S03E11 – MHAE and H&M DPSS

00:09
Dinkar
Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you’re listening from, welcome back to the Health and Mind podcast. I’m denkar Nair.

00:15
Roshan
And I’m Mohammed Roshan.

00:16
Dinkar
And today we’re joined by our Welfare and Equity Speaker from Unboxed, mr. Ali.

00:23
Ali
Nice to be here, guys.

00:24
Dinkar
So, Mr. Ali, could you please tell us about yourself?

00:27
Ali
Well, I’m full time faculty at the American University of Sharjah. I am a co founder of Mental Health Ae initiative that we launched about three and a half years ago now. And other than that, I do a lot of consulting and advisory for startups mental health Ae.

00:43
Roshan
How did that come to you? How did that concept speak to you?

00:47
Ali
It’s an interesting story. So I teach in business strategy, entrepreneurship and innovation, these areas. A student of mine at the time who was finance and management, came to me, actually in this very room. By the way, it’s interesting enough, in this very room. And were sitting working on something and she came to me. She goes, One of my friends is struggling with something in my head. I’m like, Just Google it, what’s the big deal? She was, I can’t find anything. I’m like, how’s that possible? Give me your laptop. And I started looking and I realized there wasn’t. And remember, this is three and a half, four years ago is pre COVID, right? So I wasn’t able to find anything. And I’m like, something’s wrong. We learned from basic economics, we learned supply and demand. So I’m like, okay, if there’s no supply of mental health and wellness type of places, there must be not enough demand.

01:37
Ali
So the problem is small. But the academic side of my brain kicked in and I’m like, Wait, let me start looking. So I spent two weeks deep dive into data, found nothing in the UAE, found near nothing for Middle East, but then Europe and the US and other countries and Australia around the world, they had significant amounts of data. And I’m like, Wait a second. Are you telling me 2020, 5% of people are struggling with something and nobody’s talking about it? What the hell’s going on? So then once you peel away the layers, you realize that it’s a huge problem. But due to the cultural and social stigma, nobody wants to talk about it. So about two weeks later, I think this was in July, I sent a message to Latifah, my co founder, with a text that said Mentalhealth Ae. She opened the link and she goes, ali, something wrong.

02:29
Ali
There’s nothing here. I’m like exactly. This is our website and we’re going to put stuff over here. And that’s literally how we started.

02:36
Dinkar
Was there a specific reason you chose Miss Latifah for this project?

02:39
Ali
Well, were already working on some other things and the conversation is what started with her. So I said, you want in? She goes, Definitely. So we’re like, okay, let’s start. So it was a social initiative. It was never designed to make money, and we really didn’t know what were doing. We kind of still don’t know what we’re doing. So the premise or the idea behind it essentially was that, hey, let’s offer services or information or whatever we can do because there’s not much out there to begin with, and let’s try to help in whatever way we can. Fast forward these years. We are now very successful podcast series we’ve pivoted into that.

03:24
Dinkar
Very entertaining Ms. Thank you.

03:26
Ali
Thank you. 30, 40 episodes. There we have our Meetup page. We are just a tad under 100 Meetup events that we’ve already done. There a few thousand following on the Insta.

03:39
Dinkar
There’s no need to be humble.

03:42
Ali
We’re not a clickbait channel, so we don’t get tens of thousands of followers. We got good organic followers and that’s kind of it. So we listen to what the people want and then what we have the capacity to do, and then we connect the dots. But ultimately, if I was to say what our mission and vision and goal and aim out of all of this is essentially to start dialogue and start people talking in their homes about mental health and wellness, and only by having conversations is the stigma going to be reduced and then people can actually get the help they need.

04:16
Roshan
What was it like recording that first episode? Was it like navigating a dark room or did you know what you were going to do?

04:22
Ali
Did you have an aim in it’s? Interesting, you guys got here early, so you saw me set up the equipment. We didn’t have any of this, and it was never supposed to be a podcast. So what it started with when we started doing our Meetups early days, there were two types of meetups, like a peer support group. We would call it Wellness Wednesday because the name sounded nice. And then later we introduced something called Tuesday Talks, which actually weren’t every Tuesday, but it sounded nice even. By the way. Now the podcast is still called Tuesday Talks. We kept in it, so were meeting in person. So the premise for Tuesday Talks was that, okay, we as a group don’t want ali. We don’t want somebody to come and teach us. We just want somebody to talk to us, somebody who knows a little bit more, somebody who might know about Tourette’s, who might know about anxiety, who might know about whatever.

