MARK Good morning, LinkedIn. Good morning, world. Thank you for joining us on Mind Monkeys Welcome: Bananas Optional, our regular LinkedIn live stream where we name, explain, and reframe the most common hesitations that get in the way of the success we deserve. I'm Mark Franklin. I'm your guide as we embark on raw, honest, irreverent, and important conversations designed to normalize the fears that we each face at work and at play in order to help you, our amazing listener, shift the mindset and perspective you've created for yourself that might be feeding those monkeys. Today, I am joined by a sheer force of energy. Um, just the most wonderful man, I have to say. Someone who I met at a small networking event last autumn. And you know when you're in one of those spaces and you're sat with people and someone just kind of lights up that room, this is that man. Let me tell you a bit about him. Samir Mallick is an imagineer. What a wonderful title that is, an imagineer. He is a poet. He is a community builder. He is a workshop leader, but his passion is to help you imagine anew. Imagine a new you and imagine a new world. Samir, welcome. Welcome. Tell me, tell me about this wonderful vision you have for the work that you do. SAMIR Ah. So this, this idea of imagineering, of imagining something that you want to manifest and then- Exactly ... engineering it into reality- Yes ... is the core of it. Um, the big vision is a community that I'm in the f- initial stages of building called Scouting Our Future. Nice. So one of the things you could do is, is one-on-one, it could be scouting your future. Um, globally, we might look at scouting the future, and I think science fiction does a great, um, take on that, scouting the future through science fiction, giving us a possible vision of what could happen. But the community I'm building is called Scouting Our Future, and at the initial stages, it's where a community of like-minded people, each interested in making themselves or the world a better place, or both, is supporting each other in realizing that vision and holding each other accountable to making it real and in finding the tools to help make it happen. Now, the long-term vision, that's the individual level. That's each of us helping each other in our own space to first break through and imagine anew, and then imagine a new you happening, but then how do we imagine a new world? And the long-term vision for this community of Scouting Our Future is to have other communities connecting with each other to find ways to solve the world's problems. Now, that's the long-term version. We gotta build it up bit by bit. That's like- Yeah ... age 350. I'm on page two or three right now. But I mean, only 350 pages towards changing the world for... MARK But this is, I mean, yeah, this is a wonderfully ambitious and exciting kind of vision you have. T- tell me a little bit about the, the why. Why is building a better you, building a better world, coming together, supporting each other, lifting each other, why is that something that really speaks to you? SAMIR The why, that's really the core of it. That's kind of the, the, the k- one of the key questions in making it real is, what's in your heart? What are the passions? When I had the initial vision for becoming an imagineer about 10 years ago, uh, the, I was looking for a logo, an icon, some sort of visual that would represent what it could be, and I had the, the notion of a water drop falling into a pond and the ripples going out. Love it. So the, the why is, you know, what, when you l- especially today, when you look out at the world and all of the, there's so much to cause despair in what we see happening in the world, and I, I was, when, you know, how can you make a difference with that? What can you do? So the, the, the why is to build hope for today. You know, how do you overcome that? You don't overc- well, the way that I envision overcoming it is first looking at what I need to change within myself to be able to survive and thrive in that kind of climate. And then those ripples, they start in your local community. It may be first your family, and then your neighbourhood, then you could expand out to the world, but you gotta take care of home first. Yeah. You know? And, and then you can start having an impact. And as you do that, it's kind of like self-fulfilling. When you see the positive impacts in yourself, in the people around you, then the hope grows, and you feed each other, and that rolls into this whole thing of Scouting Our Future. When we're in it together, we can lift each other up when it feels down. MARK Yeah. Beautiful. Beautiful. And again, I mean, again, just reflecting back on how we met and that ripple effect, your, your energy rippling through that group. Um, it, it's a wonderful, it's a wonderfully, positively contagious kind of attitude, I guess. This, this sort of idea, again, where how, how we turn up in a room affects everyone else, whether we like it or not. So how can we do that in a way which, as you say, lifts all ships? Tell me just because this is such a wonderfully bold ambition, and I'm sure you're meeting kind of people in all sorts of different places and having all sorts of different conversations and working out, again, where those hesitations are and what they need to sort of step up and step forward and, and shine. Within all those