Break The ADDICTION To Negative Thoughts & Start MANIFESTING Anything You Want | Lilly Singh

I thought to myself, you have such an extraordinary life. You get to do amazing things. You have a dope career. The fact that you still feel lost and confused and sad was very upsetting to me because I thought, what would have to happen in your life to not feel this way? And what I've included is this.

I think you gotta have a dream.

The School of Greatness.

Really? Yeah. Please welcome Lewis Howes. What was the biggest lie that you feel like you lived or thought you thought was a real truth but you realize this is a big lie.

Yeah, there's a few that I've subscribed to and that I've been like, I don't know if that was absolutely correct. It's always so hard when I get this question because I'm like, was it a lie or did I genuinely believe it at that time? Because I was in a different spot. Of course. The best example I have of this, I think, is for most of my life, I truly believe there was one definition to success. I believe this. I think it's the way I was raised, maybe the fact that I had immigrant parents that, like, they had one definition of success. It was, You go to work, you work really hard, you get money, you provide for your family, and that is success.

Okay.

I subscribed to that, you know? So I worked hard in school. I wanted to get a good job to make money, to then support myself and eventually a family. And so I think even though I don't have the family and I'm still single, I really use just work as my definition of success. Awards. Oh, I won an award. I remember the first time I won a Streamy. If you don't know what a Streamy is, it's a YouTube associated award. But the first time I won it, that really meant so much to me to the point where I was like, oh, I am now a more valuable person now because I have this award. When I reached milestones of numbers on YouTube, I am now, I add more value now. I am better now as a person because I have a million more people following me. And I hustled a lot and I worked on my professional life a lot and I thought that's what success was. And I believed that for lots of 10 years. And I think now I'm in the point of my life where I think that's one definition of success. Because actually when I have a day where I'm really, I make great memories with people, that feels like a success to me now. It never used to, but now I'm like, no, that actually feels, I made a new friend today. That feels like success. I've redefined what success means to me.

Do you feel like it would have been successful if you didn't have 40 plus million followers, the awards, the money, the TV shows, the New York Times best selling books? Do you feel like if it was 10-15 years ago, if you just, had a great moment throughout the day where you were connecting with a friend, that would have been success.

Absolutely not. 100%. So I think I can be really honest in saying this. I know this is a little bit of a scary conversation because mental health is so important and rest is so important. I'm of the belief that I had two chapters in my life thus far. One was hustle hard, you can't say no, doesn't matter if the thing is annoying, you do the thing, doesn't matter if the gig is free, you do the gig, climb the ladder, climb the ladder. And the reason I climbed the ladder is because I thought one day I will get to a place where I can call the shots and I can do what makes me happy But the issue is you get so caught up in the climb and you get so caught up in this race that you forget that was ever the goal to begin with. So I think I've recently recognized that actually you don't need to do all this anymore. There was a time and place for that, but you can actually find joy. You can actually say no to things that are not exciting to you. You can make those-- and this is a very privileged conversation, I'm aware, but I think a lot of us have earned that privilege.

We don't exercise it though. Do you think you would have been able to find joy? If you would have known this, let's say your body knew this, do you.

Think you would have been able to.

Do this before you Accomplished though? --No way. No way.

So you had to experience that. --You have to go through a certain amount of torture. I believe that. I really believe that. You have to go like and a lot of how I learned this was I had two seasons of a late night show.

And I've talked about this a lot that that happened. --This was a big deal. --It was a big deal.

--This is a massive moment.

I remember the announcement.

It was like Fallon and yeah it was it was a whole it was a whole thing. --What did that teach you? Well, I'll tell you right now. I'll be honest. So a lot of people have asked What was your reaction when you got that call from NBC? And I think for a couple of years I kind of lied, to be honest. I was like, oh, I was so excited. And of course I said yes. The truth is I actually said no first. A lot of people don't know this. I said no because I never grew up with late night. I never had a dream to be a late night host. That wasn't necessarily exciting to me. But then so many people said to me, this could be historic. There, you know, it's been over 30 years since there's been a a woman, a woman of color even longer, someone who's South Asian the first time ever. -Wow. -And so there was a little bit of ego there where I thought, I want to, of course, be part of this epic moment. But there was a little bit of pressure as well to think, if I say no to this and it goes to someone else, that history would have never been made. So I really did this to help pave a path. I was naive in thinking that that reason would help me endure the seasons of that show that were very difficult, but that taught me that no actually being passionate about something and having fun while doing it, they're really undervalued. We don't value fun and passion enough, I feel.

I know.

I never did in my life.

Do you value now?

I do now.

You do more now?

I do.

You seem more relaxed.

I am more relaxed. No, but it's been, I'm learning a lot of things. Because my parents, I never in my entire life have seen my parents ever do something because it was fun or it was their passion. If I ask my mom right now today, what are your hobbies? She will say none. And she will say, I'm too old to have hobbies. And all of their decisions are based on survival. They're based on, I need to save money, I need to survive. And that is how I have behaved for years and years and years. I have finally given myself the permission to let go of that trauma and understand where it comes from and say, I can actually do things that are fun, just because they're fun. Even if the paycheck's low, but they're fun.

That should hold some value. It's interesting, now thinking back, every time I've spent time with you, which is not that many times, maybe a handful of times we've hung out, I try to play a game with you.

Oh, yeah.

We played ping pong when I was at your house like years ago. Yeah. I've got Papa Shot basketball in the other room. So after this, we'll play a 60 second game. 60 seconds of fun. We were at a, you know, a birthday party one time having fun. So my goal is to bring joy to your life every time we hang out. Even 60 seconds of joy. And you guys, that's the goal. Thank you. But I think that should be all of our opportunity when we're connecting with.

Friends is how to find joy and play.

Even when it seems really stressful.

60 seconds of play. Most of us are in the habit of survival, even though our circumstances do not require survival. You know, and that's what I'm trying to unlearn.

How do we get out of that? Some people, they might feel like, I am in survival mode, I've gotta work 12 to 14 hours a day. And perhaps they are. I don't have downtime right now at.

This season of life, but most of us are not. So how do we get out of that? And I want to emphasize that's fair. If you're in survival mode, More power to you, do what you need to do. But most of us, I would say, that is not our circumstance, but we're so used to behaving like that, so we continue doing it. But what really helped me was learning where these behaviors come from. You know, and I think it is a lot of, especially for kids of immigrants, it's a lot of generational trauma. It's all about, I'll give you a prime example, my parents, and I think most brown kids, if there's any brown kids listening to this, we get so upset with our parents because we think, My parents only care what people think. You know, Indian parents really care what people think. I'm sure this is true across many cultures. And they used to bother me as a teen. I used to have a lot of friction with my parents. You care so much what other people think more than you care about me. You don't love me as much as you love other people's opinions. And I never, ever would understand why. And then as an adult, I was like, let me actually look at my parents and let me actually really dive into this. They actually had to care what other people think.

Why?

They immigrated to Canada in the 1970s. The only people they knew were other family members. That was their only support system. And so if someone thought ill of them, that kind of would impact their survival and their resources, which is why they care so much about the family thinking they're, you know, on good terms. So that caused a lot of friction with me when I'm like, I wanna make YouTube videos. I want to pierce my belly button, you know. Oh, I'm actually coming out. I'm bi. Now, this rattles every part of their existence because they think, What will people think? How will we survive? That is not the reality I'm operating in. I live in LA where everyone is-- There's so many queer people where you're encouraged to be different.

And so I had to look at.

That for what it is and think, I respect that you have that trait and I know where it comes from. And I know it's been passed down to me, but I'm actively choosing to not use that tool in this circumstance.

Because it doesn't make sense here. On a scale of 1 to 10 in the last-- Decade. 10 being you love yourself fully and completely. One being you don't love yourself at all. Where do you feel like on average you were on that scale in the last decade? 10 being like I fully love and accept myself. I am inner peace. I feel calm. I say nice things about myself. And one being you speak badly and you don't love yourself.

I'm gonna go from 2012 To right now. Okay. In 2012, I was a false 10. I was a fake 10. Uh huh. Because I did love myself, but I can honestly reflect back and say I loved myself because other people validated me so much. I was the new hot girl on YouTube. I was paving a path. You know, I was the token diversity person. People were bigging me up and I thought, oh, I love myself. Look at all these. But loving yourself doesn't mean you love yourself in relation to what other people think about you. It doesn't mean that comes from somewhere external. It means that, hey, even if all these things weren't here, I still love my, I didn't have that.

Really?

And then I think I realized that and I dove down to like a two because I thought, wow, you are just actually a shell of a human being.

Really?

You don't actually, none of this is real, and I realized this especially during the pandemic when everything went away and I literally felt like I had no value.

Really?

I felt like I had no, I didn't even feel like a human. I felt like a shell of a human truly. Now I can genuinely, and this is F a book promo, it's not even a book promo, this has helped me get to what I feel is the truest 10 of my life.

Wow.

So a two, when were you a two?

I think I was a two.

Or for how long was the season?

Probably a good amount of time, honestly. It might have been during even late night, the season one of late night, because I felt so much of that pressure and there was so many opinions getting thrown at me and they impacted me every single day. And I didn't get upset at the negative opinions per se, I got upset at how much I gave people permission to tell me who I was. For a lot of my life, I have given complete strangers the permission to tell me who I am, even though they've not met me.

Through comments or through reviews?

Through comments, through reviews, through whatever it might be. And I give myself grace because that was such a big part of my job, being on the internet, you get that. And so I give myself grace, but I really, that pains me, that makes me sad.

I feel like this is one of the biggest challenges for people that want to share their voice. They want to create a book, launch a podcast, do YouTube, whatever it is. You want to be on social media, you want to put yourself out there and make something meaningful that's meaningful to you and share with the world. I feel like that's one of the biggest challenges. I've had many people on in the last few weeks who, let's say, before they became known and successful, they loved themselves more. Then within a couple years of after all this success and massive following, The pressure, it was like we're not trained or taught how to manage the responsibility, the weight, the pressure, the noise, the conflict.

The human brain is not built for that.

It concerns me because there's a lot of people that want to accomplish something. They want to put themselves out there. They want to grow. But when they hear these stories of successful people or people in the spotlight who have less love for themselves or let's say less confidence or whatever it might be for some people. when they grow, that might scare people from putting it out any more. How do you think people can learn to love themselves before and during their growth phase and even if they hit a hiccup and you know go down, maybe the views stop, people don't buy the book after a while, whatever it is. How do you love yourself when no one's watching, when everyone's watching and then when everyone's criticizing you?

-Right. I have a two-part answer here. Me being type A, I have a two-part answer here. This was exactly the predicament I was in. I thought to myself, you have such an extraordinary life, you get to do amazing things, you have a dope career. The fact that you still feel lost and confused and sad was very upsetting to me because I thought what would have to happen in your life to not feel this way?

Yeah, I should feel great.