05:08
Ali
So finding content matter experts surprisingly wasn’t hard because were one of the very few resources that were connecting. And my volunteer sign up list on my Google Docs is in the hundreds now, right? So I’d be like, hey, would you be available on this Tuesday? And we actually tried to do it on Tuesday to come and give us a talk and like, yeah, sure. May I come in? And so it was like 510, 1525, depending on week to week, people would be and we’d meet at a park. We meet at a nice little quiet cafe type of stuff, and we would have a conversation. That was it. And whoever this person was would share their knowledge, and that was it. Okay. And then COVID hit. Well, what do we do now? Okay, let’s go online. Everyone’s doing Zoom. Everyone’s doing teaching and classes on Zoom.

05:55
Ali
I was teaching on Zoom at the university, so I was like, okay, you know what? Let’s put it on zoom. We put it on zoom. And then somebody’s like, hey, Ali, I won’t be able to attend. Can you record it? Okay? Sure. I’ll record it. Oh, Ali, would you mind putting it on, like, YouTube? Okay, I’ll put it on YouTube. Hey, Ali, you know what? You guys keep putting all these episodes on here. Would you mind making it into a podcast? Okay, we’ll make it into podcast. Hey, Ali, you know, it’s nice to listen to you, but we would like visuals also. Can you make it podcast plus video? Okay, we can do that. So literally every step, we bought more equipment. We started with the mics, and then we started with we even have a light kit. And we started with just recording on our phones for video.

06:41
Ali
And then we got the nice cameras, and now everything’s in 4K Bougie. So that’s kind of it. We never intended to be a podcast, but what’s happened is that during COVID a lot of startups mushroomed in the mental health and wellness space. Like, before, you would find two or three apps that were not Middle East based where you could get a therapist or a counselor or coach. Now there’s like a dozen. So there was no point for us to also step in because that was never our objective. Our objective was information, dialogue, conversation, normalize, and then ultimately end goal of reducing stigma. So we’re like, we don’t need to become another app. How about we focus on things that we have good traction on and we get great feedback on? So now we are full blown pivoted. Like friends. Pivot, pivot. We’ve full blown Pivoted into a podcast.

07:38
Dinkar
You mentioned destigmatizing mental health, and it’s become a common theme nowadays to remove the stigma that’s surrounded with mental health. But do you think that due to this destigmatization, it’s been overdone the topic of mental health?

07:52
Ali
Everything is over and done. The world we live in is clickbait. The world we live in is social influencers. Go pick any social influencer. Anybody go a year back and watch their videos and watch them do the dumb stuff that they’re doing, but they’re doing it in that moment because it’s the in thing. It’s the trend. So during COVID we saw that mental health and wellness became a trend. Everyone’s talking about it, oh, we must do something about it. Corporates jumped in. We did corporate wellness training workshops also. And then post COVID, the buzz has started to go away, and then now, all of a sudden, it’s like, it’s okay. It’s okay, man. There’s no more COVID. You don’t need to have mental wellness issues, just get back to work type of attitude has started to kick in for a lot of places. Not all, but for a lot of places.

08:39
Ali
So I think the key thing to understand is that whether or not it’s a buzword of the time or in the moment, there is a huge amount of work that needs to be done. A mindset shift, I think, is the hardest thing to do, because this mindset is ingrained by your parents, parents, parents. And as soon as you challenge it are you calling my parent a liar? Are you calling me a liar? That’s the defense mechanism. So that’s not easy to overcome, and especially if it comes from somebody younger. So we know in our parts of the world, the Middle East, the subcontinent, and most parts of the world, actually, not just these it’s very difficult to have a conversation with your parents about mental health. And I’ve, at this point, had thousands of conversations with all sorts of people of all ages, genders, nationalities, languages, you name it, and it’s exactly the same story.

09:40
Ali
Everyone is suffering in silence because they are stigmatized and don’t talk about it, and they assume that they’re alone. It’s absolutely mind boggling. It’s like, how stupid is everybody?

09:54
Dinkar
Why do you not see it?

09:56
Ali
We’re dealing with the population of I don’t remember the most recent numbers, but 1718. 19% of the population is diabetic, and we have huge centers, and hospitals are advertising, and there’s campaigns and all of this stuff. 20% to 25% of people are suffering with mental health and wellness issues. Those numbers, on average, double for university students. Those numbers double, triple, quadruple for specific professions and young working professionals. So it’s not a problem of just this big. It’s a problem of this big to this big. Right? It’s huge. But without conversation and without dialogue, we’re not moving.

10:37
Dinkar
What has been the hardest part of preaching your message of mental health matters, especially in the UAE, in the Middle East? What is the hardest part of it?

10:45
Ali
That’s a good question. The hardest part, I think, has it’s two things, I think, in my mind. Two things. First, reach. Yeah.

