The Journey to Freedom Podcast
Journey to Freedom serves as an exclusive extension of the Living Boldly with Purpose podcast series—a platform that inspires powerful transformation and growth. Journey freedom is a podcast hosted by Brian E. Arnold. The Journey to Freedom is an our best life blueprint exclusively designed for black men where we create a foundational freedom plan. There are five pillars: Identity, Trust, Finances, Health and Faith.
The Journey to Freedom Podcast
Can Purpose and Success Coexist? Exploring New Definitions
In this dynamic episode, we explore the profound intersections of freedom, identity, and community as integral parts of success. Our discussion is sparked by the recent Super Bowl and the empowering performance by Kendrick Lamar, which serves as a cultural touchstone for understanding progress in the Black community. Listeners will be drawn into an inspiring conversation with NaRon Tillman that challenges traditional narratives around success, urging a redefinition of what it truly means to live purposefully.
Throughout the conversation, we delve into how freedom of time is often a more significant measure of success than monetary wealth, as it allows individuals to pursue authenticity and purpose. We confront the complexities of identity, particularly for Black men navigating societal expectations while striving to carve their paths. The discussion is underscored by heartfelt personal stories from our guests, showcasing how mentorship and community support can propel individual achievements.
As we address historical context, we highlight the importance of representation and visibility in shaping aspirational narratives. Listeners will find not only philosophical insights but also practical advice on fostering relationships that support personal growth and development.
As you listen, we invite you to join the conversation – how do you define success? Can you live in your purpose while navigating societal challenges? We encourage you to reflect on these questions as you consider your own journey.
Be sure to subscribe, share this episode with friends, and leave a review! Your insights are invaluable to us and help enrich our community conversations. Join us as we continue to unpack these themes and more in our upcoming episodes.
The success for me is the freedom of my time. I don't have all the money in the world, but I can make my own schedule. Yes, I preach. Yes, I have had businesses. Yes, I was in construction. Those are a part of the journey, but that's not who I am.
Speaker 2:Good morning. Good morning to another edition of the Journey to Freedom podcast. I am Dr B, I'm your host and today we are just another exciting day. I got Naran Tillman on today and we're going to get into his story real quick. And this weekend and I don't know when you're watching this, but this weekend we ended up with a Super Bowl. That was yesterday, so we're the day after the Super Bowl.
Speaker 2:I think it was Kansas City and the Eagles, but our halftime show was I guess it was Lamar, he was on yesterday and so you know very controversial that we're dealing with and when we think about, you know, what does it mean to be a Black man in America? There's just so many different assets and things to it and they had, like Samuel Jackson that was on there and he was, you know, talking and I guess they're on. I don't know how much you know about the. What I was reading this morning is the stage was set like one of the video games that's out here and then there was a lot of, I guess, black white controversy. That was part of it, because he's such a prolific songwriter and he just speaks in a way that where he's got several Grammys and a Pulitzer Prize and all that, and so I was talking to my wife this morning and just talking about so what does that mean for us? And I think what we really kind of found out is that we are standing on the shoulders of giants, that people. We've had opportunities that we didn't have. We have now opportunities that we didn't have in the past. I just got back from Alabama last week on a civil rights victory tour, which was amazing that we got to go through the Bryan Stevenson Museum and really talk about it. You know, this hasn't been the greatest country in the last 400 years for Black men, but I think we have opportunities now that we never had before.
Speaker 2:Evidence by that Super Bowl and that Super Bowl halftime show could have not been done. I don't even know if it could have been done five years ago and still got the reception it was. I don't think they would have pulled him off the grass 15 years ago. They wouldn't even let him try it. You know. You know, as we think of how many different entertainers from you know Michael Jackson being able to do the Super Bowl. I don't know if he was the first black entertainer who got to do the Super Bowl, but we've had several since I think we had Beyonce last year, so we're able to continue to progress and our ability to speak about how we feel is changing in main scene America, which is a cool thing to see, but we still got a lot of work to do, and so today I'm excited because we get to do these interviews.
Speaker 2:Last year we did 105 interviews with black men who are making a difference and creating success, and around one of the themes was that I found, is people needed to see, or they say I needed to see somebody who looks like me, kind of doing what I'm doing to know that I can do it. And I think yesterday was a testament to that. We've now seen somebody be able to speak exactly what he believed in, what he thought in rapping or however entertainment platform he wanted to use, and we got to see that. And I used to say that wasn't important to me. I used to say, well, I don't need to see that somebody looks like me. I know that I can do whatever I want to do in life, but I find myself like Journey to Freedom came out of me being at a seminar and going oh, there's 400 people here, and then I'm counting how many black men are in the room right?
Speaker 1:It doesn't matter.
