Latest / INSPIRE STORY / Podcast Episode 4 - Real And Raw Stories of Survival

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Podcast Episode 4 - Real And Raw Stories of Survival · INSPIRE STORY

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Speaker 1: Welcome to the Inspire Health podcast. Thanks again for joining us.
0:05
Today we have a truly authentic and inspirational human being,
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Gabriel Jerome from Kinetic Effect. If you were in need
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of some inspiration and motivation to follow your passions in life,
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then this is the episode for you. From an angry
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and explosive teen to an award winning keynote speaker, Gabe
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has learned that it is how we reflect on our
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past experiences that defines who we are and how we
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view the world around us. This highly dynamic keynote speaker
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and spoken word artist has made a career out of
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inspiring youth and adults to follow their passions and live
0:39
life for today. Kinetic Effect combines dynamics spoken word messages
0:44
with motivational speaking that is described as both life changing
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and captivating. I hope you enjoyed this episode as much
0:50
as I did. Welcome to the Inspire Health Podcast. Your
0:55
life is about to get a whole lot better. Have
0:58
you ever felt like you tried everything yet still couldn't
1:00
find the answers or the solutions that you were seeking.
1:03
Whether you're dealing with chronic illness, physical or emotional pain,
1:07
I want you to Know that your body is the
1:09
most sophisticated machine on planet Earth. Your body holds unfathomable wisdom.
1:14
Trust in it and learn from it. Know that there
1:18
are answers and there are solutions to your specific health challenges,
1:22
and we will be uncovering all of them here on
1:25
the Inspire Health Podcast. I'm so excited to be a
1:29
part of your healing journey. Your transformation starts now. Welcome
1:36
to another episode of the Inspire Health Podcast. Today we
1:39
have Gabriel Jerome. He is an award winning national keynote
1:43
speaker and poet who has dedicated the last thirteen years
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of his life to philanthropy and the art of writing
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and performance. Gabriel's the co founder and executive director of
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Speak It Forward, Incorporated, a nonprofit dedicated to transforming the
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lives of youth and adults by using spoken word poetry
2:01
as a vehicle to raise awareness, challenge stereotypes, break down barriers,
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and instill a sense of empowerment and community. As a
2:09
former soldier in the US Army and a cancer survivor,
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Gabriel has learned the power of sharing his story and
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how words have the ability to connect, transform, and inspire others. Today,
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Gabriel spends his life traveling, speaking, and performing as one
2:23
half of the duo known as Kinetic Effect. His purpose
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and passion in life is to help others realize their
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true potential and recognize the power of their story and
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their voice. Gabriel, Welcome to the show. Thanks so much
2:36
for joining us.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks for having me on that. That bio makes
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me sound amazing, It's great.
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Speaker 1: So, Gabriel, I was not too familiar with spoken word
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poetry until I met you and started looking into some
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of your work and thought, man, what a really cool
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way to bring messages to kids, and in a way
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that I think is fairly receptive at least from what
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I'd seen through a number of your videos and everything.
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How did you How did you get into spoken with poetry?
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I mean, it's not usually the thing you see when
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you go to university or something. Yeah, one of your majors.
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Speaker 2: So I've always loved writing ever since I was a kid. Actually,
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my mom still has my first published piece of writing,
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which was a limerick in the kindergarten newspaper when I
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was five. So I've always had a if ons for writing,
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and in a lot of ways through some of my
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past and some of the difficulties that I experienced, which
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we make it into a little bit later. Writing became
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the one thing that I could trust. I could always write.
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It was just me and the piece of paper. And
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I grew up more in a hip hop kind of genre,
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so I used to write a lot of raps. And then,
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as you mentioned, I was in the US Army and
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a cancer survivor. So when I was in the military,
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I was diagnosed to a stage three B testicular cancer
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and it had spread all the way up to my
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neck when they found it. And so I was stationed
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in Washington, d C. At Walter Reed Army Medical Center,
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and I used to print out my poems, my wraps
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or my writings. I would do a little bit of
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pros and short stories and stuff, and I would print
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them out and I would tape them up on my
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wall locker in the barracks room where I was at,
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And so when people would come in, it was kind
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of they would be able to kind of see some
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of the stuff. And my fellow soldiers would always like
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stand there and read them or ask me to perform.
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And a friend of mine was like, man, if you
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heard of this place, called the Myth and they do
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this thing called slam poetry, and I was like, no,
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I don't know what that is, and so he was like,
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we got to check it out. And so the first
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time that I went, the basic setup is there's a
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national competition for slam poetry where over seventy two teams
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from all across the world come to compete in the
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US every year, and so venues hold competitions that basically
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you qualify to compete for nationals, and so a venue
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will have like an open mic and a slam like
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a competition that if they're connected to the national competition
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scene to qualify, and then they'll have a featured poet,
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someone that they bring in, typically from out of state.
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And the first time I went, the feature was a
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world champion female slam poet and she was incredible and
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I just fell in love with it. She I remember specifically,
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she did this one poem and it's very it's very
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performance based. It's not the you know, sometimes I think
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when people hear poetry or performance poetry, they think of
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like a guy in a beret with beard and circle
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glasses and people snapping and he's smoking a pipe, you know,
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type of things. It's very much not that it's very
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like interactive. There's a lot of comedy, there's a lot
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of vulnerability. It's kind of borders on some kind of
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hip hop style rhythms because it's free verse. And so
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she did this piece about her mother, and her mother
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was had passed away and she was Basically the essence
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of the poem was, no matter what your relationship with
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your parents, are be grateful that they're alive, because I
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don't even get to fight with mine anymore. In a nutshell, right,
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It was so much more complex than that, I kid
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you not. After her set was over, ninety percent of
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the people got on their phone, including myself, and called
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and called their mom. Wow, because that's powerless. It was
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that powerful. So it started. It shifted my writing into
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a different genre, and I just again I never I
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never started writing to share with other people. It was
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really just a way for me to process. So I
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was writing a lot about my battle with cancer, things
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that I was going through in the military, things that
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I was going through, and at the time I was eighteen,
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nineteen twenty into twenty one, So it was just a
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way for me to process. And I fell in love
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with it, and so that's why we use it as
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a tool really in our nonprofit.
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Speaker 1: I love that and like what you had mentioned when
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everybody gets on the phone and then starts to phone
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their mom after hearing that, that's that's the power of
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when people pick up on someone being vulnerable and authentic.
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And to me, that's where so much of this is
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so transformative because that's not something that a lot of
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people feel safe to do. So right, when you're working
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with kids, how how do you start that process? Because
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I like, I mean, and I'm thinking you also work
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with groups of kids from a lot of very backgrounds,
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so you're going to hit something where it's like they're
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growing up in rough areas where even the concept of
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being vulnerable might not might not be advantageous for them
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or or their perspective of it seems like a weakness
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rather than a strength. How do you how do you
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work with that to kind of show them and teach
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them where that that actually becomes one of their most
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profound strengths.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, so I'll get to that in one second, but
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just just for your audience awareness, So I co founded
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a nonprofit with my performance partner because I performed and
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speak with another guy. We performed simultaneously together, and then
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we He was an English teacher for almost ten years.
