Latest / Alive, I Guess Podcast / Episode 32 - Liberation Be Happenin w/ Dr. Cornell

Transcript

Episode 32 - Liberation Be Happenin w/ Dr. Cornell · Alive, I Guess Podcast

0:16
SPEAKER_00: What's up, y'all?
0:18
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to your safe space.
0:20
SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, RJ, and this is the Alive I Guest Podcast.
0:23
SPEAKER_00: If you're new here, welcome.
0:26
SPEAKER_00: I appreciate you for joining.
0:28
SPEAKER_00: And if you've been here, welcome back.
0:30
SPEAKER_00: I appreciate you as always.
0:33
SPEAKER_00: Today we have a very special guest.
0:36
SPEAKER_00: This is someone who is truly near and dear to my heart.
0:41
SPEAKER_00: This is someone who was very instrumental in getting me to even the starting line of starting this podcast.
0:49
SPEAKER_00: And just someone that I consider a friend, a mentor, and an incredible human being in the world doing the work to help free and liberate us as a people and just like as a collective.
1:02
SPEAKER_00: So it is my honor to introduce Dr.
1:06
SPEAKER_00: Cornell.
1:07
SPEAKER_00: Hello, hello.
1:09
SPEAKER_00: Hello, how are you?
1:10
SPEAKER_03: I'm great.
1:11
SPEAKER_03: I'm great.
1:12
SPEAKER_00: It's so good to see you and to have this conversation with you.
1:15
SPEAKER_00: It's been a while.
1:16
SPEAKER_00: It has been, I think this conversation today is going to be something that is beautiful.
1:22
unknown: Yeah.
1:23
SPEAKER_00: Typically, all the conversations that we do have off camera are.
1:27
SPEAKER_00: So I think this is going to be a game changer.
1:30
SPEAKER_00: And it's going to be a regular conversation with cameras and mics to truly.
1:34
SPEAKER_00: We're just letting them live.
1:36
SPEAKER_00: Exactly, exactly.
1:37
SPEAKER_00: I cannot wait.
1:38
SPEAKER_00: So I know you have seen the show, and I've talked to you just how I want to start things in the past, but it is completely different to be in this seat and be my second guest officially on the show.
1:51
SPEAKER_00: So as you know, we start every episode with gratitude.
1:55
SPEAKER_00: So what are you grateful for today?
1:58
SPEAKER_03: I am grateful for navigating this season of my life with curiosity.
2:05
SPEAKER_03: That's what I'm grateful for because this is a new form of me.
2:10
SPEAKER_03: Truly.
2:17
SPEAKER_03: And I am navigating this so differently, and it has been amazing.
2:21
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
2:22
SPEAKER_03: And I'm so grateful for that.
2:23
SPEAKER_00: As someone who is observing, I can completely see that.
2:27
SPEAKER_00: I appreciate that.
2:28
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
2:29
SPEAKER_00: Not that you weren't great before.
2:30
SPEAKER_00: It's just this light.
2:32
SPEAKER_00: It's different.
2:33
SPEAKER_03: It's different.
2:34
SPEAKER_03: Everyone that said that to me, all my closest friends, like, there's something a bit, there's a glow on you.
2:39
SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, I I feel that glow.
2:41
SPEAKER_03: I wake up with that glow.
2:42
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
2:43
SPEAKER_03: Every single day.
2:44
SPEAKER_03: And it shows how the bills are going to get paid.
2:46
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
2:46
SPEAKER_03: But I have this like deep, deep sense of knowing that I am moving in the right direction.
2:52
SPEAKER_03: And it feels amazing.
2:53
SPEAKER_00: That's incredible.
2:55
SPEAKER_03: Liberated.
2:56
SPEAKER_03: Literally.
2:57
SPEAKER_00: We're going to get into that.
2:59
SPEAKER_00: Because that's what I'm getting from this.
3:02
SPEAKER_00: And you know, us a year ago was not us today.
3:06
SPEAKER_00: I'm telling you.
3:06
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
3:07
SPEAKER_03: I'm telling you, my life wasn't my own.
3:09
SPEAKER_03: No.
3:09
SPEAKER_03: It was never, it was not my own.
3:11
SPEAKER_03: And I finally, yeah, yeah.
3:12
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
3:13
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
3:13
SPEAKER_03: We're going to get into it.
3:14
SPEAKER_00: I'm ready to share all of it.
3:16
SPEAKER_00: Full disclosure.
3:18
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
3:19
SPEAKER_00: Truly.
3:20
SPEAKER_00: Um, well, thank you for sharing that.
3:22
SPEAKER_00: Today, um, as I was sharing with you off camera, you know, it's a very grief, heavy time for me.
3:29
SPEAKER_00: And so um, I know this was something that the last guest said, but like I'm truly grateful to wake up this morning.
3:37
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
3:37
SPEAKER_00: Because not everybody gets the opportunity to do so.
3:42
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, in these days, I understand the importance of that.
3:48
SPEAKER_00: There have been times where I did not want to wake up.
3:51
unknown: Yeah.
3:51
SPEAKER_00: And having this appreciation for life, like, I'm I'm grateful to be here today.
3:56
SPEAKER_03: I'm grateful.
3:57
SPEAKER_00: Don't know what tomorrow means.
3:58
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
3:59
SPEAKER_00: Or brings.
4:00
SPEAKER_00: But today, we are here.
4:02
SPEAKER_03: Living in the present.
4:03
SPEAKER_00: And we're gonna get into it.
4:04
SPEAKER_00: I love it.
4:05
SPEAKER_00: So, before we get into all the things, I want you to tell the people in your words, who are you?
4:13
SPEAKER_00: What are you about?
4:14
SPEAKER_00: Who is Cornell?
4:16
SPEAKER_03: Such a big question.
4:18
SPEAKER_03: Who is Cornell?
4:19
SPEAKER_03: I am um I'm a black queer man um who is from New Jersey and grew up in a single-parent household with my mom and four other four siblings.
4:33
SPEAKER_03: I'm the oldest of five.
4:35
SPEAKER_03: Um, and I've played a father figure in the lives of my siblings.
4:40
SPEAKER_03: Um, and we had to grow up really fast.
4:43
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you know, I had to mature really fast.
4:46
SPEAKER_03: I've been working since I was 13 years old.
4:49
SPEAKER_03: You know, and understanding what that looks like, understanding bills and that whole, you know, when I should have been running around not working, you know, I understood responsibility.
5:01
SPEAKER_03: Um, I'm sensitive, I'm very sensitive.
5:05
SPEAKER_03: I I take energy and read energy.
5:09
SPEAKER_03: I read the shifts and how people say things and how they behave and how they act, and I'm watching.
5:14
SPEAKER_03: And the sensitive part comes in where I sometimes take it personally and I'm growing and learning that it ain't about me.
5:21
SPEAKER_03: Even if it's at me, it ain't about me.
5:23
SPEAKER_03: Right.
5:24
SPEAKER_03: But uh yeah, I'm deeply sensitive.
5:26
SPEAKER_03: Um yeah, I have a doctorate, which I never thought I would get one.
5:30
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
5:31
SPEAKER_03: I didn't want one.
5:32
SPEAKER_03: Doctor.
5:32
SPEAKER_03: I did not want one.
5:34
SPEAKER_03: Didn't want one because of what it represented.
5:37
SPEAKER_03: I have always been someone who has pushed back against norms.
5:41
SPEAKER_03: Always.
5:42
SPEAKER_03: Since I could since I can remember elementary school, middle school.
5:46
SPEAKER_03: Why?
5:46
SPEAKER_03: Right.
5:47
SPEAKER_03: Why do I have to do it that way?
5:48
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
5:48
SPEAKER_03: My teacher's right home, he will not comply.
5:53
SPEAKER_03: And I still won't.
5:54
SPEAKER_03: I can see that.
5:54
SPEAKER_03: And I still won't.
5:55
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
5:56
SPEAKER_03: And so when people were like, oh, well, you know, if you do a PhD, you gotta do it this way, and I was like, no, I don't want that.
6:01
SPEAKER_03: But the biggest narrative was that I wasn't deemed what's the word I'm looking for, um not valuable, but not trustworthy, but credible.
6:13
SPEAKER_03: Unless I had a PhD.
6:14
SPEAKER_03: And I was like, I'm gonna show you better than I can tell you.
6:17
SPEAKER_03: You're gonna respect me no matter what.
6:19
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
6:19
SPEAKER_03: But I got it because I ended up finding a program that I really, really loved and spoke to my heart.
6:25
SPEAKER_03: So that's why I ended up getting it.
6:27
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
6:28
SPEAKER_03: And I'm glad I did.
6:29
SPEAKER_03: But it wasn't a sense of seeking this validation from the professional world because I already knew who I was.
6:35
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
6:35
SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
6:36
SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
6:37
SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately, that accredited piece is important when you are black, when you are black.
6:43
SPEAKER_00: Mark weird.
6:43
SPEAKER_03: But here's the thing, even when you have it, they still don't want to give you what they're supposed to give you.
6:47
SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
6:48
SPEAKER_03: So, like to me, I was like, you making me chase something that I know it's not real.
6:50
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
6:51
SPEAKER_03: You know?
6:51
SPEAKER_03: So I if I was gonna get it, I wanted to get it because I wanted it, not because I felt like they would only respect me if I had it.
6:59
SPEAKER_03: That was super important.
7:00
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
7:00
SPEAKER_03: Um, and then knowing that they go through, like they haze you, and I'm just like, nah, because I will cuss you out.
7:06
SPEAKER_03: Quickly.
7:07
SPEAKER_03: You will get cussed out.
7:08
SPEAKER_03: I'm not the one that replaced it.
7:10
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
7:10
SPEAKER_03: I do not tolerate that.
7:11
SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's oh yeah.
7:13
SPEAKER_03: And like they're spending too much money for that.
7:15
SPEAKER_03: It's like, it's like, what do you call it?
7:16
SPEAKER_03: Uh generational trauma.
7:18
SPEAKER_03: I gotta put you through it because I had to go through it.
7:20
SPEAKER_03: It's a part of the process.
7:21
SPEAKER_03: It doesn't have to be.
7:22
SPEAKER_03: Not at all.
7:23
SPEAKER_03: You hated it when you were doing it or getting it done to you.
7:26
SPEAKER_03: Why would you pass that down?
7:27
SPEAKER_03: But that's what we do.
7:29
SPEAKER_00: We think it's a form of love, unfortunately.
7:32
SPEAKER_03: It's a part of the process.
7:33
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
7:34
SPEAKER_03: It does not have to be.
7:35
SPEAKER_03: You can change that.
7:37
SPEAKER_03: And I was like, you you won't.
7:38
SPEAKER_03: I was like, I can't operate in that world because they will kick me out.
7:42
SPEAKER_00: Right.
7:43
SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't feel good to my core.
7:45
SPEAKER_00: 100%.
7:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I'm completely aligned with all of that.
7:49
SPEAKER_00: You would see we hold on, we're getting too ahead of ourselves.
7:54
SPEAKER_02: So And that was from one question.
7:55
SPEAKER_02: Right.
7:56
SPEAKER_02: That was just one.
7:58
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
7:59
SPEAKER_00: This is gonna be a good one.
8:00
SPEAKER_00: Um, okay, so how, well, before we do that, you're in a transition period.
8:08
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
8:08
SPEAKER_00: Briefly.
8:09
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
8:10
SPEAKER_00: Can you give a quick overview of like where your career started, how you went through tech, and like what this past year has brought you and where you are today, like surface level.
8:20
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
8:21
SPEAKER_03: Um, so I started my career, my professional career in education.
8:26
SPEAKER_03: Um, I did Teach for America in Atlanta, Georgia, uh 2009 to 2011, and taught high school English at Maynard Jackson High School.
8:34
SPEAKER_03: And I thought I would be a teacher for quite some time.
8:38
SPEAKER_03: Um, I wanted to, I grew up in those types of neighborhoods, right?
8:42
SPEAKER_03: Underserved and with black and brown students, and I wanted to give back.
8:45
SPEAKER_03: I've always known since I was young.
8:47
SPEAKER_03: Like you would ask me at eight, nine, ten.
8:50
SPEAKER_03: I knew I wanted to give back.
8:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it seems like it's in your deeply root.
8:55
SPEAKER_03: Deeply rooted in who I am.
8:57
SPEAKER_03: Because I also had uh role models of my grandmother didn't have much, but she gave you what she had.
9:03
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
9:04
SPEAKER_03: To the point where when she passed, we could not leave the funeral home when we were scheduled because there was a line around the block waiting to see her before we closed the casket.
9:17
SPEAKER_03: Impact it doesn't even end there.
9:19
SPEAKER_03: They they all followed us to the cemetery.
9:24
SPEAKER_03: That's how I want to go.
9:25
SPEAKER_03: That's right, and she wasn't she wasn't wealthy, she had a high school diploma.
9:30
SPEAKER_03: That was she what you know what I'm saying?
9:31
SPEAKER_03: Like she wasn't this big figure or she was at the same damn time.
9:36
SPEAKER_03: I grew up in Camden, New Jersey, and I remember watching the drug dealers on the block move out the way when she came down the street.
9:49
SPEAKER_03: That's respect.
9:50
SPEAKER_03: They would stop what they were doing when Miss Betty was coming down the street.
9:54
SPEAKER_03: She was a force, she was a force, and not from a fear perspective, from a like she cared for you.
10:01
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, she cared for, and I was like, that's who I want to be.
10:06
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, right.
10:07
SPEAKER_03: So where was I even going?
10:08
SPEAKER_03: Okay, so yeah, did education and uh hated the system and was like, I need to go get a master's and go back to school, and but I wouldn't go unless my kids asked, let me go.
10:22
SPEAKER_03: I see my kids, yeah.
10:23
SPEAKER_03: They were my students, but they were my kids.
10:24
SPEAKER_03: I understand.
10:25
SPEAKER_03: And um they were like, and I remember I said, Look, I want to go back to school, but I feel like I'm I'm leaving you.
10:32
SPEAKER_03: And I remember to this day, one of them stood up and said, You are always telling us how important it is to go after yours.
10:39
SPEAKER_03: Why wouldn't you go do it for yourself?
10:42
SPEAKER_03: I was like, excuse me.
10:44
SPEAKER_03: Come on.
10:45
SPEAKER_03: So like they were like, go.
10:46
SPEAKER_03: Like, yeah, we're we're gonna miss you, but go.
10:49
SPEAKER_03: Wow.
10:50
SPEAKER_03: That's uh I remember bawling.
10:52
SPEAKER_03: Bawling.
10:54
SPEAKER_03: Because I felt like my time with them was well spent.
10:58
SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
10:59
SPEAKER_03: They understood it.
10:59
SPEAKER_00: It's a direct reflection of what you've instilled in them.
11:02
SPEAKER_03: 100%.
11:03
SPEAKER_03: And I wasn't the best teacher, you know what I mean?
11:05
SPEAKER_03: Like, but we did work in that classroom.
11:07
SPEAKER_03: So yeah.
11:07
SPEAKER_03: Teaching kids is hard, so um, so yeah, left there, then got a master's in at the University of Vermont, then went to and worked at uh NYU for a number of years.
11:16
SPEAKER_03: So lived in New York City, then got recruited to go work at Cornell University and was there for five and a half years, then switched over to the human resources side of the university and got tired of higher red because they moved too slow.
11:29
SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, let's let's try something and fail.
11:32
SPEAKER_03: Let's let's keep going.
11:32
SPEAKER_03: And it just I was like, I can't do the internet.
11:35
SPEAKER_03: And I also wanted to make more money.
11:36
SPEAKER_03: This is I'm just be very clear about that.
11:38
SPEAKER_03: Generational wealth.
11:39
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
11:39
SPEAKER_03: Right?
11:40
SPEAKER_03: I wanted to be able to buy a home someday.
11:41
SPEAKER_03: I wanted to be able to help people, help my my siblings, and I couldn't do that on a higher ed salary, you know?
11:48
SPEAKER_03: Um, and so I ended up transitioning into tech and moved out here to California, where I met my now husband.
11:53
SPEAKER_03: Like the day I drove into Santa Cruz, I met him.
11:57
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
11:58
SPEAKER_03: Wow.
11:59
SPEAKER_03: On grinder.
12:00
SPEAKER_03: Divine.
12:00
SPEAKER_03: Own grinder.
12:02
SPEAKER_04: I hear.
12:03
SPEAKER_03: I hear is where it's at over there.
12:05
SPEAKER_03: 100%.
12:06
SPEAKER_03: And um, yeah, did tech, worked at a company called Looker, then worked at a company that got bought by Google, and then worked at uh Google for a year, then worked at a company called Headspace, the meditation app that a competitor to calm.
12:19
SPEAKER_03: Then was there for two and a half years, and then went to Zillow, um, and then to Pixar Animation Studios, where I then lost my job from there due to some what I would consider bullshit.
12:32
SPEAKER_00: I would consider it bullshit as well, truly.
12:34
SPEAKER_03: But you know, every everything for a reason, right?
12:36
SPEAKER_03: Like I did the best that I could um and really worked hard to care for my team, and I think it was it just for them, it just wasn't what they wanted.
12:46
SPEAKER_03: And I'm also a direct person, like I care deeply for you, but I'm also gonna be direct and clear because I think that uh honesty and and directness is kindness, yeah, right.
12:56
SPEAKER_03: Um you also have a job to do.
12:58
SPEAKER_03: 100% right.
12:59
SPEAKER_03: I have people to answer to director, and they just did not like that.
13:03
SPEAKER_03: They did not like that.
13:04
SPEAKER_01: Well, that's their loss.
13:06
SPEAKER_03: It really is, and it's 100% my gain because I am now doing work that I truly, truly love and deeply connect to my values.
13:16
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
13:16
SPEAKER_03: Because one of the things I think I knew for quite some time prior to me losing my job was that I wasn't happy in what I was doing and where I was doing it.
13:25
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
13:26
SPEAKER_03: And I think the universe oftentimes sends you these little messages this is not where you're supposed to be.
13:31
SPEAKER_03: Time's up, time's up.
13:33
SPEAKER_03: And then when you're not listening, it kicks up.
13:35
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
13:35
SPEAKER_03: So, all right, I told you time was up.
13:38
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
13:38
SPEAKER_03: And I've it's happened to so many friends, so many people, where it's like you you saw the red flags where it was time to go, and you had a chance to go on your terms, and you chose to say anyway to force it.
13:50
SPEAKER_03: And the universe is like, I said what I said, I need you over here.
13:53
SPEAKER_03: And then it snatches you up.
13:54
SPEAKER_03: And I'm telling you, I like like I was saying, you know, before we started filming, I don't always know how the bills are gonna get paid.