Speaker 2:But if it doesn't matter, then why am I counting? Because it does matter, and so, thank you for being on. I'm going gonna let you start with your story, uh, start with wherever you want to start with in your life, um, and then, uh, we'll, we'll chop it up after that, but thank you so much for being on. Thank you for being willing to be part of this podcast and being able to speak exactly, uh, what you would have for the the audience to hear something well.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, uh, dr b, for having me and, to your point, um, I got a chance to watch that I had. My son is 11 years old, my youngest son and his teammates from his basketball was there and it was really excited and into it and to be able to see the artistry. A lot of backlash was given out of our community because of that performance, because we want to be entertained and not necessarily lean into a message. And you know, oh man, it was. You know that was one of the worst halftime shows ever. But the fact that he had the audacity to do what he did, knowing that in the end there could be some backlash from mainstream America and still be able to say I'm going to go, but they call him the boogeyman.
Speaker 2:So that's it. Yeah, Well, I think we knew exactly what today would look like. Kendrick Lamar said you know what?
Speaker 1:I get this opportunity.
Speaker 2:I may never get this opportunity in my life to be on a stage this big, because, you know, the Super Bowl is this biggest stage in America right now, and I get to speak about something that I feel passionate about whether it was political or not political. They gave him the stage to do it and then he went ahead and did it.
Speaker 1:On my end. Is this saying a recording error? I don't know if you see that it's going on mine.
Speaker 2:It seems fine Okay.
Speaker 1:All right.
Speaker 2:So, my name is.
Speaker 1:Noron Tillman. I grew up in a town in New York City called Far Rockaway, queens, um single parent household uh, not, not much means. And during the war on drug era anybody knows about the war on drug era I used to call it.
Speaker 2:I used to call it the crack era, but it was, yeah, I think we all did, but the official term is war on well, the president named it war on drugs. But even when you go to, I think Bryan Stevenson coins it as part of mass incarceration. So many of us ended up in jail, you know, for things now today should be let out of jail for, you know, for possession of weed or something like that. So definitely know the area you're talking about.
Speaker 1:So that was my upbringing Not realizing that we lack. Well, you know you lack resources, but not realizing all of the resources that you lack for emotional intelligence and all of the resources that you lack for emotional intelligence, having to fight for everything and using fights or using aggression as a tone. We also was on the hills of gangster rap music coming out and having that aggressive music constantly blaring at high levels, and every Friday night we would go to parties and dance. So we had some good things. We built a community. Our parents did the best that they could to build a community.
Speaker 1:I was a church boy, so I had to go to church two to three times out of the week. So I had to go to church two to three times out of the week and by the time I got 18, I remember I got kicked out of college, just came from a party. But I woke up and I realized that life was this is not what I wanted in life. I didn't know what I wanted in life, but I knew what I was getting. I didn't want at all, so fast forward. I met a guy at my church who became like a father figure and mentor to me and he moved me out of the projects and moved me into his home, put me as a partner in his construction business and that was my beginning to entrepreneurial pathway. Went to back to school, business school got my associate's degree. When I went to business school it was funny because you think that you're going to learn business, but you're only learning. I learned how to type, I learned how to do administrative work. I didn't really learn the entrepreneurial lessons that would come later on in life, suffered some great loss in business, as always, and one of my first lessons I learned is that business people are not at the table to educate you. They're at the table to make what they're gonna make and they look for the novice. And if you're green in what you're doing, you shouldn't wanna be at the table until you get the education, or you'll pay royally for the education and it's usually in a matter of loss. So I learned those lessons at 24, 25, 26. Ended up living in a house with no heat for some time, no hot water, no lights, because I was too proud to go back to my mother's house and yada, yada, yada Started preaching and in my 30s I ventured into the world of mindfulness and yoga.
Speaker 1:So I'm a master blend of I teach spirituality, which is a Christian with a Christian context, but I also teach mindfulness, I teach yoga, I teach entrepreneurship. To anyone who would listen, I have a podcast now called Walking Victory and One Ministries podcast. Both podcasts, one Ministries. Of course, that's as you can hear from the thing, that's church-centric. You hear me preaching, and we'll turn that into One Ministries Network where we'll highlight other ministers from around the world, giving a person an eclectic instead of just hearing one voice. Eclectic instead of just hearing one vote.
Speaker 2:Thank you, there you go. Yeah, some of you just popped off, but they're still going, so we'll just take that part out. And then you end it with One Ministries and what that does.
Speaker 1:One Ministries. We're changing that to a network where we can highlight other ministers and pastors from all across the world and gain a better reach. And in Walking Victory, I interview people like yourself, where we talk about things from business, AI, entrepreneurial studies, finances, mindfulness, yoga all the fun things that I like. All right, Gotcha.
Speaker 2:It sounds like there's a ton of things Like all the entrepreneurs don't just work like serial entrepreneurs. We just can't do one thing and we're into a whole lot of stuff, especially in the podcasting world, where you start thinking of like who are the best guests that we can have. What are the things that we can do?
