Yung Pueblo, LIGHTER: Let Go of the Past, Connect with the Present, and Expand the Future

[1:53]Zibby Owens: Hi. I'm Zibby Owens, the creator and host of the award winning podcast that you're listening to right now, thank you so much, called Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. It is a daily podcast three hundred and sixty five days a year, and each day we talk to an author about all of the things related to their career, their book, their life, and more in thirty minutes or less because who has time? I am now an author myself, although I wasn't when I started this podcast, and you can get my new memoir, A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Literature wherever books are sold starting July 1, and my children's book, Princess Charming. You can learn more about me at zbowens.com. But, really, you're here to learn more about the authors, and that is what we're going to do. Also, be sure to check out all the other podcasts in the ZCast Podcast Network. You can learn more at zcastnetwork.com and definitely check out those shows as well. Young Pueblo is the author of Let Go of the Past, Connect with the Present, and Expand the Future. Young Pueblo is the pen name actually of Diego Perez, is a mediator and New York Times bestselling author. He's widely known on Instagram and various social media networks through his pen name, as I said, Young Pueblo. He has an audience of over 2,200,000 people online, and his writing focuses on the power of self healing, creating healthy relationships, and the wisdom that comes when we truly work on knowing ourselves. His two books, Inward and Clarity and Connection were both instant bestsellers. Leiter is also a bestseller. Welcome, Diego. Thanks for coming on. Moms don't have time to read books and not to confuse anyone, but Diego Perez, who is pen name is Young Pueblo, is here joining us today. So very excited to have you here. Thank you for having me, Zoebe. I'm excited to be speaking to you today. Congratulations on all the success of lighter, your most recent best selling book. So exciting. Before we talk about that book, can you just tell listeners about you and your, like, rapid trajectory, how you've become such a sensation, and how you've tapped into this sort of font of wisdom that you share with everybody?

[4:00]Yung Pueblo: Sure. So the story really starts with me immigrating from Ecuador with my family. And I was born in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and we grew up in Boston. So we got here when I was about four years old. And it was a really, it was a big time of struggle where, we were just suffering through poverty. And during that time, I saw how much it was impacting my parents. I was not really aware of how much it was impacting me, but I developed these tendencies of sadness, of anxiety, of developing the scarcity mindset and all these sort of like emotional issues and tension that I had no way to process. And as I got older, what I ended up doing was just partying as much as possible, doing a bunch of different drugs. And that led to a pretty big rock bottom moment in the summer of twenty eleven, where I almost lost my life due to just using way too many drugs. And so I realized that in that moment my mind was incredibly heavy and I had to find a way to make it lighter. So my first solution was I need to start being honest with myself. And that helped build my mental strength. And eventually that led me to meditation about a year later. And I've been practicing Vipassana meditation in the Sri Lanka tradition now for about ten years. And really, think that clarity that I've developed about myself and about what I'm seeing around me, it really emerges from meditating regularly.

[5:22]Zibby Owens: Can you share more about your rock bottom moment?

[5:26]Yung Pueblo: Sure. So it was a moment where, you know, it was just, I think it was about a year after I graduated from college, and I was just totally lost. You know, like I still was trying to basically run away from myself as fast as possible. I knew that, I just didn't like feeling any tension inside of me. So whenever any sort of sorrow would come up, any anxiety, what I would do is quickly roll up a joint or drink alcohol, go to another party, just surround myself with people so that I could avoid myself. I realized that that craving to avoid myself was coming from me not wanting to face the truth that there was something wrong. You know, there was something wrong inside of me and that I needed a lot of healing.

[6:10]Zibby Owens: When you started meditation, was that easy or hard? I've tried meditating, and I cannot do it. So how you're doing it for ten years straight and becoming a total master.