Exactly, and I, through writing this book, did a lot of that work. I had a lot of false starts on this book because I started writing and I thought, no, this is not right, this is not right, this is not true. Get to the root of what this is. Don't write another fluffy thing, write what is actually true and have to do the work. And what I've concluded is this: The reason we have this problem, and a lot of people have this problem, is because we are not encouraged to do any of this work as a kid. We don't actually know how to do this. We don't know how to live a fulfilling life. We don't know what a fulfilling life is. We've never defined it for ourselves. We use these terms loosely. What does it mean to live a fulfilling life? That's just a fluff word that you see, you don't actually know. If I tell you, though, how do you solve this math problem, you're gonna know how to do that. If I tell you how do you edit this video, you're gonna know how to do that. It's because we are valued on school work and professional work, and we're taught things in school. We're taught how to analyze other people's emotions. We're taught how to champion other characters. We're never taught how to look inwards. We're never taught how to analyze ourself. We're never taught what our own goals should be, because goals are always grades or salaries or promotions. So I tried to do that work. I was never encouraged to do that as a kid. Really?

Yes, which is what this book was.

In the last couple of years you tried to do that?

I did.

I did, and a lot of the quarantine I spent doing this work. And what I concluded was the definition of a fulfilling life is to build a foundation, so, I'm gonna explain foundation as well because that's another fluff word, to build a strong foundation for your life that actually cannot, does not teeter based on what is actually happening in your life.

Powerful. So you're not in reaction to events, words, criticism out there.

I don't know if you can relate to this, when I'm having a great day or great period of my life, it's very easy to practice gratitude. Of course. My moral compass is so in alignment.

With what I want it to be.

You're the best version of yourself, yeah. But when I have a bad day, it's not so much that it's hard to be grateful, it's that I felt like I changed to my core, like who I was as a person changed, my belief system changed, how I treated myself changed. And that's a very dangerous place to live, thinking I am just gonna make myself completely vulnerable to all external forces so that no matter what happens in my day, I will just teeter in the direction that the world is making me go. I don't wanna live in that place. No. So what I mean by building a strong foundation is building a safe place in my mind that I can return to regardless of what's happening in my day. So I call this book the Blueprint for Building a Safe Place in youn Mind. Something where if you succeed tomorrow, if you fail tomorrow, you still have a safe place to return to where none of those things matter. So let me ask you this.

Let's hypothetically you have a horrible day. Everything goes wrong. You try something, whatever, it's all going wrong. People are mad at you that you're not trying to make mad, all these things. What do you say? What do you do? What does that safe place give you?

Yeah, so the safe place, the foundation I'm talking about, I've broken it down to four things that actually matter. So this is what I love about the book, is I actually break it down. I don't leave any fluff words open to interpretation. I define all things. A foundation for me is a relationship to yourself, a relationship to the universe, understanding distraction and implementing design. These are the four things I repeat to myself every single day and any conflict I look at through that lens. That is the foundation of my triangle, so to speak. I think that all conflicts can be looked at through these four things and this is the foundation of every single person's triangle is what I believe.

What is implementing design mean?

Implementing design means unsubscribing to ideas that no longer serve you. Because so often we are doing things in life because We have to. I don't have a choice. It's complicated. We treat opinions as facts, and we treat choices as facts. You know, a prime example being a lot of tension in my life has been, oh, you know, my parents and society expects me to do something else. They expect me to get married. I have to get married. My parents want me to get married. I have to get that job. I have to follow my sister's footsteps. You don't get it.

I have to. I have.

But you don't have to. You actually don't have to do that at all. I wanna get into entertainment. I have to move to L.A. I have to get a casting agent. I have to go to acting class. That's the only way I have to do that? No, you didn't have to. I got in through making YouTube videos. So it's about unsubscribing to ideas that don't serve you, even though they may seem like they're facts you have to follow. Implement design into your life and actually build a life that is beneficial to you. And I talk about this through the lens of when we're born, we're all served a platter. Society's like, here, boy, blue onesie, girl, pink onesie. This is what you... But we have a choice to stop eating from that platter. It's gonna take work. It's gonna be uncomfortable, but that is still our choice.

Yes.

You know, it's not a fact.

What were the three things that were not serving you the most that you've had to really let go of?

One of them was that because of my job, part of my job is to allow people to disrespect me.

Really?

Yes.

So-- you- mean like with comments on YouTube specifically?

Yeah, that's the thing. I think anyone in entertainment, it's quite normal for people to bully people in entertainment. We have all of these morals when it comes to treating people kindly and the asterisk is always anywhere in entertainment, you know? So I think I unsubscribed to that idea and thought, I know I can't control your comments, I know I can't control other people's opinions. I can control me giving them permission to actually come into my world. So it comes in some practical ways where I have no issues blocking, muting people, I don't care at all. But even spiritually, when someone says something to me, I say, you know what? I actually remove the permission for your words to have value to me.

So it doesn't penetrate your heart.

It used to every time before. Really? Every time before.

That's gotta feel painful.

It does. So that's one idea, another one, let me think.

That's powerful. How did you get to that space to spiritually block or just allow something to go through you and not stay within you?

Yeah.

Like when was that moment? 'Cause that's a big aha moment. It is. It came through writing this book.

Really? Because I've tried everything else prior to this moment. I don't wanna harp too much on comments because it is what it is, This goes with anything, someone you have conflict with in your life, a parent you have conflict with in your life, whatever it is. I am a firm believer through doing the work in this book that my mantra is now I am you and you are me and we're in different circumstances. So I think previously I would believe you're mean, you wrote this comment, you don't know what it's like to be me, you're mean, I am offended by your comment, I'm hurt by your comment. And I think now I have the perspective of, I am actually just like you. You are in fact just like me. But our circumstances have led us to these different places and that doesn't need.

To be a fight.

And it's also getting off my high horse of thinking that I would do different if I was that person because I might not, I might do worse. If I was you and I just had a layoff and I saw my vacation picture, I might be even meaner than you were to be honest. And so I think it's just understanding that we're all kind of, The same. None of us are higher than anyone else and we have different lived experiences.

Yeah, I think the opportunity or the challenge of life is you're gonna be judged for doing nothing, for sitting on your couch all day and not actually taking action on something, and you're gonna be judged for doing something. You just gotta learn how to manage whichever judgment.

It's also, and this is why I talk about understanding distraction, I actually label these things as distractions, and I don't mean this in the way of like, You're not valid, I don't care about your opinion, you're a stranger, so you're a distraction. What I mean is that where I know I thrive the most is when I'm grateful. When you're grateful, you feel happy, you are a pleasant person, you probably get even more success because gratitude just has such a magic to it. Whatever takes you away from gratitude, I consider a distraction. So it's not that it's not valid. So if you wake up one morning and you're like, I'm in such a good mood, I have a great family, I have great friends, I'm in such a good mood, And then something happens, someone cuts you off in traffic, and suddenly you're like, My life is so annoying, honestly. And then you start spiraling. It's not that that's not valid, and you shouldn't be upset. You can be, but you don't have to live there. You can come back to a place of gratitude.

That's what I mean by distraction. Something that's taking you away from that place. The mental distraction. Exactly. It's kind of like allowing that thought to stay with you for an hour or days or weeks. Sometimes people hold on to these things for so long.

I've done that in the past.

And I realize, is this supporting my meaningful mission or is it pulling me away from it?

And calling them distractions actually allows you to come back to a place. Because when you don't call a distraction, you can stay there for a really long time. But knowing that you actually want to return back to somewhere else makes it that much easier. Just that shift in your mentality of, I'm over here in the land of gratitude, now I've been pulled over here. Let me get back to you. You know what? My goal is to get back here. I never had that goal before, so I would just, wander around over here for a really long time. Because I was like, I don't know what to do.

I don't know what to do. Exactly. So now you have a framework. So when a thought enters your mind that's not a serving thought, let's say, you'll be there for a while until you're aware of it and then you shift back into gratitude. What do you do?

Do you start thinking, here's what I'm grateful for in this moment, this day, this week, how do you do it? I always repeat those four things I told you about because I look at everything through that lens. Is this about the relationship to myself? It's not, so it doesn't matter in that way. Is it about my relationship with the universe? No. So it also helps me kind of we know what's not a priority to think about. But really what I do is I actually just give myself grace of being a human being. If I get upset about something, I do not force myself to not be upset. And I think I did that for a long time. But now I'm just like, hey, you're upset. I think you should process all of these emotions. You're allowed to be upset. Give yourself, forgive yourself for being upset. It's stupid, it's petty. Allow yourself to forgive yourself. But after you're done, don't forget you can return back to this place. Absolutely.

And when you're gentle with yourself, you actually react a lot better to situations than being so harsh to yourself. I've been doing therapy pretty consistently for the last year, year and a half now. It's been a powerful opportunity for me. I've done it throughout the years, but this time I was like, I'm just gonna do it when things are really good. Not when I have an issue I need to address. But because things are good in my life, I wanna maintain and continue this emotional accountability that's called.

You realize you don't always have to cry in therapy. Exactly.

I just learned this, yeah. My coach will say, you know, when you feel the emotion, don't try to stuff it. There are so many different healthy ways to express anger. You shouldn't do it at the person in an unhealthy way. You know, it's getting it out first, whether it's punching a pillow or writing down everything nasty thing you want to say and putting it down and then burning it or whatever it might be. But there's so many ways to express your anger in a healthy way, let it out and then get back to gratitude and peace. I think that should be the goal. I think it's really hard to find fulfillment from anger. Stress.

It won't happen.

We really need to find fulfillment from a place of peace and love.

Absolutely. Peace and freedom and giving yourself permission to be flawed and give yourself space.

Absolutely. Yeah. 100% flawed. So the distraction, what about the relationship with self? Because it used to be at a two or maybe there were some seasons of life you were, you know, in the two range out of a ten. How do you think about that now when you go through this framework?

Is this about my relationship with myself? Absolutely. So this is about the relationship, one of the relationships we tend to ignore the most, which is the one we have with ourself, which is we spend so much time and energy on what other people think of us and how we interact with others that we don't actually give ourselves the time and energy that a relationship requires. So of course I talk about meditation in this book, I talk about spirituality in this book, but you've had Jay Shetty on this podcast, so I'm not even gonna try to compete with it. What I talk about in this book is also the concept of we like to define people very easily. We, as humans, love to do this. And we've done this throughout history. It's easy for us to, in our brains, say, right, wrong, black, white, yes, no, tall, short. It just makes it easier for us to understand people. But we do that to ourselves as well. We have all these words in our head of, I am a hard worker. I am funny. I am not lazy. But the issue with giving yourself these really extreme labels is we're never, all of these things and we're not always all of these things. And then that starts to create conflict. So for example, I'm a workaholic, I know this, but why that has caused conflict is because I've labeled myself this hustler. You know, that's my whole brand, Hustle Harder. So when I have a day where I'm like, I feel like doing nothing, I don't enjoy a lazy day. I actually get upset at myself because it goes, that action goes against the label I've given myself. You know, and so you create these little battles for yourself inside because you've concluded this is who you are when really who you are is a multitude of things that falls on various spectrums at different parts in your life. You can hustle hard on this day, doesn't mean this day you're gonna be the exact same person. We need to understand we are these complex humans that are not easily labeled. We never give ourselves context, ever. We're just like, I have to be this all the time. No, what is the context? For example, when I fail at something, I used to get really upset at myself. You gotta get this right, Lily. You are the only one, you're the first at this, you gotta get it right. It's a lot of pressure. 100%. But instead of looking at myself and being like, you didn't do it right, so you're stupid, and then I apply that stupid label on me, what if I actually looked at myself and said, oh, you're someone who is struggling with something you've never done before. That gives me some context. I actually feel like helping that person. I feel like championing that person instead of just being like, you,'re stupid. So we're just so lazy with labels.