Speaker 2:One of the things that I want to talk to you about a little bit is just identity. Think about identity and who we are and how we became a person, and it lends to you know exactly what you're talking about doing different podcasts and that kind of stuff. How do you think your identity was shaped and what were maybe some pivotal points during that process that got you to become the man that you are today?
Speaker 1:My identity. It's funny I'm doing a series now helping people discover their true I am. Those two words I am are real, powerful words, and I've had to reshape my identity because I used to identify I grew up poor, right. But those are words that that's why I say well, we didn't have the means that everyone else had. Because if you hold on to, I grew up poor and you have this mentality, I am poor, right. So you want to reshape those things. So what I found out in the last eight years is yes, I was a preacher, yes, I preach. Yes, I had businesses. Yes, I was in construction. Yes, I had those, but that's not who I am what really defines me for who I am.
Speaker 1:Uh, those are. Those are a part of the journey, but that's not who I am. Growing up in the projects and the ghetto, that's not who I am. That was a part of the journey. So my true I am itself is is one, one that understands my position of abundance, that understands my position as a teacher, and always take the opportunities whether I'm teaching somebody how to make a layup or teaching someone how to do a downward dog, right, just having the opportunities to articulate what it is that I do and what what it is that I bring to the table and be comfortable with that. Um, in my 20s, early 30s, I wasn't comfortable with my true I am, except because I didn't realize who I was. I thought I was a preacher, I thought I was this, I thought I was that and I'm a husband, I'm a wife or whatever. When I really found out, honed in on what it was that I truly am.
Speaker 2:The society sometimes you believe for our identities and who we believe we are, pigeonhole us into almost a belief that this is who I am, because this is what they told me I am you know, especially like you know today when we talk about some parents that are just so you know when I think of athletics now and youth athletics.
Speaker 2:You know that for us it seems like a big thing, but I've had so many parents that say this is what my, I need my child to be a professional athlete. This is they got talent. This is what they're going to do. You put them in club sports and not using rec sports. Now it's all the club sports. And then you start telling the kid this is what you are. They might not even like hockey, they might not even like basketball, but they're telling them this is who you are. Is that part of the identity that you kind of felt that you had to become what others had already decided that you were going to be, or did you just get?
Speaker 1:it? No, because when we come up, like I said, I grew up in church. So even even in church, they would ask you well, what do you want to be? And I was always one that was just want to be successful. I don't know what I want to be. I don't know. I was a little boy. Why are you trying to force me to want to be something? I don't know? And they would say that I was being rebellious. But it's because of my openness and my willingness to identify that I don't know and I'm not going to allow anybody to label me.
Speaker 1:I did music when I was 13 years old. I was on a VH1 hip hop honors. I did music when I was 13 years old. I was on a VH1 hip hop honors. I did things. I've had several careers because my friends call me like the Forrest Gumpshin. I got this whole thing Because I walk into things and I see things differently.
Speaker 1:Some people look at a decapitated house and they say, oh, let's go to a brand new facility. I look at the decapitated house and I say there goes an opportunity, but I'm wired. I was wired differently. So, yes, people do label. We have to really, really be mindful when we are labeling.
Speaker 1:I had a rabbi friend and we used to always meet on the weekends I mean on midweeks and we would sit around with a rabbi, a Hindu minister and an atheist and we would have these conversations and one of the things that the rabbi said what they would do with the kids is they don't force it. They don't force their children to do anything. They monitor the children to see what they like, what they lean into, and if one they see one playing, hitting the bed, making music with their hands and stuff like that, they'll get them in a drum class because they want the whatever the child, what is coming out of the child, to put them in a position of success Doesn't mean that they're going to be a musician. No, their end goal is to take them somewhere else. But they're going to use what they like in order to drive them to where they need to be, and I think that we don't have that kind of freedom in our community to put our children in the things that they like.
Speaker 1:I wanted to go to school for music. My mother told me no, so I fell college. That's what happened. Oh, that's good.
Speaker 2:Well, I love it because you brought up success a few times and sometimes we need to define success, whether it's success or purpose, or economics. In your mind, what do those words mean? When I say success or purpose, and what's the difference? Sometimes I think of service as being a big difference, but if you were to define success as we talk about it, what does that mean? Because I don't think it's always about money and sometimes we just think that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, success for me is the freedom of my time. I don't have all the money in the world, but I can make my own schedule, you know, and I do. Okay, success, and what was the other one? Because I did have.
Speaker 2:I said purpose Purpose.
Speaker 1:Purpose is different, because when the person lives in their purpose, they may not be successful in the sense of the words, like for me having my own time right or having the freedom of creating my schedule and things like that. But if I'm living in my purpose, my purpose may demand me to sacrifice what I believe might be my successes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I once heard somebody say I love your answer with time because time is so much more valuable than money is. And what I heard somebody say one time. He says here's how I can prove it. He says, if I gave you, told you I was going to give you a million dollars that only give you 10 minutes to live, or a half hour to live. Would you take the million dollars or would you live longer? I'm going to take life right, I'm going to take it longer. Or, on the other side, you know I'm going to give you.
