Ep.51-Ally Salama: The Middle East’s Mental Health Ambassador

This is the You Winning Life podcast, your number one source for mastering a positive existence.

Each episode, we'll be interviewing exceptional people, giving you empowering insights and guiding you to extraordinary outcomes.

Learn from specialists in the worlds of integrative and natural wellness, spirituality, psychology, and entrepreneurship so you too can be winning life. Now here's your host, licensed marriage and family therapist, certified neuro-emotional technique practitioner, trainer and certified entrepreneur coach Jason Wasser.

So I'm really excited for today's guest because I had the opportunity to spend a weekend with him at the retreat that I co-hosted with my good buddy Pablo Gonzalez, uh, middle of March. And this guy is someone who, from the moment I met him, has been an inspiration, who has set himself apart from other people people around him by leading by example, by showing up with vulnerability, by putting his own story out into the world so he can inspire and empower the people around him. His name is Ali Salama. He is the Middle East Mental Health Ambassador, and he spends his day empowering youth because he is the founder of Empower Magazine, which is the first mental health and wellness magazine in the Middle East. Empower Mag offers an array of engaging articles tackling all topics with a focus on relevant and informative, action-based information, and it positively influences the mental health and well-being of millennials in this region. So, my man, first of all, it's good to see you face to face again because the last time we saw each other was literally at the airport, both heading back. You were heading back to Toronto, I was heading back to South Florida, and it was literally like the week before everything really started shutting down. So welcome.

Thank you, man. I really appreciate being here.

My pleasure, my pleasure. So, so, you know, there's so many places we can start, and I know that this, this, this title, the Middle East's mental health, right, wellness ambassador, whatever, very right, your variation of that, where did that come from?

Mostly it came from, um, it came from an event that I, that I went to speak at, and it was the biggest Arab youth leadership conference and they introduced me as the Middle East Mental Health Ambassador, and since then I've just stuck with the title. I think that, you know, before I actually like tried to, you know, call myself that, I actually spent a little bit of time because I think it comes with a really big responsibility, like to be an ambassador for an entire region of 400 million people, that's not something that, you know, you take lightly. And at the end of the day, like I sort of I looked at myself and I was like, why am I doing all that? Like, what do I want to do? And I think that at the premise of everything that I want to do is I want to really be a voice to youth leaders, and I want to use my story and my masculinity and my empathetic sort of approach to leadership in a way that can help stimulate people's ability to live a better quality life, i.e., express themselves fully, i.e., just really feel that they're alive. And I think that a big, big problem in our region is a lot of people feel that they're hindered by misconceptions or notions of belief systems that their parents impose or that their environment imposes, and that greatly hinders someone's mental health. And I think that by sharing my story as like a guy who literally was, you know, a pro athlete, and I was kind of the alpha guy in the locker room at school, whether it was from high school in Dubai or You know, I just never, never imagined that I could be super, super mentally ill and feeling all those feelings that I want to end my life and do all these things and then just come out and have that comeback. And I feel that I just want it to be okay for people to understand that. And hence why I've done the show, the Celebrity Mental Health Show. I just want to show that that doesn't hinder your ability to dream, to succeed, to be someone who ultimately lives their best quality life. And that's why I, I, I've, I've been like adamant on maintaining this title as an ambassador, because I think as an ambassador you have to be very vocal about a cause or a mission that drives your inner purpose and being. And that's really what I do.

Yeah. So this is a big thing. This is a big project. This is a big undertaking. This definitely feels that, you know, for people out there that don't know you All the things that you've already accomplished has come so far at an early age of success. Yeah. Right? And when we met you over the weekend, I had no clue how old you are, right? And I was blown away by what you're putting out into the world and what you're already accomplishing. And if you're already accomplishing this now, what's going to be ahead of you with the things you're going to be doing, with the people you're going to be collaborating with, with the communities that you're creating? What I'm really curious about is that you now live in Canada, right? You went to school in Dubai and your family's originally from where?

Egypt.

Okay, from Egypt, right? So why, you know, there are Middle Eastern communities all over the world, right? Why not just stay local? Why not just be like, okay, I'm just gonna be the guy in Canada who's talking about people who are in Canada from the Middle East, or just teenagers and college kids. Like why specifically? Specifically did you pick the Middle East, people who are still living there or people who have recently moved from there, to be the target population?