10:56
Dinkar
Okay.

10:56
Ali
We are a tiny country that is bombarded with marketing and advertising, right? I mean, you have to fight and pay a lot of advertising dollars for my ad or my image or my Instapost to be seen on your feeds, right? So it’s very hard to get reach without paying. And we’re a social enterprise. We don’t have any funding. We’re self funded out of pocket, and we don’t have any source of income. We don’t sell anything. We’ve always thought about figuring out something to sell, but nothing seems to have clicked. Maybe one day we’ll figure that piece out, but because of that, we don’t do paid ads. Or we might do, like, a ten that I’m boost on an event that’s coming up. I mean, what’s that tender I’m going to get me when I’ve got people paying thousands for the same eye space your eyes that see.

11:43
Ali
So I think reach has been the first one, and the second one is opening conversations outside of the circle. So we have people coming into our peer to peer support group. They’re comfortable to share. It’s a safe space that we’ve created. But when they go back, they’re not having conversations at home. They’re still afraid, they’re still stigmatized. But the solution to that is it’s slow. We know it’s slow. So we’ll have one conversation, two, three, four. At some point, that conversation will start to feel normal enough that you’re going to go home and bring it up. Another thing that we’ve well, these are the two, I think, big things. And in order to kind of mitigate and identify the target market, because I come from business background, so we always think of target market. How are we going to hit this? The university student is our sweet spot.

12:38
Ali
Target market. So a lot of the conversations that you listen to, I’ve got high schoolers and college students and young working adults, so, like, let’s say 17 to 24. That age bracket, they relate most to our conversations. And these are the type of people I also kind of talk to or the topics I want to talk about, because as a kid in school, your parents aren’t really going to listen to you. But once you’re in college, it kind of shifts a little bit from a little bit to a lot of bit. Right? But that shift is important because now when you go home, you’re like, listen, I’m a college student. I’m grown ass adult now. Listen to what I’m telling you. You can explain better, you can communicate better. And for most of these college kids, they’re taller than their moms, if not taller or equal to their dads.

13:25
Ali
And they’re like, hey, bro, listen. And then the parents are more inclined to listen. These same people can champion their younger siblings, who you can see them struggling. I have so many people, and they’re like, Ali, you know, I never connected the dots this way, the way you said it. I’ve got a younger sibling that I am, like, 90% sure is Dyslexic and struggling in school, but nobody wants to recognize it. So you know what? I decided to take my younger brother sister for an assessment, and he came back dyslexic, and then I told my parents, sit down, we need to have a conversation. They’re like what? Like this? No, this will go. No, listen. This is not the end of the world. This is nothing to be ashamed of. This much percentage of the population have an issue. It’s not an issue. Why do you want your child to suffer and struggle when there are solutions in place to help them learn in a different way.

14:17
Ali
So they were able to push conversations, not just have them push them. So I think that’s been our saving grace and the sweet spot.

14:26
Dinkar
I completely agree with your older siblings because I have two older brothers and we had a difficult time during COVID And because of that difficult time, they were able to push conversations with my dad, who was typical Indian, because mental health doesn’t really come up in our society as much. So due to them being present, I think in my household has become a more comfortable topic. So I completely agree with that.

14:51
Ali
That’s great to hear.

14:52
Roshan
I have an older sister as well, and the way that were raised is completely different because like you said, when people go to college, they toughen up. So my sister was always Muslim family. She was kept in the house most of the time. But when she evolved and she went to college outside in a European country and she came back, she’s like, Why are you telling that to him? Why are you speaking to him like that?

15:15
Ali
They champion the young.

15:16
Roshan
Yeah, even she’s very small. She’s not as tall as them, but she tells why are you speaking to him like that? Don’t speak to him like that. Let him go out, it’s fine. He’ll come back home and shout at him. So it’s like the progression from how she was to not understanding, like, okay, how I feel. But now she’s able to relate because she’s got the courage to talk to me about it now and to my band as well.

15:38
Ali
Agreed 100%. And this is exactly what I was saying, is this is why we felt that was the sweet spot to push on, because it has a very impactful ripple effect. So it’s not just the person who is in college or a young working adult who’s starting their life who are struggling. And also keep in mind that the data I told you is the worst for this bracket. The high schoolers who are hitting those board exams and those A levels and whatever, depending on the school system, then college itself is stressful. Then as a young adult, you’re stepping into work and you’re new and you don’t know what’s going on, and you’re struggling and finances and salaries and expenses and living alone, and it gets crazy. So this age bracket is a double edged sword. It’s toughest for struggle, but at the same time, it’s most impactful because this is the age you are still ready to open your mind and listen and you champion your siblings and other people around you.