14:02
SPEAKER_03: But I wake up with so much joy and peace and energy.
14:08
SPEAKER_03: That's beautiful.
14:10
SPEAKER_03: You can't ignore that.
14:11
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and you cannot ignore that.
14:13
SPEAKER_03: And I made I was making almost a quarter of a million dollars a year, was nowhere near as happy as I am right now.
14:23
SPEAKER_03: Nowhere near.
14:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I spoke to our relationship to money on a previous episode.
14:31
SPEAKER_00: And unfortunately, when you have money, you do feel better.
14:34
SPEAKER_00: But when you remove that temporarily, temporarily, like it's it's more so safety than happiness.
14:41
SPEAKER_00: It's a band-aid.
14:42
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
14:43
SPEAKER_00: And you know, we were in this transition period at the same time, and I just recall, yes, I'm scared because I don't know how these bills are gonna get paid, but somehow I'm less stressed and more happy not working under this capitalist society and not playing that game every day than I was when things were expected.
15:07
SPEAKER_00: So although that has changed recently, I resonate and I understand and I agree.
15:13
SPEAKER_03: Like that joy, that fun employment joy, telling you, an entrepreneurial journey, getting to create and design things the way you want to have them.
15:23
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
15:24
SPEAKER_03: Especially your life.
15:25
SPEAKER_03: My life, how I want to do business, who I do business with, you know, um, getting to meet people I otherwise would not have met.
15:32
SPEAKER_03: Right.
15:32
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
15:33
SPEAKER_03: And they just keep coming into my life.
15:34
SPEAKER_03: And when I explain to people what I'm working on, they go, that's amazing.
15:38
SPEAKER_03: Like they I just keep getting the validation.
15:40
SPEAKER_03: It's the little micro winds of like, yep, keep going, keep going.
15:43
SPEAKER_00: And you have some irons in the fire.
15:46
SPEAKER_00: 100%.
15:46
SPEAKER_00: You've got a lot going on.
15:47
SPEAKER_00: I see.
15:48
SPEAKER_03: I see it clearly.
15:49
SPEAKER_00: So we're let's dive into that.
15:51
SPEAKER_00: So let's talk about how we met.
15:55
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
15:55
SPEAKER_00: Because we we gotta set this.
15:56
SPEAKER_00: Oh, wait.
15:57
SPEAKER_03: Wow, okay.
15:58
SPEAKER_00: Do you I don't remember how we met exactly?
16:01
SPEAKER_00: We had a few interactions.
16:03
SPEAKER_00: I think I was like coordinating for you.
16:06
SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to remember.
16:07
SPEAKER_00: I don't remember.
16:09
SPEAKER_00: So this is my perspective.
16:11
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
16:11
SPEAKER_00: So we let's get into the whole thing.
16:13
SPEAKER_00: So obviously, you were Jeanne's manager at Headspace.
16:19
SPEAKER_00: Um, Jaune, y'all know, is my partner, my wife.
16:22
SPEAKER_00: Um, I remember at first, y'all were butting heads.
16:27
SPEAKER_00: Heard I talk about this all the time.
16:29
SPEAKER_00: Y'all were butting heads.
16:31
SPEAKER_00: Look at y'all.
16:31
SPEAKER_00: Siblings.
16:32
SPEAKER_00: I was so I was always around in the background for the meetings because remotely.
16:37
SPEAKER_00: So I was there to experience the relationship as a spectator.
16:41
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, this is going to work out.
16:44
SPEAKER_00: I see because I'm very similar to you, like I I feel what it is you're trying to do.
16:51
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
16:51
SPEAKER_00: And I recognize the space that y'all were in.
16:54
SPEAKER_00: Like, y'all were the top in your field in your companies when you came together.
16:58
SPEAKER_00: Right.
16:58
SPEAKER_00: And y'all don't know each other.
17:00
SPEAKER_00: We it was just a lot.
17:02
SPEAKER_00: There were different things in the system.
17:03
SPEAKER_00: So I'm like, this is gonna work out.
17:05
SPEAKER_00: 100%.
17:05
SPEAKER_00: Take the course.
17:06
SPEAKER_00: She was not too confident.
17:08
SPEAKER_02: I'm like, ah, I'm an Aries.
17:13
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
17:14
SPEAKER_02: I was born in April.
17:15
SPEAKER_02: She was like, I got history with them people.
17:19
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
17:20
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
17:20
SPEAKER_02: I mean that until later.
17:21
SPEAKER_02: I was like, that is hilarious.
17:23
SPEAKER_00: It made sense.
17:24
SPEAKER_00: And so once it started to come together and the relationship developed, then we met when we all co-worked that one.
17:32
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
17:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
17:33
SPEAKER_03: Oh, wow, I've forgotten about that.
17:34
SPEAKER_03: That's right.
17:35
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
17:35
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
17:36
SPEAKER_00: That's where we met.
17:37
SPEAKER_00: And then we established our relationship.
17:38
SPEAKER_03: And it just kept growing from there.
17:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
17:40
SPEAKER_00: And then fast forward to last year, where we are both in this transition period.
17:47
SPEAKER_00: I just lost my job.
17:49
SPEAKER_00: You met up with Janet, and you let her know what you were going through and your job loss and your mentorship.
17:56
SPEAKER_00: And that's when you asked if you could mentor me.
18:01
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
18:02
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, yeah.
18:03
SPEAKER_02: Let's get to free coaching.
18:05
SPEAKER_02: Let's do it.
18:06
SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
18:06
SPEAKER_00: So, how like what made you want to do that?
18:10
SPEAKER_00: Like, how did you know, like, I need to reach out to them and make this happen?
18:14
SPEAKER_00: Like, how'd you get to that point?
18:15
SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
18:16
SPEAKER_03: It's it's a feeling.
18:17
SPEAKER_03: I've been telling people a lot.
18:18
SPEAKER_03: Like, people ask me a question all the time how do you know X?
18:21
SPEAKER_03: I think sometimes it's a deep sense of knowing.
18:23
SPEAKER_03: You gotta know to know.
18:25
SPEAKER_03: And it's beyond an intellectual sense of knowing.
18:28
SPEAKER_03: To me, I'm I'm describing it as a spiritual sense of knowing.
18:32
SPEAKER_03: I believe that things happen and become aligned at the right time for the right reason.
18:36
SPEAKER_03: And, you know, I was I'm also on a mission to make coaching more accessible because people who look like us don't get access to it because it costs$20,000.
18:46
SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
18:47
SPEAKER_03: And we don't oftentimes get to the C-suite.
18:49
SPEAKER_03: We oftentimes don't get to the VP level where they tend to pay for your coaching.
18:53
SPEAKER_03: And so I'm on a deep mission to ensure that more people can get access to it.
18:59
SPEAKER_03: Um, and so even when I'm, you know, charging the money that I charge, I'm gonna always have a couple of slots that are free for people who historically can't get that.
19:09
SPEAKER_03: So I just think it was just this feeling.
19:11
SPEAKER_03: And you know, y'all my people.
19:12
SPEAKER_03: So I'm like, if somebody needs something, I got nothing but time now.
19:16
SPEAKER_03: So like, yeah, let's do that.
19:20
SPEAKER_03: You know what I'm saying?
19:21
SPEAKER_03: So it that was a no-brainer for me.
19:23
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, no-brainer.
19:24
SPEAKER_00: And I was so honored because it's like, I know the position you're in, you gotta pay these bills.
19:29
SPEAKER_00: I have no money to pay you.
19:31
SPEAKER_00: And you really were like, I want to work with you and help you do this thing.
19:35
SPEAKER_00: And at the time, I'm like, I'm thinking of starting this podcast, but I don't know.
19:40
SPEAKER_00: And we worked through all the different unconscious beliefs and limiting beliefs and fear.
19:49
SPEAKER_00: Um, you remember we wrote that sticky note together.
19:55
SPEAKER_00: So, context for the listeners, we put some guardrails in place because we knew along this process it would get hard.
20:06
SPEAKER_00: It would get to a point where it's like, I don't know, like whatever that be, external people, just my own things with it.
20:15
SPEAKER_03: Trauma, all kinds of stuff, yeah.
20:17
SPEAKER_00: And so we wrote that sticky note.
20:18
SPEAKER_00: Yep, and the sticky note said, like, it gave me a reason to keep going.
20:23
SPEAKER_00: It's like somebody out there needs to hear this, they may not have found it yet.
20:27
SPEAKER_00: Keep going.
20:28
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
20:28
SPEAKER_00: And that has truly gotten me through all these moments.
20:32
SPEAKER_00: That's really all got my eyes water.
20:34
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
20:35
SPEAKER_00: When I tell you, I've almost put this down a few times.
20:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
20:39
SPEAKER_00: Because it's a lot of work.
20:40
SPEAKER_00: Of course.
20:40
SPEAKER_00: And it's just me.
20:41
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
20:42
SPEAKER_00: And I'm an artist and I'm sensitive.
20:45
SPEAKER_00: Uh-huh.
20:46
SPEAKER_00: And this is very vulnerable, you know, all the all the different reasons.
20:49
SPEAKER_00: Right.
20:49
SPEAKER_00: And so I wanted to show you.
20:52
SPEAKER_00: Uh-huh.
20:53
SPEAKER_03: Wow.
20:53
SPEAKER_03: You still have it.
20:54
SPEAKER_03: I love that.
20:55
SPEAKER_00: Oh, it sits by my computer.
20:56
SPEAKER_00: I love that.
20:57
SPEAKER_00: Truly.
20:57
SPEAKER_00: Because even in these moments where it's like I don't have strength some days, I'm learning to be okay with showing that because somebody needs it.
21:10
SPEAKER_03: Somebody needs it.
21:11
SPEAKER_03: You literally can save someone's life.
21:15
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
21:16
SPEAKER_03: Like, and people think that that's like over dramatic.
21:18
SPEAKER_03: Like, it's so real.
21:20
SPEAKER_03: Truly.
21:21
SPEAKER_03: This morning I went on a hike in Oakland, and um, I sat, I arrived early because I was hiking with a friend, and I sat down.
21:27
SPEAKER_03: I had I meditated this morning.
21:29
SPEAKER_03: And what came up for me was being able to hold both the shitty things that are going on in your life and the things that are are great.
21:37
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
21:37
SPEAKER_03: And oftentimes we tend to live on either side of the spectrum, and neither side is healthy.
21:42
SPEAKER_03: Where's the healthy balance of going, yeah, things might not be great, but look at what's possible.
21:47
SPEAKER_03: And I was recording that um to post on my socials.
21:51
SPEAKER_03: And this woman happened to be walking past as I was talking.
21:54
SPEAKER_03: She left.
21:55
SPEAKER_03: Me and my friend and his wife went to start our walk.
21:59
SPEAKER_03: She was coming.
22:00
SPEAKER_03: Back, she stopped me and goes, I needed to hear what you I heard what you said earlier, and I really needed to hear that.
22:09
SPEAKER_03: You never know.
22:10
SPEAKER_00: You never know.
22:11
SPEAKER_03: You never know.
22:12
SPEAKER_03: It could be a year from now.
22:13
SPEAKER_03: Someone will hear an episode and go, You saved my life.
22:17
SPEAKER_03: And so, yes, I'm so happy that you had not put it down.
22:20
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
22:20
SPEAKER_00: And and I thank you because it was all you.
22:23
SPEAKER_00: You thought of all the different things.
22:25
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, oh, I don't think I'm gonna run into that.
22:27
SPEAKER_00: And I did.
22:29
SPEAKER_00: I did less than six months.
22:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
22:33
SPEAKER_00: The trolls, the just loss of motivation.
22:39
SPEAKER_00: So I I thank you.
22:41
SPEAKER_00: What was it like when I was like, I want to do this podcast?
22:45
SPEAKER_00: And I want you to be honest, because everybody got a podcast today.
22:49
SPEAKER_00: How did you receive that?
22:50
SPEAKER_00: Like, what was it like for you?
22:52
SPEAKER_00: I was excited.
22:52
SPEAKER_03: Because I guess knowing who you are, right?
22:55
SPEAKER_03: And knowing a little bit about your backstory, that's a that's a perspective you're not seeing out here in the podcast world.
23:00
SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
23:01
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
23:01
SPEAKER_03: And knowing how you show up authentically, I knew it wasn't gonna be some show that, you know, you know, when somebody starts off small, right?
23:12
SPEAKER_03: And you're like, oh, they're so raw.
23:14
SPEAKER_03: But then once they get to a level, they change.
23:18
SPEAKER_03: And I knew that you would not do that.
23:20
SPEAKER_00: No.
23:20
SPEAKER_03: That you're gonna, right?
23:21
SPEAKER_03: You're building something off the basis of authenticity.
23:24
SPEAKER_03: Truly.
23:25
SPEAKER_03: And so I'm like, people need that right now.
23:27
SPEAKER_03: And people are tired of seeing the polished stuff.
23:31
SPEAKER_03: They want to know if I'm listening to you, I need to know you know what this is like being where I am.
23:36
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
23:36
SPEAKER_03: And I just know that that you're authentic in that way.
23:39
SPEAKER_03: So I was like, hell yeah.
23:40
SPEAKER_03: And I've I've had a podcast before.
23:41
SPEAKER_03: So I'm like, oh, I know how to do this so I can be of a sounding board for you.
23:46
SPEAKER_03: So it was a it was successful.
23:47
SPEAKER_03: It was it was it was a lot of fun working with you and seeing how you're thinking and and helping you see, you know, bring the vision that was already in you just out and on paper.
23:57
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
23:58
SPEAKER_00: And I I'm so grateful for you like getting me to that point.
24:02
SPEAKER_00: Because it's not like you like walked me through it and told me how to do it, but you had it.
24:07
SPEAKER_00: You and you brought that out.
24:08
SPEAKER_02: You had it.
24:09
SPEAKER_03: I knew what I think.
24:10
SPEAKER_03: My experience as a as a podcast host in the past gave me the right questions to ask you.
24:15
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
24:16
SPEAKER_03: Right.
24:16
SPEAKER_03: So that you could figure out for yourself what you wanted your experience to be like.
24:20
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
24:21
SPEAKER_03: And you did it.
24:22
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
24:22
SPEAKER_00: So how's it feel now that it's wild?
24:25
SPEAKER_03: It's matt, it's really, really fucking cool.
24:27
SPEAKER_03: And I just I'm really proud that you stuck it out.
24:31
SPEAKER_03: I'm really proud that you kept going.
24:32
SPEAKER_03: And I just I can't wait for people to continue, your audience to continue growing.
24:37
SPEAKER_03: And for I'm telling you, I I I feel it.
24:40
SPEAKER_03: That deep sense of knowing.
24:41
SPEAKER_03: I feel it right now in the pit of my chest.
24:44
SPEAKER_03: Somebody's going to hear this podcast.
24:47
SPEAKER_03: Some young person is going to hear this and it's it's going to change their life.
24:54
SPEAKER_00: I would say I hope so, but I know so.
24:56
SPEAKER_00: You know so as well.
24:57
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
24:57
SPEAKER_03: It's not hope.
24:58
SPEAKER_03: I know.
24:59
SPEAKER_00: I I truly believe it.
25:01
SPEAKER_00: Um just from the short time that I've had it, I've gotten a lot of feedback.
25:06
SPEAKER_00: But even outside of that, like I see where it's going.
25:09
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
25:10
SPEAKER_00: I just can't wait.
25:11
SPEAKER_00: So thank you.
25:12
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
25:13
SPEAKER_00: But now let's get into you.
25:14
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
25:15
SPEAKER_00: All right.
25:15
SPEAKER_00: I'm ready.
25:16
SPEAKER_00: I have some questions.
25:17
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
25:17
SPEAKER_00: Um, let me make sure I am not.
25:22
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
25:22
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
25:23
SPEAKER_00: So we're talking about how we got to this point.
25:27
SPEAKER_00: So you went through your career history and you went, you were a teacher, which I did not know.
25:33
SPEAKER_00: I did a little research.
25:34
SPEAKER_00: I had no clue.
25:35
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but I had to do that.
25:36
SPEAKER_00: No, I had to, yeah, no clue.
25:37
SPEAKER_00: I just, you know, I guess I never thought past that, you know?
25:40
SPEAKER_00: Got it, yeah.
25:41
SPEAKER_00: But I know you were in tech, uh-huh, and then we moved out of tech, and now we're in this venture of entrepreneurship.
25:48
SPEAKER_00: Um, but you are strongly based in DEIB.
25:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
25:52
SPEAKER_00: Like that is, I feel who you are as a person in different aspects.
25:55
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
25:56
SPEAKER_00: When did DEIB work become the thing for you?
26:01
SPEAKER_00: Was it always the plan, or did you find your way into it?
26:05
SPEAKER_03: Both and.
26:06
SPEAKER_03: I think when I look back at my life and the type of things I have done and said, social justice has always been deeply a part of who I am.
26:18
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
26:19
SPEAKER_03: When I was in high school, um, I was class president all four years of high school.
26:24
SPEAKER_00: Of course.
26:24
SPEAKER_03: And like voted president all four years.
26:27
SPEAKER_03: I tried to step down and they were like, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
26:30
SPEAKER_03: I was like, okay.
26:32
SPEAKER_02: You're right.
26:32
SPEAKER_03: Um, but I wanted to ensure that my and I went to a small Quaker school.
26:38
SPEAKER_03: Um, and I'm talking about a class of 45.
26:40
SPEAKER_03: Uh yeah, small.
26:42
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
26:42
SPEAKER_03: And um, I always wanted to make sure that people in my presence always felt like they mattered.
26:49
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
26:49
SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
26:50
SPEAKER_03: Like that's super, super critical.
26:51
SPEAKER_03: So for so for four years straight, I baked a cake, a birthday cake, for every person's birthday.
27:00
SPEAKER_03: And I lived in Camden, New Jersey.
27:02
SPEAKER_03: I didn't have access to a car.
27:04
SPEAKER_03: I would take the bus and and we had a school bus that was paid for by the school to come get.
27:09
SPEAKER_03: We were we were Camden scholars.
27:12
SPEAKER_03: Oh.
27:12
SPEAKER_03: And so we were brought and I had a full-year scholarship.
27:15
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
27:15
SPEAKER_03: And on the days that I wanted to get to school early, because I wanted to come to school, print out a banner, and each grade had a their own hallway.
27:23
SPEAKER_03: So I wanted to put the banner up, happy birthday, whose every birthday it was, and then you know, decorate their all their their locker and be there when they first got into the door.
27:33
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I'm not voting you out either.
27:34
SPEAKER_03: So that they could be great, so that they could be greeted with happy birthday.
27:37
SPEAKER_03: And like it was simple, you know, it's a little 99 cent, you know, package of the cake, and I, you know, I bake it the night before and bring it.
