growNman
growNman
I am growNman 140
How often do you examine what you're truly practicing each day? Not what you hope to become or what you're working toward in theory—but what your daily habits are actually building toward.
In this deeply reflective episode, we explore the profound yet simple truth that your life is the direct result of what you practice daily. Whether conscious or unconscious, intentional or accidental, your habits are creating outcomes. The question is: are they the outcomes you actually want?
Most of us operate with what I call "empty habits"—activities that consume our precious time without contributing to meaningful growth. Think about it: with eight hours for sleep and eight hours for work, how are you utilizing those remaining hours? Are you passively consuming entertainment, or actively building the skills, relationships, and mindset needed to reach your goals?
The hard truth is that you can't rise to the level of your goals, but you will absolutely fall to the level of your practice. If you're stuck in patterns of complaining without action, consuming without creating, or hoping without strategizing, you're practicing behaviors that reinforce your current circumstances rather than transcending them.
Drawing from my personal journey from podcasting beginner to assistant principal, I share how intentional practice creates momentum that transfers across all areas of life. Men who establish disciplined routines in physical fitness, for example, often demonstrate greater structure in their careers and relationships—not by coincidence, but through the power of practiced discipline.
Ready to transform your daily practices into powerful catalysts for growth? Listen now, and remember: Get After That Action, or the action will get after you. Be great on purpose.
what up, though, and welcome back to I'm growing man, shemaine john d, in the building, uh got a new setup. Uh, I know y'all can't see, but my studio is definitely becoming um more studio like, so bear with me as I try to get used to the way it's looking, uh, but I wanted to give a shout out to any and everybody who tunes in and watches my evolution into a better version of myself. For those of you that don't know, I've been doing this since 2020. I started the idea of it came right before COVID, but I started practicing creating videos in January of 2020. Yeah, so I've been doing this thing for a little minute, um, but my main focus is on self-improvement, on what men can do better. Whether it's a parent can do better, whether it's a parent, father, husband, partner just a better person overall.
Speaker 1:It comes through intentional practices, and what we're realizing is that every day is like your practice, and I don't know if you know what you're actually practicing for, but most of us are. We have empty habits, and when I say that that habit can't create any type of result that we're looking for, we have habits that could create a result that we don't even want. So what I'm trying to do is motivate, inspire, push any and everybody who's willing to get a different result from their day to day, but at the end of the day, it's really going to take your effort. So we have to actually put in the effort on what we want to do. Our life really reflects what we practice every day. Sometimes we don't know that we're practicing laziness or communication skills a little bit of just any and everything that is preventing us from growing into the person we wanted to become before life got really complicated. And when I say that, I mean when you were a child and I don't know when it was taken from you, but at some point you thought you could do something. You didn't know how you were going to get to it, but depending on where you are on your journey of life, you can still get to it. The amount of effort to get what you want really just takes one day, but it's followed by a string of days that you are continuously creating habits to look like what it's supposed to look like.
Speaker 1:I remember when I was I don't even know, but I was fairly young and I used to say God, if you give me this, I promise I'll do this from now on. That doesn't work that way. If he would have gave me any and everything that I wanted, I didn't know how to put the work in. The people around me didn't know how to put the work in. The people around me didn't know how to tell me to put this work in. That's necessary to get what I thought I needed then.
Speaker 1:So, as I've matured into the man I'm becoming, I realized I couldn't get any and everything I wanted because of my habits. My day-to-day habits were filled with. I don't know if some of you guys have ever heard of empty calories, but sometimes you're just doing something that's not going to give you a positive result, and I've offended a lot of people talking about this subject because I always throw sports in there. I used to be this person who used to keep up with all the sports and I wasn't getting any closer to getting this life I wanted. But if you put me in a conversation with somebody to talk about any of the sports stats, wise, we could go for it, and you know what I'm saying. Depending on who their favorite team is or favorite person, I would be able to entertain that, and I was just thinking about some of the things that I used to hear. It's like, man, I be knowing all the stats. None of that got me any closer to what I was trying to get. But I did like that feeling right.