When we define ourselves, and I'm encouraging.

People to give ourselves context.

Is that something you learned in the pandemic also?

It is. It is. We're not clickbait on the internet. We deserve content.

What do you see when you look yourself in the mirror?

Besides gray hair.

What did you see and what do you see now?

Before I saw someone who has achieved a lot. I always defined myself by my achievements. Now I'm trying my best to see someone who is a human having an experience.

Yeah.

You know, I, and this is gonna sound like a load of BS, but I'm gonna tell you this is honestly something I've been working on. I'm trying to not define myself by anything external because that is a slippery slope. It's very slippery. It's true. The fact that when we had to quarantine, I had no gigs and no work and no travel and I was like, oh, so I have no value. I hated that. That doesn't mean I don't value myself as a friend. I don't value myself as a daughter. I don't value myself as a dog mom or someone who can make memories or someone that can laugh and experience joy. I don't value any of those things. I just literally always define myself by external things. And so now whether something bad or good happens, I don't tie it to my value or definition. And the best example of this is I got something that is my dream role in a show, the new Muppet Show for Disney+. That's top of my vision board. Muppet Show. It's my first lead, a really big deal for me. But the day I announced it, I had to have a whole session with myself where I said, this is really great and it's really cool. You are not now the girl who's on the Disney+ show. You are not now the lead actress. You are Lily. And this is a cool thing you get to do, but the success or failure of this does not reflect on you as a person. This is not your value. And it's easy to do when it's bad, it's hard to do when it's good, because you want to. You want to define yourself by all these things. But you can pick and choose. It's gotta be that, no, I'm complete without the these things as well.

My hope and my intention is that everything you touch turns into gold, right? Every creation is a beautiful thing and it's celebrated and it's successful and it has high ratings and all that stuff. But let's just say one thing doesn't go as planned from expectations. How will you approach it if that happens now with this framework? You launch a big show, no one cares. You get bad reviews, whatever it is. Absolutely. And you put your life into something, your value, your creation, into something, how will you now manage that? Letdown, disappointment, missed expectation, whatever it might be?

Well, first I'll allow myself to feel whatever I want to feel. It's not realistic for me to say, It's okay, I'll be grateful. I'll probably be sad. I'll probably be upset. I'll give myself the grace to feel all of those things. But at the end of the day, I will remind myself that when it comes to the relationship with myself and the relationship with the universe, that show falls nowhere in there. So when I come back to my safe place in my mind, There's really no room for that to define me because I already have all these other strong values. So really when people have asked me, Will you write another book? My answer to them is, I hope this blueprint serves me for the rest of my life so I never have to write another book.

Sure.

Is my goal.

But yeah, I think I would just remind myself that that failure or low rating is not a Lily Singh low rating. It's not a low rating for me as a human. It is that project that is that one thing that is a thing I did. It is not me. I am not that thing. that thing is just something I did.

How can people separate their work or their creative energy or efforts apart from themselves and not having value as them being the thing that's wrong or bad or not good?

I think a big part of that, 'cause all that work is over here, I think we have to work over here. So it's not about how do I.

Let go of the value from work.

It'S how do I value myself more in the other areas. It's about, okay, I've thought about work for so long, I valued myself with work for so long, let me practice valuing myself in other ways. So now if I have a really great meditation, I go, oh, that was really good. You did a really good job. That was a successful thing you did today. And that is a cool moment for you that should hold some value. If I had an amazing conversation with a friend. So for example, I just went to Jay's house the other day and we had this deep, great conversation. And I remember leaving thinking, wow, moments like that actually define my value. A memory I create with a friend, a deep conversation, that counts for something. And when you start getting in the habit of doing that, it helps you not just to find yourself in the traditional way we've been taught. To be fair, we've been taught to only value ourselves in one way. I'm suggesting that we actually find value in the other things that are never given value. Yeah. The laughing, the moments, the good nap that you took.

Oh man.

You know, that's value. You are a full human. And again, when I say this, I just need to preface one thing. When I say this, people always treat mindfulness and mental health like all or nothing. Oh, so she's saying we don't have to hustle. We can take naps in the middle. No, I'm saying I have for 10 years hustled so, so hard and everyone has to do that at some point. But then you can get to a.

Place where you can give yourself permission. Absolutely. It's funny you're saying this today because earlier my girlfriend slept for a few hours during the middle of the day and she was like, I've never done this. She's an actress and a writer and a producer and creator. You matter. Yeah. For as long as I've known her, I was like, this girl just doesn't turn off. She's always coming up with the next treatment or script or production meeting or whatever. And she creates. And I'm like, you know, you can just kind of chill. You don't have to do it. You don't have to be reading or working on yourself or doing this. You can just be. And today was the first time she's like, I've never done this. It feels amazing. Like I just needed to rest.

Right.

Take a few hours. And after a few hours, she's like.

Okay, I'm ready to work again.

But it's okay. So I think people should be- I.

Sound like my therapist.

Yeah, it's okay. Take a few hours in the middle of the day.

It's not a bit the other way. But it's also assign value to that. Absolutely. Those other things also add to your value. It's not just the accolades and the numbers and all that. So my answer to your question is.

To start placing value in all those other things. We're told our meeting clients that are actually so important.

Absolutely. The things that people maybe don't see all the time also. I'm that person that's like my new mantra, I've already named 10.

But something I've been telling myself is.

For this period of time, you will actually be okay with missing a meeting, but not a meditation. That's where I am right now. Right now in my life. Yeah, this season of life.

Exactly.

That doesn't mean I'm less successful. I'm actually more successful professionally than I've ever been. And I've realized that not placing all my value in work has actually helped me be more successful. Because when I'm not so. When I'm a little bit detached from it, I can actually see things more objectively for what they are as instead of being so just. tied to every aspect of it.

Yeah, I believe when we're just getting started on launching anything, we've got to say yes to everything. I'm going to do this, I'm going to say yes to this meeting and do these things. And there's a turning point where you start to say no, right?

Yes.

Where do you think you would have been had you valued meditation and these other values in the beginning? Let's just hypothetically, 10 years ago, if you would have learned this and implemented it, do you think you'd be at the same place you are, success, career-wise, numbers-wise, bigger, smaller, just curious.

I'm gonna answer this question from specifically me.

Yes.

I'm not saying this is for other people. For specifically me, I would not be as successful as I am now. And I'll tell you why. I am a very all or nothing type person.

Right.

And I dislike that about myself. I've been trying to work on that. I'm either you have to work all the time or I'm just gonna meditate for 10 hours a day now. So 10 years ago, if I, took those naps and I meditated, I would have gone so all in on that that I would have been, I would have created such a rigid wall saying, no, I can't work. I can't do that free gig. I can't do any of that because I'm all or nothing. That is something I'm trying to change. I'm trying to learn that progress is in the middle. That you can actually have a little bit of both. Yes. I never knew how to do that and now I've unsubscribed from the idea that to be successful, I have to be mentally unhealthy. I believe that I can be successful and mentally healthy now. But that takes work from both ends. And like I said, I think a lot of people think it's either you have mental health and you have work-life balance or you're a workaholic. No, we can actually have seasons of things. For example, this book's coming out. For the past two weeks, I have been the workaholic. It is what this is demanded. But that doesn't mean now the week after the book comes out, I can't be like, and you know what? Now I can take those naps and I can do the meditations and I can do all this stuff.

Progress is in the middle. It's not all of this or all of that. Oh, no. And I think it's when we can create an hour a day or maybe it's two hours for some people where you're, I'm gonna get by my 15 minutes of meditation. I'm gonna get to move my body. I'm gonna do something for me, something that I value for myself to build that relationship with myself. Then I think if you can keep that consistent.

Absolutely. You have to think about this. It's like, and this is the best way to describe the relationship with yourself is what kind of partner do you wanna be to yourself? And the example I give in the book is, You know when you go into an elevator and there's other people in the elevator? So what do you do? You instantly pull out your phone because you're like, oh, I can't, I need to, I need to, I need to dive into something. I can't interact with people. I can't be here. If you ever pay attention, you'll notice that you actually do that when you're alone in the elevator as well. When you're alone in the elevator, you probably pull out the phone as well because you don't even wanna be with yourself alone. You're so uncomfortable to be with your thoughts and yourself in that elevator. And I started to pay attention to things like that and I thought, Is that the relationship I want to have with myself? Where I can't even be alone with myself for 30 seconds in this elevator that I have to at every instance? Let's be real, every red light, I can't even just observe and look where I can't even be with my thoughts and feelings.

I have to pull out my phone.

That's not a good relationship. When did you realize that? I did realize that when there was a period of time during the pandemic where I actually deleted social media off my phone. For like six months, I had no social media. Come on, really? Six months, six whole months. And if I had to post something for work, I would install Instagram, I would post it and I would delete it right away. Six months.

Six whole months.

Was your team posting or what was happening? If they had to post some brand-related stuff, sure, but I gained back so much time in my life. Wow. One was time, but also I realized that, yes, we can talk about meditation and I think that's so important, but I also think aside from meditation, just being present with yourself, you know, allows yourself to process emotions. Like I remember when I deleted social media off my phone, The time it really occurred to me what a difference it made was when I was at the airport. I was waiting for a flight and every other person in the terminal, every single person was on their phone. And I thought I would be doing the exact same thing. I would also be, but because I wasn't on my phone, I was like, okay, let me think about this travel I'm about to take. Let me think about what I want to make out of it. Let me think about if I'm excited about it, how do I feel? And just, this is going to sound silly, but being there for myself and giving myself the time of day, and my thoughts and feelings the time of day, it made me feel special. I felt seen by myself, 100%.

Did you see yourself in the last 10 years before this?

Not completely in that way, no. Because there was just so much other noise I let in.

Did you feel like you could be okay alone or alone without devices?

Less of the question of if I would be okay, more of, did I see the value in that? Right, right, right. I didn't. For me, it was like, no, the values if I'm informed. If I'm in the loop, if I'm creating content. Creating content, that's my value. Again, it goes back to assigning value. I always valued creating content more than being present with myself. Now I'm saying you can have both. So I do have social media on my phone now. It's been a long time.

But my relationship with that is a lot different.

Wow, you deleted all social media for six months. For six months, yeah. And you know what?

I had Phantom Hand for a while.

But- oh my, you're like- I kept trying to find another app. so I'd go in on the weather app, I'm like, what's the weather like? I gotta know if the weather changed, what's the weather like? What's the weather talking about? So definitely, that took a while to get used to, but now again, even.

Till this day, if I feel like.

I'm passively scrolling too much, I will delete it off my phone for the day. Delete it. I will just delete it, yeah. That's fascinating.

Holy cow. And do you feel like you're not missing out on anything? No. You feel like you're growing stronger? More than real life. That's true. Social media is not real life. It is, it's a tool and it's great, but we have to recognize it for what it is. It is a tool we should use. It is not a tool that should use us, you know, and we really treat it that way. It'll define me now. I will form all of my opinions based on what I'm seeing. My entire world view will be framed by, that's not how we should live life. We should put the phone down and discover for ourselves. Of course.

What's been the richest moment you've had without social media?