27:44
SPEAKER_03: And people just like, yo, like it's it's the little thing.
27:48
SPEAKER_03: So um that has always been, and again, for my grandmother, watching her, right?
27:54
SPEAKER_03: She didn't have a lot, but she gave you everything she had, whether that was her love, her time, her attention, her last dollar.
28:01
SPEAKER_03: You know, she gave you, and I that that was my mom is the same way.
28:04
SPEAKER_03: My dad is that way.
28:06
SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah.
28:07
SPEAKER_03: Like it's ingrained, it's ingrained in me.
28:09
SPEAKER_03: It's all I know.
28:10
SPEAKER_03: So it's always been in me.
28:12
SPEAKER_03: From a professional standpoint, it started in when I was teaching uh high school.
28:20
SPEAKER_03: The principal wanted us to wanted me to teach something on belonging in the classroom.
28:25
SPEAKER_03: And I was like, oh, I can do that.
28:27
SPEAKER_03: And it was like one of those teacher in service days.
28:29
SPEAKER_03: And so I taught about what it looks like to create a culture within the classroom for students from different learning abilities and the parents and how you engage them.
28:37
SPEAKER_03: And from there, it just kind of kept going.
28:41
SPEAKER_03: I was doing workshops, I was doing consulting, I was doing like, and it just turned into this big thing.
28:46
SPEAKER_03: And so I I landed in DEI as a career, yeah, but it's always been in me from a human perspective, if that makes sense.
28:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so you just became aligned with it, especially as you grew in your career and these opportunities became available.
29:01
SPEAKER_00: It just made sense.
29:01
SPEAKER_00: 100%.
29:02
SPEAKER_03: And social media, I was on Facebook back then, and I was like, people literally was like, yo, I come to your Facebook page to see what you think about the news.
29:11
SPEAKER_03: Because I trust that you're going to that you're giving a really good, uh, balanced view on it.
29:16
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
29:16
SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
29:17
SPEAKER_03: And I'm just like, people are like, why are you not doing this for a living?
29:20
SPEAKER_00: And like, who's hiring?
29:23
SPEAKER_00: Point me in the direction.
29:24
SPEAKER_03: But but but they were mean like doing this on my own, like starting a business back then.
29:27
SPEAKER_03: I was like, I can't, I can't do that.
29:29
SPEAKER_03: I differ time.
29:31
SPEAKER_03: I'm a W-2 employee.
29:32
SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
29:33
SPEAKER_03: Like I didn't know anything else.
29:34
SPEAKER_03: Um, yeah, it was it was wild.
29:37
SPEAKER_03: So I I I fell into it, yeah, but it's always been deep in-grained to me.
29:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, truly.
29:41
SPEAKER_00: It just like they just happened to have jobs for it, and you applied.
29:45
SPEAKER_00: Right back, right time.
29:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
29:47
SPEAKER_00: And now, like, you still carry that with you outside of that wholeheartedly.
29:52
SPEAKER_00: Everything I do.
29:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
29:54
SPEAKER_00: And so that's why I was like, this is like the topic of liberation when I was thinking about having this discussion with you.
30:02
SPEAKER_00: Yes, it's liberating the people and wanting to liberate like historically excluded groups and just all the work that you've done.
30:10
SPEAKER_00: But I feel you're also in a space of liberating yourself from the different things that you have uh collected along the way that may have served you at one point, but your learning no longer served you.
30:23
SPEAKER_00: So I just feel like your life is about liberation.
30:26
SPEAKER_03: 100% in a lot of different and it's been spent in most of the time trying to liberate others, and now I'm focusing on myself so that I can be better at helping to liberate others.
30:37
SPEAKER_03: Um, and and I I'm even weird about that word me deliberate liberating others, me helping other people liberate themselves.
30:44
SPEAKER_03: Right?
30:44
SPEAKER_03: Because, like, yeah, if it's not within you, what happens when I'm gone?
30:49
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean I'm I'm looking for sustainability when it comes to liberation.
30:54
SPEAKER_03: Teach a man.
30:55
SPEAKER_03: That people have the tools to know their worth and how to push back against norms that are unfair and unjust.
31:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
31:05
SPEAKER_03: So it's not me liberating, it's them learning to liberate themselves.
31:08
SPEAKER_00: Right.
31:09
SPEAKER_00: Similar to how you did with my podcast journey.
31:12
SPEAKER_00: Because you will walk me through this process, like, like, let's think about this.
31:18
SPEAKER_03: Uh-huh.
31:19
SPEAKER_03: You know, I challenge you, I challenge you.
31:21
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
31:21
SPEAKER_03: But again, it was all and that that's the basis of coaching.
31:24
SPEAKER_03: Right?
31:24
SPEAKER_03: Like, I don't have the answers.
31:26
SPEAKER_03: You have them for yourself.
31:28
SPEAKER_03: It was just being putting a mirror up in front of you and going, what do you see?
31:32
SPEAKER_03: What do you want to see if you don't like what you currently see?
31:35
SPEAKER_03: And how will you get there?
31:38
SPEAKER_03: That's it.
31:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
31:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you've you've truly been like this.
31:41
SPEAKER_00: Just looking at your career path, it all just kind of makes sense.
31:44
SPEAKER_00: Like, you've been in alignment, I feel.
31:47
SPEAKER_00: It might have looked different.
31:48
SPEAKER_00: It's interesting you say that.
31:49
SPEAKER_00: I didn't feel like I was.
31:51
SPEAKER_00: When you lay out the steps, now, mind you, we have these intimate parts that of your life that have different effects, but it's like you started off being nurtured in this family who already lives in this way.
32:04
SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
32:04
SPEAKER_00: You become a teacher.
32:05
SPEAKER_00: Right.
32:06
SPEAKER_00: These kids tell you to move and go pursue higher things because that's what you've taught in them.
32:11
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
32:11
SPEAKER_00: You move through this process of educating, getting educated, furthering your education, moving into a space that is the technicals of diversity and inclusion.
32:25
SPEAKER_00: You move through that till you get to the point where it's like, okay, now you need to do that for yourself.
32:30
SPEAKER_00: Like it kind of was this path.
32:31
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
32:32
SPEAKER_03: I never looked at it that way.
32:33
SPEAKER_03: That's that's that's really fascinating.
32:35
SPEAKER_00: You know, I have a great life coach.
32:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
32:38
SPEAKER_02: I never saw it that way.
32:40
SPEAKER_03: Help you.
32:40
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
32:41
SPEAKER_03: Think about it.
32:42
SPEAKER_03: Seriously, this entire time I was like, wow, I've been living outside of my values, and I felt just deeply disconnected from them.
32:48
SPEAKER_03: And I think that was a big part of the burnout.
32:50
SPEAKER_03: Like, I'm not who I want to be.
32:52
SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
32:53
SPEAKER_03: Like I'm being forced to pound a square peg into a round hole.
32:58
SPEAKER_03: And I kept trying to become what corporate America wanted me to become in order to survive, in order to keep my bag.
33:05
SPEAKER_03: And I and not even just to keep my bag for myself, but to keep it for the people who I was helping to support.
33:11
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
33:11
SPEAKER_03: It wasn't just about me, right?
33:12
SPEAKER_03: It's about my nephews, my nieces, my siblings, my mom, my mother-in-law, all those different things.
33:18
SPEAKER_03: And I then just was like, there's gotta be more to life than this.
33:24
SPEAKER_00: And there is.
33:24
SPEAKER_00: And there is.
33:25
SPEAKER_00: And you were finding that out.
33:26
SPEAKER_03: And I'm hella finding that out.
33:28
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
33:30
SPEAKER_00: I I feel you.
33:31
SPEAKER_00: That weight.
33:31
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I don't have that many people relying on me, but just the weight, because it's like it's all on me, and this seems like it's the only way.
33:38
SPEAKER_00: It's the way we've been taught.
33:40
SPEAKER_00: Like you have to get a job, you have to get a higher education.
33:44
SPEAKER_03: It's like you And who are you if you're not producing?
33:46
SPEAKER_03: And particularly the narratives that men have been given.
33:49
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
33:50
SPEAKER_03: Right?
33:50
SPEAKER_03: Who are you if you're not producing?
33:52
SPEAKER_03: Who are you if you're not caretaking?
33:54
SPEAKER_03: Who have you, who are you if you're not protecting?
33:56
SPEAKER_03: But then you go, but damn, who's caretaking for me?
34:00
SPEAKER_03: Who's protecting me?
34:01
SPEAKER_03: In my work that I'm doing now as a coach, I've been doing a lot of research on the experience of the matriculation from young baby boy to young adolescent boy to teenager to man.
34:15
SPEAKER_03: And the research is so clear that men receive significantly less touch in terms of like embrace and hugs and care compared to their female counterparts, and I'm speaking in the binary in this moment, right?
34:29
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
34:30
SPEAKER_03: Um and talking about hugs, kisses, love, affection.
34:35
SPEAKER_03: And then you throw on top of that be a man, stop crying.
34:40
SPEAKER_03: It's the prime recipe for what we see today.
34:44
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
34:44
SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
34:45
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
34:46
SPEAKER_03: And I was, even though I'm a gay black man, I'm I still got caught up in some of those things.
34:52
SPEAKER_03: Isolating, you know, lashing out sometimes with my directness of like you my thing was I match energy.
35:02
SPEAKER_03: Well, right?
35:03
SPEAKER_03: You know what I'm saying?
35:04
SPEAKER_03: Right?
35:04
SPEAKER_03: But like but I was always ready to fight.
35:06
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
35:07
SPEAKER_03: So yeah, it just, yeah, a lot of liber a lot of liberating.
35:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
35:11
SPEAKER_00: It's interesting.
35:12
SPEAKER_00: I am not a man and I was raised a girl, but I was taught those same things in terms of ways to protect myself.
35:21
SPEAKER_00: Like, don't cry, don't let people see you cry.
35:24
SPEAKER_00: Like you have to show up tough.
35:26
SPEAKER_00: You can't let people get under your skin.
35:28
SPEAKER_00: 100%.
35:29
SPEAKER_00: I'm very sensitive myself.
35:31
SPEAKER_00: I'm a Pisces, and I used to cry all the time.
35:34
SPEAKER_00: And it was deemed as like weakness for so long that eventually when I was crying, as I got older, I would get angry.
35:42
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
35:42
SPEAKER_00: Because it was perceived as being weak.
35:45
SPEAKER_00: But it's like we are humans with emotion and a lot of shit going on.
35:49
SPEAKER_00: That's particularly important for us as black people.
35:52
SPEAKER_00: That is true.
35:54
SPEAKER_03: Because we've endured.
35:55
SPEAKER_03: And you got to just keep enduring.
35:57
SPEAKER_03: Keep enduring.
35:57
SPEAKER_03: Don't let them see you sweat.
35:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
35:59
SPEAKER_03: And it's like that gets exhausting.
36:01
SPEAKER_00: Extremely.
36:02
SPEAKER_00: That is exhausting.
36:03
SPEAKER_00: Extremely.
36:04
SPEAKER_00: And not to mention, we already have to be twice as good to get half as much.
36:08
SPEAKER_03: You gotta be ten times as good.
36:10
SPEAKER_03: And that still ain't enough.
36:11
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
36:13
SPEAKER_03: The field goal keeps moving.
36:15
SPEAKER_03: Constantly.
36:15
SPEAKER_03: It keeps moving.
36:16
SPEAKER_03: Forever.
36:16
SPEAKER_03: Keeps moving, yeah.
36:17
SPEAKER_03: Don't matter how many degrees, credentials.
36:20
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
36:20
SPEAKER_03: And and and again, you add on top of that, being a non-binary person of color, right?
36:26
SPEAKER_03: Even more than me, you you have to prove who you are and your and your worthiness.
36:33
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
36:33
SPEAKER_02: So I got it back, and you you got it ten times worse.
36:36
SPEAKER_00: It's it's an interesting situation.
36:40
SPEAKER_00: Because it's like at my core, yes, I am a black, queer woman.
36:45
SPEAKER_00: You get what I mean?
36:47
SPEAKER_00: But like just the ways in which I have to move through the world, it's like I have to be mindful on all sides because it's like I'm intimidating these men.
36:56
SPEAKER_00: All of them.
36:57
SPEAKER_00: And women, it's it's a lot.
36:59
SPEAKER_00: It's a lot.
37:00
SPEAKER_00: So thank you for seeing that.
37:02
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
37:02
SPEAKER_00: And understanding that.
37:03
SPEAKER_00: Because it's exhausting.
37:05
SPEAKER_00: Like I'm just trying to show up.
37:07
SPEAKER_03: I'm just trying to pay the bills and go on a trip, buy some nice stuff.
37:10
SPEAKER_03: Eat a little bit.
37:12
SPEAKER_03: I mean a lot, actually, but uh I lost 50 pounds.
37:17
SPEAKER_03: Wow.
37:17
SPEAKER_03: Since since on this this year of like self-discovery, look down 50 pounds.
37:23
SPEAKER_03: You look good.
37:23
SPEAKER_03: 50 pounds.
37:25
SPEAKER_03: You look good.
37:26
SPEAKER_03: Feel good honey.
37:27
SPEAKER_03: Feel good.
37:28
SPEAKER_03: That is crazy.
37:30
SPEAKER_03: Feel great.
37:30
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
37:31
SPEAKER_00: See?
37:31
SPEAKER_03: I'm telling you, there's just there's so much in learning to let that shit go.
37:35
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
37:36
SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
37:37
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
37:37
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
37:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
37:38
SPEAKER_00: I just got this job and I'm like, please don't let me.
37:41
unknown: Please don't.
37:42
SPEAKER_00: Because you know, I was on a health journey as well.
37:45
SPEAKER_00: And then I'm working, I can't be in the gym as much.
37:47
SPEAKER_00: But like, when you got the time, oh, uh-huh.
37:50
SPEAKER_00: To pour into yourself.
37:53
SPEAKER_03: But the important part is figuring out how to sustain it even when you don't have the time.
37:56
SPEAKER_03: We're not talking about that.
37:57
SPEAKER_03: Right.
37:57
SPEAKER_03: Uh-huh.
37:58
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
37:58
SPEAKER_03: It doesn't have to look the same way it looks when you got all the time.
38:02
SPEAKER_03: It's just what does it look like in that new normal?
38:05
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
38:05
SPEAKER_03: And that's what I'm figuring out.
38:07
SPEAKER_03: Because like you're right, I have all the time now.
38:09
SPEAKER_03: And someone said to me uh a couple months ago, you'll never have this much time again, this much free time again.
38:15
SPEAKER_03: Because you're building.
38:16
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
38:17
SPEAKER_03: So make sure you use this time to figure out how to continue these good habits when shit gets busy, busy, busy.
38:25
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
38:25
SPEAKER_03: And and and keep yourself first.
38:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
38:28
SPEAKER_00: So that's why you're pouring from minute to cupped.
38:30
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
38:30
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
38:31
SPEAKER_00: Because I I can't give this up.
38:33
SPEAKER_00: We work too hard.
38:34
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
38:34
SPEAKER_00: To go back.
38:35
SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
38:36
SPEAKER_00: And admittedly, you know, I I slipped a little couple months, two months, but I was in a grind.
38:41
SPEAKER_00: But I'm like, no, no.
38:42
SPEAKER_00: Like this means more to me than any job ever could.
38:46
SPEAKER_03: One of my mentors said to me, it's not about work-life balance.
38:49
SPEAKER_03: That's not real.
38:50
SPEAKER_03: Right.
38:50
SPEAKER_03: It's work-life integration.
38:52
SPEAKER_03: Sometimes work is going to get more of you, and your personal life is going to get less.
38:57
SPEAKER_03: Sometimes your personal life is going to get more and your work life is going to get less.
39:00
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
39:00
SPEAKER_03: There's only so much of you.
39:06
SPEAKER_03: And when when she said that, I was like, oh, that that's a much better way.
39:10
SPEAKER_03: Because you think, oh, I gotta balance it all and be great here and great here.
39:14
SPEAKER_00: And then you feel bad when it's not balanced.
39:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
39:17
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like marriage.
39:18
SPEAKER_03: That's the lie they tell us.
39:19
SPEAKER_00: You understand?
39:19
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, 100%, child.
39:21
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
39:23
SPEAKER_03: Don't get me started because I look.
39:25
SPEAKER_03: Get me started on marriage.
39:26
SPEAKER_00: You know, I so I love your husband.
39:30
SPEAKER_00: I love him too.
39:30
SPEAKER_00: I think I've met him once, but like I feel like I've never been once.
39:34
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was one time.
39:36
SPEAKER_00: But like I feel like I see him all the time on social media.
39:38
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
39:39
SPEAKER_03: I feel like you've met okay.
39:40
SPEAKER_03: That just seems so like.
39:41
SPEAKER_03: We gotta make that happen.
39:42
SPEAKER_03: We gotta make that happen again.
39:42
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we gotta make that happen.
39:44
SPEAKER_03: He has been a big part of why I've been able to, you know, he's a breadwinner now.
39:48
SPEAKER_03: You know, and he has allowed me to kind of fall and flounder and has been there, has never made me feel like I was failing or that I need to figure it out fast.
40:00
SPEAKER_03: Um, and gave me time to cook and been a sounding board.
40:06
SPEAKER_00: That's literally what Jean A did for me.
40:09
SPEAKER_03: That's it it it's it's so necessary.
40:11
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's very beautiful to have that.
40:13
SPEAKER_03: And I'm glad I took this long to find him.
40:16
SPEAKER_03: Because I could have just settled.
40:18
SPEAKER_00: Oh, you know what I mean?
40:20
SPEAKER_00: If I would have been where I thought I was going to be, I wouldn't be here.
40:26
SPEAKER_00: If you get what I mean.
40:27
SPEAKER_00: 100%.
40:27
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, 100%.
40:28
SPEAKER_03: He is a great partner.
40:30
SPEAKER_03: He's a great partner.
40:32
SPEAKER_03: Great partner.
40:32
SPEAKER_03: Because one of the things that we said when we first got married, we've been married for six years, and one of the things we said, like we're not two people becoming one.
40:39
SPEAKER_03: We are two people on individual journeys who are choosing to go on our journeys, you know, side by side.
40:45
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
40:46
SPEAKER_03: Right?
40:46
SPEAKER_03: Truly.
40:46
SPEAKER_03: And so he has his thing that he does and who he's becoming, and I have the thing that I'm becoming.
40:51
SPEAKER_03: And are we willing to sit and support each other in the becoming of who we are?
40:56
SPEAKER_03: And how often that will change throughout our marriage.
40:59
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
40:59
SPEAKER_03: And that it's been it's been hard.
41:02
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
41:02
SPEAKER_03: But I will go through it every day, even knowing what I know about what we've been through, I would do it all over again.
