"The Black Man Talking Emotions Podcast" Starring Dom L'Amour
"The Black Man Talking Emotions Podcast" Starring Dom L'Amour
Phones Down, Life Up: My 8.5/10 Mental Check-in
When everything feels overwhelming—from global conflicts to personal struggles—how do we find clarity and peace? This raw mental check-in episode explores the powerful intersection between worldwide chaos and individual challenges that many of us are silently navigating.
Sharing my personal journey toward an 8.5/10 mental state, I reveal how removing social media apps from my phone transformed my ability to think clearly, connect meaningfully, and rediscover creative focus. This simple change created space for genuine growth during a time when global events and personal milestones collided in overwhelming ways.
The discipline of maintaining digital boundaries has rippled through every aspect of my life, from relationships to productivity. Instead of hoping things will improve—whether it's fertility challenges, family disagreements, or career uncertainty—I've learned to accept reality while taking concrete action on what I can control. The first step toward change is awareness; the second is acceptance.
For anyone feeling pulled in multiple directions or struggling to find mental clarity amid constant information, this episode offers a refreshing perspective on putting yourself first without guilt. Because true self-care isn't selfish—it's necessary for showing up fully in our increasingly complex world. Subscribe, share your own mental health journey, and let's continue this important conversation together.
Opening quote: Nathaniel Branden
Opening and Closing Theme song: Produced by Dom L'Amour
Transition Music from Mad Chops Vol. 1 and Mad Chops Vol. 2 by Mad Keys
and
from Piano Soul Vol.1(Loop Pack) by The Modern Producers Team
Cover art by Studio Mania: Custom Art @studiomania99
Please subscribe to the podcast, and give us a good rating. 5 stars please and thank you. Follow me on @dom_lamour on Instagram. Or at
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, and anyone else who is here. You are listening to the Black man Talking Emotions podcast. My name is Don Lamour and I am going to be the only person on this episode. We're doing a mental check-in this week and I hope you enjoy. The first step towards change is awareness. The second step is acceptance. All right, folks. Uh, thank you so much for listening to this week of the pod and I hope y'all been enjoying this season so far.
Speaker 1:I feel like it's been really, really dope to talk to all these people and have all of these incredible conversations about life and other things we're going through, how we're working on ourselves and what we are feeling. Through this incredibly crazy time in history. I feel like things went bonkers and then, of course, I've hit some huge milestones in my life that I never thought I would hit, and it's been very challenging to take on the stress of living throughout all of this chaos, the stress of living throughout all of this chaos but then also having my own problems and struggles in my own personal life. So if anybody is hearing this and feels like it's overwhelming what's going on, it is not just you. All of us are going through a lot right now and it's been nonstop, and I feel like it's almost crazy to say but like we lived through a lot right now and it's been non-stop and it I feel like it's almost crazy to say, but like we lived through a pandemic, and I still feel like now is a little more stressful than it was then, when everyone thought they were going to die from something that we didn't even understand. Now it's like we're watching things that we clearly understand happen around us. We understand that two illogical people arguing isn't going to completely correct something, but if they're both illogical, if they both have goals that are outstandingly different than the other, there's not really going to be much compromise, and we're seeing that with china and taiwan about the pop off.
Speaker 1:We have the stuff that's going on in Israel, that one side feels so strongly about one way and the other is opposite, and it's just chaos. Russia. Same things going on. There's same things happen here in America. There are two arguments. One feels very wrong, one doesn't feel completely made up, but also doesn't feel like they are not at least on the better side of history. And with both of those two arguments and the crazy energy towards them, no one's actually having any answers for solutions. Everyone's really just kind of spitballing ideas and telling us one's it's better than any other. What are we gonna fix? Honestly, how are we gonna improve as a species if the morals of everyone is so completely opposite? It's just a really difficult time. But, with that being said, the stuff that we're going through.
