The Power of Community

Since 2001, Mental Health Awareness Week has been opening up important conversations, reducing stigma, and encouraging people to seek support when they need it. The theme for this year is “community”, as a sense of belonging and connection can make a real difference to our wellbeing.

But not everyone feels part of a community, and not all communities are equally resourced or supported. So this year is also a call to look at what helps people feel included and how we can play our part.

With that in mind, I spoke to Krish Patel of Tales to Inspire.

1.      So I know we've met before, but my first question is to ask you to tell me a little bit more about yourself and also Tales to Inspire.

I'm Krish Patel. I'm the founder of Tales to Inspire, a not-for-profit organisation that supports people from underrepresented communities. We showcase people's stories of lived experience from across societal challenges. We train those individuals and give them the opportunity to create impact whilst getting paid in places where we live, where we learn and where we work.

I'm from Bolton. I’m born and raised here and football was kind of my dream growing up. I always wanted to play football. I ended up becoming a professional football player and then moving over to the US to play football (or soccer) for six years.

And that's where I was very different to the Krish I am today in terms of my values. I was very materialistic and essentially there were a few turning points in my time whilst in America that kind of changed the trajectory of my life.

2. Wow. I'm a big football fan, so I feel like we could go off on a whole different tangent of football. What were the turning points?

Football is a ruthless sport to be part of. It's really cutthroat. For example, if you're in a professional team, you've usually got four or five trialists who are trying to essentially take your place on a daily basis. It's essentially this pressure that you're never good enough, you're always striving for better in this, but also that you can't show weakness. And it's a place where if you show weakness, you kind of create vulnerability that could give someone else an opportunity. So it was a really difficult time. When I got released from my professional contracts in England, that's when I was like,

“What am I going to do? I've dropped out of school when I was 16 and I’m now 20 years old? I’ve put all my eggs in one basket.”

That's when I headed out to America and had an alternative route that I'd never ever thought about. Playing football but getting an education at the same time. It created a lot of challenges, but amazing life experiences.

3.      And when was it that the idea of Tales to Inspire came to you?

Tales to Inspire came to me in 2019.  I am an ideas person. Through my degree and when I played football in America everything started to change and this entrepreneurial spirit started to grow. I was getting ideas all the time and I was like this is special. I created a Google drive of probably about 200 ideas and really thought through these different ideas. They were really wide-ranging, from an app that cured hangovers to technical and technological advances. I claim that I came up with AirPods before AirPods because I've got the date in my calendar or in my drive, which was 2012 and essentially the idea “Wouldn't it be amazing if there were some things you could put in your ears that didn't get caught every time you went running.”

Tales to Inspire came about when I'd moved back to England. I’d just built a schoolhouse in Uganda to support children over there and I’d done some incredible challenges to support people.  And so Tales to Inspire came about in 2019 when I realised that my role models had always been celebrities, it had always been people outside of my immediate community and I thought maybe there's a way that I can support those people.

And there was a big problem, which I still see today, in that our challenges are siloed. You've got mental health, you've got a refugee, you've got a homeless person, you've got someone struggling with finances, you've got someone struggling with their mental well-being, someone struggling with their physical well-being, someone who feels disconnected or isolated. They're all completely connected. And I was like, “How do we connect and build bridges across society and across challenges that represent people?”. And the only way I could think of was to share the stories of real people. I started a blog - Tales to Inspire - on 4 November 2019.  And that kind of grew into five years later, still being here doing what we're doing.

1. Okay. And I’m going to take one of my questions out of order because you said there that your role models used to be celebrities. Who are your role models now then?

It's our ambassadors. The people I share the stories of, we call them ambassadors. There's 164 people stories we've shared in the five years.

And we've never made any money from a podcast or sharing the stories now on our blog. No money comes from that. People have asked me, business coaches have asked me,” Why are you doing that?”. And I'm like, because essentially, I get an hour to build trust, friendship, connection, with a true role model. The majority are now friends, which is amazing - Andy Hall's one of them. There's so many of these incredible people, who are my role models, who are essentially our ambassadors, that I have at the end of a phone or go for a coffee with. There's never a week when I don’t see one of them – I’ve just come from the Join the Dots event this morning, where I've seen four or five of my ambassadors. Every day I'm speaking to my role models and connecting with them, which is special.

And the difference as well is the way that I used to look at role models, which was very much I looked up to them as a hierarchy, like they were better than me. But my role models now, we're completely together, so it's like it's a mutual benefit. There's a true reality to that.

1. And you've mentioned there a couple of things about connection, about friendship. I think that brings me on to my next question quite nicely. The theme for this year's Mental Health Awareness Week is community, so what does community mean to you?

   
   

Community is everything. Essentially, humans are not meant to be isolated. And there’s a big difference between being lonely and being alone. Being alone is okay. It can be really empowering. You can have that space. I really need my alone time.