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He was an English teacher for like eight or nine years,
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and he was like that out of the box crazy
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teacher that everybody wanted to be in his class. He
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was just amazing at connecting with students. He used humor.
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He's a little bit aggressive, kind of controversial, you know,
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he would say things that borderlines, you know, like I
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wouldn't be able to get away with saying some other
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things that he does, but he can because it's him.
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And so when we started getting some notoriety for performing,
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we always wanted a way to give back and connect,
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and so he would work with the kids who could
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barely you know, read and write. But also he was
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so brilliant and so good at what he did that
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he would work with the ib the International Baccalaureate or
9:47
AP sometimes it's called Advanced Placement kids. And so he
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had this like interesting spectrum of the two sides. And
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so it was interesting because when we started the nonprofit,
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that's kind of where we fell into with who we
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ended up working with, because both of us were really rough,
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kind of troublemaker youth, and also then when we went
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to college, we both somehow figured a way to turn
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it around and exceled, So we very much mirrored each other.
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So we work with kids in juvenile detention centers and
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treatment facilities, so oftentimes in the treatment facilities there like
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last stop before prison kind of treatment centers, like this
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is your final chance to turn it around. And then
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we also work with like leadership development, so like the
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kids who are going to go on to the Ivy
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League schools and be successful, traditional successful kind of things.
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So you're absolutely right. Ironically enough, in both of those spaces,
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it is often not advantageous to be vulnerable. So what
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we do is we really use the performer and writing
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as a trojan horse because we're good at what we
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do and we're captivating and entertaining, and it's my dog
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sitting next to me making sure that everything's okay. So
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what we do is we use the writing as a
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way to engage the kids, and we'll get in there
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and we don't tell them that we're going to get
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them to write about things in their personal life or whatever.
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We just get in there and entertain them. So we
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connect with them with humor. We connect with them out
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of the box, lesson plans and activities, to engage them,
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to get them thinking, to challenge concepts that they've been taught.
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And then we start talking about our personal stories of
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transformation and we get really vulnerable. But we do it
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in a way that can be both heard engaging but
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not overloading. You know, like sometimes when you talk to
11:57
people and they're sharing something, it feels like they're dumping
12:00
on you versus sharing. We've found a way to do
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it in a way where we can just connect. And
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so really what we what we establish in the beginning
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is laughter, trust, and vulnerability. So we model for them
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what then we're going to ask them to give to us.
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So we never do We never ask of them anything
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that we're not willing to do. So it makes it
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a lot easier and a lot of that comes from
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my teaching style. It's just really incredible.
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Speaker 1: So well, I know, when I've watched some of the things,
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one of the things you guys do really beautifully is
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incorporate that aspect of humor that gets tied into the
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entire message that you're doing. And I kind of find
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it when you kind of bring something really quite raw
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and authentic and powerful. There's a way that it kind
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of transitions in and out with humor. And what I
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love about about humor is I find like it is
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about the easiest way to almost instantly change context around.
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So as soon as you had a beat of humor
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into something, you know, you make people laugh, all of
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a sudden, their guards come down and they kind of
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become a little bit more open naturally. So exactly, yeah,
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to watch.
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Speaker 2: I love that you picked up on that because it's
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it's something that a lot of people don't catch actually,
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because we'll actually have people come up to us afterway
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and be like, you guys were hilarious, You should be comedians.
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And my business partner always says, well, I can be
13:34
funny because I'm not expected to. So if I say
13:36
something that doesn't get humor, I can just move on
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because what we're actually talking about is serious. So that's
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what helps us be funny. But we're very intentional about
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exactly what you just said, which is to us, humor
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is the easiest and best way to cut through into vulnerability.
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It builds trust, right and you get in the media
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auditory response, So I can be saying the most profound
14:04
amazing thing in the world to you. But some people
14:07
are very non readable. They're just they can be stonefaced,
14:12
so you have no idea if it's landing right inside,
14:15
they might be agreeing with you. They might be with
14:17
you every step of the way and be saying, oh
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my god, yes, this is incredible. I can't yes, yes, yes,
14:23
but you can't read them. On the flip side, people
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are also very good yeah, as I'm sure you run
14:28
into at faking understanding social norm so they can be
14:32
nodding and being you know, but inside they're like, God,
14:37
I can't wait until this is over. So with humor, though,
14:44
you can't really fake that very well and especially not consistently.
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So by using humor, it elicits that audience response and
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in a way, and I hate the word manipulation because
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it has such a negative connotation, but for lack of
14:59
a better world, it helps manipulate the audience because when
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you hear other people laughing, it's almost contagious sure where
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you feel, oh, okay, these guys are funny. They're all right,
15:18
I trust, which is why we usually start with humor.
15:21
We make fun of ourselves, we talk about embarrassing things,
15:24
and it just it kind of lets everybody let their
15:26
guard down. Then we're able to talk about some concepts
15:29
that you know, we challenge a little bit some light
15:33
or stuff, and then we move into our personal stories.
15:36
So it's like, after we've gained a little bit of trust,
15:38
here's something that you wouldn't expect or to know about me,
15:42
and then that draws an audience in and then we
15:46
take them really deep down into some heavy places and
15:50
then we bring them back out and bring them up
15:54
and leave them on a high note. So we've constructed
15:57
our speaking performances and the poems that we do in
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a manner to be able to get in build trust,
16:06
take them down into a deep level of transformation where
16:11
they can learn something or have a switch in their viewpoint,
16:15
and then bring them out and it's a really interesting
16:18
roller coaster ride. So in our workshops, we can get
16:23
people to a place where they're comfortable sharing some of
16:26
the most vulnerable things about their life that they may
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not have shared with a lot of people in like
16:33
an hour because we've crafted this. You know, two strangers,
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they're not coming in for their concession. It's not the intention,
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but they we bring them to places so quickly and
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we've really studied and learned and watched and analyzed and
16:48
taken feedback constructive criticism. We're always trying to grow and
16:51
learn to a place where that's really the key to
16:55
the door for us. It's like, if we can get
16:57
them to laugh a little bit, then we know we
16:59
can and take them where we need to go.
17:02
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's it's obvious when I don't know if
17:05
it's obvious, but it's like you feel like you're a
17:07
part of that roller coaster ride when you watch when
17:10
you guys are working with an audience, And and that
17:12
was what kind of jumped out with me was just
17:14
it's like you can see where it's like open the.
17:17
Speaker 1: Door, bring a little bit and I go through, open
17:20
the door a little more, bring a little bit more information,
17:22
and you just see the audience kind of just going
17:24
on that journey with you guys. So yeah, so when
17:28
you are yeah, you performing.
17:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I have to say it's interesting too, because yeah,
17:34
go ahead.
17:36
Speaker 1: Go ahead, finish, finish your thought there and then we'll
17:38
move to next question.
