I Think I'm Finally Becoming Myself Again

In this episode, I talk honestly about something I’ve been realizing lately… how social media, pressure, performance, and constantly trying to “say the right thing”, slowly made me lose touch with parts of myself.

While being out here in Japan, I’ve had time to reflect on creativity, identity, authenticity, purpose, burnout, content creation, and what it actually means to feel like yourself again.

I talk about:
- overthinking your voice online
- feeling pressure to always sound deep or inspirational
- social media performance vs real personality
- why culture, music, sports, humor, and creativity matter to me
- becoming more expressive and honest
- rediscovering joy in creating again
- why people connect more with authenticity than perfection

This episode is for creators, entrepreneurs, artists, high performers, and anyone who feels like they’ve been disconnected from themselves trying to become who they thought they were supposed to be.

Recorded in Japan.

#podcast #selfdevelopment #creativity #mindset #authenticity #socialmedia #identity #selfgrowth #mentalhealth #motivation #creator #culture #podcasting #personaldevelopment

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

So I am currently in Japan right now. And this is not a flex. I'm not trying to flex, but I'm in Japan at the time of this recording is uh about 1.32 p.m.

SPEAKER_00 0:17

May the 20th, I believe, which means that it's we're a day ahead.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

So we're 16 hours ahead in California, 13 hours ahead on the East Coast.

SPEAKER_00 0:28

So it's about 12:30 a.m. in Michigan and 9:30 p.m.

SPEAKER_01 0:39

Tuesday in LA. And I gotta tell you, I've been here for about four days now, and this has been the most incredible trip I've ever been on in my entire life. Now, I want to preface this by saying I've never really been a traveler, let alone out the country, let alone Japan, which is this is so many people's bucket list, especially coming from where I'm from. This is so many people's bucket list to travel to Japan. And to go to Disneyland for the first time in my life and to say that I went to Disneyland, Tokyo is crazy. Um, I'm gonna be here for 17 days. So I have basically two more weeks left here to explore, to travel, to create content, and um just to have a great time. So it and two quick things I want to share with you before we get into the episode. The food here is incredible. It's just incredible. I had uh the first night here, I had ramen, um, which was out of this world. Last night, then the second day was at Disneyland pretty much all day.

SPEAKER_00 1:57

Then last night, yesterday I went to this burger place, like in downtown Tokyo proper, called what's the place called? It is, I want to give them a proper shout out.

SPEAKER_01 2:15

It's called Wagyu Burger in uh Hiroka, Tokyo. Outstanding. I got this burger called, I think it's called the Cheese Bob. And basically, what it is, is it's a double cheeseburger, and they bring the burger out, and then they take this cup. I'm gonna share it on my Instagram so you see, but they take this cup and they pour all this melted cheese in the cup and then they remove it and it just goes all over the burger. And they give you like these black um, you know, latex gloves to uh to eat your food. One of the things that I've noticed about the eating here, the portion sizes are a lot smaller than in American cuisine. They also bring the fries out as an appetizer rather than bring it out with the burger. And so they give you the fries first, and it's literally like a small little cup of French fries, which was outstanding. And then the main thing, the burger, was a good size. But the food here is outstanding. Um, the second thing is it's very quiet here. The people here in Japan are very quiet. It's very structured, um, and it's very clean. The customer service has been amazing. It's it's just I I cannot. The four days that I've been here, I cannot. I'm gonna take the turn this live off. The four days that I've been here, I know this video is gonna be terrible. You know, I don't have maybe I'll turn off. Oh, let me just this a little bit. Sorry, I'm I'm making this up as I go here, guys.

SPEAKER_00 3:51

How do I lock this? There you go.

SPEAKER_01 3:54

Um the customer service has been amazing. I cannot stress if you can ever go to Japan, I highly recommend it. It's been a life-changing experience, which is kind of what has driven me to make this video or and this podcast, I should say. Um, so if you're watching this and if you're listening to this, the what I want to leave you with on this episode of Out Loud is I'm not saying you have to come to Japan to recognize this, but being here has made me realize how long I've been overthinking who I'm supposed to be, especially whom I'm presenting myself to be online. I, you know, since I can remember, I've been someone that just second guessed my ability, second-guessed my talent, second-guessed just me. And if I can just talk about the last six years of my life that I've been a presence on social media, you know, I I have over a million plus followers across social media platforms. And, you know, I for for uh the last two to three years, I kind of felt like I kind of hit this place where creatively I kind of felt stale, even though I my content wasn't stale, even though that I really enjoyed the content that I was making. I just felt like there was more to me that I just wasn't saying.