Speaker 1:Personally just to use me, instead of trying to throw this on everyone I feel like I'm about to turn 36 this year and I'm seeing a lot of people go through a lot of similar obstacles. You know, we've been trying to have kids and it's been difficult and that's something I'm seeing is more common everywhere. People are starting to really speak out about it more and it's encouraging and helpful and I appreciate the good words people have given me throughout this entire process. It's hard to go through something like that but then also have family issues, disagreements, philosophy, ind. You can to improve your situation so that in the future everything kind of works out, because if you're in a good headspace, you're able to shine that headspace and that energy onto others. And so I'm reading a lot. So I've been reading a lot, I've been working through a lot of my issues, doing therapy and truly trying to approach this as open and honest and ultimately the goal is to make sure I'm OK and I'm putting me first so that the things in my life can be better. And so I'm still on that journey. There's some things that are still frustrating and hard for me and I don't really see some of the things changing. That's okay, it's life. We can't really hope for anything to be different. We just got to try to make it better and that's been the philosophy I've kind of clung to. Thank you to Mark Manson's Everything is Fucked book. I really enjoyed reading that and it really touched on hope and our understanding of hope and what we need to do. And, like I said, we need to work on ourselves. We need to make sure we're in the right headspace. We need to make sure that if someone we care about in our life is hurting, we do everything we can to try to help them.
Speaker 1:My check-in this month is, I must say, like a 8.5. I am really happy with Life in general. I feel like the networking I've been doing for these past couple of years here in Atlanta is starting to really show promise. People are starting to commit to me a little bit more, take me a little more seriously, and that's just all you can ask for as someone who's looking to have a career in something that feels almost impossible. You know music and performance and hosting. I do it every week. I'm constantly working on my craft and the wins in this type of a career are, you know, those random calls you get after sending someone an email eight months ago. They finally message you back saying oh, I've been crazy, I'm sorry, but I like your music, let's work together. It's like that's kind of the payoff that you have. You don't really get a nine to five kind of satisfaction from this, because that's not what this is. So it's really encouraging seeing the things change and my perspective change around all of this.
Speaker 1:A lot of things that I held on to really aren't affecting me like they used to anymore. I held on to a lot of feelings when it came to how people perceived me, how people talked to me, how people treated me, how people interact with me on social media or in person, or you know through how many text messages I get on my phone or anything it could be. I could date this back to how many Valentines I would get on Valentine's Day. I just I just felt like I needed all of that energy. But I started something new recently where I took all of my social media off of my phone and off my tablet. So the only time I could check it is on my desktop, like I used to when I was in high school and Facebook first started, where I could get to it, but I couldn't get to it every where I was. So if I'm on the road in St Petersburg, florida, like I was last weekend, I can't check it until I get back home and I might have a little bit more notifications. But I start to see exactly what I'm looking for from life when I don't have something pulling me away from life. I took games off my phone.
Speaker 1:I really have attacked the world that isn't in real life. You know the outside world, the Internet. I don't feel like it's affected me positively in my life in a while. I'm not going to say it never did, because of course, I was able to connect with people. I'm still able to connect with people that are thousands of miles away and people who live in different countries, and people listen to this podcast. They're literally all over the world, which is really exciting, and that's because of the Internet.
Speaker 1:I will never say it didn't do anything good for me, but when it comes to my mental headspace, I was a theater major. One of the big things about being a theater major is memorization. You have to memorize music. You have to memorize monologues. You have to be able to to really focus on that craft and build. And the older I get, the better the technology. Now you can have a music stand with an iPad on the stage, so you might you might memorize all the lyrics, or you might, you might just know what it sounds like and read it while you're on stage, but pretend like you're not reading it, like you can do that now, and that takes away from the preparation. It gives you an excuse to say, oh, I don't have enough time, I'll just put it on the iPad and and that'll be what I do. You. You know that's the type of stuff that we allow now and it's not. That is not good. It is good that we have these options. It's incredible.
Speaker 1:But for me personally, I want to know that I've done the work and there are certain things that I felt like after a while I wasn't truly in control with it. If I feel like I have to get on Duolingo every day to keep the streak going. It stops becoming about me learning Spanish and it comes more of I need to play this game. If I take that game away, take the scrolling online away, I find myself thinking more. I find myself wanting more Working on simple projects, emailing people, writing way more. Now, just from a simple adjustment, and I feel like the idea that I'm more clear and working on my favorite things in the world has really enhanced my relationships around me, that people around me can see I'm happier. They can see that I'm excited and have a different type of energy, and it's strictly because I eliminated something that I'm excited and have a different type of energy, and it's strictly because I eliminated something that I noticed was doing more harm than good. I know that I can't truly get away from it completely, because I need it as a marketing tool and I need it to reach people that I still can't reach. But even with that, I'm looking at alternatives. I'm pushing myself to want to look for those alternatives because they're there.