17:39
Speaker 2: Yeah. I was just gonna say, it's it's so interesting
17:41
too because people will often ask us, you know, or
17:46
see a video or something and and I think in
17:49
a lot of ways, a lot of people love the
17:51
concept of being able to put a video out or
17:55
a recording of an audio because there's a refinement to
17:58
it and interesting enough. For us, we feel like we're
18:02
so much better live. Like I've listened to a lot
18:04
of CDs and music and all that stuff, and then
18:06
you go to a live show and it sometimes it
18:09
feels more disconnected. You're like, I like the CD better.
18:13
For us, we have never received anybody who's like, man,
18:18
that was better on the video or better like they're
18:22
always like, it's so much better live. And I think
18:25
one of the other things that we do well and
18:28
that I think is important for people to realize is
18:32
leaving room for spontaneity and connecting in the moment. When
18:36
you go and just repeat the same thing over and
18:38
over and over again, first as an artist, it gets boring,
18:41
but secondly for an audience, they can kind of feel
18:44
that it's like staged. And so one thing that we've
18:47
learned how to let go of is the show has
18:50
to go exactly like this. Kirk and I don't even
18:53
talk about what we're going to say anymore. When we
18:55
go on stage. We know the poems, they're memorized, right,
18:58
and those things are set in place. We know the
19:00
we're going to talk about, but we leave a wide
19:03
open door for audience interaction, whether they're connected through laughing,
19:08
so that we can shift. And we've been doing this
19:10
so long that him and I can talk to each
19:13
other on stage without saying anything, so we know if
19:16
we're like, Okay, we need to we need to skip
19:19
that next part, or we need to move through this
19:21
quicker and get to the main crux, or maybe that
19:23
poem's not going to land because of how we're getting reactions.
19:26
So that we can be in the moment with the audience.
19:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you can tell, like when you guys have
19:35
been working together for a while that it's it's it's
19:38
pretty smooth, even like little eye gestures or even you
19:42
might even word something in a joking way, but it's
19:44
got like another different meaning for you guys as far
19:47
as the direction you're going to take things or something stuff.
19:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, yeah, and I totally.
19:51
Speaker 1: Agree with you. It's like to have spontaneity is what
19:56
I think allows more of that authenticity to come out
19:59
because you have to kind of tap into a different
20:01
level of creativity when you just remain open to downloading
20:05
some kind of information that needs to be shared at
20:07
that point in time.
20:09
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, you can.
20:10
Speaker 1: Still have your sort of rough template on you know,
20:13
your message that you want to kind of get across
20:15
and here's some different ways, but have a lot of
20:17
flexibility on how it arrives there.
20:22
Speaker 2: Absolutely, when you take.
20:24
Speaker 1: People on a journey, when you're doing a spoken word
20:28
poetry to a large group, is there anything that happens after?
20:33
Does the transformation happen there during the time, or is
20:36
there a follow up in some way after for the
20:40
for the people to kind of because I imagine once
20:42
you do that, there's going to be a certain amount
20:44
of stuff that's going to shift for people. And then
20:46
where do they go from there? Where do they kind
20:48
of take that, because I imagine you're going to get
20:50
some people that want to go deeper with you on
20:52
a more personal level. Or what's their next steps when
20:56
you sort of create some shifts for people that sometimes
20:58
didn't even know needed to be shift.
21:01
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, it's a great question. So it really depends
21:05
on the purpose, which is another thing that we focus
21:09
on and I think is really important for anybody who's
21:12
wanting to be a motivational speaker or a performer is
21:16
remembering audience and purpose. It's one of the first things
21:19
that we teach our youth when we're getting them ready
21:22
to set out and performing, which is who's the audience
21:27
that you're speaking in front of and why are you
21:31
speaking to them? Right? Because a lot of people are like,
21:34
what I have to share is just amazing and it
21:36
doesn't really matter who I'm talking to. Everyone needs to
21:38
hear this, and we feel like that sometimes is okay approach.
21:42
You know, you might get asked specifically because you're an
21:45
expert in this field to talk about this thing. But
21:48
a lot of times for us, we shift the way
21:51
that we tell our story or how we tell our
21:53
story depending on the audience. So if we're coming out
21:57
to an event where we're not the keynote speaker, right,
22:01
we might be part of their main set, or we
22:05
might even be the keynote speaker, but we know that
22:08
the day's been long or heavy, our shift might be
22:12
we need to get these people inspired, we need to
22:14
get them uplifted, we need to get the energy moving
22:18
in the in the audience. And so sometimes things come
22:23
up for people and they'll come and they'll share them
22:25
after the performance. With us. We always make it a
22:28
point of habit to a show up like an hour
22:32
at least early to our performances so we can get
22:35
a feel of the energy in the room and listen
22:37
to some of the other speakers or some of the
22:40
other things that are being said at an event, or
22:43
talk to people if it's just us that's performing, say
22:46
at a high school, talk to principles, talk to students,
22:49
so that we can kind of gauge where to go
22:51
with that. So that's one thing, and then we always
22:54
stay afterwards because we know things are going to come up.
22:59
Just we had a performance last week and this kid
23:02
came up afterwards. It was really incredible, kind of a
23:07
good looking guy. You could tell he was, you know, athletic.
23:12
He had nice clothes on, looks totally like the kind
23:15
of kid who he'd think has an easy high school career.
23:19
And he came up and he just started crying, like
23:24
literally just broke down and I held him. He came up,
23:28
just grabbed me, and he's probably like six foot one.
23:31
I'm five foot seven. He just grabbed me and bawled
23:36
in my arms for and a kid you not between
23:39
probably by it was a really and hold him in
23:49
that space, and we stayed after for an hour and
23:52
talked with him about what was going on in his life.
23:55
And so some of it is just being able to
23:57
be in that moment and talk with people when things
23:59
come up they really just need to share it. Sometimes
24:03
you don't have that luxury, or you have you know,
24:06
sometimes we're performing in front of audiences that might be
24:08
three thousand plus where you can't talk with everybody. So
24:13
for us being able to offer up our emails or
24:18
social media accounts help you know, if people are willing
24:22
to reach out on the good in the good spaces
24:27
where they're really not just looking for a momentary blip
24:30
on the radar, they're looking for some transformational shift. We're
24:34
doing long term work, so we're we're coming in there
24:38
more than once. Maybe it's maybe it's a handful of times,
24:41
or maybe like with our workshops, like once a week,
24:44
and so in those ways, when things come up, you're
24:47
able to take them on a case by case basis,
24:50
you're able to really think about them, and we develop
24:53
our lesson plans around the kids. We don't bring in
24:56
lesson plans again like we've been we're celebrating our tenth
25:01
year this year for our.
25:03
Speaker 1: Non profits.
25:06
Speaker 2: Thank You and one of the facilities, for one of
25:12
the long term juvenile facilities that we've been working at,
25:21
we've been there for nine years and up into two semesters.
