Mastering the Mindset
Mastering the Mindset
Stop Borrowing Trouble From Tomorrow
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What if most of what keeps you up at night never happens? It's 2026 and life is hard enough, so stop making it harder. These two habits quietly steal joy and energy; regretting the past ,and worrying about the future. The only place you can actually change things? The present. It's time that we learn what to carry forward without dragging yesterday like a weight on our backs.
Opening Anthem On Chasing Goals
SPEAKER_01Losing myself and finding my strength came to the conclusion that I want it all. Feeling that pressure of tryna do better. I wanna reach heights, but too scared to fall. Too scared of failure, way more scared of feeling regret. I'm not even trying, that's terrifying. I understand that chasing my goals, I bury my clocks because it takes time. I gotta go. I already know. If I wanna grow, you reap what you sow. That be the case. Planting my seeds and water my base. Yeah, I make mistakes. Yeah, I know you grow in your garden, but watch for the snakes. The people that act like you're crazy, but trying it, they far away. They don't think it's possible, I think it's possible. That is just hate. If they hate themselves, cause they on the shelf. While you create a life that you love.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01A life that you love. Loving the fact to improving yourself. Decided that you would not settle. Decided that you got the drive to do it. The road got bumped in your foot on the pedal. You go up a level, you turn up whenever it's time for you to go put in that work. I know my work, huh? I know it ain't gonna be easy, yeah. I know it hurt, but thing is for sure. Yeah. Until it put me in this earth. Before I ride in that hearse, I'm chasing my goals. I'm chasing my goals.
SPEAKER_00Love enough back to improving yourself.
Welcome, Gratitude, And Support Ask
SPEAKER_01Alright, and welcome back to another episode. Thank y'all. Like I always say so much for being here. Uh, if you are on a you uh if you're on YouTube, go ahead and like and subscribe to my channel. If you're listening on a podcast platform, make sure you leave me a review. Also, please become a monthly supporter of the show that helps me keep this thing going for y'all. You can choose a monthly amount, it can either be three, five, eight, or ten dollars, and you can cancel at any time. But why would you ever do that? But let's go ahead and jump in today. The title of this one is pretty straightforward with what I'm gonna talk
Joys Of Summer And Life’s Highs
SPEAKER_01about. Uh, but before we dive in, let me just say this life can be a beautiful thing. When things are right, we enjoy life to the fullest, and it's a beautiful thing. And it's cold and ugly outside right now. But when the summertime comes, a lot of folks start taking vacations. You end up being by water a lot. That's one thing I love about the summer is being by water and being outside. I'm in the kickball league and a softball league, and I'm loving them both. Just being outside in the sun, right? Life can be amazing.
Naming The Problem: We Make Hard Times Harder
SPEAKER_01We all know life can also be hard as hell. We all been there. You've been through some things in life, some hard things, stuff that make you look back and say, damn, I don't know how I made it through that. And I'm gonna talk about today. What I'm talking about today is the fact that the majority of the time when we go through the bad times, when times get tough, we are the ones that can actually make it tougher on ourselves. It don't have to be as tough as we make it. We can get stuck in the past and do all the regretting and wishing it was different, and we can get stuck in the future and worry and give ourselves unnecessary anxiety about what might be coming up next week, next month, the possibility of problems.
Two Habits To Quit Immediately
SPEAKER_01And you better believe all these things can contribute to life just being that much harder. And life being life is crazy enough as it is, right? Things are always changing. Every time you look up, something didn't happen, some tragedy, some mass shooting, some murder, some accident, some scandal, some crazy new law, somebody dying. There's always something going on. And on top of all that, we still have to think about our own happiness and fulfillment and try and keep it all together, right? Hell, we still gotta pay bills. I feel like after all the things we done been through as a country, there should be some kind of bill forgiveness program or something. I need that for a whole year. Should help everybody help everybody get back to normal because my God, this economy right now? Anyway, we should be making things easier on ourselves for ourselves. Don't you think you deserve that? I think you do. So let's dive in. Let's talk about these two things that you need to stop doing immediately to be a happier person.
