what up, though, and welcome back to be a fun topic today. I want you guys to know that this area that I'm going to attack today is going to be a constant project as I get older. It'll just continuously find ways to improve, but I wanted to share it with you because I think those of you that are looking for ways to improve. I want to just show you how intentional I am about this. I've never read anything where it says men who like just intentionally like found ways to improve their found ways to improve their day to day, and I feel like I intentionally try to find ways to improve my day to day by improving my weaknesses and looking for areas and welcoming feedback for many and everybody, that is, from the people I work with, my friends, my family, including my wife and my kids. Before we were rudely interrupted, I guess, for the most part, a person who was constantly looking for ways to improve on purpose. Yeah, the point of this episode was to find people who are interested in creating something that they didn't know they could create. I'll give you an example of what I'm talking about. When I think about mastery, I think about monks, buddhist monks. I think about, I guess, people that get paid a lot of money for their time. They have a level of mastery that their time is that valuable People are willing to pay for it. So when I say that if, like, I don't know why the story isn't told about self-mastery, why the story isn't told about self-mastery, but I truly believe if there were more people trying to master their body when I say their body, I am referring to your health. That includes what you put in your body Like, okay, there's a point, there's like a time in your life where your parents are giving you these ideas. They feed you, you go to school, you learn that other people may have different ideas and I'm just talking about food and then, whoever you go to school, wherever you go to school, they give you these ideas about food. Right, I just remember that food was a very important topic at one point and they had this horrible diagram of what was important, and I think that diagram just now recently changed in the last 10, 15 years. But I grew up on some poor messaging, so imagine having that, that messaging in your head about what's supposed to be good for you and what's bad when you, when you get a certain age and you can get information that is not in your school or in your house and you intentionally go find better information. You are improving your day to day. You have to really believe you're important enough to want to change your diet anyway. I'm not telling you you cannot have fun with delicious foods, but in order to maximize how important you are, you have to find some type of discipline where you don't become addicted to something so easy Like. Delicious foods are delicious for a reason, and if we can't find mastery in our taste buds, we're going to gain unnecessary weight for the most part. So we have to, like, literally do it on purpose or we're hoping that our environment is supposed to just get better for us and that's not going to happen.

So when I originally started this episode, I just thought about what kind of word can describe a person who literally believes they can create something that nobody's ever done before. I know some of you guys was like what does that look like? I used to wonder that too, but now I'm in this position in life where I can work on my craft every single day and my intent is to do it for the remainder of my life. So at some point these hours are going to accumulate and it's going to develop something that nobody's ever seen. Like I don't see myself not working on communication to some capacity every single day for the rest of my life and I feel like at some point I'm going to have enough hours of understanding why we have not evolved enough as people. And I know people's like what are you talking about? Like, in today's time, we're still killing people through war, and I don't understand that. And I feel like at some point you, you need to understand that I don't want to die and I don't know what I'm doing for you to want to kill me, but people are dying that way. People are just born to like being in a war. We're still there. So I feel like I've never heard people say I'm going to work on communication for the rest of my life. I was like I'm going to do that.

So I have faith that if I continuously work on my craft, at some point I'll be able to create words where people like oh, I didn't look at it that way and maybe we would create better relationships so that we can protect each other versus try to hurt each other. And I feel like if you grew up in my house, like we would have some type of bond or something. But since you didn't and you grew up over there, there's a chance that you could try to kill me or vice versa, and I feel like it's just a lack of communication. There's a misunderstanding somewhere. So I'm looking for a word that can describe a person who is dedicated to just working on their craft. You know, sports can't be it, because we only have one body and the more you use your body for a rough I mean wear and tear from the constant hustle and bustle of sports, like it's too difficult to continue that because your body will break down. So whatever you're going to work on, it needs to be something that can challenge you every single day and after so many days you can look back and see how much you've grown. You can create your own timeline of how much time you're putting in. You can just journal, like whatever you're working on, just put how many minutes. The more minutes you accumulate, the better you become in that area. But do something to sharpen your mind. If you work on your mind every single day, it unlocks parts of it that can't unlock because we are not mature enough.

Before I offend anyone about maturity, I just want you guys to know. When you were a kid, you made immature decisions because you didn't have enough information Right. And as you get older, you learn either from your parents teaching you or the experience of you didn't win in the situation. So you learn from it Right, or you know you could have got hurt. Painful experiences creates this thing. Right. Years old, I need the next level of maturity because I recognized that I was immature in so many different parts of my life up until like age 41. And I'm still immature, so I do want to say that. But I have recognized some of the things that, like my practices, was preventing me from maturing, because I really I locked into the wrong message but I didn't have anybody to say, hey, that's the wrong message. So this is how I can tell you if you want to mature, you got to think about this the decisions you make. If you say hey, can my wife leave me, it's probably immature. Can my kids be impacted by my decisions I make when I'm away from the house? It's probably immature. If you are getting behind the wheel under the influence of alcohol, you're probably immature.