25:25
We haven't repeated a single semester of identical curriculum in
25:29
nine years. And I don't mean that every single lesson
25:31
plan is new. We have someones that really work and
25:33
are very effective that we use. Is kind of like
25:35
our foundation, but we allow the students to guide us
25:39
where we need to go. Sometimes we really want to
25:41
take them somewhere deep and we realize, man, they just
25:43
need to let off some steam and have fun. So
25:45
we'll play a game, you know, turn a lesson plan
25:47
into a game or vice versa. So so kind of
25:50
to get back to the crux of your question, it's
25:52
hard because it's such a varying degree of situations that
25:57
come up. Sometimes you need to just be present in
25:59
the moment, stay with one person and really give them
26:01
your time because that's life changing. Sometimes someone just needs
26:05
to come up and share something like because I'm a
26:07
cancer survivor and my business partner had a really traumatic
26:10
experience his senior year of high school. Five of his
26:13
friends took their lives his senior year of high school.
26:16
And so we touch on some of these topics from
26:20
the average kind of mundane like I had to move
26:22
around a lot as a kid, and my parents got
26:24
to board. You know, things that a lot of people
26:28
experience that can affect us deeply but are very common
26:35
to you know, I had cancer when I was eighteen,
26:38
or my friends I lost a Hey, like, I'm going
26:42
through this thing and it's really tough, and I haven't
26:44
really been able to talk about it and be present
26:46
with them and hear them and maybe it's just a
26:49
minute and they just need to say that out loud
26:52
so that they can start the process. The nice thing
26:55
is a lot of places that we go to have support.
26:57
So for at a school, they have counselors, a treatment facility,
27:01
they usually have therapists or pair of pro workers with them.
27:06
When we're in adult facilities, when we're at national conferences
27:10
or annual conferences, a lot of them usually have some
27:14
type of support that they can go to. Sometimes they don't,
27:16
And those are the ones that we really try and
27:19
give our time to and really kind of stay there
27:21
and be there. I hope that answered your question.
27:24
Speaker 1: But yeah, no, that's good.
27:26
Speaker 2: Well.
27:26
Speaker 1: And I was also thinking, which kind of groups do
27:28
you find yourself performing to primarily or is it a
27:32
lot of stuff in schools or is it what are
27:35
some of the different venues that you tend to move toward.
27:38
Speaker 2: It's a mix, it's a mix. So I would say
27:41
probably maybe fifty fifty to fifty to sixty percent of
27:47
the audiences that we perform for our high school and
27:50
middle school because we get so much repeat business in
27:56
that arena because the obviously the kids are continuing to changeover.
28:02
And then the other forty percent is like college corporations, foundations,
28:09
national conferences, annual conferences, you know, event fundraisers, those kind
28:16
of things. So it varies. When we're in a high
28:19
school or middle school or college. Typically we're the thing
28:23
that they're bringing in, so it's just us for that
28:27
hour or two hours or three hours or however long
28:30
they have us come in, and so we're able to
28:34
kind of just do our thing on the annual conference stuff,
28:38
national conference stuff. Obviously, we're one of a handful of speakers.
28:42
Sometimes we're in the beginning, sometimes in the middle. Sometimes
28:44
we're the keynote closing it down. For corporations, you know,
28:49
a lot of times it's they're bringing us in to
28:53
give back to their employees or get some you know,
28:57
passion or motivation. And so those are the varying degrees
29:01
of like, what are we going to talk about, what
29:04
are we going to focus on? Why are we talking
29:06
to this crowd, audience and purpose? Thing that I was
29:08
talking about earlier.
29:09
Speaker 1: Right, that's I was going to ask what the what
29:12
the motivation was for them to bring you in. What
29:15
they were looking to get out of your performance? Do
29:18
they when you're when you are talking to someone about
29:22
coming in to perform, How does that go? What do
29:26
you kind of explain to them? Do they know the
29:28
impact that they're looking for?
29:31
Speaker 2: Most of the time they do. We've been blessed enough
29:34
in the last we started Kinetic Effecting two thousand and seven,
29:38
so this is twelve years for us now. On the
29:41
performance side, In the last eight years, we have not
29:49
solicited a speaking gig. In other words, we haven't done
29:53
any promotion. We haven't asked people, we don't have an agent.
29:57
We're just now starting to do that because we're recognizing
30:01
that in this digital age, it's just advantageous to do that.
30:05
But everybody who's brought us in has really just been
30:08
by word of mouth or people seeing us. And we've
30:11
made a career for the last eight years just on reputation,
30:16
so that's been really nice. So most of the time,
30:19
like ninety five percent of the time, they know exactly
30:22
what they're bringing in because someone has said, these guys
30:24
are amazing, you have to get them in. And so
30:27
if it's a school, like I said, we'd like to
30:29
ask them what are the issues that are going on
30:32
in the school? And it varies from place to place,
30:35
varies from rural to urban, it varies to socioeconomics status.
30:41
You know, sometimes it's hey, we're really struggling, especially right
30:44
now with like bullying is a big issue. Almost all
30:48
the schools struggle with drugs because of course, when you're
30:51
a teenager and you're trying to figure out who you
30:53
are and what you want to be and there's all
30:55
this pressure on you, escaping is a big thing. Sometimes
31:00
it's just challenging the concepts of what it means to
31:02
be successful or kind or you know, all those things.
31:06
So we will kind of pick the brains of the
31:08
people who are bringing us in when it's a national
31:11
conference or an annual conference. We know we've been to
31:14
a lot of those things. I'm sure you've been to some.
31:17
Sometimes they can be really boring, Like sometimes they're great,
31:21
you know, sometimes there's really amazing speakers, but sometimes they're
31:24
just trying to fill up time. You know, they've got
31:27
people who are putting on these three day events and
31:30
they're like, man, we need to have every hour something
31:33
for them to do, with little breaks here and there,
31:35
and so people are just like exhausted sometimes when we
31:38
go into these things, because you know, I've been to
31:41
enough and I know that I'm can be a little
31:44
bit more critical because I do this for a living,
31:46
so it's hard for me to watch someone else do
31:48
what I do. But I've been to enough where it's like,
31:52
if I see ten speakers, I'm happy if two of
31:55
them gave me something that I can walk away with.
31:59
So for some times when we're there, we're like, we're
32:01
going to talk about the tough stuff, right, We want
32:05
to really reach in and get them, but we definitely
32:08
focus more on getting the energy back in the room,
32:11
making them laugh, making them feel like we'refreshed, get them
32:14
going for the next session. So it really just varies
32:18
on where we are and what we're doing to how
32:21
to really connect.
32:23
Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh, and it also just like that's what's going
32:26
to keep them engaged, especially after hearing speaker after speaker,
32:30
when someone pops up and they're inspiring and humorful, and
32:35
it's like, that's what's going to keep people open and
32:37
community into what you're doing.
32:39
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely.
32:41
Speaker 1: Now even too, there's I mean, it's not just about
32:45
how it makes people feel and whatnot. I mean this
32:48
has been studied now too. There's a lot more research
32:50
kind of showing the beneficial effects of spoken word and
32:54
the transformational ability that it can have. Can you speak
32:58
a little bit about.
32:58
Speaker 2: That, Yeah, absolutely, so, especially around the youth, that's a
33:02
really big thing for us. So I'll give you a
33:08
little bit of background in my story just to kind
33:11
of help understand how it was for us experientially, and
33:15
then I'll talk about kind of on the research side.