I think it's because we have no voice, Jason Wasser. We absolutely have no voice. Like, when I went through the struggle that I went through, I actually had no one to point a finger at. We actually have no one doing— and I don't mean to say what I'm doing, because The whole point of what I'm doing is to allow hundreds and tens and hopefully thousands of people to do what I'm doing. Like, I'm not doing anything special. Like, I hope everyone sort of hearing me understands that this is— I'm not putting myself on a pedestal at all. I wish, you know, the thing that I do with people that are maybe writing in Empower is I actually sit with them and I optimize their LinkedIn, I optimize every tool and skill set that I harness to be able to give them the same platform and to give them the same power. I think leaders And what I aspire to see in the world is leaders getting like— you can't have any authority, you can have influence. And when you have influence, you automatically have inherent authority that is built on respect and not that notion of authority we've come to have seen over the past like century. And I think that is the true meaning of leadership for me. And I think that's why I started with the Middle East. I started with Middle East because We don't have any data. We, like, Canada's biggest issues in mental health is so simple. We have many resources, state resources, but the issues around navigation, that's because there is data, but like a lot of people are like competing over who's gonna provide this best service. But in the Middle East, like, first of all, you have no governing board of like anything whatsoever. People are still not aware of the differences between mental health challenges versus stress-related challenges or mental illnesses as well. Like, there's a very fine gray area between like life coaching and psychology and mental illnesses. Like, everyone's— no one's educated on that. So I started with what I needed to do because I know that the impact there, learning from what I'm learning here, can be like exponential. And that's not to say that people don't deserve help where I'm at here in Toronto, because I do know that I could invest efforts here. But I'm learning from the great organizations here, and I'm learning, I'm taking all the efforts from Jack.org, youth charities that I've been speaking for at schools, and I'm taking all that and harnessing all that, and I'm allowing others in the Middle East that perhaps have the same tools, have the same technology such as the internet, and even right now podcasting is such a great tool. The more that we can use our voice, and mental health isn't just about, per se, mental illnesses and mental health challenges. Mental health is in everything. So if you're able to express yourself, if you're able to use your voice, if you're able to build If you build your own community, then you automatically will have great mental health. Now, what I do is I simply do one thing, and that is I empower youth, I empower people to just use that voice and feel more comfortable being themselves. And that in turn stimulates a better sort of knock-on effect on people's mental health and well-being. And I've done that through podcasting, and I aim to really, really become some sort of a pioneer in allowing people to harness the power of this digital landscape that we have and all those tools that we have to really, really, really develop into the best versions that they can be of themselves. And I don't want to use the term success, and I don't want to use the term like, uh, all these things that have created notions in us when we think of arbitrary things that have been constructed into our notions of thought and beliefs. I want people to start thinking of well-being as a holistic sort of acumen and, and, and and point of thinking. And this is what I'm doing. I'm actually going to be pushing a lot into the podcasting sort of space because I, I do believe podcasting is a great sort of platform to embrace this public speaking skill. Your confidence skill develops your voice in so many different ways, and it makes you feel that you are adding something to people's lives with very minimal costs yet exponential reach.

And it's on demand, right? And it's an easy resource for them on demand when it works for them versus having to be like on a livestream at the right time or jumping on a Zoom call at the right time, right? It's on demand and it's accessible. And I love that because when we talk about magazines, right, that you, you know, you grew up in a digital culture, right? I grew up from analog where everything was in paper, right? And then moved to digital. So I had to adapt as one, as a person, but two, as a professional and a therapist. And as you know, we've talked about this, is that my podcast started last summer, right? Literally in the middle of last summer. So I'm only not even a full year into it. My birthday actually in July will be episode 50 that will be released, which is kind of cool that I can't even believe I've gotten that far. But the accessibility, I completely agree with the accessibility of the internet, the accessibility of podcasts, the accessibility of live streams are all there to kind of break down these barriers. That you and I and the other people in our field are trying to do. One of the things I'm really curious about, and we didn't really get so much into this when we met, but one of the things that we did, of the many things that you and I bonded over, was obviously how similar our cultures are. Even though I did grow up in America and you grew up in the Middle East, but being Jewish and having lived in Israel for a couple years and going back every couple years to visit, how much similarity we have in both language and food and like expressions and, and mindset. I'm curious for a few minutes to just, what are some of the big beliefs that you and your community has spent time unpackaging about mental health, about self-care, about committing to wellness that you feel is kind of this dominant thing that's involved in the Middle Eastern culture?

Look, I think that, you know, we've had a structured notion, and I don't know if I can answer this question like to the best, you know, notion, because I think it's going to be biased from my end, but I think this notion of having the ultimate life and the ultimate success, especially in Egypt, is like, you know, you get married, you know, the ultimate sort of happiness or the ultimate, because, you know, many notions around our belief systems is, you know, you stabilize when you have a family, when you're, you know, when your needs are met, when you're doing things, and, you know, according to, you know, the religious beliefs and notions really dictate a lot of our, you know, cultural behavior, our behaviors and our culture. So I think that, and that ties to well-being a lot, Jason, like it ties to well-being because You know, people according— like in the West at least, people see life differently, you know. They don't think of certain things we think of at an earlier age. We in the Middle East, we want to stabilize very quick because we don't have relationships in the way that relationships are constructed here. That's one main thing. That's just right off the bat. So Getting— finding this stability in life is very important. And by the way, uh, like, I'm just gonna be straight up because the truth is very, very, very important to say. Like, if you look at the most successful, um, Egyptian people in the world, like Mohamed Salah, the very successful soccer player, now when he— when he went out of this culture, out of— the only reason why I believe he is super mentally very well stable, unlike any sort of Egyptian footballer or any Egyptian that amassed huge amounts of success at a young age is because he was able to navigate a sense of belonging around him. He got married, I think, what was a year after going and playing in Belgium, and he was always put in place, and he wasn't really— he didn't lose himself in this identity struggle that every Middle Eastern loses himself in when they are— even myself, that's not limited to socioeconomic level or whatever. And this highly relates to well-being because you see him now performing at an incredible standard, and to perform at an incredible standard, you have to be mentally super well. And that is my point with Mohamed Salah, is because it is very, very, very difficult to maintain that level of well-being with our cultural belief systems no matter where we go in terms of living abroad and in the world and adapting to that lifestyle and that culture. So that's my take on— maybe I hope I answered your question, but it is mainly around really, really, really stabilizing and understanding that You know, again, our culture is dictated by a lot of religious beliefs, and you know that very well. You know, coming from a Jewish background and living in Israel, you definitely know how much this region or this area values religious beliefs, and it's just very important to know that.