[6:24]Yung Pueblo: What was it like at the beginning versus now? So the first silent ten day course was incredibly, incredibly difficult. It felt like just the hardest thing I had ever done, even to the point where I barely made it. You know, like I barely made it through those silent ten days. And I was thinking about leaving on day six, on day seven. And once it was over, when I got through it, I realized afterwards that I felt better. Like I felt significantly better. And my mind felt lighter. I felt like I could kind of see more options in my mind than before whenever something troubling would happen. And I felt much more connected to my emotions in a healthy way. And I knew, I was like, Woah, this thing has changed me. And even though it felt really difficult and really hard, I need to go back. So I would go back periodically every, I think like every like three to four or five months and just put a lot of time into it. And, I really don't think of myself as a master. Think of myself as a student because, meditation's hard and it's hard for people who even have been doing it for decades. But we keep going back because the results are great. And then tell me how that turned into your writing career. So before I wanted to you know, before I started meditating, I thought I was gonna be an investment banker. I you know, because of my experiences in poverty, I knew that I needed to help myself and my family out. And my thought was, okay, let me go into finance. But I realized that these were aspirations, these aspirations weren't on my own. They were much more conditional and much more given to me by society. And when I started that deep healing work through meditating, I realized that there was this creativity that started bubbling up, and I was surprised by it. And I think it was after the third silent ten day course that I did that I really felt this motivation to start writing. And it felt clear. It was like, okay, you know you're not totally wise, you know you're not fully healed, you know you have a long way to go, but start sharing the fact that healing is even possible. Because that was the big shocker to me was like that the mind was malleable. Like, that that was a surprise, you know, to be able to experience that firsthand.

[8:30]Zibby Owens: Wow. Well, this is not exactly an advertisement for a career in in banking. This is like the the the road less traveled seems pretty good right about now. Yeah. Yeah. The wisdom that you've gotten and that you can post on your massively successful Instagram and in your books and in the snippets of stories and these one liners or paragraphs that really, like, just hit home. Talk to me about that. And which of the things that you've yourself written do you kind of refer back to and find the most helpful, like on a bad day or a sad moment? Or are there do you have your own stuff sort of taped up places?

[9:12]Yung Pueblo: Like, how does it help you and help others? I think one of the pieces that sticks with me the most is the this, like, simple definition of love that came out. I think I wrote it in, like, 2017. And I remember sitting I was living in New York City at the time, and I was sitting in front of the New York Public Library, like right there on like 43rd, like in the middle of everything. I wrote, Love is not, I will give this to you if you do this for me. Love is, I will give this to you so that you can shine. And that selfless quality of love, I felt like it was something that I was really learning at the time. Because I think a lot of the sorrow that I had experienced before, it made me really self centered. And I was trying to balance that out. I was trying to be giving to others while also not exhausting myself or falling into people pleasing, but really trying to develop a balance so that I could treat myself and other people well at the same time. I think that one is sort of just like, I always think about it and I'm always trying to apply it in life. But lately, I've been enjoying writing longer essays. I've started you know, I've released my new book later, and that's in a non fiction format that includes a lot of my personal story, which is different from my first two books, which was a lot of short poetry and prose. That was fantastic, and I love that. But, nonfiction feels like a new home. I'm glad you segued us into lighter, which some of the things you were just saying, of course, are in the book and your experiences and setting the stage for what happened. Why did you decide to go to nonfiction,

[10:38]Zibby Owens: and how did you feel sharing some of the some of the things that you put in the story?

[10:44]Yung Pueblo: Well, I I did not like it. I knew I wanted to write a nonfiction book, I think, from the beginning, from when I really started writing about healing and about my own experiences in it. But I would write about my experiences not from first person. Like, would talk about them in a space where it was much more universal. I'd talk about letting go, talk about personal development, talk about love and relationships, but I wouldn't include my own stories in it. And when I started putting together this non fiction book, my editor, told me, he was like, you know, we need more of you in this book. And I enjoyed, you know, cause I use this pen name, Young Pueblo, and my real name is Diego Perez, but I had started to really enjoying being in the shadows, you know, quietly sitting behind the pen name Young Pueblo and living a private life while all of this, you know, like all this, you know, more more followers are coming, more books are being sold, and happily just being in the background. But I realized that for this type of book, for lighter, like it wouldn't make sense where these, you know, where does all this stuff about relationships come from? It comes from the ups and downs of, you know, the relationship I've been having with my wife for the past fifteen years. And it comes, you know, from, you know, almost passing away when I was 23. And including all of that, I think it definitely helps the book make more sense. Like, you know, this is from real lived experiences. Did you consider using your actual name? I did for a while, but I think the name stuck because, you know, young Pueblo just it just means young people, and I like putting everything that I write within this idea that humanity is maturing. Cause I feel like when I first started meditating, I was like, woah, I am like woefully immature. Like I'm terribly immature. But then I started thinking back to the world and to history. Cause I like to study a lot of history as well. And I'm like, wow, humanity itself is super immature. You know, like, think about the things that we try to teach kids as soon as they enter school or they're like three, four, five years old. And it's basic things like clean up after yourself, share with each other, don't hit each other, tell the truth, be kind to one another. And we may be able to do these things as individuals, but we don't know how to do them collectively yet. And to me, that's a big sign that humanity has not mastered the fundamentals yet. Today's episode is sponsored by Quince.