33:17
So I grew up in New York. I grew up
33:22
in like a spiritual community, which I loved. It was.
33:26
It was really great. My parents were studying meditation and
33:29
yoga and then when I was seven, my parents started
33:35
to go through the process of divorce, and when I
33:39
was nine, we moved from New York to Michigan, which
33:43
is where I live now. And so from seven to ten,
33:47
I went to four different schools in four years, and
33:50
from someone who had really stable more or less you know, upbringing,
33:55
it was really difficult to do all that transitioning and
33:58
losing friends and making friends and losing friends and being
34:01
the new kid. And then I was really close with
34:03
my dad, and my dad stayed in New York and
34:06
my mom moved to Michigan because that's where her family
34:09
was from. My mom was one of thirteen kids in
34:11
a large Italian family, so she wanted to be close
34:14
to her family. And my mom did really the best
34:19
she could, but she was forty one years old. She
34:22
would had, you know, moved to Michigan. So she didn't
34:25
have a job. When she came here. I think she
34:27
had something like three thousand dollars in the bank and
34:30
a nine year old kid, and we had to start
34:32
over and we had nothing, and we moved into an
34:35
area that had kind of a higher socioeconomic playing field.
34:39
So I was and not very diverse, So I was
34:43
you know, half half hispanic. So I'm brown, I'm from
34:47
New York, I don't have the nice clothes, I'm the
34:51
new kid. It was really tough, and I went from
34:54
somebody who felt like, you know, I was kind of
34:57
a leader and did things that I I kind of
35:00
loved and was outgoing to turn very introverted because basically
35:06
what I was taught was what I was and who
35:08
I was was not accepted. And I don't think I
35:12
understood that consciously, but on an unconscious level, my survival
35:17
techniques went get small, go in, and don't be who
35:22
you are because you're not accepted. Be someone else. And
35:25
so I started hanging out with the other outcasts, and
35:29
by the time I was thirteen, I got involved in drugs,
35:32
alcohol and gangs. By the time I was fourteen, I
35:35
started selling drugs, and by the time I was sixteen,
35:38
I had people working for me selling drugs. And I
35:42
wasn't really focused or thinking on how that was going
35:46
to impact my future. I was focused because I was
35:49
in survival mode. I was focused on the now. What
35:54
do I need to do now to be able to
35:56
fit in? What do I need to do now to
35:58
get money? What do I need to do now to
36:00
kind of escape from my reality, and so I started
36:05
doing a lot of those things. My best friend growing
36:08
up in high school, he kind of introduced me into
36:13
that life more or less. And because he wasn't able
36:17
to shift from that perspective, he's in prison right now.
36:23
He's serving eighteen to forty two years in a Level
36:26
four maximum security prison. And I honestly believe that that's
36:30
where I was headed because I wasn't really making the
36:36
best choices for myself. I wasn't living up to the
36:38
truest potential of who I was. I wasn't really thinking
36:42
about what my purpose was or the power of what
36:48
was inside. I was really focusing on just surviving. Now.
36:53
I was lucky because I had a few things that
36:56
really changed the way that I looked at life. As
37:00
a youth, for some reason, I always had this fascination
37:03
with what was next, and by that I mean like
37:06
the afterlife, what happens when you passed. Well, my grandfather
37:10
passed away going into my senior year of high school,
37:14
and he was just this amazing person and he was
37:20
successful in the sense that he made a difference in
37:23
his community. Right. He had thirteen kids, so he didn't
37:26
have a lot of money, but he always was able
37:31
to set a place at the table for someone else
37:33
if they needed it. He never judged people by the
37:36
way that they looked, or the way that they dressed,
37:38
or any of that. He was also very welcoming and
37:42
he really instilled that and it trickled down through his family.
37:47
But because I didn't grow up there, and because I
37:50
came in kind of in that chaos, I lost part
37:53
of that messaging as I was going through my teenagers
37:57
and so at his funeral, my family had Even though
38:00
I was making a lot of bad choices, I still
38:02
loved writing, and my family knew that I was a
38:04
really good writer. They asked me to read something at
38:06
his funeral, and when I stood in front of the audience,
38:12
it started to really make me think a lot about
38:15
because I saw all these people show up for his
38:18
funeral right and it wasn't like a hey, we're sorry.
38:20
It was like, hey, we're here because this guy made
38:23
a difference right in my life in the community. And
38:27
I started thinking like, who would show up if I passed?
38:32
Who would show up at my funeral? And what would
38:34
they say? Would anybody have anything good to say about me,
38:40
and it really started playing into the way that I
38:42
started looking at the world, and I realized I had
38:44
to start taking some responsibility for some of the things
38:47
that happened. Sure was I control when I was seven, eight, nine, ten, No,
38:51
you know, Was I in control of the school that
38:53
I went to. No, the way that the kids treated me. No.
38:56
But I was in control of the way that I reacted,
38:58
the way that I responded, and the steps that I
39:01
took after that. And so I started to think, like, well,
39:05
what's my part in all this? And right when I
39:08
started to change and shift my thinking because I was like,
39:11
I don't have money, I don't have the grades, right,
39:13
I haven't been doing anything or focusing on the things
39:15
that would propel me in the normal, traditional path of success.
39:20
Right when I really started asking those questions, I ran
39:23
into an Army recruiter, and the Army recruiter I sat down,
39:27
wasn't even an option for me, Like, I wasn't thinking
39:29
about this as a good choice at all. But he
39:31
started talking about the ability to travel, the ability to
39:34
kind of start over in a basic training, you know
39:38
kind of scenario where it was clean slate, the ability
39:41
to make my own money, the ability to pay into
39:43
the GI bill to be able to earn college, and
39:46
I thought, oh, my goodness, this is everything that I've
39:51
been thinking about in one shot. And so I ended
39:56
up enlisting in the military about three days after I
39:58
turned to eighteen, and no nobody like nobody wanted me
40:02
to go. My mom didn't want me to go, my parents,
40:04
my dad didn't want me to go. Like my friends
40:06
thought I was crazy, but I knew I trusted myself enough,
40:12
and I went there's something here, like I have to
40:14
do this. I didn't want my mom to take care
40:16
of me anymore. I wanted to really kind of grow
40:18
and change. And seven months into my enlistment, I got
40:23
diagnosed with cancer. They covered over the next I think
40:30
I was Walter read from March of two thousand and
40:33
one to December of two thousand and three, and my
40:37
last surgery was in February of two thousand and two.
40:40
So for those two plus years that I was there,
40:44
they covered over a half a million dollars with the
40:46
medical bills, and I would estimate, which is insane, right,
40:50
my family never would have been able to afford that,
40:54
and I would have been in college at the time,
40:56
so it would have totally derailed anything that I was doing,
40:59
and it totally restructured the way that I started viewing life,
41:03
which was what's really important, And I thought about When
41:08
my grandfather passed, no one talked about his money, No
41:11
one talked about the things that he had. They all
41:13
talked about how he made a difference and how he
41:15
made an impact. And my mom handed me this book
41:18
after I think it was after one of my first surgeries.