Being lonely is not okay. Being lonely is the isolation. It feels like you've got no one in the world, no one you can trust; true community for me is having at least one person you can trust in your immediate environment.

The amount of people that I’ve spoken to who are from our homeless community or from challenging communities and really struggling. The thing that they didn't have was one person they could trust during their childhood or even now. Things like that is true community. The more people who you can trust and rely upon the better.

6. Without putting you on the spot, if you think about your communities which of your communities are really important to you?

There's probably three communities that are really important to me. Family is really important, which is interesting, because I would say family is probably one of the most difficult because family is often not chosen. I love my family - my family's amazing - but our values don’t always align on certain topics, if you will.

Family is big. And then friendships is huge for me.  Life is about friendships and that is for me community.

And then there's a third one for me. The third community is the unknown. I have this challenge to myself to meet one new person a day - a person who's an unknown person. Not a networking thing - just to speak and have a conversation with someone I don't know. For example, today whilst walking back from the train station, I was speaking to someone and just genuinely having a conversation and you start to learn about someone else's life that’s very different to yours. And it just gives you an appreciation of the fact that not everything's the same as you.

My three communities are friends, family and finally the unknown.

And within my friends as well, I do practice Nichiren Buddhism, so within my friends, I very much have my friends who practise Buddhism.

I love that about making it your mission to talk to one new person or meet one new person every day.

It expands my horizons, gives me new perspectives.

1. And you mentioned there, uncertainty can also be a challenge. Going back to your work, what would you say are some of the challenges with your work?

   
   

As a founder, some of the challenges with my work are I'm essentially an accidental CEO.

We may have talked about this in the past, but essentially I never planned or studied to run a company. I have such a determination to make a difference in this world in which we live because I see so many gaps that have easy solutions that are human-based. Easy on one front, but definitely not on the other. That’s my driver - to make a difference.

My driver is not to do the social media or the administration or to try and gain funding or any of this kind of stuff that's not my driver. So the number one challenge is that I’ve really had to fly it myself more than anything, to be able to get Tales to Inspire five years down the line. Because a lot of the things that I do in my job role isn't me essentially. This is me. This is what I love doing. I love being creative. I love connecting to people.

And so that's one challenge, the other one is definitely clarity. I started Tales to Inspire without a product, I started a company without anything to sell. And that lasted over a year. Essentially, I was told you need to niche, you need to have a product, and I was “let's just go with it and the product will develop itself.” The product has developed itself, but I've said yes to everything which has kind of blurred who we are and what we are and the last year has essentially been refining that back to this is who we are now. Clarity and vision have been difficult.

It's been lonely - really, really lonely because no one loves the organisation you set up as much as you and no one sees that vision as much as you. So trying to get that buy-in has been really, really challenging and lonely.

1. So you talked about the challenges and you did start to talk about some of the things you love but just expand on that, what is it that you love about your work?

   
   

I love the fact that there's so much to what we've built.

Within Tales to Inspire, there's probably six or seven separate businesses that you could just have.

A podcast, a blog - there's two straight away. A speaking agent - people get us for speakers and keynote talks. We put people's stories into books so that's another one there. We do documentary films or we put people in touch. We support culture change within organisations and put programs in.  There's all these different aspects. Now part of me is like that is so hard and there's too much to it, but also part of me is like, I love working on one and then working on another and working on another …. Last week we were working with students in high schools and today I've been working with directors and CEOs.  So working with such diverse people, I love that. I really love that.

I also love connecting with people, getting to speak to some of the leading - I call them experts by experience - leading people within our community who are change makers standing up in our society. And I'll be their advocate. I'll be there, right beside them, showcasing their stories however I can.  I absolutely love that. I love how creative it allows me to be.

From a personal point of view, I love making ideas into reality. I'm a “yes and" person, not a “no but” person. Like “yes and how are we going to do it” or “yes and this” as opposed to “no, but we can't do that.” Let's be “yes and” people and let's make a way to try and figure out how that works. The work we've done all over the UK is amazing. I've done so many diverse things which I love.

And the other thing that I love is the fact that there's a lot of unknowns. So I don't know where this is going to go, but I know that we are supporting individuals with the aim of supporting systemic change. Systems are broken - education, healthcare, politics - you can literally go through every system that you look at within the UK and you think they could all be better. And the one thing that's missing from a lot of those is - why aren't these systems taking into account the end user that they're supposed to be supporting?  How do we bridge that gap? And I sit in that connector role there. I'm the person that kind of connects the dots and and joins that up.

There's lots that I love and I feel that the other thing that I love about this is that this is a replicable model. In five years time, I might go to this interview and we might be like “What was he talking about?” or the other thing we might think is  “My God, he was onto something”. Because the challenges that we find in the UK are very similar challenges that we find in India, in Uganda, in South Africa, in the US because it's people-based challenges, it's disconnection within communities, it's people who are different. So we're showcasing people, it's authentic stories we're raising and then we're saying, “Right these are the people who are here - what are we going to do to make positive change for these people?”