Yeah, well, it's interesting because, like you said, education and information are the foundation of all this. And one of the words I want to offer is normalization, that it's normal to be stressed, it's normal to have a bad day, it's normal to wake up feeling funky, right? And a lot of times when there isn't community resources in any culture, in any subculture, then that's going to tend to grow bigger and bigger and bigger and get more challenging and more problematic, right? So as you started building this community, like, what were some of the steps for us? So because not only are you doing these amazing projects, but you're also building a community. I mean, every time I see you on social media, like all these, right? Anytime you're on Instagram Live or whatever it is, like all of a sudden all these people are jumping on and commenting and everything like that. How did that start, right? How did you go from, I'm going to do this, and then I'm going to put myself out there, and then I'm going to start connecting with people that I don't even know, and then I'm going to start, right? What were some of those steps to build this really incredibly engaged community? Community that you now have?

I just decided that I needed to, like, this needed to be something I needed to live for, and I needed to find out ways to harness this, the tools that we have. So I'll walk you step by step. First of all, like, I was diagnosed and it was a very, very tough time. And I keep saying my mom was a very huge supporter. I also have a very close friend of mine who would Skype me every single day. And I, till this day, I never forget that. His name is Dan Perry. And even though he lived in the UK, like, and this is the beauty of technology, right? You can have friends that, you know, you know your support system when they just show up. And that's super important to anyone listening out there, especially during this very tough time. I decided that I just needed to do something I have a very high energy as a person, and I know I just wanted to put that to good use. And I know I wanted to do that with honor and honor that with integrity and with honesty. And I think that one thing that really pushed me towards that is, you know, I have very select family members who are really suffering, and I was just like, why this? Like, that was sent to me. That disease was sent to me as a gift from God. And maybe I just need to talk about it because I know deep down in my heart no one's going to do that. I just know it for sure. I know deep down in my heart I haven't seen someone try with that same vocal sort of— I don't want to say aggressiveness because I'm not really that aggressive. I'm just very vocal and very out there, and I have no shame in that. I have actually no shame in that. And I think that how I started, to go back to your question, is I started seeing how people are doing things with different purposes and different missions. So I realized that, wow, Instagram is great. Oh wow, LinkedIn's great. One thing that I realized is like TikTok, I'm not using TikTok, so why don't I go on TikTok? And I just filmed first 2 TikToks right before I hopped on your call. I sent them to a friend for them to look at. But my point is, your time, my time, the next generation's time, we're all going to have different tools. And it's just how are you going to adapt to use them? Like when someone told me, Ali, you should use TikTok. I was like, what? Like people dance on this shit. Like, do people really educate like on TikTok? And then I started like hashtagging like psychology, mental health, and I started realizing, wow, this woman is doing a great job at educating. Why can't I do that? And I just started trying. And like when you say, why can't I do this or do this or that or whatever that is, you're not comparing yourself. You're actually empowering yourself to to give yourself another chance at doing something. And you know what, you're gonna fail. Like, I don't feel great about what I'm doing, but I wouldn't be where I am today if I didn't have this mindset. Why not me? Why not me post on LinkedIn? Why not me try to do this? And like, the people that always judge you are never the same people that are in the arena with you. And I— there's this great quote that I can't really rephrase, but it just says that, you know, the person that is in the arena Like, do not take any criticism or judgment from someone who has no idea of what a mile in your life looks like. And typically, I really respect everyone's opinion, but I really take to heart only those that truly, truly have shown me super care and love with the genuine fundamental purpose of what I'm doing, what I'm doing. And it's very important to take that into consideration because whenever you start a new community, whenever you start anything, especially when it's so sensitive around mental health— like, I had people telling me, you're not a mental health professional, like, you shouldn't do this, you shouldn't do that. But like, I'm not treating people, I'm actually the catalyst to allow people to seek out the help that they need. Like, Uber is not a car company, it's just a tech company that allows people to facilitate easier transportation. Now that's just me with mental health. Like, that is simply what I'm doing for a living. And I love that because I'm allowing people to get what I wish I had the opportunity when I wasn't feeling well. And I wish that someone would have told me it would have been okay, and like, I would be this guy that would, you know, go on to become a better version than who I was. I was— a big thought that I was struggling from when I wasn't okay was, will I ever be the same old Ali? And the reality is, no, you're not going to be the old Ali. You're going to be a new, better Ali. And you're going to be a new, better Jason Wasser. You're going to be a new, better Salma Hayek. Do you believe in that? And the thing is, if they say no, that's why I'm doing what I'm doing, because they have to see someone out there doing that for them to have the power to feel that there is hope. For sure.

And it's so interesting, because I know that you and I have talked about some of the stories that have come out of this. Community that has been life-saving, right? I mean, it would be honest to say that there has been lives that have been saved over and over again because of this community.

Yeah, 100%. Yeah.

Right. And that alone is a game changer, right? The fact that, like, if people are going to give you crap, like, who are you? You're not, you're not a mental health professional, but you're an expert of your own experience. And I do believe that, right? I believe that the people who can guide people to another place. Don't have to be this professional expert, but if you have a particular expertise in a specific set of areas and you can guide from there and point the— to the exits, then you're just as valuable, and sometimes not— if not even more, because you have relived that experience yourself. And say, there's that old, um, I think it's a big teaching in, um, in the 12-step world, um, and if actually, if you've ever seen the TV show The West Wing One of the main characters suffers from alcoholism and is in recovery, and one of the other guys went through a whole traumatic experience. And he goes, "There's a story about a guy who fell down in a hole, and the minister walks by or the rabbi walks by, and he goes, 'Hey, brother, can you help me get out?'" He goes, "I'll pray for you." Right? And then another person walks by and he's like, "Oh, I'll throw you down some food." And then finally, a true friend walks by, and the true friend jumps in the pit. And he's like, what are you doing? Now we're both stuck here. He goes, no, I've been down here before and I know how to get us out.

