly God, and I wouldn't be to everyone. Yeah, it would just have it. It would be like ten percent of the population. That's what's going to happen. It's the law. Every year ten percent of the population, your bank balance becomes what the person with the least amount has in that in the in the world.

And I just wonder how we would live. I genuinely would because, yeah, I think sometimes and I understand it. You know, capitalism, hyper capitalism, you know this thing we've been tricked into believing that in order for you to have, I cannot have, as if trading didn't exist long before. All of that has tricked us into a world of believing that mine is only mine and yours cannot come with it. So I wonder what would happen in that space.

I think, even myself, everyone would pay a lot more attenion. You know, how much do you have? We need to get your balance up, yeah, because I'm trying to keep my life as comfortable as it is. Yeah, And the feeling that it could be any of us, Yeah, that will take it for granted, Jake, like it could it could always be any of us. Luck is the most random. You can work as hard as you want luck as a huge factor. You can be the best luck as a factor. You can be the worst luck as a factor.

So you know, it really could be any one of us. And so I don't take for granted that I'm lucky. I work hard, I try, and you know, I try and shape as much of the environment that my luck will exist within. But I never take for granted that I'm lucky. Travel is a new thing. I learned about you today that you don't just ask good questions, but you really answering questions, and that's where people don't by the way, right, Yeah, thanks, thank you, thank you. True,

that's so special. Everyone has been listening or watching wherever you are in the world. I hope you appreciated that conversation as much as I did. I hope you could see that we're genuinely just having a good time and getting to know each other and learning and going back

and forth. But I think there were so many great insights in this conversation, and I'd love to see what you took away, So please do share them wherever you're sharing, whether it's Instagram or TikTok, or Twitter or wherever it is. I'd love to hear what you learned, what you took away, what you gathered from this conversation, what you collected, what you questioned, right, I think that's the biggest thing. What did you question? What is a question that you're asking

that you never asked before today? And I want to give a big thank you to Trevor for showing up and thank you doing all this time. And I will admit, though I didn't do this just the goodest of my heart. I came because I remember seeing a clip of yours many many, many many years ago, and you talked about how we don't know how to breathe. I remember that. I remember even watching it. I was like sitting at home, like I don't know how to breathe. And since then

it's it's stuck with me. I was like, one day, I'm gonna meet this guy and I'm going to ask him to teach me how to breathe. We left to do that, I know. No, Yeah, thank you, thank you, honestly, no, thank you, man. I appreciate you the best. This is awesome.