SPEAKER_00 5:34

You know what I mean? And um, if you know me personally behind the scenes, you know I'm I'm a very serious, not serious person.

SPEAKER_01 5:51

Meaning, like when it's time to have the conversations where we have to go deep, we go there. But most of the time I'm I'm very laid back. I love to have a good time. I'm talking about movies or shows or sports or you know, pop culture for the most part of the conversations that we're having.

SPEAKER_00 6:13

Um I'm cracking jokes a lot. I come from a family that crack jokes a lot in debates.

SPEAKER_01 6:22

So I'm debating a lot sometimes, and I felt like I never really got a chance to show that part of me for the first three to four years of me being on social. And now, especially these last, this past year of 2026, I've kind of just slowly started to roll out the full air experience, which has caught a lot of people off guard. I'm telling you, I get messages and DMs of people that are just like, oh man, I remember when you were doing the prayer videos or when you were doing encouraging words, talking about your relationship with God, man. I hope you find your way back. I'm like, damn, like it's like, you know, this is exactly why I was waiting so long to do the kind of content that I'm doing now, was because of that reason. I built such a platform on Christian content that I felt like if I were to talk about other things that I was interested in, that people would think that I'm not a believer anymore. Or, you know, my friends or people that I went to church with would start looking at me sideways, or I had all these ideas in my head. And so I would get these DMs and messages of people saying that, and I'd be like, dang, like people just really think I just don't believe in God or I'm not a Christian anymore. Like, and it's further from the truth. If anything, my relationship with God and my walk with Christ has gotten deeper the more I started doing this kind of content, because one of the things that I now realize is that personality is a part of purpose. I want to say this again. Don't miss this. Personality is a part of purpose. How you are uniquely wired, the way you think, the way you perceive things, your sense of humor, how you talk, if you're animated, your personality is a part of your purpose. And there is a certain way that you are, that when you pair that with the thing that you care about the most and you deliver it in a way that only you can, there's no other feeling greater than that. And I shared something on my stories a couple of days ago that the last 30 days where I really kind of doubled down on me when I started talking about Michael Jackson and pop culture and music and movies and kind of things that's going on in the world. Stuff that I've been wanting to do and I just haven't done it. And I share, uh I shared this screenshot that over the last 30 days on Instagram alone, I've amassed like 1.3 million views.

SPEAKER_00 9:05

I have videos that have done, you know, I think I have three videos alone that have done 300 plus thousand views. And I have videos that have done 100,000, 200,000, 50,000, whatever. And it's not about the metrics, but it's about not only is the content doing well, but I feel well while doing the content.

SPEAKER_01 9:38

And if you're if you're listening to this or watching this, and you're at a point in your life where I was at, I'm 39 years old, right? This is another reason why being in Japan means so much to me, because one of my goals for my last year of my 30s is to do stuff that I've never done. Um and to close out my 30s with the bang. So, what way to be a month into turning 39 and being in Japan?

SPEAKER_00 10:08

But if you're watching this or and if or if you're listening to this and you are where I am or where I was, this is your sign, man, to just really say I'm about to double down on being mean. And whatever that means to you, right?

SPEAKER_01 10:27

It may not be content for you, it may not be, you know, video, it may be audio for you, maybe it's it's it's starting a business, maybe it's going back to school. I don't know what it is for you, but it could be all of it. And I think being born in this time that we're in right now, where there literally is an endless amount of ways for you to express your creativity. I just really think it's important to just shoot your shot and just try something. And why not try it all? You know, and it's like with this podcast, I really do believe God has placed on my heart a very, very here's the thing too, like I God I was able to touch a lot of people with my content, you know, prayers, encouraging words. I was, you know, being asked to come around the country to speak at conferences and just to speak on stages and big and small. And I I preached at my church. I helped start a youth ministry. I spoke at eighth grade graduation commissions ceremonies. Um, even just the messages I would get on social media about how much my content meant to them. I've been able to reach a lot of people. And I'm very fortunate and grateful to be able to do that. But one of the things that I also think about now is I was able to reach a lot of people, being one part of me.