Speaker 1:There are other ways to communicate and to reach people and I don't have to go through the same process everyone goes through. Just because everyone goes through it, people always tell me. You know people get real big on TikTok. I don't really do the music that is going to do big on TikTok and if it does, eventually it'll pop off. But for now that's not what I do. An algorithm that I see on TikTok nothing looks like me.
Speaker 1:So why would I continue to put myself in a position where I feel like I'm attacking something and putting all of this effort into it and pushing myself into it, but then I have to adjust to it, I have to put out content that revolves around it and next thing, you know I'm doing stuff that has nothing to do with what I do. That's happened too many times. I'm doing stuff that has nothing to do with what I do. That's happened too many times. And now I'm just speaking directly to people calling people, sending people messages, emailing people. It reminds me of college and it's enlightening. It's exciting, it's fun to get to communicate properly again and to not feel like something's in my pocket that I have to check every five minutes. I don't check my phone as much as I used to. If I'm on my phone, I'm usually writing something, I'm usually reading something, I'm usually listening to something.
Speaker 1:I've been working on house projects. I painted the deck. I've been working on house projects. I painted the deck, I have been digging holes to try to help with the erosion on our hillside. Going into our driveway, there's a bunch of sand and clay and I just feel like I've found the rhythm that fits me best and it's really exciting. So when I said 8.5 for the check-in, it's mostly because I am having a really good time.
Speaker 1:There are some things I want to fix. Still, there's some people I want to communicate with and I want to see improve in their life too, and that 1.5% is that there are things that I can't really control, that I'm hoping for and I'm trying to remind myself that I can only hope for what I know and everything I know is happening and that's encouraging. It's not something surprising, something that I never expected. No, some of all of the stuff that I'm going through, stuff that I kind of could see, and I'm just going to do what I can to make it better. I'm not going to hope it's going to be better because I'll be sitting here all day hoping I got to put some movement into this. I got to take some risk and be in some uncomfortable moments to truly work through this, but I'll get there, work through this, but I will. I'll get there and I'm sure that whoever's listening to this.
Speaker 1:If you're going through certain things like this, it's the same thing you got to look out for yourself. It's not selfish. If someone is willing to tell you that that's selfish. That's something to look into them about. Because if you tell your friend, I am doing this for me and they can't say OK, I respect that they have a different motive on their end. That's not something that you need to concern yourself with.
Speaker 1:The older I get, the more I look within and I'm very honest with myself. Now I feel like sometimes I would over exaggerate things in my head and then I would have to check myself. But now that I'm not exaggerating too much, now that I'm actually looking at things relatively with a straight lens and seeing what I can do to improve, it's been. It's been very delightful this year. Like I've said before on the pod, my theme of the year is discipline and I feel like I've struggled with this for the past month and a half. First three months of the first two, two months I was doing well. Third month really kind of hit me harder and I'm kind of clawing my way out of it now here in April. But I see the good that discipline has had on my life.
Speaker 1:My planner is full of events and things that I've scratched out and people I've reached out to and self-care days and family and friend days and no plan days and date night and adulting days the idea that I am clearly seeing visions of how I want to move forward and I'm working towards that. The discipline is there. Still, I'm losing discipline in certain areas that I'm going to be able to improve because I'm aware that it's a problem. That's what the quote at the beginning of the episode said. First step towards change is awareness. Second is acceptance and I'm accepting. A lot of the things that I've done have been things that I've kind of done myself and I want to change that and I'm gonna change that. I'm not gonna hope that it changed. So hopefully everybody is having a good year, or at least having a good year, or at least working on themselves and trying to have a good year, and I hope that, not a hope.
Speaker 1:I look forward to continuing this podcast. I'm looking forward to great conversation. I'm looking forward to great conversation. I'm looking forward to more growth and my target is to shoot through all of that expectation in my head that I believe I can get to. I believe I can go further than I imagine and the people listening to this podcast. You're part of the reason why I believe that, because you all have supported me and looked out for me and listened to me and enjoyed this and sent me feedback, and I truly appreciate every moment someone spends listening to this podcast and I appreciate you.
Speaker 1:Ciao, thank you. I want to thank you for listening to the black man talking emotions podcast. Look out for more stuff like this and I want to thank you once again. This has been a really good time. The opening quote credit goes to Nathaniel Brandon and please subscribe to the podcast, share the podcast and give us a good rating. Five stars, please, and thank you. You can support the show by clicking the link at the bottom of the episode description. Also, tell me your stories about these subjects at dom underscore lamour on instagram or at domlamourcom. I'm Dom Lamour. Much love, more Much love.
