Greg Voisen
Welcome back to Inside Personal Growth. This is Greg Voisen, the host of Inside Personal Growth. And joining me from Los Angeles is Humble the Poet and for my listeners who listen to me regularly, uh, you can go back in my archives, and Humble has done a couple of other podcasts with us. He has many books, this book that we're going to be talking about today is called How to be Love(d). And the subtitle is Simple Truths for Going Easy on Yourself Embracing Imperfection, and Loving Your Way to a Better Life. It's a Hay House book, by the way. So big shout out to Hay House, love them. They're great to us and, and I know that humble was telling me, we spoke and had a wonderful experience getting this author through them humble. I'm gonna let my listeners know a tad bit about you. Before we dive into this interview, is a former school teacher turned creative. What began as resigning spoken word poetry and coffee shops to impress girls evolved into creative adventure that has now spanned 10 years crossing genres mediums and oceans. Now and an author and he's an author of way more than one book, go look for him on Amazon, we'll put a link there, hip hop artists, speaker, designer, filmmaker and creative consultant. He admits he's made a lot of mistakes along the way, like we all do. This is about being vulnerable. Actually being loved is about being vulnerable. And humble is very vulnerable. In this book expresses, you know what's happened in his life and things that he did and things that learn life lessons, since that's how we learn from one another. And I'm happy to share that. so humble, you know, we might as well start out in Oak for my listeners, if you want to learn more about him a home page is shopping shop, he's got a shop, speaking music, his new book, all of his books is community. Just go humblethepoet.com that's h-u-m-b-l-e-t-h-e-p-o-e-t .com. There, you can learn more about Humble. Well, good morning to you Humble.

Humble the Poet
Good morning.

Greg Voisen
Blessings to you. Thank you for being on the show. And I'm gonna dive right in. Because if you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself, I just told them a little bit and but really, why you wrote how to be loved. You've had many predecessor books that weren't exactly on love, right? But they've all been on personal growth. In my estimation, you mentioned that this book wasn't a labor of love. But a reminder that it's a labor to love. I thought that was an interesting way to put it. So what is the labor to love?

Humble the Poet
Um, I think a lot of popular ideas around love is that love is this prize that we have to win and gain from other people. Or earn or be worthy enough of and it's just a reminder that love is the verb. You know, love to service. Love is sacrifice. And love is the work, the work that we do, you know, can be inspired through love. And I remember doing that

Greg Voisen
podcast with rom das on love and devotion. And I guess my question for you would be around the word devotion because I, during that podcast with him. It was quite enlightening, like the ones I've had with you. But those two words are used frequently together. love and devotion. What would you have to say about devotion?

Humble the Poet
I think when it comes to devotion, you know, you know, the first word that springs to my mind is commitment. And, you know, a friend of mine in which I included in the book said, you know, honor your commitments, not your feelings. And I think the repetitious element, the ritual element of honoring a commitment, you know, and understanding that we are only entitled to the labor, not the outcome of the labor. I think so often we think we're destination oriented, when we should really be focused on the journey. So for me, love is that journey. And it's a committed journey. And that, to me is devotion. And understanding that, you know, our relationship is not only with other individuals with ourselves and with the world around us, but it's also with love and having an unconditional love towards the idea of love. And staying committed. You know, irrespective of how, you know, Rocky the seas are as we sell them.

Greg Voisen
Well, you know, humble but one of the things As the chair I was listening to podcast just a few days ago with James Timon, Simon. And you know, he talks about universal non duality. And for a lot of listeners, they understand they've heard duality before. But you speak with our listeners about the dualistic nature of thinking, you state that loves the experience, beyond duality, totally agree with you. But how can we move to this non dualistic thinking that is unified as pure love?