Speaker 2:You know there's this medicine, there's this cure that it's going to cost you $1 million and you'll never, ever have to worry about whether you're going to. You know it will cure you. It's guaranteed you got cancer, but it's going to cost you a million dollars to do it. Would you give up the million dollars you know to be able to be cured and have the time to live the rest of your life? And obviously you're going to like I will find a million dollars some way, somehow, if you're guaranteed that it's going to. You know, give you that longevity of life. And so you were so right.
Speaker 2:Time is so much more valuable and then, what you get to do with that, you know because, some of us, you know, spend, you know, our time that we do have, you know. I don't even want to say change it, but I'm saying like let's just say I'm going to work every single day and I'm getting up every morning and I know I only have so much time, but I continue to do that and I don't pursue.
Speaker 2:You might not necessarily think that person is successful, but in the same right that it's Mother Teresa and she's doing it with her time every single day because she's serving others, then of course that's successful Right. And you think about purpose and this like, know this, like what you said we're using. Okay, that is what I'm on this planet to do, and maybe you can answer this Can you live in purpose without serving others?
Speaker 1:No, we created. Man is not just homo sapien, man is homo religious, which means that man, within the nature of ourselves, has to have a community. The nature of ourselves has to have a community and within that community we see the weaknesses or the flaws. You're a doctor, you serve in a certain capacity. Someone else may be the cook and serve in that capacity Someone else. But what has happened is we've minimized certain aspects of community. And because we've minimized aspects of community, purposefully and intentionally, if it's done in our communities we no longer have Big Mama With Sundays. We know we're going to go get big.
Speaker 2:It might not be healthy for you, but it's good to you, it's good to you Every last bite and you know, know, I often tell people if you want to see the worst diets in the world, go to a pastor's anniversary in between service. Oh, you're not getting smoothies there. Huh, no, no, no, no, no, no protein smoothies. No, no, no smoothies.
Speaker 1:Worst diet in the world. So, but we have to within start to serve. But what happens is, in our serving is the servant feels drained and destitute because they're making sacrifices that nobody see, and then sometimes it goes unappreciated. Sometimes they get up, they're not paid, they're not taken care of and in the religious context where you know the congregation doesn't care if you got a car or not, some some, they, they, they feel like the more leak, the more meat you are, the more, the less you have, the better serving you become, and and sometimes that that that takes away from the desire to serve and it becomes, uh, flipped, because everything has a polarizing opposite. So to serve it, no one goes into servitude saying I'm going to F this up, roy Lee.
Speaker 2:One of the things that when I think of the Black community and one of our themes has been what it means to be a dad and what has happened in our communities systematically for one and then in our communities that has pulled the family apart in big ways.
Speaker 2:And I think of the 30s, 40s and 50s when we were segregated and, as much as we possibly could believe, we lived in separate communities and yet our education levels were super high, Our family values were super high, the way that we treated each other was super high. And then we get into the 70s and they start pulling that away and kind of stripping that identity. And now I'm doing a. I do a podcast on Sunday nights where we talk about why love waits and we have 50% of black women over the age of 40 who have never been married. 75% of them have children. And then we think about what it means to be a dad and what it means to have a family unit together. To have a family unit together and you walk through and through your purpose. How does that fit in to the fight that you're fighting and the things that you're trying to work on?
Speaker 1:I met my wife when I was 17 years old. I'll be 50, lord willing, in September. She been by my side through the good and the bad, and I was not a good husband. I put all of my projects before my family. I put other people before my family, thinking in the vein of servitude, just having your name called and being celebrated, but then you come home and you don't even have a few words nice to say. You know, um? So we went through our, our rough patch. We went through a period of separation, and that that was when I realized how important having.
Speaker 2:I realize how important having a proper spouse in your life is. And what changed? How did that realization come? Was it because you wanted to make sure that the family unit stayed together? Was it you wanted to? What difference? Because we have so many people in our community that it doesn't change right, that they don't move forward.
Speaker 1:What was the big for you in that I wanted to make sure it was important for me, to make sure that my family would stay together, not for the sake of the kids and see, that's one thing we always say oh, I went back for the kids, I went back for the family, the structure of family. I think that I have two boys. My oldest son is 21. My youngest son again is 11. And I have a daughter. She's in Howard University right now and there are certain things that we could not accomplish separated. My daughter went to one of the top boarding schools in America. Well, in the world, it's a national school.
Speaker 1:They get people from Africa, china and if I was somewhere else, misplaced being a dad to somebody else's family because I was going to get another woman if I'm not all right, and I couldn't rest knowing that my presence was needed where I was supposed to be.