Story: Merch Mishap And Mindset Shift
SPEAKER_01Number one, and I already touched on it a little bit, but stop regretting the past. By regretting the past, you're keeping yourself stuck in the past. Way too often we let the past determine who we become in the future. Let me say it again. We allow the past to determine who we become in the future. We let the past have way too much weight on what we do with our lives moving forward. So many so many of us just can't allow ourselves to go in the future without bringing that past behind with us. And we all have regrets, things we did, decisions we made, things we didn't do, opportunities we missed, mistakes we made. That's the human experience. Right? One mistake I was just reflecting on the other day, as I was sitting here being grateful for some of the things I've accomplished, um, was when I had a um performance in St. Cloud, and I spoke about it a while ago on here, but I got to be the headliner for the city of St. Cloud's Juneteenth celebration, which is crazy to think about. The fact that I get paid to perform my music. I'm literally living a dream right now. God is good. And it was my second year in a row, and I was also given the vendor space to sell merchandise. It's been three times total, I think three times, yeah. And I make these Juneteenth themed t-shirts with my logo on it, and I'm hella proud of the shirts. Uh I think they look real dope, and people always compliment me. And the folks that I sell the shirts to, they always tell me that the shirt gets a lot of attention whenever they wear it. Oh, yeah, and I forgot to say, I also dropped my EP that same day back then. I dropped my EP, I was a hairliner performer, and I was selling t-shirts with my brand on it, which is a whole nother kind of regret, right? I can't I can't do that again. I have this problem where I think I'm damn Superman and I can do all this stuff and be able to promote it all and get ready for it all. Like, who the hell do I think I am? To try and do all that in one day. I literally should have planned for that to be at least a month-long thing. And I should have been prepping and promoting my performance and the t-shirts, then do the same thing for the EP as far as the promotion and prepping for it. And it would have made my anxiety and stress way less. Because my God. Anyway, that's not the point I'm trying to make. Still was a regret, but not the one I'm talking about right now. So the first year, the shirts did amazing. I actually ran out of shirts. I only brought 35 with me, and the biggest t-shirts, I only purchased a handful of them because I figured they was just too big and nobody would want them because they were really, really big. And boy, was I wrong. People kept asking for all the big sizes, and I didn't have them. So the next time I was like, okay, you know what? I'm gonna be ready. I doubled the amount of shirts that I brought with me. So this time I was ready, had my shirts ready, a bunch of bigger sizes. This time I brought 70 shirts with me. I doubled what I brought the first time, and guess what? I only sold three shirts. Three. When I tell you I was hurt, and that regret started setting in, and all the coulda woulda shoulda's got so loud in my head, and I was down. I'm talking about down. I felt like it was a failure. And I had to do some internal work on myself and my mind and my mindset because I could have let that just completely discourage me, or I could have looked at it differently. Because, like I said, I was damn so proud of the shirt. It's a great shirt. So I had to make this shift, this mental shift, and say, you know what? Next year, I don't gotta make a single shirt. It's already done. All that work is done. And I still actually did sell some shirts because the performance was on a Friday and the actual day of Juneteenth was that Wednesday. So I made half my money back already, and now next year I have so much more time that I can dedicate to
Lessons From Regret And Moving On
SPEAKER_01other things when this time comes, right? That's the shift I had to make in my mind. And like I said, I still got paid to perform. I got paid four times the amount I normally get paid because I was the headliner. So I made my money back. I didn't take a loss, I still came out ahead. But I was I was not trying to hit all that in that moment. Hell to the no, no, no, I was not. And here I am with a whole podcast about changing the way you think and how setbacks are just part of life and how you overcome them. And I was right in the middle of a setback and I was still hurt. So yeah, we can or we could look at the past and say, damn, I could have did that way better. I could have did so much more. And you've heard me say this before, but in the past, in those moments, you did the best you could at that time with what you had. With the knowledge and the circumstances and who you were in that moment, it was the best you could do with what you had. Hindsight is easy. It's easier to look at something you did five years ago and say, Yeah, I wish I could have done that. I wish I did this thing differently. Things would be different. It's easier to have more knowledge today, right now, five years later, and wish you would have done something different. And that's natural because you didn't have the knowledge you have now back then. And even if it was a scenario where you knew better in that moment and you still didn't do better, well, now you have the opportunity to look back at it. You didn't have that opportunity to look back at it at that mistake that you knew you shouldn't make back then. Again, this is natural. It happened. If it could have happened any differently, then it would have. But it didn't. Lessons have to be had and we have to improve and get better from it. If it happened, it had to happen the way it did. If it happened, that means it had to happen that way. So relieve yourself of that feeling. Easier said than done, I know, but we gotta understand that dwelling on the past and on your mistakes and the things you messed up on or the things you didn't do, it holds you back from moving forward. And it takes you out of the present moment. And if you're not in the present moment, do you really think you can be doing the best you possibly can? Probably not. Which means that dwelling on the past can hold you back from possibly having a better future. So again, learn from that event, learn from that mistake instead of dwelling on it, instead of regretting it. Learn from it. Ask yourself, what can you learn from it? What were you supposed to bring with you for the rest of your life? What are the the good things? Of course. What are the things that are supposed to make you wiser? Right? Use those mistakes to improve yourself