Humble the Poet
I think when we're younger, and our brains are still developing, it's very easy to fall into the trap of dualistic thinking things are right things are wrong, things are black things are white. And as we're young, it's, you know, as I said, our brains haven't fully developed to kind of see the complexities of life. And the challenge with that is we make a lot of really important decisions of who we're going to be and establish certain habits, what directions we're going to go to when we're young, without updating our software without updating those policies, as we get older, as our brains develop some more and as we're able to see a lot of the gray in between the black and the white. So for me, getting out of dualistic thinking is revisiting some of our old patterns, revisiting some of our old policies when it comes to how we handle life. And also approaching life with much more curiosity than judgment. You know, instead of looking at life, as this is, oh, it rained outside, this is good, or this is bad. Understanding that there's everything else in between as well. And opening up our mind to seeing the complexities of life and understanding that our judgments are what are denying us love from any moment or any situation. And so either reserve those judgments or surrender those judgments to allow things to be as they are. As I'm taking a deeper dive into surrender, it's recognizing that things are happening, irrespective of us, and they're not happening to us, you know, they're either happening for us, or they're just happening. And we need to learn to realize that these things are as inconsequential to us as they've always been. The analogy I heard was, you know, we don't have an opinion on Saturn having rings. So let's not have an opinion on anything else. Life is happening. Things are things are developing. And oftentimes the reason we have these opinions and get into dualistic thinking is that it goes back and connects with some previous trauma that we've experienced in our life.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, and you know, one of the things that we you talk about, but at the same time, we know it's ego, and that's what splits people is just this ego speak, if you would a minute about the actual ego when you're younger, and it says, Would you rather be in love? Or would you rather be right? I heard that said many times. And what happens is, I'm not just saying younger people, older people, too, unless they've reprogrammed, right? They're going to have this issue associated with the ego. And I kind of say, hey, the ego isn't going away. But you have to learn how to live with it. You have to learn how to I'm not gonna even say control it because that's not the right word. You have to coexist with this because it isn't going away. Yeah, I view. Yeah, I

Humble the Poet
view ego as a force of nature the same way I view gravity. And, you know, it's only until we understand gravity, can we learn to fly. And I think it's the same thing where our egos can serve as both fortresses to protect us, but also prisons to keep us trapped in. And I think what's really important is Love is the phenomenon, you know, that we've all experienced, that melts the ego, when you have love for someone else, you know, where you begin, and they end, you know, starts to blur. And I think that's really important. And especially when we make choices, what we have to realize is when we're feeding our ego, we're taking ourselves almost in the exact opposite direction of love. So that earlier comment you brought up so do you want to be in love? Or do you want to be right, proving that we're right, in an argument, establishing our autonomy, establishing our power, establishing our control, you know, these are all languages of the ego. And the thing is the ego, ego and love will hold hands. You know, love is forgiveness, love is service. Love is kindness, love is sacrifice, and all of these are going to melt the ego. So it's really a question of what direction we want to head and what experiences we want to have.

Greg Voisen
So true, so true. And you know, you stated that love is a path and not a destination that frequently we're looking for love as if it was a secret in a secret hiding place someplace. You know, we're looking for love people say that all the time. I mean, look for web, speak with the listeners about Robert Holden, the PhD term destination addiction and how It applies to love. I thought that was pretty fascinating. You pull this term, destination addiction. And how does this apply to love in your estimation.

Humble the Poet
So I think, especially in Western society, we think very linearly. So we think in terms of life having this beginning, middle and end, and we have to get to something, there's got to be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. And I think destination addiction is just that this thinking that there's a prize at the end of some sort of journey, not realizing that the journey is the prize, you know, the pot of the rainbow is the pot of gold. And I come from Eastern philosophy, which is much more cyclical. So it's less about trying to get to any specific destination, and instead, just understanding where you are in a constantly repeating cycle. And I think that's really important. Because if we always focus on the end goal, then we lack appreciation for where we are. And it's really important to understand that, again, we're only entitled to the labor, we're only entitled to the journey where the journey takes us is not as important as what the journey does to us, and who we become through going through this journey. So again, we watch movies, movies, have, you know, endings are happily ever after a lot of this contributes to our addiction to having this ending this happy ending this moment, but that's not what life is, you know, you graduate high school, yeah, you finished high school, but you immediately go back to the bottom of the barrel, and start a whole new experience in college or at your job. And now you're at the bottom and you climb your way up to the top. And then you're gonna start at the bottom somewhere else. And I think is really important that we start to abandon this idea of these linear journeys that have endings and destinations. And instead, realize that, you know, we're in cycles, we have our, we have seasons, we have our winter, fall, spring and summer. And when we look at life in that cyclical manner, we'll be able to be less judgmental of the things that are happening. And as well embrace it, embrace the presence as it is.