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[14:50]Yung Pueblo: So how can we do that? Well, we need to develop our self love. I think that's one thing that hit me was that self love is this great balancer, and it's something that you use to not only heal yourself, but when your self love really starts developing, it opens the door to unconditional love for all people. It's not going be perfect unconditional love, but it starts opening that door because that compassion that you have for yourself, you start seeing that, Oh, the way that I feel sorrow, other people feel sorrow as well. The way that I have felt loss, other people feel loss as well. And that helps you slow down, not be as reactive, and have more patience with people when they're either saying something dumb or doing things that are unkind. One thing that I've found is just that as your self love increases, you're gonna be less and less interested in harming yourself or other people. I think that's what's missing.

[15:44]Zibby Owens: True. Do you think it's possible? Like, you have hope that our society can really change on

[15:50]Yung Pueblo: a major level? Sometimes it feels pretty dire. Yes. It does definitely feel dire. But I've been learning to think more in bigger macro scales when I think back. Like, I'm happy that I was born now. Like, I'm really grateful that I was born in 1987, and I'm super happy I wasn't born in, like, 1930, you know, or that I wasn't born in 1840. Like, these are rough times. Like, can you imagine being born back then? I'd much rather be born now. So I do see a line of progress that's happening. And hopefully we can add to that because now not only do people wanna change the world for better and make it more humanized, but we are also, we have the ability to heal ourselves as individuals, and that's gonna add to that greatly.

[16:32]Zibby Owens: Alright. I'll cling to that. And what has your experience been like now with everyone? You you had a hard time doing it, but then you put it out there. Now what? How do you feel that you sort of worked through it and shared and have gotten obviously a wonderful reception of it? Like, how does that make you feel, and does that inspire you to do so much more? I know you said this is your home now, but Mhmm. Tell me about that. Honestly, it feels really freeing. I think it was a great challenge to be vulnerable like that and to add so much of myself into the book. But now what I feel, I feel like I sort of like fell in love with writing again. So it was a little while where I was a little bit tired of it, but I realized that I was tired of feeling

[17:12]Yung Pueblo: stuck within a particular format. Like I was tired of just writing poems, of just writing short prose pieces. And when I started writing non fiction, was like, oh, the universe has opened up. Like I can, you know, I can say so much more. And I look forward to, you know, I actually think that right focusing on lighter for the past two years, has given me a new love for poetry and for prose. So I'm excited to do a bit of both and to just let all of this kind of emerge organically.

[17:42]Zibby Owens: So I know you give all this advice in the book as well, but for someone who is struggling with sort of self acceptance and knowing it's important to get to this place of self love, but wanting to heal and not necessarily knowing how to do it, what then?

[17:58]Yung Pueblo: I think we're we need to be able to see first how fortunate we are to live in this time period, because we live in this sort of hyper globalized world where we have access to all of these Eastern modalities, things that have been developed for thousands of years that are now available in any city or through the internet, similarly with the Western world, right? What the Western world has done with psychology, with psychotherapy. These are incredible advancements that are now worldly, they're available around the world. Similar with different indigenous practices, there are tons of things out there now. So there's no lack of healing modalities. So what our job is, is to figure out how much time do we have, you know, what is it that I'm struggling with? Is it anxiety? Is it, you know, sadness? Like what's happening inside of me? Then trying different things to see what really connects with us and what actually provides us results. So, you know, for me, meditation is fantastic. It's done wonders. But, you know, meditation is not necessarily the best thing for every single person. Like it may work for tons and tons of people, but for someone else, you know, it may be a form of therapy. You know, and there's so many different forms of therapy. So I think going out there and finding something that meets you where you're at and something that is challenging but not overwhelming so that you find that sweet spot where, yes, it's hard, but it's helping me grow instead of being so difficult that I don't want to continue. So I think that's really our challenge is finding our sweet spot and finding that tool and then keeping you know, keep going. So question on Instagram because I spend a lot of my time my time on Instagram.

[19:39]Zibby Owens: With so many followers, how do you manage it? Do you ever check your own DMs? Are you on it a lot? You never go on. No. No. I'm on. But

[19:47]Yung Pueblo: I've learned that I need to be really careful with my own mental health on Instagram. One thing I've learned as a writer, and I'm sure people come across this in all creative fields, right, is that some people are going to love your work and some people are not going to love it, right? And that's totally fine. It's almost like flipping through the TV where there are some shows that you like and others, you know, they're not as interested in. But then there are some people who, because of whatever sort of psychological issues they've had in the past or traumas they've gone through there, you know, they don't just not like it, but then they like really hate it. There's like this, you know, those trolling qualities or whatnot come out. So what I realized is that I'm much better off just not reading the DMs and not reading the comments and just trying to build these boundaries so that I can just focus on writing. And if you like it, fantastic. And if it serves you well, great. If it's not for you, that's also fantastic. Totally fine. You know? Because that's that's to be expected. Every art is not for everyone.

