We think we want the success to come easy but in reality that would be the biggest curse to have. Success that comes easy leaves easy. Consider this; What if your pursuit of progress could be your most powerful addiction? What do you think that would do in your life 5 years down the road? How do we get to the place where personal evolution isn't just a passion but a lifestyle? This is a much needed listen.
This podcast is 100% donation driven. If you like the content I provide I would truly appreciate any donation you have to offer.
Watch On YouTube
Listen To My Music!
Here's how you can donate:
VENMO
PAYPAL
CASH APP
Need other options? Email me at:
dariusdotch@gmail.com
We think we want the success to come easy but in reality that would be the biggest curse to have. Success that comes easy leaves easy. Consider this; What if your pursuit of progress could be your most powerful addiction? What do you think that would do in your life 5 years down the road? How do we get to the place where personal evolution isn't just a passion but a lifestyle? This is a much needed listen.
This podcast is 100% donation driven. If you like the content I provide I would truly appreciate any donation you have to offer.
Watch On YouTube
Listen To My Music!
Here's how you can donate:
VENMO
PAYPAL
CASH APP
Need other options? Email me at:
dariusdotch@gmail.com
What's up everybody, and thank you for listening to Mastering the Mindset. My name is Darius Dutch and I'm an actor, hip hop artist and fitness and life coach. I'm here to personally help you train and improve your mindset so that you can, one, become the best version of yourself mentally and, two, gain focus and motivation to be able to take action and achieve the success in life that you want and deserve. Before we get started, please like and subscribe to my channel. At the end of this episode. If you liked it, please share it with a friend or a loved one or someone who will benefit from hearing this message. I'm so glad you're here and I'm ready to go on this journey with you, and that journey begins now. Alright, and welcome back to another episode, man, thank y'all so much for being here. If you are listening to me via podcast, please leave a review, and if you are watching on YouTube, please be sure to like and subscribe. Both things are greatly appreciated and both things will help me greatly, so thank you. Now let's go ahead and get started. So we have covered a lot of topics on here, and if you're like me and you've been at least trying to apply some of these things in life, then you should, without a doubt, be seeing some growth. And that's exactly what I'm touching on today, which is growth, and how do we get more growth and why it's so critical in our lives. And there's this very dramatic sounding quote I came across that says you either growing or you're dying. And as dramatic as that sounds, there is some truth behind that. You're either green and growing or you're brown and dying. It's part of nature, it's part of the human experience and unfortunately, too many times people get comfortable and they become stagnant. We get stagnant and we wonder why we're not happy. And I truly believe the path to growth, the path to true happiness, to true fulfillment, is always to be growing, always to be changing, evolving, always chasing that better version of ourselves. And that process should be happening on a daily basis. And actually it is nature. Literally, what do I mean? So your body has 37 trillion cells 37 trillion.
Speaker 1:Now think about this. Your body replaces cells every second. Your body replaces 810,000 cells every second. That's almost hard to wrap my mind around. 810,000 cells every second are being replaced by your body. That means that just in the time you've been listening to me talk, several millions of cells have been replaced inside of you. Old cells are dying. New cells are replacing those old cells.
Speaker 1:You're growing and changing all the time, constantly, even though we don't feel it. In our bodies we're growing and replacing ourselves on a constant basis. Your digestive system it replaces itself every four days. Your lung tissue, it replaces itself every eight days. Every year, 10% of your skeleton replaces itself. Every single part of your body is replacing itself all the time.
Speaker 1:So think about this. What this means is that every 10 years, you are literally a completely different person. If 10% of your skeleton replaces itself every year and everything else is being replaced way faster, in 10 years that body of yours is going to be a completely different one. Now, I don't know about you, but I don't want to just be a different person on a cellular level, on a cellular level tongue twister in 10 years. I want to be different mentally and successfully as well. And for this to happen, we need to be growing and changing other areas of our lives as well, and it definitely needs to be happening in our minds. Right? The pathway to happiness is growth All the time, all the time, all the time. The pathway to happiness is growth In order to grow the external part of our lives. In order to grow our identities, our happiness and our confidence, we have to be aware of the need to grow mentally and in our mindsets. So let's talk about it.
