Speaker 1: M hmmmmm.
Speaker 2: Welcome back all the smoke Jacket's been a nice two
Speaker 2: day run. We get to end it off learning something, Yes,
Speaker 2: sure with some substance. Yeah, I'm excited about that. Excited
Speaker 2: about this next episode. Yeah, I started hearing about you
Speaker 2: maybe two, three, four years ago. I'm on no, I
Speaker 2: was late to the party. But glad we finally got
Speaker 2: a chance to sit down. This episode is for boys,
Speaker 2: young men, fathers, uncles, brothers, husbands that might be struggling
Speaker 2: with manhood or suffering from suffering in silence. We have
Speaker 2: someone here to talk to. Six million men are affected
Speaker 2: by depressing the United States. Every single year. Men die
Speaker 2: by suicides at are rate four times higher than women.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the show. Glad to be here finally. Man,
Speaker 2: it's a pleasure, man, Jason Wilson, I mean, let's get
Speaker 2: to it. I mean we were doing a little bit
Speaker 2: off camera and wish the camera was on it because
Speaker 2: it was just in real and in depth, just this
Speaker 2: mental game. We all fight for our physical appearances and
Speaker 2: then the strength muscular bodies and all, but there's not
Speaker 2: as much emphasis. There's a little bit more now, but
Speaker 2: just on the mental aspect of all this and that
Speaker 2: is to me, it is the most powerful aspect of
Speaker 2: all this. Talk to us about what got you into
Speaker 2: this space and why you're so passionate about her.
Speaker 3: I saw the ill effects of trauma early on as
Speaker 3: a young boy. My grandfather was lynched in nineteen I
Speaker 3: think thirty five or thirty six, and my mother and
Speaker 3: her siblings had to live with that happening, but then
Speaker 3: also the aftermath because the police who beat him and
Speaker 3: lynched him for being just desiring to be a human
Speaker 3: being and treated that way, they continued their racial terror
Speaker 3: after he died. They wanted to make sure that there
Speaker 3: would never be another estes righte to rise from in
Speaker 3: the family, and so that the entire community ostracized my family,
Speaker 3: my mother's family. So you in the black community, and
Speaker 3: everyone is scared to be around you. So now you're
Speaker 3: alone with that, and now you're feeling like you were
Speaker 3: the problem and almost blaming yourself for your own father's lynching.
Speaker 3: On a psychological level, traveled down maybe another thirty years,
Speaker 3: I start to see it play out in my mother's life.
Speaker 3: My brother, Larry, she had to get her first marriage,
Speaker 3: was very abusive. My brother's father's father would beat them
Speaker 3: with the flat size of butchernies, would slap them at
Speaker 3: the table with that, shoot guns in the home, and
Speaker 3: then beat our mother senseless at times. That trauma carried
Speaker 3: on and to me when I was born in nineteen seventy,
Speaker 3: but three years after that, my brother Larry was murdered.
Speaker 3: One day, my mother, while I was in high school,
Speaker 3: had a nervous breakdown, and that was the first time
Speaker 3: I saw that the brain wasn't created to hold all that.
Speaker 3: We've been conditioned to believe that it's like strength or
Speaker 3: admirable that we do, especially as black men, what doesn't
Speaker 3: kill us can only make us stronger. No pain, no gain,
Speaker 3: even from childhood. Big boys don't cry when you tell
Speaker 3: a young boy that when he gets older, you wonder
Speaker 3: why he shuts off. He's apathetic and doesn't want to
Speaker 3: communicate with you. He's been programmed at being expressive of
Speaker 3: his human emotions, and his right as a human is
Speaker 3: not only counter manhood, but also is viewed as weakness,
Speaker 3: and so growing up, never wanted to be appearing weak,
Speaker 3: and so seeing all of this, and then seeing my
Speaker 3: friends who fell into the trap of what I called
Speaker 3: misconstrued masculinity or misunderstanding of masculinity and seeing them die,
Speaker 3: friends getting shot and killed, and then my other brother
Speaker 3: Keith getting murdered. I said, something is really wrong with us,
Speaker 3: and not necessarily with us and eately as men, but
Speaker 3: the way we've been programmed. And after all of that
Speaker 3: trauma and then seeing the ill effects of it on
Speaker 3: my family, when I got married, that's when I realized
Speaker 3: something was wrong with me, because I was conditioned to
Speaker 3: believe that got married at twenty eight, hadn't resolved my
Speaker 3: father wound, hadn't grieved the death of both of my brothers,
Speaker 3: just the disappointments in life. I pursued music. I was
Speaker 3: sharing with someone off camera that I used to be
Speaker 3: a DJ. That was my desire, Chris Webber. We talked
Speaker 3: about him, I produced his album, and all of those
Speaker 3: dreams that shattered, and I had all of this unresolved anger.
Speaker 3: So when I got married, there was no room for empathy, compassion, patience.
Speaker 3: I never knew those characteristics. I only knew what it
Speaker 3: meant to be strong, dogmatic, powerful, bold. If you're not
Speaker 3: a comprehensive man, it's impossible to truly be a husband
Speaker 3: because you have to be more than a protector and provider.
Speaker 3: One day, I'm talking to my wife in the kitchen
Speaker 3: and our son, Jason was born, and I wanted to
Speaker 3: spend more time with them, and I simply said, you know,
Speaker 3: I wish I had more time to spend with Jason.
Speaker 3: All Nicole said was I wish you desired to spend
Speaker 3: that much time with me. What I heard was another
Speaker 3: knock on what I wasn't, another knock on who I
Speaker 3: was as a man, something else I wasn't doing. But
Speaker 3: my wife was saying, I longed to be with you
Speaker 3: the way you longed to be with your son. Because
Speaker 3: I wasn't an emotionally stable man, a verbal process, or
Speaker 3: a comprehensive man, I snapped, started yelling at the top
Speaker 3: of my lungs, hit the refrigerator, and within that moment,
Speaker 3: my wife, my beautiful wife, Nicole, just sat down. And
Speaker 3: in the process of that, I saw that I had
Speaker 3: crushed her spirit. And that's when the most I said,
Speaker 3: you got major issues you need to resolve. You can't
Speaker 3: keep running from them. I can't even use you until
Speaker 3: you become a comprehensive man. And so that journey took
Speaker 3: me into psychotherapy. I was able to uncover where a
Speaker 3: lot of my unresolved anger came from. It was from
Speaker 3: my dad. You know, like most of us, you know,
Speaker 3: if the hero in your life isn't invested in you,
Speaker 3: and you're not the apple of his eye but the
Speaker 3: worm and the fruit, you know, that hurts, and that
Speaker 3: creates an anger that I see often with working with boys.
Speaker 3: And so that's how I started the process to save
Speaker 3: my family. Here it is, we got married in nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety eight, two thousand and fifteen. We consider separation all
Speaker 3: because I hadn't dealt with what was really hurting me,
Speaker 3: and so that began. And I could go on and on,
Speaker 3: but that's how the process started for me. Are you
Speaker 3: guys still we're still your twenty six years in and
Speaker 3: this is deep, So it's not like we still don't
Speaker 3: have problems. Right, We're scheduled to have another therapy session.
Speaker 3: You know, I didn't want counseling. We wanted therapykay, because
Speaker 3: typically typically what happens when we're arguing with your wife
Speaker 3: or your spouse, we think it's that grown person, but
Speaker 3: it's the broken child within. And as you and I
Speaker 3: were talking, little Matt is hurt as well. You see
Speaker 3: what I'm saying, I don't know if stack I mean,
Speaker 3: you haven't really talked on a deeper level. But we
Speaker 3: lived from that broken boy, and so I wanted to
Speaker 3: heal that boy so that I can be the man
Speaker 3: the moment demands, and instead of missing so many moments,
Speaker 3: I don't want to be an older man who has
Speaker 3: a lot, maybe financially as far as success and accolades,
Speaker 3: but failed so much in life regarding my family, and
Speaker 3: so something that I hold dear in my heart and understand,
Speaker 3: even from conspiracy, but from even from a generational wealth standpoint,
Speaker 3: how important it is to stay in my family, how
Speaker 3: important it is for my children to see a man
Speaker 3: who could leave.
Speaker 2: I could leave.
Speaker 3: They're women I could sleep with, And but I wanted
Speaker 3: to model what it really means to be a comprehensive man,
Speaker 3: what it means to be committed, what it means to
Speaker 3: keep the covenant I made with Nicole at the Altar
Speaker 3: before the Most High, And it was just so much
Speaker 3: their brothers that I said, you know what, I fight
Speaker 3: for things that are far less worth than this. You
Speaker 3: know what I mean, like that are worthless compared to
Speaker 3: my marriage. Why am I not putting that same zeal
Speaker 3: and saving something that literally could create a legacy that
Speaker 3: can last throughout maybe three or four generations.
Speaker 2: When you say you started with psychotherapy and therapy, how
Speaker 2: far into that journey? I know we're always learning and
Speaker 2: always evolving. Did the light turn on for you?
Speaker 3: I went to a retreat for men called the Crucible,
Speaker 3: and I didn't know what to expect. So imagine being
Speaker 3: in three days in the wilderness, no technology, no one
Speaker 3: can contact you, and maybe from fourteen to twenty therapists
Speaker 3: and counselors, and as being a man of the most high,
Speaker 3: these men were men of faith as well, and so
Speaker 3: I can't give a lot away because it would ruin
Speaker 3: the experience if you guys ever tried it. But at
Speaker 3: that point in my life, I needed to hear what
Speaker 3: I missed from my father, and so being around all
Speaker 3: these men who were not only men of faith but
Speaker 3: were trained in psychology, they were able to help me
Speaker 3: go back to the times that has still kept me
Speaker 3: wounded as a man, resolve those issues. And so that's
Speaker 3: when I was able to finally cry about the neglect
Speaker 3: and the abandonment I felt from my dad, the lack
Speaker 3: of affirmation. But then to hear the words that he
Speaker 3: actually has said that I missed due to my pain. Man,
Speaker 3: it was liberating, and so it takes you know, as men,
Speaker 3: we're jumping front the bullets for our loved ones, our
Speaker 3: families if we feel disrespected, But when it's time for
Speaker 3: us to deal introspectively with what we're dealing with, to
Speaker 3: go deep to that childhood, that pain, we run because
Speaker 3: I believe we're conditioned by society that whenever we feel weak,
Speaker 3: whenever we feel emotions of sadness, depression, with pusillanimous or
Speaker 3: lacking courage. So that's why men with relationships, I don't
Speaker 3: want to marry her until I have everything together. What's
Speaker 3: the hesitation. The hesitation isn't that you don't love her
Speaker 3: or you unsure. The hesitation is that you really aren't
Speaker 3: the man that she thinks you are, because you can't hide.
