The Person I Had to Leave Behind | The Rick H. Show | Ep. 234

Growth isn't always exciting. Sometimes it means confronting the person you've been, owning your mistakes, and letting go of mindsets that no longer serve you.

In Episode 234 of The Rick H. Show, Rick Hierro takes a deep and honest look at the evolution of his life—reflecting on the old version of himself, the lessons learned through failure, and the difficult process of becoming someone new. From ego and pride to missed opportunities and hard truths, Rick opens up about the growing pains that come with personal transformation.

This episode explores the internal battle between who we were conditioned to be and who we're capable of becoming. It's about recognizing unhealthy patterns, embracing accountability, and understanding that growth often requires leaving parts of yourself behind.

If you've ever looked in the mirror and realized you're not the same person you used to be—or felt caught between the person you've been and the person you're trying to become—this conversation is for you.

Because evolving isn't about becoming perfect.

It's about having the courage to let go of old versions of yourself so you can grow into who you're meant to be

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:56

Welcome to the Riggade Show. Welcome to another episode, episode number two thirty-four. Um, before we begin, I just want to uh take a second to remember my good friend Art. Um he passed away in 2012. It's been so many years, and I still haven't forgotten you, my brother. The reason why I selected your music to be the theme song of the show is because um I wanted you to be a part of this, and I'm pretty sure if you were live, you would be a part of this. Um, so your music still lives on through us, and a cherish every memory we have. Um, and we just we really miss you, and you we wish you were here. So uh RIP to uh my boy R. Miss you and I love you, man. So, welcome to the show, episode 234. Uh, I think this is the third episode of the relaunch of the new format of the show. The first episode was called Reset, the second one was called the No Blueprint. Um, reset was about the explanation of what the pod was going to be moving forward, what to expect when you tune in, what to expect to listen to, um, and sort of like the history of the show and um how we got to where we are right now. Basically, the many different changes, many different co-hosts. The you know, I changed the theme of this show a couple times. And if you're someone who's been with us since day one, thank you. I appreciate the love and the support. You would understand what I'm talking about. If you're someone that's listening for the first time, welcome. Um, this version of the show is gonna be a lot more personal. You know, obviously, the show is called the Rick Aid Show, it's about me. Um, I will have guests on the pod, and I think in a week or so we'll have our first guest on the show. Uh, but for now, these episodes are all there's a theme, there's a title, there's questions, there's stories behind everything. If you take something out of it, great. If you want to share uh a story that, you know, if I say something that touches a nerve or something you can relate to, or you've been through a similar situation, please uh share with us. You can share by either joining on the live or sending me an email. I'm gonna put up the email on the screen uh shortly. It's the R-I-C-K Rick H, the letter H by itself, show at gmail.com. So um you can share with us stories, you can give us uh advice, critiques, everything. You know, engage, engage with the show. So um tonight's episode is a little different. Um, I'm live on that Instagram. Instagram, join us on the YouTube. I'm so sorry. Uh I gotta use my phone right now. Tonight's episode is uh it's a comparison. Uh it's called the person I had to leave behind, right? So it's who I used to be versus the person who I'm becoming or I am. Um, and I thought it would be like a great look into that. Uh so I'm gonna discuss like my old mindset, the ego, the pride, the mistakes I've made. Excuse me, versus the new mindset, growth, discipline, purpose, uh, and who I am now. So this is what the pod has become. It's become a journal for this season, for me to create content, for you to get to know me personally, understand who I am, where I come from, um, and tune in to watch the show. Not just for who's on the show, but for the show itself. So um that's why I've made this transition to this uh iteration of the show where it is now. So let's have a discussion. Now, it's May 29th. Usually this time of year, I'm I'm I'm very reflective and very like thinking and planning and creating, and just in my own head a lot because of uh my birthday is around the corner, it's a couple weeks away, and very much so how people do on New Year's. I I tend to uh on my personal birthday, I tend to reflect on where I am and where I'm going and what goals have I accomplished in the last year, what I haven't accomplished, um, what I need to work on where I am in life. Excuse me. Um and then I figure out what I want to do in the next year, year 42. Um, so usually around this time, I like like it's not really like a pro and con list, it's more of a you know, reflection. And I've been doing this for several years, and I find it works for me. You know, I I feel like everybody should be honest and real with themselves every once in a while, you know, um have those tough conversations, not just with other people, but with yourself as well. You you should reflect. Um, and then by reflecting, you either will be, I don't want to say disappointed, but you either will be like, all right, I need to work on these things, or you will be appreciative of where you are in life. And I think that if you view things from that angle, like I'm appreciative of where I'm I am in life, and and and things that you haven't done, checked off your list yet, I I think you should see those things as small as goals. So the person I used to be, um, I'm