16:34
Ali
Okay.

16:34
Dinkar
I think the fact that board exams and then college life, I don’t think students nowadays get much of a break. So I think, especially in my school and in our friend’s circle, there’s a lot of burnout. So do you think there’s a way around this. Burnout. What do you think society needs to change to ensure that students get a break?

16:54
Ali
So this is going to be interesting. I’m a career academic. I graduated from the university you’re sitting in right now. I graduated in 2002. I started working here in 2004. I started teaching. So I’ve been in this university since January of 1999. My whole life, my whole adult life, basically, right in academia. So what I’m going to tell you is going to be shocking for a lot of parents is to relax. Grades are not the end game. It’s not the end goal. What are you going to do, put a black on the wall? And who’s going to look at it? You? That’s it? Then what? Grades don’t get you a job. Your degree doesn’t get you a job. What you learn and put in your head, that gets you the job. The single most important thing you are supposed to be learning at university is not the courses and the material, but you’re supposed to be learning how to learn.

17:43
Ali
It is impossible for anybody to teach you everything you need for life except the one skill, which is to continuously teach yourself and to continuously evolve. It’s unfortunate that the world we are in today has set up a archaic educational model that relies on grades as a filtration system. So you guys are from India, right? You mentioned all right, so what’s the population right now? You just crossed China a few months ago, wasn’t it?

18:10
Dinkar
I believe it’s 1.4 billion.

18:13
Ali
Yeah, as soon as you said one plus billion is enough. But what happens when we have huge amounts of population, limited resources? It’s a fight. It’s got nothing to do with your competence. It’s got to do with the number of people that are standing next to you and how many spots are available at a given institution of education. So what do we do? We have to filter. How do we filter? Let’s see. Okay, you know what? Let’s filter. Based on grades, it seems to be the most fair, it’s the most inaccurate. You have friends who understand differently, who learn differently, who test differently. Some people have high anxiety and stress and don’t perform well. But if you have a two minute conversation, you’re like, wow, how smart are you? How are you able to connect all of this information and apply it and relate it?

19:01
Ali
And then you have students who literally have adopted a strategy. I’m just going to memorize everything just so I can regurgitate and vomit in the exam just to get the grade, because apparently the grade is the end game. Now, I’m not saying stop studying and don’t get the grades because we don’t have a different option right now. The option on the table is to get into good universities, you need the grades. And this is the very big one. Nothing in life, the entirety of your life, nothing in life is worth sacrificing yourself?

19:38
Dinkar
Absolutely.

19:38
Ali
Whether that’s physically, mentally, spiritually, nothing is worth it. Nothing. You don’t get into a top tier college, then what? Your life is over. No, your life is what you make it. Your life is what you make it. So there’s a lot of miseducation about education. There’s a lot of miseducation of what is the measure of success of one’s life. The best job and the highest salary is not a measure of life. A measure of life is happiness. A measure of life is contentment. A measure of life is doing what you love, doing what you have passion for. The number of parents who push their children to get into majors and careers that they hate because, no, I know better than you. You have to do this. And for a very long time, the answer traditionally was either a doctor or engineer. I know a lot of engineers who don’t make any money at all.

20:30
Ali
I know finance graduates with Ferraris and three years of graduation. But to each their own. I’m not saying one is better than the other. Do what you love, and you will automatically be very good at it. But need to step away from this race that nobody wanted to be in, but you’re being pushed to be in because the race is illogical and unfair.

20:53
Dinkar
Absolutely, yeah.

20:59
Roshan
You’ve been doing this for a while now, advocating for mental health, starting dialogues for mental health. Has there ever been an incident or a story that someone has told you or you talked to someone, you met someone where you felt, okay, what I’m doing is right. This is something I’m supposed to be doing.

21:16
Ali
This takes a lot of work, a lot of effort. Not time and not money. That’s not what I’m talking about. It takes a lot of emotional capital. Listening to people and holding space for them is hard. It’s not easy. The things people have told me, heartbreaking. Heartbreaking. And it takes time. It takes a while to even recover from it. Everything from a very close friend of mine had postpartum depression and had suicidal thoughts, and I didn’t know anything about it. And I’ve known this person for almost eight years, ten years. What world am I in? When did this happen? How right, things like that to young women talking about how they’re struggling with anxiety and high levels of stress, and they finally work up the coverage and talk to their parents, and their parents tell them, don’t say these things out loud. Nobody will want to marry you.