Speaker 3: Once you're married, you know they're gonna see. We ain't
Speaker 3: impervious to feeling insecure, feeling fear, feeling self doubt, insecurities.
Speaker 3: But for me, I chose like it's nothing more liberating
Speaker 3: to tell my wife, Yeah, I'm scared of this decision,
Speaker 3: but I'm gonna move through it. But that in that moment,
Speaker 3: Nicole has told me that the fact that I can
Speaker 3: acknowledge the fear but don't succumb to it, in her eyes,
Speaker 3: makes me even more of a stronger man. And so
Speaker 3: I just I didn't want to in my life the
Speaker 3: way it was kind of given to me. You know,
Speaker 3: I wanted to. I want to have my mind and
Speaker 3: just everything I'm involved in liberated.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I don't want to live for wounds. I want to
Speaker 3: live from a healed heart.
Speaker 4: It's a bar new book out, The Man, The Moment,
Speaker 4: The Man. Can you explain that to our our followers?
Speaker 3: The reason I titled that, that's my third book, probably
Speaker 3: my last, in regarding the whole Manhood series, how many
Speaker 3: of us as men are the wrong man in the moment,
Speaker 3: And we talked about that as well. Often the subtitle
Speaker 3: is Master the Ten Characteristics of the Comprehensive Man. So
Speaker 3: comprehensive is just another word for being complete. Most of
Speaker 3: us are stuck in the first gear of manhood, which
Speaker 3: I say is masculinity. And when you look up the
Speaker 3: word itself, it's just an adjective. It's not a comprehensive
Speaker 3: definition of what it means to be a man. But
Speaker 3: when you have a man who only can live by
Speaker 3: the attributes of strength, bolden, its aggression, or being just
Speaker 3: a protector and provider. Now his life is only performance based,
Speaker 3: which a lot of athlete's lives are, then you wonder
Speaker 3: why you can't trust anyone. It's hard for you to
Speaker 3: remain faithful because you can't. You feel that they only
Speaker 3: the women in your life is because of what you
Speaker 3: have and who you are, well no, what you do
Speaker 3: and not necessarily who you are, and so unpacking that
Speaker 3: you say, wait a minute, you're telling me there's more
Speaker 3: to being a man than just providing and protecting. And
Speaker 3: there is. And the issue is a lot of us.
Speaker 3: And I tell women this as well, because they'll say, well,
Speaker 3: why won't my husband go to the doctor. Do you
Speaker 3: expect a man who entire life is based on giving
Speaker 3: to go to the doctor, to live longer, to continue
Speaker 3: to give and don't experience anything of what he works
Speaker 3: so hard for. They all get quiet. But to some extent,
Speaker 3: my brothers, that's our fault as well. If we keep
Speaker 3: wearing a superhero costume, why would we get mad at
Speaker 3: those who expect us to save today? You know we
Speaker 3: have to realize and say, and if anything, we need
Speaker 3: to be masculine about standing for the life that we
Speaker 3: design and deserve and take the cape off the strangling us.
Speaker 3: There is no freedom in the facade. And when we
Speaker 3: can stand on that, now we can experience the other characteristics.
Speaker 3: So the ten are I start with the fighter because
Speaker 3: I knew that would draw men in. The issue is
Speaker 3: that we fight, but we don't fight the right way.
Speaker 3: How many intellectually gifted men we know who are incarcerated
Speaker 3: from any emotional decision. So you got the fighter, you
Speaker 3: got the provider. The provider is an issue for me
Speaker 3: because we give to everyone but ourselves. We forget that
Speaker 3: we too are a part of the family, and then
Speaker 3: we get angry when we don't take care of ourselves.
Speaker 3: The lack of self love. We have the affirmation. So
Speaker 3: I don't say self love anymore because it's so foreign
Speaker 3: to us. I say self maintenance. So as men, we
Speaker 3: understand what it means to maintain something. As an athlete,
Speaker 3: you understand, I got to maintain this body for me
Speaker 3: to perform well and provide for my family. After the provider,
Speaker 3: you have the leader. Do you lead by intimidation or cooperation.
Speaker 3: Then after that you have the lover, you have the nurturer.
Speaker 3: We're all nurturers. Some of the greatest coaches in history
Speaker 3: were the greatest nurturers. You have the gentleman being a
Speaker 3: gentleman or Chivalry isn't dead. And when I studied that,
Speaker 3: chivalry was not a system to pander to women, but
Speaker 3: it was a code of honor amongst the medieval knights.
Speaker 3: So here it is these are warriors of their day,
Speaker 3: and they practice chivalry as their code of honor. But
Speaker 3: we've allowed society to make it seem like it's pandering
Speaker 3: to women to be chivalrous. After the gentleman, you have
Speaker 3: the friend, and then the deeper with the devotion characteristics,
Speaker 3: the husband, the father, and the sun. And I close
Speaker 3: with the sun, similar to you, Matt. You know my
Speaker 3: mother lost my mom. I wasn't a comprehensive man when
Speaker 3: she dubbed this she developed dementia. I was a masculine mail.
Speaker 3: I knew how to provide and protect.
Speaker 2: That was it.
Speaker 3: But the most I showed me, says, the only way
Speaker 3: she's going to get the care she needs from you.
Speaker 3: You got to become a nurturer. You're going to have
Speaker 3: to become long suffering and patience. You're gonna have to
Speaker 3: by all her nails, you may have to wash her,
Speaker 3: massage your scalp. I would have never done that, but
Speaker 3: when she almost died from a mini stroke, I had
Speaker 3: prayed for her to die. I said, most High, this
Speaker 3: isn't life. Why don't you just take her from me.
Speaker 3: She's not experiencing it, and it's really causing a lot
Speaker 3: of pain, not only to her.
Speaker 2: But our family.
Speaker 3: And he made it very clear, he says, Jason, that's
Speaker 3: not love, nor is that sacrifice. Sacrifice is not doing
Speaker 3: what needs to be done. Is doing what needs to
Speaker 3: be done that you don't want to do. And the
Speaker 3: greatest example of that is Messiah or yes Sure or
Speaker 3: who they call Jesus. Many people don't understand. We see
Speaker 3: that he died on the cross for our sins, but
Speaker 3: we missed the part in the garden of Gassemite where
Speaker 3: he was wavering back and forth like I don't want
Speaker 3: to do this. It was something that needed to be
Speaker 3: done that he didn't want to do, but he pushed
Speaker 3: through it. So for me with my mom, the sacrifice
Speaker 3: was yeah, you're gonna cry a lot now, Yeah, you're
Speaker 3: going to have to answer her forty nine times after
Speaker 3: you'd told her to answer to her question forty eight times. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you're going to have to get up at two in
Speaker 3: the morning, the same way you would have her worry
Speaker 3: when you were out hanging and didn't call and she
Speaker 3: had to get up at two in the morning. But
Speaker 3: when I became a comprehensive men, in that process made
Speaker 3: me who I am today, and it made me even
Speaker 3: a teacher I am amongst boys. And so that's why
Speaker 3: I ended the book with the sun chapter, because many
Speaker 3: of us aren't serving sons with still dependents, and it's
Speaker 3: important when you become a man that you get in
Speaker 3: a place where you can serve your parents.
Speaker 4: It's crazy, how I know. You talk about a lot
Speaker 4: about how life can force you to be the person
Speaker 4: that you're supposed to be. You know, they'll tell you.
Speaker 4: I've always been a protect and provider for like I
Speaker 4: got to jump in front of everything for all my friends.
Speaker 4: I've always been that guy. But losing my siblings it
Speaker 4: changed me a lot, you know what I mean? And
Speaker 4: I can see I to never I hate to say
Speaker 4: I don't have them, but I would never be the
Speaker 4: person that I am today if I didn't experience that,
Speaker 4: because my mama tells my wife that she has the
Speaker 4: best version of me because of everything I went through.
Speaker 4: You know, I lost my sister and my younger sister,
Speaker 4: my longer brother two much apart. And I don't think
Speaker 4: I still handily right. But it's made it made me
Speaker 4: a better person. It's making me a better person.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's all we can do. Brother. Even when
Speaker 3: I my best friend dropped out of a heart attack
Speaker 3: on the job with us, my other best friend here Vic,
Speaker 3: he was in the room with him, still holding onto that.
Speaker 3: I've been in the gym many times, but I used
Speaker 3: to love lifting weights and I would grab the waights
Speaker 3: and just break down cry. And it's been years since
Speaker 3: he's been gone. But his absence and not releasing it
Speaker 3: like I thought I.
Speaker 2: Had, Yeah, man, it.
Speaker 3: You snap it things that like, man, where did that
Speaker 3: come from? Where is this anger coming from? And that's
Speaker 3: why I tell brothers, tears when you're really leased them
Speaker 3: in the natural way through crying, it really stress hormones.
Speaker 3: All Right, you may now if you don't cry that way,
Speaker 3: you're crying in other areas. So you're crying with depression,
Speaker 3: you're crying with suicidal ideations, you're crying with.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you name it.
Speaker 3: And so these crutches that we lean on eventually slipped
Speaker 3: from underneath us. But it's a good thing, brother, you're becoming.
Speaker 3: You became a better version of yourself. Like even in parenting,
Speaker 3: one of the characteristics is the father and I transparently share.
Speaker 3: I failed many times raising my daughter Alexis because I
Speaker 3: was just like you, hard protector and provider. That was
Speaker 3: just my lane, that's all I ran in. But being
Speaker 3: a father, the children need you, not to be perfect,
Speaker 3: but to be present. They don't need someone who's infallible,
Speaker 3: but someone who's faithful. My son has a better father
Speaker 3: than my daughter had, you know, But I still have
Speaker 3: to go back and make sure I'm still a better
Speaker 3: father to her.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: What I mean by that is because of the memories
Speaker 3: and in the lack of affection, because I didn't get
Speaker 3: it from my mother. Not that she didn't love me,
Speaker 3: but I didn't realize till recently that because of my
Speaker 3: brother dying, she was scared to really commit all of
Speaker 3: her heart to me because she may lose another son.