conversations, what would you say is sort of the, the most common hesitation, the, the, you know, the most frequent mind monkey, I guess, where people are sort of hesitant to, again, to, to radiate that, that magnificence that we each have? SAMIR It's fear. Okay. Unequivocally. And, and that's me. You know, I, you know- Yeah my own personal example here was, is, has been as I'm building this community, um, putting myself out there, letting my voice be heard. But then if I don't do that, then I can't offer to help anybody. I can't offer that hope to anybody. And when I saw your first w- mind monkey in, in, um, January, I was like, "This is it. I know Mark. I trust him. I gotta step up and do this." This is me facing my mind monkey, facing my fear. And in, in, uh, the Making It Real workshops, when I come across this, it's like the, the, the metaphor I use is a f- fear monster, not a monkey. And I say, "You gotta take that monster from this big intimidating thing, squeak it down, pat it on the head, and say, 'That's nice, but we're doing it anyway.'" MARK And as we w- we were chatting just before we went live, again, in terms of the, okay, so there is this fear, this, this fear of being visible, in your case, fear of sort of stepping up and showing yourself. But you mentioned, and I think this was a really lovely kind of little sort of tweak or twist, that idea of visibility can sometimes s- cause us to hesitate because it feels like a chore. It feels like it's work. It's, it's a task that we're not comfortable with. Whereas as you very s- I mean, I'll go, I'm gonna let you explain the twist. You, I know where you're going. SAMIR Yeah. I know where, I know, I know where you're going. MARK Yeah. So r- rather than it being work, rather than it feeling too hard, not worth the effort, tell me how you've turned that around for yourself. SAMIR Well, I, I didn't do it alone. It, it's again, it's scouting our future. I, I have a, a near and dear friend, Christina Calabria, and I was telling her about this and that I, I need to get out there, I need to be visible. And she's like, "You know how to do this. You've done it." You know, she's known me for years. "You've done it, so what's stopping you? You've got 24 hours. Put something out there." It's the account ... Then when I, when I heard what she was saying, you know, she was telling me, "You know how to do this. You've done it before," then I was like, "Ah, what's blocking me is that I've been carrying it like it's work, and it's been weighing me down." Yeah. When I thought about, yeah, I have done it before, and I've had fun with it. When I make it fun- Yep ... it's fabulous. Yeah. MARK And again, coming back to that kind of ripple effect and that contagious energy, if you're having fun, people ... And again, I, I defer, I defer to, you know, being in a room with you. When you're, when you've got that wonderful smile and you're kind of sort of bouncing around the table, it, it does, it, you know, we're all like, "Wow." There is that kind of motivation and that sort of, that level of self-belief just kind of creeps up. Look, look at Samir. Look at, you know, I wanna be a part of this. Come on. Interesting about, as you say, Christina mentioning, you know, you've done this before. You've done this before. There is ... I mean, I talk a lot about this, you know, this, this body of energy. Uh, sorry, body of evidence. Mm. You know, we have a lifetime of stories within which there are those moments where we have felt the fear and done it anyway, where we've done things outside of our comfort zone and the sky didn't fall in. And we often overlook those, don't we? We kind of, as Christina suggests, you forget, you forget just how good you are in those moments, and sometimes you need that other person to say, "Come on, man," you know? Yeah. "I saw you do that last week. It was incredible." Uh, I mean, a- and I'm guessing in terms of building your community, is, is that kind of a, a core part of the attraction? You want to help people remember their magic? SAMIR Oh my goodness. This is, this is ... So there, there's an aspect of this that I've been, I've been sharpening since about midyear last year. I went to go see, uh, a, the pr- the, a film called, uh, Time Travel is Dangerous. And on it, they had a, a program, uh, about, you know, this is the future. And it, and it, it relates to kind of a, a, a thing that I do called, uh, Imagine News, and I'll interview somebody from, from their future self, having achieved what it is that they wanna make real. Yeah. You know? So saying, "Okay, imagine it fully as what you've helped happen." What you've made happen. And then, and I'll do some pre-work with them so I'll know some questions to ask and, uh, you know, I've done two of these before in, in a public setting, and it's, it's incredible just how mu- how positive it becomes. And I've, I've s- I've, I, I'm now talking about doing time travel tours. So, it's going into that past, like Christina did with me, helping me remind me that you've done this before, and, and, and plumbing, you know, what are those things? What's in your experience? Is it, it may be people that you know, uh, things that you've done, um, that will equip you for that journey into the future. So, the time travel t- first we go into the past to equip. Nice. Yep. Then we go to the future, to your future self, and, and