growNman
growNman
160 Four Seasons, One Focus
What up, Doe, and welcome back to I'm Growin, man. It's your man John D in the building. Uh just got off or ending our break, and we got all of this snow. You know, I was hoping that we were gonna get this snow for Sunday and Monday so that we can get an extra day off, but the universe said, no. I love Michigan for this. You know, I really enjoy um the four seasons I've been getting. I know when I was younger, uh people used to complain about uh it was cold majority of the year, uh, but now I think it has four beautiful seasons that I've really enjoyed for the last five years. But you know, the history of Michigan having snow will make people complain about things that they can't control anyway. But uh I wanted to get on here and specifically talk about things I'm working on. Uh I just came up with, I guess, an acronym. Uh it's CADER C A D E R. C is communication. Uh and you know, when I say communication, I mean that's anything that deals with communication. Like the way you talk, the presentation, the tone, delivery, cadence, pausing, silence, hand expressions, uh, facial expression, I don't know if I said that, body language, anything, communication. Uh, and this acronym that I'm I I I've started working on is the things that I feel like will help people enjoy enjoy life or appreciate life more. And I'll be able to explain why I selected these, but I think um if people worked on these on uh every day, their life would automatically change. These things that I'm gonna name, it takes an effort that only you can do. So communication is the first one. That's anything that's dealing with communication, whether it's learning in a second language, learning the correct way to write, journaling, anything that's going to help you ensure that you're less likely to be misunderstood. The second one is activity. Your body need requires a specific type of activity for maintenance. My suggestion is 8 to 10,000 steps a day. And when you're doing this, I definitely recommend you do some calisthenics that would include push-up, sit-ups, some pull-ups, squats. You don't have to go out and get a gym membership. Now, I'm talking about this because these are the things that that I feel like I need to practice also. Now, I did at one point was doing all of these things, but doing them all at one time to become a part of the routine has been a little difficult, but I'll discuss that. And so mind you, I am doing all of it, but it's not, I'm not getting full maximum participation from myself to get what I I believe I want at some point. So we got communication, activity. And this then, when I say activity, this includes every single day. Like if you have one of those lazy days, you should still be doing some type of activity to say that you're maintaining your body. And if you're not doing that, then you are not, you're not getting the best out of your body. And I'm not a scientist or anything, but I do know the body should not be sedentary. The third letter is D for diet. Now, some diets are better than others, but all of them work. Uh, whatever you decide to select, you just have to complete the process. People say that diet didn't work for me. It didn't work for you because you didn't do all of the things you were supposed to do. Now, I do know people believe that you should be working out, you know, weights. You can, but it's not necessary. Like I said earlier, in activity, the calisthenics, basic stuff. Now, the other stuff is just a plus if you want it. But in order to master your diet, you have to watch what you put in your body. And if you're not watching that, it could get out of control. Along with your diet, you should really consider how much water you're drinking. But I've noticed is that everybody is not drinking the water they're supposed to to maintain their body to function properly. Now, they say it's eight glasses, uh, eight ounces of water, but I think that depends on your body weight. And I don't think eight ounces is enough. But I do believe if you drink half your body weight in water, that it will help control the amount of food that you can take in. So it'll shrink your appetite. This is one of the uh things that I used to do. They said that yo, yo, your stomach is supposed to be a fist, but at this time I'm really overweight. And so I probably got four or five fists at that time. But it said that if you went to drink some water, if the time where you feel like you need to eat, if you go drink some water, it'll send off senses in your body like you're not hungry anymore. And the problem is that when people feel like they're hungry, it's just that their body is dehydrated. So if you don't drink the amount of water you need, you'll constantly just be eating yourself in like spurts and moments. Like a lot of times when your body's dehydrated, it says, I need some carbs, and typically it's like bad carbs. So in order to curve that, we have to drink half our body weight in water. And I know some of you guys will like, well, I weigh this much. You need to work on it. It should get to the point where you're you're you gotta do it. Because if you don't do it, it's hard to trick the body in believing that it doesn't need the addiction you've created. And when I say addiction, I mean delicious foods. You know, everybody knows that it's not good for you. And what do we do? We still overindulge in