Greg Voisen
Well, you know, as I was watching a Netflix documentary, by I think it was Jonah Hill, with Phil Stutz. And one of the things that they talked about in that documentary was this, this concept of pain, uncertainty and work. Three things that they spoke about, and what you're talking about on the journey is really the work we're doing the uncertainty there is that pain that there is right? The Buddha said, there's pain, and then there's the end or there's suffering, and then there's the end of suffering, the end of suffering, is that state of our mind that we shift to really recognize that as the fact, would you want to comment about the part about uncertainty, about pain and about work along the way, you were talking about this as the journey, right? Not the destination. It's always about the journey, personal growth is about the journey.

Humble the Poet
Yeah, completely. And I think as well as, as a society, you know, we are constantly sold more and more conveniences, and more and more pleasures. And they are addicting. They're, you know, they're addicting to have someone bring your groceries to your front door, cook your meals, deliver your booze or whatever it may be. And you know, everything at the, in the palm of your hand. Now, the challenge with that is it impacts our resilience, and when it impacts our resilience, that puts us into a certain world of Malic melancholy in itself. And I think what we have to do is reestablish our relationship with discomfort, you know, we, if you look at the emotion, we'll have the types of emotions, humans can feel, you know, over 70% of them would be deemed negative, but that is how we survived. That's how we thrive. You know, you don't learn much when you're happy, you know, you learn to the unpleasant emotions. You don't have, it's not a good day at the gym, if it was easy. You know, you need a challenge, you need resistance. And I think what we need to realize is leaning into and going voluntarily into the unfamiliar, the uncomfortable, even the painful, is the recipe of growth and the recipe of progress and progress is really important for us to establish a stronger relationship with ourselves. And so often what we don't realize is the goal here isn't comfort, the goal should be peace, and peace isn't having everything pieces, not wanting anything. And I think that's a really important idea that we have to understand. And the big challenge is we we've grown up in a society which is like buy stuff, be happy, buy all this stuff, and that's gonna make you happy, the more you have, the better you are. And it certainly tells us that we are not enough as is, you know, as if there's well that's

Greg Voisen
that's what the merchandisers are all appealing to right you know, when they're selling all their goods, and we live in a western society, not an Eastern society. And in that Western society, it's been propagated by an economy that says you have to have more. And that economy is being driven. And people are buying into that where I agree with you. Really less is more. It's, it's like, unpack your bags, right? lighten the load. You know, I remember reading one time, and I'm sure you can relate to this, that the average American, you know, when you saw these, what do you call them? The temporary places where people store their shit, I'm just gonna say that, right? That that we have 1000s and 1000s of that people have taken their shit out of their garage and moved into one of those storage units because they didn't have enough room in their garage to store the shit. And then they never go look at it. They never do anything with it. It just sits there storage. And so you keep thinking to yourself, it's like, wow, kind of lighten the load. It's it seems like it's a lot to carry around. And it's heavy. And, and so on this theme of love. You know, you speak with us about Aubrey Marcus, he actually is my son's coach. So I know him well. And how he differentiates big l love and small l love. He states that small love gives us pleasure. And B big l love gives us peace, just like you just said a second ago. How do you recommend or recognize the differences between the two? For our listeners?