ask them, "What did we ha- what did we d- what made it possible? What is it that I'm doing today that's gonna make this real?" You know and getting advice from your future self. And then we plop down into the present and we say, "Okay, we've now got to chart our way." It's not the whole path, but what are the next impactful steps that are gonna take us there? MARK And I'm guessing by, again, reflecting on the past and that sort of backpack of resources that you already have to kind of carry forward on your next step of the journey, knowing that you've got in that toolkit a variety of skills, experiences, magical moments, memories, victories- does that help, or how would you say that helps the person begin their kind of next journey? I don't know what, I know we were talking about sci-fi and things and- ... before we started, but my head's just gone off to, like, a Hobbit. I'm kind of imagining the unexpected sort of journey now. You're putting on your rucksack and you're about to sort of cross the Shire you know. But the bravery, 'cause it's, you know, y- fear was a big word- Mm ... that you brought into conversation earlier on. It's this one thing saying, "Here in the future is where I want to be. In a year's time, this is where I want my business to be." And stepping backwards, I can work out and chart each step to help me move forward. But you have still got to take that first step out of the door. SAMIR You do, but the thing is, you've probably already taken steps. And when you go looking into the past, and we've all got tools. One of the, one of the ones I started in 2018, I started doing these, uh, journals that I, uh, that, like my morning pages where I reflect on what I'm doing and where I'm going, and now I can go back. If I wanted to see what was I doing on the 8th of May five years ago, I can now go back and look at that journal Now you may not be journaling, but I bet you got a phone with a lot of pictures in it. Yeah. And you could go back and look at what are the pictures that you took in that time, and those can trigger kind of memories of what worked, what brought you joy, you know? And r- like, like I was talking about May the 4th, Star Wars Day, and I went back through my pictures looking for a particular photo from a Star Wars celebration back in 2023, and I saw pic- that I'd gone there with a friend of mine, and I reached out to them, and we're gonna have, uh, dinner this weekend. Yeah. So it's like that reconnection, that, that joy is there in that history of photos, and you can find within there things that can help take you to that next step, to put in your rucksack and be equipped to face the mind monkeys or the fear monsters or what have you, um, knowing that you've done it before. The first time I did this, I, I divided my life into seven-year chunks, and I just did a kind of stream of consciousness outflow of what was I ... What was going ... Who was I friends with? What was I doing? Um, and I used about two-thirds of every page, you know, so I had a big margin on the right. And when I got to the present, I went back, and in the margin that I'd left blank, I wrote down themes of what had been happening. Yeah. And in terms of, you know, putting myself out there and public speaking, one of the things I found was before I was even a teenager, I put myself out ... Now I, I was an introvert, I was bullied, I had no repu- no solid reputation at school, and I put myself to represent the student government, you know, represent our class. Yeah. And I went up against the most popular kid in the class, but I did this speech about me becoming the link between us and the faculty and representing our needs, and u- I don't know where this came from But I won. Now I didn't serve very well as student representative, but when I was doing that journey into the past, that story told me, wow- Yeah there's something in me that was there early on where I've got some gravitas. I can, I can present. I can enroll people in positive possibilities. MARK Oh, that's a lovely phrase. Enroll people in positive possibilities. That's ... Oh, I like that a lot, Samir. Told you I'm a poet. Yeah. Well, okay, so let's touch on that, the, the poetry. Te- tell me about the poetry. How does the poetry play into all this, you know, aside from, you know, the obvious sort of creative exploration, I'm, I'm assuming on your own part. But go on, you, you tell me. SAMIR Okay, okay. I met, uh, an Irish poet, uh, Pádraig Ó Tuama, who, uh, was pr- reciting some of his poetry at, um, Southbank in London. And I went up to him and I told him, uh, you know, "Can you make the, the... Can you sign the book and make it out to Imagineer Samir?" He's like, "Oh, um, are you a poet?" I'm like, "Yeah." He's like, "Do you know what poet, a poet, a poet, what the word means?" I'm like, "No." He's like, "Maker." So a poet is an imagineer. You're using words and language to imagine, to create a, a word image- Mm-hmm of what's there. And what I have found in some of my poetry is that I'm doing imagineering in them. I've gone back and read poems in the pa- that I've written in the past that are, you know, ending in this positive possibility, and then I find that positive possibility manifested. So the poetry, you know, I, I did, uh, one on mourning this morning. This morning I'm mourning, and I wrote about all these things that I'm, I'm mourning, and