41:08
SPEAKER_00: I would too.
41:10
SPEAKER_00: And we have been through some things.
41:11
SPEAKER_00: A lot of people see us on the exterior, and they're like, couple goals.
41:17
SPEAKER_00: Uh-huh.
41:18
SPEAKER_00: And look, all the time.
41:19
SPEAKER_00: We have gotten some things down.
41:21
SPEAKER_00: We do a lot of things great.
41:22
SPEAKER_00: Like, that is really like my best friend.
41:24
SPEAKER_00: Travel well together.
41:26
SPEAKER_00: Like great couple, right?
41:28
SPEAKER_00: But that does not come without work, and that does not come without hardships.
41:33
SPEAKER_00: Baby.
41:34
SPEAKER_00: She almost left me.
41:35
SPEAKER_02: We didn't leave each other.
41:36
SPEAKER_02: Yes, I'm telling you.
41:38
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
41:39
SPEAKER_00: Like, it's not all glitz and glam.
41:41
SPEAKER_00: And I feel a lot of people want the honeymoon phase, but it's a fake.
41:44
SPEAKER_00: That's all that's all they see.
41:45
SPEAKER_03: Right.
41:45
SPEAKER_03: One of the things I love, uh Michelle Obama, someone asked uh her about um, you know, her marriage to to Barack.
41:52
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
41:53
SPEAKER_03: Because on the outside, it's like, y'all must never argue.
41:56
SPEAKER_03: You're like, you're a perfection.
41:57
SPEAKER_03: She gets a child.
41:58
SPEAKER_03: There were days where I could not stand him.
42:00
SPEAKER_03: Right.
42:00
SPEAKER_03: You know what I'm saying?
42:01
SPEAKER_03: Like, marriage is choosing that person over and over and over again.
42:07
SPEAKER_03: That even when things are hard, do I still choose you?
42:11
SPEAKER_03: That's what marriage is.
42:12
SPEAKER_03: Without losing sight of yourself.
42:14
SPEAKER_03: Without losing sight of yourself.
42:15
SPEAKER_03: One of my favorite quotes, I'm I'm probably gonna butcher it.
42:17
SPEAKER_03: One of my uh it's a movie called uh Shall We Dance.
42:20
SPEAKER_03: Susan Sarandon, uh, I forget the guy's name, and uh Jennifer Lopez.
42:25
SPEAKER_03: And the Susan Sarandon character thinks that her husband is cheating on her, so she hires an investigator to like follow him and take pictures anyway.
42:34
SPEAKER_03: Um the investigator is asking her, like, what do you think marriage is?
42:38
SPEAKER_03: And she goes, Marriage is saying that I will witness your life.
42:43
SPEAKER_03: I will be your witness, you will not go unseen because I will be here to see it.
42:48
SPEAKER_03: And that that hits me hard every time I hear it.
42:52
SPEAKER_03: Because who isn't looking to be seen, to be valued, not seen in terms of like celebrity, yeah, but to be witnessed.
42:58
SPEAKER_03: Seen to be witnessed, to be known.
43:02
SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
43:03
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and that and that's that's the mission I'm on, right?
43:07
SPEAKER_03: To also help other people find that too.
43:09
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
43:10
SPEAKER_00: Cause it's people think, especially in this day and age of social media, they're being seen, but being seen?
43:16
SPEAKER_03: Because who really knows you?
43:18
SPEAKER_03: Right.
43:18
SPEAKER_03: Who can you call when you were at your lowest point?
43:22
SPEAKER_03: That's being seen.
43:24
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
43:25
SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
43:26
SPEAKER_00: A lot of people have that.
43:31
SPEAKER_02: Okay, okay.
43:32
SPEAKER_02: I knew we were gonna be hot.
43:34
SPEAKER_02: Right.
43:34
SPEAKER_02: You'd be like, we're just like, who needs these questions?
43:37
SPEAKER_02: Let me ask these questions so we can do what we typically do.
43:40
SPEAKER_02: Right.
43:40
SPEAKER_00: Just roll these cameras.
43:43
SPEAKER_00: And okay, well, let's see if I done already got through this.
43:47
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so back to what I was asking originally.
43:51
SPEAKER_00: What did it feel like to be in those leadership roles, especially as a black queer man in tech and creativity?
44:00
SPEAKER_00: industries.
44:00
SPEAKER_00: It was great.
44:01
SPEAKER_03: It was, it was absolutely great because I I it was re representing other black queer people.
44:07
SPEAKER_03: Right.
44:08
SPEAKER_03: Who won who are striving to be in those spaces.
44:11
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
44:11
SPEAKER_03: And personally was like I never thought I would be in those spaces.
44:16
SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
44:17
SPEAKER_03: Like I thought I was going to be a college president someday.
44:20
SPEAKER_03: That was my goal.
44:21
SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
44:21
SPEAKER_03: I never wanted to be in corporate.
44:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
44:23
SPEAKER_03: And the fact that I was there and was traveling the world and, you know, it was like wow.
44:29
SPEAKER_03: It was, it was amazing for me.
44:30
SPEAKER_03: Like looking back at little Corey, that's what my family calls me.
44:33
SPEAKER_03: Looking back at Little Corey, I was like, wow, like you've you've done something.
44:37
SPEAKER_03: You've done something.
44:38
SPEAKER_03: You've come a long way.
44:39
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
44:39
SPEAKER_03: And being able to help people and like I helped my mom, you know, buy her first home and buy her washer and dryer.
44:46
SPEAKER_03: We helped put our nephews through college so they have no debt.
44:51
SPEAKER_03: Well she paid off one of my my nephews credit cards so that he wouldn't have debt to teach him how, you know what I'm saying?
44:58
SPEAKER_03: Like that's the goal.
45:00
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
45:02
SPEAKER_03: That's the goal not making you suffer because I suffer.
45:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
45:05
SPEAKER_03: So so being in those roles was like amazing.
45:08
SPEAKER_03: Not again, not just for myself, but for what it meant for community and for the people who I will never know who probably saw me on hurt me on a podcast or saw me somewhere and was like, damn I can do that too.
45:20
SPEAKER_03: Yeah you can.
45:21
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
45:22
SPEAKER_00: You can a role model in every sense of the world.
45:26
SPEAKER_00: So yeah you've done a lot of work a lot of learning and unlearning to get to this point.
45:31
SPEAKER_00: And I'm sure there's so much more to do in the future.
45:34
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
45:35
SPEAKER_00: So now that you're in this um in-between space if we're talking about corporate verse entrepreneurship what are the learnings that you're finding about yourself?
45:44
SPEAKER_03: Damn these are good RJ these are good questions.
45:48
SPEAKER_03: Come on bro you better know bro.
45:51
SPEAKER_03: What are the learnings but what I'm learning about myself that I can do this.
45:57
SPEAKER_03: Because like I said when people have been telling me for 10 years you should be doing your own thing and I was like I can't I don't have it what it takes.
46:08
SPEAKER_03: I'm finding that I do and doing it well.
46:11
SPEAKER_03: I'm finding that I do.
46:12
SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
46:15
SPEAKER_03: That I am f fine exactly as I am.
46:20
SPEAKER_03: You know I've been trying to fit a square peg into a round hole for years trying to re mold myself into what people in the world wanted me to be.
46:29
SPEAKER_03: And the one of the biggest lessons is that I am fine just as I am.
46:34
SPEAKER_03: As long as I'm not causing harm and I am doing things with great intention and willing to own my mistakes and apologize and and and fix things I'm fine as I fine as I am.
46:47
SPEAKER_03: I I don't need to become something even right like you know what I mean like I already am that person.
46:53
SPEAKER_03: I'm just uh revealing it peeling back the layers that are hiding it.
46:58
SPEAKER_03: Yeah you know um yeah those are the kind probably the the biggest things and then the other thing I had been re-watching episodes of Living Single and Golden Girls for the last two years.
47:10
SPEAKER_03: Oh I'm not gonna and I'm not exaggerating every single day those are the only two shows in rotation in my home.
47:18
SPEAKER_03: And what I'm finding is that I have been running away from the negative feelings or thoughts that lead to negative feelings that I don't want to feel.
47:29
SPEAKER_03: Because I know that when I do I feel like I'll get stuck there.
47:34
SPEAKER_03: What about those shows drew you to that connection laughter it's familiar I know what's going to happen.
47:40
SPEAKER_03: Yeah right you know what I mean safety joy it literally helps me to not think about the other things.
47:47
SPEAKER_03: Yeah and that's unhealthy.
47:49
SPEAKER_03: And I and I have been doing it for a while.
47:51
SPEAKER_03: And so that was another big lesson like oh wow you're running away and so many different signs from the universe and people in my life and have been like stop trying to think your way out of this stuff.
48:02
SPEAKER_03: Feel your answer is in the feeling so this I've been I I can so what I've learned is that I can feel and not get stuck there.
48:12
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
48:13
SPEAKER_00: And that's very difficult to get to on your own it it in such an unsettling time of not having that stability.
48:22
SPEAKER_03: I feel like it was the time that forced it was like I I feel like God, Buddha Allah whoever you you follow and love the right universe is was saying you can't go into this next season unless you figure this shit out.
48:41
SPEAKER_03: And you will not go into this next season will not until you figure this out you learn this lesson.
48:49
SPEAKER_03: And I'm learning it.
48:50
SPEAKER_03: Yeah because I'm I'm moving into that next season.
48:53
SPEAKER_00: Truly I think the same as for myself like I was unemployed 13 14 months something like that.
49:02
SPEAKER_00: And I learned more about myself and how to love myself in these last 14 months than I think I did in the previous 30 something.
49:28
SPEAKER_00: Because I'd still be limited I'd still be telling myself I couldn't I'd still be manifesting because what you tell yourself is manifestation all the limiting small safe things.
49:41
SPEAKER_00: Hiding behind your hustle hiding behind the hustle.
49:44
SPEAKER_00: Because I was great at that I'm great at hiding behind an accolade busy moving.
49:51
SPEAKER_03: Ain't got time to stop at all and slow down to actually listen to what the silence is telling me.
49:56
SPEAKER_03: Oh no I can't listen to that no right now I ain't got nothing but time to sit and listen because my husband is a flight attendant so he's gone I'm at home with me and the dude me and the dogs like you gonna learn today that was going to tell me you're gonna learn my ancestors was like you're gonna learn today and I did yeah I did I finally I finally gave in yeah I mean they was gonna win right I said I got I got all that if I if I don't get you in this I'll get you in the next one and we don't want that get you in the next we don't want to learn this lesson.
50:35
SPEAKER_03: Yeah and so how do you think Cornell a year ago if he saw where you were today like would he be surprised what would he be because there would there would be this like wow you're you're you're you did that you're doing it because I'm telling you like I a year ago year and a half ago I would be if I was where I am you know like you know unemployed and stuff like that I would be on the couch in fetal position I would be miserable sad crying distraught I had not I think I thought that for maybe the first two weeks yep mine was the first two and I said okay can't do this.
51:14
SPEAKER_03: And I didn't even have to try to shift the shift just came I was like like I had this deep sense of knowing you're gonna be all right you're actually gonna be better than you were and from then I was like all right let's do this.
51:28
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that crazy?
51:29
SPEAKER_00: It's wild like when you remove the things you thought kept you safe and you just trust that inner knowing and yourself and just go just go.
51:39
SPEAKER_03: So at that point I started massage therapy school almost done with that got certified as a life coach therapist like doing all those things I'm like this this is how I'm gonna bring value to the world yeah this is what I'm gonna do you are the most busy unemployed part of the city my mother in law just said that my mother-in-law said that today she was like but you don't work but you always working that's right ripping and running if I'm not learning I'm out networking I'm doing something I'm I am building that next chapter right now yeah and you're like pouring into yourself which is pouring into others which I think is beautiful.
52:17
SPEAKER_03: Tabitha Brown in her book her first book she talks about how we're taught to fill our cup so we can give to others she goes no what's in the cup is for you the overflow is for everybody else so I'm learning to overflow my cup not just fill it I think I got caught in just filling I forgot to overflow.
52:38
SPEAKER_03: So thank you for that remote and you're pouring right if you pour from the overflow you always have enough for yourself.
52:44
SPEAKER_03: Exactly and what she's telling us is like you got to take time for yourself.
52:48
SPEAKER_00: Now taking time for yourself is not selfish.
52:50
SPEAKER_00: No it's not no it's not and that was one of the things we had to break down with me because I'm like no I gotta you gotta take time for the gym you gotta take time to eat right you got to take time to do those things.
53:02
SPEAKER_03: You have to that's how you sustain yourself to do what you what you're doing.
53:05
SPEAKER_02: Yeah yeah somebody's waiting for you somebody's waiting to hear an episode yeah and you'd be happy to know I got it mainly together me too you know I I had first toast today with a lot of syrup should not have had that watch this don't count on the don't count the past release it'll be yesterday.
53:37
SPEAKER_00: Yeah we pass that what you talking about it's all right it didn't even happen no yeah like the growth the change it's all very beautiful yeah um I love it so liberation the topic of the day yeah you have been in this space of finding liberation within yourself and you have discovered different things about masculinity and just your connection to the different accolades and things in your life what does liberation mean for yourself not as the work you do for others but as a practice that you're living today liberation for me means releasing the need and expectation of perfection or becoming or needing to prove my worth that like I was born already perfect and already worthy because it's it's it's it's the it's the shackles of needing to prove the worth that keeps you chained up.
54:55
SPEAKER_03: Right right and so when you let go of needing to become great and recognize you already are you don't care about none of the other shit.
55:05
SPEAKER_03: At all at all I used to care so much.
55:09
SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean like I don't care what that person thinks at all.
55:12
SPEAKER_03: I'd be out here one day I was in the airport and this teenage girl was filming content most likely for her social media yeah and doing a goofy ass dance and I was watching her I was like and she got all these people watching her and she didn't give a shit now I'm not there yet I'm getting there not there yet that's why I filmed that that my last content in the park and that woman hurt me because I'm not but that's what I'm trying to get to that you don't give a shit yeah what people think you out here doing yourself.
55:44
SPEAKER_00: That's that's liberation for me that is something I really feel we're both living but you are living because we're one the type of year ago I was not putting myself on camera.
55:56
SPEAKER_00: I remember that that was a big that was a big topic that was a big topic yes did not want to do that.
56:02
SPEAKER_00: No I was very I have introvert tattooed on me oh well I remember that yeah uh because be let there be no mistake I forgot about that that was a that was one of that was one of the big hurdles I was hiding I didn't want to be perceived or judged and then I realized oh they do that anyway it doesn't matter.
56:22
SPEAKER_03: Going back to my story about the birthday cakes did the somebody found a reason to go you just doing that so that we'll we'll like you you just doing that for attention how do you take something so innocent and turn it into that that's when I learn it don't matter just be you just do what you gotta do.
56:42
SPEAKER_00: Yeah let them talk let them they can talk anyway exactly so yeah I I think that's a great uh understanding of what liberation is because like truly it is very limiting to be worried about everybody else's perception because you will never ever get it right because you're always chasing a moving goalpost you you you meet that goal then they move it again and move it again and then nothing ever becomes enough.
57:08
SPEAKER_03: No.
57:08
SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean like so like why like who do I want to be exactly and that's the work that I do within coaching.
57:14
SPEAKER_03: So who do you want to be?
57:16
SPEAKER_03: What will make you happy and you find out that people are not doing the career that they actually want to do they did they chose that career because that's what either made them money or that's what their parents sold or that's what society said was the most reputable but what but they really wanted to be an artist.
57:30
SPEAKER_03: Right.
57:30
SPEAKER_03: And they're unhappy because they're not doing what their spirit what their soul actually was put on earth to do.
57:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah and when you move like that for the sake of other people you're truly out of alignment.
57:43
SPEAKER_03: You're out of alignment and you're not living your life you're living someone else's life.
57:47
SPEAKER_00: Exactly and you will never be fulfilled in it.
57:50
SPEAKER_00: Never and therefore never liberated never so that's liberation.
57:55
SPEAKER_03: Yeah I mean I hate that it was such a rough jolt to this path but I'm really happy that we both got to 100% we needed it because again we are two people who are very good at getting the accolade making it look great on paper and holding it down but like how do we feel inside how do you feel inside losing a sense of who I was or who I thought I was right you know because I think I I don't know if I said it already but like losing my job and then not having the income to be able to help people I was like so what do I do then?
58:33
SPEAKER_03: Because that's all I've ever done was help.
58:35
SPEAKER_03: You know, needed this I was like here you know so I was like who am I?
58:41
SPEAKER_03: Yeah and the universe was just like and people around me like you're take your Cornell and you're taking care of yourself for a while.
58:49
SPEAKER_00: Yeah and I'm sure that was uncomfortable for you as well very uncomfortable because I was like oh very uncomfortable very uncomfortable.
58:58
SPEAKER_00: So I'm growing into it though beautifully might I add yeah yeah it's comes so natural from what I see.
59:06
SPEAKER_02: Now for sure because a month and a half ago I was like what do I do if I don't if I'm not helping but also finding new ways to help that helping isn't just giving out money.
59:19
SPEAKER_00: That's very important.
59:20
SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean that distinction there are other ways in which you can show up for people.
59:23
SPEAKER_00: So that that's that's another learning that I've I've had yeah yeah and the ways in which you can help can also help yourself.
59:30
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
59:30
SPEAKER_00: Like yes this podcast is very demanding but it's been therapeutic for me.
59:35
SPEAKER_00: It's helped me process things like a lot of my episodes are me processing in real time like oh love that you know um and so like it's interesting how we can find this sense of helping that also helps us that duality instead of just being completely in service to others.
59:54
SPEAKER_00: Right.
59:55
SPEAKER_03: Right because again liberating yourself pouring from a full cup yeah overflow that overflow that's important um so you spent over well over a decade creating pathways for other people's freedom and liberation and belonging in organizations but what did that work cost you because of the spaces I was doing the work in I think it it cost me a sense of who my own values you know because to to survive and to get to the levels that I got at yeah you had to move in certain ways you know um you had to put up with stuff you had to endure certain stuff you know what I mean um sleepless nights anxiety peace so much relationships with people because you were always on edge always waiting for somebody to say something or do something and be ready to fight verbally or sometimes physically right like being ready to like defend yourself so then it puts you on edge even in your in your personal relationships yeah you know uh because you become somebody else and and again that was that that was the thing where I was like I'm nah enough enough um yeah deeply sent personal sense of who I am is is what I lost is what it cost me yeah well I'm happy you're back finding that do you feel you're the person that you're meeting is new or older versions of you that maybe you forgot about I would say both and I would say both and um because that that that kind of like uh ability to say what needs to be said is has always been in me right um that that was the part that I was starting to lose even though it was still there um that's probably why they didn't like me um but the new part is the belief that I can build something from scratch and be successful that part I've never had yeah I've never had yeah so that that that definitely is new and I'm sure like that person is being fed by the old version of you like it they work interchangeably you know like they they go hand in hand yeah so absolutely yeah that's when you're talking about and speaking about like the anxiety and the stressors of work I think about how I used to work for that man Elon Musk and the first trillionaire mind you of the world and I worked there for two years okay and I went on leave three times for my mental health.
