Latest / Wanzology / What Do You Think Of Yourself?
Transcript
- What Do You Think Of Yourself? What's the buzz? Tell me what's happening! What's the buzz? Tell me what's happening!! What's happening with you? You good? How you doing? How your mama do, hmm? Welcome to another episode of WANZOLOGY! I am your host, The Wanz, coming at you live and direct from the upper left-hand corner of the United States of America. Kids are getting out of school, things are happening, the world is turning, and man, there are lots of things to think about. Halfway through the year, I don't know about you, but I mean, it's been a very, very tough year getting things all ‘right-sized’, staying above the fray, as it were. Life is challenging. Getting past things isn't as easy as it used to be. I had a very challenging winter, which took me into the beginning of this year broken. My goal was to put myself back together doing three things: living more out loud, meaning, being who I know I am. The second thing was I was going to try to write and record more music than I had before, and the third thing was to try to perform out in public more. Two of those three things are things that make me extremely happy. So this episode, I'm challenging you to come up with three things that no matter what, make you happy. What do you think of yourself? How do you think of yourself? What do you do to improve what you think of yourself (one word). The mind is a terrible thing, I've been saying it since high school. It can work to your benefit. It can work to your detriment. Totally other direction. The thing that I think we forget is that we get to control which is which. We, in our conscious mind, can negate whatever our subconscious is doing without our knowledge. The subconscious is really powerful, and it will put out all these suggestions of what it believes based on your past experiences. It comes to its own conclusions. How do you mitigate the negativity that could be coming from you? Not sure? I'm not sure either, but I've been thinking about it over the last five months. I spent a month and a half kind of mourning where I had been and then started getting to work rebuilding where I wanted to be. I did that by the three things I mentioned earlier. I stopped worrying about what people thought about what I thought, how I looked, how I behaved. I wasn't gonna be a secret to anybody ever again, meaning that if I really liked something, I was gonna let people know I liked something. If I really didn't like something, tactfully, I was going to let them know I didn't like something. I was going to get into my studio and work on more music. I was going to try very hard as an independent artist to get myself more gigs, which is all fine and good except for one thing, I'm running that show I've said before, being the fireman and the arsonist is not advised. Meaning I didn't trust myself (one word), to get it right, to act in my own best interests all the time. So, I enlisted the help of not one, not two, but three different friends. Before I made a serious move, I made sure to tell them what I was thinking about doing, not just going and doing it and then coming back to clean up whatever mess was made, I was trying to be proactive. “What do you think about this?”, “What do you think about me going this direction?”, “What do you think about me feeling like this?”, “What do you think that means?”, I didn't try to solve all my mental problems, all my mental challenges by myself. I'm not gonna lie, I did enlist the services of not one, but two different online counselors. It's worth the money. This late in life, hell, any time in life, investing in yourself is gonna cost you money, but wouldn't it be better to invest in yourself than to blow money on things that would more or less hurt yourself? (two words) Over the last five months, I've been doing serious ‘inside’ work. I ask you, what do you think of yourself? (one word). How do you think of yourself (one word)? How much do you concern yourself with what others think of yourself (two words)? As my oldest son would say, "Well, I thought about it for a while, and I realized I really don't give an ‘ish’! I really don't care." Now, what do I mean by I really don't care? What I mean is what I think of myself really doesn't have to be anybody else's business but mine. What I think of myself is instrumental in how I will conduct myself, where I will do that conducting, how long I will be doing that conducting, and when I'll stop. Now, it may seem silly to you, your life is under your control, and you're not worried about a lot of things. I've always... Well, not always. I have come to believe that thinking that you have control of things outside of your skin is just like believing you can hold onto a puff of smoke. You think you got it, but you don't really. We are reactionary creatures. We look at life as it's happening, and when things happen in life, we then make a choice to do something or not, think something or not. We survey a situation, decide what we want, can, or will do, and then act accordingly. Don't think so? Imagine what you would do if you were driving down a normal thoroughfare and you watched some motorcycle person run into the back of a car, get flipped over the car and into oncoming traffic, and then get run over. What are you gonna do? Are you gonna pull over and stop and try to help that person? Are you gonna pull over to the side and just whip out your phone and then just start filming things? Are you gonna navigate through the other stopped cars and have it be none of your business? What would you do? I think that I would stop and try to help the person, 'cause, I could really care less about filming it. I like people, and I do what I can to help them any chance I get. That is standard operating procedure for me. But not everybody is like me, I get that. Be honest with yourself and ask yourself that question. If you were a witness to a traumatic event and somebody was in distress, what would you do? Let's say you're on a walk, whether you're walking your pet or not, and you witness someone stealing a woman's purse and running away. you hear her scream. What are you gonna do? Are you gonna run after that person that took the purse? Are you gonna go and try to console the person who is the victim? Or are you just gonna mind your own business? Being old as I am, I will run and try to catch that person, but I probably won't catch him 'cause I can't run like