it's like life had turned to ash from all these things that had gone by. But then the embers are still there, and you blow on the coals, and it's like the phoenix. Um- Yeah ... possibility arises. And when I read it again, I'm like, "Oh, my goodness. Some of those things I was mourning, you know, manifested." It's a bit personal, so I don't wanna go into too much detail on it. That's all right. Yeah. But, but it manifested. Yeah. MARK Um... Um, I mean, I mean, tr- my background is design, so I'm a visual, you know, ra- rather than words. Um, but in a very similar way, I guess. Sort of, you know, visual drawing, sketching is kind of my equivalent, I guess. I don't do as much of it as I used to. Okay. But, but what I love about what you've just said, lots of things I love about what you said, is this idea... I mean, the power of words. W- I was thinking about this yesterday. And LinkedIn is sort of becoming a prime example of, you know, we're using technology to write our words, he says. Some of us are. So yes, when I say we it's, it's not the royal we, it's a they using techno... But, um, interesting conversation with a couple of people yesterday about this, and it, it kind of brings me back to the, again, the ripple effect. Mm. How can you, how, how can you enrol people in positive possibility without that very deeply human narrative that your poetry clearly kind of, you know, is an example of? What, what– Let's go there. What, what are your thoughts around sort of, you know, the, the, the technology for the masses? Um, you know, we're talking AI, of course, but, you know, broad- broadly speaking, how do you think, how do you think, coming back to the question of visibility- Mm how do you think AI is helping or hindering that human visibility? SAMIR You, you, you've walked me into a minefield. MARK It's, it's a big question. But you're up for it. I know you are. SAMIR So I, I've been imagining, um, kind of true artificial intelligence for a long time. Uh, one of the books on the bookshelf is "I, Robot" by Isaac Asimov. Yeah. And in 1994, I, I took a science fiction class and I wrote a book, a short story called "The Turing Horse." Nice. Yep. And it was about, um, it was an email epistolary, but i- in, in the sense it was, it was about a galactic civilization of artificial intelligence that was desperate to find a biological civilization that hadn't destroyed itself. And it was about their encounter with us, because finally they'd found one. We were on the cusp of it. You know, we– it, it could be, uh, disease, climate catastrophe, um, machine intelligence gone awry. Yeah. Um, you know, we– nuclear war, you know, any of those things. You know, we were ready. We were on the cusp in so many different vectors that they were aware of, of destroying ourselves, but they found us. So I, I– it's a, it's a topic I've been contemplating for some time, and the best possible imagination of artificial intelligence, if it's true artificial intelligence, is that they will be looking to us to show them how to love. Yeah Now, going back to the q- you know, where does it stand right now? Well, there, there's so many different dimensions to this, um, artificial intelligence, especially today. Um, it's, it's ... If you look at the heart of it, there, the, the rush to build all these hyper data centres is backtracking us on the climate control- Yeah ... el- elements. You know, fossil fuels are now desperately needed to build these hyper data centres, but why? Are we looking at how we're applying artificial intelligence? Are we looking at the impact to the communities, to the environment, to the individuals? You know, for- forget about, you know, how we're applying it in our bu- businesses and our lives. Mm-hmm. It's taking jobs. It's, it's, it's hurting people. We're not using deliberation with how we apply it. It's about building wealth for a few, and there's this whole hype about adopting it because it's the only way you're gonna survive and thrive, and that to me is one of the mind monkeys. Yeah. That is, you know, I gotta stop. I gotta put the brakes on and say, you know, if I'm gonna imagine the future, if I'm gonna go to the matrix and I'm gonna say, "Do you want the blue pill or the red pill? Do you wanna wake up to what's really going on, or do you wanna take up the hype and just follow everyone else?" I wanna put the brakes on. I wanna go, "Let me look into this. What's really going on? Is there a way we can imagine this done in a more positive way? Could we look at adopting AI in ways that enhance people's lives, in a way that enhances communities?" Possibly, but it doesn't look like the road that we're going down. No. Um, there's a book I've read, uh, I can't remember her name, I'll, I'll put it in the comments after, uh, called Think Bait, and, and it's, it's about taking, retaking control of our thoughts. 