Speaker 1:So I believe that every year you should be a different version of you. If you look back a year from now and compare yourself, you should, without a doubt, see some growth, and if you don't, you shouldn't be comfortable with that. That should be something for you to evaluate, because too many times, even though our skeleton is replacing itself by 10%, even though our long tissue is replaced every eight days our digestive system, we don't replace ourselves with the next best version of ourselves. And then there becomes a certain age, an age that's different for everybody, but an age that the version of yourself, the versions of yourself, start to be the same. Let's say the 18 year old version of you. That version is almost exactly like the 19 year old version or was it 26? And you're almost identical to the 23 version. 23 year old version of you. Or the 35 year old you looks exactly like the 29 year old you.
Speaker 1:In the process of growth, it begins to slow down and a lot of times it stops all together and when we stop replacing ourselves every year, we get stagnant and we never change. We never grow. We have to get to the place where growth is an addiction for you. Let me say that again. We have to get to the place where growth is an addiction for you. Many times have we done or said this, and I know I have. You get presented some kind of information or some situation presents itself to you. That would no doubt help you grow, but it requires you to put in some work and you say stuff like yeah, I look into that. Oh yeah, I should do that. Or okay, I'll see. Oh yeah, you're right, I should go ahead and get around to doing that. We've said it, we've all done it. See, we like to grow, but every time we don't make it a priority, we don't make it an urgency. We don't get there. It's impossible to. And it all comes back to that quote You're either growing or you're dying.
Speaker 1:It's like you didn't know about all the ways your body grows and replaces itself. You should be growing as well. You need to grow and it needs to become an attention, an intention of yours. It needs to become an obsession. You can't always acquire and get what you want that new house, the new car, that relationship, that job, some of those things you can't control. But what you can control and acquire is the next version of you. And that requires being accountable. That requires growth, that requires a conscious effort, that requires putting in some work, just like being in the gym.
Speaker 1:Think about working out To build muscle. You have to intentionally break your muscles down. You have to make your muscles uncomfortable for periods at a time. Think about those times when you work out. Do you think, if you go to the gym and you work out from home, that if you're comfortable the entire time, you will see growth? That's literally impossible. No, you have to break those muscles down to build them back up again. To get that growth and this is true in life Sometimes we have to take a step backwards.
Speaker 1:It may get uncomfortable, just like in the gym, just like on those last few reps. It may start to hurt, it gets really uncomfortable. But we know that when we are hurting, we're growing. If it's not hurting, then you're not growing. And we understand that concept without having to put much thought into it. And it's also true that when it's also true About that, when it comes to our identity, our confidence, our life. It has to be hurting at least a little bit in order to be growing. So we have to run towards that pain, not away from it. We can't be comfortable in life and grow. That is literally impossible and this particular podcast episode is a real-time example of that.
Speaker 1:I don't know. You probably can hear a difference in my the quality of this podcast and I get to that in just a second. But I didn't do a podcast episode last week, which I had a very good reason to. I was in tech week for the show I'm in right now and if you know about tech week, it is long, it's tiresome. You sit in the dark theater for 10, 11 hours a day and the show on the show I'm in has a lot of technical elements to it. So we literally needed every last second of tech rehearsal, even on the day of opening night, and I was exhausted and Mentally it would have, it would not have been good for me to try and push through and get you a podcast. So I gave myself grace for my own sake in the long run, but the moment I just had with myself just now. So I had a show yesterday and I'm recording this on a Monday and I'm in Chicago for performance for a different theater company, for Pernumber theater, and that's tomorrow, and I'm actually in a hotel room right now, so the quality may may suffer a little bit, but I wanted to get this to you. So I fly out tomorrow After my show and I go straight from the venue to the airport and I have a student matinee early the next morning, early Wednesday morning, and on the plane ride here I started working on music which, by the way, I have some sneak previews for you.