SPEAKER_00 12:04

And one of the things that really brings me joy is now that I'm opening up more of me.

SPEAKER_01 12:14

How many more souls can I reach? How many more people can I reach and help them find a relationship with God? And some of you may be asking, well, you're not talking about prayers, you're not talking about God as much as you used to. How can you see man? This is what you, this is what you fail to realize. You know, it's not just about talking about God, it's about walking with Him. I don't want people to just know that I'm a believer because I say it. I want people to know because of how I live, because when they meet me in person and they're able to see my authenticity and to hear the passion and to hear my love for God and my love for my work, that they experience that through their relationship and encounters with me. There's a lot of people that talk about it, but when you are with them in person, there's no connection or relatability there. You know what I mean? It's kind of hollow. And I've been there too, where like I talk about God a lot and I've reached a lot of people around the world virtually, but there's been a lot of times where I'm one-on-one with someone or in a small group. I'm not really present. And I feel like one of the reasons why I kind of got burnt out a few years ago was because a lot of what I was doing was very performative. And I know that's a word that's being thrown around a lot, but I felt very performative of what I was doing with my career. And now, you know, I'm still training people, I'm coaching, you know, coaching people one-on-one. And, you know, I still work with a lot of business people behind the scenes. So there are things that I do that I don't really talk about a lot, but you know, I coach founders and executives and CEOs on how to um get the most out of their business, but more importantly, how to get the most out of themselves and let that bleed into their business, right? So helping people become more whole holistically and mind, body, and spirit, and and and how to get rid of the noise that's in the head and get into your body and and and focus on what's important and how to get results in a in a faster fashion, right? So people pay me to get results quickly, but also results that are nutritionally dense. What do I mean by that? We're not just getting goals and we're not just accomplishing things just to say it. Like we're we're we're we're going after fulfillment here, not success. So two totally different things. So I do that too, right? So but the reason why I bring all this up is I want to show the world all of me. And I'll never forget this conversation I had with one of my best friends, Kyle, on my birthday in 2025, so last year. And he just said, like, bro, you lived a lot of lives. And that we were having this conversation on my birthday in the parking lot of a gym. And he, I was telling him about what I was thinking about and what I was feeling, and he was just like, bro, you lived a lot of lives. I just think you got to let people into like all the lives that you lived and all the experiences you've had. People don't know about my journey with basketball. People don't know about, you know, you know, having a black mother and a white father, what it was like growing up the only mixed kid in your family, and having three white brothers and two black brothers and not feeling scene. I don't really talk about that a lot. You know, talk about going to private schools and, you know, having your professional basketball dreams taken away because of knee surgeries and going into acting and modeling and relationships and all these things that I never really talked about because I felt like I couldn't, but in reality, I wasn't giving myself permission to do that. And I'm telling you right now, the things that you are the most hesitant to do because of how you feel people are gonna perceive that are the things you should be doing. Uh repeat. What you are hesitant to do for whatever reason, you're scared, you're worried, uh, you don't know how people are gonna perceive that. People are gonna like you, they're gonna hate you, they're gonna love you, whatever. Those things are what you should be doing. One, it's gonna require faith. It's gonna require you to go outside of yourself to do that, right? So you're bringing God into what you're doing, which is what I was saying earlier. Like me taking a leap of faith and starting to make content that really moves my soul, allows me to bring God into the things that I'm uncertain about doing, and it gives me the strength to do it, and it can come out on the screen, right? I have friends. I'm gonna tell you something. I have friends that have reached out to me about the content that I'm putting out now that was not reaching out to me of the content I was doing before. And one of the reasons why is because I believe this is just what I believe. I believe because I'm making myself feel more relatable to people, right? Because sometimes, you know, when you're walking this life, and you know, when you're walking with God and when you, you know, or just being a believer like me, sometimes we forget that everybody's at different stages of their faith journey. And it's important to not shout from the mountaintops, but come down to where people are at. And this doesn't, I don't want to make it seem like I'm up here and I gotta go down to reach people down, but it's more so I I want to be able to feel approachable that when people hear me speak or they or they see my content, they're like, you know what, this is a dude that I want to, you know, have lunch with, this is a guy I want to have coffee with, this is a dude that if I was on a five-hour plane ride, if I was on a 12-hour flight to Japan, we would have an incredible conversation. And because of that, right, that allows me to build that trust to be able to, if it goes there, to talk about my faith and to talk about why I do what I do, or if they ask me, you know, how do you get so confident, you know, or whatever it goes into, it allows me to do that. And so I have no nothing written down at all. I'm just thinking off the top of my head right now, and what's in my heart is like it's really important for you to just really be yourself. And I know it's hard to do and it's very easy to say, but you know, I have clients that I work with, and I'm telling you, like I have a client that I'm about to work with that is in the music industry.