1:02:44
SPEAKER_00: Whoa I didn't know that yes I went uh at one point it was for like alcoholism and the stress that that caused um which also caused me to stress even more and then one was just like depression anxiety and then another was kind of like both yeah um but yeah it was my mental health was tanking wow terribly bad wow and they did a great job of reinforcing that like unworthiness in how much they didn't care.
1:03:16
SPEAKER_03: Of course and you know that's probably one example of many companies not all companies are terrible but like at the end of the day these are companies they're not here to be your family they're here to make money and and that's another piece too the radical acceptance because I think a part of me did not want to accept that that was the truth that that we couldn't change those spaces.
1:03:42
SPEAKER_03: I had to radically accept that that's just that's what they do to survive.
1:03:48
SPEAKER_03: And I can either continue trying to fight that or go and build my own space.
1:03:57
SPEAKER_03: We have choices.
1:03:58
SPEAKER_03: We do we we have choices we do and these corporate entities have over and over and over again told us who they are and what matters to them more.
1:04:07
SPEAKER_03: I won't say that all companies don't care about diversity equity and inclusion right I just don't I think that they care more about making their money than they do about it.
1:04:15
SPEAKER_03: So in in a moment where that money is being threatened they will cut this right yeah it is what it is it is and I just I couldn't change who I was in order to accept to to to live in that or and I had to learn to accept that that's what that was and go okay so if you don't like that what you gonna do?
1:04:38
SPEAKER_03: Are you gonna stay and become somebody that you're not in order to survive or are you going to go do something else?
1:04:44
SPEAKER_03: So go go do something else.
1:04:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:04:46
SPEAKER_03: Because my values really mean a lot to me.
1:04:48
SPEAKER_00: Yeah and you can't like if you're a decent person with your morals aligned it's gonna be a long road for you incorporate.
1:04:57
SPEAKER_03: 100% long road especially you're in you're in that space of like doing for the people it's hard it's really hard and you know and I now don't judge people who have changed who they are um in order to survive in that space.
1:05:16
SPEAKER_03: Right because particularly those of us who come from historically excluded groups yeah you know what I mean um because it's hard I don't I I I truly don't blame them.
1:05:27
SPEAKER_03: Yeah you know um I blame this I blame the system that that has made that the case.
1:05:33
SPEAKER_03: Yeah you know um but I I just knew I I couldn't do it.
1:05:37
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:05:38
SPEAKER_00: And I have an interesting relationship to it now that I'm back for the time well however long um because it's like I know what I know now and I have this understanding in myself now so it's it's just interesting.
1:05:52
SPEAKER_00: To accept that space for what it is.
1:05:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah to pay the bills.
1:05:55
SPEAKER_03: And that is not here to make friends.
1:05:57
SPEAKER_03: I'm not here to have a family to be These people become my family.
1:06:01
SPEAKER_03: This organization will cut me whenever they don't need me no more.
1:06:04
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:06:04
SPEAKER_03: So I'm using my time to build my wealth and to pay for the things that actually matter to me.
1:06:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:06:10
SPEAKER_00: Respectfully.
1:06:11
SPEAKER_00: That right.
1:06:12
SPEAKER_03: I enjoy the people I work with, but this is what it is.
1:06:15
SPEAKER_03: This is what it is.
1:06:17
SPEAKER_03: I think the problem is that we are trying to find too much of our center, joy, peace, fulfillment in work.
1:06:27
SPEAKER_03: Because that's where our ancestors, right?
1:06:30
SPEAKER_03: Our grandparents, that's work, work, work, work, work, right?
1:06:34
SPEAKER_03: That's what you did.
1:06:35
SPEAKER_03: You live to work.
1:06:37
unknown: Yeah.
1:06:37
SPEAKER_03: And I think we have to let that go.
1:06:40
SPEAKER_03: That's not where you're gonna find your peace, your joy, and your fulfillment in life.
1:06:43
SPEAKER_03: That just funds the real thing that is your peace, your joy, and your fulfillment in life.
1:06:49
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:06:50
SPEAKER_03: That's a big lesson.
1:06:52
SPEAKER_03: And when you can get that dad, you can go, oh yep, I know what this is.
1:06:55
SPEAKER_00: Well, they also design it that way.
1:06:57
SPEAKER_00: 100%.
1:07:00
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:07:00
SPEAKER_00: And if you want health insurance, uh-huh.
1:07:02
SPEAKER_03: You need this job.
1:07:04
SPEAKER_03: 100%.
1:07:04
SPEAKER_03: 100%.
1:07:05
SPEAKER_03: It's all by design.
1:07:06
SPEAKER_03: 100%.
1:07:06
SPEAKER_03: But but but again, you can be a part of those organizations, know what it is.
1:07:12
SPEAKER_03: That's where your mental health can can be better.
1:07:15
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:07:16
SPEAKER_03: Because you're not, because you go into these organizations and think, oh my God, it's gonna be dope.
1:07:19
SPEAKER_03: This is gonna be my best career, my best job everywhere.
1:07:21
SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna have friends.
1:07:22
SPEAKER_03: If you let that go and go, I may have friends.
1:07:25
SPEAKER_03: I'm open to having friends.
1:07:26
SPEAKER_03: I'm open to this being the best experience of my life.
1:07:28
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:07:29
SPEAKER_03: But I also know what this could be and what it oftentimes can be.
1:07:32
SPEAKER_03: That's not negative, it's just accepting things for what it is.
1:07:36
SPEAKER_03: Truly.
1:07:36
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:07:37
SPEAKER_03: And not expecting putting all my eggs in that basket.
1:07:40
SPEAKER_03: That's all I'm saying.
1:07:42
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:07:42
SPEAKER_00: So I I think that's where I am today.
1:07:45
SPEAKER_00: Um and we'll see where the years bring me.
1:07:48
SPEAKER_00: But I know this is like a a permanent thing that I'm I'm sticking with.
1:07:54
SPEAKER_00: Like this platform.
1:07:55
SPEAKER_00: Right, right, right.
1:07:56
SPEAKER_00: Everything else is secondary.
1:07:59
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:08:00
SPEAKER_00: It's it's all temporary.
1:08:02
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
1:08:02
SPEAKER_00: I mean, regardless of how I felt about it.
1:08:05
SPEAKER_00: It's like, oh, now I now I understand.
1:08:07
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:08:07
SPEAKER_00: Because I've started my own liberation.
1:08:10
SPEAKER_00: And you can't undo the liberation once you see it.
1:08:12
SPEAKER_03: Once you know, you can't unknow.
1:08:14
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:08:14
SPEAKER_00: Well, and that might be a blessing and a curse.
1:08:17
SPEAKER_03: That's true.
1:08:18
SPEAKER_03: Because it yeah.
1:08:20
SPEAKER_03: Because when you see the world for what it is, it's like, wow.
1:08:24
SPEAKER_00: Can't unsee it.
1:08:25
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:08:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:08:26
SPEAKER_00: I love The Matrix.
1:08:28
SPEAKER_02: Oh, God.
1:08:28
SPEAKER_00: I had to watch it for a class in, I think it's like sociology.
1:08:31
SPEAKER_00: Uh-huh.
1:08:32
SPEAKER_00: And ever since then, I'm like, mmm.
1:08:37
SPEAKER_00: Dang, you shouldn't have told me that.
1:08:39
SPEAKER_00: And then I married the black power to the people ass woman in the world.
1:08:48
SPEAKER_02: So my goodness.
1:08:51
SPEAKER_00: Did she really know?
1:08:53
SPEAKER_00: Even if I wanted to.
1:08:54
SPEAKER_00: And like now, this is who I am.
1:08:55
SPEAKER_00: So like I'm really in it.
1:08:57
SPEAKER_00: So okay.
1:08:59
SPEAKER_00: How do you navigate holding space for other people with mentoring, massage therapy, coaching, while also doing the work in freeing yourself?
1:09:09
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:09:09
SPEAKER_00: Are you in selling practices for yourself?
1:09:11
SPEAKER_00: Um like how does that show up for you?
1:09:13
SPEAKER_03: It's it's being it's intentionality.
1:09:15
SPEAKER_03: Like I have to have time for my own growth and learning.
1:09:19
SPEAKER_03: So I think I've done six or seven healing retreats, like men's healing retreats this year, like where I've been a participant.
1:09:27
SPEAKER_03: And that's intentional.
1:09:28
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I've got to do the work because when I go to do the work with other men, I want them to know I'm not speaking from a just a theoretical academic standpoint.
1:09:36
SPEAKER_03: I'm speaking from a personal lived experience of understanding what that feels like.
1:09:41
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:09:41
SPEAKER_03: And also how to come out of it on the other side.
1:09:43
SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
1:09:44
SPEAKER_03: Um, so yeah, I I make time for it.
1:09:47
SPEAKER_03: I meditate in the morning.
1:09:49
SPEAKER_03: I'm not always perfect at it, but I'm I'm I make time because I know that when I do, I feel better throughout my day.
1:09:55
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:09:56
SPEAKER_03: I'm trying to get back in the gym.
1:09:57
SPEAKER_03: So I'm putting time on the counter.
1:09:59
SPEAKER_01: Maybe.
1:10:00
SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
1:10:01
SPEAKER_03: I feel you.
1:10:01
SPEAKER_03: Um, so that that's what that looks like.
1:10:04
SPEAKER_03: It's extreme intentionality, but also a reminder of what do I stand to lose if I don't make time for my own growth?
1:10:13
SPEAKER_03: What do I stand to gain if I make time for my own growth?
1:10:16
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:10:17
SPEAKER_03: I want more of what I'm standing to gain than what I lose.
1:10:21
SPEAKER_00: You also taught me that as well, because I didn't look at it as that way.
1:10:26
SPEAKER_00: It's just like all or nothing.
1:10:28
SPEAKER_00: But it's like you want that future self.
1:10:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:10:31
SPEAKER_00: And you know, I'm not perfect.
1:10:33
SPEAKER_00: Some days I slip.
1:10:34
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:10:35
SPEAKER_00: But perfection doesn't exist.
1:10:37
SPEAKER_00: No.
1:10:37
SPEAKER_00: But do we get back up and keep going?
1:10:39
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
1:10:40
SPEAKER_00: That's the key.
1:10:40
SPEAKER_00: And that has really like helped me because throughout this process, ebbs and flows.
1:10:46
SPEAKER_00: Some days you're motivated, other days you don't want to do anything.
1:10:48
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
1:10:49
SPEAKER_00: And on those days where like I lose sight of that motivation, it's like this is just a moment.
1:10:56
SPEAKER_00: This doesn't define you, this doesn't mean you were off course.
1:10:59
SPEAKER_00: Like, you can always pick it up and figure it out.
1:11:02
SPEAKER_03: You can always pick it back up.
1:11:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:11:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:11:06
SPEAKER_00: And I feel like, especially in this journey of quote unquote, like being on and doing the right thing for so long in our careers, and we have come to this place that might be deemed on paper as like falling off.
1:11:20
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:11:20
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:11:21
SPEAKER_00: It's helped me like understand that sometimes things shift.
1:11:25
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the things we want, sometimes the things we need aren't what we thought we wanted or needed, or they no longer serve us.
1:11:33
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:11:33
SPEAKER_00: And so it looks differently.
1:11:35
SPEAKER_00: We're in a different season in our life.
1:11:36
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:11:37
SPEAKER_00: Culture.
1:11:38
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
1:11:39
SPEAKER_00: Now so many variables.
1:11:41
SPEAKER_00: So it's just like interesting how that like applies on like the macro and the micro levels.
1:11:46
SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
1:11:48
SPEAKER_00: Because this year took us some places.
1:11:52
SPEAKER_03: Life is life and adulting is ghetto.
1:11:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:11:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:11:57
SPEAKER_00: So, like, what do you have going on?
1:11:59
SPEAKER_00: Because I know you have the life coaching, you have the massage therapy.
1:12:03
SPEAKER_00: Like, what are all the things?
1:12:05
SPEAKER_03: So the deeper, the bigger vision, and this is like two weeks old, this vision I'm about to describe.
1:12:12
SPEAKER_03: Because it's all coming into vision or into clarity.
1:12:16
SPEAKER_03: Um, is building a wellness practice catering to men.
1:12:20
SPEAKER_03: There is so much stuff happening in the world, and men tend to be at the center of it in terms of the harm.
1:12:28
SPEAKER_03: The data is very clear.
1:12:29
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:12:29
SPEAKER_03: Men can trick uh um uh act out most of the violence we see around the world, not even just in the US, around the world.
1:12:37
SPEAKER_03: Um, but when you stop there at that data point, your conclusion is that men ain't shit.
1:12:43
SPEAKER_03: Right.
1:12:43
SPEAKER_03: And I don't blame women, trans people for feeling that way.
1:12:47
SPEAKER_03: They're angry.
1:12:48
SPEAKER_03: They are the the I hate saying victim, but they are the recipient of that violence.
1:12:52
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:12:52
SPEAKER_03: So they get to feel whatever the fuck they want to feel.
1:12:54
SPEAKER_03: That's not that's not my my ministry.
1:12:56
SPEAKER_03: My ministry is to go talk to my fellow men, gay, straight, bi, pan, trans, all of us, yeah, to go, what are we gonna do about it?
1:13:05
SPEAKER_03: If we don't like this narrative, how are we going to heal?
1:13:08
SPEAKER_03: Because what's what the the the the core of that violence is hurt, is trauma, is feeling unloved, not enough.
1:13:19
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:13:19
SPEAKER_03: Right?
1:13:20
SPEAKER_03: So I I'm going back, I was asked the question, how did we get here?
1:13:24
SPEAKER_03: Which I presented that data on little boys, even as little children, receive significantly less physical touch than their female counterparts.
1:13:32
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:13:33
SPEAKER_03: It starts there.
1:13:35
SPEAKER_03: So how do we get men to hug and go, yo, I see you.
1:13:40
SPEAKER_03: Without the without it being paused as gay.
1:13:45
SPEAKER_03: One of the things I'm learning to do, even as a gay man, when I hug another man, I hug and then let go.
1:13:50
SPEAKER_03: I'm learning to sit in that hug.
1:13:54
SPEAKER_03: And a number of men who I've done that with, and you feel their body melt.
1:13:59
SPEAKER_03: We need hugs.
1:14:00
SPEAKER_03: We we humans, male, female, non-body, we all need physical touch.
1:14:05
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:14:06
SPEAKER_03: And and and not just sexual physical touch.
1:14:09
SPEAKER_03: Because that exists.
1:14:10
SPEAKER_03: Right.
1:14:11
SPEAKER_03: Platonic.
1:14:12
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:14:12
SPEAKER_03: So I'm building a wellness practice that is steeped in mind, body, and spirit.
1:14:16
SPEAKER_03: Massage therapy, life coaching.
1:14:18
SPEAKER_03: I'm I'm getting certified as a uh personal trainer.
1:14:21
SPEAKER_03: I'm getting certified as a yoga instructor.
1:14:23
SPEAKER_03: I just got certified as a breath coach.
1:14:25
SPEAKER_03: Like, I'm doing the patient.
1:14:27
SPEAKER_03: I never met a degree.
1:14:29
SPEAKER_03: I did not know.
1:14:30
SPEAKER_03: Right?
1:14:31
SPEAKER_03: You didn't get it.
1:14:32
SPEAKER_03: My mom was like, do not invite me to another graduation.
1:14:36
SPEAKER_03: Because I ain't got to get it.
1:14:37
SPEAKER_02: Like I get it.
1:14:38
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:14:38
SPEAKER_02: You smart.
1:14:39
SPEAKER_02: You is you is smart, you is important.
1:14:42
SPEAKER_02: I ain't got to I'm not doing it no more.
1:14:44
SPEAKER_03: Like I'm done.
1:14:46
SPEAKER_03: But yeah, I just and funny bringing that up, I spent so much money in this period of not having a job.
1:14:55
SPEAKER_00: Girl.
1:14:56
SPEAKER_03: I had to go, what are you doing?
1:14:58
SPEAKER_03: What I found out was that in this new industry that I'm transitioning into, I felt insecure that I wasn't an expert.
1:15:07
SPEAKER_03: Yep.
1:15:08
SPEAKER_03: So I felt I had to get all the certifications in order to be deemed what I was in HR and diversity.
1:15:15
SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
1:15:16
SPEAKER_03: That's what you knew.
1:15:17
SPEAKER_03: And right?
1:15:17
SPEAKER_03: And so I'm learning.
1:15:18
SPEAKER_03: I've only learned that lesson in the last week.
1:15:23
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:15:23
SPEAKER_03: Like recently.
1:15:24
SPEAKER_03: Oh, like you are already enough.
1:15:27
SPEAKER_03: Just go do.
1:15:29
SPEAKER_03: Go do what you know you know how to do.
1:15:32
SPEAKER_03: So yeah.
1:15:32
SPEAKER_03: So that's what I got going on.
1:15:33
SPEAKER_03: And I'm also working on a book.
1:15:39
SPEAKER_00: Now, what is this?
1:15:42
SPEAKER_00: Is it gonna be like an autobiography?
1:15:44
SPEAKER_00: What's it gonna be?
1:15:45
SPEAKER_03: Kind of memoir-ish, because it is steeped in my own healing journey.
1:15:49
SPEAKER_03: But it's a book tour for black and uh Latino men around our healing and what we have endured being socialized as men in this society, and what has that taken from us?
1:16:03
SPEAKER_03: Right?
1:16:03
SPEAKER_03: Our ability to feel, our ability to love, our ability to process our feelings, our emotions, and uh and and respond instead of react.
1:16:12
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:16:12
SPEAKER_03: What has that cost us in terms of relationships, marriages, friends, jobs, all kinds of stuff?
1:16:18
SPEAKER_03: And to get people to see that there's another path, there's something, there's another way to exist as a strong, powerful man.
1:16:26
SPEAKER_03: I'm not saying to be weak.
1:16:27
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:16:27
SPEAKER_03: Because men love going, I ain't trying to be a punk.
1:16:30
SPEAKER_03: Ain't nobody saying that.
1:16:30
SPEAKER_03: Actually, strength is being able to say, yo, I'm struggling.
