growNman
growNman
149 Changing Your Results
Have you ever wondered why some people seem to effortlessly transform their lives while others stay stuck in the same patterns? The answer lies not in luck or talent, but in a systematic approach to personal growth.
In this deeply reflective episode, I share the framework that revolutionized my own life after I reached my 40s. Everything meaningful begins with an idea, but that's just the starting point. Whether you want to become a master communicator, advance professionally, or improve relationships, you need a clear plan that outlines the steps between where you are and where you want to be. Without this roadmap, even brilliant ideas remain unfulfilled dreams.
The real magic happens when you combine your plan with consistent effort. I reveal how studying multiple languages daily since 2020 transformed not just my communication skills but my entire approach to relationships. The pivotal moment came when I realized that being the loudest voice in an argument doesn't make you right—it often means you're being misunderstood. This awakening fundamentally changed how people perceive me and, more importantly, how I perceive myself.
What separates temporary changes from lasting transformation is the daily practice of reflection. Before sleep each night, ask yourself: What could I have done differently today? What did I accomplish? What didn't I complete that I should have? This simple routine creates a positive feedback loop of continuous improvement, helping you replace reactive behaviors with intentional responses.
This isn't just about personal development—it's about creating ripple effects that benefit everyone around you. As an educator, I've seen how this approach transforms student-teacher dynamics and creates learning environments where everyone thrives. The world becomes better when we each focus on becoming the person we didn't know we could be.
Ready to break free from the groundhog day cycle? Listen now and discover how to be great on purpose rather than waiting for circumstances to change your life. Your transformation begins with the decision to take that first intentional step.
What up, Doe, and welcome back to I'm Growin' Man. It's your man John D in the building. What's really good, everybody? I want to uh thank you guys for tuning in to another day, another episode of me explaining my journey in life and me trying to present it in a way where it could be received. Last night I had a conversation with my mother, and this is gonna sound crazy, but she told me I didn't start talking until three. And for those of you that don't know me, I'm black and Korean. So my mother spoke Korean, and when we moved to the States, everybody was speaking English, but I didn't talk to three. She said that she believed that it was just too confusing. I couldn't understand. But she said when she started talking English regularly, I caught on really quick. And I said that because my daughter didn't speak to three. And she was a premature baby, though. But the difference is that when I started speaking English, I talked too much. And not only that, I still do it today. But when I was a child, talking too much got me in a lot of trouble. She said that I was all over the place and I couldn't stay still. I was hyper. I just couldn't understand. And I still can't understand why I was acting the way that I did. But I used to get in a lot of trouble. And you know what's so crazy? She was like, it wasn't like you got a whooping every day. I got a whooping like every other day, sometimes multiple times in a day, but it's crazy to just think back. But this episode is focused on changing results. And I think I didn't learn this officially until like well, I can't say that. I learned it at a younger age, but I didn't start practicing it until my 40s. But whenever you want to do something in life, it comes from an idea. And that idea can be awesome. The problem with an idea is if you don't plan, it's just an idea. But you you have to plan on how to execute this idea. When you start to plan it, and when I say plan, it's like, what does it look like to get here? So if you're here, you got this idea and you're trying to get here to this outcome, to this result, how do we get there? So that is the goal of me teaching you what I started to practice in my 40s. So having this idea, I'll tell you, so this idea is, let's say, me being the greatest communicator ever. The result is in my timeline, is by the time I die, I should be considered one of the greatest communicators ever. And some might think that's a far-fetched goal. It's cool, but it's mine. And I'm the only one that has to walk toward it. So the people around me, even if they believe that it's not possible, their belief in me has nothing to do with the belief I have in myself. Because at the end of the day, by the end of this information, you'll understand why the people around you don't really matter if you want to go get something. Now, when I had this idea, I created a plan. And the plan looked like me getting up early in the morning, me studying languages. Originally it just started out with Arabic, and now it has grown over the years into Deutsch, Hanguk, and Espanyol. And although I am not fluent in any of them, I am well-versed enough to be able to read. I won't say write because some of the symbols I haven't gotten in Hangook. And Hangook is Korean for those of you that don't know, but I still can read it. Speaking, I'm probably better in Arabic and Espanol, but again, I want you to know it's a journey for the rest of my life. So at some point, I'm gonna become fluent in all of them. And what else did I do? I started to incorporate videos, audible books with anything that had something to do with communication. And now mind you, the this is just a plan. I haven't started at this point, but I was just thinking, like, what can I do? What does it look like? And I had to really have a real reflection of myself on how was I speaking to the people that I cared about. So I worked on how I was speaking to my household. And that's when I realized that's why my relationship was not growing. It was more so, it wasn't even stagnant, it was decaying. And I didn't know that. But when I started to plan for this, I was about a year out from moving back home. So this was maybe a yeah, about a year and a few months. So I was at home, I was living by myself. So this plan, nobody could interrupt or distract me other than me. So I started putting these things in place. And I was like, I'm going to do this for the rest of my life. And as I continued on this journey, I just started to implement more things in my plan to become or to create this result I want, this outcome. Now, after the plan, it takes an effort. And a lot of people, it's just like working out or starting a new diet. You have the effort in the beginning. You have the motivation, you have the energy to walk toward this result. But