Humble the Poet
I think it's important for us to, you know, create an anchor of peace. I think, you know, the first thing we have to do is you know, go back and remember what it feels like to have peace. I think so often. Pleasure gets so overwhelming that we don't realize that we're not even enhancing our lives with pleasure anymore. We're medicating our lack of peace. So I think the important thing is to understand what brings you peace, or what are some of these nutritious experiences that you've had or relationships that you had. And for those who have had healthy family dynamics, I think that's a great place to start. When you think for big for big l love. Thinking about activities that you do that you don't care if anybody's watching that brings you joy, and peace. I think those are important. And also we're doing it gives you a level of satisfaction versus when you do the small l love stuff chasing pleasure. Pleasure is extremely temporary, it's delicious. But there's no nutritional value to it. And as you chase more. And I kind of think about healthy eating versus fast food. And I think when no one is a lot more convenient and quick and cheap. But at the end of the day you do it long enough, is going to eventually bite you in the ass. So I think it's really important think of it from that standpoint. And I think as well as going back to the ego, you know, the small l stuff is what scratches and the itch of the ego, even though it's an insatiable edge. Yeah, versus, you know, the big l love. There's another quote in the book that says, you know, small l love, you know, makes you feel smaller and small worlds big l love makes you feel bigger in a big world. Does your world feel bigger? Do you feel bigger in that big world, I think does a really good measurement right there for the types of activities. And people we should be around.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, it happened yesterday, I actually, this is the time of year where I actually distributed a lot of my gift cards to the homeless. So I'm out on the streets with the homeless, giving them the gift cards and doing my little interviews with them and so on. And, you know, you leave an incident like that, knowing that you're helping somebody to actually maybe get a meal and get something to eat, do something, it has so much more significance than chasing down. Pardon me for saying this. But you know, another Christmas present somewhere, right? Because you're now reverse the gift. You know, you got this gift of giving this gift of giving and the receipt is to see the faces of the people and understand what's going on and emotionally understand how somebody actually gets there, you know, actually ends up out on the street. And, you know, just that is what I call the Big L That's the way to be at peace because I left there with so much peace. You know, in your chapter on love attracts love. You speak about anxiety, worry and uncertainty about love. And we've all been there. You know, it's like people that get jealous. They, you know, it's a pretty common thing. I think more among younger people than it is older people but certainly younger people. How do we get rid of the unwanted emotions and realize the love in our life regardless of whether or not somebody accepts us or not? In other words, hey, you got rejected. I've seen people do some pretty crazy things when they get rejected. And what you got to realize is that you're the only one responsible nobody out there or is responsible for giving you love. Nobody outside of you is responsible for giving. But that's a hard one. Because people look at love as togetherness there saying, oh, well, I'm supposed to be together with this person, you know, that was the love of my life that I lost or whatever. And I get there's tons of emotional pain and pain at breakup. But how do you help people get rid of these unwanted emotions, I'm gonna call them emotions. Because then they're just sad, and they're lonely, and they're depressed, and they're angry. And, you know, you can name every emotion that comes up. But that's what happens.

Humble the Poet
I think the important thing is to, you know, not label them as unwanted, you know, emotions are all essential and necessary. And as I said, the vast majority of emotions a human can feel, or would lean on negative side. So I think other than happiness, and surprise and surprise in itself can go both ways. All the other emotions on a human emotion, we all would lean negative, because that is what allows us to survive. And I would also, caution, listeners understand this, most of the things that we chase, thinking is Love isn't love. You know, rejection just means it's, you know, that's the opposite of acceptance and validation, acceptance, and validation, on love. That's acceptance, and validation, these are facsimiles of love, power control, attraction, attention, status, success, you know, desire, all of these things have been related to love, but they're not love, you know, love loves what is existing, when all these emotions are gone, all the experiences are gone. Now, you know, in these situations, you know, you always have a relationship with yourself and a relationship with somebody else, if I reach out to somebody, and I want to connect with them, and I'm rejected, you know, I can view their rejection, as you know, and I can take it extremely personal. Or I can, you know, view this as well as a moment of self-respect, where, you know, I put myself out there and I took a risk. You know, nobody is promised to be accepted by everybody. You know, even we don't accept everybody or love, or like everybody in that capacity. And I think it's really important to understand that that these emotions aren't. You know, things that we need to avoid. If you work in sales, the first thing they're going to get you to do is learn to have a healthier relationship with rejection. Understanding that rejection isn't about you. It's the other person's story. You know, somebody, somebody tries to sell me a dishwasher, and I don't need a dishwasher. There's no reflection on them or their dishwasher. That's not where I am in my life. And