Speaker 1:So I was like how can I get closer to my goals while doing things that I want to do? Now, unfortunately I did. I had to give up my addiction on sports. I didn't want to be a news broadcaster. I didn't want to be a personality on TV to talk about sports. I didn't think I was polished enough without offending people. So I had to figure out what can I do to get to my goal by doing something I want to do.
Speaker 1:Podcasting came up. But I had to figure out the subject area because I'll say, when I originally started, shout out to Omega my guy Naeem he was going to do a podcast and Corey D Ryan, a photographer in Abu Dhabi, thought it would be a great fit if I got in there and he introduced us and we did a couple of seasons together and you know I never thought that I could get to this point. There are moments in that first two seasons I've talked about I would never want to do this by myself or lead a podcast, and over the course of time I've gotten to the point where I can definitely talk to myself for large periods of time. But I wanted to be different from other people. I don't know if y'all noticed, but I can definitely talk to myself for large periods of time. But I wanted to be different from other people. I don't know if y'all noticed, but I don't try to have long podcasts. You know, they say the average duration of somebody's attention span for an adult is between 23 and 27 minutes or something like that. So I try not to go too much further than that and I try to stay in that gap because at the end of the day, I want to keep your attention long enough to plant a seed, if not encourage you to find the best version of yourself.
Speaker 1:My subject area was pretty much just focusing on men. A lot of people was like I give men a hard rap. Well, I give us a hard rap because we can do better. There's no reason that we can't do better. I haven't ever met a man that said I can't do better. Well, actually I did, but he was playing. But at the end of the day, we don't know the perfect way to do something. So if we put in that time, we can always get better. So we have to to figure out what ways can create a better result. We have to look at our habits, like I was talking about earlier. If we do not have the habits on a day-to-day basis to create something that we want, we're just kind of just existing, and I don't know how many of you guys are just existing. But I no longer want to exist anymore. I want to be a functional tool or resource in this society.
Speaker 1:When I say society, I'm tool or resource in this society. When I say society, I'm not just talking about my community, I'm talking about in the world. And I know that it's not going to happen overnight. It's not going to polish my ability to communicate any and everything where the person is going to receive it, whether they accept it or not, but it's something for them to know. Like. I didn't look at it that way, because me I always looked at it from the narrow view that I was right. Nobody ever really showed me the proper ways to communicate and it was a lot of yelling. I remember somebody said just because you're getting loud, don't mean you're more right, and I didn't even think that by getting loud. I was considering myself more right, but it was still a joke on me that. Why am I being so loud?
Speaker 1:So we have to reflect on our day to day habits. Like there's a few episodes ago where I was talking about got 24 hours in a day. Eight hours is supposed to be for sleep. Whether you get in your eight hours or not, your body needs recovery time. So if you're not getting your eight hours of sleep, none of this really matters, because you are not properly maintaining your body. And if you're not doing that, that means if you do get started on something, it's going to get cut short because you're not getting the proper rest your body deserves. The next eight hours typically dedicated to work. This is your way of living, this is how you make a living and if you're lucky enough, you can work on your craft within your day to day job. But if you don't, you're there to make a living.
Speaker 1:And I challenge you this Become the coldest person in your position, no matter where you are. Become so cold in the position that somebody above you is wondering why you are still in that position. Because you're so productive that it's only right that you get rewarded for what you deserve. If you get into that position of life where you're comfortable and you feel like you don't have to work harder than everybody else. That's a tough road to live. I know a lot of people that's living in comfort and they complain almost every day. They like their life, but they complain almost every day. They like their life, but they complain about something. And you know when you complain about something it means something's wrong. And what I've determined if you're not trying to find a better version of yourself in every part of your life, you're going to find reasons to complain. There's so many areas on your life you can work on, that can improve, and if you did it you wouldn't even have time to complain because you're working on everything about you.