41:21
I had gone through all the chemo. I had four
41:23
major surgeries, four cycles of chemo, dozens of minor procedures.
41:27
Like two of the surgeries left me with these huge
41:30
scars on my body. Well all four of them did,
41:32
but two with like really really big surgery those scars.
41:35
One where they split me from my sternum down below
41:37
my belly button. They had to cut my abs in
41:39
half and take out all my lymph nodes because I
41:41
had a fourteen x six centimeter massive cancer in my avenue.
41:45
And the other where they split me from the bottom
41:49
of my neck down to that same spot in my
41:51
sternum because the cancer had moved behind my lungs and
41:55
into my neck and they had found a spot on
41:57
my thighmus claim, so they cracked my chest play open
41:59
into them times going. So I was going through these
42:01
really traumatic physical and somatic experiences as well as the
42:07
chemo and all the emotional baggage that came with, you know,
42:10
facing your mortality as an eighteen year old. And my
42:13
mom handed me this book by Pema Children called When
42:17
When Things Fall Apart? Yeah, And I loved reading when
42:23
I was a kid, but I didn't really do it
42:25
much when I was a teenager anymore. And so it
42:27
was the first book that I really picked up as
42:29
a young adult. And it was like this glue that
42:32
started putting my life back together. And I really started
42:35
looking at the ways that I was doing things and
42:38
kind of being becoming more aware. And I would have
42:41
these long conversations with my dad and my mom, and
42:43
my dad is just this amazing human being and it's
42:47
really been one of the spiritual guides in my life.
42:49
And I went what's important, Like, what's really at the
42:55
end of the day, what's important if I die tomorrow
42:59
or if I the cancer comes back. What are the
43:02
things that I really value? And to me, they were
43:06
doing things that I care about, doing things that I love.
43:09
They were being around friends, and family. They were creating community,
43:13
they were leaving an impact, leaving somehow it better than
43:17
when I arrived. And so when I got out of
43:20
the military and everyone was like, what do you want
43:22
to do, what do you want to be? What are
43:24
you going to go to school for? Even though I
43:27
never saw writing as a successful monetary path, I went,
43:33
I'm going to go to school for writing because that's
43:35
what I love. And I know that tomorrow's not guaranteed anymore,
43:40
and I'm not going to live my life for what
43:43
someone else tells me that I need to do anymore.
43:46
I'm going to live my life for me, and I'm
43:48
going to do things that make me happy so long
43:51
as they don't hurt anyone else in the process. And
43:55
so as that part of me started to evolve, I
43:59
realized the level that writing played into all this. It
44:04
was really therapeutic for me. I started sharing some of
44:07
my experiences of going through the cancer with people, which
44:11
was never my intention, and people started going, oh my god,
44:15
you need to perform. Hence the slam and the spoken
44:18
Word and my friend taking me down there because he
44:20
heard what I was writing. He was like, you need
44:22
to get involved with this. When I got home and
44:24
went to school. In college, people started asking me to
44:27
come out and speak at Relay for Life events. And
44:29
that's actually how I started getting into speaking. Was I
44:35
then became like the person to have come out and
44:38
speak at these Relay for Life events for the National
44:43
Cancer Society because I was able to tell my story
44:47
in a way that was powerful and impactful and really
44:49
showed that even though it's a hard thing to go through,
44:53
it changed my life in a positive that you can
44:56
be in these really difficult spaces and find these amazing
45:00
lessons from all this stuff. And so as we transitioned
45:04
this work from performing into the nonprofit sector, and now
45:08
I'll kind of circle back to your question, we knew
45:12
experientially the power that writing has, the transformative power, and
45:17
I knew that when I shared my story on stage.
45:20
The more I shared it, the more I became comfortable
45:23
with the difficulties that I went through, and the more
45:26
I was letting go of some of the trauma that
45:28
I experienced and taking the power from what happened back
45:32
to me. What I didn't know was that the research
45:36
was backing this up. And so after I graduated from
45:39
college and we were doing this for a little while.
45:42
I went back and started working on my master's degree,
45:45
and I went for Communications and Public Administration, which was
45:50
basically like their way of combining two things that they
45:54
had to be for the nonprofit world. So I was
45:57
learning a lot of things about how to run a
45:59
non profit and how to be effective through these two
46:02
kind of paths, which was kind of like their way
46:04
of saying, like, we don't have a nonprofit degree, but
46:07
if you go down these paths, you'll have everything you
46:09
need in order to be successful. And so I was
46:13
in these communications class where they were talking about research
46:15
and I ended up having to read this case study
46:20
about people who were diagnosed with AIDS, who had contracted AIDS,
46:28
and they were talking about how difficult it was for
46:32
people to be able to share the fact that they
46:35
had AIDS. Now this was in the early two thousands, right,
46:38
so there was still a lot more stigma around it.
46:42
And they were talking about how when people were able
46:45
to actually tell the people who were close to them,
46:49
or even strangers in a group therapy circle about the situation,
46:55
they were able to start to change the personal idea,
47:00
their own personal identity. In other words, when they were
47:03
able to speak it out loud and not receive a
47:07
harsh criticism in return. It started to change the way
47:11
they viewed themselves. And when I read that, I went,
47:15
I already knew that, Like I didn't know it, but
47:19
I knew it. I knew that's what was happening when
47:21
I was doing it. I went, Oh, my god, they
47:24
have research on this. The studies are coming out. And
47:27
then the article went on to talk about what happens
47:31
when they're able to get into these groups. And so
47:35
when they're able to get into these groups and share
47:37
it and they receive a positive reaction, it can also
47:39
start to change their social identity, in other words, the
47:42
way that they see themselves within community. And I went,
47:47
I've got the I'm getting the data. Now, I'm getting
47:50
the research behind what we're doing and why it's effective.
47:53
Because what we do with these kids when we get
47:56
them to write is at first it's just with us. First,
48:00
it's just with the paper, so they're seeing themselves. Then
48:03
we do an in in within the facility performance, so
48:07
they're sharing with their peers, they're sharing with staff administration,
48:11
maybe their PO officer comes in, or if it's in
48:14
a school, you know, maybe their parents are allowed to
48:16
come in and watch these you know, in house performances,
48:19
and it's very emotional and the kids create. We create
48:21
this really safe environments for the kids to share. And
48:25
then what we do is we take the students that
48:28
we work with and every May we have this thing
48:31
called our Celebration of Success, and we get about five
48:35
to eight hundred people to come out from the community.