Speaker 2:And with those values that you believe you were taught. And then, no matter what you said, or is it so, how did? Yeah, because we have so many people right, so many of these men, who were brought up whether with the single moms or just in the, in the, in the streets or in the community, and it wasn't a value. And yet some of us have figured out no, the family unit is. I'm going to do everything to maintain it. And then, if we're starting to lose that, what is it that happened? And that's what I'm asking you, because you were able to say wait a minute, my family was important, I needed to maintain that Because when you there's a certain amount of structure that comes with having that unit.
Speaker 1:We talked again. Man is homo, religious right, so man needs to have certain things to be complete. We don't feel as if we need to have those things because we have a different concept now, construct of what it means to be a man in a community. But when you start to level up and get to certain levels of success and if you look around you, anyone that's really really reached a certain level of success has a partner, because it's hard to become successful whether it's financial success, spiritual success, emotional success without having someone when you are really vulnerable to help you through those times.
Speaker 2:I haven't done this in a podcast context before because we really get the real answers, but I would love for you to give me three as growing up and as a young man maybe even a young dad, married father what three ideas you thought it meant to be a man and then what your belief is about that.
Speaker 1:Now a man, and then what your belief is about that now, uh, one as many women as I can get, okay, okay, two, as much money as I can make, okay, and three as much trinkets that I can monetary stuff.
Speaker 2:Okay. So what has changed in that thought process from you being a young man to today?
Speaker 1:One. It's more the discipline that it takes to switch those terminology from that mind frame. They were all self-serving, so the mini-woman as I want, the money that I want to have, the trinkets that I want to flaunt. They was all self-serving in order to look as if I was successful in the context of what it meant to be successful in an income housing area. He got mad. He got mad.
Speaker 1:Oh man, look at this car. So we ascribe to that by any means necessary. It didn't matter who we hurt or what we had to do to get through it, how many shootouts we had, how many funerals we cried at, none of that mattered. But then you get older, you realize okay, that paradigm is off kilter. How can I survive doing any and everything? I didn't think. Honestly, I didn't think that I was going to live to be 21. Wow, wow, didn't think I was going to live to be 21. So, yeah, your values change. I have a buddy who just came home from eight and a half years of prison. I have a buddy who just came home from eight and a half years of prison.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, you start to realize, okay, those lessons that you learn on the corner, they're not self-serving, yeah, and when you think about it, we're all born as a blind slave. All of that thought process had to be learned at some point. That this is what makes, I don't know, success, or means that we should strive for. You know, somehow we start believing oh, I got to have as many women because of. Are we thinking that that shows other men that we're the deal? Does it show other women that we're the deal? I don't know if it shows the other women that were the deal.
Speaker 1:You know what's funny it does? Because a woman can know you got five women and she, for some reason, may think that she's going to be different.
Speaker 2:Gotcha. Well, and then you think about, like now we know you and I have this conversation, we're going to stay where the rest of the world is or not, but if you have five women, that's expensive. So it takes away. Like the next thing is, I need to have a whole bunch of money, but then I got five women, those two things like well, if I only had one I would have a lot more money. But again I say I I gotta make all this extra money. And and then how much money is enough? You know, and when we start thinking in our mind, especially when we're young and we're impressionable, you know okay, I need to make a million dollars. Okay, but have you thought through what a million dollars can do for you or how it's going to work?
Speaker 1:or I don't know if we think that until we've had someone yeah and um, one of my mentors told me making your first million is the hardest because, like, there'll be times when you like right there and something comes up. You know, once you do that, then it becomes because now you have systems in place mental systems, financial systems in place in order to duplicate the process.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you think that, 100%, that that's true. But then you think of what you're being taught on the street. Right is women, money and trinkets and we go. Well, you don't get to make your first million. If you do, you don't keep it, you're just spending as fast as you get it.
Speaker 1:That's why they called it fast money. Fast money don't last.
Speaker 2:Fast money don't last.
Speaker 1:When I'm talking to kids, so we teach you yoga and stuff in schools. When I'm talking to kids, so we teach yoga and stuff in schools. When I'm talking to kids and we start to talk about mindsets, everybody thought that they can go on and get a Bitcoin and turn themselves into a millionaire and then, when it doesn't work out, bitcoin drops down to $20,000. Everybody leaves because they're not in it for the long haul. They want to make fast money. So when you want to make fast money, you don't invest because the stocks go up and down. But the stocks go up more than they go down. They're always moving right. And when you don't have certain disciplines we weren't taught finance. We didn't talk about money like that we have something for a rainy day. Put something away. Well, it's always raining over here.
Speaker 2:Always raining, always going through right. The ladies at church are always saying how you doing, mrs? I'm going through, going through. When do we get to the other end? When I was three, you said that Now I'm 12, and you're still going through, we're going through, and I think that's another huge detriment to our communities.
Speaker 2:When I think about mindset, because you brought up mindset and I think you're setting your mind at this level. How do you help people change that mindset so that it can continue to go up, where it can continue to rise, where it can continue to set a temperature that you want to get to?