There's lots I love. There's much more things that I love than I don't love. It just depends on that perspective and where I'm at on the day.

1. And I think you started talking about my next question quite naturally in terms of what are your goals for the future?

I'm a very ambitious person. I'd much rather have a huge goal and fall just short, as opposed to have a small goal and really easily hit it. My goal is to really make this a global organisation that bridges the gap and creates systemic change through the power of lived experience, through the real lives of people.

We're going to bridge the gap between humans and politicians, and humans and leaders and we're going to bridge that through community members and through building those pathways, so the goal for me is to get this where it needs to be in the UK. Then go do the same in the US. Go and do the same in India, which are our three biggest markets that listen to our podcast, and then branch out across the world.

1. You’ve mentioned about humans and connectedness and just as we're talking, a thought occurred to me. because it's coming up in lots of other conversations  - how do you see AI affecting community, connectedness, interacting with other humans?

   
   

It depends what day of the week you get me!

If we go back in time - industrial revolution, technological revolutions, and all these revolutions we've had, Daisaku Ikeda, one of my mentors within Nichiren Buddhism he says this incredible thing that with great technology and the revolution of technology we created nuclear weapons. We had the best brains you could ever imagine, but look what we created with that. So until humans change, no matter what the technology is, no matter how great the medicine is, no matter what we use, things will not change for the better. AI can be the best thing we've ever had - it could also be the next nuclear weapon. The thing that relies upon is the humans behind it.

One thing that I definitely do fear in the future is that humans could become more bone idle and lazy. It's very similar to George Orwell's 1984, where basically just you've got everyone, you've got the thought police looking at everything, but essentially you are on your sofa, you're on your bed, you don't have to move all day. You've got the food that comes to your door, you've got your work that you're doing or you don't even need to work anymore - everything's done from one place.

Now, there is a difference in that the Western world is very different to the rest of the world. The gap between wealth and poor is getting greater and greater. And the gap between the West and essentially the rest is really getting greater.  So the technology we're seeing here, if I go to Uganda, it's still terrible to get internet, never mind anything else. Or if I'm in South Africa, it's really difficult to get certain technologies in certain areas.  The gap is just getting huge.

But it comes down to, once again, how do we use AI for the best for humanity and the wider world? And it comes down to people.

1. I think you're right - AI can be a power for good but it could be a power for evil. So now thinking about Mental Health Awareness Week and your own self-care. You're obviously very busy with everything that you do, so how do you make sure that you look after yourself and balance work and life?

   
   

Oh, it's very difficult. It's always a challenge.

From my perspective, I know when I'm present I am unbelievable and I feel great. If I'm not present, if I'm thinking about other things or if I’m struggling I know that I need to get myself into a present state of mind.

With my Buddhist practice, I chant every morning and every evening. It’s a must  - so every morning, every evening, we chant a phrase called Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, which people could say is like a meditation or a prayer. I do that, it's amazing. It's my time.

Then at 6 a.m., I go to the gym. I can't figure out how to get exercise into my day because it's just so hectic. So first thing in the day, 6 a.m. till 7 a.m.  I'm at the gym and then from 7 a.m. I love to read.  I always read and I actually like to write. I write a postcard to a different person every day just to let them know that I'm there and to see how they are. That's something I've started doing in the last two or three months instead of journaling personally for me. I still do that as well, but not as regularly as I'd like.

And then the other side of it, the balance side of it, I don't think I have the balance. Balance for me is very much one end of the spectrum or the other. And then I'm like, well, I’m here, I'm there and then that's the balance. But my life is very much, I try to encompass work as part of my life. Work is not a separate part of my life. Family is not a separate part of my life. Friends are not a separate part of my life. Everything is one and everything comes part of that one as opposed to, you know, breaking it all up.

That's how I do it at this moment. And I do not judge. I try and never judge because I know that I'm only ever hearing certain areas of a story and that includes myself. So if I'm going through a bit of a tough time or I'm feeling really doubtful, the last thing I need for me is to punish myself. Guilt doesn't do any good for anyone.

So being present. Don't be isolated. Having that community that we're talking about and being connected to my purpose.

1. And so my last question then is what advice would you give to your younger self?

   
   

I love that one. The advice for me is to own myself more and to own being me.

I've always, from my past, always, if you go to my childhood, I always wanted to be white like my mum and not like my dad.  I wanted to fit in, I always wanted to look right or to be something else that wasn't me. To be part of a community that I wish I'd had but I couldn't, so then I fitted into these other communities. So if I was to speak to my younger self, I'd be like, just, authentically be you. You know, and really own it.

Krish Patel is the founder of Tales to Inspire, a not-for-profit organisation that shares the stories of real-life people with the aim of encouraging real-life outcomes to inspire change.

Website: https://talestoinspire.com/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krish-patel-2868748b/