Speaker 1:The mastery of the body, the mind, helps us navigate this world in a way that we wish we knew at a younger age. But as you continue this journey, remember your habits will determine how successful you are. And if your habits let's say the last eight hours right I didn't even get to that part the last eight hours. Some people say they like to sleep, sleeping into that eight hours, that means you don't have that much time left. Some people like to watch TV, listen to music, drink, go out, whatever you can do. Whatever you do, that is your business. But I want you to understand this If you do not have a healthy routine for that eight hours, you're not getting better at anything. In fact, you're only increasing more opportunity for you to complain. Energy attracts energy, not just in relationships, but just overall ideas. The people around you will agree with you so that you can be so distracted that you forget how important you are.
Speaker 1:Remember that if you do not have the proper habits to develop the best version of yourself, when do you really have time to do it? That is the million dollar question. If people are truly working on themselves on a daily basis, when do they do it? Do they do it in the morning while they're running late to work? Do they do it on their break when they get off from a long day of work? Do they have a time set aside for them to be able to work on themselves? Are they too tired and beat, or do they have other things lined up for the rest of that time that they're at home before they have to go to sleep?
Speaker 1:We have to put things into consideration. If you are complaining, are you actively looking for ways to solve the solution? Because apparently there's some type of problem. If you're complaining and if you're looking for a solution, I promise the universe will work for you, but you have to do it on purpose. If you don't do it on purpose, you're just hoping somebody says something or something happens for you because you're lucky or God wanted you to have it, then that's not how it works. You have to put in the work. If you don't, go, look for it, it's not going to fall in your lap. And if you meet anybody where that information fell in their lap, don't believe it's going to happen again. You have to go get it. Just remember this.
Speaker 1:What you repeatedly do becomes who you are, even if it's not on purpose. A lot of times we don't know you can't rise to the level of your goals, but you can definitely fall to the level of your practice. Think about that. You could fall to the level of your practice. If you are not practicing, where are you falling? To Keep that in mind? Because as we get older, all we do is reflect on what we could have done, not realizing that we can fix today. Today is the best day for anybody to be able to change what they don't like. But if you don't do it on purpose, maybe you're waiting for that miracle. So listen to this when I told you about your practice even if you're doing something and you don't know you're doing it, it's still creating something. You're creating this product by not doing anything. This version of you, eventually, is going to get this result. So if you don't put that work into your relationship, your career or even your legacy, you're going to wish you had more time on the end, and that example that you're setting for the people around you is going to stray some of the closest people away if you don't take the time and effort to find a better version of yourself.
Speaker 1:I always say sometimes we don't get the proper consequence to change a behavior because typically, from my experience, men believe we know a lot of things right and we somehow have to lose something. Before we were practicing poor behaviors and whether it's a car, a job or even your relationship, you don't realize you were practicing bad habits for this result to happen. And this is the thing If you lose any of these things, it wasn't just a one night thing. It was in a culmination of events that led to this. So if we do not take it upon ourselves to make better habits, we're going to have self-destructive results that could possibly trigger you into a spiraling effect that gets worse, and to prevent that from happening, we have to look for more information. We have to create strategies for us to make sure that we're doing what we need to do.
Speaker 1:The key point in all of this is, if you don't believe in yourself, you won't even put the effort in to create the result. You have to believe you deserve more If you enjoy your life. Remember this message isn't for you. This message is only for those who's looking for a way to create a result that they haven't seen or they feel like that they deserve. This is for you. Find as much information on whatever you wanna do, find out who's doing it and see what they did, because you don't want to recreate the wheel. You just want to become so good that somebody wants to pay you. But you have to put that time in. I don't care who your parents are, I don't care who your friends are. If you don't do the work, you're setting your life up for a bunch of complaining, and last time I checked, people who complain are not happy.