them, and we're in the top in the world in obesity. So it's like we know that it's a problem, but we're not putting rules to implement to maintain the body to enjoy life. You only have you only live once, they say, right? And I said this before, it's not true. You live every day, you only die once. So you have to be more accountable of the only body that you got. And I just I just pray that we're doing everything we can to ensure that when we get older, we're not regretting things we should have already started. The the fourth thing I want everybody to work on emotions. There's this emotional color wheel. It talks about different ways that you can feel. And growing up, it was always like man, happy, sad, angry. Uh it wasn't that many emotions, but there's so many different words. And a lot of times we just clump things into a category. And uh, and I think that if we can learn to control our emotions, we are ahead of the curve. Most people overreact because they can't control their emotions. Like if you know enough information, you won't overreact. So you have to believe that everything's gonna be all right. You haven't heard enough information for you to overreact. If you're gonna overreact, at least see all the information before you overreact. Because a lot of times you'll be apologizing and can make things a lot worse than it is. So, in my mind, our goal is to learn how to control our emotions. Like a lot of our emotions can cause us, put us in really bad situations. And I do know that growing up the way that I did, I was emotionless in a lot of ways where I was willing to go, go there. I was looking for the smoke. And as I got older, I didn't realize how immature I was. Being that I knew how to fight, I didn't walk away from trouble. My in my head, I'm like, I ain't scared of nothing. But that's not very smart. And it's almost like you wish you couldn't fight so that you would put yourself, get yourself out of harm's way and reduce the chances for anything to happen to you. So my my blessing is that nothing bad happened to me while I was going through this idea that I wasn't scared of anything. I couldn't control my emotions. Uh a lot of times I overreacted on things, and you know, nothing really comes good when you overreact. And I couldn't describe how I was feeling. And I feel like I'm still learning to be able to recognize that I have waves about me that I'm trying to change. You know, just recently my wife told me, why you say it like that? And your face turned up. It was just a reaction. It wasn't she was irritating me, but it's just like something that causes me to remind me when I was young. And maybe it's it's not her, but it reminded me of something, and I just could not figure out like why would I respond like that to her? So I am learning to be in the moment. You know, that's the that's what it is. I need to make it make it my duty that whenever I'm in a situation, that I am in the moment so that I can truly understand what's going on. Because I think my my automatic response when I'm not in the moment, if I hear something, it triggers something, it causes me to respond like I'm being irritated. And she doesn't deserve that. And I know she knows, but it still makes her feel a certain type of way. So I need to fix that. And that's one of the wonderful things about being on this journey, that I get real-time feedback and I can learn to correct it. And at some point, it won't ever be a problem for anybody. Like it's not like I'm doing it on purpose. Uh, but if I can figure out what's causing it, I could change that behavior and less likely for me to offend people when they say something that may be very well important to them. Or even if it isn't, I still don't want them to feel a certain type of way because of my response. Now, that's four letters. CAD is communication, activity, diet, and emotions. I feel like the activity I do want to include. You can put yoga in there, meditation. Um, these things to me, it helps you give the body what it needs when you participate in these activities. Now, communication, activity, diet, and emotions. If you worked on them from as a child, these things would change your self-esteem. It would change how you communicate with people, it would change so many different things for your family because you are learning the proper ideas of how to function the body. Now we're still learning, but there's way too much information out there for us to still be uh doing things perpetually, and we know that it's not good for us. With this information we have, we should be finding ways to master the body. And I and you know, I do want to say this before I go on. Like I've I've studied so many different like religions or different ways of life, and I think you should live the life you want to live, but there are certain rules that's going to allow you to enjoy it even more than you could have imagined. But it's gonna take a different type of effort. You're gonna have to believe that you're important enough to learn new mu uh learn new information and apply it to your life. And I tell you this, there's not gonna ever be a person to tell you that if you work on communication, that it's gonna hurt you. Like it's only gonna improve. Like it'll improve how you talk to people, how they receive your message, less misunderstandings, your activity. You know, you your body needs activity. That means being active, not