Speaker 3: Until my brother sent Claire said he saw it but
Speaker 3: never told me. And so here it is. I'm wondering
Speaker 3: why that lack of affirmation turned me into this teenager
Speaker 3: and even in my early twenties a man just seeking
Speaker 3: it through women and never could find it there. And
Speaker 3: so the goal is always to evolve as men. We
Speaker 3: always want to have a standard, a goal, or a
Speaker 3: point to reach. There is no master level in manhood.
Speaker 3: You keep evolving. You keep evolving, You keep evolving, and
Speaker 3: that's the beautiful thing. When you can allow yourself that
Speaker 3: space and that freedom, mistakes then become instead of condemnation,
Speaker 3: they become our best teachers. And that's what I tell
Speaker 3: all men. It's like, look, I've never been a grandfather.
Speaker 3: When it's that time, I'm gonna have to find a
Speaker 3: man to teach me how to be one, because it's
Speaker 3: different from being a father, and I just you know,
Speaker 3: the goal is to live from the good in my heart.
Speaker 3: Growing up, we had to wear a facade. We had
Speaker 3: to look tough. You know. One of the songs I
Speaker 3: used to joke about was E forty song practice looking hard. Literally,
Speaker 3: you know that's what we had to do. You know,
Speaker 3: you look soft in Detroit. You wouldn't make it so
Speaker 3: you had to practice looking hard. You were conditioned that way.
Speaker 3: Even Drake says in one of his songs, I pop
Speaker 3: bottles because I bottle my emotions. So in the club,
Speaker 3: you may be doing this, but you miss what this
Speaker 3: brother is saying. He's saying because I can't express how
Speaker 3: I feel, I got to get drunk. I gotta get high.
Speaker 3: And that's not the path of freedom. That's why I
Speaker 3: think it's almost over eighty percent of homicide in the
Speaker 3: United States are committed by us. This is a lot
Speaker 3: of unreleased aim, trauma and emotional loss, and crying is
Speaker 3: not something especially from what you went through and myself
Speaker 3: and even you, my brother, you just don't get over
Speaker 3: some of this stuff. It's a journey. And I tell
Speaker 3: my brothers who read my books and hardened street brothers,
Speaker 3: they called me, like, man, why am I crying over everything? Jay,
Speaker 3: Like it's just a cartoon. I'm watching with my son,
Speaker 3: and I just start crying. I said, my brother, you
Speaker 3: backed up your entire life. You've been programmed to be stoic.
Speaker 3: A stoic you can't really express or experience life, and
Speaker 3: that's why we so quick to commit suicide. And so
Speaker 3: I tell my brother's like, look, you ain't tired of living,
Speaker 3: You're tired of not living. Instead of us complaining about this,
Speaker 3: and that let's finally fight for what we deserve, and
Speaker 3: in the process of doing for ourselves, others would benefit.
Speaker 2: We kind of started talking to it earlier because I
Speaker 2: saw an interview able to cray and you spoke to
Speaker 2: the power of crying, and I, you know, kind of
Speaker 2: briefly shared my story of growing up by racial black dad,
Speaker 2: Italian mom, drugs abuse, alcohol, violence, losing my mom at
Speaker 2: twenty seven. So it'll be eighteen years this November, and
Speaker 2: I haven't cried. And I mean, like I said, last
Speaker 2: time I think I cried was maybe ten eleven twelve
Speaker 2: when I got my ass whipped. But outside of that, like,
Speaker 2: have not cried in so long. And from that time,
Speaker 2: from being the breadwinner, the provider, through college, through the pros,
Speaker 2: through post career, starting a business and hiring my friends
Speaker 2: and looking out for everyone and taking care of everyone,
Speaker 2: like always taking care of everybody, and it gets to
Speaker 2: the point where, ibbi shit forty five next week, like
Speaker 2: I'm starting to feel it now, you know, and I
Speaker 2: feel like I'm almost pouring from an empty cup, and
Speaker 2: you know through my actions, I literally just lost my
Speaker 2: family through being what you talked about, like not I
Speaker 2: was a strong provider, I wasn't there emotionally, I wasn't empathetic.
Speaker 2: I wasn't willing to share those emotions, and that was
Speaker 2: stuffed in my expotement like I don't, you're a wall.
Speaker 2: And then again trying to dig back and understanding and
Speaker 2: starting counseling that, like you said, little Matt from back
Speaker 2: then is still hurt and still trying to find his way.
Speaker 2: Although grown Matt feels it seems like he has it all,
Speaker 2: Little Matt is there more than I realize. And how
Speaker 2: do you? So? My question is like to all those
Speaker 2: men that can't or feel like they can or just won't,
Speaker 2: tears won't come out. I know it's such a refreshing
Speaker 2: and helpful and good thing to do as a man,
Speaker 2: But how do you cry if you don't? I don't
Speaker 2: want to say I don't know how to cry because
Speaker 2: I've cried before, but I haven't cried in probably thirty years.
Speaker 2: Your guard it too much.
Speaker 3: You have to change your perspective of what crying is.
Speaker 3: You still deep inside of you, you still believe it's
Speaker 3: a sign of weakness. It's really is a sign of
Speaker 3: you being human. And until we get to the place
Speaker 3: where we can release it, that's when you always feel
Speaker 3: this raise, this anger, never feeling settled. You gotta smoke
Speaker 3: some weed, you gotta get something to drink, You need
Speaker 3: to call that girl, and you don't even hear it.
Speaker 3: Taught enough about contentment, like when is enough is enough?
Speaker 3: You know? Why do I have to keep grinding and
Speaker 3: keep going? That's not peace, you know? And then speaking
Speaker 3: of peace, which it seems like the majority of us,
Speaker 3: that's all we want. Peace is not the absence of chaos, trials, tests, adversity.
Speaker 3: It's having a calm heart in the midst of those things.
Speaker 3: So the only way you can have a calm heart
Speaker 3: in the midst of all of that. For me, you
Speaker 3: had to start with my relationship with the Most High
Speaker 3: through is sure Christ. After that, I had to put
Speaker 3: the work in, because faith with our works is dead.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: Once I started putting the work in and digging deep
Speaker 3: and then shattering the misleading mantos we've been programmed to
Speaker 3: believe it, I had to start there. I had to
Speaker 3: unpack why can't I cry but we honor you guys
Speaker 3: are athletes. When you win a championship, no one dog's
Speaker 3: Jordan for crying over a trophy or Kobe. But I
Speaker 3: couldn't cry when my wife walked down the aisle. My
Speaker 3: best friend linked up in my ear. Dog, if you cry,
Speaker 3: I'm hitting you and your kidney?
Speaker 2: What is that? I cried, Yeah, but you should.
Speaker 3: My wife when she lost had the fifth miscarriage, lost
Speaker 3: our daughter Olivia. I'm next to her and the doctor
Speaker 3: and he's rubbing the ultrasound the jail over her stomach
Speaker 3: and we don't hit a heartbeat show boy, And I'm
Speaker 3: sitting there stoic, because that's all I knew. I got
Speaker 3: to just be strong. I'm saying, I can't cry in
Speaker 3: front of her. That's my daughter gone. But if I
Speaker 3: won a Super Bowl and cry holding it in the
Speaker 3: locker room, no one would say a word. That's crazy,
Speaker 3: that's insanity. So you have to start unearthing the lies
Speaker 3: when we get there and understand. Look, that ain't manhood.
Speaker 3: I want to be able to feel even like the
Speaker 3: concept of the alpha male, that's a lie. There is
Speaker 3: never a battle between two wolves male wolves to see
Speaker 3: who leads the wolf pack. The man who created the study.
Speaker 3: These wolves were even in captivity, so they weren't even
Speaker 3: in the wilderness. Come to find out, the alphas are
Speaker 3: the male and female wolf leading a wolf pack. So
Speaker 3: in the essence or the example of humans, you want
Speaker 3: to be the alpha, stay married to your wife and
Speaker 3: lead a family. That's the alpha, you see. But it's
Speaker 3: like the society in the world wants to keep us
Speaker 3: boxed in and locked in, and then they complain when
Speaker 3: they have a man who's less sensitive, less kind. That's empathetic,
Speaker 3: let's considerate, volatile, lax patience. You can't have it both ways.
Speaker 3: And so with you, I would just ask, you know,
Speaker 3: for me my mother, I could cry if I see
Speaker 3: a few pictures of her.
Speaker 2: I'm gone.
Speaker 3: You know you're still guarded. Something happened in that time
Speaker 3: that you're still holding on too. And I will work
Speaker 3: with you till you come to Detroit. I got you,
Speaker 3: but I see it in your eyes now, it's right there.
Speaker 3: It's like a damn ready to break. But you got
Speaker 3: to be willing to say, look all of this you
Speaker 3: got here, this ain't your identity. This isn't your identity.
Speaker 3: See when your performance based which is my heart stays heavy.
Speaker 3: For a lot of athletes that I work with, everyone
Speaker 3: wants something from you. You graded as soon as you
Speaker 3: start dribbling a ball? Are you a five star, four star?
Speaker 2: Whatever?
Speaker 3: Your whole life? Now you're okay, good. So who I
Speaker 3: am is based on what I do. You're programmed. Now,
Speaker 3: then you wonder why you give? You give, you give,
Speaker 3: and you can't say no, or I give you this,
Speaker 3: what's the plan? I can't just give it to you.
Speaker 3: I want to teach you business. So I'm gonna give
Speaker 3: you a loan. But if it fails, I got you.