'Cause as you use these, you know, large language model generative AIs and you enter into dialogue and confu- co- uh, conversation, you're taking up what it's already been fed, what it's been taught. Um- Mm. And it's simulating conversations, and there have been studies, I believe at MIT, that showed that your cognitive ability to think goes down the more you engage with these, and you give your thinking over to a machine. So, you know, I, I ... There's, there's a bit of negative there, but then there's a bit of positive. I'm looking at how can we reimagine this, how can we do it, and I know others that are, that are also looking to do that. Um, how do we make it positive? So I'm being very cautious in how I adopt these tools. Um, I think there's, there's a, a, a, a phrase that, you know, "Guns don't kill people, people kill people." It's a tool. Yeah. Is the tool good or bad? It depends on how we use the tool. MARK And I think the, the word that leapt out in your response to that question for me was love. Because, because I think, you know, coming back to you, how, how do we, you know, we've been gifted or created tools- Mm-hmm ... you know, throughout human history. Um, and is, you know, is the ultimate use of AI in terms of coming back to your, your ripple effect of, you know, building communities that foster positivity and lift each other up, can technology, I don't know if technology can learn to love, but can we use technology in a way to spread that, that positive, warm, loving energy? That, that for me, I feel is, is what's missing from this kind of, like you say- Mm-hmm ... this race to the bottom of we all must keep up. We all must embrace this technology, otherwise our businesses get left behind, otherwise we'll earn less money. You know, we'll, we'll be failures in terms of the, you know, the fear. Um, but actually the, the bigger question is, you know, what is it we want to achieve? Coming back to your, you know, huge, unbelievably great goal that you've shared, um, what is it you want to achieve and how can these tools, not just that tool, but any other tool that, you know, feels appropriate, be leveraged to facilitate that? You know, it's, it's, I suppose it's the, the tail wagging the dog, isn't it, at the moment, is the kind of, "Hey, here's a shiny new toy." Yeah. Um, see what it can do, as opposed to going right back to that beginning of the why. What is it we really want? Why is that so important to us? Okay, with Samir's help, I've reflected on my past. I've got that map towards the future. What have I got in my rucksack? SAMIR Where do we wanna go? Where do we wanna grow? It's with intention. You know, do we wanna be swept up by the history that we're, we're making collectively, or do we want to intentionally build a new world together? I hope the latter. MARK I hope so too. With intention. I hope so too. I hope so too. And with more people like you in the world, my friend I feel ever more hopeful. Yes. I feel ever more hopeful. SAMIR Mission accomplished. MARK Absolutely. I think if it's okay with you, we will pause it. We could, we could go on so much longer. Again, I just, I just love feeling your vibe- ... on screen. But for all those other people who perhaps haven't met you yet and would like to, remind us where can we find you? Your website is imagine- imagineanew.me. SAMIR Yes. That is, that is, uh, I think, my blog where I am imagining a new dot me, so it's sharing my journey. Um, if you wanna know about things that I'm up to or going, that are going on, the best place to do that is, uh, patreon.com/imagineersamir. I'll be announcing, you know, things that are coming up, sharing my writing, um, and workshops, and there'll be, uh, a launch for the Scouting Our Future, um, community down the road. So that's the best... And, and you could, you don't have to pay. You can sign up for free and just get the announcements and find out what's going on. So, um, I, I, I would love to see people there and to be able to share- I'll try ... what it is that I'm offering. MARK I will put all those links in- ... in the video so people can come and find you. Um, and one last question for you. What, what's the one thing that Samir will be doing next? SAMIR The one thing? Okay. Yes. I'm gonna be hosting a workshop on the 30th of May with the aforementioned Christina Calabria, decluttering, uh, your life. And this is the first time I'm doing a Making It Real workshop with someone else, and the announcement will be out there on my Patreon when it's open to the public. Fabulous. That's– I am so looking forward to this. It's gonna be amazing. It's, I, I'm gonna look at this myself. MARK This sounds very, very cool. Awesome. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you. It's a pleasure as always to chat to you, and we went places that I'm sure neither of us expected to go- ... but I'm so pleased we did 'cause it was, it's just, just a joy to, again, feed off your energy. SAMIR Thank you, Mark. Thank you so much. MARK Thank you. Thank you. And thank you for being brave, and yeah, being the first person- Yeah ... to kind of message me and say, "I wanna be on Mind Monkeys." SAMIR I was the first? MARK You were the first. Woo! Yeah. Breakthrough. So, yeah. Yeah. Absolutely, and I'm thrilled, thrilled that you did. Thanks. So- Thanks, everybody That's it for today. Thank you all so much for tuning in. Again, this will be available on YouTube shortly after as well, where you can see all of Samir's details, uh, and watch any of the previous episodes. Our next episode, uh, 'cause we're speeding up things, so we're gonna have another May episode, 22nd of May, another Friday, and that's with mental health trainer Liz Moron. So look out for that one. The event will be set up very soon. Go to YouTube, go find Samir, and keep those mind monkeys at bay. Thank you everyone, and yes, take care. Have a great weekend.