sedentary. And a lot of times we're sedentary when we're overweight and we don't have the energy to get out and do what we need to do. Uh the diet, this is the self-esteem part. If you do what you're supposed to do, your body's gonna look like what you want it to look like. It won't be so hard to actually stay active. But it's just like one of those things where if you really want the body to look like what you want it to look like, the work is in the diet. It's what you put in it. And if you don't watch what you put in it, it could get out of hand. Emotions. Control your emotions. That's it. It has it has so much to do with how we are perceived in the reputations we create from the responses in tough situations or situations where you know you could overreact. And I'm not saying you gotta care about what people think, but you don't want people to think that you're unstable or unsafe to be around. So we have to do that. Now, to be aware enough to say, I want to work on these things, I think the relationship is like that is the journey. How can you build something with somebody intentionally where people will look at it like I want to be on that? And I feel like a lot of times people don't understand. I said this before, relationships are for mature people. And maturity can look totally different. A lot of people think that it has something to do with age, has nothing to do with it, has everything to do with how you look at the relationship. If you feel like your person is gonna save you from whatever, then you're not there yet. You both are bringing what you have to the table and you are gonna say, hey, we're gonna create our new rules, our own boundaries, what's gonna work and what's not gonna work. And I do want you to know this. If you decide to say these rules work, and then you decide to change your mind, that is okay. You probably made a rule because you thought that's something you could deal with. But if you get challenged on it, you can your partner can't say, Hey, you said this. Well, now you don't you feel a certain type of way. Now, mind you, if you're working on communication, it's really easy to deliver that information to your person. You'd be like, Look, you know, I said that I was gonna do this, but that's not working. I don't like the way I feel. And if the other person is open, because nine times out of ten, somebody's gonna get the short end of the stick, right? But if you that's your person, you like, I wouldn't want you to feel that way. So I'm willing to change this. Okay, we don't have to do that. We have to learn how to communicate with each other. That's what I'm saying. That's gotta be one of the main things that you work on. But this relationship thing, if you decide to go on the journey, whether you're with somebody or you're looking for somebody or you say you're not even interested, these are the things that I need you to consider whenever you become mature enough to say, that is what I want. You need to have the tough conversation in the beginning. You gotta find out what their hangups are. And a lot of times people are willing to compromise themselves for an idea because they like what they see or they they believe they like what they see and don't realize that some of the bad habits will challenge you compromising yourself. And I'm not saying it can't work because it can work, but you guys are gonna have to put in so much different type of effort because you kind of passed the red flags. And what I realized in the journey with my wife and I, like, she passed a lot of red flags, but she had no idea what a marriage was supposed to look like, though. There was so many different things that she said in the beginning that over the course of time she changed her mind and was like, no, I don't like that. That's not, but that came through time. Like in the beginning, I remember I used to say, but you said this. And then it didn't matter. You know what I'm saying? Like, you don't want your partner to feel like that, but I'm so stubborn, I can't see because I'm only like this is the way the relationship's supposed to work. But like what I've noticed that on this journey, that I really do look forward to spending time with her. And I didn't think that I would, like, that would be one of my thoughts in the daytime. Like, we're gonna, we're gonna chop it up, we're gonna kick it, you know what I'm saying? And it's it's just the presence of her. I I enjoy the idea that there is something in this world that I can look forward to that I don't have to do anything for other than like compliment her. And this is one thing I want y'all to know. You're gonna be the captain of your soul, the master of your fate. You have to watch who you pick. If you pick the wrong person, it's gonna take way more working than you're gonna say as her. And she didn't trick you. You didn't put in enough time. Now, that's why I say relationships are for mature people. So if you find your person, that woman will do any and everything for you. That's that's that's what they're gonna do, right? But if you don't treat them right and you don't set the tone of how she's supposed to be treated, and you do it every single day, like it's gonna, your behaviors is gonna change everything. So to me, I feel like the way this relationship works, if she's complaining about it, I'm trying to fix it. You know, like if she wants something done, I want to do