Speaker 3: But if you succeed, you get me back. You can't
Speaker 3: do that because you're worth. You have been hoodwinked into
Speaker 3: thinking your value is based in doing, performing, protecting. That's
Speaker 3: why it's so hard to take naps. Your brain never
Speaker 3: consists still because you got to keep thinking how I'm
Speaker 3: gonna make things happen. The beautiful thing with me, I
Speaker 3: can my wife, she runs our nonprofit. When our boilers
Speaker 3: went out when we first bought the building over sixty
Speaker 3: thousand dollars, I wasn't worried, she was nervous. I said,
Speaker 3: God called us to do this, that's his responsibility to
Speaker 3: replace those, to be able to settle in that and
Speaker 3: become confident. And then I got called for interview for
Speaker 3: my second book, and I prayed over the host. It
Speaker 3: was a Christian show in Texas. The vice president comes
Speaker 3: down and says, I'm gonna give you twenty five thousand
Speaker 3: dollars because you can't fake that. So that hit me
Speaker 3: and caught me off guard. Still wasn't enough to get
Speaker 3: the boilers. When I told him the price, he says, all,
Speaker 3: I give you thirty. But that still wasn't enough. I
Speaker 3: fly back to Detroit. I wasn't trying to figure out,
Speaker 3: worrying about how I'm gonna make this happen. He cost me,
Speaker 3: he says. He texts me. He says, can you jump
Speaker 3: on a call? I said sure. This man tells me.
Speaker 3: I thought about this and I prayed, and it hit me.
Speaker 3: How am I helping a man only giving him half?
Speaker 3: He sent sixty thousand dollars directly to our nonprofit account,
Speaker 3: and I just met him. That was the power. The
Speaker 3: scriptures say that the power of crisis affected in our weakness.
Speaker 3: Me allowing myself to be weak and powerless in that
Speaker 3: moment allowed his power to be perfected in me. So
Speaker 3: even if you can call yourself a man a god,
Speaker 3: you'll say a brother. Steph Curry has it on his shoes.
Speaker 3: I can do all things through Christ, who strengthen me.
Speaker 3: I say that is possible for many of I mean
Speaker 3: that is the truth. But can He do all things
Speaker 3: through us? So if we're only protectors and providers, he's limited.
Speaker 3: If he needs us to go to an orphanage and
Speaker 3: just serve and wipe the faces of babies who are
Speaker 3: crying and can't can't are they blind or have disabilities,
Speaker 3: or help parents with children who are autistic. And because
Speaker 3: you're scared of crying in front of people, you can't
Speaker 3: even be used by him in those moments. And so
Speaker 3: who wants to live a life where all I got
Speaker 3: is based on just doing? It's misery and that's what
Speaker 3: men want a scare.
Speaker 4: I will tell you this too, Matt, Like what I
Speaker 4: have to learn to I from losing four out of
Speaker 4: six siblings is.
Speaker 2: When you cry, is you know we do a lot
Speaker 2: of people do.
Speaker 4: Think it's a sign of weakness, But that's that's your
Speaker 4: way of showing you miss him and the way you
Speaker 4: love him.
Speaker 2: Say it you know what I mean. That's why I love.
Speaker 4: That's why I'm cool with crying on the short like
Speaker 4: I was, just like you mad but like y'all know,
Speaker 4: I cry all the time when something bothered me. I
Speaker 4: let him out because that's that's the only way I
Speaker 4: can show those people that I miss him and love him.
Speaker 4: And if I don't do it, it'll drive me crazy.
Speaker 2: No, I feel it's definitely boughted up. Like you said,
Speaker 2: there's a damn ready to be broken. Also, another thing
Speaker 2: I've wondered too is I feel like I can give
Speaker 2: love but can't accept it. I feel like I can't
Speaker 2: accept love. We don't really get what we put into.
Speaker 3: It, or we don't. Again, where workhorse is not war horses,
Speaker 3: She a workhorse. All he does is work. A war
Speaker 3: horse not only works and it is ready for battle,
Speaker 3: but he is maintained, you know, a war horse because
Speaker 3: he is for workhorse. They send him to off to
Speaker 3: somewhere to die when he's no good anymore. That's how
Speaker 3: we feel as men. It's somewhere in little Matt's life
Speaker 3: where you missed that, somewhere where you didn't feel valued
Speaker 3: or loved or appreciated, just in our ten minute conversation.
Speaker 3: I hear it just from what you shared about certain individuals.
Speaker 3: So you're guarded. Your brain wants to protect little mac
Speaker 3: because the pain of facing it feels too great. But
Speaker 3: that's where we need to go. And as men, it's like, look, yeah,
Speaker 3: you can be strong. You say you're a dog on
Speaker 3: the court, football, boxing mma, but let me see you
Speaker 3: be really a dog and face the issues. Is stopping
Speaker 3: you from being the man that you need to be.
Speaker 3: And men, but once men are in a safe space
Speaker 3: where they feel that there's no chance of condemnation, that
Speaker 3: they see the other brothers open up like what you
Speaker 3: just shared. I've never seen when men stay stoic. They
Speaker 3: start dropping their guards and they open up and they
Speaker 3: break down. Majority of men are carrying the weight of
Speaker 3: the world on their shoulders and are waiting for somebody
Speaker 3: to say how you doing and really mean it. I
Speaker 3: had one guy h engineered for my audiobook one of
Speaker 3: his children, but both are autistic, and he had shared
Speaker 3: he he was watching the son trying to do something
Speaker 3: we do effortlessly every day, brush his teeth, and his
Speaker 3: son was just struggling just to accomplish this one thing.
Speaker 3: And so as a man you may know, may have
Speaker 3: a friend like this, but it's not your problem. So
Speaker 3: you really aren't really empathetic towards your man's Imagine driving
Speaker 3: to work with that. He broke down crying. He just
Speaker 3: needed an ear. Somebody said, Man, I just acknowledge your pain.
Speaker 3: I acknowledge the hurt so many of us we never hear. Man,
Speaker 3: that's a lot what you've been through, Matt Man, I
Speaker 3: see the tears well up in your eyes. I couldn't
Speaker 3: imagine all of this happening. And then not knowing why
Speaker 3: are you so guarded?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 3: It lets like you know now I'm not crazy for
Speaker 3: the way that I feel, And maybe let me take
Speaker 3: another step to go a little deeper so that I
Speaker 3: can heal and break free from that. And like you said,
Speaker 3: my brother, about tears, it's honoring those that we've lost.
Speaker 3: A friend of mine, grandmother, had died. At the funeral
Speaker 3: and I'm sitting I mean at the funeral, I'm sitting
Speaker 3: next to him. He couldn't cry, and as I'm listening
Speaker 3: to her obituary being read, this woman was a pillar
Speaker 3: not only in the community but their family. I just
Speaker 3: leaned next to him. I leanked into him. I said, hey,
Speaker 3: your grandmother deserve your tears, and I just leaned back.
Speaker 3: Matter of seconds, he broke down. He just needed the freedom. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's a mission to cry. It's okay. And we tell
Speaker 3: our sons what to be fearless, right, No man is fearless.
Speaker 3: No one is fearless because we all have something we
Speaker 3: love that we don't want to lose. When you tell
Speaker 3: a boy to be fearless, it'd be like one of
Speaker 3: my students. Well, he wasn't the stude. He wanted to
Speaker 3: be in the cave. He went to a party he
Speaker 3: knew he shouldn't have been at because there was a
Speaker 3: rival game there. Guys that didn't like him were jealous
Speaker 3: of him. He went anyway, Why I ain't no whole.
Speaker 3: Ain't nobody gonna stop me from doing what I need
Speaker 3: to do? Beautiful young boy. That was Saturday. I get
Speaker 3: a call he got shot and killed. N watching his father,
Speaker 3: beautiful man standing next to this casket like a soldier,
Speaker 3: wouldn't move. I'm not saying his dad told his son that,
Speaker 3: but look how many boys we teach to be fearless
Speaker 3: and it's impossible. Then once you got to understand too
Speaker 3: without fear, there's no room for courage, no need for it.
Speaker 3: But when you scared and something is at risk, that's
Speaker 3: when they say, Wow, he was courageous. But for me
Speaker 3: to get walk from here to there, that don't take
Speaker 3: no courage. But let this be a pool of sharks
Speaker 3: and it's only a five inch board. I gotta walk
Speaker 3: across to get to my daughter, who may walk into
Speaker 3: this pit of sharks. That takes courage. What's even deeper,
Speaker 3: it takes love. We have to start becoming human again.
Speaker 3: When we do that, start living from the good in
Speaker 3: our heart, because we got bad.
Speaker 2: In our heart.
Speaker 3: We all know that as men, definitely. But the comprehence
Speaker 3: of man is courageous but also compassionate, strong but sensitive.
Speaker 3: He lives from the good in his heart instead of
Speaker 3: the fear of how he'll be perceived. And that's how
Speaker 3: I can move man. I have battles every day, mentally, spiritually.
Speaker 3: I'm attacked often because of what I do.
Speaker 2: Look at the.
Speaker 3: Boys I'm trying to save in my community, and the
Speaker 3: fathers who lives are changing, and they no longer coming
Speaker 3: home yelling because they had a bad at work. Oh,
Speaker 3: I got an adversary who don't like me and I
Speaker 3: have wars. I wage every day, but I keep going
Speaker 3: because I make sure I reflect on what's bothering me,
Speaker 3: release it before it becomes toxic, so that I can
Speaker 3: reset and rest. I call it the four rs. I
Speaker 3: do that every day. I can do it while I'm fighting.
Speaker 3: I can do it while I'm talking with Nicole. I
Speaker 3: can do it right now here, even if I'm talking
Speaker 3: now and I'm like, man, I'm with Matt and Stack.
Speaker 3: You know, I got to release that so that I
Speaker 3: can stay in this moment. And that's the power of
Speaker 3: being a verbal process. So that's a the power being
Speaker 3: emotionally intelligent. So now when these feelings arise, you're used
Speaker 3: to them. When sadness come up, I don't have to
Speaker 3: get angry, I can express the sadness. When fear comes up,
Speaker 3: I don't have to get angry. I can just express
Speaker 3: the fear. When depression arises, I don't have to get angry.
Speaker 3: I can just say, hey, I'm depressed and then dig
Speaker 3: deeper why am I depressed? And that's the key, and
Speaker 3: that's comprehensive manhood. So, brother, Matt, I'm this ain't really
Speaker 3: no interview, no more.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because I'm not trying.
Speaker 3: That's over with.
Speaker 2: That's over with.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I just met you and I'm looking in
Speaker 3: your eyes. I can see it, Little Mad. If you
Speaker 3: would have digged deep and close your eyes. Can you
Speaker 3: tell us one emotion Little Matt feels mm close your
Speaker 3: eyes and it ain't no rush? What one emotion? Little Matt Fields?