Yeah, yeah, that's a great analogy. Um, I think that, you know, one thing that I wanted to say with regards to what you were saying around, um, you know, if you're a professional or not, uh, there's a, there's a, you know, the— I, I call him my second father, Dr. Nasser Lhosa. Um, he invited me to the World Health Organization and he's the consultant of the Eastern Mediterranean regional office, and there was a huge workshop in Sharm el-Sheikh in July, and he invited me, and I didn't really know what my purpose was until like I got there, and it wasn't until that when I actually had the opportunity to speak there that I realized my true purpose and the message, the power of a voice of someone with a lived experience, and that was because professionals who haven't lived that experience can talk about the scientific notions to reporters. The whole session around the workshop was bringing together the Middle East's most renowned journalists into a room with the World Health Organization to review all the BS that they've been writing around mental health patients and mental challenges, because they heavily stigmatize it. They call us crazy, they call us whatever. And like, I just needed to be in the room and speak on the third day after having chilled with all of them, having dinner, lunch, joking around, like jokes day in, day out. When I stood to speak and said my story, they could not realize that I had been this black dot that they had been writing about and canceling me out of society. And they realized why they were brought into a room with like 100 other people and in workshops, because people like me who don't have this luxury of being in a room or knowing someone like Dr. Nasser or being in a family of privilege, because I am from a family of privilege, and it's not shameful to say that. It's just how I am brought up, and I think that privilege is a responsibility, and that's something that's so important to say. I'm lucky, like, I'm fine saying that, but some other people aren't, and that's why I wake up every single day, because at the end of the day, I know that my voice can and hopefully will one day allow someone else, allow parents, allow people that have had lives destroyed because of a lack of education and a lack of communication within their family to realize what this person is now way better and this person has been able to communicate with their parents like, why can't I do that? And like Parents don't despise their children. The fact that people aren't understood in the MENA region for their struggles, it's not the parents' fault. It's negligence on a societal standpoint. And like, I'm not here to blame someone and tell this person, oh, you should be doing this better, because they don't know any better. And that's part of like having an empathetic approach to this whole movement and this whole message. You know what, I'll blame someone if they know something and they're not acting upon it because they simply are ashamed of saying that my child is going through something and whatnot. But then I'll be like, well, someone like my mother, someone like my father was able to take that upon him and not take that upon his ego that he, you know, gave, or he gave, or his children, or his child may be not perfect. But in recognizing that, his child became his own perfection in his own way and is living the life that he, you know, enjoys. And if that isn't enough, then what is your definition of a happy life? And it's so much around letting go of this child and letting go of expectations, because in the Middle East, unfortunately, we don't simply realize that the most important thing when we come to— and again, that ties with the stability part, right, Jason? When you told me what's the biggest sort of thing that revolves around well-being in the Middle East, it's around getting a family, it's around starting something, but people don't think about what's beyond that because we neglect self-love and we neglect self, you know, ourselves, because when we do that, we realize, holy crap, like I need to give that right to my daughter, to my son, and I don't have to say that they need to be doctors or engineers or blah blah blah, because I realize that when I look deeper into myself, I'm a whole mystery that is worth discovering. I'm unique. And the fact is, we're all unique, and just not a lot of people can see that, and that's probably why I'm very passionate about what I'm doing.

Yeah. Well, it sounds to me like you're saying like the healthier— like you can go out and you can get a job, you can go and get a degree, you can go out and do something in the world. But the way I see it, especially as a therapist, is that the healthier you get, the more you unpackage, the more you heal, the more you work on your self-awareness and your self-insight, the more empowerment, right, which is, which is the whole basis of your platform. But I— but the whole— your potential exponentially grows, right? You may ever— I do believe that everybody has some level full of potential, but when you do exactly what you just said that we could and should be doing, I think our potential grows exponentially. One of the things that you're talking about is intergenerational themes. What's unfinished business that gets passed on from generation to generation? How do you no longer be a victim to that? There's really only a binary option. It's really like ones and zeros, right, in computer language. You either are empowered on a topic or you're a victim to that topic. We have so many different things in in our life that we may be empowered in this area, but a victim in this area. And our job, especially going to a therapist and working with mental health professionals, is to figure out what those hangups or things that are blockages are. But one of my favorite things to talk about, it's not that I have to go back into a person's past and spend years with them on that, but I'm a big fan of finding patterns of belief, patterns of expectations. Whose beliefs are you carrying? Who are you still honoring by doing, acting, behaving, or experiencing things in your present day based on culture, based on religion, based on family of origin, right? You know that my grandfather, my dad's dad, survived the Holocaust in Nazi Germany, and it's interesting to see the different viewpoints and different beliefs of people who've been through such traumatic experiences. And what has been passed down intergenerationally. And we know, and you've probably seen the science, that even in the DNA, in the blood samples, like there's, there's stuff that they've talked about, people who have intergenerational trauma, stuff will show up in second and third generation in their psyche, in their, you know, emotionality. And our job is to unpackage that and put it to rest because we do have the resources. We can say that I didn't have the opportunity. We can't say that there was no resources available to me. And I think that's what makes what you're doing so ridiculously amazing is that in the Middle East, you're giving them the opportunity to say, "I don't have any more excuses." There's this Empower Magazine, right? There's this podcast. There's this guy who grew up just like us, who speaks our language, who looks like us, who's been through these experiences.