it. Like people, it's almost like, you know, how they like uh a honeydew list. My wife is maintaining what this house is supposed to look like. So if she says these things need to be done, if she can't do it, I should be doing it. You know, so people's like, I always gotta do something. Well, if you don't do it, who's gonna do it? And I feel like I I didn't I didn't realize that the things that she's adding to the house is things that I didn't know about. You know, I was I grew up in an apartment. So to watch her turn this house into a home, it's it's like, oh, that's what it was supposed to be like. I didn't realize that she's giving my kids this feeling that maybe I was looking for when I was younger, but I didn't get because we couldn't afford certain things. And it's so crazy is that I'm the hater, like they don't need all of that. We don't need all of this because I'm thinking about how we saving money, but it's just to like enjoy life the way we want to. And she gives me that. So when you find your person, you have to work on it every day. It's it's so crazy because I've I realized just like if you fall in love with anything, if you got that itch where you just work on it, that's the way I look at this relationship. I I think about like what can I do to enhance our our time with each other. I try to come up with questions that will get her to think like I never thought about that. And something that can give her happy moments or happy thoughts. And I feel like you have to be very mature to feel like I'm gonna do everything I can to make this relationship work. Because if it don't work, that means I don't know what I'm doing. And what does that look like? You may need therapy, you may need counseling. But at the end of the day, if a man does what he's supposed to do in the beginning before the relationship starts, he'll achieve the goal he's supposed to. He just, most of us don't know the effort we're supposed to put in. So whether you're like an athlete or a writer or like a person that's really good in their area, you put that work in, right? There's a certain level of work you have to put into the relationship so that it becomes worthwhile for you to say, oh, this is why I'm in it. Because I'm telling you, watching people not have this feeling that I have, it makes me think about those days. It's 365 days in a year. I don't have those days, I have those thoughts. But when I think about it, I'm like, golly, that's a lot of days. You can have friends or whatnot, but I don't. Have to retell a story because my wife knows everything. And I realize that that's how the relationship is established. When you can be vulnerable to each other and share any and everything, as long as it's not hurting a relationship, it can be shared and it should be discussed and talked about. And that is the journey of life. I think through mastery of self to the journey of building something with the intent of creating something that no one has seen before. Like when people start working on relationships on purpose, kids are going to be a lot happier. And I think that I'm not going to say it's going to be easier for them to find their mate, but they're not going to waste their time on a lot of riffraff that causes a lot of mistakes. I feel like they'll make better decisions. And although a lot of the things will be tempting to like participate in, at least it won't be a practice where they increase their level of difficulty in life. I just feel like relationships are for mature people. And fellas, if you believe that you're mature, you have to know that intercourse is overrated. And the stuff that they push on TV, that is the true programming. You should only be thinking about doing it when you want to be intimate. An intimate moments shouldn't be happening all the time. Once or twice a month. And, you know, that's just my opinion. But I know as we get older, like you want to save those moments. And when I say that, and I do mean no touching anything. Like you can't fulfill yourself. You got to just build up that feeling and share that with your person. But if you think you're supposed to do it every single day, you're going to end up with some consequences that will prevent you from getting what I'm discussing right now. And to make babies. Those are the things times you should be doing it. Just because you're excited don't mean you're supposed to be doing it. That's called an addiction. You know, you have to find some type of control, or it's going to be some type of expectation that doesn't even become fulfilling later in life. It's just like you're doing it to be doing it. And that's unfortunate for a lot of people. But I do know that these experiences occur because we were following the wrong message. But you can change it. You just have to unlearn some things and learn some things and relearn it. And once you start practicing, you start practicing better behaviors, you get a different type of opportunity in life. And you enjoy because you see the work that you're doing. If you don't put the work in, you're probably complaining. I don't know anybody who puts the work in and still complain. The people that complain the most are not putting in the work and the things they complain about the most. The end of the year is coming. And I'm looking forward to finishing it out like we started. I'm excited. 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.