So during the Black Lives Matter protests, I, like a lot of other people, was super overwhelmed by social media. That's actually when I decided to delete it, because there was just so many arguments and so much friction. And it was honestly really overwhelming for me. So I deleted it, and I went to a protest in real life, and it was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. I saw all types of people standing together for one cause, people from different races hugging each other. No one was arguing. And I thought, oh, This is actually real life. Real human beings off their phone giving each other grace, recognizing that we're two human beings that can see eye to eye. That doesn't really happen on social media because social media lacks two things. It lacks context and it lacks accountability. And I think without those two things, you can't have a real conversation.

Yeah, and I wish the people that were saying things on social media, they would actually just have an opportunity to go up to the person and say the exact same thing.

That would be great.

Would you say it?

It would not happen.

You would never say it.

It would not happen.

It's crazy.

I also question, and this is specific to Twitter, which I don't use because it's not good for my mental health, but I question that if the ability to trend was not a thing, would people really have all these opinions? Because it's hard to have a conversation, a genuine conversation, in an environment where you are rewarded for being loud. If you took that element away.

That's interesting.

If you took that all away, I question if people would be as upset and as heated as they usually are.

Interesting, yeah. You know, they're getting validated. and more attention for it. So, there's something interesting about the relationship with the universe. Can you talk about what this means? Yeah, let's start with that. Yeah.

For a lot of my life, and I think most people can relate to this, whether you're religious or not, spiritual or not, it doesn't matter. We tend to ask for things. We look up, whether you pray, whether you whatever, please help me with this, please let my health get better, please let me get this role, whatever is you always asking for stuff. That is a relationship we have with the universe. We're just really bad partners. because we take and take and take.

Oh, man.

Right, we just take and take and take. If there was any other relationship, for example, you and your girlfriend, if you treated your girlfriend like you treat the universe, she would dump you.

Right.

Because you would just take and take and take.

I feel like I'm pretty good to the universe.

No, no, no, but I'm just saying for example. In general, yes. I'm saying for example. Something I had to call myself out on was, and by the way, Luz.

Is a great partner.

I've seen him interact many times. That was not specific to Luz. Yeah, but in general, yes. Something I had to call myself out on was, that I always, especially in hard times, I always look up and ask for things, but I never think about what I give back to the universe. And most people don't. I always say that we missed 10 calls from Mom, we missed 15 from the universe. We don't acknowledge this relationship. And that is not fair because everything in this world is an exchange. Everything is an exchange. Whether you understand that because you need money to buy something versus I had to go through this heartbreak to learn this lesson. It's still an exchange. We need to acknowledge that because we've already been given so much that the only fair way to be in a relationship with the universe is to give back to it. That is actually the only fair way. So I think service and however that might mean to you, I mean, charity work, it might mean being there for a friend, planting a tree, whatever it is, we have to consider that as part of our foundation because we would be naive to be ignoring that reality.

When did you learn that?

While writing this book. Is that- Let me tell you, I'm not lying. The reason this book was really hard to write is because my first book, I knew exactly what I wanted to be about. I knew all the stories I was gonna tell. I knew all the advice I wanted to give. When I tried to write this book, I had to learn every single thing on these pages to write this book. You didn't know the answers.

I didn't know the answers.

I had to go through it. I had so many false starts. I started writing and I was like, this is not helpful. So I had shredded up those papers and I had to actually fundamentally change as a person to write this book. I'm a different person after writing this book legitimately. And my friends will tell you that. They'll be like, you said it yourself, you seem really chill. That's the most common thing people said.

To me since I finished writing this book.

You seem happy. When did you finish this?

Like two weeks after the deadline.

I finished it six weeks ago.

No, no, I finished it seven-ish months ago, I wanna say. There's definitely a light about you. And you're not the first person to say that. Like an energetic, light and just like your shoulders look lighter, your face looks younger. Not that you looked older something, but I mean, but your energy is light. And I think it's really important for people to understand this when our minds are hijacked by lies or by negative thoughts or horrible conversations that we're saying to ourselves with just a poor relationship with ourselves like you're talking about. I think it's hard to feel fulfilled and light. energetically when our minds are hijacked by these lies and these negative thoughts. And so I'm so grateful that you found this framework for yourself.

Myself included.

And going back to the framework when you feel like stressed or overwhelmed, not that it's going to be perfect every moment, but having a framework to go back to. And I think if people subscribe to this framework or one that works for them like this, it will be powerful to overcome a lot of the the mental challenges, the stress, the anxiety, the overwhelm, the depression thoughts that a lot.

Of people have, and just the stress of life. It's not easy. The reason I think this is so helpful, like I said, this book has been a gift to me. So truly, it is the best thing I've ever done for myself. I'm confident it can be that for other people. But again, even if it's not, it has done wonders for me. How I came about this also was thinking about, I talk about school in the workplace a lot. I talk about how I got so frustrated because I know how to deal with those problems. and I never knew how to deal with problems related to life. And I discovered that what all of those places have in common is they have like these pillars that are anchored into the ground. A bad teacher doesn't change the importance of education. You know, that pillar exists. You believe in education, education is value. We need to do that for ourselves. It's where you have pillars so deep where things don't alter those. That is what I mean by a framework. And it's been so helpful for me because it's that thing I can keep going back to at the end of the day. like I said, the safe place in your mind.

And what about manifesting? So, you know, when we want something and you say the relationship with the universe or God or whatever it is, I just saying, I want this role, I want this gig, I want this thing, I want this relationship. How do you think about it now in terms of, okay, if I want something from the universe or if I want to land something or create something, what's your framework now? Are you saying, well, how can I be of service to my friends, my family, and my audience? How can I help more people, what is the way you think about it now? Well, I think about things always bigger than myself.

I don't think that I just solely got something by myself. I believe the universe is always at play. I believe in manifestation in that way. If I felt like my direct actions got me everything, that would be a very egocentric way to live, I think. Of course, I've worked really hard and that has contributed to it, but the universe is still at play in providing for me. I think, well, also on the note of manifesting, I should tell you, and this is not a joke, my vision board is in my shower.

I take it next level here.

Vision boards are not very aesthetically pleasing, let's be real. My house is very neutrals and beiges and my vision board is just such an eyesore. So last year I kept it in the back of my closet, but I didn't really see it often. So I was like, this year, that's it. January came, I taped it to the.

Glass wall of my shower on the outside.

That's pretty cool.

You look at it every day.

I take a shower every three days, maybe.

And I cannot tell you the difference come on.

It is incredible. I know my vision's like this. So many of them will come true already and it's only April now. It's insane the difference it has made. So let me just start there. But yes, I think about things as in the relationship I have with myself. That means that I know what I want. My priorities are clear. However, this thing does not define me. It is not gonna be who I am now. And I, yes, will be the best, nicest giving back person possible because if I want the universe to provide, then I need to give something like that.

So tell me, what does seeing your visions in front of you every day do for you? First of all, it keeps my priorities in check.

Focused. Focused, because I used to have this problem where I would get so many cool things in my inbox. I have to say yes. How could I not say yes?

This is so cool.

This person's asking me to do something awesome. And then at the top of this year, I thought, you,'re gonna pick like a handful of priorities and you'll only make decisions based on those priorities. So my vision board helps me keep those priorities in check. But it also helps me just kind of daydream and make it happen. So when I'm in the shower, I kid you not, like one of the things on my vision board, the top left thing is Disney+.

Come on.

I kid you not, and I made that before I got the audition for this.

So there was no show, there was no audition. You just had an idea.

Two things on my vision board were audition success and Disney+. And then I got a Disney+ audition and I got the lead role. I kid you not. This is a, and some of the people on my vision board that I've never hung out with, I have hung out since January.

Come on.

I had the opportunity to hang out with Reese Witherspoon recently, like in a way that we had some really cool conversations. That's pretty cool. She was on my vision board. And the opportunity to do that also came after I made this vision board. So I'm a big, that's crazy.

I'm a big believer I'm a witch. I think we're all witches in some way. I'm 100% a white witch, yeah. What do you think is happening when we, again, see a vision in our mind or see something we've put down on paper over and over. What do you think we're doing with our relationship with the universe?

I think we're making our needs clear. Something we're not very good as humans. We don't usually make our needs clear. We like to beat around the bush and talk in between lines and all these things. But I think we make our needs clear and we make our desires clear. And more than anything, I think we subconsciously take actions than to lead to those things, you know? You can't have one without the other. Some people think, I'll just make a vision board and then do nothing and these things will come to life. And some people think, A vision board is garbage. I'll just work really hard. It's a combination of both of those things.

You work really hard subconsciously towards a direction you have set out for yourself and the universe will provide. Man, the light is just coming out today. How did you know what to put on your vision board that was fulfilling or meaningful and not just, this would be cool for the ego? Because I think some people were gonna put, Big house, money, success, fame, growth of followers, or whatever it might be, which is not bad things. Like, hey, I'm all about getting the dream house and all those things. But how do you know I'm making a conscious decision on something that is a more beautiful future that will inspire and impact more people or help me as well, versus this is gonna make me look really good to my friends.

I think the way I have gone about making vision boards is instead of thinking about the actual object, I think about what it will mean to me if I get it. So, for example, and I love that you said it's not a bad thing, because I think I used to judge myself a lot, being like, I can't put money on my vision board. Like, that's so shallow. First of all, it's your vision board. You can do whatever you want with it. You know what I mean? But I do have things on my-- I have a fancy car. I have a Rolex on there. I have a whole bunch of things. And the reason I put them on there is because I thought, I actually know what this means to me. It's not that I'm gonna get this Rolex, and now I'm a cool person that's better than other people, and now I'm a-- it's that, oh, you know what? I've worked really hard. I think this Rolex It's really pretty and sometimes I do wanna flex and I agree that that's how I am. And I understand that I'm aware about.

That so I can get that.

Sure. Things I have like don't forget to have fun. I know what that means to me because I know I wanna value fun. I know what it feels like to go to set and have fun with those people and I value that now. So I think we need to allow ourselves grace. If you have things on your vision board that are materialistic, that's completely fine. Just know what those things mean. And I think that's the biggest difference between my first and second book. My first book was a lot of hustle, goal setting. get that network connection, get all of that stuff. And this book is like, okay, what does that actually mean? Yeah. You know?

How can you get it and have peace inside? Exactly.

If you know why you want the things you want, and you can put healthy value towards those things, I don't think it's wrong to put anything on your vision board.

What's the biggest mistake people make when it comes to manifesting?

Thinking that you don't have to work for it. I have a lot of gen-z, I'm gonna call you out here. I'm gonna call you out here. There's a lot of people that think, I made a vision board, but nothing's coming true. You also have to work very, very hard still. But I think another thing is that people are not very specific when it comes to vision boards. Sometimes I'll see people's vision boards and it says success on it, or it says money. What is money? What does that mean? So when I make my vision board, I actually Photoshop myself into specific situations I want. Really? Yes. I want to be on this magazine cover, this specific magazine cover. I Photoshopped myself on that magazine and put it on my vision board. That's cool. Because I'm like, I'm not just gonna put magazines.

What does that mean?

What does that mean that my cousin just started a school newspaper and now I'm on that magazine? Is that what it is? As specific as you can be with what you want, and then the universe will answer. The universe can get confused.

You say money, they're gonna make you find $10 on the street.

Is that money?

Yeah, it's a quarter.

Exactly, it's money. You said money. What is money? Interesting.

What magazine covers did you put yourself on?