1:16:33
SPEAKER_03: And how do we call on each other and stop relying on the women in our lives to protect us and save us and and and baby us, and us men show up for each other and go, yo, let's go.
1:16:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:16:46
SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
1:16:47
SPEAKER_03: So the book is it's called right now.
1:16:49
SPEAKER_03: I'm calling it giving space.
1:16:52
SPEAKER_03: And there's a double meaning there.
1:16:54
SPEAKER_03: It's us to give space for the healing, but also for other people who are not men to give us space to do our healing.
1:17:04
SPEAKER_01: Oh.
1:17:05
SPEAKER_03: Because what we do know is that people who are not men, women, also perpetuate the toxic masculinity.
1:17:14
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
1:17:14
SPEAKER_03: Because I want you to love me, but I also want you to be a man.
1:17:19
SPEAKER_03: And I want you to be strong.
1:17:21
SPEAKER_03: And it's like, wait a minute.
1:17:22
SPEAKER_03: So when I'm so, you know what I'm saying?
1:17:24
SPEAKER_03: Like you can have all of that, but I don't want I don't want you crying.
1:17:26
SPEAKER_03: I don't want I hate when people oh um what they what do they say on on Instagram?
1:17:31
SPEAKER_03: Uh uh a new ick.
1:17:33
SPEAKER_03: Oh yeah.
1:17:34
SPEAKER_03: And you and you see women posting this like, oh, but the new ick is the man crying or getting a pedicule or you know what I'm saying?
1:17:40
SPEAKER_03: Like lemon drop.
1:17:41
SPEAKER_03: But then without busting shit up, you are, you know what I'm saying?
1:17:44
SPEAKER_03: Like what which one is it?
1:17:46
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:17:46
SPEAKER_03: Right?
1:17:46
SPEAKER_03: So it's getting men to go, what kind of man do you want to be?
1:17:50
SPEAKER_00: I think that's absolutely beautiful.
1:17:52
SPEAKER_03: I'm really excited.
1:17:53
SPEAKER_00: I'm really excited to read that book.
1:17:55
SPEAKER_00: I did not know.
1:17:56
SPEAKER_00: I will be tuning in.
1:17:57
SPEAKER_03: I am really, really excited.
1:17:59
SPEAKER_00: It's it's so interesting when you were speaking about um women perpetuating things.
1:18:03
SPEAKER_00: I thought about my relationship to the word stud.
1:18:07
SPEAKER_00: And granted, this is the 2010s, early 2020s, and like just we've come up with different terminologies.
1:18:15
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but I used to put myself in such a box.
1:18:18
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:18:19
SPEAKER_00: How I got to this um identity of non-binary was a doozy.
1:18:24
SPEAKER_00: There was a time, 2021, where I was just feeling very flooded with feminine energy, masculine energy, and I'm like, I have to put myself somewhere because I don't know what this in-between is.
1:18:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because not the one felt good for you or exactly right.
1:18:40
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I can't why do I have all this?
1:18:43
SPEAKER_00: I'm questioning myself why I feel this feminine energy.
1:18:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, as if I wasn't born with all this feminine energy.
1:18:48
SPEAKER_03: Got it, got it.
1:18:50
SPEAKER_00: And I remember feeling like in these fluxes of strong masculine energy, like I have to be like this thing.
1:18:59
SPEAKER_00: So I was like, am I trans?
1:19:01
SPEAKER_00: Like, I'm trying to put myself in this masculine box.
1:19:05
SPEAKER_00: You feel both.
1:19:06
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
1:19:06
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
1:19:07
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, but it's not making sense to me.
1:19:09
SPEAKER_00: And I'm I'm going through it trying to understand.
1:19:12
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:19:12
SPEAKER_00: And Jeanne, she's like, just be.
1:19:16
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, oh, let me let me try that.
1:19:21
SPEAKER_00: And so I sat with it, and it got me to a place where I could understand, like, I could hold both things.
1:19:29
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
1:19:29
SPEAKER_00: And I don't have to fit.
1:19:30
SPEAKER_00: And so I'm like, oh, non-binaryism.
1:19:34
SPEAKER_00: Like, that's who I am.
1:19:36
SPEAKER_00: And when I released that, I was able to release these stereotypes of being the man, the boy.
1:19:45
SPEAKER_00: And it's allowed me to flow more into like this feminine energy.
1:19:48
SPEAKER_00: Whatever you want to be.
1:19:49
SPEAKER_00: Whatever.
1:19:50
SPEAKER_00: Whatever you're feeling.
1:19:51
SPEAKER_00: I got back to painting my nails.
1:19:53
SPEAKER_00: I got back to I love that.
1:19:55
SPEAKER_00: I I leaned into some very feminine things.
1:19:58
SPEAKER_00: I love that.
1:19:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:19:59
SPEAKER_03: Like because it felt good for you.
1:20:01
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
1:20:01
SPEAKER_03: And then there are moments where like this is who I want to, this, this is how I'm showing up.
1:20:05
SPEAKER_03: This is the energy of the thing.
1:20:06
SPEAKER_00: I love that.
1:20:07
SPEAKER_00: But I spent a lot of time perpetuating these same things in myself because I'm trying to be masculine.
1:20:16
SPEAKER_00: Totally.
1:20:17
SPEAKER_00: I consider myself a mask, but without those other things.
1:20:22
SPEAKER_00: Got it.
1:20:22
SPEAKER_00: Got it.
1:20:23
SPEAKER_00: Girl, you're gonna help me carry these groceries in the house.
1:20:26
SPEAKER_03: It's not me.
1:20:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:20:28
SPEAKER_00: I love that.
1:20:29
SPEAKER_03: Oh my goodness.
1:20:30
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:20:31
SPEAKER_00: So I didn't have the language to put to it, but that helped me realize that.
1:20:37
SPEAKER_00: I really love that.
1:20:38
SPEAKER_03: Because the reality of it is like we all have divine feminine and masculine in us.
1:20:42
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:20:43
SPEAKER_03: Truly.
1:20:43
SPEAKER_03: All have it.
1:20:44
SPEAKER_03: Like these names of what we call man or woman or boy or girl are made-up things.
1:20:49
SPEAKER_03: Because we had to know what that thing is, right?
1:20:52
SPEAKER_03: But we all have divine feminine.
1:20:54
SPEAKER_03: And I think it's helping men also tap into that divine feminine, right?
1:20:58
SPEAKER_03: That divine of feeling of um connection, of community, of you know, like, because for me, I'm like, women can also protect.
1:21:08
SPEAKER_03: And that seems masculine.
1:21:10
SPEAKER_03: Right.
1:21:11
SPEAKER_03: But women also protect.
1:21:12
SPEAKER_03: Fiercely.
1:21:13
SPEAKER_03: Women also provide.
1:21:15
SPEAKER_03: You know what I'm saying?
1:21:16
SPEAKER_03: So like we all can tap into all of that.
1:21:19
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:21:19
SPEAKER_03: So why are we?
1:21:20
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and I'm I'm I'm I'm done with all that.
1:21:22
SPEAKER_03: And and I want to help.
1:21:23
SPEAKER_03: And I I know I've redone my algorithm on Instagram and unfollowed every celebrity I've ever followed.
1:21:30
SPEAKER_03: I've unfollowed certain profile, even some some friends, and started following other.
1:21:34
SPEAKER_03: And my algorithm is now a lot of men who are out there doing the same work.
1:21:39
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:21:40
SPEAKER_03: And trying to bring other men along with them.
1:21:42
SPEAKER_03: Like enough is enough.
1:21:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:21:45
SPEAKER_00: Enough is enough.
1:21:46
SPEAKER_00: Like a movement.
1:21:47
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what's happening as a collective, but there is a shift.
1:21:50
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:21:51
SPEAKER_00: Even though there are a lot of like harms and evils in the world who have a lot of power at the same time.
1:21:57
SPEAKER_03: There's a lot of people who are doing the work.
1:22:00
SPEAKER_00: And I feel like we're going to win.
1:22:02
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:22:03
SPEAKER_00: We we the people.
1:22:04
SPEAKER_00: I have to believe that.
1:22:04
SPEAKER_03: It's the only way I get out of bed in the morning.
1:22:08
SPEAKER_00: I have to believe it.
1:22:09
SPEAKER_03: If I'm being honest.
1:22:10
SPEAKER_03: I have to believe it.
1:22:11
SPEAKER_03: Because that other stuff will get you down.
1:22:13
SPEAKER_03: And that's the energy you have to approach it with.
1:22:15
SPEAKER_03: Because if you believe that you're not going to win, then you're just what's the point of doing?
1:22:19
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:22:19
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:22:20
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:22:20
SPEAKER_00: So I I completely agree.
1:22:23
SPEAKER_00: Um, okay.
1:22:24
SPEAKER_00: I feel like we let me let me see.
1:22:29
SPEAKER_00: How well actually I'd rather ask this.
1:22:33
SPEAKER_00: Is there a guilt in choosing yourself after spending so long fighting for the collective, or do you hold both?
1:22:41
SPEAKER_00: I didn't think so.
1:22:41
SPEAKER_00: No guilt.
1:22:42
SPEAKER_00: But I was like, let me not assume.
1:22:43
SPEAKER_03: No guilt.
1:22:45
SPEAKER_03: Because I know that choosing myself is also choosing the collective.
1:22:48
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
1:22:48
SPEAKER_00: Right?
1:22:49
SPEAKER_03: Right?
1:22:49
SPEAKER_03: So if I know that if I'm good, then I get to be good for other people.
1:22:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that overflow.
1:22:55
SPEAKER_03: Gotta pour from an overflowing cup.
1:22:58
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:22:58
SPEAKER_03: So it releases that.
1:23:00
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:23:00
SPEAKER_03: That's liberation.
1:23:01
SPEAKER_00: At first, though, I know for me, I'm like at first it was not easy.
1:23:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:23:06
SPEAKER_00: I'm like this.
1:23:07
SPEAKER_03: There totally was yield.
1:23:08
SPEAKER_03: Because like when I made the decision to leave to say I'm no longer doing corporate, no longer doing DEI in that way, I was like, damn, I'm giving up on the movement.
1:23:17
SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, no, I'm just choosing to do it in a in a different field, in a different venue.
1:23:22
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:23:22
SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
1:23:23
SPEAKER_03: Do it in the way that I actually want to do it.
1:23:25
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:23:25
SPEAKER_03: Where I can say the things that need to be said and not care if someone doesn't buy a service from me.
1:23:31
SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
1:23:32
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:23:33
SPEAKER_03: Um, so yeah.
1:23:35
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:23:35
SPEAKER_00: I again I didn't want to assume, but because I know again, our journeys are similar.
1:23:40
SPEAKER_00: Like at first, it was like, yes, I feel terrible.
1:23:44
SPEAKER_00: Because it feels very self-serving, but you understand when you're in it and you shift that thinking, it's self-serving, but you're also serving it.
1:23:55
SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
1:23:56
SPEAKER_03: Like, I I I gave a keynote address at a conference in London a couple months ago, and it was a diversity conference, and I had a whole thing prepare.
1:24:04
SPEAKER_03: I got on stage and said, I'm tired.
1:24:07
SPEAKER_03: And they all was like, whoa.
1:24:09
SPEAKER_03: I was like, I realized that I was doing this work from a space of anger.
1:24:14
SPEAKER_00: I was gay bash when I was younger as a middle schooler.
1:24:18
SPEAKER_03: And that to me isn't so surprising that little little boys would cause me harm.
1:24:24
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:24:25
SPEAKER_03: It was the adults who watched and laughed that made it worse, right?
1:24:29
SPEAKER_00: And also reinforced it.
1:24:31
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:24:31
SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
1:24:32
SPEAKER_03: And so I've been angry for 38 years.
1:24:39
SPEAKER_03: And I was doing the DEI work angry.
1:24:45
SPEAKER_03: It's not a healthy way, not a sustainable way to do the work.
1:24:48
SPEAKER_03: So what I told the audience is like if you are still angry and you haven't spent time on your own healing, you will burn out.
1:24:56
SPEAKER_03: You will burn out.
1:24:58
SPEAKER_03: But you have to do your work of healing yourself from those wounds, from those from that trauma.
1:25:05
SPEAKER_03: Because you you're pouring from an empty cup.
1:25:08
unknown: Yeah.
1:25:09
SPEAKER_03: You're pouring from an empty cup.
1:25:10
SPEAKER_00: And it's emptying quickly.
1:25:12
SPEAKER_00: Quickly.
1:25:13
SPEAKER_03: And it doesn't empty and it doesn't fill up as fast as it empties.
1:25:17
SPEAKER_03: Because it's because you're not spending time filling it up.
1:25:20
SPEAKER_03: Right.
1:25:20
SPEAKER_03: So, you know, I'm now not doing the work from that space.
1:25:24
SPEAKER_03: I'm doing the space from love, from deep care for myself and even and for other people.
1:25:30
SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
1:25:31
SPEAKER_03: Like there's it's it's just it's just different.
1:25:33
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:25:33
SPEAKER_03: There's more patience.
1:25:35
SPEAKER_03: You know?
1:25:36
SPEAKER_03: Not that I let shit go, but I will check you in a minute.
1:25:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:25:40
SPEAKER_03: But I also know what toxic masculinity has taken from men.
1:25:45
SPEAKER_03: I know what white supremacy has taken from white people, right?
1:25:48
SPEAKER_03: We all have been harmed.
1:25:49
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:25:49
SPEAKER_03: Other people have been harmed ten times more because they are the recipient of the result of that.
1:25:54
SPEAKER_03: Right.
1:25:54
SPEAKER_03: But we've all been harmed.
1:25:55
SPEAKER_03: And until we recognize that there's so much more to life that we could be living if we release ourselves from the shackles of these systems, we're we're not gonna survive.
1:26:07
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
1:26:08
SPEAKER_00: Hurry up and write that book and just get it out to the masses because we need it now more than ever.
1:26:15
SPEAKER_03: I particularly want black and Latino men to just find that piece.
1:26:19
SPEAKER_03: That piece that we just have never seen.
1:26:22
SPEAKER_00: Do you feel like men are truly ready for it?
1:26:29
SPEAKER_03: I think so.
1:26:31
SPEAKER_03: I think there's I think there's always compartments.
1:26:33
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:26:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:26:34
SPEAKER_03: There are people who are in the manosphere who don't want it.
1:26:37
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:26:37
SPEAKER_03: I'm not talking to them.
1:26:39
SPEAKER_03: There are people who are doing the work and they're like, they're already doing the work.
1:26:42
SPEAKER_03: But there's this middle group that we have an opportunity to move them to the other side to come closer to the side of people who are doing the work that that is the audience.
1:26:52
SPEAKER_03: People who are like, I I hear this and I hear this.
1:26:57
SPEAKER_03: What am I resonating with?
1:26:58
SPEAKER_03: What do I need?
1:26:59
SPEAKER_03: And they just need someone, a coach, to put a mirror and go, what are your values?
1:27:05
SPEAKER_03: What legacy do you want to leave?
1:27:07
SPEAKER_03: If you have children, what do you want them to have?
1:27:10
SPEAKER_03: What do you want to feel and experience?
1:27:13
SPEAKER_03: Okay, cool.
1:27:14
SPEAKER_03: How do we get there?
1:27:16
SPEAKER_03: How do you get that?
1:27:17
SPEAKER_03: What does it look like to be cared for?
1:27:20
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:27:21
SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
1:27:21
SPEAKER_03: Like, because I'm telling you, like no one has they they haven't had time to stop and go, yeah, I don't feel like I have somebody I can go and go, yo, I need a hug.
1:27:30
SPEAKER_03: Because they have to be the hug.
1:27:31
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
1:27:32
SPEAKER_00: You know what I'm saying?
1:27:33
SPEAKER_03: Like and giving them a soft pace space to land every once in a while to put down the armor so that they can fill their cup up again.
1:27:42
SPEAKER_00: That's so important.
1:27:43
SPEAKER_03: So I'm excited to see where this grows.
1:27:46
SPEAKER_03: Really excited.
1:27:47
SPEAKER_03: I I see the vision.
1:27:49
SPEAKER_03: I see a big building that um has rooms and space for massage, for classes, for yoga, coaching.
1:28:00
SPEAKER_03: Group therapy, group coaching, spaces to to to to take a nap.
1:28:07
SPEAKER_03: I see it so clearly.
1:28:09
SPEAKER_03: And men come and spend an entire day just pouring into themselves, connecting with other men so they can go back into the world refreshed, ready to take on responsibility.
1:28:23
SPEAKER_00: I see that too.
1:28:24
SPEAKER_03: I see it.
1:28:25
SPEAKER_03: I see it so clearly.
1:28:27
SPEAKER_03: I do too.
1:28:27
SPEAKER_03: Like I'm like not even joking.
1:28:29
SPEAKER_03: Like I see, I see it overlooking water.
1:28:32
SPEAKER_03: I see it out and I I see it.
1:28:35
SPEAKER_03: And I'm not being given this vision for no reason.
1:28:37
SPEAKER_00: Once you see it, it means that it's there.
1:28:40
SPEAKER_03: And you have a choice.
1:28:41
SPEAKER_03: You can walk towards it or you can fight it.
1:28:43
SPEAKER_03: And I'm choosing to walk towards it.
1:28:46
SPEAKER_03: I don't know how I'm gonna get it.
1:28:47
SPEAKER_03: Right.
1:28:47
SPEAKER_03: I ain't got no money to buy this big ass.
1:28:48
SPEAKER_03: And this is the big ass building.
1:28:49
SPEAKER_03: Like it is a big escalator in the building already.
1:28:53
SPEAKER_03: In my mind.
1:28:54
SPEAKER_03: Elevator, it's like I see it.
1:28:56
SPEAKER_03: There's two elevators.
1:28:57
SPEAKER_03: Right.
1:28:58
SPEAKER_03: And men are coming in and out, and they're like, yo, I need a day.
1:29:02
SPEAKER_03: And they're building out their own schedule of like, I need this, this, and like they're sitting with a coach.
1:29:08
SPEAKER_03: They are they get assigned a coach to go, what are you experiencing?
1:29:12
SPEAKER_03: Well, I'm experiencing okay.
1:29:13
SPEAKER_03: Here, how about this service?
1:29:15
SPEAKER_03: Let's let's build you an itinerary for the day based off of the things that you want to work on.
1:29:19
SPEAKER_00: Oh that's incredible.
1:29:23
SPEAKER_00: And you know what?
1:29:24
SPEAKER_00: As incredible as it sounds, someone will find a reason.
1:29:29
SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
1:29:30
SPEAKER_03: I ain't listening to them.
1:29:31
SPEAKER_03: And that's on them.
1:29:32
SPEAKER_03: Because you know why?
1:29:33
SPEAKER_03: Somebody out there is waiting for me to build that.