Greg Voisen
but in a non-dualistic world. Let's go back and visit that for a second. We're talking about these dualities now again, but in that non dualistic world, humble, what is supposed to happen. Okay, is this purity of unconditional love? We are all one, we're together. So when you look at them out over the masses, you know, I was just, I was just flying an air, I am in airport terminals, and I'm in waiting in queues, and I'm all over. I mean, you look out at the people. And you really look at it with unconditional love that were, hey, we're all in this together trying to get on this plane. There's no reason to get upset. There's no reason to be in a hurry. There's no reason to do any of that. Yet. There's this something inside of you frequently, that spins up and says, and I gotta go to the front of the line now and you get what I'm talking about. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Because there is no peace in that. No, no, there is no peace in that just period there isn't. There's anxiety in it. There's worry, there's frustration. How do you tell people or at least inform them or because you know, you're looking right now as you know, in your philosophy, to find a world of peace. I see your sign behind you freedom as having nothing to lose, you know, but everybody thinks they're gonna lose something if they don't get in line at front of somebody. Okay, because we're gonna run out of something. And it's this scarcity mentality. There aren't enough people, there isn't enough of this. There's not enough of anything. So if I don't hurry up and get my enough, then I'm gonna run out.

Humble the Poet
And I think it's about acknowledging these apparatuses and systems that have been developed for that. You know, I think it's important to understand that a lot of causes of our disease is believing that we live in a universe of one. And I don't mean that in a positive sense. I mean, the sense that we are the center of the unit First and nothing else matters. And then you go to the airport. And not only, you know, do you have this urge to be at the front of the line, they'll also say, well, if you're in a certain socio economic standpoint, you can afford to get to the front of the line. You know, it doesn't it's not a meritocracy, who got there first, it's about who can pay the most. And, you know, in that decides, if you get to have a meal on your flight that gets set aside, if you're, if your chair has a little bit more cushioning that decides how many people you have to coexist with. And I think it's a really interesting standpoint, because it goes back to how the society is being developed, and how unnatural that is, you know, because what that does is that encourages us to become almost robotic, in the sense of our productivity, we got to be on like, we're computers, all of a sudden, when no other animal on earth, you know, operates in that capacity, they feed themselves and Sprint's build feed themselves in endless productivity. And I think it's really important that we recognize that and a lot of these things that we're talking about are going to feed the ego, you know, this, who are these people? Why are they encroaching in my space, and not just helping us understand that listen, we are made of the exact from a scientific standpoint, we are made up of the exact same atoms, as the stars in the sun, and everything else on Earth, we are, we are no different, we are no more special. And you know, there's a beauty in that, because that makes us nothing. And everything, our egos are what separates the drop that we are from the rest of the ocean. And these rare moments where we can experience that that membrane melting, that separation, melting, that border melting between us and others, is some of the most beautiful feelings we've ever had. And I'm not saying it's easy. I'm not saying I haven't been in a hectic, crowded airport. And you know, had my emotions get the best to me. Yeah, exactly. And also, if you want, you know, get perspective there, there isn't an airport in the United States, that is more hectic than an airport and a third world country, you know, or anywhere else where the population is 10x. You know, and there's no such thing as a lie. You know, lines don't exist in queues don't exist and all of that stuff. And it becomes a perspective really, oh, I miss the fact that at least, you know, at the terminal here, they have separated the lines for group 1234. Over there. It's just a crowd, and it's just elbows. And I think I think it's important in that context, but also remembering that, you know, peace is internal. Yeah,

Greg Voisen
it is an inside job, you know, it's an inside. And the thing is, I recognize that if we just breathe. And we take in, you know, there I, I go to meditation retreats in the orcas islands. And there's a, there's a, there's one called Tong Lin meditation, which is breathing in the pain and suffering that you sense people are having, we'll call it Ukraine, call it Russia, call it wherever. And then you breathe out the love and compassion, right. And it's almost like, I'm not recommending that people go do that meditation. What I'm saying is when you think about the process of what you're putting your mind into, even if you were at an airport, and you just took a moment, to close your eyes, I mean, a minute, and breathe and put yourself into a new state of I'm not rushed, there is enough, my seat will be there. I'm going to be okay. It does shift you it really does speak with the listeners about being enough we just talked about and not having to become someone else to be loved. Right? So here, somebody here, this is important. It's like, oh, I gotta do something different than who I am so that I can be loved by that other person outside of myself, right? How do we just love ourselves unconditionally? So we can be love, be loved by another?