Why The Future Feels Dangerous
SPEAKER_01in your life. We know we can't change the past, so why get caught up in wishing you can change it? We can control our response to it. That's what we can control. So that's number one. Stop worrying about the past. The second thing we should stop doing, which is number two, and I bet you see this one coming, but it is stop worrying about the future. The future is unknown. And because of our human nature, we naturally don't like the unknown. To our animalistic nature, to our animalistic brains, the future is seen as a danger. It's something that goes all the way back to the times when we lived out in wilderness and lived in tribes before civilization. The unknown was dangerous, especially out in the wilderness. There could be dangerous animals, dangerous landscape. If you venture too far off from your camp, right, and get lost and separated from your tribe, you could settle in an unknown land and experience a famine or a drought, right? The unknown was very dangerous back then. So your brain wants to solve the unknown. And to do that, what your brain does is it tries to project the future and see all the ways it needs to protect you so you can plan ahead, so you can be prepared for it and take certain actions or lack thereof to stay safe. And that's a lot of energy. Fun fact your brain is the uh organ in your brain that uses the most energy. It only weighs 2% of your entire body weight, but it uses about 20% of your energy every day. Think about that for a second. And I know you can relate to this one because all of us at some point have been mentally exhausted, even if all you're doing is sitting in front of a computer all day, staring at it, staring at a screen, your body barely moving, but by the time you're done, how do you feel? Drained. You feel tired. Why? Because your brain is working and working and working, and it's using all that energy and it makes you tired. Right? Another good example. You've been in a relationship and your partner, you and your partner have those big arguments. I'm talking about them arguments that last for hours, days. Right? Ain't that draining? Your body ain't using a lot
Mental Energy, Exhaustion, And Worry Stats
SPEAKER_01of energy to talk, right? To argue. You don't sweat just from talking, right? It's not a workout. You ain't jogging. But at the end of the day, you better believe you are just mentally tired, mentally drained. And in theater, it's the same thing. In rehearsals, for example, after using our brains to be creative and thinking on our feet and just diving into the world of the play, into the character, doing scene work, using all that focus and energy on something like that, we need breaks. And the best directors, they know this. The good directors understand they look at the clock and they say, okay, we still got like 45 minutes left of rehearsal, but you know what? We good. It's better for us to just call it a day. And what they understand is that this does a lot for the actors. That 45 minutes that the actors can be able to turn off their brains to just leave off where we are and come back to it the next day, that really can make a difference in their overall experience, the overall rehearsal experience, which will make the actors that much more energized. It'll make us have that much more of a better overall experience. And I've used this stat on here before, and I love using this stat. And I bring it up as much as I can. But statistically speaking, psychologists found that only 15% of the stuff we worry about actually comes true. Only 15%. That means 85% of the stuff we stress over and worry about don't even come true. 85% don't ever come true. And check this of that 15%, 12% of that is never as bad as we imagined. So that means that only about 3%, 3% of the things that we worry about will actually happen. Think about that. Think about all that energy we waste worrying about things. How many times have you worried yourself sick about something? How many times have you lost sleep or worried for days and days and days about something? You didn't realize it then, but you were literally wasting your time. We waste our time worrying about things. 85% of it doesn't even come true, and only 3% of the time it actually happens as bad as we imagined it. I don't know about you, but I like them odds. Worrying is literally a waste of energy, a waste of coffee, a waste of time. We worry about the future, and most of the time that thing never comes true. And again, we've all been there done that. We all been there when we worry about something and we're scared about it, and then the time comes for us to actually have that moment that we worried about, and it don't even happen. And we be like, Whew, I'm glad that's over. I worried for nothing. Again, it's a waste of energy, a waste of time to worry about things that more than likely won't even happen. That breeds anxiety. It puts your body through way more than it needs to. So let's stop this. Let's be aware of when we start to project our thoughts in the future. Like the old folks used to say when I was growing up, and
Practical Reframe: Return To The Present