I'm a big fan of Vanity Fair. Have you been on it yet? I've not, not yet, except for in my shower. I also, who doesn't want to be on the COVID of Vogue? Come on, Vogue is really, really dope. We like Forbes in this house. In this house we like Forbes. This house, who doesn't want to be on the COVID of Forbes? 100%. 100%.

I really pride myself on the destructive kind of, you know, disruptors of business. I like this. Do you think it's possible? to be extremely successful, accomplished, manifest everything on your vision board, be fulfilled internally, and be in a healthy, conscious, loving, long-term relationship?

My honest answer is that I do think it's possible, but I do not think all three of those things would get equal attention. That's my honest answer. I have not figured out a way to be all of those things perfectly at the exact same time. and maybe that shouldn't be the goal. Maybe the goal should be that, hey, for right now, 50% of my energy is gonna go here, and I have a loving partner that is on the same page with that, 'cause we've communicated about it. And I have therapy to help me figure out the parts of me that I cannot tend to because I'm working so hard on this. And then when seasons shift, maybe those percentages shift. And maybe it's like, hey, I just finished six movies, so now 60% of my effort is gonna go towards the relaxation, I think that's more realistic of life. I think it's that we need to understand we are on several places on several spectrums, and that's okay. We don't have to be the definitive, I'm this and I'm this and I'm this. I think those energies will always be shifting, and I've come to peace with that.

Do you see people in Hollywood that have healthy relationships, like intimate, committed relationships long term? Do you see a lot of this happening? Or is there people you admire that have besides Jay and Roddy?

Oh, okay, you took them away.

They're gonna be my answer.

Yeah, exactly. I don't, my honest answer is I don't know anyone well enough in this industry to genuinely answer that. Of course, on magazine covers and red carpets, I could say people are very in love. I don't know anyone well enough behind the scenes to know if that's true. But also, I guess it goes back to for them, what is a successful relationship? For me, a successful relationship is where two people are on the same page, they've communicated, and they have the same priorities. So could it be that someone's definition of success is that, hey, Don't really care about this. We need to kill it together in business. We need to flex on this red carpet and we need to be the beacon of love and light for people. If they're both on the same page, then they're succeeding in their eyes. And who am I to say that that's wrong? Right.

You know, as long as two people are on the same page, then that's success. I think for a long time I was like struggling relationships thinking like, you know, do I need to just completely give up everything I'm doing to like put all the attention in the relationship? Is there a way to do both? You know, can I take care of my health? and run my business and be in a relationship. And I feel like I'm finally figuring it out. Only time will tell, obviously, but it's.

Like- yeah, another idea I've had to unsubscribe from that didn't benefit me was that love shouldn't be work. I think a lot of people think love should come naturally, relationships shouldn't be work, and real love means that things just click. There's chemistry, you just click, they brighten up your day, that's all fine and well. But I've actually unsubscribed to that idea because it does not serve anyone. Relationships are work. Love can exist, it still requires work.

Yeah.

Relationships require compromise and they require communication and they require tough talks. That doesn't make the love any less. It's just that we've all believed this idea that love should be so effortless, which is not the case.

I agree with you and I wanna add an asterisk there. I like to use words and I think work for some people means like it sucks.

Which is also an interesting story.

So I would like, for some people, I think when they think the word, I don't think that, but when you think of work, it might seem like it sucks or something. So I like to use the words conscious energy. It takes energy for you to show up vulnerably, consistently. When you're annoyed or frustrated, it takes being conscious on how to choose your words, conscious energy on how to schedule things, plan things. I was telling my team today, Last weekend, the day before I ran a marathon actually, but the day before-- Subtle flex? Yeah, exactly. But I never wanted to do a marathon. It took me almost six hours.

That sounds like my nightmare.

It was actually a spiritual experience, but that's for another conversation. But the day before, I did a five-hour therapy session with my therapist and my girlfriend. And I've always said to myself, I would like to start a relationship with conscious conversations. about the future. And doing work together, work, or doing sessions together with an accountability therapist, coach, someone, to help guide us on agreements and things like that. So what some might call work, I'm calling it conscious energy.

Yeah, fair.

Not when anything is wrong, but to make sure it keeps going great. And to have conversations which take work, if you want to call it work, it takes time, it takes effort, it takes energy. But, Definitely, you can't just show up and think everything's gonna be perfect.

You gotta invest the energy. What I've taken away from that story is that your therapist is securing the bag. Is what I took away from that story. Is that your therapist is securing good on you?

Congratulations, lose his therapist. No, but it wasn't her saying this, it was me saying, I wanna do, I've been wanting to do this for years. And I think it's been really helpful because it creates a sense of togetherness, it creates a sense of alignment, it creates a sense of agreements, you know, all these things that I think Relationships sometimes don't do until there's a disruption or conflict. So why not create it before that?

Therapy is the vitamin C. It's incredible, right? It's the vitamin C to everything.

That's it. So I think it's conscious energy. It's effort. But I think you're right. It doesn't just magically happen.

Absolutely. We need to let that idea go.

Yes. Yes. What is the biggest challenge you're faced with today then? 'Cause it seems like you've got all these things manifesting from your vision board. You've got peace, inner peace. You're an authentic 10. You've got light radiating. Disney show. The book, Be a Triangle. You've got, you know, Canada's got talent. You're like the star everywhere. Everything is coming.

It's a pretty cool time.

What is the biggest challenge? And even more importantly, what do you think is the biggest wound? you have yet to fully face and do the work on to get to the next level.

My biggest challenge and something, actually my answer is kind of the same for both of the questions you asked, which is in my life as much as I've done the work to detach from accolades like I've talked about, what I've not been able to detach from thus far is the pressure of being a first. In my life, I've been the first in many instances, whether it was YouTube, you know, the first Indian girl doing things like this.

Yep.

The first one on, the first Indian girl on billboards for YouTube, then the Late Night Show was also a first. I get that headline a lot, the first. And for someone who hasn't lived the experience, it can sound like, why would you ever complain about that? That's awesome. You have to be in all these, you have to make history. You get to be the first, you were the first person to do things. It's wonderful and exhilarating and also horrendous at the same time. To be the first is a really lonely place to be because you not only have so much pressure of every minority looking up at you, expecting you to do right by them, which you cannot possibly do for everyone, but you also have no one to turn to when things get rough. Late night being the best example of that, when things got really rough for me, which other female late night host was I supposed to turn to and ask advice for? So because that has been a theme for so much of my career, this first idea, it's such a big concept to say, but I've associated my, success a little bit with history making, which is a really heavy thing to associate yourself with. Like, I have to make history every time I do things.

Every six months, you're making history.

I have not been able to, if I'm being honest, completely heal after those types of instances. Yeah, I still, when I think about those things, I feel very nauseous thinking about them. I have a lot of anxiety about them.

From the past things you've been the first to do.

And also the fear of it happening again. which is a really unhealthy place to be because sometimes when I have an opportunity that's really exciting and awesome and I'm excited about it, I have a little voice in my head that goes, you could be the first again and it's gonna be horrific all over again. And that's a very tainted type of evil that's in all things to come. I haven't been able to reconcile that.

So based on this framework, how would you coach yourself if you were stepping into that? Yeah, this is great.

I love that this is a thank you. I can cancel my therapy session tomorrow.

This is fantastic. Honestly, yeah. How would you coach yourself if calm, peaceful, loving Lily was sitting in front of you? What would she say to you?

The first thing I would say is-- With that fear. With the relationship with myself, I just finished telling you about how we easily define ourselves. I just define myself as the first. I just did that. But if I change that wording from you're not the first, you are someone that loves to try new things, and then you get put into a circumstance, where it's unfamiliar territory. Oh. I can actually empathize with that person a little more. All right. So already that feels better to me that you're not the first. You're someone who tried something new and got on this path and now it's unfamiliar so allow yourself some grace. That's cool. With my relationship with the universe, I would say that, hey, the universe has provided an opportunity to you, right? So yes, it's scary but it's also an opportunity and you should focus on that part of it, you know, because this will be an exchange in some types. You will gain something, no matter what it is, you will gain something from everything. the worst heartaches in life, you will still gain something from them. So I will remind myself that.

Yeah.

Understanding distraction will play a big role here because all the reviews and comments and people putting pressure on me are actually distractions from what my actual goal is, which is to do something cool and try something new and do my best and find fulfillment. So all these things are all these things people are saying are actually irrelevant. Of course it might mean a lot to them, but I actually do not owe to anyone to make history for them. I can only talk about my own experience, I can't talk about theirs. So I have to like take away the permission I've given them to tell me what I should be doing in this situation. And then implementing design, this can get real real. Oh, this intense news cycle is gonna happen, I'm not gonna see it. I'm not going to put myself in the position to hear these things or be in those rooms where those intense conversations happen. I'm gonna remove myself or Implementing design is also okay, I actually want to really do well in this situation. How can I build the best possible scenario where this thing is fun and I can actually enjoy it? --Mm. So that's how I'd work through it. --Did I just sound good?

--I did it.

--I just did it.

--That sounds peaceful to me.

--Yeah. Wow, the first one really hit me. The taking away the definition of first.

--Yeah, exactly. --Sounds like I've been hearing you putting this identity on yourself, this label for years. I've always been doing the first and the the weight, the identity that you've held onto. Seems like that's not serving you that identity.

Yeah. You're right, 'cause when people call me the first, they're also giving me that identity without giving me context. Not only are you the first, but you're gonna be doing something no one else has done. You're gonna be trying something new. It's gonna be scary. You know how lovely it would be if in an interview someone said, I'm sure it's really scary to be the first, and I'm sure you're gonna be trying new things. And tell me about that, but no one ever asked that question. No one ever asked it in that context because I'm not given the context. Sure, sure.

That seems like a good framework though. This framework works. We're testing it live, it's working. I love it.

Is there any other fears you think you'll need to... The great thing about life is life is so creative. The universe is so creative. You know when you were younger and you're like, oh my God, I lost my best friend. This is the worst pain I could ever feel. And then the universe was like, hold my beer, because I'm gonna introduce you to 17 more things that are painful. Humans always think what they're going through right now is the most painful thing ever. But the universe is very creative. The universe will come up with new ways to both gift you and torment you. And so the goal is to build a framework that can last those things, even the ones you haven't met yet. And so I'm sure there'll be many.

Other fears that I haven't even thought of yet. But the more you implement this framework, the more, I guess, resourceful, the more confident you'll be with any new challenge that comes your way. Absolutely. That's beautiful. I want people to get the book. Get the book. They can go to lillysinghbook.com, also just anywhere on social media, follow @lilly and get a few copies. I love this type of book. I told you before because it's short.

It's short.

And for someone like me that can't read that long. It has illustrations.

It's got pictures.

I feel like I'm seven years old again. It's perfect. And it's speaking about real life, which I think is really powerful. So make sure you guys get a few copies, not just one, but this is one where you get like three, five, ten copies. and give them to all your friends. You can read this in a day. For me, that might take me a couple weeks, but most people can read it in a day, and I think it'd be a great book club for you and your friends. So get a few copies of this book. Lilsingbook.com, @Lily pretty much everywhere. How else, before I get to the final two questions, how else can we be of service to you?

Oh, wow. Well, first of all, you're already been of service to me. I want everyone listening to know this, that I literally emailed Lewis about this yesterday. I would love to I'll be on the podcast, talk about the book, and now I'm sitting here in your studio today. So you've already been of service. I'm sure you uprooted your schedule. I'm sure you made a slot happen. You've always been so supportive. So you've already been of much service to me.