Speaker 1:So stick around to the end and I'll let you hear something that nobody else has heard before. And so I'm working on the song and I'm cooking. I mean, I'm surprising myself lyrically. And then I get to the hotel and I'm like, oh man, I do not feel like recording this damn podcast. And the moment or thought I had to myself is Dutch. You are literally living a life you pray for. You're traveling and performing, you're in a show back in Minnesota, you're creating music, you have the podcast. This is your dream. Now am I where I want to be at with it all, like where I ultimately want to be? No, but how will I ever get there? How will I build up that muscle when the projects and the performances get bigger and bigger? Do the damn podcast, dutch, just do it. And it's not like I have to work today, right, I'm in this hotel room and I don't got to be anywhere until tomorrow, at tomorrow at 2 pm, so I'm going to do the podcast and hopefully finish writing that song. I'm going to shower, watch TV and just be proud of myself that that's an area of growth that I'm able to recognize and learn from and take advantage of. So, anyway, let's keep it moving.
Speaker 1:So how do we grow? Ask yourself this In the last week, last month, last year, how many uncomfortable situations have you put yourself in? How many uncomfortable situations have you put yourself in? That challenge you that grew you, that puts you to get you to that next level of who you are? Are you under the illusion that you can acquire these external things? You want the new car, the house, the growth, the goals, the career, the marriage, the things that you want without growing who you are? You could not be further from the truth. As a matter of fact, if you did happen to get those things. Understand that the power of identity is real, if you got those things without growing yourself, you will lose those things.
Speaker 1:Think about all the celebrities who have the world given to them, especially the ones who strike lightning and the bomb right. They quote, unquote, overnight successes. How many times have we seen them not be able to handle it? How many times are celebrities in the news because they just can't handle all the things that have been given to them? They didn't grow. People think money will change you. It doesn't. Money makes you even more for who you already are. Same thing for athletes. How many times are they in the news for doing some crazy wild incident? And you see it on your timeline. You're like how in the hell are they making these stupid choices? It's simple they can't handle it because they haven't grown. They haven't grown.
Speaker 1:And I think about me being in college and playing football man. So many dudes came through their program and couldn't make it because they couldn't handle the responsibility of being a college athlete. They would go out partying and drinking and a lot of them were flunk out of school because they literally couldn't handle having a scholarship, being committed to a football, being committed to the football team and to school At the same time. No, the partying consumed them. They couldn't handle it and they got kicked out of school, kicked off the team and ended up leaving and going back home. And some of those dudes were extremely talented man. One of those guys should be an NFL kicker right now the best kicker I have ever seen in real life on a football field with me and he didn't even make it to his junior year.
Speaker 1:My point is if you were to acquire the things you really want without growing yourself, you will eventually lose it because they aren't congruent with who you are as a person. So evaluate yourself. This last week, this last month, how many times, how much have you put yourself in those uncomfortable situations to help you grow? And that could be a number of different ways. Right, putting yourself in positions that you're not completely prepared for, especially if you're perfectionist, or being uncomfortable by putting yourself in some extra time after work? Right, we all want to come home and relax, but let's be real. If you're relaxing, you're not growing. And I get it, you're tired, work is hard, but that's the life.
Speaker 1:Don't use the excuse of work, because you better believe there are people out there who are busting their butts and getting things done at an elite level, and one of the realest things I heard Steve Harvey say was that if you want to be a millionaire, you can't sleep eight hours a night. If you want to be successful and make a lot of money and get ahead in life, you can't sleep eight hours a night. And that is literally a third of your life. How would you expect to get ahead in life if you are sleep for a third of it? And I know what you're thinking. Eight hours is what's healthy. It is what the body needs. I'm not saying that you should never get eight hours of sleep.