SPEAKER_00 19:20

One of the things that you know we're gonna work on is is sometimes we we try to do our way into clarity instead of um instead of just being right.

SPEAKER_01 19:40

And what I mean by that is like when you're trying to make things happen, when you're when you're trying to, you know, uh to make things better, there there tends to be a tendency to to do more stuff, take on more responsibilities, make more content, try to make more money, and try to just put more stuff on your plate. But sometimes the answer is actually doing less.

SPEAKER_00 20:04

And like just being yourself. We are human beings, we're not human doings.

SPEAKER_01 20:16

And the more that we we're trying to do things, sometimes it it's coming from a place of insecurity because we we we need people's approval. So we think that if we do more, we're proving to people that we deserve and earn the things that we get. When in reality, it's just like number one, the more that you just be yourself and you understand and you're secure in you, whatever people think is of no concern. Like they crucified Christ. So people are gonna hate, people are gonna think whatever they want to think, regardless of the fact. And so if you're spending your time trying to prove people that you're good or that you should listen to my music, or you should read my book, or you should listen to my podcast, like you're gonna waste your time. You know what I mean? So as somebody that just turned 39 and that is in his, you know, in his about to approach 40 era, one of the things I wish I would have learned earlier was to trust my own ability more and to trust that what made me different did not discredit my purpose. It actually differentiated me from everyone to make my work more purposeful. Because now I carry myself in a way that if you remove me from any equation, the value of the thing you remove me from goes way down. And when you put me into an equation, the value of what you put me in goes way up.

SPEAKER_00 21:52

Because I know that you can only get the errand experience if it's coming from me.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

So, like when I put out content, right? Or like when I'm doing a podcast, one of the things that I'm keeping in the forefront of my mind is like, am I trying to sound like you should listen to this, or am I just being me, knowing that my perspective on the world is so valuable and the way I do it is so unique that the right person has to stop and listen to it because they're gonna see something or hear something that they've never heard before because it can only come through me. Right? And so that's what I'm saying. Like walking with God is like when I'm being myself, I allow him to come through me more because I'm not trying to control this. I was talking to a client of mine, and uh the same guy I was talking about, and one of the things I said in our first meeting was your job is to let go of the balloon, not try to control the wind. And instantly when he heard that, he was like, damn, that makes so much sense. And what I was telling him was, we have a tendency to try to control the wind before we let go of the balloon. And so we want all the conditions to be right and perfect. Like we we need people to do this and this and this, and I need this and this and this. And then I'll feel secure enough to let the balloon because now I know where it's gonna go. When in reality, creativity is an infinite resource, it's a spiritual asset, it's endless. You cannot run out of creativity. Like we are a we are God's creation. And so, because of that, creativity is a is an endless asset. However, if you don't use it, you will get clogged up. So when people have like writer's block or they're overthinking or things like that, one of those reasons is because you have ideas and things that you should have executed on a long time ago and you haven't done it. And so you you're you're jammed up with ideas and thoughts because you're not getting rid of stuff. Some of the videos that I put up, dog, I'm not, I'm not even gonna hold you. Some of this is just to get shit out of the way so I can make room for the one that's gonna pop. And I don't know which ones are gonna pop, but I know like if I'm trying to overthink and trying to figure out how to say this in the right way all the time, I'm I'm gonna clog myself up. So when the when the thing comes to me in the moment where I'm just like, yo, I gotta say this now, I won't be able to do it because I'm still thinking about the thing I should have released two weeks ago. You feel me? So you got to let go of the balloon for the balloon's sake and let the wind be what the wind is gonna be. But here's the thing: the more you let go of balloons, you'll start to see a trend of where the wind is blowing. That's why it's important to let ideas flow, because you're trying to control the wind and you're trying to look at the trend of where the wind is going before you even know where it's blowing. You know what I'm saying? Like, in order for you to know where the wind is going, you got to put something in the air. And so we're trying to control the wind to see like where, nah, you got an idea, you got to get it out. You got something to say, you gotta say it. You you got an idea, you write, you gotta write it. You gotta um, you gotta take about something, you gotta put it out there, bro. Like, you gotta just put it out. And then when you start to do that more consistently, you'll start to see a trend. Okay, like the wind is starting, okay. So let me go over here. You know what I'm saying? When I when I was trying to figure out like how do I say certain things, when the Michael Jackson movie was about to come out and I saw the reviews, I instantly felt something, I felt compelled to say something.