gonna be honest, I had zero clue of who I was growing up, right? I knew of I know like you know, family, where I was from, um dislikes, likes, but as in the previous my previous episode with No Blueprint, I didn't know who I was as a person, right? Uh in the beginning of my life, I was very much so a person who just wanted to fit in and be in part of the crowd, and I did several things, you know, growing up. I grew up in Washington Heights. Uh everybody should know that by now. Um I wanted to be liked by everybody. I wanted to be obviously growing up, you want to be liked, you want to be cool, you want to be um unique, you want to be heard, you want to be understood. Uh, but you can't get any of those things if you don't know who you are personally, right? Um, so I would say bits and pieces of who I was as a person came from like the influences that I had around me at the time. Um, so it really wasn't substance, you know. I was just the kid from uptown, loved sports, uh tried to be, I was always like I was a good individual. I got that from the family, but you know, I always tried to be, you know, an alpha leader, uh the guy, the cool guy, and the you know, you know, most of my teenage years, I spent it trying to be something I really wasn't, you know. Um, and I never felt comfortable in my own skin uh as a teenager. Because there was things that I liked that I knew if I said, oh, I like this, I was afraid of the rejection I would get from the outside crowd, right? Um, for example, like big-time WWE wrestling fanatic. Like I loved it. I loved watching it, I loved the story, I love the drama, I love the athleticism. Uh and in high school, it was just it was not something I mentioned, you know, when I was in incarnation, you know, I was a fan of certain shows and stuff that I watched, and I never said, Oh yeah, I'm a fan of this, or oh, I just went with whatever was popular at the time, you know. I was I was very much so just trying to fit in, find my place, find my footing, you know. Um, and it was always like that for me. In high school, I tried to rap. I wanted to be a rapper because the guys on my block, they all rap. They were all super talented, super amazing. Um, I could write, I was very good at writing, and very good with coming up at courses, and very good at like inspiring others and coming up with ideas and concepts for songs and music. Um, but me, be a rapper, like, you know, and I can laugh at this now, but even when I was going to Sewer Park High School, you know, I I was trying to, I grew out my hair to try to get braids. Because I really was like, I really thought I was gonna be like the next big pun. And at the time, big pun was out and it was cool, you know, Latino could rap, they could do, they could be in that, you know, and it wouldn't be frowned upon or wouldn't you wouldn't be looked at as opposed or whatever. I've always loved hip hop, don't get me wrong. But maybe making the music was not my place in the culture, right? Um then me and my best friend Craze, shout out to Craze. We got into like creating groups and creating music with other artists that we thought were super dope, super talented. Um, and again, that's where I excelled. I excelled at you know, song structure, concept ideas, you know, album ideas. I was more of that, and I felt like I fit that role a lot better. Like my creativity was much better for that. Um I had a terrible flow. Like songs there, I release them, I'll have some. Um, I also was not good growing up listening to advice from others, right? One of my passions besides music was basketball. A lot of the guys on the block thought I had some skill set, some talent. They wanted to show me some stuff, they wanted to like practice with me, and I was like, nah, nah, I know what I need to know, you know. Uh I know what I need to do. That was the ego. Like, I don't need nobody to show me. I could do this all on my own. My mom told me a couple of times, like, hey, you know, they're trying to like show you and expand and and and and help you grow. And I was like, yeah, but I could do that on my own. And I did, I used to go to a lot of black tops, I used to play a lot of basketball. I went to different neighborhoods, different areas, and watched the heights, and I absorbed as much as I want, but not someone showing me by me watching others and playing against other players. So the ego, not being comfortable in my own skin, wanting to fit in. Um being afraid to just be myself, right? Was uh a big thing for me because I I I always I cared about others' opinions, right? It's easy to say, and I find myself doing it now, who cares what others think of you, you gotta be 100% with yourself, and it's easy to say that now, but back then I really, really, really cared about what other people's perception and opinion is of me were. Um, and I did things that I wouldn't normally do, and I normally weren't into um just to stay in the crowd and you know be part of the guys or whatever. But as I got older, um and I started analyzing who was around me, right? You know, craze was there, art, rest in peace, art was there, my brother was there, and my cousins, so I stopped trying to impress strangers, and I just started doing things that I liked with family, essentially, and it kind of got me comfortable with me being me, right? If there was one thing I got from my cousin Gene, I want to shout Gene out. Um Gene was never afraid to be himself, he was who he was, he never tried to pretend to be anything else. Um he never tried to fit in the in-crowd. Um, and I've always admired that about him. He was very much comfortable with who he who he is, what he likes, and what he's into. Um and I really out of the core out of all four of us had that, has that, and has always had that. Um, so I just started like being around people that like me for me as I kept getting older. Now, what didn't leave me was the fact that I still felt like I knew more than everybody else, and I would never listen or take somebody else's advice. Like I I I um I very