22:20
Ali
This is your child. This is your child. How did you even say this? There’s things that my brain refuses to comprehend. How can you say something like this to your child who’s coming to you? Lord knows how much it took for them to come to you and say this. After how much struggle and how much pain, and you just brush them off. Listen, your kid comes to you with a broken arm, what are you going to do? It’s okay. It’s okay. We don’t want people to know you had a broken arm because then they’ll think you’re not human enough. No. You pick your child up, you jump in the car, you rush to the emergency and you take, why is this so polar? Why is this so different? So there have been many times throughout these last few years where I just and I told Latifah, I’m like, I can’t do this anymore.

23:06
Ali
I just can’t. It’s just too much. And every time, without fail, this is how I know God’s got a plan. Every time without fail, something happens. I get a random message or a call or somebody, something, and then all of a sudden, it validates what I’ve been putting all this effort into. I remember the first time this happened, literally within two days of me having this thought process, like, okay, you know what? Maybe it’s time to shut this down. It’s just too much. It’s just too much. It’s just so much to do. It’s huge. It’s huge. The problem is just so huge. I’m barely scratching at it. Am I even making an impact? Is it even worth all of this? These were the thoughts in my head. I got a message from a guy, I don’t remember this guy. I don’t remember his name, I don’t remember his face.

23:58
Ali
I don’t remember meeting him. Imagine. And this guy’s message was about yay long, like three scrolly pages on my WhatsApp? And he goes, when I came to Expat, he’s like, when I came to UAE, it was the worst time of my life. I was in severe depression. I didn’t know what to do. I had thoughts of ending my life, and I came for one of your meetups. And it was just so nice to see that there’s other people who are like me and I’m not alone in this. And because of you and because of your organization, my perspective on life shifted. I decided to educate myself more. I decided to apply for different jobs. I decided to upskill myself. And now I’m in a very happy place. And thank you to you. I took a screenshot, I sent it to Latifah, and I was like, I can’t stop crying because I don’t know who this guy is.

24:54
Ali
I don’t remember him. So impacts that you make, you don’t even realize. And every single time something has come up, I remember as early as last year, I was like, you know what? This is getting too much. I don’t think we can do this. And this is just about when I had started converting some of the older videos to podcast format, before we started to record as podcast format and ran into somebody had a great concept of recording a six part series on adolescence and mental wellness and health. And I was like, you know what, let’s just record this last thing, push it out there. It’s okay. And in my mind, I’m like, this will be the last thing. And then I’ll shut it down. Like, this is too much. A friend? No, she’s not an old student. She was a few years behind me in college, right?

25:52
Ali
She lives in Saudi. She’s got kids who are early teens right now. She listened to the entire series, and she sent me a couple of minutes long voice note. And in essence, what she said was that I have made sure to download these episodes in case they ever disappear. Because when my kids get to that age, I want to listen to this again so I’m able to be a better mother. And then I was like, Damn, rock can’t quit. So it’s just been one thing after the others. Every time I felt like this is something that’s just too tough to do, I get a little ping, and I get a little thing like, hey, you’re making an impact. And these things always reflect back to advice that I got from my mom when I was little. Same advice was why we started. And she says she used to tell me, don’t complain about something that’s not being done.

26:50
Ali
Get up and do it yourself. That’s why we started without having any background in psychology or mental health. Another thing that she used to tell me as a kid was that whatever you do, even if it helps one person, it’s enough. So we’ve had a lot of one persons over the years. It’s a blessing.

27:09
Dinkar
You mentioned that. It’s obviously very emotionally draining, what you’re doing. How do you take care of yourself? What is something you do for self care that you enjoy other than this?

27:20
Ali
This is interesting. I’m going to put a plug here for a previous episode I recorded with Ray about healers. And this is where we had a very interesting well, it was an interesting discussion over Shisha, and then we decided to put it into a podcast because there’s a lot of healers out there. So over the years, I’ve realized that different people have different capacity to listen, to absorb, to assimilate. I’ve realized, I think I have a little bit more than the average, but it does come at a cost. Just because I can bear more doesn’t mean I don’t feel it. And just because I have a larger capacity doesn’t mean it doesn’t run out. So balance is key. And this is something I don’t just talk about in this context, but in the context of life itself. One of the terms I hate is work, life balance.

28:05
Ali
Like, why did you separate work and life? You’re implying that life is life and work is counter to life. No, there’s one life. Everything is part of life and everything and that should have a balance. If you have life with all the various components that are misbalanced, you got a problem. So I think. The same applies. Practice what you preach. If this is what I tell everybody, this is the same thing that I do. I try to find balance. So there are times where I feel like amen. It’s just I had to listen to somebody shared a while back, a young lady shared her story about physical assault. That was a tough one for me. It took me weeks. Like my mind would constantly think about it. It took me weeks and I reached out to my friends and I said, listen, man, I’ve got like my head is not in the right place.