the effort, what does it look like? It doesn't look like I am going to, like, say you're starting to workout. You decide you're going to go hard on the first day. Well, if you go hard on the first day and your body's not used to it, you're going to get sore and it's going to make you rethink the plan you created and possibly make you put it on the shelf because you're in such pain. Now, I won't say that what I'm doing is in pain, but it does make you think like, how long does this really take? Um, and these are the thoughts that I was having. And it's only natural to, I wouldn't say second guess yourself, but to say, is this something you really want? Because it's going to take the remainder of your life to achieve. And the motivation behind that was that I always have something to work on. And when you always have something to work on mentally, you're sharpening your thoughts. Because when you have something to do, you're focused on that even when you are an autopilot. Like, now you have to do this on purpose because I'm telling you, in the beginning, my thoughts were thinking about a little of everything. But once I started removing my bad habits and started replacing them with better habits, my thoughts were being consumed with ways to improve the ideas that I wanted. And now I have gotten to the point where when I'm in autopilot, I know that I am practicing some form of communication so that I can present in a way that's receivable and rarely misunderstood. I'm not there. I'm misunderstood often, but I know that if I give a warning, an asterisk, a precursor to me speaking, this will allow me to get a little grace from my audience. Typically say, if I say anything to offend you, it's coming from a good place. I'm working on communication, and sometimes I say things that could be offensive, and it's not, that's not my intent. So if you don't mind, pull me to the side or raise your hand, ask for clarification, get some clarity. This allows your audience to be more open-minded to your mistakes that you could give, or I wouldn't say it'll increase how about this, it will increase the listening from your audience if you have something to say. Now, I told you you need an idea, you need a plan, you need effort. Now, when you have this effort, the thing with the effort, you have to have the consistency. When you have this consistency, the consistency only happens when you can see something that you didn't see before. Now, I've been practicing these communication techniques for about five years now, somewhere along the lines. Now, I'm nowhere near perfect. I want to say that. Like if there's a spectrum, I'm probably just at halfway point. But before that, I was really down here. And I really thought I knew what I was talking about, and it offended a lot of people. So in my mind, I've gotten to the place where I am very comfortable with being wrong. And when somebody has an idea about what I'm doing, I'm open to listening because I'm trying to improve this routine. Now, when I tell you, my consistency has been really good. I have language apps that I've been consecutively every single day since 2020 that I've participated. Now, some of them I kind of lapsed, like no more than a day, I want to say that. And I think it just happened like maybe when I was sick or something. But I have something to show that I was working on those days that I missed. But the consistency created this energy in me because people started to recognize the difference in how I sounded, and that made me feel really good. Like, if you continue, the people that you speak with, they're going to recognize the difference. Once I got those are like benchmarks, honestly. Those were unknown benchmarks. I remember when I first started, and I was like, there's gonna be a time that I'm gonna read this, and like when it was in a different language, I was gonna like read this and not think nothing of it. And some of the words I don't get, but I understand the meaning of it. But I remember saying that I'm gonna remember this at some point. And those are my own benchmarks, like when I got to the point where I'm like, okay, I'm getting it. But the most rewarding benchmarks are being heard from people around you that don't know you, people that know you. It gives you, I don't know, it's gratifying to hear people give you these compliments that you didn't even know were gonna happen. And that further lets me know that I have to continue because anything you do can get better if you work on it. And I know people are gonna say something to disagree with that, but I am looking to improve. I'm not looking to take anything away unless I can find something better to replace it with so that I can get better. The whole journey of communication is to make sure, which I learned from uh a friend from Abu Dhabi, he's the one who got me into the podcasting. Brother named Naeem, he said he hated being misunderstood. And I didn't realize that my entire life I was being misunderstood, and I was arguing, I was arguing points that I couldn't explain, and people only heard once heard something, and I would end up arguing about something that had nothing to do with my original point. But that was my, that was the poor communication practices that I had. But when he said that he hates to be misunderstood, he doesn't want to be misunderstood, I decided that that was something that I wanted. When I kept working, I realized I was being misunderstood less. Therefore, my arguments and disagreements reduced greatly. And it changed, it changed the perception people had of me. I remember when people say, you know, John don't lose no arguments. He's always right. And you know it's so crazy. I really felt that way. And to feel that way is it's crazy because I was most likely wrong on everything, or I was arguing about something that had nothing to do with the original point. And I was just loud. And another friend of mine, shout out to Glenn, he told me, just because you're getting louder don't make you more right. And I didn't understand that when he said that because I already thought I was right. So me being loud was like him just being distracted from the point. And then once I started to really break down what people were saying to me, I realized I was the problem. I was the denominator. And I had to change these results. Idea, plan, effort, consistency, results. My results constantly change because I'm trying to improve them. The consistency of whatever you're practicing will get better. And if you incorporate ways to improve your routine, your results constantly change. So if I stop today and I want to be the greatest communicator ever, my results are already done. But in order for the results to change, I have to do my part. And if I don't do my part, what is this all for? So this episode was to show you whatever you want to do in life, whatever you want to be, whatever you're trying to get to, whether it's a grind or it's