And your exact response to my text was, so excited to support you. Of course. I want all your listeners to be fantastic. Yeah, of course.

Of course, I got your back. I mean, people besides the book, they can watch, tell me what else is going on. They can watch the movie. Yeah, I'm part of an animated movie called the Bad Guys. It's a DreamWorks animated movie. It's coming out April 22nd in theaters. So that's been really fun. If you have any Canadians listening, I'm a judge on Canada's Got Talent, which is every Tuesday on City TV. Oh yeah, I'm gonna start shooting this Muppet thing. I just did a TED Talk recently.

I guess that's all kind of cool. I'm doing a few things. Trying to save a few things.

Are you still doing consistent YouTube right now? Or is that kind of like... No. I am not. I mean, I am gonna release a really cool video I'm passionate about related to the book. But I am not consistently making YouTube videos for the your sole purpose.

Your mental health probably.

Making them that frequently is not fun for me. Yeah, it's not.

And I don't find fulfillment in that anymore. Yeah, it served you for a season.

But not this season. I like to do things sporadically here that I could post a video, but.

The whole creativity on demand is no longer fulfilling for me. Yeah.

Okay, cool.

I asked you this last time four years ago. You were on the show. I asked you this question.

It's called the three truths question.

Probably don't remember it, but I'm gonna ask it again. I don't remember what I had for lunch yesterday. and I have your answers here.

Oh, dang.

So I'm gonna see if they're the same or what has changed in the last four years. I love this. So this is a hypothetical scenario. Imagine it's your last day on earth. You get to live as long as you want, but eventually you gotta go to sleep, right, for the long haul. Okay. And you have this vision board every year that is just manifesting. Everything comes to life. Anything you want happens. You accomplish peaceful love, fulfillment, all these things are great. Health, But one day you got to go and you got to take everything with you or no one has access to your content or your information anymore. All your videos, all the Disney shows, the books for whatever reason, it's gone somewhere else. But you got a piece of paper and a pen and you get to write down three lessons you would share with the world. Three things you know to be true. And this is all we would have to remember your content by. What would be those three truths? for you?

One, I would say, is much of my content can be defined by being a disruptor. I think that is my purpose on this planet. I'm very clear on that, is to disrupt things. So I would say don't be afraid to look at the mold and break it into pieces and do things the way that are right for you, not the way someone told you to do them. I would also say that you shouldn't take life so seriously. And that's what the power of comedy is. A lot of my videos are taking my traumas and pains and making fun of them. you know, and I think we should be able to laugh at ourselves and we should never get to a place where we can't laugh at ourselves. And then I would say that we are doing a disservice to ourself if we are not showing stories that actually showcase what the world is like. And I know representation is kind of a fluff word and a buzzword at this point where representation, what does that actually mean? It means that there should be stories for everyone and not every story has to be about everyone. But there should be stories for everyone. Everyone should be able to look at something and be like, I see myself in this and now I can kind of understand myself better and I can understand others better. We all deserve that type of medicine I feel in life.

Yeah. Not every story is for everyone, but there should be.

There should be stories for everyone, although not every story has to be for everyone.

Yeah, okay.

Because I feel like we also criticize stories a lot because like, well, that's not my experience. It doesn't have to be your experience. It's someone's experience. And everyone should be able to look.

At someone and say, that's kind of me. Yeah. Yeah. Well, if people want to know the other three truths you had, we'll have it linked up so they can go.

And listen to it.

Amazing. Amazing. Because you had three different things from here and that last time, which is interesting to see just kind of where you're at.

Yeah, and evolution. That's cool. That's a cool thing to do. Yeah.

Look at you when you're awesome podcast doing cool things. We're having fun. Good on you. We're having fun. Before I ask the final question, I want to acknowledge you for the incredible growth that you've had for the journey you're on because I think it's really easy for a lot of people who have built following success and accomplishments to not look within and do deeper work because things are working on the outside and they're getting recognized for the things they've been doing for so long. But the fact that you we're struggling on doing this book multiple times for how long and said something's not working on the inside fully. What is that and how can I heal and transform and go beyond that? I think it's really beautiful. So I really acknowledge you for the growth, for the work, for diving in on yourself and going from a two to a 10. I think it's really powerful. I think it's hard for a lot of people to be out of 10. these days or even like a seven through 10, you know, range on average. So the fact that you were doing that work, I think it's really inspiring. Thank you. And it's a beautiful representation of what's possible for people when they accomplish externally as well. There was a quote I think I saw you post on your Instagram recently that was like, you wanted your life to be identified more on your potential rather than your pain. Isn't that right?

It was about how going back to relationship with yourself and how we define ourselves. If you don't have a clear idea of who you want to be, you often define yourself by pain.

Your past pain.

Yes, it's why when people would ask me, tell me about yourself, my answer would be, well, you know, I've had some mental health struggles. I had a rough childhood. I instantly gravitate to those types of answers because I've defined myself by the pain. pain because the potential of who I could be is quieter than the pain in my brain.

Yeah.

And so the quote was that pain often screams louder than potential in our minds. And I don't want to be that person. I respect and acknowledge and see all of those painful things about me and I'm not trying to erase them. But what I'm trying to say is that while they are part of who I am, they don't need to define me entirely. When someone asks me, tell me about yourself, I want to say, Well, I'm gonna create great things, actually. I'm going to create things that change the world. And I want an answer like that with potential rather than pain. You know, we always define ourselves by our struggles, usually. And those struggles are beautiful, but we're also more than those struggles.

Yeah, that is beautiful. I love that. I'm gonna start doing that more as well. My final question for you, Lily, is what's your definition of greatness?

Someone who actively puts the work into discovering their purpose. Whatever that purpose is, I don't care if it's making great ice cream or changing the world. Whatever your purpose is, you put the work into learning why you're here and what you can uniquely offer. I think that is greatness because I think people should impact the world in only a way they can. But so often we don't put the energy into figuring out what that way is.

Lily, appreciate you.

We appreciate you. Thank you so much for having me.

If you got value from that, then go ahead and stick around for more. Coming up right now.

But I think sometimes as humans we need to be like, we feel pressured to always be giving people credit and that's very, very important. But sometimes we don't give enough credit to ourselves.

Absolutely. Yeah, I agree.

At the end of the day, it's.

Still you that did the thing.

I love it. Now you went to school and you started becoming less creative. When did you decide that I need to kind of unleash my creativity again? and bring this to the world and how can I make a living?

Yes, I was doing it through a bunch of different things. In university I did this thing where I started to bake cakes, like, you know, cake boss, ace of cakes type stuff. I know and I was like, I'm gonna be a baker now and do cakes and that was me trying to be creative, make them look like a purse or make them look like something. They had to be perfect. They had that also rarely happened, but I tried my best. And then it was, I had, I was part of a dance team. I thought, okay, this is my creative outlet, I'm part of a dance team. But the thing that always held me back in any of those endeavors was the fact that I always felt my success was dependent on other people. So the dance team is the greatest example of that. In true Lily fashion, I was like, we're not just a dance team. No, no. We're gonna take over the world through dancing. I want the biggest dance team. I want the best dance team. I want all genres of dance being performed. I want the best costumes. And when you have 15 people on your team that are like, we really are just here to dance for 15 minutes. We ain't trying to have a dance empire taking over the world. And that used to frustrate me so much. 'cause I would be showing up at practice, putting in my own money, staying up late. Exactly. And one of the things I learned was that's not actually their fault. You know, people have different priorities and that's okay. It's my fault for trying to implement my priorities onto other people that simply.

Did not have them.

When I was in my last year of university, I discovered YouTube, which did not exist when I was younger. And I remember watching these videos thinking, there's people in their rooms making videos and people are watching them. Like, what is happening here? And there was a few creators in my community that, you know, Had a few videos and I didn't really think anything of it. I thought it was just them. Then when I went more into YouTube, I saw no people over the world are making these videos and this is a thing. And I spontaneously one day put up a video online. I saw nothing of it. It was not even comedy. It was so far from who I am today. It was actually a spoken word piece about religion. Yeah, I heard you took it down, right? I took it down not because it sucked, because I have many sucky videos up. I took it down because it just does not represent who I am anymore. but it was so awkward, I was so uncomfortable in it, and as bad as it was, I just fell in love with the fact that I could write whatever I wanted, say whatever I wanted, edit it however I want, promote it however I want, and no person around me impacted that success. There was no one else I had to rely on, I learned how to do everything myself, and that I fell in love with. And so without thinking I posted a second video that was comedy, it was based on A linguistics argument I had with my friend and I posted another one, another one, and then suddenly I found myself thinking, well, how can I get better? How can I learn how to edit more?

How can I write better? Just like the Fruit Bowl.

Just like the Fruit Bowl.

And then it snowballed into this brand and career. It's amazing.

Yeah.

Do you still edit all your videos? So as of recent, a few months.

Ago, I do have an editor on.

Board that helps me. Really? Just a few months ago?

Yes.

So for the past six or seven years, I know which is crazy. Six or seven years of me dressing up as different characters, moving my tripod, writing.

And it wasn't forever.

Not only did it take forever, it got to a point where it wasn't enjoyable anymore. Because I play so many characters and I shot and I edited myself.

And you wrote the scripts.

Everything. And so I remember shooting these videos by myself dressed in a beard, looking around like, what the hell am I doing with my life right now? Because I'm not having fun doing this and this should be a fun career. And that's why I decided to bring more people on my team. And now when I go on a shoot, I'm like, oh, I can do my job really well and have fun because having fun is important to continuing doing something. And not to mention my editor is better than me. You know, one of the things I've learned is that it is okay to be the dumbest on your team in respect to some things. I'm really good at what I do, but I will not be as good of an editor as my editor. And so we work very collaboratively where I say, I want to look like this. This is how I want. And he does that. And sometimes he adds his own flair, which is even better. But it's still me having the creative control, but someone executes it way better.

Than I ever could. And it allows you to go relax or do more work.

Or do more work. It allows me to do more work.

It allows the movie to get inspired into something. Exactly. I love your quote about let's you already know where this is going to be in the part of your book. We tried to do this game. It didn't work. The quote about the universe might respect the law of attraction, but it respects.

A good hustle even more.

I really love that. Was there a point earlier when you weren't a hustler or was it even when you were five, you were like always hustling? And then how do you sustain the hustle for people that feel like, man, that just seems exhausting.

Is there a point in my life where I was not a hustler? Yeah, it was that point of my life at the end of university when I was super sad.

Yeah.

That if anyone had met me during that time, they would not recognize me as who I am today. I literally got up at I mean, I still wake up at 3 p.m. sometimes if I go to sleep really late. I'm just gonna be honest. My sleep schedule is a hot mess. But I had absolutely no goals. I woke up with no purpose. Literally Walker from the Walking Dead did not care, didn't care to accomplish anything. I didn't care at all about how the football looked. You know what I mean? I was a different person. But prior to that, I do gotta say everything in my life when I look back has been this need to do my best and the the greatest example is I remember I used to work at Harvey's, which is a Canadian fast. I think your equivalent might be Hardies.

Yes.