Speaker 2: First thing come of mind is scared? Good? Why of
Speaker 2: the unknown? Good?
Speaker 3: Keep your eyes closed? What about the unknown? What is
Speaker 3: the unknown? Stay with Little Matt, not Big Mad.
Speaker 2: Because there's just so many people depending on me that
Speaker 2: I'm gonna let them down.
Speaker 3: Why do you have a fear of letting them down?
Speaker 3: Because I never have? MHM. Who told you had to
Speaker 3: take care of him?
Speaker 2: A good question. I just felt like I was the
Speaker 2: chose and wanted to do it.
Speaker 3: Did your father ever tell you that What messages did
Speaker 3: you receive from him?
Speaker 2: Tough love.
Speaker 3: Got it? So Little Matt really didn't experience the love
Speaker 3: that he desired or needed to get from his dad.
Speaker 2: No, not even close.
Speaker 3: Did you ever feel that you had to perform for
Speaker 3: his love or be the best kid ever?
Speaker 2: No? I didn't to be honest with you, but I
Speaker 2: found out after my mom died that how fucked up
Speaker 2: his childhood was, so he was trying to learn on
Speaker 2: the fly and try to make up. And now it's
Speaker 2: funny you mentioned grandfatherhood. He's got nine grand babies now
Speaker 2: and he's amazing grandfather, Like it's almost like his second
Speaker 2: act because as a dad to us, it was volatile.
Speaker 3: Most grandparents said it, it's the second chance to get
Speaker 3: it right. How does that make you feel, the fact
Speaker 3: that you see your father love on the grandchildren in
Speaker 3: the way that you desired.
Speaker 2: I mean, it makes me happy that they get to
Speaker 2: experience that.
Speaker 3: That's cool. That's a good, politically correct, excellent man.
Speaker 2: I mean there's still times, you know, like me and
Speaker 2: my dad. My mom died when I was twenty seven.
Speaker 2: My dad had never hugged me or me recalling hug
Speaker 2: me and tell me love me. Up until that point,
Speaker 2: I don't even recall it, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: So it's just like now now we get along great,
Speaker 2: and I'm to the notion it's never too late to
Speaker 2: be a father. So when I see him be a
Speaker 2: great popa, I love it. But there's still something me
Speaker 2: at times it'll be kind of like you the same
Speaker 2: motherfucker used to beat my mom in front of me.
Speaker 3: That's where it's at. That's everything you said, That's where
Speaker 3: it is. Have you ever shared with him how you feel? No,
Speaker 3: super deep service level. Let me give you some advice.
Speaker 3: My father was the master of tough love and he
Speaker 3: had a cause and effect just like your dad, which
Speaker 3: is why I was able to forgive him and reconcile.
Speaker 3: It took for him to develop Parkinsons disease for to
Speaker 3: slow him down, for me to have some time with him,
Speaker 3: to really get to know him. The first time I
Speaker 3: heard my father say he loved me, I was thirty
Speaker 3: seven years old. But that couldn't have happened, Matt until
Speaker 3: I confronted some things till I asked him, why was
Speaker 3: he so hard? Why did you curse out your middle
Speaker 3: school age son for making a mistake and turning on
Speaker 3: the heat instead of the ac and the barbershop and
Speaker 3: humiliating me in front of everyone. When I was able
Speaker 3: to hear his heart from where it came from, I
Speaker 3: was able to forgive him, and in that moment, the
Speaker 3: Holy Spirit said, tell your dad, thanks for being the
Speaker 3: dad you needed. So in me, I'm like, that's crazy.
Speaker 3: Because I needed a different father. And I said that,
Speaker 3: and I kissed him on his forehead. That's the first
Speaker 3: time I would kiss my father. As I was walking
Speaker 3: out the room in the nursing home, I hear him
Speaker 3: breathing heavy. He was crying. The first time I saw
Speaker 3: my father cry. And I went back to him and
Speaker 3: I laid my head on his chest and we just
Speaker 3: cried like man. It was so liberating because for so
Speaker 3: long I didn't know it. He held the guilt of
Speaker 3: not being the dad that he even wanted to be
Speaker 3: because he was hardened by his situation. He was the
Speaker 3: things he went through in Florida when it was racist,
Speaker 3: the pimp culture. In Detroit, he was actually called to
Speaker 3: be a pastor, but a lot of the pimps became pastors.
Speaker 3: And he says, I never want to be a hypocrite,
Speaker 3: so I just rather live his life and he ran
Speaker 3: from it. And as a result of that transparent moment,
Speaker 3: I asked him, what would you like me to promise
Speaker 3: you that I could live out? He said that I
Speaker 3: would preach the Gospel and then he would hear it.
Speaker 3: Both of those are fulfilled while your father is living.
Speaker 3: Don't get the enemy. Two stones. What I mean by
Speaker 3: that is when he died and you're not reconciled, you're
Speaker 3: going to have heavy regrets. Just allow one stone, meaning
Speaker 3: you get hit with one stone is death, two stones
Speaker 3: is man. I wish I could have shut it and
Speaker 3: would have.
Speaker 2: I wish it's so much I could ask my father
Speaker 2: right now.
Speaker 3: So you have a chance that many young boys and
Speaker 3: men don't get and your father may need you.
Speaker 2: To help him.
Speaker 3: Dude, they didn't have men of that era, couldn't talk
Speaker 3: like this in that so that the realness was you
Speaker 3: the same. Whatever you said used to beat me. That's resentment.
Speaker 3: That's hurt.
Speaker 2: So your guard.
Speaker 3: So you're living from the anger instead of releasing those
Speaker 3: real emotions. That's why I said, where's the what's the
Speaker 3: real emotion? When you start expressing the real emotion, then
Speaker 3: the tear is gonna come. The anger is it's a front.
Speaker 3: It's safe for us to express that real say we
Speaker 3: go there, real facts. But to say, man, you neglected me.
Speaker 1: Dad.
Speaker 3: I tried my best to to to be your best son,
Speaker 3: and you still missed me. Here it is, I'm in
Speaker 3: the NBA, I'm doing great things. You still missed me.
Speaker 3: That has to come out. And that's why you backed up.
Speaker 3: You need emotional enema. That's what I tell me. You
Speaker 3: gotta release it. It's gonna it's gonna lock you in.
Speaker 3: Like my best friend Vick here struggle with PTSD from
Speaker 3: being a police officer and other things that happened. He
Speaker 3: was driving his car, his truck and he got overwhelmed
Speaker 3: with anger and he was clinching the stern with or
Speaker 3: so fierce that he imprinted his fingernails, imprinted his palm.
Speaker 3: And he has a big pickup truck. But for him
Speaker 3: to be that intense with anger and not knowing where
Speaker 3: it comes from. But his wife died. I can go
Speaker 3: on and on and on, and if you're not crying
Speaker 3: about that a lot, and you got to be strong
Speaker 3: for everyone else. He has a young son, and how
Speaker 3: many friends are emotionally intelligent where it can be there
Speaker 3: with you and not judge you. That's why we lose it.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's always been a thing, man, And that's
Speaker 2: another thing I fear. That's just like one. It could
Speaker 2: be something small like me flying off the edge and
Speaker 2: jumping on somebody's ass, you know what I mean, just
Speaker 2: because it's that's the quickest emotion, the easiest emotion, just
Speaker 2: that anger is.
Speaker 3: Do you want to be free from that?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Absolutely, I would love to.
Speaker 3: All right, you get with.
Speaker 2: Me, Yeah absolutely, We're gonna do it.
Speaker 3: Help you work through that with all these lights and
Speaker 3: can Yeah, your.
Speaker 2: Youth Development Group Union, which is your old record label,
Speaker 2: how did you transition from you know, we skipped over
Speaker 2: a little bit stuff, but you DJed, You found some
Speaker 2: piece in DJ in and worked with a lot of
Speaker 2: big people, big names in that space. Where did the
Speaker 2: transformation from DJing into giving back to comming men?
Speaker 3: It came first and foremost when I was a second
Speaker 3: of DJ, just producing music, just wanted to become the
Speaker 3: number one producer and DJ. It didn't matter what type
Speaker 3: of music I put out. But when I surrendered my
Speaker 3: life to the most high, that all changed. And then
Speaker 3: I saw myself as a hypocrite because here it is
Speaker 3: I'm trying to mentor youth out of the life that
Speaker 3: could lead them astray. But yet my music was the
Speaker 3: soundtrack for it. When we started the Union, when I
Speaker 3: got the vision to do that Union Records, all the
Speaker 3: music was christ centered, It was encouraging, empowering. But what
Speaker 3: we noticed is that when the songs stopped. The kids
Speaker 3: still had their issues, they still had the trauma, they
Speaker 3: still had to deal with the environment they were in.
Speaker 3: And that's when I decided to go after our nonprofit
Speaker 3: and we transform from you and your records to the nonprofit,
Speaker 3: the Union, and we've reached over seventeen thousand youth since
Speaker 3: two thousand and three. And the Cave of Adullam, which
Speaker 3: is the Transformational Training Academy, where I use the martial
Speaker 3: arts as one two to help men with boys to
Speaker 3: navigate through the pressures of this world without succumbing to
Speaker 3: their emotions by first teaching them that it's okay to
Speaker 3: be emotional, and then with the biblical principles and of
Speaker 3: course the presence of their fathers there, it's truly a
Speaker 3: transformational space. You'll see the boys have their emotional breakdown.
Speaker 3: We call it a moment on the mat when I'm
Speaker 3: able to get them to see, Okay, this is why
Speaker 3: you're failing in school, this is why you're talking back
Speaker 3: to your mother, this is why you fear walking your
Speaker 3: own path. The father who is watching starts getting emotional
Speaker 3: because he sees himself.
Speaker 2: On the man.
Speaker 3: So if you were there and I'm working with your sons,
Speaker 3: you not only see them, you'll see a little mad
Speaker 3: on the man, and in them finding freedom, you're going
Speaker 3: to request the same. And then you actually learn how
Speaker 3: to become emotionally intelligent because you watch me help them
Speaker 3: process their emotions as well. And so that's how that
Speaker 3: all started. And we're trying to make it a school
Speaker 3: now because I want to scale the Cave of Adelum.