Humble the Poet
Yeah, I think as I said, I think there's this idea of enoughness is just should not apply. You know, I think we need to abandon this idea of telling people there enough to just it's not a measurement that should apply to people. Enough as measuring recipes and your gas tank, as measuring, you can't be enough of a person, you can't be enough of a tree, you can't be enough of a flower, you can't be enough of a puppy. There's none of this enough and if you know needs to be abandoned, and anything that that comes from consumeristic culture as well. Were you meant to feel like you are inadequate as you are and you need to have some more shit to feel like you're something else. So I think that's really important. And you know,

Greg Voisen
that excuse me, doesn't it also come from other people who've said you're not enough? I mean, hey, you didn't get straight A's. Why didn't you get straight A's? You know, you're going to school, college, whatever. In other words, the psychologically, emotionally, spiritually, the people can actually lay gone to other people, that they're not enough. You didn't do a good job? Yeah, but yeah, all right.

Humble the Poet
But I think what that is, is that's the prisoners graduating to the guards. You know. So what they're doing is they're still taking these concepts. And you know, and again, outcomes could be enough, you know that I get the grades to get into Harvard, you know, that I, you know, the outcomes can be enough. But again, those aren't a reflection of an individual.

Greg Voisen
But you also said earlier about reprogramming ourselves. I mean, what we've been, look if, if my hardware, I'm sorry, if my software that I put into the computer doesn't care, and it's like, my software says, I'm not enough, I'm not enough, you've got to reprogram that. Right, it has to be new software that says, You're enough, you're now here. Now, the way you are,

Humble the Poet
I'm gonna go a step further and say, we may also have to make peace with the fact that some of this software is not going anywhere. Despite our efforts, I know, it's like, you buy a phone, it already comes preloaded with software, and there's nothing you can do to get it off, you can't delete the calculator app on your phone, you can't do any of these things. And I think a lot of these a lot of this software served vital purposes in our survival, the need for acceptance mattered a lot when we were in small village communities. Paranoia meant mattered a lot when we were susceptible to different predators. And none of these have any relevance or value in these large societies that we live in. And I think oftentimes, that's where a lot of these challenges come from, where you know, your enoughness didn't matter as much outside of what your community thought of you in terms of you contributing to the community when you were in a village of 100 people. And if you weren't carrying your weight or following the rules, you might have been shunned and ostracized, and that shunning and ostracism could have led to, you know, your actual death. Now, I feel like those fears remain. And I think the step number one, and I think this is this is where, you know, this is my belief on it. Step number one is acknowledging, okay, I have these limiting beliefs. They may be etched, or tattooed into my DNA, the same way software is built into a phone. Step one is to be aware of it. And step one is not to instantly believe it. And understand that for 1000s and 1000s of years and hundreds of generations, this served us, but now in modern society, it's actually not, you know, it's a, it's not serving us. And I think this first step to the reprogramming and again, I don't know if it can be completely a reprogram, or at least I haven't witnessed an individual with a complete reprogram of it, is to acknowledge it, and then be like, Okay, I can feel these things. I can think these things, but I want to believe these things, you know, I am, I am the soul within, you know, witnessing this, and I'm witnessing the world around me, I am experiencing emotions, and I'm experiencing thoughts. But none of these are me. And I think that's a really important thing to take knowledge from that standpoint, especially when it comes to this enoughness. And also just a reminder of the people you love, genuinely that you love that fill your heart, when you think of them, you could probably write a list of all their imperfections or their flaws. And none of those flaws or imperfections disqualify them from your love. And there's also true, yeah, it's true. Also, little babies that you've held for the first time that have filled you up with love, you've had no interactions with this child, you have no idea what their personality is. And it doesn't matter. It doesn't require you don't, you don't need five years with them, to establish a relationship to love them. love, the love has always existed, you know, the pathways are being created between us. It's just the older we get in the way our society is framed for its own economic gain. We feel like we have to be or do or accomplish something, to gain this love, when really that's just giving us a whole bunch of ego stuff that's really going taking us further away from love. Whereas I said, Love is how do you love yourself, go easy on yourself, you know, embrace what is considered imperfect, you know, you're able to do that with everybody else. I mentioned Beyonce video on YouTube where she falls off stage and like, watch that and see if it gives you a negative impression of her it won't. That the only way to connect with people is to be vulnerable. The only way to be vulnerable is to not be perfect. If somebody was perfect, they will be incapable of vulnerability because they have nothing to be vulnerable about. So let's embrace our imperfections. Be vulnerable, because that is the only way to establish meaningful connection with other people and cut through this membrane of ego and allows you to become more than

