Neil Pasricha (born September 17, 1979) is a Canadian author, entrepreneur, podcaster, and public speaker characterized by his advocacy of positivity and simple pleasures. He is best known for his The Book of Awesome series, and "The Happiness Equation" which are international bestsellers. He is also an established speaker and his TEDx talk, "The 3 A's of Awesome", is ranked as the ninth most inspiring TEDx talk with over 3 million views to date. In total, he has sold over 1 million books. The book and TED talk are based on Pasricha's blog, 1000 Awesome Things. The blog has won three Webby Awards and ranked in PC Magazines list of top blogs and websites in 2009 and 2010.
Pasricha is frequently sought out by media outlets as an expert on the topics of positivity and leadership.
Pasricha is also a recipient for the 2018 Canada's 40 under 40 award.
Early life
Pasricha was born in Oshawa, Ontario to a Hindu family. His mother is from Nairobi, Kenya; his father is from Amritsar, India, and he has one sister. Pasricha says much of his wonder for the world comes from his immigrant parents and their perspective on seeing everything for the first time in Canada. In his TED Talk he explains how his father would 'stare in wonder at the little stickers on all the fruits and vegetables.'
Pasricha was educated at Queen's University and Harvard University.
Career
Pasricha graduated with a Bachelor of Commerce at Queen's University in 2002. While there, he wrote for campus humor newspaper Golden Words which then took him to New York City to work for a humor syndicate with former Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons writers. He says "It was a cool rush but it became draining very quickly. I realized this could never be my full time thing." Pasricha also holds an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws- Faculty of Education from the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT).
Pasricha returned to Toronto and worked in Marketing for Procter & Gamble before leaving to run a Quiznos Sub franchise and then selling his franchise to move to Boston to attend Harvard Business School. Upon graduating, Pasricha returned to Toronto to run Leadership Development at Walmart Canada. Pasricha left Walmart in 2016 to devote more time to the Institute for Global Happiness, an organization he founded in November 2015 to improve happiness in the workplace.
Author
Blog
Pasricha began writing a daily blog called 1000 Awesome Things on June 20, 2008. The site was billed as 'a time-ticking countdown of 1000 awesome things.'
He said at the time of starting the site "if you flipped open the newspaper it was filled with the same stuff every day. Polar ice caps were melting, there were pirates storming the seas, the economy was on the verge of collapse, and there were wars going on all over the world." As a result, he created a website discussing "popping bubble wrap, snow days, and the smell of a bakery." In later interviews, and through a series on his blog, Pasricha shared that his personal divorce and a close friend's suicide are what prompted him to begin looking for positive things in life.
In July, 2008, the popular links site Fark.com linked to post #980 Old, dangerous playground equipment which gave the blog new readership and got attention from Wired and CNN.com.
In 2009, Pasricha was approached by literary agents after his blog hit 10 million hits and won the Webby Award for "Best Blog" and signed with Erin Malone from WME who also represents Christian Lander, author of Stuff White People Like, and Rainn Wilson, star of The Office and author of SoulPancake.
Pasricha continued publishing one awesome thing a day until #1 Anything you want it to be was posted on April 19, 2012.
Books
The Book of Awesome
Published in 2010 by Amy Einhorn Books, a division of Penguin Publishing.
The Book of Awesome is a #1 international bestseller, and a New York Times bestseller.
Pasricha wrote The Book of Awesome while attempting to get over his divorce and close friend's suicide. His frustration with the 'gloom and doom' in the news caused him to expand on simple pleasures of life through new written essays complementing existing material from his blog.