Yeah.

And I think that's just what's so fascinating and so incredible about your community that you have created, because it's not just you, right? Now you have all these contributors and you have people who are, who are, right, famous, uh, actors and actresses showing up now and, and part being part of this conversation. Like, what was that like to go from like you being this guy who's like, okay, I'm gonna do this organically, right, in my community? And now you're getting like these— I know you've mentioned some names, um, I've seen by following your social media people that I don't know, but like Some famous actors and actresses.

Yeah, I think, look, I think that it's even football players, you know, I was told by the same guy, Dr. Nasser Loza, if you want to make a change, Ali, I don't know how the hell you're going to do it, but you need to bring the people that Egyptians follow the most, and they are footballers, number one. Number two, actresses and actresses, the red carpet of Egypt. And then like professionals that are well respected, like doctors and whatever, but like the first two are the biggest ones. So that's really what I started doing. I was like, everything that I did, whether it was speaking at the World Health Organization, you know, I had this other venture, Visit Egypt, that we did like a campaign that went to win a UN award, and I just literally used every single piece of success that I have ever done or won or whatever to make those people like look and see this is maybe someone who I will give a second of my attention to. And when they— I only needed one second to be like, yeah, we want to listen, we want to give a chance. And I think that when you do believe in what you're doing, it's just a matter of time. It's just a matter of time. If you give up, then you give up. But like, with me, giving up was never an option. I mean, if I take a job, this is going to be what I'm going to be doing from 6 to 12 until I pass out. Why? Because I like it. Because I'm only going to stop when I'm dead, you know what I mean? You know what I mean? So I think that like, it's just super simple. It's very simple. It's a mission that I've always wanted to work on, and I think that this is what my life is worth. My life is worth sharing this message because I know like, there are warriors out there that fight for things, and not every— there's a saying in Arabic is, "Ash-shantumoochahid, lezm ta'ayt shahid." And it's like, If you believe in something, if you're honoring something, you're not up to die as a martyr. You have to live as a martyr. I know that's like an extreme example, but like you have to live for something worth dying for, right?

Which is what's your purpose and what's your potential, which is one of my favorite things to talk about.

Yeah, exactly. And like, to me, I had to hold on to something when I had nothing to hold on to. Like, Jason Wasser, like, I got to a low where I literally just wanted to end everything. And I think that many people get that. But at that point, you have to ask the fundamental self-discovery question, which is, what is my life really worth? Like, why am I here? And when something really makes you feel so fulfilled, and do that 24/7 as much as you can, and take a break and keep doing that. And if that fuels you, you will— you eventually know this is meant for you. This is not like a trial and error thing. And I think for for just seeing the impact that, you know, from day one. I get touched whenever someone sends me a message saying, "Hey, this meant something to me," or whatever, because I just never expected. Like, I think it's something that hinders our, you know, instant gratifying or instant gratified generation is we always expect results. And I'm a victim to that, like, a lot of the times, by the way. I'm not saying I'm I'm immune to that. But when you find something you just love doing, whether it's music or like making an electronic music track, or like just something that puts you in your flow element because you don't want anything in return, because it makes you feel so damn good about yourself, then that's truly what you need to do. And, and, and never expect anything. Everything comes in return. And to me, that was honestly, honestly, honestly what started with this mental health movement. I actually never believed in mental health like 4, 6 years ago, but slowly but surely when I started to see all these guys chasing success and all these girls chasing self— like beauty standards, I started realizing that maybe it isn't success or whatever or happiness that we're chasing. Maybe it's a better quality life, and maybe that's something around, you know, our mental health and well-being that we need to focus on. And I started to decode all these messages and I started to realize that maybe that's what I need to be doing because I've always been told, hey, you should be a motivational speaker, you should be whatever, hey, you should— At the end of the day, like, I never felt like I'm a motivational speaker even though many people still think that. I always felt that I'm someone who's very purpose-driven and I just needed to find that. And that's the That's something to anyone listening to us out there, is that if you have energy and if you feel like if you just knew what you needed to do, you would go and live the best life. Start today. Get your journal out like what I did here and like just write about what you love. Like write about what drives you insanely wild. Is it Alice in Wonderland? Is it Aladdin? Like what fantasies do you have? And you start to decode things in the middle of writing. Oh, Maybe it's just I love giving back. Well, how do you love giving back? And then things always come up in your sort of reel of your life, and you start making sense, connecting the dots backwards. And that's sort of what I did, and realizing what people have been telling me, what I believe. It's like this Johari window, you know, what don't I know about myself and what do others not know about me? And that's the secret window. And what do others know about me that I don't know about myself? And what do I know that others know about me, and like, is it making sense? And like, the more you start realizing all these things, the more you start saying, aha, now I've got something to work with. And that's really what I did.