28:59
Ali
What happened? I’m like, what happened is not relevant. What happened is somebody else’s story. That’s not for me to share. But what’s happening with me is that story was very heavy and my friends like, what can we do? What can we do? I’m like, I don’t know. I don’t know how to solve this. I don’t know how to fix this. Because my brain is always solved. Consulting and advisory my whole life. It’s literally my job is to fix and solve, right? I’m like, guys, I don’t know how to fix and solve it. One of my friends is like, you’re not supposed to fix it and solve it. You’re supposed to let it pass through, but you’re holding it. I’m like, how do I let go? They’re like, Time will help with that, but in the meantime, don’t sit and let it cook. What do I do?

29:41
Ali
Come, I’ll pick you up. A budy of mine picked me up. We went out, we had a nice coffee, we chilled and relaxed and slowly, slowly, things dissipated. But the idea was that in order to have balance, sometimes you need to step away and not constantly be in friction. So balance is key.

30:01
Dinkar
Balance is key, yeah. You’re going to do the same for me, right? If I ever struggle or something? If you’re.

30:14
Roshan
So you’ve been fighting the good fight for a while now, but at times it’s like a David versus Goliath kind of situation. You’re just throwing stones. So do you think the small moments, the small impact that we make, that small thing that we did pass the water bottle to him, close that gap for him, those small moments, how people perceive them, do you think that’s what the world needs more now?

30:42
Ali
I think there’s a couple of parts to that. The way I see and the way I would like to respond to that. I think the first thing and me and Latifah always have great conversations about this because it’s not just me who kind of sometimes has reached its end and is exhausted. She has the same and then we’ve had conversations, they’re like, are we even making a difference? You’ll hear me in a lot of my podcasts referring to my mom, because I’ve always gotten brilliant advice from her growing up. And one of the things that she used to say is you need to do good without expectation, which is what we’re all told. But the other thing that she used to add on to that is you need to do good without expectation and being okay to not see its impact. I never really understood.

31:36
Ali
The second part I can understand, hey, I’m going to do something good for this person, but I’m not going to expect anything in return. Okay? That part I got. What do you mean by not seeing? I don’t get it. What do you mean? And then I remember many years later, because over the years, I’ve always pinged back to my mom and said, mom, you said this, but I understood it this way. But now I understand it this way. And she’s like, yes, as you grow, you understand and have better perspective. I’m like, Mama, explain this to me. She goes, like a rock. The rock? Rock. The Dwayne johnson rock. What rock you talking about? She goes, no, there’s a lake of water. It’s very calm, and you take a rock and you throw the rock in the middle of the lake. I’m like, okay. She goes, what happens?

32:18
Ali
I’m like, there’ll be ripples. She goes, Where the ripples go? I’m like, they go out from the center. She goes, and then what happens? The ripples get bigger or smaller? I’m like, they get smaller, but do they get wider or narrower? I’m like, oh, they get wider. And she goes, can you always see them? I’m like, well, after some point, you can’t see them. She goes, Think of the good that you do as the ripples. You can’t see you’ve thrown the rock. You saw some ripples, but there’s ripples that you can’t see because they got so far away from you that you can’t see them, but it doesn’t mean that they’re not there. So do good without measure, and do good without looking at the scope of it.

33:03
Dinkar
So you are the favorite child. Is that true?

33:05
Ali
I’m always the favorite child. There are two siblings, me and my younger sister. She’s the spoiled child. I’m the favorite child. Or at least that’s what I tell everybody.

33:15
Dinkar
That’s what we saw on your Instagram. What we also saw was that you cook as well.

33:19
Ali
Of course.

33:20
Dinkar
And we also saw that there was supposed to be a brownie Bake Off.

33:24
Ali
Yes, sir.

33:24
Dinkar
So we’re waiting on the results of that.

33:27
Ali
Well, okay, so two things on that also. So the first part is when we talk about the stigmas that we have in our societies, we also have a lot of other bad things that we have learned. And, for example, set gender roles. The girl should cook, and the guy should just boss. No. Any person, male or female, who does not know how to cook for their own survival are an embarrassment to the human species. So if you have been left alone in the house for two weeks, and all you can rely on is Talibat, you are an embarrassment. Step up.

34:04
Dinkar
I was thinking more instant noodles or eggs.

34:06
Ali
Step gentlemen, step up. Step up. First thing, second thing, real men know how to cook real food. Step up.

34:19
Dinkar
We’re still boys.

34:22
Roshan
One more year.

34:26
Dinkar
We have to learn now.