much so not that I felt that I was smarter than everybody, but I felt that like I was in a way figuring things out, and I felt like I didn't need anybody else's anybody's help. But a couple guys in my life changed that perception and that outlook, and finally my wife really owned that for me. And I gotta say, it was Anthony shout out to Anthony, Big Lou and Craze Boogie. Those three guys really showed me different things, you know. Lou opened up my eyes to things that I was blind to that were going on in the world. He also, the philanthropy part in me, a lot of it came from him telling us, yo, instead of doing this, let's do this. You know, we can still have our fun, but we also got to care about our home and our neighborhood. Anthony wanted to show me things outside of the bubble of watch the heights that we lived in, and um, he was very much into film and television, and I always looked up to him like if he was an older brother, and then craze craze is always the one that was never afraid to call me on my bullshit, and and my my brother too, Benny. So those three guys are very instrumental in again, me figuring out who I was, or you know, what my moral compass, where was it, you know, what did I think of the world, and and me myself. Um, but again, there was still an ego. There was still, let me see, what was it again that I have here? I did a very nice graphic for this. Um, there was still an ego, there was still pride, and there was still a ton of mistakes to make uh moving forward. So you can't help anybody that's not willing to help themselves. And if you are blocking off advice and are I basically was getting the way of myself. Um, I didn't know where I wanted to go or what I wanted to do with my life for most of my teenage years. I had a bunch of oddball jobs. I worked in McDonald's, I worked in Costco, I worked in what else? Uh I went down to Florida, I worked in Checkers for a while. Um, excuse me. Um, I worked in clothing stores and law firms. Um I worked for a huge law firm on 45th and Madison. I worked for a huge, huge, huge clothing store on 45th and 5th. But to me, in my mind, that was just a place I was working at to earn a check to be able to go out and do what I wanted to do, which was party, drink, and hang out with my friends. There was no vision, no direction, and no purpose at that point in time. I was getting comfortable in my skin and and and and figuring out who I was and learning about the people in my circle and who I wanted to be in my circle, um, and qualities of people I wanted to align myself with, but I still had no purpose, no drive, no vision as to what I wanted to do. Um then Lou was like, yo, let's do this NPO. Um let's call it Gibby Grow. And let's just do this around certain issues that are going on in the neighborhood. Let's see if we could do events to bring either light to Those issues, or to raise funds, or to assist in any way we can, um, and also to celebrate where we're from, right? So we did several different events. I mean, uh, this was great, it was a great learning experience for me. Um, we did something called the Washington Heights History Hash, where we had a bunch of people who were from or weren't from the neighborhood, and they did a uh like a scavenger hunt all around Washington Heights and Inwood, and it was, I think, three or four teams, and there was different clues with historical purposes of each at each stop, and it was great. We got local businesses involved. That was a great event. We did a graffiti cleanup, we did a hunger run, a midnight hunger run. Um, what else? We cleaned up Morris Trumel Mansion. Man, we did a fundraiser when Obama was elected president. We did an event to do a because most people work during the day, so we figured we'd we'd show the video of the inauguration at nighttime. Um, and then we we held a fundraiser where people would uh donate money for any future events we were doing. I mean, I was very proud of that work and it was very fulfilling. Um, but again, it's it's it's the difficult thing with philanthropy is if that's what you do as a passion, as a hobby, then realistically uh you gotta figure out a way where you could make it a career out of it. And I didn't know at that time. So um, you know, I had I still had to have you know an NR5. So again, like doing oddball jobs, working in Whole Foods and things like that. Um working in grocery stores, supermarkets. Uh, and it wasn't till I got a job with the police athletic league that the wheels really started turning about working in public service. And I did five years in PAL, some of the most fulfilling work I've ever done. Um, I impacted some people's lives, those people impacted my life as well. I learned a lot about myself. Uh I learned a lot about issues that were going on. It was very much a very experiences where I was growing as a person, as an individual, and then I landed a job with my job now, so which is still in public service, but all those things happened in a sequence that led me to it, and eventually, slowly excuse me, I started listening. I had the ego before you can have an ego, but you can still listen to people who have something to offer to you, or people who actually care about you or and want to give you advice and want to see you do good, right? Um I started listening and I started thinking and I started figuring my life out, and I and it was those years were very crucial to where I am now. I reconnected with someone who I was interested in, which is the woman I'm married to right now in those years, and she was her she had her stuff figured out, like college grad, had good jobs, people come other companies constantly were um offering her employment. Um she knew exactly where she wanted to head or wanted to go to in her career and and her personal life as well. I wasn't quite there yet, but um I got to meet her inner circle, I got to guess meet, you know, I got a lot from her. Um and yeah, just I started listening and I started paying attention, coming up with a plan. Um, I started to uh