That aha moment is so powerful. I love watching, especially now, like since I converted my whole practice to online. So I'm literally like inches away from my client's face right now versus like when they're in my office, they're like, you know, 6, 7, 8, 9 feet away on the other side. On the other couch, right? And I get to like, I can now literally see their eyes so close now where I'm like, okay, something's really turning, something's really changing. And I'm like, and I can now say, okay, so what's going on? What just happened for you? What aha moment did you just have? And I think, right, that self-discovery, the constant pushing and provoking and doing it with the support system. I think, again, going back to one of the successes that I really want people to hear is that every step of this way, from what I know about what you share with me, is that you didn't do this alone. You're doing a lot of the nitty-gritty work, but you have, you know, but now you have your collaborators, now you have the people you're bringing on as guests, but you're also partnering with different, like you said, the World Health Organization or all these different things. You're not doing this alone. And I want people to get this, that especially when it comes to emotions, when it comes to well-being, when it comes to mental health, One of the biggest factors that contributes to a decline in mental health is isolation, is being alone, feeling alone, thinking you are alone, thinking that no one will help you, no one wants to connect with you, no one cares about you, and shutting yourself off from the world. And I think in the model of what you're doing is already proof positive of why it's so successful because it's not alone. It's not in a vacuum, right? It's on social media. It's on podcasts. It's on a website. DM and Twitter, and there's constant, constant engagement of people who would otherwise be isolated in front of their phone are now interacting with each other. And I want people out there to hear that. That solving these problems means that you have to get uncomfortable with asking for help. You have to get uncomfortable looking for the resources. You also have to get uncomfortable with the fact that you have to let go of the belief that no one out there can help you. Yeah, that's the biggest one, I think.

Yeah, that's the biggest one. And I think that you are, you know, it's, it's, it is a very, very— that's why empower, the word to me is a big word because you can have the best team around you, you know, Michael Jordan had the best team around him. I love this documentary, but it's all, it's him, it's him. And, and the more you realize it's you, it's, it's your belief, it's your decision to commit to healing, it's your decision to make or break your sense of hope, your sense of your life. And I know it sounds kind of like counterintuitive, but in a sense that a lot of people ask me, do you like, you know, are you with or against medication or all these things? And the only thing that I ever ask them is like, Is this person willing to get— willing to commit to get better? So this person takes medication to stabilize him, and then he has this talk therapy, or is it whether it's DBT or CBT, to stabilize him, and then they work on a gradual progression of reducing so that the medication does not stem into an addiction. Is that person willing to commit to that, or is that person just wanting to live on life support? Because at the end of the day our mind, neuroplasticity. Like, you know, the study that— how incredibly sophisticated this mind is, and no one today understands how sophisticated and incredible this organ that is the most powerful in the body is, the most mysterious in the body. My whole point is it's a personal decision, and sometimes people are too chained to the notion that this is way beyond their scope until someone else comes and breaks that chain for themselves and shows other people that they too can cut that chain because they were just right where they were and can tell that story in a narrative that can be super relatable and super relevant in a cultural and contextual manner. Right.

And it's funny because you just talked about Michael Jordan. So I'm not sure if you're familiar with Tim Grover, who wrote the book Relentless. He was Jordan's trainer, D-Wade's trainer, LeBron runs, right? Kobe's trainer. And he read this amazing, amazing book. And there's just so much powerful mindset in there. And what you're really talking about, I mean, of the many quotes I can pick from that book, but one of them is like, "Being relentless means demanding more of yourself than anyone else can ever demand of you. And knowing that every time you stop, you can still do more, you must do more." Do the work every day. You have to do something you don't want to do every day. Challenge yourself to be uncomfortable. Push past the apathy, the laziness, the fear. Otherwise, the next day you're gonna have to do 2 things you don't want to do, then 3, then 4, then 5. And pretty soon you can't even get back to that first thing because of this big snowball of stuff, right?

But you know, Jason, something I realized is that even it works in both ways. So when you say do something that makes you feel uncomfortable, sometimes for me resting is so uncomfortable, like sitting on a couch is so uncomfortable. Yeah. So it's not just like working on a physical thing, right? It's like It's here as well. Like, so many of my guy friends find meditation super uncomfortable, yet studies are showing that meditation is extremely beneficial for the mind. Like, okay, well, now I'm asking myself, how the fuck can I meditate? Because it's super important. It's just like—

One second at a time. That's how you do it, right? Right. It's one second at a time. It's the decision that I'm going to do this in this moment. Right. And I know for many men, it's the idea of like, Wait, if I take a break, I'm not accomplishing something, right? If I relax, I'm not in momentum, as opposed to this is going to recharge my— I got it. You do have to feed yourself. You do have to put gas in your car. You can't just keep driving without gas in your car, and people need to realize that taking a rest is rejuvenating, is helpful, is healthy. In fact, one of my guests last week, Dr. Sandra Dalton-Smith, is a sleep expert, and she talks about the different ways, 7 different types of rejuvenation. Ruminating Rest. And actually, that podcast is going to be coming out a few episodes before yours. So, for people out there who aren't taking advantage of restful nature, and it doesn't mean taking a nap. It could mean taking a nap, but you're right. It doesn't have to be this forward momentum. It could just be— Ah. That.

One thing I want to say with what you're saying is I think the one-liner that hit me the most from Jordan's documentary, which was highly regarded as to the way it was presented to the public is this one-liner: "No one was ever as present as Michael Jordan." And I think that this showed the ultimate way to really become the best version of yourself is to become physically and mentally super apt. And what that means is that you can't simply be present if you're not mentally if you're not mentally well. And you can't play at that level of performance, at that world-class standard, if you're not mentally well. And I think that what I loved about that sentence is that it showed that just as he put so much emphasis on his work, he put so much emphasis on his space. And in creating sort of boundaries and what we are trying to incorporate in the mental health spheres and allow kids, especially with the notification era that we're in with digital social media, it is so important to always maintain this balance. And I think that once you get that, once you get that the most that you can ever deliver in this world is when you are present, and the most happiest you will be is when you are present, then yeah, you have the secret of the best in the world.