34:27
Ali
Yeah. Interestingly. A lot of people assume I have a passion for cooking. My passion is for eating good food. And in order for me to get the food that I want to eat, if I have to cook it, I will cook it. No problem. Can be done. So the brownie cook off is with a very good friend of mine, an old student, Maneswe. She graduated, I think, a year and a half, two years ago. She’s working now. She’s vegan. And I am like the opposite.

34:54
Dinkar
So you were going to win regardless.

34:56
Ali
I’m the opposite of vegan.

34:59
Roshan
You win by taste.

35:00
Ali
Yeah. I’m carnivore, so we always kind of have a little bit of tit for tat on this. It’s funny. So she was, I don’t know, one day she was talking, oh, I made these lovely brownies.

35:10
Dinkar
I’m like how’d you make brownies?

35:12
Ali
You didn’t put eggs in it. You didn’t put oh, they’re vegan brownie. I’m like, how can vegan brownies be good? And we had this huge debate and then I was like, you know what, enough is enough. I threw a challenge over the summer and then we got busy. So the challenge actually hasn’t been executed yet. So maybe in another couple of weeks, as soon as I can find a common time slot. But a very good and close friend of mine, Roman, he’s the chief pastry chef at the Obelix and he’s like award winning pastry chef level guy. Right? He is the top of the tops. So I roped him in to be the judge.

35:46
Dinkar
I was just going to ask, could we judge?

35:48
Ali
No. You guys are welcome for sampling and everything.

35:51
Dinkar
We will be there.

35:52
Ali
Roman, roman, you don’t want the vegan one?

35:53
Dinkar
Yeah, we’re just there for the normal brownie.

35:57
Ali
Okay. This is just trash talk, right? But I’ve actually eaten brownies that she’s made. They’re really good. So you guys aren’t going to know which one? We’ll do blind taste testing and then we’ll see if you can identify the vegan or the better one. Wait.

36:16
Roshan
So you’re pretty confident you’ll win?

36:18
Ali
I’m always confident I’ll win.

36:21
Dinkar
That’s love. I mean, that is a good trade.

36:23
Ali
Yeah. For the love of a good brownie.

36:27
Dinkar
I feel like that just goes after.

36:29
Ali
Everything that a brownie stands for.

36:31
Dinkar
Okay, now that we’ve gone on a light hearted note, let’s get back to mental health. You are going to be speaking for our welfare and equity committee at Project Unboxed on 14th October. How do you think mental health ties into welfare and equity?

36:46
Ali
It’s absolutely critical. I mean, how does it not tie in? So if we talk about equity right, and I’ll talk about both aspects. If we talk about equity, everyone should have equal access to fundamentals of life. Food, water, shelter, education, health care. And when we talk about health care, I’m not talking about just physical wellness, but mental wellness. Whenever we say health care, the default assumption is physical wellness. No, mental wellness is equal, if not more important. And if you start drilling down global data, you will realize how big of an issue it is. So if we truly want to live in a world where we are equitable to all of its citizens, mental health and wellness is definitely in that list, without question. That’s the first thing. The other thing that you guys talked about was it welfare. So in order for you to be a I’m going to simplify this a lot because that helps kind of drill it in.

37:52
Ali
In order for you to be a functional human, your head needs to be in the right space. Otherwise you’re not a functional human. So welfare of an individual equals welfare of the society. Welfare of the society equals welfare of the individual. If we create individuals who have better mental health and wellness, they are better contributors to society. If we create a society that is a safe space and open communication, not stigmatized, to discuss these sort of things, we would immediately see impact. Suicide rates have increased globally year on year. It’s embarrassing with the day and age that we live in, with the technology, with the industry where it is, with computational power of wherever it is, we can’t provide enough welfare to somebody to the point that they want to end their life. This is an embarrassment to humankind. Honestly, if you think about it’s, a failure.

38:49
Ali
Not embarrassment. It’s a failure of humankind as a species that you have people who end their own lives. Again, one of the things my brain.

38:59
Dinkar
Fails to comprehend, we’re just sitting around.

39:01
Ali
Doing nothing and it’s critically important. And if we bring this down into the school level, the high school level specifically, I think it’s exquisitely unfair the amount of stress that these young people are put under. It’s just not your minds are not ready to handle these levels of stress. And this is the age where your minds are still developing. And if you look into neuroplasticity and these sort of things, you’ll realize that up to the age of 24, 25, your brain is still kind of like Clayish informing. I’m sure my nohes are neuropsychologist who helps us with many things. And I’ve done a bunch of podcasts she’s going to have, oh, you said it wrong, but you know what I mean, right? You know what I mean? I think it’s absolutely critical. So I’m looking forward to having conversations with everybody. I think a lot of conversations not only need to be had with the parents, as we discussed earlier today, I think a lot of conversations need to be had with school administrators.