48:38
It's a free event, and we bring the best students,
48:42
so say maybe eight to ten kids out out of
48:45
the hundreds that we work with. We put them on stage,
48:49
we perform, We see the whole event, but we make
48:52
it all about them. And so each one of those
48:55
kids gets a chance to stand on stage, talk about
48:59
why they're there, and share their performance. Whether it's spoken word, rap, song,
49:04
however they want to express themselves is okay, and they
49:07
receive these standing ovations from hundreds of people, and you
49:12
can literally see the power and the impact that it
49:15
has on these kids and even adults. So sometimes we
49:19
have adults that are in our workshops and will come
49:21
out and perform, and so it's amazing to see when
49:25
you trust yourself and you know that what you're doing
49:29
has validity, right, not like the ego like, I'm amazing
49:33
that I know what I'm doing, but really like that
49:35
I know what I'm doing is right, I know what
49:37
it's working, and stay on that path. It was amazing
49:41
how I found our way to numerous studies that started
49:44
backing this stuff up. And then you have people like,
49:47
you know, billionaires like Mark Cuban or Richard Branson or
49:52
Warren Buffett starting to say things like soft skills are
49:56
the biggest way to increase your own personal value, right,
50:00
And what are we teaching them? Really we're saying we're
50:03
teaching them writing performance, but it's a trojan horse to
50:05
teach them self awareness, self confidence, verbal skills, literacy skills,
50:12
and so we're giving them these soft skills that they
50:16
can then go use anywhere where they're like. People will
50:19
be like, well, you're teaching them poetry, Like what's that
50:21
going to do? We're teaching them how to perform on stage,
50:23
And I'm like, don't we have conversations with people every day?
50:27
We're teaching them communication skills. Don't you have to go
50:30
in for a job interview and talk to people. Don't
50:33
you have to work with people? Like? Don't you have
50:36
to write emails and craft all this stuff. They see
50:39
it in such a limited box, which is how we
50:41
present it to be the trojan horse. But when you
50:46
really step back and look at what we're doing, it's
50:48
this huge complex thing that we're giving them these soft skills.
50:54
We're giving them these gifts, this self perspective that then
50:57
they have to use. Right, it can't just be up,
51:00
but then they can use to go further on and
51:03
be able to recreate, kind of talk about their experiences,
51:07
change other people's lives, or take back the power from
51:10
the trauma that they had and make a shift.
51:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I feel like that's actually a really significant
51:18
worldship that's starting to go on right now. There is
51:21
this movement kind of almost that it feels to me
51:27
like there's this movement from the almost solar plexus kind
51:31
of power center into more of the heart center. And
51:35
when I see work like that happening, what you see
51:38
and when I hear it and when I watch it,
51:39
that's what gives me goot bumps around it. And it's
51:42
like you can tell when that heart just kind of
51:45
opens and and it goes back to how important it
51:51
is to be vulnerable and authentic, but how it is
51:58
so essential to have a safe place that allows that
52:02
to naturally come up, and that gives people the courage
52:06
to be able to kind of express it in their
52:09
own way. I mean, I implore everybody to go and
52:14
check out. We'll put all your information at the end
52:16
so people can check it out. But it's like it
52:18
really is an experience to watch it take place. And
52:22
when you watch the different I mean, every once in
52:24
a while you can actually see the participants there and
52:28
you can see it in their face when things kind
52:30
of shift. But it's the way you describe that. It
52:32
definitely the soft skills. This is a transition that is
52:36
needing to happen in the world right now, and it
52:38
is shit. And whenever you go through this shift, there's
52:41
always that transition period where you get certain aspects where
52:45
they don't want it in other people where they know
52:46
it's but it's eventually that's what's going to start to happen.
52:49
And you look at the world leaders that are making
52:52
a big difference, like you're talking about with some of
52:54
these people, I mean, they're big game changers in the world,
52:58
and they're the ones telling you softs or where it's are.
53:01
That's what really creates that infrastructure and that foundation to
53:05
then have all the other pieces fall in place.
53:08
Speaker 2: Oh my god, especially right now where where you know,
53:11
we're in a world where you have to be able
53:13
to use technology, right, I mean, it's it's it's almost inevitable,
53:16
even if even if you're in that world where where
53:18
we met in the you know, the the you know,
53:22
the yoga or the getting more into your personal self
53:25
right like where you want to kind of reconnect with
53:27
yourself and disconnect with that stuff. People like the Anadeya
53:32
she has to be able to present online, you know,
53:35
to draw people in, right, So you have I get that.
53:40
But the more that takes place, the less people are
53:43
learning how to communicate honestly, openly with vulnerability, you know.
53:49
And so it's exactly what you said is debt on
53:51
you know. It's like more and more these skills are
53:54
going to be fewer and far between, where if you
53:57
learn how to do that stuff and aster it with
54:00
any kind of skill passion that you have, you're really
54:03
going to stand out from a crowd.
54:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, I totally agree. Now, Gabrol, you had mentioned that
54:10
you might be able to put together a little bit
54:13
of a performance for our audience here, So yeah, sure,
54:17
got something you're still up for that I would be
54:19
I would be honored to hear.
54:21
Speaker 2: Here, absolutely, and poetry absolutely so. So one of the
54:26
other big things that I think is really important is
54:28
this the idea of really following your own passion, following
54:33
your own path, right, And and a lot of times
54:36
when we talk about that in schools or or even
54:39
in the corporate world, there's a big risk that's involved
54:42
in that, right, like, oh, my goodness, how am I
54:46
going to do this? I have whatever it is, I
54:48
have student debt, loan, or if they're in high school,
54:52
you know, I have this pressure for my parents to
54:55
do this thing to make money to survive. Right. All
54:57
those pressures come typically from a place of love because
55:02
they don't want to see their kids suffer or struggle,
55:05
but they're often misguided. Or if you're in an adult
55:10
you might be married and have a partner who's dependent
55:13
on part of your income, or you might have kids.
55:17
You know, Oh my god, I have this other human
55:19
life that I'm responsible for. How can I take these
55:21
risks to do these things? And for me, at the
55:24
end of the day, I understand that sometimes people have
55:28
to do what they have to do right, that's just
55:30
part of the nature of the world. But I encourage
55:34
more and more people to be willing to take these risks,
55:37
because even if you don't succeed in what you set
55:41
out to attain, if you're being present with the journey,
55:45
you learn. And so especially with the youth, I feel
55:49
like they have so much potential to be so many
55:51
different things, and we're moving into this world where so
55:54
many things are becoming automated and full of technology. And
55:59
so for me, I'm like, I watched my mom start
56:04
over at forty one, and it's always been this really
56:07
like underlining motivating factor for me that like, I'm going
56:11
to take so many risks because I know you can
56:14
start over. I know that at some point something falls
56:17
apart and you just have to be able to do
56:20
whatever you need to do to survive. So if I
56:23
need to go into that space where I'm following the
56:25
path right automation or computers, I'll do that if I
56:29
have to in the future to survive. But I want
56:33
to be able to take that risk on myself. Why
56:36
do I want to take a risk on someone else's
56:39
dream when I'd be so much more apt to bet
56:42
on myself Because I believe in myself, and so for me,
56:46
a lot of what we do takes risks. Like my
56:49
business partner left his job as an English teacher when
56:52
we were making literally zero dollars. He had a newborn son.