1:29:36
SPEAKER_00: I'm waiting.
1:29:37
SPEAKER_03: Somebody's okay.
1:29:38
SPEAKER_00: You got like a non-binary wing I can.
1:29:41
SPEAKER_00: Look, I'll be off to the side.
1:29:42
SPEAKER_00: You can come.
1:29:43
SPEAKER_00: Because I do not infiltrate in spaces that are not for me.
1:29:46
SPEAKER_03: And you know what?
1:29:46
SPEAKER_03: I love that you just said that.
1:29:47
SPEAKER_03: Because one of the things I realized that was keeping me from saying that out loud that I was focusing on men was exactly that.
1:29:53
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:29:54
SPEAKER_03: That people would go, why are you focusing on men?
1:29:56
SPEAKER_03: They already have everything.
1:29:57
SPEAKER_03: And yes, and yes, and I'm creating a different type of space.
1:30:02
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:30:03
SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
1:30:03
SPEAKER_03: And I finally had to let go of the fear of the backlash I would get from people who were like, but what about the someone else is building that?
1:30:12
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
1:30:12
SPEAKER_03: I've been given a message and a calling to build this.
1:30:15
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:30:15
SPEAKER_03: And that's what I'm doing.
1:30:17
SPEAKER_00: I felt the same way about making this podcast centered around black and people of cover, color women and non-binary people.
1:30:25
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
1:30:26
SPEAKER_00: I was like, oh, can I say that out loud?
1:30:27
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
1:30:28
SPEAKER_00: Yes, you can.
1:30:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:30:29
SPEAKER_00: Because that's what it is.
1:30:30
SPEAKER_00: Build something else for them.
1:30:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:30:32
SPEAKER_00: And I'm not excluding them.
1:30:33
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:30:34
SPEAKER_00: I'm centered around the black and browns.
1:30:38
SPEAKER_03: Right.
1:30:38
SPEAKER_03: I'm going to build this around that need.
1:30:41
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:30:41
SPEAKER_03: And so, yeah.
1:30:43
SPEAKER_03: Like the book I'm I'm writing is for black and Latino men.
1:30:46
SPEAKER_03: People have asked me, well, what about white men?
1:30:47
SPEAKER_03: What about Asian men?
1:30:49
SPEAKER_03: I'm not, that's not my black and Latino men have more of a similar experience to masculinity.
1:30:56
SPEAKER_03: That is, I mean, there's also drastic differences as well.
1:30:58
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:30:58
SPEAKER_03: But there's a lot of overlap that we don't necessarily have with Asian men and white men.
1:31:05
SPEAKER_03: And so that's why I feel comfortable putting that together.
1:31:09
SPEAKER_03: Um, but doesn't mean that my coaching practice is not also for those, right?
1:31:14
SPEAKER_03: My coaching practice is for all men.
1:31:16
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:31:16
SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
1:31:17
SPEAKER_03: Trans men, right?
1:31:18
SPEAKER_03: Because there are a lot of trans men who are also getting steeped in this toxic masculinity too, because that's what a man is.
1:31:24
SPEAKER_03: So I'm like, nah, you have an opportunity to create your own.
1:31:28
SPEAKER_03: We all do.
1:31:29
SPEAKER_03: We can we can reject that narrative and build a different one that is steeped in building rather than destroying.
1:31:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:31:37
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:31:38
SPEAKER_00: It's I started to think about uh my older brother.
1:31:42
SPEAKER_00: He lost his father before he was born.
1:31:45
SPEAKER_00: We grew up in Richmond, California, now Virginia.
1:31:48
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
1:31:48
SPEAKER_00: And just a tough upbringing.
1:31:50
SPEAKER_00: Had to be tough.
1:31:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:31:52
SPEAKER_00: Was like the man of the house.
1:31:54
SPEAKER_00: Um, and that turned him into this heartened man to protect himself because at his core, as most little black boys are, very sensitive, but had to be told to be tough.
1:32:06
SPEAKER_00: He now has a four-year-old son who is the most precious light.
1:32:13
SPEAKER_00: And he's raising him to be that.
1:32:15
SPEAKER_00: But he's also this man with this past.
1:32:18
SPEAKER_00: And so he was telling me recently, he like accidentally broke something, like a TV.
1:32:23
SPEAKER_00: And you know, the kid.
1:32:24
SPEAKER_00: My my brother.
1:32:25
SPEAKER_00: Your brother broke it.
1:32:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:32:26
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
1:32:27
SPEAKER_00: Um, and you know, we love our TVs.
1:32:29
SPEAKER_00: Uh-huh.
1:32:30
SPEAKER_00: I watch Golden Girls and Living Single.
1:32:32
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
1:32:33
SPEAKER_00: And he was really upset.
1:32:34
SPEAKER_00: You know, my brother was dealing with something.
1:32:36
SPEAKER_00: So, like, that was just like one more thing.
1:32:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:32:38
SPEAKER_00: And my nephew was like, Dad, just take a deep breath.
1:32:42
SPEAKER_00: Like, it's gonna be okay.
1:32:44
SPEAKER_00: And he is telling me how much he's like softened him and like seeing how he moves and loves through the world, allowed him to be softer and just say all these things I never expected him to say.
1:32:58
SPEAKER_00: That's what I'm saying.
1:32:59
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, that is the most beautiful thing that I have.
1:33:03
SPEAKER_03: That's the other thing I'm seeing on social media.
1:33:05
SPEAKER_03: Men with their with their boys and kissing them and hugging them and cuddling them, and it's so tender.
1:33:12
SPEAKER_03: It's so beautiful.
1:33:13
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:33:14
SPEAKER_03: And also teaching them to be strong.
1:33:16
SPEAKER_03: Cause the duality exists.
1:33:18
SPEAKER_03: Because it's all the same.
1:33:19
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
1:33:19
SPEAKER_03: It's it's like I I cried when I saw this one video of this black man just loving on his baby boy, and I was like, oh, that's so beautiful.
1:33:28
SPEAKER_03: So beautiful.
1:33:29
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's been truly amazing to see more of an influx.
1:33:33
SPEAKER_00: Because you know, I got all blood brothers, you know?
1:33:36
SPEAKER_00: And so like I've always wanted to love on them because I know the world is going to harden them.
1:33:41
SPEAKER_00: 100%.
1:33:42
SPEAKER_00: And the youngest is what, 16?
1:33:45
SPEAKER_00: 15?
1:33:45
SPEAKER_00: And then the oldest is 26.
1:33:48
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
1:33:49
SPEAKER_00: And they aren't hardened yet.
1:33:51
SPEAKER_00: They've gotten older.
1:33:52
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, there are certain aspects, but I'm very grateful they haven't hardened.
1:33:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
1:33:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:33:56
SPEAKER_00: You know, I see some of my brothers.
1:33:59
SPEAKER_00: A lot of softness still there.
1:34:00
SPEAKER_00: Yes, absolutely.
1:34:01
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's good.
1:34:02
SPEAKER_00: Because I hate to see the light go out in little boys.
1:34:05
SPEAKER_00: I hate it.
1:34:06
SPEAKER_00: It breaks my heart.
1:34:08
SPEAKER_03: Trust nobody.
1:34:10
SPEAKER_03: Every, you know, they think, you know, it's just, it's bad.
1:34:13
SPEAKER_03: It's bad.
1:34:13
SPEAKER_03: And and we don't talk about enough that enough about what gets done to young boys that turns them into the men that cause this harm.
1:34:22
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:34:22
SPEAKER_03: And so we can't just stop at the data and just go, oh, see, men ain't shit.
1:34:27
SPEAKER_03: Okay, how did we get here?
1:34:28
SPEAKER_03: They didn't come out the womb like that.
1:34:30
SPEAKER_03: No, but I'm reading uh Belle Hook's book again, um, The Will to Change.
1:34:35
SPEAKER_03: And she talks about how traditional feminism believes that men just ain't shit and just can't change.
1:34:42
SPEAKER_03: And she's just like, if that is what we're if that's a basis, then we're screwed.
1:34:47
SPEAKER_03: Right.
1:34:48
SPEAKER_03: We cannot believe that men just can't and won't change, or don't have the ability to change.
1:34:53
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:34:53
SPEAKER_03: They do.
1:34:54
SPEAKER_03: We just haven't, no, they've never been given the blueprint for what that looks like.
1:34:58
SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
1:34:59
SPEAKER_03: So I see myself in trying to pass down the blueprint of what it what another form of masculinity can look like.
1:35:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and removing that conflated piece of strong, tough, and masculinity and weak and femininity.
1:35:19
SPEAKER_00: Because women are so huh.
1:35:20
SPEAKER_03: Let me tell you something.
1:35:21
SPEAKER_03: A man could never give birth.
1:35:24
SPEAKER_03: I don't think y'all can have a period.
1:35:26
SPEAKER_03: So to tell a period, right?
1:35:28
SPEAKER_03: So you can't tell me w women don't have strength and right.
1:35:31
SPEAKER_03: We all have it.
1:35:33
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:35:33
SPEAKER_03: But we all also need the moments of softness.
1:35:37
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:35:38
SPEAKER_03: Right?
1:35:38
SPEAKER_03: In in our soft area.
1:35:40
SPEAKER_03: Mm-hmm.
1:35:41
SPEAKER_03: And being able to be loved, to be cared for.
1:35:43
SPEAKER_03: Men don't get that.
1:35:45
SPEAKER_03: No.
1:35:46
SPEAKER_03: They don't allow themselves to get it.
1:35:47
SPEAKER_03: And the world tells them that they, that you, that you, you, you give it, you don't get it.
1:35:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:35:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:35:52
SPEAKER_00: It's funny because like men or who, whether they know me or not, their natural instinct is to like dap me up.
1:36:00
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, no, I want to.
1:36:02
SPEAKER_00: Just like you hugged her, you're gonna hug me.
1:36:04
SPEAKER_00: Cause like, no, we're not doing that.
1:36:07
SPEAKER_00: And it's okay.
1:36:07
SPEAKER_00: Like, I know you think I'm this thing that's masculine.
1:36:11
SPEAKER_00: But like, no.
1:36:12
SPEAKER_03: Right, right.
1:36:13
SPEAKER_00: No.
1:36:13
SPEAKER_00: And even if that is the case, hug me.
1:36:15
SPEAKER_03: I still want to hug.
1:36:16
SPEAKER_03: My some of my good friends who are straight men, and like they are like, you know, the stereotypical, like, they're straight, they're bros.
1:36:23
SPEAKER_03: Straight.
1:36:23
SPEAKER_03: They hug me.
1:36:24
SPEAKER_03: They kiss me on the cheek.
1:36:26
unknown: Oh.
1:36:26
SPEAKER_03: And I that that was when I first learned that, oh no, this is possible.
1:36:30
SPEAKER_03: Very much so.
1:36:31
SPEAKER_03: This is possible.
1:36:32
SPEAKER_03: They they text me and say, love you.
1:36:34
SPEAKER_03: Randomly.
1:36:35
SPEAKER_00: I thought of you today.
1:36:37
SPEAKER_00: Love you, man.
1:36:39
SPEAKER_00: Because showing love does not make them any less, more has nothing to do.
1:36:44
SPEAKER_00: It just means they love another person.
1:36:47
SPEAKER_03: I care for you.
1:36:48
SPEAKER_03: In a platonic way.
1:36:49
SPEAKER_03: I thought about you.
1:36:50
SPEAKER_03: And so when we call each other to go, yo, I'm struggling, they know they have a soft face to land.
1:36:56
SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
1:36:57
SPEAKER_03: Like that's it.
1:37:00
SPEAKER_03: That's it.
1:37:00
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:37:01
SPEAKER_02: Hurry up and get this facility rolling, this book out.
1:37:04
SPEAKER_02: You got somebody who got a billion dollars that's willing to give it.
1:37:08
SPEAKER_02: Now that's I started building it now.
1:37:11
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
1:37:12
SPEAKER_03: Well, you are.
1:37:13
SPEAKER_03: I am.
1:37:14
SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
1:37:14
SPEAKER_03: Foundationally, you are.
1:37:15
SPEAKER_03: I am.
1:37:16
SPEAKER_03: I am.
1:37:16
SPEAKER_03: Actually, my next step is like I kind of get it on paper.
1:37:19
SPEAKER_03: Right now it's in my head.
1:37:20
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:37:20
SPEAKER_03: But I'm also trying to practice slowing down.
1:37:23
SPEAKER_03: I move too damn fast.
1:37:24
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:37:25
SPEAKER_03: And um, that's not good.
1:37:27
SPEAKER_03: I need to learn to slow down, build it, be reasonable in my speed.
1:37:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:37:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:37:34
SPEAKER_00: Because I know the excitement will have you want the Of course.
1:37:37
SPEAKER_03: I'm I'm hella excited.
1:37:38
SPEAKER_03: I'm so I want to get it now.
1:37:40
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:37:40
SPEAKER_03: But it it the universe is like, chill, build this part first.
1:37:43
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:37:44
SPEAKER_03: It all will come.
1:37:45
SPEAKER_03: Mm-hmm.
1:37:46
SPEAKER_03: It all will come.
1:37:47
SPEAKER_03: I'm I'm I see it.
1:37:48
SPEAKER_03: It's so clear.
1:37:48
SPEAKER_03: It's not even fuzzy.
1:37:49
SPEAKER_03: I see it, see it, see it.
1:37:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:37:52
SPEAKER_00: I don't have a clear vision of what this is going to turn in for myself.
1:37:56
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:37:58
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's because it's even bigger than what I think it's gonna be.
1:38:02
SPEAKER_00: Like, I don't see these tangible things.
1:38:06
SPEAKER_00: I see the emotional impact.
1:38:08
SPEAKER_00: And you can't really see that.
1:38:10
SPEAKER_03: You can't see in terms of the venue with that emotional impact.
1:38:16
SPEAKER_00: Brick and mortar-esque.
1:38:17
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
1:38:18
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:38:18
SPEAKER_00: Like I see reach from like a metrics perspective.
1:38:23
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
1:38:23
SPEAKER_00: But I don't see like I have this platform and this building and on this tour.
1:38:29
SPEAKER_00: I don't see that.
1:38:30
SPEAKER_00: But I know it's gonna be big.
1:38:32
SPEAKER_03: And I I and I think that's a good sense of knowing.
1:38:35
SPEAKER_03: That's enough to keep you motivated.
1:38:36
SPEAKER_03: It's terrifying.
1:38:38
SPEAKER_03: Touche.
1:38:39
SPEAKER_03: Touche.
1:38:40
SPEAKER_03: Because we like controlling every damn thing.
1:38:42
SPEAKER_03: And I let it go.
1:38:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:38:45
SPEAKER_03: Let it go.
1:38:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, one thing this year has shown me.
1:38:47
SPEAKER_03: Let that trust it.
1:38:49
SPEAKER_03: Trust it.
1:38:49
SPEAKER_00: It's gonna be okay.
1:38:50
SPEAKER_03: Happen.
1:38:52
SPEAKER_03: And our lives, we had we didn't get here by not learning to trust what will be.
1:38:59
SPEAKER_03: You know what I'm saying?
1:38:59
SPEAKER_03: Like our entire lives have been a product of trusting that we're moving in the right direction.
1:39:06
SPEAKER_03: So it's just it's just coming back to that.
1:39:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:39:09
SPEAKER_00: Getting back to those roots, which will liberate us.
1:39:13
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
1:39:14
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
1:39:14
SPEAKER_00: I love it.
1:39:15
SPEAKER_00: That's how you do that.
1:39:16
SPEAKER_00: I love it.
1:39:17
SPEAKER_03: Liberation.
1:39:18
SPEAKER_00: Period.
1:39:19
SPEAKER_00: I love that.
1:39:20
SPEAKER_00: I wish we could talk all day.
1:39:22
SPEAKER_00: It looks like we've been talking for like three hours.
1:39:24
SPEAKER_00: How long has it been?
1:39:25
SPEAKER_00: Almost two.
1:39:26
SPEAKER_00: Almost two?
1:39:27
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
1:39:27
SPEAKER_00: It's like longer than that.
1:39:28
SPEAKER_00: I love it.
1:39:29
SPEAKER_00: I know.
1:39:30
SPEAKER_00: So I have a few rapid fire questions for you.
1:39:34
SPEAKER_00: Just answer.
1:39:35
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
1:39:35
SPEAKER_00: Don't think too deeply.
1:39:36
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
1:39:36
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna show you.
1:39:37
SPEAKER_00: Never comes to mind.
1:39:38
SPEAKER_00: I know.
1:39:39
SPEAKER_00: Try your best.
1:39:40
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
1:39:40
SPEAKER_00: What's a moment in your life where you realize you were free, even if just for a second?
1:39:48
SPEAKER_03: A moment in my life where I felt like I was free even for a second.
1:39:55
SPEAKER_00: I don't, because I don't know.
1:39:56
SPEAKER_03: Nothing, nothing even comes to mind.
1:39:58
SPEAKER_03: Maybe riding a roller coaster?
1:40:01
SPEAKER_03: Mm.
1:40:02
SPEAKER_03: Cause like I had to learn to let go.
1:40:04
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:40:05
SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
1:40:06
SPEAKER_03: And just let the motion take me.
1:40:08
SPEAKER_03: So I guess maybe riding a roller coaster.
1:40:10
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
1:40:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:40:11
SPEAKER_00: I gave you that one.
1:40:11
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:40:12
SPEAKER_00: Um, what's one thing you had to unlearn to get closer to liberation?
1:40:17
SPEAKER_03: That I am already enough and don't have to like get closer to being, I don't have to be perfect.
1:40:26
SPEAKER_03: I had to let go of the idea of perfection.
1:40:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:40:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:40:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because it doesn't exist.
1:40:30
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:40:30
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't exist.
1:40:31
SPEAKER_00: Um if you could go back and tell yourself something before you entered the DEI social justice work, what would it be?
1:40:38
SPEAKER_03: Spend time on working on healing those past wounds.
1:40:43
SPEAKER_03: Do the work now.
1:40:44
SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
1:40:45
SPEAKER_03: In tandem.
1:40:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:40:47
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:40:48
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:40:48
SPEAKER_00: Because that you need both.
1:40:51
SPEAKER_00: Uh, what's something small that brings you joy right now in this transition?
1:40:57
SPEAKER_03: Being able to be creative.
1:40:59
SPEAKER_03: Like, I I love sitting down and just like brainstorming and just writing out my ideas and thoughts about a new service, a new program.
1:41:08
SPEAKER_03: And I I I get I can't pull myself away from my desk at home.
1:41:13
SPEAKER_03: Like, I'll be up until like 2 a.m.
1:41:15
SPEAKER_03: I'm just like creating and I'm asking Claude.