a hustle, it takes an idea, a plan, effort, consistency to get those results. And if you don't put those in, you're hoping that one of your friends or one of your family members, somebody is going to bless you with an opportunity. But if you don't put the work in, you're kind of just praying for a miracle. And I don't think that's fair to you. If you don't have, and and and you may find this offensive, but I want you to receive what I'm trying to say. If you have not developed any type of plan or goal to improve yourself, how do you get better? Are you hoping that you have an accident or somebody's just going to pull you to the side and say, hey, you know you could do this better? If you're not re-constantly re-evaluating yourself on a daily basis, your growth is very slow. You can increase your growth every single day by just reflecting at the end of the night. I just learned this and I've been practicing this idea, but it got better when I heard these things. It was like, before you go to sleep, you need to think about the things that could have gone differently. What could you have done to make a result different? Now, when you do this, it causes you to brainstorm on the resources that you already have. Like, how could you have responded differently? How could you have said something differently? Now, this experience may not ever come, but it's getting you in the practice of developing different responses to things that could create a better outcome than the one you got. If you do that every night, you will change your future responses when a disagreement or misunderstanding develops. Then you need to ask yourself, what did you accomplish today? Like, because your days are filled with a series of events. If you're not doing anything productive, you could find yourself wasting a lot of time. And I'm gonna tell you, I just told a student yesterday, middle school student, I am 47. I remember when I was their age and what I was thinking and how slow time was going. And I'm here. And I was just thinking, like, I wish I would have been practicing being present then because my results will look a lot different today. And thinking about working with students, I think about the things I've accomplished in the day. Maybe, how about this? I could suspend a kid, and the kid will tell me to have a good day or thank you, and he understands because I am trying to change a behavior. Now, I will give you a lot of chances, right? But if you break a rule, you have to receive a consequence because of my job. My job says I'm supposed to do this to try to change a behavior. Now, I suspended a lot of students in this past week, but before they left, they understood that why they were being suspended. They knew that it was just my job. It wasn't that I was picking on them. And to me, I feel like once students know that if you cross this line and this is my job, they don't feel like I'm coming for them. So in my mind, I have accomplished the relationships with students that didn't have the best consequence for them. Last question I need you guys to think about. What didn't you do today that you were supposed to do? Whatever you didn't do should go to the top of the list so that you will automatically in the morning, the beginning of your day, have accomplishments that you can reflect on in the evening time. When you can get your life, your day-to-day, to have a series of accomplishments, it's like an optimistic or positive feeling that you have about yourself. And it causes you to walk a little more confidently, causes you to lift your head up, move your shoulders back, but you have to do it on purpose. And I think that the groundhog hamster wheel effect is an effect for a lot of people. And the the biggest reason for these episodes is to show people how important they are. And I could tell you, like working with kids, I tell these kids how important they are. But it doesn't matter that I say it. They have to genuinely believe they're that important. And convincing students that they're that important is probably one of the most difficult things you could do because a frat brother and colleague of mine said, it's the 7, 17. You got them seven hours of the day, and then they go to their environment for 17 hours. Those seven hours that we have, we have to learn how to communicate so effectively that when they do go to that environment, they could take a little bit of what we're giving them. But if they don't take anything, they don't receive what we're trying to give, they go back to this environment, going back to doing what they've been doing. And it reinforces everything that they've been doing out there versus the things that we're doing in here. And that's one of the reasons why communication is so important. If students are coming to us, our job, a teacher told me this, and this is so awesome. She said, Mr. Lewis, I get paid to help students learn. I don't get paid to teach. My job is to figure out how I can get these students to learn. And I looked at her and I was like, man, that's so awesome. If we can get teachers to truly believe in the art of learning, I think it will change their teaching. And that could be that's something that I'm working on because my goal is to help teachers become better educators so that their craft will motivate these students to learn. I can't lie to you. I enjoy working with adults and students because I know that it there's a goal for all of us. It's like we're on the same team. My principal says that we're on the same team. I have to convince them that. I'm like the liaison between the two. How can I get students to understand how important they are, and how do I get teachers to buy in helping students learn versus teaching a content area? And I do know, like I have teachers that are phenomenal in their content area. But it's my goal is to help refine their teaching practices so that students will learn and receive the information. And I do believe at some point I'm gonna be really good at it, but I have this idea, I have this plan, I'm showing my effort on a daily basis and I'm consistent. I try to find ways to improve. And at some point, the students and the teachers will feel very confident in when they come to work and school because we're collectively creating this outcome that we all want. We believe that if teachers enjoy their craft, students will enjoy learning, and it will help nurture the students who don't go home to the best environments. And it will help improve the performance of students who have a great support system at home. So many different elements in trying to create this, but we need the effort and the consistency in order to get the result we want. I really believe the world would get better if people focused on themselves and believed how important they are, because this will ultimately create a version of you that you didn't even believe you could become. 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.