And I think it's awesome, for sure, for sure. Well, and that's funny, right? When we met, um, on the retreat that Pablo and I hosted together, the How I Show Up Retreat, one of the things that— if you remember this specifically— one of the assignments I had you guys do was your stop, tolerate, or what are you going to no longer tolerate, your stop doing list.

Yeah, right.

And in a way, it's kind of like I wanted it to be this like blunt, in-your-face question of like, what is it— what are you allowing into our lives? What are we allowing into our lives that doesn't allow us to work on maximum capacity. That's keeping us away from being rejuvenated and restful. That's taking away from our mental health. That's taking away from our connections with others, with our connection with ourself, with spirituality, whatever it may be. And then I challenge people out there to just take out a piece of paper or pull out their phone or whatever and just write a list of like, what are the things that you're tolerating in your life that you know are keeping you away from feeling better? Just on a simple level, right? Is it the foods that you're eating? Is it a person that you're hanging out with? Are you spending too much time binging Netflix, right? I mean, as much as Tiger King is this really crazy, seductive thing, and we all want to know if Carol Baskin did it or not, right? How much time a day can we go through those things? And is that— I always challenge my clients, and I use this example a lot. It's like when someone comes in like, "Well, we want to be the best in our relationship." And I'm like, "Okay, great. How many books have you read on relationships?" And they're like, "Zero." I'm like, "Okay. Podcasts and YouTube videos?" They're like, "Zero." "Okay, so you've been together in this relationship for 3 years, 5 years, 10 years." I'm like, "How much other— have you seen another therapist for?" And they're like, "No." I'm like, "Okay, so percentage-wise, you have 0.0000.2% effort on making your relationship and your emotions and your connection better over the course of 10 years, 5 years, 8 years, 12 years of this relationship. And you want this to be like that? But where's the inertia? Where's the effort? Where's the motivation?" So I constantly want to challenge people like, "What are you What do you have to give up doing in order for that to happen?

I remember that was what for me, because at the time, you know, I actually had a very hard, like, 3-month struggle with smoking. And I know that I wrote that down. And it's funny that we are having this right now because I officially, like, you know, put that out. And I wasn't smoking a lot, I was just smoking 1 cigar a day, but it would bring me so much instant ease and a head rush that would take so much stress away. And you know, the best way to replace a habit, to avoid a habit, is to replace it with a more empowering habit. And that's when I started working out, uh, you know, running in the morning, workout in the evening. And I know Kenzie is watching us and she's, she is helping me a lot right now. But I, I know that once I start doing that or stop doing that previous habit, like my level of tolerance or happiness or quality of life, my performance, my creativity, my, my inner genius has started to pop out more and more and more. Because here's the thing, when you do something or when something's stopping you, whether that's not knowing how to set a boundary with someone or whatever, you lose some sort of self-respect because you know that that's hurting you and you just can't stop it and you don't know what to do about it. So it's not allowing you to feel like You are in control of your ultimate— that inner locus of control is coming out. And when you feel that, you become empowered and you become more confident in doing XYZ and something completely different in your life. But everything has a trickle effect in your life.

And that's where destiny, right? You can truly step into your destiny. And I can see, like, and I think that was one of the main things that, like, behind the scenes that Pablo and I wanted to create by this specific group of people and keeping it such a small group of people when we hung out on that weekend where it was everybody was such high performers and so talented and so gifted and so insightful, right? And right, we had such a great group that weekend. And, and I feel that like in a way it wasn't like, oh my God, they're doing that, I feel bad about myself because they're doing that, I'm not. It was like that old phrase, a rising tide raises all ships. That everybody there, I think, benefited from everybody else there. And everybody there was able to also be of amazing contribution to the other people, right? And both giving and receiving in a reflexive way. And I think that's one of the things going back to community and creating community. And like you said, like people reaching out to you from across the sea or someone hitting you up on DM or TikTok or whatever. Whatever, and now all of your collaborators and your contributors also being in this network of that it's good for all. I think that when it comes to mental health, when it comes to well-being, when it comes to that community is huge. Community that's helping everybody be uplifting is huge. I think that's why I just love that it's just simple, like EMPOWER Magazine, right? EMPOWER is just the greatest platform for that. I know that on Facebook, we put out the links, but I just wanted to share. With everybody that to go online, to go to empower-mag is the magazine right there. And then to find you on Instagram and to find you on TikTok and social media, where do they go to follow you?

It's Ali Salama, A-L-L-Y instead of salami. It's Salama with an A at the end.

That's it. And then from there, if you go to your Instagram, you can go right to all the other links that are there.

Yeah, it's very easy. Linktree. I think it's the best thing ever because you literally can connect with anyone anywhere. It's one link. But yeah, no, I just want to say thank you, Jason Wasser, for having me, and it's a pleasure. I love being always stimulated intellectually. It's something that, you know, in our day and age, I think we're so distracted with so many things happening, you know. So funny, because one thing that I heard a doctor, a neuroscientist say 3 days ago is that if you don't have ADHD in today's day and age, like you're not, you know, you're doing it wrong.

There's something wrong with you.

Yeah. Yeah. Like what we consume on one day in data from a data perspective or information processing is more than what a human being consumed in the 1950s in their entire lives. The amount of data. And I think that like, once you fathom that, you will understand the amount of pressure. Because we haven't changed. Our minds are still the same. Like, we haven't evolved at that incredible rate of, I don't know, evolution, whatever the hell you may call it. But the point is like, how are we meant to stay sane? And that is something we need to teach ourselves and our kids at school. Because while technology is great, And I'm a big fan of social media. I'm a big fan of so many things. I'm also a big fan of regulating all these things because just as Michael Jordan was the best at what he did, he was also the best at controlling his environment. And that's not something we teach our kids.

