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My name is Ali Eslamifar, I'm your host for this show I've been wanting to record this episode episode zero for a very long time as a matter of fact I have three of our episodes already recorded and ready to go live but it came down to the fact that I'm just stuck and it speaks to the fact that how important it is for me to do this show because I'm also struggling with mental health issues there are so many days in the past few weeks that I wanted to sit down and record this episode I even recorded a version of this yesterday on my drive to the gym because I was so tired of pushing this back I was so tired of not being enough and being insecure and having all of my old traumas coming back and telling me that you're not enough but here we go we are doing this foreign [Music] about me as I said my name is Ali born and raised in Iran I love researching people and get to know them I always enjoy having one-on-one conversations but I was always scared of being in a group setup this may relate to the childhood that I had I grew up in a lovely family that are religious and I also like went to a very religious school where I always felt like an outsider I could not understand a lot of the things that was being discussed there and I started like putting all of those into myself and taking all of them personally I went to school for computer engineering back in Iran in the beginning of the program I noticed that actually I have no interest in doing an engineering work I started building my own project working in small startups with friends here and there and notice that what I really love is to know the human being and the whole cognitive science behind it this led to my decision leaving the country in 2013 moved to United States and went to Arizona State University to study design I love the program to be honest and one of the biggest reason is I met this amazing person William Haywood who taught me Way Beyond design and research he taught me to how to live how to find my purpose and how to question myself and that was where I started caring more and more about my mental health I didn't know what that even meant it was scary and during the same time I lost my father which just put another big hit being in a different country losing my Father which I loved a lot but through that process will help me to find myself and he taught me about meditation as he's teaching that to all of his students in Arizona State University after losing my dad I did not have any source of money to pay for the rest of this school I finished the 18 credits all in one semester and graduated in the end of 2014. and moved to San Luis Obispo to start my first tech job in California then very quickly I moved to Silicon Valley worked in startups one after another as a product designer and also product manager in the past few years but during this whole time I really never felt that I'm doing what I'm really meant to do there was always like this thing in me that maybe I translated that as I should have a startup just like so many other people who live in the Bay Area and I did not live my own life that led to me really not being happy with any of the work I was doing [Music]

thank you so about a few months ago right on April 5th 23. I actually quit my job to focus on Mental Health projects and more importantly to focus on my own Mental Health after my experience building a podcast in Farsi which is 10 minute meditation episodes and it's called 10 minute pause I noticed that this is actually something that I love to use more and more as a way and as a channel to communicate my thoughts and ideas when I thought about doing something in mental health it made a lot of sense to just start another podcast but in English language I posted something on LinkedIn right after quitting my job and invited people to have conversations about mental health and surprisingly over 40 people schedule sometime with that calendly link that I had and we talked after those calls I noticed that a lot of people are just like me they are stuck they are working 10 plus hours a day and there is no clear easy solution for them to really analyze what's going on in their mind and after that analysis put that into their lives and solve those problems so that's why I was like more and more motivated to do something here Beyond just a therapy solution and that's not even my expertise and this is how the Ally show was born and the name of the Ally show comes from one of Joseph Campbell's book uh the hero with thousand faces the Ally in Heroes story is a character that shows up in their lives and goes through all those problems with them and make them become the hero they are so I thought that putting this name just means a lot to me not because it's similar to my first name of course but because it is something that I always felt in life that I'm missing and having that Ally sometimes occasionally in my life was really helpful I called some of the names already William Haywood and I'm wondering how we can all be allies to each other so I'm hoping that our guests in this show are allies for you with your problems with your mental health issues I'm also hoping that I can be an ally to you and you can be an ally to me to help me go through my mental health issues forever we are building the Ally show to be the community where people can come together and as a collective Society by sharing similar pains solving these issues together in every episode one of our guests is coming up and telling their story of pain and mental health and after the show they are committed to go on a journey with five of you for a month and keep you accountable to do something for your mental health in our episode 1 Brad Winters which is our first guest he is actually using a one mile run per day and he's going to do that for 30 days with five of you great listeners our guests on the show are Ordinary People but I would say amazing people that I had the chance to get to know them in my life they are sometimes friends that I know from all time back in school friends from work and friend of friend that people suggested that hey you should talk to these guys I hope you're gonna have a fun time hanging out on this show with these folks just like I do and I hope that you get the chance to join one of these campaigns that we're gonna have at the end of each show [Music] this was the quick intro on myself and also the show I hope to see you in every single episode as we follow if you have any questions any comments please leave them here and I would be more than happy to respond to you all I will see you on episode 1 with Brad Winters see you soon 
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