I used to. But who knows? Then if I catch him, what do I do? Well, that's a whole 'nother situation. But as far as the person who was the victim, what would you try to do? Would you try to help’em or would you just not? You don't wanna get involved. You don't wanna become a witness to a crime because it could impact you later or not. Now, I ask you these things because we all have an impression of what we are, who we are, what we're like, and what we wanna be like, right? I don't know anyone who lives their life very content with the fact that they are not ‘happening’. Everybody's always happening. You have your circle of friends, you have your job or maybe family that you're raising at home, and you have a spouse maybe or a significant other. You have the things in your world, the people, places, and things that you value in your world. Those things help you define who you are, how you see yourself. What are those things? How do you see yourself? Are you okay with who you are? Do you believe that you have deficiencies that could be fixed? And I'm not talking about working out to lose ten or fifteen pounds, I'm talking about you had been wearing pastel colors, not really concerned about standing out, and you flip the switch to, "I'm gonna live out loud, and I'm gonna be wearing primary colors that are loud and boisterous, and some of them are even neon, because I want people to see me." Or maybe you are already seen and you wanna fade into whatever so that you can't be seen. Both of these things are pretty much dependent on what you think of yourself, how you perceive yourself, how you think you come across to others. Self-perception is very, very important. Think about it. How do you think other people see you as opposed to how you see yourself? For the last, I don't know, eight to ten years, it's been driving me nuts. People think that I'm just the greatest thing since sliced bread. They think a lot of me, and I don't know how to handle it. Some days it's like, "Okay. Well, thank you." Other days, I'm looking in the mirror in the bathroom going, "Who the hell are they looking at? I don't see that person." And yet, everywhere I go, I try to be helpful, I try to be courteous, kind, I try to be supportive of everyone that I meet because I have no idea what they're going through. I just know what it feels like when I'm going through things. I never know how I'm gonna catch people, so I put myself out there, support my friends the best way I know how, hoping that if the tables are turned, they would do the same for me. Does it always happen that way? No. Do I expect it to happen? Sometimes. What I'm working on is to be self-motivating, energy self-generated, so that I don't need the critique or approval of anyone. What I feel for myself is all that matters. You can do this too. What you think about yourself (two words), matters. It has nothing to do with your appearance. It has nothing to do with how much money you have, what you drive, where you live. It has everything to do with you being in proximity of another human being. You wanna know how to build up what you think of yourself positively? When you accomplish something, anything, recognize that you did If you fail at something, ask yourself, "What did I learn?" But most of all, the simplest things, make sure to pat yourself on the back and compliment yourself. You're here, you're alive! There are some who do not have either one of those luxuries. So while you're here, I suggest you figure out how you wanna be seen and do the things that back that up so that you are seen the way you'd like to be seen. As I can tell you, man, I can tell you, there is not much worse than being misperceived. There is not much worse than thinking you're okay. yet talks amongst your people behind your back is that you're not. You have to believe in you. You're with you all the time, and it's taken me five months for me to figure this out for myself, to the point where I don't really care what anybody else thinks. It's not as important as what I think. And what you think of yourself (one word), is more important than what almost anyone else thinks. You have to take care of ‘you’ first in order to be available for anyone else, if you care about them. So if you're not sure what to do, I suggest you do some digging and find out what you think would make you a good person. Just a short list, three to five things, and then every day try to do one or all of those things. See how it turns out at the end of the day. Take inventory, personal inventory at the end of the week. Did you have a good week? Did you get through adversity? How did you get through adversity? Did you lose your cool, and if so, how? Did you show love to people that you can't stand, or did you just avoid them? How did you fare? How do you feel about it? I'm gonna keep doing what I'm doing, and I hope that you figure out a way to do what you're doing better, because all I want is for you to succeed at whatever you want. Long as it doesn't hurt nobody else, I want you to be successful. I want you to be around for a long time, not only for those people that care about you, but for yourself. You owe it to yourself. Lord knows you've gone through some things, and here you are on the other side. Like the meme says, “You've survived every bad thing that has ever happened to you.”, so what makes you think that you can't move forward through whatever's going to happen to you? I don't know. But it's an inside job, and you're the only one in control of what goes on in that weird four inches between your ears. That's where all your decisions get made, so take care of it. Be who you think you like to be. Be who you wanna be, and then evaluate it. Are you happy? If you're not happy, be honest with yourself, 'cause man, there's nothing worse than lying to yourself. If you don't think you're that good-looking, you probably aren't. If you don't think you're that talented, you probably aren't. If you think you're more talented than anyone else, you probably aren't. If you think you're better looking, smarter, stronger than anyone else, you definitely are not. In my experience, the people who say those things to themselves do it so that they can try to convince everyone else of the lie they tell themselves. Be open, be honest, and for heaven's sakes, be cool!! That's all I got for this week. Figure out who you is !!and then be that person! Have fun doing it! I will check you out next week! Later, later!!