because I would like really when someone tried to be, oh, you need to do this, need to do that. I don't want to hear that. I don't want to, you know, but the way like the circle I had around me, plus my wife at the time and my family was more the the their approach was different, right? This wasn't no longer a young man, this was someone in their mid-20s still trying to get their footing correct. Um, and the the approach was different. So I started to listen, you know, and then I started to ask myself those questions like where do I want to be? Where do I want my life to go? Like, what do I want for myself? What would make me happy? Because I I I wasn't happy all those years, you know, I couldn't be myself, I didn't know what I was doing with myself. I was just following a crowd, trying to be someone I wasn't. Um then I got I was working at this job where I was completely, completely, utterly miserable, and it and it hit me like yo, I'm really, really unhappy with where I am in life. Unhappy with my entire fucking situation, and it was like uh an epiphany or a moment where everything hit me with a ton of bricks, right? And it coincided with my friend passing away. Like, why am I wasting my life? I could be doing so much more. Not only that, but I need to be fulfilled and happy for me, and I'm not gonna say it happened right away when I was dating my wife, but I got the job that I'm currently in right now. I met some more intelligent people that just amazing that I've worked with for now 13-14 years, I listened to them as well. Um, the job that I'm in, I love and I'm passionate about. I get something out of it every day, and I enjoy the people I work with. And then in my personal life, I met someone whose soul matched mine, right? She's when we were dating, we dated how people date, but then when we got engaged, got married, we really just enjoyed being with each other. We had although we have similar likes and things, and we for example, like we both love movies, but I like comedy movies, she likes horror movies. Um but we really enjoyed being with each other, and we really matched each other's energies, and I don't know what she gets from being with me. Um, but I know what I get from being with her, right? And I've appreciated every single moment, right? When I started to listen to my circle and I realized I was unhappy, guess what happened? The ego went away, and I started to search for purpose, and I found purpose, and once I found my purpose, I worked hard at it, and I'm became obsessed with what that was. So that's the transformation I've been on all these years, and yesterday I opened the fortune cookie and it said uh you gotta fall find joy in the in the road. Uh let me read it to you exactly because I thought it was I was like, man, this thing is on the money, on the money, as to how I'm feeling right now. Um, and I've always felt this way. I'm gonna find it right now, and I'm probably gonna repost it because it's pretty good. Again, this was a fortune cookie that I opened up yesterday. Remember to find joy in the journey, not just the destination, and that's a fantastic thing to take in, right? The journey is what makes you appreciate the destination, you know. The this the struggle, the pain, the the what you've been through makes you appreciate the destination. Um, and if if if if if you're miserable during the journey, then that means you're gonna be miserable during the destination. But it's currently where I'm at. I enjoy the journey. I started podcasting in 2018 after also, you know, I found my job, I found something that I also like to do as a passion, as a hobby on the side, which is this, and I've been doing it ever since. And I and I've I haven't done it half-ass. I've been consistent, I've been focused, I've worked hard. Um I've I've I've had these visions of this and how to expand podcasting and what I wanted to learn, and I've done that. I've created a network, I've I've joined a network, I've created a network, I've ran advertisement, I've made money off of it, I've produced shows, I've written shows. Um and at the end of the day, everything I've done, I've I've loved every single piece of it. And this is where I am now. Like I've kind of learned what this space was for those first where are we, eight, nine years into this, and now I feel like you're probably gonna get the best content from me because I know exactly what I want to do, how I want to get it done, and the purpose behind everything. So this is where we are with this show, the Rick A show. So that's who I was, and the person I had to leave behind, and this is who I am today. Currently, uh pretty good at the job that I do professionally. I think I'm a pretty good dad. I think I'm a pretty good husband, and I think I'm a pretty good podcaster. So that's where I am today, and that's who you see in front of you. Um do I have goals? Yes, I have some big effing goals coming up in the next couple years, and I think I'm gonna I'm gonna do what I've always done. I'm gonna attack them, I'm gonna become obsessed with them. And I'm gonna try to cross those all off my list. So again, find joy in the journey at just the destination. For those of you who tuned in tonight, appreciate you tuning in. If you want to leave a comment or message, you can. Again, if you want to send me an email or the direct message, you can. You can follow me on Instagram at the Rick H Show or at it's Rick H. The email of the show is theriw at gmail.com. You can watch us Mondays at nine o'clock. I also produce and co-host a secondary podcast called the 2 a.m. crew, which is with Jason Enrique. You can catch that show Tuesdays at nine. And if you have any questions or advice on podcasting, or you're someone that's trying to get into podcasting, send me a message. I can help you. This is really what you want to do. But until then, thank you for giving me the time that you spent listening or viewing this show. And like, subscribe, share. And I hope I hear I hope you're here for the next episode. Have a good one.