So, Raylis, tell me about your vision.
Hey, so I am a communication coach
for parents of preteens.
And my vision is everything I do
has to deal with communication between the generations
because we are the stories we tell ourselves.
And just like stories and cultures of old,
we gain our understanding of who we are,
of our virtues and values by what's passed down
of how other people overcame.
What I envision considering AI and technology
and capturing stories will be easier
is in the developing world,
I'm a third culture kid,
my mother's from the Philippines,
my dad's from the Bahamas,
and they grew up in meager means, like humble beginnings.
I want to take stories.
Sorry, I started with the question of
how might I deal with the mental health issues
that are happening in the English speaking world,
but then this is a human thing.
I want to take the stories of the parents
and capture them for the kids
and actually take the stories of the kids.
They put in what their challenges are,
their virtues and their values.
AI will help them formulate something
of how they might overcome.
And asynchronously, the parent will also be able to check in
and make a comment on it.
And it's story bridging in a sense.
And my vision is to do this at scale with an application
because that's what technology does.
It amplifies how quickly we're able to
create the story inside the kid
from a young age in their formative age
and their formative years.
I've yet to put a number on it,
but my vision is bringing that application
to have scale of telling wholesome stories
so that the kid can know their identity at an early age
from a source, a trusted source, such as their parent.
And if they stay with the story long enough,
it will change over time and they can reflect back on it
to understand who their character was
and the change over time.
And ideally, they'll be able to pass those stories
onto their kids.
So that's what my vision is.
Thank you for showing that.
You mentioned we are the stories we tell ourselves.
What do you mean by that?
The first language we learn is storytelling.
And really storytelling when you boil it down
is change happens and we give it meaning.
My background is an English teacher.
I taught English language arts.
I did also study communication.
And I believe life is continually asking us, who are you?
We're at peace when we understand I am, right?
They used to say in the ancient times,
know thyself and you'll understand
the secrets of gods and men.
The way we know ourselves is we see our change happen
and then we give meaning to it.
That's what a story is.
We are a character going through life,
facing challenges and hardships.
We overcome some and then we learn more about who we are
as we go through this resistance.
And that's what a story is.
It's conflict, then resolution, again, tension,
easing, tension, easing, tension, easing.
So yeah, we are the stories we tell ourselves.
We are narrative beings, narrative theory.
Is that your story?
What is your story?
Would you tell yourself?
I would even go so on to say that is your story as well.
When I say that, all of us are telling us a story
of the past and a story of the future.
We can only take action in the present.
And we can't change our story of the past.
We can change our perspective of it.
And that will help us take action in the present.
And as we're able to create more empowering stories
of the past and more empowering stories
of the future to reach for, we get to take empowered action
in the present.
Thank you for sharing that.
My next question for you is where did this vision
of bridging gaps come from?
Okay, so yeah, that's, so there's the vision.
The mission is the present current day thing.
And then there's the origin.
It's a little bit of my origin
and it's a little bit of my mission.
A little bit of my origin, as I've mentioned before,
is my mother and father, right?
Them staring.
I say it's one of the three great gifts my father gave me.
He gave me life, he gave me my name,
and he gave me his story.
This book behind me, it's called the Goodbye Book.
Can't really see it.
And it was given to me by fifth graders and sixth graders
when they were graduating.
And I used to share storytelling and writing with them.
And when I was leaving, they presented this book
while I was on the stage.
And I was surrounded by a bunch of fifth graders.
And Penny, she said, turn to the last page,
turn to the last page.
And you can't really see it, but the last page it says,
you of all people deserve a happy ending.
I thought about that.
And I thought, do I?
And it wasn't doubt, it was just critical thinking,
curiosity, like do I?
And I said, yeah, and how do you do that?
And a still small voice said, you write it.
I'm a writer.
And I got choked up, and then Penny said, are you crying?
To which all these fifth graders started hugging me.
So the whole idea is I'm bringing these communication
techniques to parents so that they can connect
with their preteens.
I wanna stay in the game long enough
so that these fifth graders can teach these same principles
to their kids, because the principles stay the same.
This is all human development, it's still the same.
That helps form some of my vision
of what I have for the future, yeah.
Thank you for sharing that.
You said a still small voice said it.
That statement, still small voice,
I've heard only a few places.
Why do you say still small voice?
Where did that come from for you?
Sure, I've always had a sincere relationship
with the divine in my prayer life growing up.
I'm named after Marcus Aurelius,
and I am a practicing stoic,
but one thing is to recognize greater power,
higher forces, and so on.
Even when I was shifting my religion
or my understanding of what the divine was,
there was always that connection of,
yeah, there's something greater than me sustaining me,
asking me to contribute back to something greater than me.
And it doesn't have to yell.
It doesn't have to hit you over the head.
It's a voice that anywhere and everywhere,
you can just pause and turn inward and hear it.
That's why it's a small voice.
It's a still voice.
Yeah, that's what it is for me.
Thank you for sharing that.
Don't know much about me because I haven't told you.
I'm born and raised in India,
and I moved to United States, I think, when I was 18.
My parents still live back there.
I do have family here.
My wife is here now,
and my sister lives down the street with her family.
And I'm also converted Christian
from Hinduism to Christianity.
So I get what you were trying to say there,
and what you said is very profound,
the fact that you said still small voice
and not vision, dream, something straight out of heaven.
That's the voice of the Lord.
Thank you for sharing that.
Yeah, I really do.
Yeah, you had something you wanna add?
No, no, I was saying thank you for sharing.
What would you say earlier is your vibe, what you do?
Other people matter.
It's that simple.
Again, everything that I do,
I believe is what human development is.
In human development, we're dependent,
then we reach independence.
After independence, it's interdependence.
That's how a cell grows.
There's mitosis, it splits apart,
but then it works towards the whole.
And that's why community matters.
That's how our brain is formed.
That's how life and growth happens.
Eventually we get to the point where I'm specialized,
but I'm specialized in the service of other people.
And then there's the phrase, a community is made great,
a nation is made great by men who plant trees
for the shade they will never see.
My why is because other people have done this for me
before I was here.
And this is my part to play in humanity.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions
as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is gonna get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show.
And thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision
and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.