Speaker 3: I don't want it to die with me. And we
Speaker 3: get a lot of requests, can Chicago, Atlanta, La, can
Speaker 3: you please bring it? Quest for Ghana. So we want
Speaker 3: to make it a middle school with the Cave of
Speaker 3: Adelum as the physical education piece. So imagine all of
Speaker 3: the core subjects are surrounded by that, that principle of
Speaker 3: emotional stability, mental resilience, respect, and all the other codes
Speaker 3: that we teach in the Cave of Adelum. Now a
Speaker 3: student takes those principles into the classroom, then they's community service.
Speaker 3: We teach dining, etiquete, grooming, etiquete, financial literacy. All of
Speaker 3: these principles now are in one hub, and that's what
Speaker 3: can be skilled. If it stays the way it is now,
Speaker 3: it'll die with me. Because I'm annoying it for it,
Speaker 3: which I believe the next person who has it has
Speaker 3: to have that as well, because it takes more than
Speaker 3: martial art skills to help boys navigate through their trauma
Speaker 3: and emotional pain. But it's a lot easier when it
Speaker 3: isn't just that. So that's my desire. We're going to
Speaker 3: pilot it this summer, as we'll call it the Cave Camp,
Speaker 3: and they get to go study math and science other
Speaker 3: ages eight ages eight through twelve. We have them for
Speaker 3: eight hours, which is really good. Yeah, we want to
Speaker 3: see how it really work in the school environment, and
Speaker 3: so we're really excited about that.
Speaker 2: Sounds great.
Speaker 4: Do you wish more rap artists making powering songs to
Speaker 4: empower youth instead of talking about guns and violence and
Speaker 4: stuff like that.
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, of course I would. You know, I
Speaker 3: would love to that more rappers would have that on
Speaker 3: their heart when they're writing their songs. But more importantly,
Speaker 3: I want them to live in you know, it's it's
Speaker 3: you know, you could find one or two good songs
Speaker 3: on the album, but then we listened to.
Speaker 2: The whole album.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so exactly, you have one good song and then
Speaker 3: one of my students here it and now you buys
Speaker 3: your album. Now he don't like women because of this
Speaker 3: other song. So I understand where they are because I
Speaker 3: was there, you know. I compromised my gift to try
Speaker 3: to get record deals, you know, started producing music for rappers,
Speaker 3: my good friends. We you know, the lyrics didn't match
Speaker 3: my heart, you know, but it was the only way
Speaker 3: to get a record deal.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: We started with Ka and Mashra was my first group.
Speaker 3: We're friends with Chuck Depublican and me. He even let
Speaker 3: us open up for him twice, you know. But that
Speaker 3: shifted when the music industry shifted, and now you can
Speaker 3: only get a record deal if you rap a certain way,
Speaker 3: you act a certain way, you talk a certain way.
Speaker 3: So I get it. But now the power is now
Speaker 3: back to the artists, and you have the power to
Speaker 3: really shift the culture. So yeah, I would love for
Speaker 3: them to do that because I see the result of
Speaker 3: what's being produced when the kids come to behavior their mindset.
Speaker 3: And as a DJ, you can't tell me there's no
Speaker 3: power in music to change. I would throw on certain
Speaker 3: songs when the party was kind of dead, or I
Speaker 3: just wanted to go meet a girl. I knew what
Speaker 3: songs to throw on and make them fight, and I
Speaker 3: just throw on certain music. Just wait next to you know,
Speaker 3: a chair, bag bag. I'm packing up, ready to leave.
Speaker 3: Give me my money. I'm going to get something to
Speaker 3: eat and meet this girl. So you can't tell me
Speaker 3: there's no power in music and we have to hold
Speaker 3: each other responsible for that. It's a powerful too, it's
Speaker 3: a powerful gift. But the thing is because I'm reached
Speaker 3: out by a lot of rappers you know who are
Speaker 3: real popular, I'm like cool. I appreciate the DM. I
Speaker 3: admire the fact that you're seeking. But let's go deeper.
Speaker 3: And that's the stopping point for a lot of us
Speaker 3: as men because to many of them, like a father
Speaker 3: they didn't have. So when you finally could get with
Speaker 3: a man who cares for who you are and not
Speaker 3: what you do. Even when I work with NFL players
Speaker 3: or basketball players, I'm not really a fan of what
Speaker 3: you do. I'm a fan of who you are as
Speaker 3: a man. When you meet someone like that, now you
Speaker 3: got to drop your guard and I'm not going to
Speaker 3: crush your heart. I'm not going to crush even your ego.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna give you the space to feel and to
Speaker 3: fail in that moment so that you can heal. Once
Speaker 3: you get them to see that different, they won't even
Speaker 3: want to make the music that way. And so that's
Speaker 3: my I'm a principal person. So making one song and
Speaker 3: your heart hasn't changed won't really change the culture.
Speaker 2: You know, the sense of the community has been lost.
Speaker 4: We have a real mutual friend that I wish he
Speaker 4: was in every state the United States because a lot
Speaker 4: of things will be different in new era.
Speaker 2: Zeke, you know, that's my brother.
Speaker 4: What do we need to do to continue to support
Speaker 4: people like that, just to get that contagious in every state,
Speaker 4: because what he's doing is showing how we need to
Speaker 4: take care of our community, provide for our community, and
Speaker 4: care about the children in our community. He's showing that
Speaker 4: on a high level, and for it to be like
Speaker 4: with social media, feelingly be doing it.
Speaker 3: It's still not contagious as it should be in every
Speaker 3: other state.
Speaker 2: How do we support people.
Speaker 4: Like that and get that going everywhere because that would
Speaker 4: make a big change.
Speaker 3: The mind of our people. Zeke actually had posted something recently.
Speaker 3: He said that more parents are concerned with big meat
Speaker 3: paperwork than their children's school work.
Speaker 2: Mostly that the other the day year.
Speaker 3: Okay, that resonated with me because of the work we've
Speaker 3: been doing for over twenty one years. Now, you can
Speaker 3: help the child, but send them back to the parents
Speaker 3: who are still wounded and dealing with unresolved trauma.
Speaker 2: You name it.
Speaker 3: So you see how passionate Zeke is. His commitment and zeal.
Speaker 3: When I look at my brother, even myself to some extent,
Speaker 3: and you really look at the problem, we're sowing seed
Speaker 3: on infertile ground. We haven't broken up the trauma, the lies,
Speaker 3: the systemic racism, all of this that has our minds
Speaker 3: like this, and as a people, we like this. And
Speaker 3: until we can til that soil of our minds and
Speaker 3: open it up and renew the mind, all of the
Speaker 3: seeds will stay on the surface and the birds that
Speaker 3: keep coming taking into the way. That's why millions are
Speaker 3: spent on this type of work. And then you're like, well,
Speaker 3: wait a minute, why is it worse now than it
Speaker 3: was twenty years ago? And we have more money. People
Speaker 3: see what Zeke does, but they don't understand what he's
Speaker 3: been through to make him that way. You see, his
Speaker 3: mind isn't like the majority of people. Again, we got
Speaker 3: to go to the principle as a people, as a fighter.
Speaker 3: For instance, let's stay in sports. We were talking about this.
Speaker 3: If you had to play, I don't care, say the
Speaker 3: bulls and you' all on the same team. Do you
Speaker 3: only look at the bulls film and don't look at yours?
Speaker 3: Or do you look at both both both? In our community,
Speaker 3: we tend to only look at what was being done
Speaker 3: to us instead of same.
Speaker 2: Okay, cool.
Speaker 3: What do we need to do to improve? What are
Speaker 3: our strengths and weaknesses? How do we eliminate these weaknesses
Speaker 3: and become stronger? That's what has to happen.
Speaker 2: First.
Speaker 3: See, our minds are not renewed. We've fallen even from
Speaker 3: the faith where we used to be. We've been in church,
Speaker 3: but we weren't in Christ like literally walking that out.
Speaker 3: You know, you can't just pray things away, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean. The scriptures even say faith without works
Speaker 3: is dead. I'm a doer, don't be It's also written,
Speaker 3: don't be a hero of the word, be a doer
Speaker 3: of the world. So it's so much there that we
Speaker 3: have to heal our people. So even with parents who
Speaker 3: you know, who may not be doing the greatest of
Speaker 3: job raising their children. When you talk to them, pull
Speaker 3: them aside. They break down.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 3: I had mothers literally say, can's you get a hood?
Speaker 3: I can't contain it and just cry weeping fathers. You know,
Speaker 3: I've never in all the years I've been doing this,
Speaker 3: I've never seen a father who didn't love their children.
Speaker 3: I saw a father who didn't love himself. He would
Speaker 3: feel less of a man because he couldn't do more,
Speaker 3: and so he felt that isolation was the answer, and
Speaker 3: it's not.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 3: My thing is helping our people, heal, helping our community
Speaker 3: hold each other responsible in love, meaning I'm not on
Speaker 3: you just to be you. I'm on you because I.
Speaker 2: Love you, you know.
Speaker 3: And then that's when I believe things have changed. Zeke
Speaker 3: is a unicorn brother, you know what I mean, And
Speaker 3: he's he's a solid brother. And if it just stays him,
Speaker 3: the problem gonna keep existing. The issue is is that
Speaker 3: Zeke is running his lane. But when is everyone else
Speaker 3: going to start running there running their lanes? You know,
Speaker 3: how did martial arts become a staple in the development
Speaker 3: of the youth you work with? I always wanted, you know,
Speaker 3: that father figure, that man who could teach me the way,
Speaker 3: you know, to manhood. Of course, every young boy wants
Speaker 3: to know how to fight, and so you'll see the
Speaker 3: sense the old martial arts movies. The students come in
Speaker 3: and bout and instructed all wise, and no one could
Speaker 3: touch them. So I longed for that, and so I
Speaker 3: started training in that and it became my outlet. But
Speaker 3: the marshal art isn't enough though. When I started the
Speaker 3: Cave of Adullum, it was the popular thing. Was Scared
Speaker 3: Straight programs, you remember those. We'll take a kid who
Speaker 3: was troubled into the prisons and hopefully the prisoners would
Speaker 3: scare him straight and he would pay the prisoners. It
Speaker 3: didn't work, and now everyone realized, how can you help
Speaker 3: a kid overcome trauma by re traumatizing? It didn't work.