Speaker 1:You know, when I was growing up, when I was growing up, I remember I used to pray, be like I pray to get this, I pray to get that. And then somebody recently told me, like prayer, it doesn't really work. And I thought about it because I definitely had a situation where I started praying more. But what he said was more so that just because you pray, if you don't put the effort in, how is anything supposed to develop? Why is God supposed to reward you with your prayer when everybody else is praying and probably doing more work than you? So then I was just like that makes sense.
Speaker 1:But I remember how I found education. Like I prayed. Well, I prayed for an opportunity, even though I was qualified for it and I heard about it. But I felt like that was my calling and I've been praying to God ever since, and that was 2002. I've been praying to him very often, but I pray to him giving him thanks for the opportunity to be here, but not only to be here. Now I'm thankful to continue in my journey of becoming a better person, but when I originally started praying on a regular basis, it was just like giving thanks, because I didn't know what I was supposed to be doing at that point. I had a degree, I tried to go to the military. They wasn't taking me. They wanted me to start at the bottom and thank God for education. I forgot. I have to give I'm sidebar.
Speaker 1:Speaking of education, I have recently accepted an assistant principal position at my school and I'm so excited because I feel like I have a wealth of information and I can change the presentation of the school with the students in it, and I feel like they just needed some consistency, they needed some structure, they needed somebody to be able to push them and I feel like our new principal has the mindset for that and I'm going to support her in any magnitude. But I wanted to say that I've been getting a lot of congrats even though I've been an assistant principal before, but I'm getting it now because I think my journey now makes me a lot stronger than I've ever been. I went back into the classroom because I wanted to and I felt like it was so instrumental in the administrator. I will be this school year because I did. I had been out of the classroom since 2011, and I forgot I forgot certain things of the classroom since 2011 and I forgot, forgot certain things and I felt like by going back it gave me the necessary experience to be more effective, to yield those results we're looking for as an administrator. But that came through establishing better habits. Like I know that with my intent and my practice, the school is going to turn around really quickly and I pray that my example and my energy promotes that same energy in the staff in the building, when your staff buys into improving the student's benefit, when a student's benefit, that's the longest form of gratification you can ever get, because they will come back, of course, when they're older. But you can't think about tomorrow because today is so important. But I do believe over the course of time, if you do what you're supposed to, you'll be rewarded from the effort you put in today. Do what you're supposed to, you'll be rewarded from the effort you put in today. And you have to change your strategy in what's important.
Speaker 1:What are your habits? How much TV are you watching? Are you even active? Do you get out and walk? Do you work out? Are you eating right? What are you watching? The things you consume yourself with is an example of why you are not where you think you're supposed to be.
Speaker 1:Now say this People that are where they thought they would be. They have a work ethic that most of us don't know about. Their days, their hours in the day, are accounted for. If you break down your day, what hours are you not being productive? And find out why you're not. Do you need that much time to be lazy? Haven't we been lazy enough? I'm telling you, if you find something that you love or that you care for, you don't get tired of doing it and you only get better. So before I get out of here, before I get out of here, I just want to just remember. Before I get out of here, I just want to just remember. We are focusing on how to create better habits and how do we consistently do them every single day?
Speaker 1:I was listening to this podcast of this lady talking about men who work out regularly, have a different discipline that transfers into their everyday life Like men who take that seriously, are more organized and structured, so therefore they'll do those things in their life and they also attract partners to do something to build with. You know like they attract that energy. And I do want to say if you don't get organized, you're going to remain in the hamster wheel. You won't attract the people you're supposed to be around, you won't be with the person you're supposed to be with and you'll end up settling for something that you don't deserve.
Speaker 1:You have to put the effort in to change your results. Effort in to change your results. If you end up in a relationship and you feel like the person was never for you, I do believe that person was for you, but you don't realize how much work you had to do to get it there. Now you could end that relationship, but you'll have to put that work in the next relationship. Your habits will attract any and every energy you need to become the person you want to be. Y'all make today better than yesterday. Don't worry about anything you can't control. G-a-t-a Get after that action or the action will get after you. Be great on purpose.