1:41:18
SPEAKER_03: Me and Claude.
1:41:19
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
1:41:19
SPEAKER_03: Me and Claude.
1:41:20
SPEAKER_03: I'm sorry.
1:41:21
SPEAKER_03: I have this thing, but like it's a good thought partner to get me to go.
1:41:25
SPEAKER_03: Wait a minute.
1:41:26
SPEAKER_03: I mean, so I just like I when it's used as a resource.
1:41:29
SPEAKER_03: When it's used as a resource, not to replace me.
1:41:31
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
1:41:31
SPEAKER_03: Like to the point where like I will get up in the morning.
1:41:33
SPEAKER_03: It's the first, I won't even go to the bathroom first.
1:41:35
SPEAKER_03: I go turn Claude on.
1:41:37
SPEAKER_00: No.
1:41:38
SPEAKER_00: I know.
1:41:38
SPEAKER_03: We need to take a moment.
1:41:39
SPEAKER_03: I know.
1:41:40
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
1:41:40
SPEAKER_03: I know.
1:41:41
SPEAKER_03: I know.
1:41:41
SPEAKER_03: But I'm trying to make sure I get back into meditation.
1:41:43
SPEAKER_03: There we go.
1:41:44
SPEAKER_03: And start there.
1:41:44
SPEAKER_03: But like I just be so excited.
1:41:46
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:41:46
SPEAKER_03: You know, like my values are being lived through this crazy.
1:41:50
SPEAKER_03: So it's it's to me that that's small.
1:41:52
SPEAKER_03: Because it's not, you know, it's not major, but like it just it just brings me so much joy.
1:41:55
SPEAKER_03: It's not major yet.
1:41:56
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:41:56
SPEAKER_03: But it brings me so much joy.
1:41:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because I I feel like all the seeds you're planting are going to grow into these large, incredible things.
1:42:05
SPEAKER_00: I I feel it too.
1:42:06
SPEAKER_00: Like I feel it too.
1:42:08
SPEAKER_00: Truly.
1:42:08
SPEAKER_00: So don't forget about me.
1:42:10
SPEAKER_00: Same.
1:42:11
SPEAKER_00: Same.
1:42:12
SPEAKER_00: Oh well, how could I?
1:42:13
SPEAKER_00: Look.
1:42:14
SPEAKER_00: How could I?
1:42:14
SPEAKER_00: Don't.
1:42:15
SPEAKER_00: It's on tape now.
1:42:16
SPEAKER_00: Together.
1:42:17
SPEAKER_00: It sure is.
1:42:18
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
1:42:19
SPEAKER_00: Um, okay.
1:42:20
SPEAKER_00: Who's someone living or otherwise, whose liberation journey inspires you.
1:42:31
SPEAKER_03: James Baldwin.
1:42:33
SPEAKER_03: He has a quote that he said that hits me hard, where he talks about because I oftentimes get frustrated with people, and particularly our people, who won't see how we keep giving in to the system and we keep trying to play with it when there's nothing good to come from the system.
1:42:52
SPEAKER_03: And there was a quote I came across where he said the journey to liberation is really led by a small group of people.
1:43:04
SPEAKER_03: Because they're the ones who see things as they are and are willing and not willing to accept anything less.
1:43:14
SPEAKER_03: And even our own people will look at us like we're crazy.
1:43:18
SPEAKER_03: And I feel that way a lot of times.
1:43:19
SPEAKER_03: With people like, you tripping.
1:43:21
SPEAKER_03: I'm like, no, I I see what's possible.
1:43:24
SPEAKER_03: We all accepting crumbs when we can actually get the whole loaf of bread.
1:43:28
SPEAKER_00: And we gave the recipe.
1:43:32
SPEAKER_03: So his deep level of like, and I'm sure I know he wasn't perfect either, but his deep level of like, no, I'm not settling.
1:43:41
SPEAKER_03: I resonate with that so much.
1:43:43
SPEAKER_03: And how he got to that point of being able to go, no, I don't care what the world is saying.
1:43:49
SPEAKER_03: Now I believe we needed Malcolm and Martin.
1:43:52
SPEAKER_03: We needed M O K in the boardroom, if you will.
1:43:57
SPEAKER_03: And we needed Malcolm on the streets.
1:43:59
SPEAKER_03: We needed both, we needed to push from all those lenses, right?
1:44:03
SPEAKER_03: Um, yeah, yeah.
1:44:05
SPEAKER_03: James Baldwin is something that has someone that's been resonating with me a lot.
1:44:09
SPEAKER_03: And Audrey Lorde.
1:44:11
SPEAKER_00: I'm not familiar with Audrey Lorde.
1:44:13
SPEAKER_00: Audrey Lord.
1:44:14
SPEAKER_03: You have to read Audrey Lorde.
1:44:16
SPEAKER_03: Oh my goodness.
1:44:17
SPEAKER_03: So I'm reading this new book.
1:44:19
SPEAKER_03: Uh the woman's name is Rima.
1:44:20
SPEAKER_03: I forget her last name, uh, Dr.
1:44:22
SPEAKER_03: Rima.
1:44:23
SPEAKER_03: And um, she wrote this book, The Fire Inside.
1:44:26
SPEAKER_03: And it is what it's it's teaching about Buddhism from the lens of Audrey Lourdes and James Baldwin.
1:44:34
SPEAKER_03: And Audrey Lorde writes about how even she tended to be ostracized by other black women.
1:44:42
SPEAKER_03: Same thing that James Baldwin was, right?
1:44:44
SPEAKER_03: Like, because I like, yeah, they are trying to liberate, but like I'm doing it in a in an even more, in an even different way.
1:44:52
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:44:52
SPEAKER_03: And so she had to liberate herself from the need to be accepted by that group in order to be who she was.
1:44:59
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:45:00
SPEAKER_03: Still love them, but to accept it as it was.
1:45:04
SPEAKER_03: You know, I'm I'm I'm simplifying it, but like it, yeah.
1:45:08
SPEAKER_03: Those two, James Baldwin and Audrey Lord.
1:45:12
SPEAKER_00: I'll get into them.
1:45:13
SPEAKER_03: They are my teachers right now.
1:45:14
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:45:14
SPEAKER_00: Because I'm looking for more constructive things to watch in my pastime that aren't the Grits and Eggs podcast.
1:45:19
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
1:45:20
SPEAKER_00: I love it.
1:45:20
SPEAKER_00: So I love it.
1:45:21
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I will definitely be getting into that and uh hitting you up for some pointers as well.
1:45:26
SPEAKER_00: Um, what's the last thing that made you feel truly seen?
1:45:33
SPEAKER_03: My husband.
1:45:35
SPEAKER_03: Um, when when he realized that when I am like chaotic in my head and not feeling whole, my space tends to get chaotic.
1:45:47
SPEAKER_00: A reflection of that, yeah.
1:45:49
SPEAKER_03: And he d he didn't pressure me to clean stuff up or to he's like, I know where you are.
1:45:56
SPEAKER_03: And I was like, I didn't even know where I was.
1:46:00
SPEAKER_03: But he noticed the pattern.
1:46:03
SPEAKER_03: So to be witnesses, to be seen, to know the pattern of like, oh, when your office gets crazy like this and you start sleeping on the couch, I know that you're you're you're spiraling in your head.
1:46:16
SPEAKER_03: And sometimes you just need that person to say it out loud for you to go, yeah, yeah, that's what's happening.
1:46:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I um, you know, I shared that uh it's a very grief-heavy time.
1:46:27
SPEAKER_00: And I like to hold things together and not dump on Jeanne.
1:46:35
SPEAKER_00: But this week it was like I was crippled, like I could not move in certain times.
1:46:42
SPEAKER_00: And she would step in and do certain things for me or just unwarranted, unprompted.
1:46:48
SPEAKER_00: And it made me react by feeling bad.
1:46:51
SPEAKER_00: So I would like cry, and she's like, I know you are going through a lot.
1:46:58
SPEAKER_00: If you could, you would, and the fact that you aren't means you can't.
1:47:02
SPEAKER_00: And so, like, I don't want you to worry about it.
1:47:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah like I got you, and when you got me, you'll have me.
1:47:09
SPEAKER_00: But you don't right now.
1:47:10
SPEAKER_02: Right now, let me have you.
1:47:11
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's a beautiful thing to be seen.
1:47:15
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and have someone willing to just be there for you.
1:47:18
SPEAKER_00: It's yeah, uh, it makes me sad, not everyone will be able to experience that.
1:47:24
SPEAKER_00: So many people won't.
1:47:25
SPEAKER_00: But I'm also very grateful to experience a love like that.
1:47:31
SPEAKER_00: Oh touched.
1:47:34
SPEAKER_00: Okay, last one.
1:47:35
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
1:47:36
SPEAKER_00: What's something you're still figuring out right now?
1:47:41
SPEAKER_03: RJ.
1:47:43
SPEAKER_03: What is something I'm still figuring out right now?
1:47:50
SPEAKER_03: To be honest, like what the next chapter is gonna look like.
1:47:54
SPEAKER_03: Because knowing you is gonna be a big one.
1:47:57
SPEAKER_03: You know?
1:47:58
SPEAKER_03: The only difference is that I'm not like um consumed by it.
1:48:03
SPEAKER_03: I'm interested, I'm curious in it, but I'm not where I'm living in the present.
1:48:08
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:48:08
SPEAKER_03: But that's something I'm still figuring out, like, what is what is my contribution to the world going to look like if not in the way I thought it would.
1:48:17
SPEAKER_03: In in an organization, leading in an organization, things of that sort, right?
1:48:21
SPEAKER_03: Like, you know, um, yeah.
1:48:24
SPEAKER_03: And I'm having fun with that.
1:48:26
SPEAKER_03: Oh.
1:48:26
SPEAKER_03: Because I'm getting to create it.
1:48:28
SPEAKER_03: Isn't it beautiful to have fun with lively?
1:48:32
SPEAKER_03: I'll be on my phone, I'd be like, oh, I had a thought.
1:48:35
SPEAKER_03: Writing that down, and then like, yeah, it's it's so good.
1:48:39
SPEAKER_03: Oh, but I don't have it figured out, right?
1:48:41
SPEAKER_03: I don't.
1:48:42
SPEAKER_03: I I have pieces of it, I know there's a building, and it's full, you know what I'm saying?
1:48:47
SPEAKER_03: But I I don't know, you know, that even though I like like what you just said, you don't have even the building, you don't know what that vision looks like, but you know the impact.
1:48:55
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I know a little bit more, but I don't it's not coming to full fruition for me.
1:49:00
SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
1:49:01
SPEAKER_03: Like, um, yeah.
1:49:04
SPEAKER_00: Ugh.
1:49:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:49:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:49:06
SPEAKER_00: Well, again, it's gonna be great when it gets there.
1:49:09
SPEAKER_00: I'm excited.
1:49:10
SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna be there.
1:49:10
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
1:49:11
SPEAKER_00: I feel like we're gonna like collab in many ways.
1:49:14
SPEAKER_03: I see that.
1:49:15
SPEAKER_03: But this is this is the beginning.
1:49:17
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:49:17
SPEAKER_03: This is the beginning.
1:49:18
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I can't wait to look back.
1:49:19
SPEAKER_03: I think the universe brings people together at the right time for the right reason and to go on a journey together to support each other and cheer each other on and to like, yeah, yeah.
1:49:28
SPEAKER_03: 100%.
1:49:29
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
1:49:30
SPEAKER_00: 100%.
1:49:30
SPEAKER_00: And I can't wait.
1:49:31
SPEAKER_03: I'm excited for you.
1:49:32
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
1:49:33
SPEAKER_00: Likewise.
1:49:34
SPEAKER_03: Thanks for having me.
1:49:34
SPEAKER_03: I I I I really truly was honored when you asked me.
1:49:38
SPEAKER_03: I really, really, really, really, really was.
1:49:40
SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
1:49:41
SPEAKER_03: It means more than words can express at this moment.
1:49:44
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
1:49:44
SPEAKER_00: I was honored when you asked to coach me.
1:49:47
SPEAKER_00: Because I I think so highly of you because of your accolades and because of who you are and what you've done.
1:49:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:49:54
SPEAKER_00: So it's like, oh, you want to come down here to little old me?
1:49:57
SPEAKER_00: I ain't coming down, I'm coming over.
1:50:00
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
1:50:02
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
1:50:03
SPEAKER_03: There is no pedestal.
1:50:05
SPEAKER_03: There is no pedestal.
1:50:06
SPEAKER_03: I'm not better than any.
1:50:08
SPEAKER_03: I've never felt that way about myself.
1:50:09
SPEAKER_03: I'm not better than nobody else.
1:50:12
SPEAKER_03: I may have figured some things out before other people have figured things out.
1:50:16
SPEAKER_03: I'm not better.
1:50:17
SPEAKER_03: And my thing is the concept of umbutu.
1:50:21
SPEAKER_03: I am because you are.
1:50:23
SPEAKER_03: Right?
1:50:23
SPEAKER_03: So the story of the of the uh, I don't know if it's a real story, but it's a story that it gets told pretty often of the four African kids, they're given this big basket of fruit and it's put at the other end of the field.
1:50:35
SPEAKER_03: And the person says, Whoever runs and gets the basket first gets it all the fruit.
1:50:40
SPEAKER_03: So you would think that they would go, all right, ready said go, and they would run.
1:50:43
SPEAKER_03: But they held hands and walked to it.
1:50:46
SPEAKER_03: And then when asked, why didn't you why didn't you run to go get it for yourself?
1:50:49
SPEAKER_03: Like, why take it all for myself when we can all have some?
1:50:53
SPEAKER_03: That is how I feel.
1:50:55
SPEAKER_03: That's how I feel.
1:50:57
SPEAKER_03: When I build, who can I bring up?
1:50:59
SPEAKER_03: Who can I make sure bring over and say, come on, come get yours too?
1:51:04
SPEAKER_03: Like, there's enough.
1:51:04
SPEAKER_03: There's no scarcity.
1:51:06
SPEAKER_03: There's plenty.
1:51:06
SPEAKER_03: There's plenty for all of us.
1:51:08
SPEAKER_03: There's a trillionaire for God's sake.
1:51:11
SPEAKER_03: There is plenty for all of us.
1:51:14
SPEAKER_03: There's plenty.
1:51:15
SPEAKER_03: I don't need to gatekeep it.
1:51:17
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:51:18
SPEAKER_03: I've never been that way.
1:51:20
SPEAKER_00: So and when you move like that, you can't lose.
1:51:23
SPEAKER_00: You really can't.
1:51:24
SPEAKER_00: You can't lose.
1:51:26
SPEAKER_03: You really, really can't.
1:51:27
SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
1:51:28
SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
1:51:28
SPEAKER_00: There's so much more to come.
1:51:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
1:51:31
SPEAKER_00: And you know, speaking of, I know you've touched on things, but like, can you just tell people where to find you, the different things you provide to the world services?
1:51:41
SPEAKER_03: All the things.
1:51:42
SPEAKER_03: I'm looking at the camera for this one.
1:51:43
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
1:51:43
SPEAKER_03: So you can find me on Instagram at it'smeCornell with two L's.
1:51:47
SPEAKER_03: Um, you can also go to trybcc.com, which is Brave Coaching and Consulting.
1:51:52
SPEAKER_03: Um, so if you're a man, a high achieving man out there who is really looking for someone to kind of sit with and to unpack sort of the life that you want to build, hit me up on trybcc.com and set up a discovery call.
1:52:07
SPEAKER_00: Perfect.
1:52:08
SPEAKER_00: And we will be sure to put all your links and contact info in the description.
1:52:12
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
1:52:13
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
1:52:14
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
1:52:15
SPEAKER_00: This conversation was exactly what I thought.
1:52:17
SPEAKER_00: I can't wait to hear it.
1:52:18
SPEAKER_00: That's oh, it's gonna be work.
1:52:20
SPEAKER_02: It's gonna be weird listening to it.
1:52:21
SPEAKER_02: It's gonna be weird listening.
1:52:22
SPEAKER_03: Don't get over it.
1:52:22
SPEAKER_03: Listen to my own voice.
1:52:23
SPEAKER_03: I hate listening to my own voice.
1:52:24
SPEAKER_03: I've done so many podcast episodes, and people are like, you listen to them like barely, barely, but you know it is kind of hard to get out, but once you get over it, it's great.
1:52:35
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:52:36
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna listen anyway.
1:52:37
SPEAKER_00: Great conversation.
1:52:38
SPEAKER_00: Um, of course.
1:52:40
SPEAKER_00: So before you go, what's one thing that you want someone who's in a transition, career transition, identity transition, whatever transition in life, to walk away with knowing after this conversation.
1:52:53
SPEAKER_03: You do not have to do it alone.
1:52:56
SPEAKER_03: You do not have to do it alone.
1:52:59
SPEAKER_03: Reach out, find your community.
1:53:01
SPEAKER_03: There are other people also navigating, if not that same transition, a transition of their own.
1:53:08
SPEAKER_03: Stop.
1:53:08
SPEAKER_03: We are a people of community.
1:53:10
SPEAKER_03: We are a collectivist naturally.
1:53:13
SPEAKER_03: We need to get back to that.
1:53:15
SPEAKER_03: We don't gotta do it by ourselves.
1:53:17
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:53:18
SPEAKER_00: Because what's the quote?
1:53:19
SPEAKER_00: If you want to go fast, go alone.
1:53:22
SPEAKER_00: And if you want to go far, go together.
1:53:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:53:26
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
1:53:26
SPEAKER_00: And there are people out there.
1:53:27
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
1:53:28
SPEAKER_00: There are places, there are platforms, there are a lot more options today than there were.
1:53:34
SPEAKER_03: There's a lot of people also looking for other pe looking for each other.
1:53:37
SPEAKER_03: They're they we're all looking for the same thing.
1:53:39
SPEAKER_03: We're just not saying it out loud.
1:53:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:53:41
SPEAKER_03: So yeah.
1:53:42
SPEAKER_00: But we will.
1:53:43
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
1:53:43
SPEAKER_00: Came to the right place.
1:53:46
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
1:53:47
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
1:53:48
SPEAKER_00: I I appreciate you and love you dearly.
1:53:50
SPEAKER_00: Likewise.
1:53:51
SPEAKER_00: And just thank you for sharing your wisdom, your words, and just you.
1:53:56
SPEAKER_00: Well, back again.
1:53:56
SPEAKER_02: We're talking about another topic.
1:53:58
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
1:53:59
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna come back.
1:54:00
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:54:01
SPEAKER_00: We we could talk off screen about what the next one is about.
1:54:04
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I I for sure will have you back.
1:54:06
SPEAKER_00: So thank you.
1:54:09
SPEAKER_00: And that is it for today's episode.
1:54:12
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