Speaker 3: What about the boot camps? You don't see him anymore,
Speaker 3: the kids they would put on the front, yes sir, no, sir, yes,
Speaker 3: sir no sir. All you doing is yelling at them.
Speaker 3: You think yelling is going to help a boy who's
Speaker 3: wounded from his father not being there or his mother
Speaker 3: not being there. That's like stitching up a wound with
Speaker 3: a needle and no thread. That's all you're doing. You're
Speaker 3: hurting him more and more and more. I came to
Speaker 3: the mentoring space that way, discipline, focus, strength forty two.
Speaker 3: The kids in Highland Park, Michigan, which was a tough
Speaker 3: neighborhood at the time, they didn't need that. They needed love,
Speaker 3: They didn't need more discipline, They didn't need to be
Speaker 3: scared straight. They needed to be healed. So from the
Speaker 3: martial arts, I said, cool, I'm gonna keep some of this,
Speaker 3: but let me get these boys a space where they
Speaker 3: can express how they feel. The kids I was given
Speaker 3: for the pilot program, I think about six were in
Speaker 3: danger of not graduating. They all did one of the
Speaker 3: evaluations of the Cave of Adullum that over seventy eight
Speaker 3: percent of our students improved their grade point average by
Speaker 3: one letter grade. Without tutoring what's happening. I'm allowing them
Speaker 3: to unpack what's stopping them from performing to their potential.
Speaker 3: When you give a boy or a man that space
Speaker 3: to be human, he sells you can't stop them. He's
Speaker 3: going to be the protector and provider. That's an eighty
Speaker 3: in all of us. But now you're telling me I
Speaker 3: can be a nurturer, and it doesn't mean I'm feminine.
Speaker 3: I can be compassionate. It doesn't mean I'm weak. I
Speaker 3: can have empathy for someone, and it doesn't mean pusillanimous
Speaker 3: or naive. Man. The whole world would change when that happens,
Speaker 3: and that's my desire. The martial arts what I love
Speaker 3: about it. You can't hide sports. We can hide when
Speaker 3: the fist coming at you. You can't hide when someone
Speaker 3: gets your back and starts choking you and you fighting,
Speaker 3: you can feel it. You can't hide. That's going to
Speaker 3: bring up some emotions. It's gonna bring back some flash.
Speaker 3: It's like, whoa, I remember that kid bullied me. We
Speaker 3: had a man literally going to feet a position remembering
Speaker 3: the time he was bullied. Thankfully I was the right
Speaker 3: man in that moment could help him come out of that.
Speaker 3: Talk to him like, where are you what are you
Speaker 3: feeling when when he was behind me? Remind me of
Speaker 3: this happening, and this happening or pressure at work? That
Speaker 3: pressure get off me and you lose all your technique.
Speaker 3: In sports, we see emotions ruined games that should have
Speaker 3: been won easily. I had a young guy worked with
Speaker 3: in the NFL. He correlated being pulled out of the
Speaker 3: game as abandonment associated with a wounding childhood. I had
Speaker 3: to help him unpack that lie. Beautiful young brother in
Speaker 3: the NBA, you see it all the time. I was
Speaker 3: working with one brother. I can't see the team and
Speaker 3: the NBA team. His fear was missing a free throw
Speaker 3: because he didn't want to get talked about, and he
Speaker 3: traced it back to other womns. I said, well, let's
Speaker 3: eliminate anybody. Yeah, okay, of course good.
Speaker 2: So you' hilarious.
Speaker 3: So let's eliminate the threat I mean. He said, So,
Speaker 3: what do you mean? I said, well, we can stop missing.
Speaker 3: I mean his fear was the airball, That's what it was.
Speaker 3: We can stop that. He said, how, I say, just
Speaker 3: hit the rim, don't try to make the shot.
Speaker 2: Hit the rim.
Speaker 3: Then that led to other conversations. He had his best
Speaker 3: game that season that night because he was allowed to
Speaker 3: express how he felt. And then he shared something else
Speaker 3: I appreciated. He said that when the coach pulled him
Speaker 3: out of the game, he thought it was because he
Speaker 3: wasn't performing well. I said, did you ask him? He
Speaker 3: was like no, Like, why are you assuming that? The
Speaker 3: coach right there?
Speaker 2: Ask him?
Speaker 3: But it's this invisible wall between the players and the coaches.
Speaker 3: I can't let them know I'm feeling this or this way,
Speaker 3: because they may not play me. I know a lot
Speaker 3: of players play injured, like serious injuries, because they don't
Speaker 3: want to lose their spot. I know coaches who are
Speaker 3: struggling mentally personally can't fear. They fear they fear letting
Speaker 3: the team know that they then they will lose their respect.
Speaker 3: But they don't understand when you allow your team to
Speaker 3: see that you just a man just like them. And
Speaker 3: and don't let the coach be a comprehensive man where
Speaker 3: he could possibly shed a tear because of something personal,
Speaker 3: not because he lost a playoff game. Now those men
Speaker 3: that come around him and support him, So now you
Speaker 3: won't just have the same uniform on, you actually be
Speaker 3: a team. And that's the power of comprehensiveness and being
Speaker 3: a comprehensive man. And that's the benefit as well from
Speaker 3: community camaraderie, just having open conversations and the word what
Speaker 3: is it they say, let's be vulnerable, Like no, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: I tell men, never be vulnerable. That's the wrong word.
Speaker 3: We're trying to tell you to be emotionally open and
Speaker 3: transparent vulnerability or being vulnerable is actually you're putting yourself
Speaker 3: in danger or risk of death. If we had no
Speaker 3: guns and ten guys came in here with guns, we're vulnerable,
Speaker 3: all right. No good man, she say, very no good man.
Speaker 3: No good father would ever want himself or his family
Speaker 3: in vulnerable positions. So we want to be transparent and
Speaker 3: open when you allow that to happen. This will happen.
Speaker 3: If we were alone without these license cameras on, Matt
Speaker 3: would be crying me too. Yeah, And so that's what
Speaker 3: it takes. It's just like, okay, let's be open with
Speaker 3: each other. Like I don't even that just my first
Speaker 3: time meeting you, and I care about you because I
Speaker 3: know what it feels like to hold on to all
Speaker 3: of that.
Speaker 4: I want to be there too. You need to be
Speaker 4: there because I know, you know, I cried when his mom.
Speaker 2: Passed, and I know that's how we became closer with
Speaker 2: his teammates. Would have happened, and he was there every day,
Speaker 2: bringing me something, coming to watch a movie, bring me
Speaker 2: some weed we can smoke. That's how we, like, we
Speaker 2: really went from.
Speaker 3: You have to be there because I probably would need
Speaker 3: you as far as in some.
Speaker 2: Role playing and I got my own stuff that I
Speaker 2: need to let out.
Speaker 3: Okay, cool list, We'll make it happen.
Speaker 2: We go make it. I told you were coming to
Speaker 2: Detroit later in the summer. La, we're in the home
Speaker 2: of the gang capital. You know you grew up in Detroit.
Speaker 2: You know, pimping and that kind of stuff. What do
Speaker 2: you tell brothers in the cycle? Because I think a
Speaker 2: lot of times you can't see it while you're in it.
Speaker 2: How do you break free from that or what is
Speaker 2: the first step of breaking free from that vicious cycle?
Speaker 2: Because we want them to put the guns down, but
Speaker 2: then what you know, we want them to stop pimping,
Speaker 2: but then what like, they're doing it for a means
Speaker 2: of survival most of the time, and we're telling them
Speaker 2: to stop, But then we don't replace what they were
Speaker 2: doing with anything else. So what is the first step
Speaker 2: in your mind to start walking down the right path
Speaker 2: or a better path?
Speaker 3: We as men who are successful at doing it, need
Speaker 3: to model it, like really modeling everything else. Yeah, you
Speaker 3: have to model that. I remember I was going to
Speaker 3: the airport. I was lax, and a guy looked just
Speaker 3: like Nipsey stopped me. Tattoo tears and he had the
Speaker 3: marathon tattooed on his chest, and he says, there's something
Speaker 3: about you. I just want to tell you something. I
Speaker 3: didn't know what this was going. He says, God is
Speaker 3: with you, and he says, don't lose the faith. And
Speaker 3: so we just started talking. And I looked at his
Speaker 3: hand and he had broken his two knuckles here, and
Speaker 3: that's typically the knuckles. Yeah, it's from fighting because you're
Speaker 3: punching incorrectly. You're supposed to strike with these two. That's
Speaker 3: why these protrude out further the needs to I can
Speaker 3: condition these to break. And so I said, can I
Speaker 3: help you with something? I use that moment, even though
Speaker 3: I didn't know him, to pour into him, and he
Speaker 3: thought I was talking initially about teaching him how to punch.
Speaker 3: I said, yes, I said, but let me teach you
Speaker 3: how to hit the things in life that are breaking you.
Speaker 3: I said, so, if you're using the wrong tools for
Speaker 3: that moment, you're going to break instead of you breaking it.
Speaker 3: And I wish I could see this young man again
Speaker 3: because I love. That's what I love, not necessarily the cameras,
Speaker 3: the attention. If you can put me with the game,
Speaker 3: I don't care who it is. Put me in a
Speaker 3: room with them because I love them. I know they
Speaker 3: just misguided. I know they what happened. The system was
Speaker 3: setting them up. But yet they're so gifted and beautiful
Speaker 3: and they can navigate if we teach them. So many
Speaker 3: of us get to a place in life where we're good,
Speaker 3: and then we complain about them. And that was the
Speaker 3: issue I found with the boys. When I first started
Speaker 3: the Cave, I was going to many schools, the hallways
Speaker 3: and the lockers, was kicked and punched in When I
Speaker 3: started asking, like, what's going on? Where is this anger
Speaker 3: coming from? The general census was everyone expects us to
Speaker 3: act like a man, but we ain't got one here
Speaker 3: teaching us. So the first step is us teaching them.
Speaker 3: Being there with them. We all got some influence. That's
Speaker 3: why I use my platform. The young boys would come
Speaker 3: up to me. I had game members stop at the cave.