Mature people believe in themselves right. So you have to believe in yourself enough so that you can mature People who believe in themselves, they won't get in the car under the influence to increase their chances of living or decrease their chances of living because of what? Like you can't put yourself in those situations. That's immature. But I didn't think I could get caught and by the grace of God I did it. But I was just thinking like why I didn't believe I was that important. I will say that I didn't believe I was that important and it's crazy. Being a father and a husband, I don't think I'm that important. What messaging was I following? I'm that important. What messaging was I following?

Like to mature is to not do like childlike things that can cripple your household like for real. Like cripple your career like for real. Like make you come up with a different story versus the one you would have loved to tell. Like being immature, it can make you create a story that you never intended on. Like walking through life with the intention of, like trying to get better.

You know a lot of people used to say hey, john, like you can't please everybody. Like you, right, I don't really want to please anybody, I just don't want to offend anyone. You know, like I want to. I want to be able to help people and I don't ever want to offend. But I know that even though I come in peace, some of my tone, my language, my body demeanor can make people feel uncomfortable and at the end of the day, that's not my intent. So all I want to do is develop a demeanor that says he's peaceful, he's not looking for any smoke Like. If I can develop that type of energy, I think more people will want to gravitate to that. Because who wants to go out in public looking for some problems on purpose?

And sometimes I know that I've been. I've been a problem in my younger days and I didn't know it. I just thought that was being me and I didn't realize that I had a lot of issues that I hadn't unlayered yet I didn't know how to. People may have even said I need therapy, but I fell right into the stereotype what I need, I'm good, I got a job, my family's good, but it was making me be a different person, me pushing it away. This is the thing. I didn't know what I was pushing away, didn't know at all.

Like when you understand what you were pushing away, it it it allows you to breathe a little easier. It allows you to, like, feel like, hey, that wasn't even my fault, dang, it was like out of my control, dang, that was nothing I could have done about that. I wasn't protected or there was no supervision. Like, where were your parents? It was outside of your control. And when I realized that, you know, it made me want to, like, kill my parents. But when I did that, with that, all the energy did go to them. But then I started thinking about their childhood and I was just like they did the best they could with what they had, and when I forgave them, it made me feel like, hey, I wonder if other people feel the same way, like and they don't know how to express that because I was blessed enough to be able to completely change my life in a way where I can utilize my time to give messages like this.

I don't know anybody who does not want to enjoy life. But if you don't try to become mature, it's hard because you'll complain about stuff that you either did or things that was going to happen. I'll give you an example. This is the best thing I can do for giving you what I consider mature. I remember being young and my father saying you know, put money to the side, you know, just in case you know your car break down. You got something right and you know, when you get a car or something early, nothing goes wrong. And of course I think I'm working. So I'm like I'll just use my next check if anything happens. You just start going through life like that, nothing happened.

But you don't get into the habit of putting this money away. This is the mature thing to do and I just learned this. People always say man, if it ain't one thing, it's another. Golly, when it rain, it pours Things like this. You need new tires. When you got your car, you were supposed to put money to the side for some tires. Every paycheck Supposed to put money to the side for maintenance for this vehicle Because regardless, like happy, sad or whatever, maintenance needs to be done for this vehicle. So if you don't have money to the side, something happens. You'll be God dang. Why me Like. And you don't got it because you never put it to the side.

Maturity will tell you I have to prevent me from feeling this way because I see it. I used to experience it, you know, until my wife showed us she was just like. You know what we're going to just keep putting this money over here. And this is for if anything happens. We good. We good because the idea of coming out of a large sum of money where you're trying to save as a family it'll kind of dampen you, make you feel like you can't save. But you have to create a fund for anything.

And when I say that I mean like I mean every month, like it don't even count, like it just goes to the side because it's going to be. You're going to hit a patch where everything is going to be wonderful and it's going to be a large amount of money. You cannot use it. Don't say you'll put it back. Don't use it because this is what happens Whenever you end up using it. That's when the rain comes, like it was going to happen anyway. And then, guess what? You mad at yourself.

So I felt like I became mature. My wife helped me become mature because I knew this story. My father told me this when I was young, but I just remember so many times where the rain would come and I didn't have the money that I should have had prepared for that. So those of you that get mad about the transmission went out or the motor went out. Any of these things. If you're not saving money to the side, you're going to be mad later and that takes a mature decision maker. There are other things.