Exactly. And the way I picture it is kind of like we have a hard drive, right? We have a certain amount of memory, right, of space in our brain that we can upgrade, right? I mean, there's gonna be maybe incremental things, but as we get older, depending on nutrition and disease and whatever else, right, we can— we have a variation, right, a small variation of how much how much more we can utilize that. But the RAM, right, it's the processing. How much space are we using? How many apps are open? How many files are open? How much— that's what I think you're really talking about, the RAM, right? That, are we being very careful with programs that take up too much energy and too much space that causes us not to access our emotional hard drive? And when we get completely distracted or too overwhelmed and we're not regulating, like you said, and moderating what we're putting our attention to, that's when our system starts to crash, right? And then I think that's a perfect metaphor for what's going on on an emotional well-being perspective with everything. And to wrap this all up, I think the one thing that I want to maybe ask is if there's one thing that you can share. Yeah. That if you had literally 45 seconds that you were interacting with somebody and you know you would never meet with them again— and this is a big— because it's like distilling all of your wisdom that you've gained in your life— like, like, what's that like one thing that no matter what you would want someone to walk away with from talking to you?

I'd want them to know that if you truly believe in something and you have felt that like you've lost all resources in the world to do All you need is to find this one thing within you, and this is an energy, and once you are able to harness this one skill set that is communicating, and that starts from within, the more you can really communicate from within and tell yourself that, not just tell yourself, like, it's so hard to answer this question, but basically, you don't have to be a salesman, to be a salesman. I did not know that when you sign up to something you love, you automatically sell it 24/7. Like when you talk to me, like I just love what I do, so I'll be like, Jason, no, like this is actually blah blah blah. And like what I wanted to tell someone is when you love, love, love what you do, you will find the energy and resources, so never back anything up from what you want to fulfill in your life, because time is a feeling. Time is not an arbitrary number. When you love something, time flies, and when you don't, time doesn't. But the same amount of time is arbitrary. Therefore, time is a feeling and it is not a duration. And this is the only thing that I'll leave.

Love it, because I know, right, when we were talking about so many things over the weekend together, right, when, like, when we started getting into the neuro-emotional technique stuff which you experience, right, which we'll save for another time. And we were talking about mind-body stuff and healing and all these things that had, you know, separate from our entrepreneur journeys. Like, we were just like, you know, it was there, right? That ride back and forth that we had, right, from Asheville, just sitting and talking, you and I, right? Especially to the airport. Like, it's just like, it made the car ride— that was an hour car ride— go like that. So I think that's like, again, like, for people out there, like, get connected with things that are passionate, that you're, you know, that you're passionate about. And if you're not sure go experiment. That's the beautiful thing of technology. That's the beautiful thing of the—

like, everything right now. If you're not sure, there's a conversation happening literally everywhere, on Facebook, on Twitter. If you like something and if you're passionate about something, stick your head in somewhere and don't be this annoying joker. Just listen. And I think when we start listening— before I even started doing anything mental health, only thing I did was I listened. I had to research. I did all these things. So whenever I had to say something, I actually knew what I was talking about. So Go in, take that initiative and don't feel that, you know, the most, the hardest thing I've ever done in my life was go to Harvard and ask a question on the mental health panel. But once I did that, and I was asking to listen, I wasn't asking to show off, I became super close with the person that changed my life. So be curious and be interesting. Be interested to be interesting. Like, be curious to live life and be interested to be an interesting person. That's it.

That's it. And that's definitely a great place for us to hold. So, thank you, my brother.

Really appreciate it. It's good to see your face.

And I look forward to being able to spend some time with you again after all this craziness calms down and we can jump on some planes again.

Yeah, I know. We're gonna catch up soon, but I just want to say thank you for having me, and I really appreciate your time. And I, I, I just want to say that, you know, you taught me a lot from, from this weekend that we spent. And, uh, you know, especially about the Jewish community, the Israeli community. And it's, it's crazy how, um, you know, we can both be from very, very different backgrounds and connect. And, uh, I said it in the video that we posted, like, when you're practicing your own rituals I admire the fact that, you know, we can break stereotypes and we can break certain stigmas. And that's just part of the message, right? That's just part of enjoying life and just putting all the political sort of agendas aside and coming to be human and realizing that, you know what, we can have differences, but we can still love each other in a way that allows us to feel that we are connected and we empathize and we understand. And that's when we realize We are one. And I think that it's such a stigmatized, such a naive message, or such a social, it's a very powerful message because—

But it's so true 'cause we, right, of the many experiences that you and I have probably had in our life, we were able to recreate that instantaneously because of our shared love for humanity, our shared love for people that are different than us, our shared curiosity, our shared, right, asking the question. It's not like exactly what you said. It's not going in and being the definitive, this is what this is. It's going in and asking the questions, right? And, you know, we were sitting out on the patio and I was praying, and right where we had this whole— and then we started doing our Hebrew numbers, Hebrew and Arabic numbers together. I'm like, wow, that's really the same, you know? This is, right, we can grow up in different cultures, but we really do share one heart. And then I really want people out there to know that, like, this is where it's about. It's about the community, it's about asking the right questions, about not doing it alone. So, my brother, thank you again.

Thank you so much, Jason, I really appreciate it.

My absolute pleasure. Thanks for listening to the You Winning Life podcast.

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