56:58
He left his job, so he turned on steady paycheck
57:01
health insurance like security to do this. And I think
57:09
I saw I was going through some files and I
57:12
found like our own tax returns from like the second
57:14
year we're in business, and we each filed like negative
57:17
one thousand dollars or something on our tax return and saying,
57:20
you know, it's like, but we believed in what we
57:24
were doing. And because we were so passionate and we
57:27
stayed to our goals, we stayed to our focus, we
57:30
didn't give up on ourselves. We made it. And so
57:34
I say all that because from all the conferences that
57:37
we've been at, especially around leadership, a lot of people
57:41
are really talking about this concept of being okay with
57:45
making mistakes, being okay to fail, because we're living right
57:49
now in a society where it's like you say one
57:51
wrong thing, you do one wrong thing, it gets caught
57:54
on video or it gets put online, and your whole
57:56
career goes away and we really need to move away
57:59
from this idea that we have to be perfect, because
58:02
perfect is the enemy of greatness. In my opinion, if
58:06
you spend your whole life trying to be perfect and
58:08
not taking any risk you're playing is safe, you're not
58:12
going to be able to find the amazingness that you
58:15
are because the amazingness involves the flaws, it involves the
58:18
mistakes that come into play. So I'll perform a piece
58:23
that I wrote that was really inspired from just being
58:27
in this field, from listening to experts, and what I
58:30
was doing is I wrote this piece over the course
58:32
of two years, because really it just kind of started
58:35
with me jotting down some quotes and some things that
58:38
I thought were cool, and so some of the lines
58:41
in here may be familiar to people. There's a line
58:43
in here from Steve Jobs, There's a line in here
58:46
from some other wonderful speakers. But I found a way
58:48
to kind of take all of it and put it
58:50
into this narrative, put my own words into it and
58:54
my own experience into it, and really kind of tell
58:56
the story about the importance of risk taking and the
59:01
importance of being okay with failing when you're pushing towards
59:04
your dream when you're pushing towards your goal. So it's
59:07
called failure is living And there is a video of
59:11
this on our YouTube channel. Kirk and I performed this
59:16
piece together for a TEDx event in Detroit. So failure
59:21
is living. If you haven't failed in life, you haven't lived.
59:26
Because failure tells us that we've taken a risk, that
59:29
we're still challenging our own limitations. It's only when you
59:32
cross the boundary of your comfort zone that you begin
59:34
to open the lid of who you are and rid
59:36
your life with a box that everyone tells you to
59:38
think outside of it and history history favors the risk takers.
59:43
Only those who risk going too far can find out
59:45
how far we can actually go. You'll never read about
59:48
anyone throughout history who successfully inspired change because they followed
59:52
the crowd, because they played it safe, because they cared
59:56
too much about what other people thought of them. Remember
59:59
that time is limited, so don't waste it living someone
1:00:03
else's life. It's only when you jump blindly from your
1:00:06
nest that you can experience the act of flying. You
1:00:09
just have to be willing to spread your wings and
1:00:11
trust that you were meant to soar to heights you
1:00:13
never thought possible from the comfort of your fear. Don't
1:00:17
allow the things that scare you to keep you grounded. Instead,
1:00:20
become like the Right brothers after their first crash, and
1:00:23
be willing to collide into the dirt to turn the
1:00:26
toughest moments of your life into the burst of wind.
1:00:28
You need to get you airborne so that one day
1:00:31
you can see what the bottom looks like from the
1:00:34
clouds and know that just because your eyes can't see
1:00:37
past the horizon, it doesn't mean that your world ends
1:00:40
at the sunset. They won't teach you this in school.
1:00:44
You can't sign up for failure one oh one, only
1:00:46
audit and observe, so when you graduate you can navigate
1:00:50
the real world, the place where ninety nine percent of
1:00:53
the things you will experience aren't taught, the place where
1:00:57
you will find that the rules and lessons you learned
1:00:59
in school don't apply because in school, the most successful
1:01:03
students are the people who make the fewest mistakes. But
1:01:07
in life, the most successful professionals other people who learn
1:01:11
to turn their mistakes into masterpieces, artists who have discovered
1:01:15
that you can't really figure out how something works until
1:01:18
you break it apart, and they'll probably call you crazy
1:01:22
for your beliefs. But that's what passion inspires, and inspires
1:01:27
the outrageous, the wild, and it turns the impossible into
1:01:30
the incredible, like cell phones and spaceships, or sharing parts
1:01:35
of yourself with complete strangers and in the process becoming friends.
1:01:41
That's what happens when you take risks. Sometimes you create
1:01:45
amazing things that change the way we live, but often
1:01:49
we fail. You have to because mistakes are part of
1:01:53
the learning process. Success and failure they hold hands. You
1:01:58
just have to be willing to jump off the deepened
1:02:00
Because pearls don't lie on the sea shore. If you
1:02:03
want one, you have to dive to the bottom of
1:02:05
the ocean and take it. It's only when you dig
1:02:08
deep that you can plant the seeds that will grow
1:02:10
into something beautiful and will guarantee that when you wake
1:02:13
up in the morning you still feel a lie. It
1:02:17
doesn't matter where you start, it doesn't matter where you finish.
1:02:21
What matters most is what you do in between the
1:02:25
steps you took to get to wherever you are now
1:02:27
and the times you got back up after you fell.
1:02:30
So dust yourself off, start chasing your dreams and start
1:02:34
living the life that will leave you with a smile
1:02:36
on your face and a strong heartbeat in your chest.
1:02:39
And start that life today. Start by taking a risk,
1:02:42
start by learning from your failures, and start to appreciate
1:02:46
the scars you have that remind you that you live
1:02:50
the life worth living.
1:03:02
Speaker 1: Goosebumps, brothers bum thank you, love it, I love it,
1:03:07
GiB thank you so much. It's been in your time
1:03:12
for sharing your stories. Where can people learn more about you?
1:03:16
Where can they learn more about Kinetic Effects? How can
1:03:18
people people see some more of your work and next steps?
1:03:22
Speaker 2: Yeah? Absolutely so. Of course we're on the the main
1:03:25
social media channels Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, but really, if
1:03:32
you want to see some more of the videos, our
1:03:35
website www dot Kinetic Effect with an A so k
1:03:40
I n E T I c A F f e
1:03:43
c t dot com. And then there's a link on
1:03:47
our website that says get involved. That'll take you over
1:03:49
to our nonprofit web page. But directly, it's Speak It Forward, Inc.
1:03:56
Dot org And that's really the educational arm of what
1:03:59
we do, and it's our way to give it back
1:04:01
and help inspire others and work with people who just
1:04:05
need us a second chance or a minded that just
1:04:08
because they've been through difficulty or they've made mistakes in
1:04:11
their life, they're not their mistake and they can find
1:04:15
a learning lesson in those It's beautiful.
1:04:19
Speaker 1: It's beautiful, Gabe. Thank you so much. Well, that was awesome.
1:04:25
Thank you so much for taking the time to invest
1:04:27
in your health and well being. Since this podcast is
1:04:30
brand new, reviews and subscribers are so vital for us
1:04:34
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1:04:37
So if you found this information valuable, please post review
1:04:41
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1:04:45
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1:04:47
please share with them. You can also find us on
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1:04:54
question that you'd like to be addressed, direct message me
1:04:57
on Instagram or leave a comment on one of my
1:05:00
I would love to hear from you. And you can
1:05:02
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1:05:06
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1:05:09
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