Greg Voisen
it does when you are aware that you are not perfect. Allow you to open up to receive more love. Because if you are playing I am Mr. Perfect or Mrs. Perfect your expectations of what should be because you know you've got a lot of attachment to that perfection. And I know when people play that perfection game, it often makes them miserable. completely miserable. Okay, I've seen it too many times. Now, humbly, you grew up in the shake faith? How's this influenced you? And how can you coexist with the ego so that we have peace? And that we kind of want to say I'm not gonna say serve the ego. But it's an interesting place. I've met many people from your philosophy, your religion, and you are very peaceful people. You mentioned in the book that it's one of the largest religions. And I thought Muslim was the largest one.

Humble the Poet
Well, I mean, it's top five. So I think you know, I think I think Hinduism is probably number one, Islam is number two, Christianity is probably number three, I'm not sure what number four is, but I think we're number five. I know there's, there's more people of Sikh heritage and there are of Jewish heritage. So there's more of us in Jewish folks, just to put a perspective in terms of numbers. But at the same time, we represent 2% of India. So you know, as many 10s of millions of us exist, you know, we're still only a drop is a drop in the pond of India, because their population is so large. Yes. I think the beauty of Sikh philosophy and I love referring to it as a philosophy more than a religion, because I like it and not sounding indoctrination, like indoctrination. But it talks about your calm called Low Mohan calm, which is your lust, your greed, your anger, your attachment, and your ego. And it views them as five warriors that can't be defeated, but you can that you can work with. And another great analogy with the ego is, you know, the, the door, you know, we've heard the mustard seed analogy of the mustard seed size door to heaven, the ego would be the elephant that you're sitting on. And you know, the only way to get through the door is to get off the elephant. And recognizing that look, this is if I want peace, my lust, my greed, my anger, my attachments, in my ego are the five things that I'm probably experiencing when I'm not at peace. And I think that awareness. Yeah. And I think that awareness is just really important to start off, because I think so often, right now we're like, Oh, I'm not at peace, maybe I need a drink, maybe I need a bigger house, maybe I need more followers, maybe I need a blue checkmark on my social media, we think we have to attain, attain, attain, and I think for me, I was very fortunate to grow up in a heritage that was like, No, you have to let go, here thinking is to let go, you have to let go of these desires. It's, it's not the, the unfulfilled desire is to desire that is the issue, right? And let's address the desire. And also, let's channel back to moments of your life when you didn't have these desires. So you already knew what that piece was. And so I think for me, it's really important from that standpoint, and also in the writings and the hymns. You know, it's very universal in the context of human nature. And one of my favorite lines is, if you want to play the game of love, come with your head in your palm. And it's a very it's a very poignant image, because in our history, you know, the 10s Guru asked for physical heads at one point of his followers, you will then need heads and knees and your Give me your head. And he took, he took five gentlemen into a tent and gave the impression that he beheaded them, he came out, he called for one, he got a volunteer, went into a tent, came back out with blood on the sword, and said, I needed another one. And another volunteer came in, he did this for five, five volunteers. And people started thinking that he was just going to cut off everybody's head. And then when he opened the tent, all five of them were dressed in new clothes, nobody had been beheaded. But you know, and they became his beloved ones. And the analogy is the sacrifice, love, the sacrifice. It doesn't feel like sacrifice when you're when it's authentic love, but love is to give up everything you know, freedom was having nothing to lose. You're free, when there is nothing left you can everything give everything away and not acquiring things. And that quote, and so actually have it tattooed on my neck. That was a gift from somebody who saw the tattoo on my neck. And I heard that from a survivor of the Holocaust. And she said, Listen, you're free, the moment you decide to be free, you don't have to achieve a freedom from anything. The moment you