SPEAKER_00 25:52

And I just did it on the spot.

SPEAKER_01 25:55

And the first time I did it, I did it, but I felt like I was trying to control the win. Say it in a way where they kind of so I posted it, then I deleted it, and I was like, nah, I'm gonna say this how I want to say it. One take, boom. Next thing you know, it goes viral. It's got over 300 plus thousand views. Nia Long liked it. A bunch of celebrities liked it, followers was going. Then after that, like, boom, like people was coming, like, what's he gonna say next? What's he gonna say next? Right. And what that has done, it allowed me to see where the wind was blowing in this particular area based on what I was talking about and how I was delivering the message. And so I applied that to different topics, wrestling, sports, music, movies, et cetera. Now, everything doesn't do 300,000, right? It's not about the views, but it's about me letting go of creativity and not keeping it and hoarding it. You know what I'm saying? You gotta spring clean your ideas. And so the purpose of this episode is to hopefully give you confidence that your job is not to control the wind, your job is to let go of the balloon. And when you put enough balloons in the air, you'll start to see a pattern, right? The trend of the wind is just a pattern. The only way you can notice patterns is you need enough evidences, you need enough test subjects. I'm telling you, like when I saw that stat, that 85% of all podcasts that have ever started since 2007 never make it past seven episodes. That let me knew off rip. All I gotta do was just put nine episodes in the air, and my podcast is gonna succeed. Just nine. Just nine puts me in the top 15% of ever. You know what I'm saying? And so as I conclude this episode, I just want you to know that you, whatever it is your heart desires on, you can have it, but you got to put enough balloons in the air. Enough. Like, how much is enough until you start to see a pattern? Until you start. Now, if you keep putting balloons in the air and it keeps going to the left and it's not being received well, then you got to look at, okay, what am I doing incorrectly here? Am I releasing the balloon too high? Is it on the air? And so you start to look at your content, be like, okay, what do I need to change? Like, am I trying to sound too much of this? Am I not being enough of this? Do I need to kind of turn it up a little bit? You know, you can then you can start to analyze the packaging of what you're doing. But until you start to put enough content in the air, you can't really just discern or determine what you have to adjust. And so that's why when people like put stuff out there and it doesn't get accepted off-rip, people take it internally as if, oh, I'm not enough, no one likes me, I'm not good. It's like, nah, you haven't even put enough content out there to even be able to come to a conclusion about where the wind is blown. So, bottom line, man, like as long as you're being authentically yourself and you keep putting stuff out there, God is gonna take care of the rest. Not the universe, God. God is gonna take care of the rest. The person that created the universe is gonna take care of the rest. All right. I'm not trying to throw shade on people that say the universe. I don't say the universe, I say God. That's all right. God is going to take care of the rest. Because creativity is a spiritual asset. It is, you cannot run out of it. But you can get stuck with it. Overthinking, hesitating, you can't clog the the the funnel of where your creativity comes from. Your job is to think of it like this. Your job at the end of the day is to try to get your creativity on zero balance so the next day you have a you know a full supply. So um yeah. So here's my first episode from Japan. I hope this really spoke to you, connected, connected with you. Uh if you haven't followed the podcast, please do so wherever you get your podcast. Subscribe to our YouTube channel uh at Aaron Simpson TV. Yeah, let's continue to grow this thing. I I I really do believe we got something special going here and uh I want to keep it moving. So I love you so much. Be safe and blessed. Thank you for listening to out loud. Thank you for watching, and I'll see you soon. Peace.