40:02
Ali
You spend more hours of your waking life with school, your friends at school, the teachers at school, than you do at home with your family. So if I look at it as an hour by hour exposure, this is a huge difference.

40:19
Roshan
It’s scary to think that people who are just like us, who live the same lives, have got to a point where they don’t consider themselves worthy to be in this world. That’s a very scary thought. Their surroundings have robbed them of any joy to be found. And it’s even scary that they think they can’t find that joy again.

40:41
Ali
Yes, it and I had a student about two ish years ago, Jude. She has a startup called Stay Alive. She started this while she was at high school. She graduated and actually just started university a couple of weeks ago. And it’s awareness she literally started. I was very happy to support them. I still support them to date. And it was just about creating awareness that’s not the exit, that’s the wrong way, there’s solutions, there’s people to help you. But when people get to that place, in their mind, they are already isolated, they’re already alone. They don’t see any outlet, they don’t see any help that they can get. And this is, I think, where all of us, again, going back to humanity, we need to step up. So one of the things that I talk about, not everyone can become a psychologist and therapist overnight, and neither should you put yourself in that role.

41:42
Ali
It’s not your responsibility to fix the world right, or fix somebody. But if we can get basic level of training, and one of the courses that I certified in and that I recertified years later was mental health first aid, it’s a two day training. You’re not going to be the expert in nothing, but what you do walk away with is the ability to recognize possible things that are like, hey, man, I’m looking at this person, things are off. And if you’re able to identify and see it and rather than you freaking out and not knowing what to do, the course will tell you what you need to do, how you need to speak to this person, how you need to get them help. Because more often than not, if you talk to suicide survivors, they all tell you it’s not that they didn’t want to end their life, they just wanted to end the pain that they were in.

42:33
Ali
So if we can remove the pain and suffering, this human stays with us, or we can help alleviate some of the pain and suffering, this human stays with us. So in my mind, this is on us. I’m not going to expect a guy who’s been hit by a truck to get up and go to the emergency room. I’m expecting everybody around when that accident happens to help out, to call an ambulance, to pick this person up or whatever. Somebody this person is not going to get up and do it. So why am I expecting someone who is in such a devastating mental state to magically fix themselves?

43:07
Dinkar
Even initiatives like are you okay? It’s so important to promote these because these are the right steps forward to not fix our society per se, but at least help the people around us. I think everyone should know the are you okay steps so that at least if your friend is going through something or even if it’s your sibling, you should know how to help them out. You shouldn’t feel helpless in these situations.

43:32
Ali
Well, I agree with you 100% and circles back to what I said earlier. I feel like it’s our responsibility. It’s our responsibility to see who’s hurting, to see who’s struggling. And then it’s not my responsibility or our responsibility to fix it. It’s our responsibility to see it and help them get the help they need. There’s a big difference there because I’ve seen people put it on themselves to help somebody struggling. I’m like, no, that’s not your job. Your job is to help. If this guy back to broken arm, if this guy has a broken arm, are you going to be like, oh, I will be the doctor and fix it? No, you’ll take them to a doctor. Same thing. Take them to a mental health professional, help them work it out. This is where I think society needs to step up. Parents need to step up.

44:18
Ali
Schools need to step up. Not just having a counselor that nobody wants to visit or having two counselors for a gazillion students, or having the counselor visiting the counselor be like a shameful thing. Oh, did you see that guy? He went to the counselor. Why are you embarrassing somebody who’s trying to get out? Do you embarrass somebody who goes to the hospital? Oh, you got the flu. You went to the hospital. So embarrassing. It sounds stupid. I replaced the mental with the physical and literally, it sounds stupid. So why do we have double standards on ourselves? Doesn’t make sense.

44:52
Dinkar
Especially when it’s proven that these both correlate with each other. It’s a very confusing world. But thank you so much for joining us, Mr. Ali. We’re going to hope for the same type of talk at Project Unbox on October 14. We can’t wait to have you and to our audience, thank you for joining us today, and we hope to see you in the next one.

45:09
Ali
Fantastic. This was great, guys. I really enjoyed it. Fantastic conversations. I’m really appreciative of young minds and young people making change and making impact, literally. Like I said earlier in our talk, we target this particular age bracket because we feel it’s the most impactful to implement change at all levels and to create ripples within your schools, your friends, your societies, your families, your extended families. It takes one rebel to make a change, and you shouldn’t have to be a rebel to make this change. But if that’s what you got to do, then that’s what you got to do. So step up.

45:49
Dinkar
Yes.

45:50
Ali
Say, fantastic, boys. This was excellent. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you.

45:53
Roshan
Thank you so much.