Greg Voisen
lose. Well, you bring up an important point. I've had this discussion most recently, you know, I think it was Dr. Larry Dossey, spoken, speaking before a group. And he said the way the most important thing you have to remember is you have agency over yourself or free choice. Yes, and, and whether it's your health, or your spirituality, it's all about your choice. It's the choices you're going to make. And you have freewill. You have agency to lose weight, you have agency, to be a good person, you have agency to do almost anything that you want to do. And I think that's really important. And that's what you're really saying. And I want to remind our listeners, how to be loved as the book we're going to put a link to Amazon for this. This is Humble the Poet were speaking with you can go to humble the poet.com. In our wrap up question here humble. This book is filled with great wisdom advice. It's got stories, stories about you your own personal life. You've compiled over 62 short, concise chapters regarding love. What advice would you like to leave the listeners with about how to cultivate self-love, and then love others unconditionally.

Humble the Poet
I would say prioritize your self-respect over your self-esteem. self-respect is how you view yourself Self Esteem is how other people view you. So often we deny ourselves love and self-respect, in the name of being likeable and accepted by others. Self-love is saying no self-love is showing your teeth self-love is standing up for yourself. Self-love is establishing boundaries. All of these things can be scary because they can make you appear unlikable. It is more important for you to like yourself and love yourself than it is for you to gain acceptance from other people. Self-love is also going easy on yourself, you have never met a critic more harsh than yourself. Don't fight that critic. Embrace that critic with love. And as a quote in the book, don't beat yourself up for beating yourself up. And I think when we have this healthier relationship with those inner voices that we have that are critical, and instead of being combative towards them, that is a great definition of going easy on ourselves. And when we go easy on ourselves, we can go easier on other people. And when we go easier on other people, we will encourage them to be more vulnerable with us because they won't feel as afraid of being judged by us. How we judge ourselves is the measurement of how we judge other people, what we don't like in ourselves as often what we don't like and other people. So this all begins with ourselves. Embrace yourself. Accept yourself as you are. If anything goes the other way. Ask yourself what is my favorite part of my body? What is my favorite part of my personality? Celebrate yourself as is you can have progress. You can set intentions in directions to improve your quality of life, improve your health. But don't tell yourself that you're not enough as you are, you are enough. There's no enoughness again, as you are, there is no enoughness. But again, you want progress, you want to eat healthier, and you want to lose some weight, by all means do all of that stuff. And then celebrate the progress but also celebrate where you are and who you are. And honor who you are. Because I think that's really important. And to help your relationship you have with yourself that healthier relationship you can have with everybody else around you.

Greg Voisen
Well, thank you for that. I mean, it's it doesn't matter what time of the year that message is valid, but in particularly this time of the year, because I think people get a little amped up and ramped up. And you know, it's the holiday times and they've got to make things perfect, and they got to get everybody a gift and they got to go crazy. All you do is go out on the streets and you can see. And again, that's part of this Western culture, which is commercialized something called Christmas, you know? And, and I want to say Namaste to you. Thank you for being on this podcast, and embracing our listeners with some great advice and wisdom. You did a great job and I'm going to encourage my listeners again. Here's the book. It's a Hay House book, How To be loved. Subtitle simple truths for going easier on yourself, which he just said, embracing imperfection and loving your way to a better life. Six due to short little chapters that provide just wonderful advice and stories about that, humble Blessings to you this holiday and season, enjoy it. And I look forward to meeting up with you in Los Angeles when I'm up there.

Humble the Poet
Thank you so much. I appreciate you sharing me with your audience and I appreciate the important work that you're doing.