Here in America, I worked at. There was my first job, a fast food restaurant. And I remember there was downtime and the store was empty. And so I was like, okay, great. I'm gonna refill the Cutlery. And I was doing stuff, and it did not occur to me that everyone else was just chilling. They were just, like, looking at me, fill these Forks. And I remember hearing someone say this. And it was the most shocking thing I've ever heard. They were just like, you just always gotta do something. Like you're always working and I'm like, wait, are you guys not? And it was so shocking that I didn't even realize that was a thing people did. Like they just did not do something. And so I really think it's just something embedded within me that I haven't completely figured out why. It's just always been this need to do things and be productive.

Well, I mean, you look at the results. I mean, the results don't lie. You've generated certain results.

Nor do hips.

They do not.

You're right.

Do your hips lie?

Not at all. Oh, all right.

Never.

Show me later. Okay. Do a little dance move. I mean, my results don't lie. And you've created specific results in your life because of this level of hustle and energy that's been consistent. And I think if people don't want to generate great results, then they can take a break and they can pause and not be productive in certain things consistently, and they're gonna get those type of results. So it all depends on what we want.

It all depends on what we want. And I think the danger of, not the danger, but something I know people think after hearing this conversation is they think, well, that's very unhealthy. That's an unhealthy lifestyle balance. And people say that to me all the time. A lot of my friends are, you're always working. Just come out with us. And here's the thing. If I'm really honest, to have a certain level of success, I do believe you do have to be obsessed with it.

You have to be. You know, you have to be obsessed. You cannot win a championship at any.

Sport at the highest level without being obsessed. So it depends what your goals are. Depends what it if your goal is to be successful, but then also have weekends and also have a certain standard of relationship and have family, that's not wrong. That is your goal and you do that. But when people say that to me, my goals are I want to be exceptionally good at this one thing. Yeah. And that is going to require a certain level of dedication. And that is the reality of the situation.

Obsessiveness.

Obsessiveness.

All of your time.

Dwayne's a great example. Like, Obsessing is waking up at four working out no matter where he is like that is an obsessive level of.

Commitment and he gets incredible results exactly But he wouldn't get those results without obsessiveness exactly without constantly Creating and focusing on his health and building relationships and adding value to the world and being nice to people He seems like one of the nicest guys.

He is the nicest person I've ever met. Yeah, and I know people are just like oh, he's just nice to you maybe no I can write a whole scientifically proven book as to why he's the nicest person on the planet. Why is he? Okay, he's the nicest person for a few reasons. One is that he is actually, you know, when you talk about power, there's many ways you could exercise power. You know, you could do dictatorship. Like, I control you. Thus I am powerful, and I can make you do whatever I want, make all these rules. And we see these types of people in the world, and they, regardless of whether you like it or not, they have power. Another way to have power is to think, True power is how many people can I help accomplish what they want to do in life. That is a different way of looking at power. That's how he looks at power. And he does that through when he's in part of a movie or when he's talking to me or when he's talking to any of his friends, he does not say you, he says we. That's his thing. When the first time I ever had a heart-to-heart conversation with him, I remember telling him this whole situation about, you know, I call myself Superwoman. I have a deal with DC. And I told him this whole thing about how, obviously, seven years ago, I didn't think my YouTube channel would be so popular, so I stupidly called myself Superwoman, not realizing it's trademarked. And I remember, I'll never forget his response, which was, I definitely think we should try branding more towards Lilly Singh, and I think we should do. And then he caught even caught himself and he said, keeps saying we, obviously it's you, but it's just, you know, we. And he was just so invested. If you look at his movies, he's not the producer of all them, he's not the director of all them, but he always in his captions, like, We've.

Done what we can to put on.

The best movie for you, because he.

Understands that is the team. Positive way of using power. of course. Yeah, yeah. If it's all you, it's a lot of pressure. It's very selfish, I think. Exactly. I try to make it about a group of people. And I know that there's no way, even I saw Arnold Schwarzenegger doing a speech about this for a commencement speech, whether you like him or not, agree with him or not. He was like, there's no such thing as a self made man. He's like, there are thousands of people that helped me to get to where I'm at. And it doesn't matter what I've accomplished. There's so many people on the team who've supported it. So we've got to think about the team, the people you surround yourself with and who support you.

Yeah. Dwayne is all about that. That's probably the greatest lesson I've learned. To be honest, I was bad at that.

I will call myself.

You wanted to do it all yourself and have control. Yes. And I was not good at delegating. And also, I did have this internal battle when I moved to La where I was like, wait, so many people.

Need a cut of the money I make. That was a huge. I'm experiencing this right now. It's like 10 here.

Yeah.

Five percent. That's what I'm being really honest. Business manager. I was like, A hundred percent of me is in front of the camera. Wow, y'all getting 10% of everything that happens. Right now, right? And that was a struggle I had. And I remember sending Dwayne this email asking for his advice, and he said something that really changed my mind. He said, Listen, everyone brings their expertise to the table, and therefore everyone deserves a cut. And that's how you will get greater results. And I blindly trusted him because I was like, if Dwayne says it, it must be true.

It's so true. I was resistant to certain things, you know? this whole year, I've been getting more and more people kind of courting with, with the results that we're getting, the brand that we're building. And I'm like, I've always done the business deals myself and negotiated every contract and speaking fees and partnerships and sponsorships. I was like, I've been negotiating since I was getting a hundred dollars a sponsor to where I'm at now. And it's like, I don't need someone else to do that for me. I'm good at this, you know? But the more I'm realizing, like, the more people I talk to who have bigger brands, they're like, you just need the team. you need the team. If you want to elevate to a whole other level, you gotta remove yourself from something.

Right. Exactly. Because it goes back to you're really good at it. But are you as good as the person who.

That's their sole job. Exactly. You're pretty good at it. Exactly.

He's a little better, and it gives you time to do other things. Right. Exactly. That's the. The smartest decision you can make is understanding you're not the smartest at something. And get someone who's smart to do that thing. I I'm. I'm pretty decent at editing, but. Could I do the things that Edar does? Absolutely not.

Right.

What do you think you need to let go of in your life in order to get to the next level for yourself? You're already number one influencer in the world. You're already one of the top three highest paid YouTubers of all time.

You're already since the beginning of time.

You're already in a world.

You're already a number one New York Times bestselling author. You're already doing music and tours and dancing and Taking over the world. What do you need to let go of and who do you need to step into in order to get to your next level?

Something, and this is quite specific to what I do, something I need to let go of that I think a lot of people would be shocked to know it actually does impact me is I don't necessarily make content completely for views. You know, and I think my vlog channel is a great testament to that. My vlogs don't get a lot of views and I've always told myself what's not a lot. Okay, so, yes, let me put this into perspective. So my main channel in half a day should get a million views. A video. My Vlog Channel. A good Vlog in 24 hours will get 150k. So it's significantly. That's the second Channel. It's not scripted. It's me going through my day being myself. People want to watch it. Great. And I have a rule for myself that I refuse to orchestrate drama into my day for my Vlogs. I just am not going down that path. Yes. And so. Something I need to let go of is that even though I make content I really believe in and I think is funny, and you can ask my team, I'll sometimes be reading my scripts and watch my videos and I'll be laughing at my own jokes and be like, you,'re such a nerd. And I'm like, But I'm so funny and no one else is laughing, that's fine. But the challenge is that I have kind of been this very fast growing channel and done really well for myself. There are going to be people that surpass me in terms of views. There are going to be videos that don't do as well. And even though I know in my heart when I'm writing a script, I'm not thinking about, okay, this will get 2 million views, the struggle is that.

When you post things online, that's the.

Only measure we have, right? I don't have a live audience. Results. Exactly. I care less about that when it's live. Of course, I still want the place to be sold out, but when it's not sold out and there's still 200 people that are screaming, that still feels like, oh, a message is getting across. The problem with online is the views are the only measure we have. Comments views likes, but I can't even read through every comment. You know what I mean? So there's no way if there was a sea of positive comments that would make me feel like this video had a great message, I wouldn't be able to get through them all. The quickest number I can see is the view count. And so what I need to let go of is that view count actually validating what my content is. Because I don't want to be the person that makes content just for views. I want to be the person that makes content that gets people like Dwayne to be like, I want to work with you. That's the content I want to make. I want to make content where Stephanie McMahon, when I was obsessed with WWE, she's like, Yes, I'll do a collab with you. And little Lily's like, Yes, I'm glad you made this video. That's what I want to drive me. But it's been such a challenge because there's no analytic for that.

There's only an analytic for the views. And so I need to really let go of that somehow. And it's like a long-term game. It's like I'm creating content that maybe.

In a few years someone will see and inspired and they want to partner with me or we want to do a project together that that's actually more.

Important than 10 million views on any video.

Yeah.

And I, and I do really believe, I genuinely believe this when I say it. It's just hard to implement every day again because there's no statistic. But the greatest thing I could ever come for me doing what I do is that years from now, there was someone that accomplished great things, like someone who freed people, who got equal rights, someone who even became, like, some sort of world leader. And if ever in an interview they were like, you know, I used to watch this girl Lily and she really inspired me.

That is like really true, I think.

Inspiration and power of what I would want to accomplish. Because it's not only about my success, it's about everyone who might be inspired by that. But there's no statistic for that, so it's hard.

Yeah, it's tough. Who's the most inspirational person in the world for you right now?

Huh, the most inspiration person in the world for me right now is with fear of sounding redundant, it's going to be Dwayne. Yeah, it's going to be. Of course, my mom is there. Of course, there's many other people in my family that inspired me. But the particular, the particular way Dwayne has inspired me, I think is so unique. I think it's like a one in a billion story of the summary would be growing up obsessed with Dwayne. Like, his pictures were all over my wall. My email address was therock85@hotmail.com. in school, I vividly remember winning a contest. And on the announcements to the school, it said, Lily the Rock sing. Like, everyone knew I was obsessed. Wow. Okay.

And so my whole entire life was.

Just loving this guy. I started making YouTube videos. I grew up, and I still huge fan, but maybe a less fanatic fangirl. And I used to make a lot of comments about him in my videos, you know, talk a lot about him, make jokes about him, and not knowing his daughter was watching my videos, and so. through whatever fate and stars aligning, Dwayne has become my mentor and friend, and that's a rarity in life. Few people can say my absolute role model is someone I can call and.

Ask for advice from.

Crazy.

A few people can say that. And few people, a lot of people would say that's scary because a lot of times when you meet people, they're not who you expect them to be.

But he was.

Dwayne is so above and beyond who I ever expected him to be. And what that has taught me is that Everything you learn about before I even got an ounce of fame, I was so guilty of being one of those people that's like, Celebrities are suck up, they're rich, they don't got problems. All these basic mentality things people say on Twitter to me, you know? I used to think that. I used to think there's no way a celebrity actually cares about people. Dwayne proved me so damn wrong. And I remember just having a heart-to-heart with him saying, You have actually convinced me that you can be so successful in such a cutthroat industry but still be the nicest person. And I did not think that combination.

Was possible at all.

I did not think. I thought it was all facade, but it is not. You do not have to be a jerk to be good at business. You do not have to be rude to get your point across. And Dwayne proves that. And that's why I value, as I mentioned in the book, being nice so much, because I do think it is an ingredient in the recipe to success.

Wow. What's the biggest lesson he's taught you then?