Speaker 1:What I'm saying is you have to have the mentality that sometimes you're gonna have to be uncomfortable and lose some sleep to achieve certain things, just like a CEO or somebody who is super successful Business owner. They know that if they live on the West Coast, they can't wake up at 8 o'clock in the morning because for folks on the East Coast, the stock market already been open for three hours and Decisions are being made. They can't afford to be waking up at 8 30 and that's how we have to look at growth. Being uncomfortable is part of that process being tired, putting in extra hours, putting yourself in situations you normally wouldn't be in if you were comfortable, like having anxiety and fear of public speaking. If you've never done it or you only do it when you absolutely have to, of course you ain't gonna be good at it. Of course is gonna be terrifying, but what do you think? What happened? If you worked at it, over time you will get more comfortable with it and we put children through this exact same growth process. They get put in situations that challenge them and make them uncomfortable. Every day, in math, they learn something new. They have to read in front of the class. Every year, in Spanish, they learn new words. It's a constant at school, especially if they're in sports. They're in situations that challenge them, that make them uncomfortable, and it grows them and as adults, we start to avoid these circumstances and challenges and we grow at a way slower pace.
Speaker 1:So the second thing you should be doing is feeding your mind, and I've talked about this a lot on here and I bring it up again because it's really important. What books are you reading? What podcasts are you listening to? You're already on a good track with this one, but what things are you learning? What are you reading online? Do you only follow celebrities and funny cat videos and funny cat pages, or do you follow those pages that give you knowledge and insight?
Speaker 1:The more you feed your mind, the more your outlook on life will change, and it'll be an advantage because you know things that you didn't use to, and I promise that from that you guys, anybody that knows me I have a lot of random knowledge in my brain, and it's because I make it a point To learn about as many things as possible, and what happens is your conversations are different when they need to be and, yes, I have a certain way. I talk around my family, my friends, especially my homeboys, but certain rooms that you walk in that require you to speak in a certain way and you have to be mentally prepared for those situations. And feeding your mind will Find you so much perspective on life and many other things that, in the long run, the decisions you make, the habits you pick up, will serve you way better. There is literally only good that can come from knowing and learning many, many things. And the third thing is and I mentioned this one before too who you associate with. There is an incredible power to who you hang around, and to grow you have to have at least that one friend that you look up to that one friend, that when you around them, you feel the need to step up your game, because who you hang around is very indicative of who you are.
Speaker 1:There's this saying that if you want to know who you'll be like 10 years from now, look around you. It'll be the average of the people you spend the most time with. And this is true. Think about the people you hang out with the most. I know it's definitely true for me. My best friends are also actors. We pretty much in the same stratosphere as far as where we are in life and I know I've been motivating them. They see me putting in so much work on myself and they've even told me like, yeah, you motivated me to start to start waking up earlier, or you motivated me to start being more serious when my workouts and all I did Would be myself. It ain't like I've been preaching to them about this kind of stuff. No, they just see me what I'm doing and it's compared them to take action. And that's what would happen if you spend time around those folks you feel like are on a higher level than you, and what I'm not telling you to do Is compare yourself. Let me say it again I'm not telling you to compare yourself. What I'm saying is those folks should motivate you. They should motivate you to want to put that work in, to grow Friends that make you want to level up right? So who are those people that you can add to your group of friends?
Speaker 1:And the last thing we need to grow is momentum. We need momentum once we get started. We have to keep fueling that fire. Momentum is the reason why people's new year's resolutions always fall apart by April. They don't maintain that momentum. They think that once they start towards that goal, they can just coast and they eventually get there. Nope, that's not how growth works. Yeah, you might start out fast and strong, but eventually you will slow down, and those are the times when you have to Manufacture that momentum. You have to keep feeding that fire. You have to find different ways to motivate yourself when the old ways just ain't working. If you build up that momentum, it will carry you towards your growth. It will help you. Those opportunities for growth will start presenting themselves and if you have that momentum, you can recognize it and snatch it. So figure out how to build up that momentum. Stack up those days that you get everything done on your to-do list. Have those moments. Will you tell yourself, one more rep, one more rep for everything, not just working out, but in life.