Speaker 2:What are some things we have to think of, Because we've got to work on ourselves to do that right we can't expect society to give it to us, and I think we have this mentality that it's just going to show up and jump on us. We read a couple scriptures and then, all of a sudden, god's just going to jump it all on us, and then we're set.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's one of the big problems. One, when we talk about mindset, hold on one second. Sorry about that. I need to charge my computer. I don't know, bro, there's really no real way of describing it. Oh man, did I? I'm frozen again. You're frozen, but I can still hear you.
Speaker 2:Okay, but I don't know where you're. Maybe you can pop in here in a second.
Speaker 1:There's no real way of describing it. We have community leaders that feast off of us being downtrodden. It was a great thing to have Black elected officials when I was coming up, but then they all self-serving, they only come around for. So if you're in a what I call a compounding negative bias, so we're all born with signs called negative biases, which means that we can lean to the negative. First, you can have on a beautiful dress and everybody's saying, oh, that dress is beautiful, oh, you look nice, you look nice. And one person say, hey, your dress is too tight, You're going to forget about all of the compliments that you got. And because of negative bias which is scientific in church they call it sin because of negative bias, we lean into that. So the first thing that we have to do in order to shift the mindset is to understand that inherently we are negative. So if I'm inherently negative, how do I now force myself to be positive? So we rewire the structure of the brain.
Speaker 1:I like to get people in neuroscience. They call it neural pathways. So these new pathways are being developed through rather breath work or through movements or through rehearsing. For every one negative thought, I teach people to force yourself to think of two positive thoughts within the same context. So if you talk bad to yourself about your weight, then you have to force yourself to talk good to yourself about your weight. If you talk bad to yourself about your past, you have to force yourself to talk good to yourself about your past. This helps create new neural pathways. Instead of me looking in the mirror, I'm still seeing the same person, but my mindset has shifted towards what I see. And that's some of the things that we teach. We do it methodically.
Speaker 2:So when you think of you're helping somebody you know, improve their, their mindset and resetting it, and you started talking about some activities that you do when, which would be called self-talk. How important is self-talk in our pursuit of success, happiness, purpose?
Speaker 1:There was a train, the little engine that could. Well, we watched his self-talk transform All right, and he repeated these things I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can. And he constantly repeated it until he could. The problem is that the train, something inside the train, knew to tell a train to rehearse that, to train new, to tell a train to rehearse that.
Speaker 1:But with us, when life is kicking out behind and the reality is our reality, instead of I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, we say oh, my bills are late, oh, my husband's late from school, all these kids getting on my nerves, oh, so we rehearse these things and whatever you rehearse in your subconscious, you will bring forth in your reality. The subconscious mind doesn't have any understanding about negative terms, phrases. The subconscious mind is very literal and we learn how to communicate ourselves with two simple words I am and put a nice action behind it, a nice long tail action. I am universally and abundantly blessed. I am making $20,000 a month to pay my bills, to put my kids through school, and we rehearse these I ams and we make them nice and long and lengthy and I'm writing a book about this. It'll be out by the end of the year and we give our subconscious prompts to lean into and mindset shifting happens really in our nights, when you're sleeping, and you can play affirmations while you're sleeping, especially if you're going through some physical limitations in your body. You can play healing affirmations and get these new impressions in your mind and your subconscious and you'll start to see a new reality.
Speaker 1:But it takes time. It's not something that can happen. It's not going to happen overnight. Some things may manifest themselves a little bit faster and I hate the way that we use the word manifest but some things may faster and I hate the way that we use the word manifest, but some things may happen faster than others. But it still is a pursuit of longevity. Because you did not get to where you are overnight, you didn't wake up. 400 pounds.
Speaker 2:When I think of the scripture, you know, faith without works is dead. When I think of the scriptures, faith without works is dead. And then I also say affirmations without action is it dead also.
Speaker 1:Or can you just affirmation yourself and life changes Affirmation? That's why I said that the I am has to have action to it. The way that we teach these things sometimes a little off, but when we put the action to whatever we are affirming, then it takes action in order for it to manifest.
Speaker 2:It creates belief right.
Speaker 1:It creates belief. We had the Super Bowl last night, so everyone in the beginning of the year came in and affirmed that they were going to be in the Super Bowl, but only two teams was there. So what happens? How do we duplicate? What did they do different and unique than everyone else? And what tends to happen is the championship team. Now they lose all of their coaches because other coaches want to mimic that system. They lose all of their trainers. They go other places. The system comes back different, the action is different. They come back and make the same affirmation, but they don't have the same systems and when you develop a system, you want to keep to whatever your systems are.
Speaker 2:Well, and then when?
Speaker 2:I think of the just what you're saying here and using football as an example. I think sometimes we say, like your example of $ thousand dollars a month. You know, I, I am the person who can do that. Right, I think we have to become that person. But at the same time, our work ethic might not be there yet.