The biggest lesson he's taught me, I mean, amongst many, business-wise, something he said to me that's always stuck with me is he said to me, you know, when I was in football and I tried to go to wrestling, everyone was like, okay, now you're gonna be a wrestler. Then he got really, really great at wrestling. And when he left the WWE, he went into acting. And again, people said to him, Now you're gonna be a wrestler. It goes into acting like we've seen this attempted before. It didn't work out too well. And then he got into movies and after movies he decided to do Ballers, which is a show. And I love that show. People said to him, he told me people said to him, movie stars don't do TV shows. That is not the path people go on. It's like going backwards or something.

Yeah, exactly.

He was like, well, we're gonna buck tradition then. He's like, you make up your own rules about what that path is going to be. And that was always really inspirational to me as someone who went from psychology to, I'm gonna make YouTube videos, to actually I wanna act and sometimes I do music and I wanna write a book and I don't wanna live with myself because if no one else is taking that path, I'll make that path then and that's what he's done. Amazing, amazing. This is just basically episode one of Lily fangirling about Dwayne the Rock Johnson.

Here of a 12 part series that could happen. What is your vision next for you then? What's the scariest thing that you wanna go after for yourself? if you could achieve anything, if I.

Could achieve anything, I, like, you're gonna.

If you could write it down and it's going to happen, anything you want, what would that be?

I want to be, I'm just gonna be blunt. I want to be a very big star. I'm gonna say that. And I know, yeah. And I know sometimes people think that's what you want to be. I want to be a big star because You know one of the greatest things about what I do is that I can actually do things for people. You know, I can make a video that can inspire someone even through money. I can help my friends if they need help. If I need to help with a project, I can do that. If I need to promote something, of cause I really believe, I can do that. I want to be a big star not just because I want to be in movies and I believe in the art of acting and I want to tell great stories, but I think with the more stardom I have, I believe in my heart I could help more people. I want to be that person that's like, I'm gonna walk a red carpet and then tomorrow I'm gonna go and with an organization I'm working with, we're gonna go to this village in Kenya I admire and I'm gonna build schools without giving it a second thought because I can do that. That's what I want to do. I don't want to just lie and say, I just want to help people.

Of course I do.

But I also want to do it because I am a great actress or a great musician. I'm really great at something and that greatness has led to me being able to help people.

That's what I want.

I don't just want to help people through an inheritance or anything. Not that anything's wrong with that, but I want to feel like I'm really good at something and because that I'm able to help people. So it's kind of a selfish motive, but one I want to share with other people.

What's your biggest fear if that happens? Are you afraid of it all?

Oh, I'm so afraid. Half of my life is being afraid, to be honest. Really? Yeah. I'm, every day I step out of my comfort zone. And there are some days where I'm like, shut up, Lily. Just have a day where you just.

Sit on your couch.

You're safe. And you're safe and you're not doing a speech and you're not in front.

Of a camera and you just get to be crappy.

Let yourself be crappier. And I think every day, whether it's podcasts or whether it's auditions or whether it's panels or whatnot, it's always some element of stepping out of my comfort zone, preparing for something. getting mentally ready for something. And I'm scared that that's going to take a toll because even now, I don't consider myself, I mean, Forbes can say whatever they want. I don't consider myself this huge, massively, massively influential person. I think I influence a certain amount of people and that's great, but I'm scared that it is, my career is going to go upwards and I'm going to not be able to feel the same way as I feel right now speaking to you, that it's gonna take such a toll on me that I'm gonna think, really? Yeah, it is a valid fear and I know reality enough to say that I'm no longer that naive person that's like, I'm gonna respond to every message I get and every bit of fan mail and I'm never gonna say no to a picture and I'm always gonna be a positive, happy person. That's not possible. It's not possible. And I know that now sitting here today is a lie, but I'm five years from now. What else will I learn that is impossible?

I'm sure you've seen the Rock too. I'm sure he would love to take a photo with everyone.

But when there's 20,000 people outside his hotel room. When there's 20,000 people also waiting. When are you gonna get to work? Exactly. And where do you draw that line? And so I've just learned so many things that three years ago I didn't know.

And so the fear is that three years from now, what will I know that I don't know now that will change whatever I'm saying right now?

What are you more afraid of, being.

The most relevant person in the world or being irrelevant? I'm gonna say it currently, Lily, her answer, the fear would be being irrelevant. And I say that because I'm in this really interesting gray area where I have a lot of Fame online, but I still go into auditions and they're like, I'm sorry, what was your name again? You know what I mean? I'm caught in between two worlds.

You go check.

Yeah. Yeah.

So I have celebrity, but then sometimes I'll go to events. and people will not care at all about who I am. And it's like this area of like I have really, sometimes I'll have dinner with my celebrity friends and I'll have a conversation and then I know I can't have that same conversation with some of my friends, not because they're better or worse, but because like you won't relate to anything. I don't want to be that douchebag that's having a dinner with my friends being like, oh my god, so the thing I hate about first class is, you know, I don't want to have that conversation where I'm like, oh my god, so like I went outside and there was like hundreds fans and then, because I don't want that my friend to be like, can we even have a conversation about, but who's to blame there? Because that is my reality, you know, that I'm not trying to put on a facade. That's the real things I experience. And that always gets to me because I'm like, I never want to be so up here that I can't come down here and have a conversation with anyone. I want to be able to have a conversation with anyone. So I want to maintain that. And there's a fear of me making a video of my fans being like.

I can't relate to this.

What you tell us is so relevant to me.

Yeah.

What do you think about the most during your days?

You want to know a thought I have every single day? It's so ridiculous. At least once a day I have a thought where it's just, if I had a superpower, it would be to pause time so I could take a nap. Once a day I have this thought. I just would love to pause time, take a nap right here on this desk and then just resume and you wouldn't even know. You know what I mean? I think about that a lot. I also think about during my day, I'm obsessed with productivity, like I said. So, you know, I have a chapter in my book that is about problem solving everything from small problems to very large problems. So something like, oh, what am I stressed about right now? My phone is dead. Great. I'm gonna come up with three solutions as to how this cannot stress me tomorrow. And so throughout my day, I'm always picking up little things that have slowed me down. I use this analogy a lot of Mario and Mario Kart. And so I always consider my day a race. You can call it unhealthy, but I think it's fun and cute. And so, what banana peels did I deal with? I'm always gonna address the next day. And so during the day, I'm always thinking of those things, of what slowed me down and what I can improve on.

What's the thing you're most proud of that maybe most people don't know about you?

What am I most proud of? I am proud that in the vast amount of priorities you can have in a day in and in life being or at least trying and valuing being a kind person is still very high on my priority list. And I think it's easy when you're on set or it's easy when you have so many people working for you. It's easy to not care about that. You know, it is. And I almost, I don't want to give people a pass when they're rude on set. I don't think it's right, but I could see how they think that's okay because I'll go onto a set and people will cater to me left, right and center in a ways where I'm almost uncomfortable with because I'm like, no, treat me like a human. I've seen if I'm even having a bad day and I might come across rude, no one calls me out on it. No one will be like, that's not right unless I do it myself. And so I can see how when you're constantly around that environment, you might be like, I'm allowed to do this and this is what I'm supposed to do. I'm proud that I still call myself out on crap, you know? And I hope that maintains, like, an example is yesterday, not to toot my own horn, but I. Yesterday I realized that I have a shooter, and he's a phenomenal shooter, filmmaker, but we butt heads a lot on set because he's fixated on these minor, minor lighting details that I could care less about because I don't see them because my eyes not trained to see them.

Yeah.

And so I'll always be, like, kind of, hurry up. We need to shoot. We need to shoot. And so I called myself out and then I was like, well, you know, his intentions are to make this the best thing. And so I had to have a talk with him. I was like, I'm sorry if I was like being a little bit of a jerk to you. I get where your intentions are and I'll try to work on it.

Right.

And I'm proud that I'm able to see that because very few times will.

Anyone else call me out on that.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's good. I want to be a nice person. I don't want to lose you are a nice person. Thank you. Keep it though. I want to maintain, I do. I am one of those people call it Naive or Not that believes that compassion and kindness can actually change the world. I really do believe that.

What's the question you wish more people would ask you?

I wish more people would ask me and we spoke about this a bit before we started recording. What is something you were blatantly wrong about? What are something that you believe that you don't believe right now? Because I think when people look at journeys of people, they think they're very like this. But really they're like this and like this and like this and like this and there's a lot of things I've changed my mind about, you know, there's a lot of things I've learned and there's even times I've eaten my words. I'm like, oh, that's not, that's not right at all. I don't believe that. And so I wish people would dissect those elements of my story a bit more because those are the parts people actually need to learn from, you know, is that you will change and grow as a person and that is not a bad thing.

Yeah. Yeah. Before I ask the final few questions, do you guys have one? Anything come up for you?

Anything I missed? All right. Tiff asked a great, phenomenal question, which was, you know, as a woman of color, has that impacted my journey? Am I caught, am I aware of it and how has that been in general, I think, with the direction of my career? It's interesting. It's kind of multifaceted in a lot of ways because I'm obviously, I'm aware, I'm a woman of color, you know, I take a shower every day, I'm aware. But when things happen, you know, when I get write a book or when I achieve things and people say, well, how does it feel as a woman of color? I'm like, I wasn't really thinking of it as a woman of color in that moment, you know, I wasn't accepting award being like, well, with brown skin and a vagina, I think, you know, but then sometimes I do. So it's kind of an on and off relationship where I'm aware, and I made a post about this where I'm aware that especially doing things online, do I face a lot of really intense sexism with opportunities? I don't think so. I don't think I get less opportunities on YouTube because I'm a woman. That's a great thing about the digital space. I think that's a great example for Hollywood. There's no casting director in front of the upload button. You know, the number one influencer is the woman. You know, and I think a lot of other industries could take notes, just saying. But at the same time, do I face sexism in other ways? Of course. Of course there's the YouTube comments that are like, Make me a sandwich, do that. But at a deeper level, when I make, for example, one of my most hated videos or disliked videos is why I don't need a relationship. That is one of my most disliked videos. It is me ranting about all the reasons I don't think I need a boyfriend. I don't want a boyfriend. It is the same type of humor as a video I would make called Five Things I Love About Relationships. It's the same type of wittiness, it's the same everything. The only difference is I'm saying why I don't think I need a relationship.

Comments.

You are so stuck up. You are one of those girls that just thinks you're better than everybody. So what, you're so into it. This is why I hate feminism. And that's the type of sexism I deal with. Whereas if I have a strong viewpoint about something or I'm really direct about something, I will more often be called rude and harsh than some perhaps, not for sure, perhaps if my male counterpart would have done it. And I think that's consistent across a lot of industries, which is a strong point of view is not perceived in the same type of epicness if a female did it as if a male did it. And so I do deal with that a lot. But otherwise, I've always said as a woman of color, My one line is, I can make a billion videos about why racism is wrong and why sexism is wrong. I have a few, you know, when I'm feeling sassy, I have a few. But I know the most impactful way to challenge that is to be the most successful woman of color I can be.

Amen.

You know, that's when people see me on a billboard, that will probably speak way more volumes than me making a five minute video explaining to people that probably won't listen anyways as to why racism and sexism is wrong.

I love that.

And so we made this amazing team.

Now we have our own families. She's doing her own thing.

I'm doing my own thing. And we've learned to celebrate our differences. And it's okay to be different, right?

There wasn't many twins in TV back then, or even now.