Speaker 1:If you read two chapters, make it three. If you decide to study for two hours, make it two and a half. If you respond to 15 emails, make it 20. That's the kind of momentum that will propel you and magnify your growth. Get those small wins. Too many times we want the big goals and we try to achieve it all at once. Stack those small wins and keep stacking them and they will give you that momentum you need.
Speaker 1:So again, you're either growing or you're dying. Sounds grim, but we absolutely cannot get stagnant. Being stagnant will no doubt kill your dreams, it'll kill your ambition and you'll end up being the same person you were last year, and I really don't want that for myself, but I really don't want that for you. So let's get it in and let's put in this work and let's see some growth. So, like I said, I do have some music for you that has not been released yet. I'm gonna play that at the end of my last little ask and I ask you to please subscribe and like if you're on YouTube. Also please make a donation. This podcast is donation driven. All donations are greatly appreciated and it makes this podcast possible. And again, if you are listening on a podcast, please leave me a review. It really, really helps me. All right, so let's get it in.
Speaker 1:Here goes your unreleased song I'm a leap of faith and I never landed. I'm fly as a bird, I'm high as a bird and highly favored. But it wasn't my time to shine, so I waited my turn, said back and observed, yeah, and I got to work. And before I sign on your dotted line, put some respect on my check. Yeah, cause I know my worth. I done bought much, only what I deserve. I write that beat like I write in a hearse. I buy the bag of beat. Boy, I come with this heat. You might need a urn. I let it burn and as long as my family proud, I'm sitting here laughing Just like my daddy, cause we go grind. You know we go work. Long as he proud of me, that's all that matter. All your chateaubres, not my concern. Never no negative words from her. She probably salty because she got cursed. You probably thought he was finishing done. You started to doubt me, I promise. It made me go hard as ever.
Speaker 1:Open the night. I gotta buy me a open and fit man. I hope I don't splurge. I'm reaching heights. I know eventually I gotta fall. I hope it don't hurt. Hoping I don't stay down on the bottom. I hope I return. It's open tonight. Hoping I go to bed and wake up tomorrow, like over the night. Hoping you not trying to argue with me.
Speaker 1:Dog, you know what you write. I ain't seen her in a while. She know it's on site. She know that I'm busy. As soon as I find Lincoln that they off, she get the whole night Almost time. This is the night. Clean my mind. I'm finna get right.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, hoping I shine. They dim in the lights. Yes, wish I could give you this feeling. I promise this shit is the best. I got this weight on my chest. I'm pushing it off me. Promise you that's not a flex.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, damn it. You gotta be so analytic. All you gotta say is you don't get it. I'll hear acting like a critic. Yes, I'm done trying to prove to y'all that I've been gifted. Half of y'all ain't know I existed. Now my name is selling tickets. Yes, I'm thankful to myself. I stay committed and I'm sorry if I've been distant. I hope you don't get it twisted. I don't have hate in my spirit, I only hate flying spirit. Open the night. We've been sipping. I hope I'm still coherent.
Speaker 1:Yes, standing ovation, a big celebration. Pick up your libation. I'm making a toast. I put in hours and hours perfecting my craft. That makes me about to give you the most. I make it look easy, but trust and believe me, if you tried to beat me, I know you would choke. I don't want to settle. I want to do better. I'll hold another level. I'm talking about growth. It's opening night and I don't know space to type the way I feel in this post. Think about friends and all the parties I missed and places that I couldn't go. Sorry, but I gotta miss it. I be there in spirit. Damn. I feel like a ghost. I hate the stage and I float.