Speaker 2:Because when you think of these players in the nfl for years and years, they will start like this is february, so by april they're going to start doing lifting, they're going to start working out, they're going to start doing you know their drills, they're going to start studying, they're going to do all these things all the way until season starts and through the season they're going to continue to work like no, there's no tomorrow for the chance of playing 17 weeks in a row and that's it.
Speaker 2:And those 17 weeks in a row are only one-hour games because they're 15-minute quarters. So they're doing all this for 17 hours for what they get to do in 17 hours. And then we say, well, you need to say some affirmation and you do a little bit of work behind it and you want to work for four hours and expect life to change Right? So how do we help people understand that the affirmations are just the beginning. There's a whole lot of work and you know action that goes along with it before, like you said, manifest or whatever word you're going to use, into a reality.
Speaker 1:Well, all right. So I'm glad that you brought that up, because the affirmation if you look at it and you're listening, the affirmation is the foundation to help the mindset shift. So what we're doing, we're shifting the mind. You can't be an entrepreneur until first you're an entrepreneur in your head. Now I can act because I believe in me. So the affirmation is to help you believe in you. The affirmation is not going to write you a check for a million dollars. Of course it is. You got to get out there now and, as you're creating a space in your head where you can believe what it is that you would become, you now have to start becoming, and the becoming part is the action.
Speaker 1:So when I wanted to be a podcaster, so I had to get a microphone right, I had to get a light. I had to get a light. I had to get a camera, I had to turn on a microphone, I had to detach myself from the end results. So there were certain things that I had to do in order to be consistent, because the consistency was rewarded, not the affirmations. And you know, you can affirm to be a whale, but if you're a human, it's just not going to happen, right?
Speaker 2:You have to have the ability to become that person, right?
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:It's just about anything you do. Oh, I guess that is so true Part of, I think, the thing that stops us and you can attest to this or not. One of the things that stops us and you can attest to this or not, one of the things that stops us is that we try to do everything by ourselves. We try to do everything without others. How important are relationships and other people that are around us and the type of people that are around us to help us move forward. Oh, your tribe is your everything.
Speaker 1:You show me your company and I'll show you your future. Wow, if you're not around successful people and you are trying to affirm to be successful, it's not going to happen. Musicians hang out with musicians. I got that whole recording error thing again. I'm so sorry about this. I don't know what's going on.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm recording on my end, so maybe it's on your computer, but we can do it on my end. Musicians hang out with musicians.
Speaker 1:Oh, I used to say this to my friends all the time during the war on drug era All the crackheads hang out with the crackheads. We all come to the party together, but everybody leaves with their vice. The people that drink, they go with the people that drink. The people that smoke go with the people that smoke. So that's their clan. And if you're around people that's not going in the direction that you're affirming yourself to go, then you're not going to get there.
Speaker 2:And how do you change that? Because sometimes we think that we're loyal, but we got to be loyal to this person who's driving me down the wrong pathway. I know they're driving me down the wrong pathway, but they're my homie, they're my boy, they're my man. How do we move ourselves into the right rooms that can serve?
Speaker 1:us by being courageous. You got to be willing to not be known in order to get where you want to go, because a lot of times we hang out with the people that know us. So you got to be willing to walk in some rooms by yourself and understand that everybody on your team is not going to go with you Like your path is your path, and my problem in the beginning was I would always try to get people to come with me on my path. It don't work like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it is so true. And to be able to tell the people that you know are not good for you, that you know and do you tell?
Speaker 1:them, or do you just stop showing up or you stop being around um, it depends on what night they catch me, but most of the time, most of the time, I just don't show up.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah yeah, I mean I, I think in my life there's been some instances where I'm like you're just not good for me. We need to, we can't hang around. And it was hurt and it was sad and I was like this has been a good, what I thought had been a good friend to me, and I literally wrote on the paper. I said good friend.
Speaker 2:And then I took the left side of the paper and wrote down all the aspects of what I thought a good friend should be. Then I wrote down all the aspects of I put that person's name there, wrote down all the aspects of what I was getting out of the good friend and those two things weren't equaling up Like wait a minute, why do I think what's? In my mind right now that's making me think that this is a good friend of me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sometimes I think we get caught up into the fact that we can talk to someone that understood us before and they know the layers of us, so that we can let our hair down. We're in a professional setting. You're around people you can't say certain things where you can be relaxed around certain types of friends. But that doesn't mean just because they knew you long or just because they understand you, where you come from or your backstory doesn't mean that they're a good friend. No, that means that you just have somebody that you can buddy up with and laugh, and that may happen once or twice out of the year. It doesn't have to be every day.
Speaker 2:Well, one of the things too. When you start moving forward, it's kind of like that crab in the basket where you can put one crab in the basket. It'll just crawl right out and go where it needs to go. You put two. Neither one will let each other move forward, and what I found myself in before I was, you know, working on being a different man, and becoming a different person was always being around folks that we spent all of our time talking about the past and never talking about the past and never talking about the future.
Speaker 2:What's your thoughts on you know, on reminiscing and how often you should spend time reminiscing?