Speaker 3: I ain't have my gun on me walking out at
Speaker 3: the time, I didn't know what they expect. I knew
Speaker 3: the car they hanging out, you know, And I got
Speaker 3: middle school kids walking to see their parents. The war
Speaker 3: in me. I said, okay, cool, they can't feel fear
Speaker 3: or then I'm not prepared for this. So I just
Speaker 3: walked straight to them. Fast guy, get out, look broken.
Speaker 3: I said, what's up? He says, mister Wilson. I said yeah.
Speaker 3: He says, I just want to come shake your hand.
Speaker 3: He said, my father just died and you're like a
Speaker 3: father to me on social media. And I just hugged him.
Speaker 3: I prejudged him because of what society teaches us about
Speaker 3: our boys who look a certain way. Brother was just grieving,
Speaker 3: and he says, please keep these kids away from what
Speaker 3: we do. This is not the way. So right there,
Speaker 3: lets you know they don't want to do what they do.
Speaker 3: So as you says, how can we help them? It's
Speaker 3: not about talking, it's about doing. And it's even deeper
Speaker 3: than doing, it's about really modeling it, like what does
Speaker 3: it look like when the cameras ain't on? Do your
Speaker 3: kids really love you? It's easy for me not to
Speaker 3: cheat on my wife, because what can a woman say
Speaker 3: to me that my wife hasn't already said? My wife
Speaker 3: means it. You don't even know me. You know what
Speaker 3: I mean? And I'm a trip at times, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean. I admit it, But my wife still
Speaker 3: loves me. When kids can see that, they can see
Speaker 3: the unit of a family and their family's not breaking down,
Speaker 3: like oh snap, this is cool now, so how are
Speaker 3: you tough? But you can't deal with the emotions of
Speaker 3: like our wives or kids or whatever. When they can
Speaker 3: see a man, no matter what's going on, he's on
Speaker 3: fire and he's still moving through. It's like Moses when
Speaker 3: he saw the burning bush. It wasn't the fact that
Speaker 3: the bush was burning. It was the fact that the
Speaker 3: bush was burning and it wasn't consumed. That's what made
Speaker 3: him stop.
Speaker 2: Like whoa.
Speaker 3: So when they see us on fire with the stresses
Speaker 3: of life, the things that we've gone through, and we
Speaker 3: ain't consumed and we keep moving, they'll stop and say, yo,
Speaker 3: some of I'm mad. I like the fact I didn't
Speaker 3: know he went through that with his mind. I didn't
Speaker 3: know his father. I didn't know this and he made it.
Speaker 3: I can make it stack. I didn't know this about you.
Speaker 3: I didn't know that you cry, man. You look hard
Speaker 3: as hell.
Speaker 2: You know what I mean.
Speaker 3: It's like you cry too, Okay, cool, I want to
Speaker 3: cry because my best friend just got shot. We normalize
Speaker 3: our children hearing gunshots. That's not normal. When we model it,
Speaker 3: then they set free. The Cave of Adulum is successful
Speaker 3: because I gave them what I longed to have. A
Speaker 3: man who's committed but won't condemn you, will teach you
Speaker 3: the way of a warrior of y'all and still be
Speaker 3: with you regardless if you fail or not. I tell
Speaker 3: him at the door of the Cave of Adeloma, I said,
Speaker 3: you ever seen a door at the mouth of a cave?
Speaker 3: They say no, I said, you'll never see a door here.
Speaker 3: You can come in and out as you want, and
Speaker 3: I'm gonna love you the same way when you feel
Speaker 3: this training is over. As long as you don't stop
Speaker 3: before the right of passage is complete and you want
Speaker 3: to do something else, I'm here for you. I've had
Speaker 3: students couldn't make it, couldn't complete it. Still there, still
Speaker 3: love them, They said. Man, I don't know a lot
Speaker 3: of men like that, but I know one on Oakmen
Speaker 3: Boulevard in Detroit where I can go to if I'm struggling.
Speaker 3: How many former NBA players have their heart like you? Guys,
Speaker 3: what you've been through wasn't meant to destroy you, It
Speaker 3: was to refine you. We allow it to destroy us.
Speaker 3: When we hold on to it, you can't hold it,
Speaker 3: supposed to release it. It's not yours anyway. A lot
Speaker 3: of times we think that we weren't good enough for
Speaker 3: our parents, but it's actually the opposite. They weren't good
Speaker 3: enough in their lives for us. Whatever happened, who knows,
Speaker 3: they just weren't in the right place. That's the power
Speaker 3: of forgiveness. You ain't letting no one get away with nothing.
Speaker 3: It's releasing you. It's freeing you from the pain, the hurt,
Speaker 3: the resentment. I forgive you and I mean it. And
Speaker 3: that's deliberation, and that before.
Speaker 2: We get out of here, remind us of the four
Speaker 2: urs again.
Speaker 3: Four RS is reflect, release, reset, and rest. So in
Speaker 3: the morning and in the evenings, I practice it and
Speaker 3: I practice it throughout the day. I reflect on what
Speaker 3: can be troubling me, what's it can be good things
Speaker 3: as well, But if it's something bad, I think going
Speaker 3: and meditate, pray. And then if it's something that I
Speaker 3: don't need to revisit, like if I offended my wife earlier,
Speaker 3: I don't want to release that. I want to hold that.
Speaker 3: I want to retain that. That's another R. So we
Speaker 3: can revisit it, and I can apologize. But if it's
Speaker 3: negative or it can become toxic, it's not good for
Speaker 3: me or what I'm.
Speaker 2: Called to do.
Speaker 3: I release it, let it go. It's called sherlock, cast
Speaker 3: it away. After I release it, now I'm able to
Speaker 3: reset to my baseline where I need to be. Then
Speaker 3: after that, I'm in a constant state of rest. We
Speaker 3: don't need when we say retired, we don't need sleep.
Speaker 3: We want rest, man, freedom from whatever we'res assume. And
Speaker 3: that's the key. And so when you practice releasing and
Speaker 3: resetting or reflecting releasing and resetting, then you can finally
Speaker 3: find rest.
Speaker 2: Beautifully said the man. The moment demands is out. Now
Speaker 2: you could follow Jason at mister Jason O. Wilson on socials. Man,
Speaker 2: we want to thank you. This was This was dope.
Speaker 2: And I'm definitely looking forward to picking this up man
Speaker 2: the man, and and and really because like I said,
Speaker 2: it's been something I want to do. Like I said,
Speaker 2: I have a quote this Statadamy from Tupac Up dying
Speaker 2: inside but outside I'm looking fearless, Like I feel like
Speaker 2: that's the story in my life, Like I've always been
Speaker 2: damn He's a tough, light, skim motherfucker. He's always But
Speaker 2: I don't want to have to be that's just who
Speaker 2: I've been.
Speaker 3: You're saying so much. I wish I had time even
Speaker 3: in how you had to be because you're life skinned.
Speaker 3: You see, it's a lot you've been programmed to feel
Speaker 3: that's not accurate. And so when this we get out
Speaker 3: of here, we can we can dig it's you right there, Yeah,
Speaker 3: your brother see it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it'll be you know, I know, like
Speaker 4: the time, people don't like to have the stuff, you know,
Speaker 4: recording and for world to see. But for me, the
Speaker 4: way a lot of people look at me and think
Speaker 4: about me, I would love to have mind tele advised
Speaker 4: because it's gonna touch a lot of people, a lot
Speaker 4: of stuff that I've been through, even with the George
Speaker 4: Floyd me calling off the wed and like it resonates
Speaker 4: to a lot of people, a lot of young men,
Speaker 4: to a lot of them attext, like bro, I appreciate
Speaker 4: you because I was about to get married in no
Speaker 4: same type of situation. But I didn't have the guts
Speaker 4: to do that, you know what I'm saying, Like, so
Speaker 4: a lot of stuff in my life I have touched
Speaker 4: a lot of young men. But I know me releasing
Speaker 4: a lot of stuff that I have built in for
Speaker 4: the world to see and seeing me vulnerable it will
Speaker 4: help a lot of.
Speaker 3: People transparent yeah, tradual Yeah, oh yeah, I'm the same way.
Speaker 4: That's why you're transparent instead are vulnerable.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah, So I allow myself to be seen
Speaker 3: because it's freedom in that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So, like you know, if if you're sure Jesus was
Speaker 3: walking through the streets of Jerusalem openly crime because the
Speaker 3: people were like sheep without a shepherd. What do I
Speaker 3: have to be ashamed of?
Speaker 2: Nothing?
Speaker 3: So I want that freedom.
Speaker 2: I don't.
Speaker 3: I should be able to cry in front of anyone
Speaker 3: express how I feel. Now if you're not the person
Speaker 3: who can receive it or value it, thank you for
Speaker 3: letting me know. But I'm not going to change. I'm
Speaker 3: not going back into emotional incarceration just to be a part.
Speaker 2: Of your emotional incarceration. And this is that's where you are.
Speaker 3: Yes, we're gonna break you free.
Speaker 2: You used the P word earlier.
Speaker 3: I couldn't umous.
Speaker 2: What does that mean?
Speaker 3: It means lack of courage and strength, hu solanimousmous Yeah yeah,
Speaker 3: Instead of I would often pray, you know, when I
Speaker 3: was trying, when I was not trying, when I was
Speaker 3: crossing over fully into walking with christ. I wanted alternative
Speaker 3: curse words. I like Malcolm X when he said that, uh,
Speaker 3: he's too intelligent the curse so he read the dictionary.
Speaker 3: He had a vast vocabulary. So I had prayed for
Speaker 3: alternative curse words. So instead of saying the P word
Speaker 3: p U S s Y, I use pucenanimous. So I
Speaker 3: don't I don't ever want to have to conform to
Speaker 3: the way I was, you know, I want to be
Speaker 3: more intelligence, to grow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yes it, yeah yeah. This has been one
Speaker 2: of the most enlightening, not the one of the most
Speaker 2: enlightening episode We've had. My favorite episode personally, and I
Speaker 2: want to thank you for that. This was a This
Speaker 2: wasn't an interview. This was a conversation. I hope you
Speaker 2: guys enjoy it. You can find this at all the
Speaker 2: Smoke Productions YouTube and the DraftKings Network. We'll see y'all
Speaker 2: next week.
Speaker 1: Mm hmmm, mm hmm.