SPEAKER_01I get it from them, and I and I say it too. I say I'll cross that bridge when I get to it. Right? Cross that bridge when you get to when you get to it. Be more present. Focus on the moments right now. Our brains love to live in the past and in the future. Your brain is all over the place. But where is your body? Right here in the present moment. So focus on bringing yourself back to this moment. When you feel yourself worrying about the future, focus on the here and now. What do you need to do here and now? What are the things that are important? That bill that's coming up in a few months? Okay, what can you do now? Okay, I can focus on how I can find ways to make more money. I can figure out if I need to borrow money from somebody. Okay, I can work on making that bonus at work. Or I can look up ways to make more money online today. That's what I can do today. But worrying about that bill that's due in a few months and only focusing on all the bad things that can happen if you don't pay that bill in a few months, then they're gonna make the bill go away. Then ain't gonna get you any more closer to being able to pay it. But this moment right now, you can use it to figure it out, to work towards getting that bill paid. So stop focusing on the future and stop focusing on the past. It happened, you can't change it. You can only grow from it and be better prepared for it in the future. So that's what I got for y'all today. Um, like I always say, man, please share this episode to your social media if you liked it or with a friend or a family member. Um, make sure you tag me in the post. Also, become a monthly supporter of the show. You can choose the monthly amount, it can either be three, five, eight, or ten dollars, and you can cancel at any time. But why would you ever do that? But let's go ahead and get to this music. Like I said, man, uh I I shared with y'all a piece of my hip-hop musical that I'm writing, and I'm gonna share some more music with y'all this time. Um so this
Closing Reminders And Supporter CTA
SPEAKER_01song, I'm gonna just do a little intro to the song. So there's three characters in this show. Um, so I'm mainly writing this play for me as a hip-hop artist and actor, but I'm also writing it for the fellas, my boys uh Sap and Mosley. I'm sure some of y'all know them. Now, the character I'm playing, uh, he is called the Grio, and the Grio travels through time and through the play. Um, so what y'all about to hear are again wet vocals, which wet vocals are just me recording, it's not mixed, it ain't mastered. I'm just recording it just to hear it, to have it out loud, to have,
Musical Setup: The Hip-Hop Play
SPEAKER_01to be able to play for other folks to hear so they can get an idea of what the song and what the play is. So, again, so what you're hearing right now is just my voice, it's not Sappa Mosley, but they are two characters in this song. Um, and it's gonna be like this until I finish fully writing the play to make sure all the lyrics and the text is completely set. So I won't give too much away about this scene, about this song, but I will say that I the Grio is the first voice you'll hear. That's all I'm gonna say. And the song right now is untitled. I think I'm gonna call it Dreams, but we'll see. Anyway, here it is. Let's ride out. Traveling through the ethos from the beginning of our creation of our dreams, protected in echoes of our ancestor shadows, they grow wings, wings strong enough to carry the weight of trauma and pain from the harbors we've seen. So your eyes have to be closed to see the vision God put in us. Don't you dare be afraid of dusk. We rejoice with the night. For it is here where dreams happen in the darkest hours
Performance: Dreams, Therapy, And Legacy
SPEAKER_01just before there is light. Our ancestors teach us to dream, dreams to light. Don't you hear the whispers? I know it's to better me. But I don't need no therapy. Okay, say more about that. What exactly are you telling me? You heard what I just said. I don't need you owl in my head, but I don't need no therapy. Okay. Say more about that. What exactly are you telling me? Please, you know what I mean? And why you wanna know about my dreams? Let's talk about your dream. Dreams. Yes, dreams. You a young black man, it's something that you need. Let's talk about your dreams. Dreams, yes, dreams. What are the dreams? So dreams can be therapy. Just a second. Let's forget this. Tell them what are the dreams? A simple question complicated answer. Cause I dream of the American dream. I wanna give my kids things that they never have seen. I don't wanna fascinate trip to Bahamas. I just wanna pick a fits and have to wipe a happy life. And watch my favorites mix me with plamas, and take holiday photos and match pajamas. That's probably what it feels like to be the Obamas. The American dream. It's not my African American reality. I'ma talk about it for the sake of my sanity. Every damn day I got my beef by gravity, cause I can't let it hold me down. I grew up in poverty, my life was equality. But I can't let that hold me down. I saw the violence. My manhood told me to be silent. But I can't let that hold me down. I can't come on the nickel by a cracker. I can't see this thing, my life matter. But I can let that hold me down. My life made me harder. I gotta stay south from my daughter. See, I let that hold me down. So it's a violence. So my dreams and This shouldn't be a dream, it should just be a given. Honestly, it's a simple dream that we can live in societies that protect the black women. How are they the most educated at the same time? Be the ones most likely to go missing. Didn't make the news, no media attention. 200 a day, 200 a day, 200 a day, man. Get up out my face. You don't have time to dream. You worry about your women. Saw my sister die when she was getting buried. Black women, the first in that statistic. I dream for the black men to do better as men. We knew better back then. When we was born with another favorite rapper talking scenes, Money cars, clothes, and the holes. Disrespect the knob, but we've been bragging about it till I rose. Now I'm grown. I see that I was trippin'. Cause look at my position. Now my wife is pregnant. I'm scared she might go missing. I don't trust white physicians. I'm scared to death, I'm fucking scared. Okay, alright, just listen. Man, I can't read. Listen to me. I don't like this feeling. I just breathe so much unease inside of me. Just cause you have anxiety. You do need everything.
SPEAKER_00So tell me, what are your dreams?