Speaker 1:I try not to, but before you know, when you don't have anything going on, those stories excite you. Oh man, I remember when I used to do that and then, when you have stuff going on, I don't have anything going on, those stories excite you. Oh man, I remember when I used to do this and then when you have stuff going on, I don't want to remember a lot of the things that I did back in the day. I don't want to sit down and talk about that. That's not self-serving.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, there's some good times. We look at pictures, but at the same time you go. Where are we going? You know, even like the stock market, you're not moving forward. It's really hard to just stay in the past, and I think so much of our community spends so much time living in the past or living somebody else's dream through, like television or you know, those are actors who are pretending like their lives, are doing whatever they're doing, and the amount of. I was thinking about the other day how many hours you spend making a one hour show and then we watch it for an hour and we expect all these hours to to multiply themselves to us and they suck out our life and our time. And same thing with social media and scrolling and scrolling and scrolling and looking at other people's best life. But do you have any tips? Uh, for just hey, I gotta stop doing that. I need to start working on me or working on my future yes, um one.
Speaker 1:You know a lot of people beat social media up. So I say to people, one who has several certifications in digital marketing, your algorithms. If you give me your phone, I can tell you what you like. The algorithm is going to feed you what you like.
Speaker 2:It's like we talked about the Super Bowl yesterday. It's based on a game. If you haven't played that game, you have no idea what it was. There must be millions and millions of people who played that game. Yeah yeah, they knew what it was.
Speaker 1:They knew exactly what it was, and so you got to start listening to things that will help you get to where you want to be. Yeah, yeah, listening to things that will help you get to where you want to be. You got to start watching things that will help you get to where you want to be. You got to start reading things that will help you get to where you want to be, and then you got to find at least one person that has already gotten to where you want to be. And don't be afraid to be coached.
Speaker 2:Yeah, coaching is important coaching is very important because they can see your blind spots where you can't yeah yeah, even michael jordan had a coach, of course absolutely, yeah, absolutely. And when you're looking for a coach, I'll tell you a coach, of course, absolutely, yeah, absolutely. And when you're looking for a coach, I'll tell you a coach that doesn't have a coach shouldn't be coaching. No, just a tip, that's in there. Yeah, you need to have somebody who sees their blind spots as well.
Speaker 1:You know, covid messed up the whole coaching world because everybody became a coach during COVID, but now the real coaches. Covid messed up the whole coaching world because everybody became a coach during COVID, yeah, but now the real coaches can stand up again.
Speaker 2:They're rising to the top, aren't they?
Speaker 1:Yeah, because the COVID coaches are going back to work. Exactly, exactly.
Speaker 2:They realize that they didn't know. It's one thing to be able to do something. It's another thing to be able to teach somebody else how to do it. That's a skill in itself. This has been a great conversation. What didn't we talk about that you would love to talk about in our next few minutes here? That you want to make sure everybody knows and understands and how to get a hold of you and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:Our website is walkinvictoryme. I'm going to be talking about my upcoming. Our website is walkingvictoryme. I'm going to be talking about my upcoming book. I'm writing a book on AI and prompt engineering, but I'm using the whole prompt engineering to deal with the mindset, some of the stuff that we just talked about today, because prompt engineering is just like the IMs that we discuss showing you, giving you seven-day challenges, giving you things to help you develop. So that should be out sometime in the next few months and I'm excited about that.
Speaker 1:Our podcast, walking Victory, is doing well and there you have an amazing amount of guests and I'm going to have Dr B on there so we can have a conversation like this where we help you. Our slogan is we evolve lives through conversations. I love it, so we want to evolve, help people evolve. We lead with value. We ask good questions so that we can get the most out of it. Actionable steps for people that they can start using today. And that's it, man. My email is Tillman. You can do info at Walking Victory or Tillman229 at Gmail if you want to get into contact with us, and we just love what you're doing. Thank you for having me, man.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Well. Thank you for being part what you're doing and thank you for having me, man, absolutely well thank you for being part.
Speaker 2:uh, you, I never know where the show is going to go, and I think this is a super important one, where we really kind of talk about some of the pitfalls that we fall into, whether it's why we're younger we don't move forward, or whether we're older, we're going wait a minute. If we're not looking at our relationships, we're not looking at our, we're not looking to change the person we are, and I thank you for covering that. And so go ahead. If you are, you know, wanting to hit subscribe, I can promise you, with all the episodes that we have, you will find people that you can relate to. You will find people that can help you move forward, because what I believe is your God's greatest gift.
Speaker 2:And by being God's greatest gift he loves you, if you allow him to, and he can help you find the purpose that you're supposed to be in, so that you now can become the person that you need to be. So we will see you on many episodes of it. Neera, thank you again for getting on talking, sharing, being vulnerable. I look forward to being on your show and then we'll the rest of you. We'll look forward to talking to you on the next one. Have an amazing, incredible day. Talk to you soon.