I was just thinking how, when I started watching what I put in my body, it takes a mature decision because you feel like you could be important to care about yourself. You know people be like, you know I just got to have it, I got to eat what I want. You know you only live once and all of this and I'm like, but you don't know when you're going to die. This is the crazy thing. Imagine this, right, you, the type, you, one of them, people that I'm going to live the way I want to live, I only live once. You're 47. Just say you in the range of 47 to 55. I don't want to say 55. 57 to 53. And so we'll do the 41 to 53 range, right. If you're at this age range and you're not watching your health, imagine your health start to decline tomorrow, right, and you don't die until you 90. That is a horrible life to live, because you don't know how much longer. You got right, you could live to 90, but it could be miserable. So I'm telling you this If you have your bearings about you, you can move around.

If you can't, you need to create a routine where you're doing it every single day, every day. Don't go hard like five days a week. Just do a little bit of something every single day, every day. Don't go hard like five days a week. Just do a little bit of something every single day where you're becoming active. The more active you become, the more energy you get. The more energy you get, the more fat you burn. The more fat you burn, the smaller you get, smaller you get, the better self-esteem you get.

And then you start to put more time into feeling that way. You're like. What else can make me feel like this? And then you just start to invest in you and this is a part of the maturity part I was telling y'all about Like you got to seek to mature on purpose. You have to put in an effort that majority of the people around you have no idea because they don't realize how important they are. Think about that you could be like I think I'm important. So how important are you? Are you watching what you put in your body? Are you getting outside, like being present with the moment? Are you getting your steps in? Are you getting outside, like being present with the moment? Are you getting your steps in? Are you being active? Are you living a non-sedentary lifestyle? What are you doing to create something that we haven't seen? You know everybody's unique, but your uniqueness comes with the art of working on something. But how much time we got left. Okay, check this out. I'm going to leave it on this right.

I used to like Jay-Z more than Nas because I like the way that Jay-Z said things. Like he, he lived a life that was dangerous and he could put it in a word flow where it made you feel like it was dope. You know, I'm saying Nas was more proactive and powerful, more like uplifting Right and growing up I realized that I was immature because I like the idea of Jay-Z more than Nas and Nas really only flipped the script at one point because he just wanted to get money and like if you really that good, he's like man, I want to get the money too, so I get it. But overall, his music has not compromised, like not only his art, but to lift people in a way that he can look back and be like man. I made some good music to help or to share information about what's going on over here so other people can understand it, but to watch him mature the way that he did, because you can tell when people mature, because they stop talking about things that could only be taken the wrong way.

But it takes an intentional mindset to say you know what? I want to mature and I want to create a word that can create an energy where people like I want to improve in every single part of my life that I can control. I want to use my free time and enjoy the quality of life on purpose, and this is what I'm telling you. If you put that work in I mean that work where you keep yourself accountable because you don't need anybody to watch you. And you know what, as you get better, you're going to want everybody to watch you and your friends You're going to be mad because they were not. You know, they didn't understand your transition, because you've only done something for so long, right? So if you come about like I'm this person, they're like ah, ah, whatever, I'd rather see a sermon than to hear one any day. So at the end of the day, you gotta put that work in. So I'm telling you I am dedicated to working on communication for the remainder of my life to help any and everybody I come in contact with.

I was telling people last weekend I was in the D what up, though, for the International Conference for Omega, psi, phi Fraternity Incorporated that when I meet brothers I've never met, I don't want to waste their time. So my goal is to learn something, or hopefully give them something, so that when we do leave, our walk improves. I don't want to waste nobody's time and I feel like if we don't put that effort in to try to find ways to improve, our quality of life can't improve. Because I'm telling you, the more mature your decisions are, the better the result, and if we continue to make childlike decisions, you're walking toward an unhappiness that you haven't experienced, and all you're going to do is reflect like why didn't I get out? So those of you that are interested in being great on purpose, believe in yourself.

Watch what you put in your body, get active, make sure you are taking care of your body. You know people go get oil changes for vehicles. They got to change tires. Get tune-ups. You got to do that to your body. This is the only vessel you get. You can get a new car, you can't get a new body and if you don't take care of it it goes bad. I see people's teeth are bad at this age. You know what I'm saying. Like nobody wants to go that route. They got to get, you know I don't even know what they call it, but you know the expensive teeth now so they can eat and chew their food, you know, and I feel like that's expensive. You got to have money to do that.

So, at the end of the day, take care of your body, watch what you put in your mouth, that. So, at the end of the day, take care of your body, watch what you put in your mouth, because there are many addicts walking around the world hooked on delicious foods. If you do not correct that situation, you're not going to enjoy the latter part of your life and, like I said, I don't know anybody who looks forward to a painful ending. So if you don't put the effort in to like a painful ending, so if you don't put the effort in, your environment is not going to be there to save you. 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 that action will get after you. Be great on purpose. Bye.