[20:46]Zibby Owens: Mhmm. Okay. I mean, I feel like at least Instagram usually is a little nicer than Twitter. So I can't I can't even, like, deal with Twitter. That's my that's my personal boundary wall myself. Twitter is like the Wild West. It's really true. Yeah. Yeah. I'm like, I don't even know what to do with this. When you're not meditating and writing and inspiring everybody, what do you do to, like, kill when you have a free minute or two? Or what do you what are your side

[21:13]Yung Pueblo: loves, interests, you know, all of that? Yeah. When I'm not writing and I'm not meditating, I put a lot of times into this company that myself and a few other friends created called Wisdom Ventures. And Wisdom Ventures is basically a venture capital fund that we're focusing on supporting and developing companies that are trying to scale compassion. So companies that are literally developing their products with the well-being of the user in mind. Because there, I think this past decade, there have been a lot of advancements in the tech world, but there's also been massive amounts of harm where we're just like increasing loneliness, increasing depression. So our idea is to try to support companies that are investment companies that want to create great products, but at the same time, there's no shady business with, like, trying to make you more addicted and all of that. So I would think that compassion itself can actually be good business. And only in the tech space or any space? Primarily in the tech space right now, but we're really looking at you know, because our inspiration comes from the clothing industry, right? So clothing industry, they saw how many ills there were, from the way that things were produced, from the way that people were paid, sweatshop labor, all of these things, fast fashion. But what we're seeing is that people who are consuming these things, they feel better about buying these things. If it's clear that it's as sustainable as possible, that people are treated well while they're making it, that it's resourced well. So trying to bring that energy into the tech world and really, like, the world at large feels really important. I feel like that's what I do is try to do everything, like, to help the readers and help the authors. And we're all, like, working so hard, but it's, like, so mission driven and happy. And people, like, really love to jump on board with that because it feels good. That's great. Yeah. Yeah. But

[22:59]Zibby Owens: that's okay. You don't have to invest. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm good. I'm all good. And are you reading anything good? What kind of things do you like to read? Oh my goodness. I'm so glad you asked. I've been in the middle of, like, doing a lot of work, but I've been,

[23:12]Yung Pueblo: slacking off reading Babbel by R. F. Kuang. Have you read that? That's I have not. Oh my goodness. It's like I'm 60% through, and now I need to intentionally slow down because this world is gonna it's because it's almost over, you know? But I'm so wrapped up in this world that R. F. Kuang created that. It's just amazing. I'm so, so impressed by the lyrical quality of her writing, how beautiful the actual writing is, and the world building. It's just phenomenal.

[23:39]Zibby Owens: Oh my gosh. Okay. Well, that was a great recommendation. I'll go explore. Yeah. Wonderful. Any advice for aspiring authors?

[23:47]Yung Pueblo: If you really wanna take writing seriously, I think the number one thing is consistency, continuity. Like, you wanna keep going. Because one thing I have found over and over is that I started taking writing seriously in 2014. And I had come across a number of writers that were sort of emerging on Instagram that, you know, they kept going for a while and then they would just stop. You know, they would stop for whatever reason. And they were some talented people, like really talented people. So I think one of the reasons that I've been successful is because I just kept going. Like I just kept going, kept writing, kept putting out new things, and eventually people came. So I feel like that's one of the most important qualities you you can develop is just don't stop. Very true. Amazing. Well, good thing you didn't stop. Good thing you're not a banker.

[24:39]Zibby Owens: All these things are very great for the world large, and it was lovely to chat with you. I just wanted to close. There's one of your quotes that I just love, and it's, I cannot make you happy, but I can commit to support you in the creation of your own happiness. We love that. That's such a good thing for, like, my kids and all that. I feel like I try so hard to make them happy. You know? But I ultimately, I can't. No. Anyway, I just I needed that. So every I'm sure everybody picked something different, but that was mine.

[25:08]Yung Pueblo: Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Alright. Thanks a lot. Take care. Bye bye.

[25:14]Zibby Owens: Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens and at moms don't have time to read books. Also sign up for my newsletter at zibbyowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the sound editing, and thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.