Hey there folks, welcome to episode 14 of a Pebble in a Pond podcast.
My name is Daniel and in this episode we're going to be talking about something that we
all need to have in spades and yet it is very difficult to hold on to.
Today we're going to be talking about hope.
And we'll start right away with a quote and this one really should set us up for a little
bit for this episode.
This is a quote from Tertullian of Carthage.
He said, hope is patience with the lamp lit.
I think that's important when we are defining hope to understand exactly what it is.
Not just the dictionary definition but what it feels like and the way that we define it
in ourselves.
The dictionary definition of hope is to wish for a particular event that one considers
possible.
Now keep in mind that one considers possible is a major part of that.
There is a difference between hope and wishful thinking.
A lot of people tend to kind of put the two of them together or think of hope as just
being this fruitless pursuit of something out there, something nebulous.
That's not really what hope is.
Hope is seeing something that you need or something that you want and whether it be
an outcome, it's very rarely an object, but an outcome or a feeling or some sort of desire
like that.
Seeing a path towards that and believing that there is a possibility that you can get there.
That's what hope is.
Hope is not like I hope I win the lottery.
You're not really hoping.
That's just wishful thinking.
You wish you could win the lottery, but there's no actual path to that other than getting
the one in 292 million chance.
That's it.
There's no actual hope.
There's no working towards that.
So why choose the quote, hope is patience with the lamplit?
Well, because I think that as we move into the episode before I play the music, I think
I want to make sure that I tell everybody exactly what you're going to get in this episode.
I'm not going to try to sugarcoat the problems that I have with hope at times.
You're going to have some negativity towards hope.
Not towards quotes.
We never have negativity towards quotes here.
You're going to have some negativity and I'm not trying to hate on it.
I just want to make sure that both sides of what hope can do and what it can be is discussed
here.
I know that people will see hope and think, oh, it's going to be an uplifting positive
episode and we are going to have that.
That's going to be there.
But I want to be realistic about the detrimental effects of hope right along the lines of kind
of a toxic positivity type of thing.
So I just wanted to make that clear and that quote kind of encapsulates that because the
reality is that you can hope for whatever you want to.
And if you're patient and determined, hope is kind of pointless to a certain degree.
Now it'll fuel you.
It'll get you there.
But really all it is is you being able to kind of see your path.
That's what hope allows you to do so that you're not stumbling around in the dark.
That's where the lamp lit part of it comes in.
Hope kind of guides us.
And there's other things that can guide us, but hope is one of those things that you can
carry with you at all times in the darkest of darks.
And it will, it'll be the warm light that helps you see your way through.
With that, let's start the music.
Now, let me just say this, that I were through the music and we're ready to go here.
There's nothing better than starting your podcast with a topic and then shitting on
that topic immediately.
That's not at all what I'm trying to do.
I just thought I'd try to grab people's attention by saying that hope is pointless.
Anyway, let's get a little bit deeper into what hope is before we really, really get
rolling here.
You know, I gave the dictionary definition and like I said, I think that it's important
to understand what it means to each individual.
And so the best way to kind of define it outside of just the simple dictionary definition is
to understand that hope is the thing that leads us to other traits that we find, well,
that, you know, most society finds to be admirable.
What do I mean by that?
Well, I mean, hope is the reason or one of the reasons why people find patience, why
people have patience and patience is widely considered to be a good thing.
Hope is one of the fueling factors behind determination.
You find it a lot easier to stick with something and to continue fighting for something if
you have hope, courage, courage, a lot of the courageous behavior that you see or you
read or you experience yourself that comes with some hope in it.
You know, you're hoping to make a difference.
You're hoping to make a change.
Hope is one of the things that brings about and fuels enthusiasm and purpose.
It's I can't I can't really say this in any way without sounding hyperbolic, I guess.
But it really is one of the single most important concepts or ideas or emotions that humans
feel.
Why do I qualify this comment by saying humans feel?
Why do I qualify that?
Well, because we don't know.
There's no actual proof that other animals in the animal kingdom necessarily feel hope
the same way that humans do.
Now they feel anticipation, they feel excitement, they're knowledgeable of things to come and
they get worked up over it.
But it's the way that humans feel hope is something that it's just hard to prove.
And we can feel we can we have our we can kind of infer our own our own ideas and emotions
on animals.
But without proof of it, it's difficult.
Now keep in mind this is coming from somebody who's got a plethora of pets and has a lot
of interactions with animals in the wild and things like that.
So it's it's coming from a place of not trying to diminish animals in any way.
That's not at all what I'm trying to do here.
But hope and the way that humans experience hope and the way that we need hope almost
as as a means of survival.
That is not something that you see in the animal kingdom too often.
And so I just thought I'd touch on that because there are you know, for most of these other
things that we talk about, there there's kind of through lines that you can kind of trace
to the animal kingdom.
You know, animals certainly love animals certainly, you know, value certain behaviors and certain
things.
And they, you know, they hold those things up and they have societies and all that stuff.
But hope, the way the you know, the dictionary defines it and the way that we're defining
it here.
That's not something that you see in the animal kingdom.
It is a pretty much a solely human experience.
So why why do an episode about hope?
Why talk about hope?
Well, hope is one of those things that I believe it sounds weird to say this way.
I believe that we need it is a necessity of life.
It's a necessity because you know, we all part of the human condition part of what we
all go through in this existence is turmoil.
We struggle.
We, we have heartbreak.
We have, you know, all sorts of trials and tribulations that that make being human difficult.
You know, obviously people are everybody's life is different and everybody's challenges
are different.
But one of the one of the things that allows us to make it through all of that struggle
and strife is hope.
Now I'm going to give you an example here of what I'm talking about.
And some of you will get it and some of you may, may, may struggle with this.
One of the, one of the interesting things about hope is it's, it is a driving force
in almost every relationship that you will ever have.
It is the thing that kind of keeps a relationship together.
Hope is what you go into every relationship and this I'm talking about specifically romantic
relationships here, but this can go for friendships as well.
Hope is what you start everything with.
When you go in and you meet somebody there, you know, and you, you have the intention
of, you know, maybe starting a relationship of any sort.
You're hoping you see a path, you see, you see the things about them, the attributes,
the attributes that you appreciate, that you know what they appreciate in you, you know,
as long as there's an honest, open communication, then you kind of can develop a path towards
a relationship in the future.
You really do start to see it.
You know, we call those fantasies, we call them, you know, whatever, but, but what they
are is they're you, whether whichever partner you are in a relationship with, you know,
you and your partner, you both will have these individual, you know, fantasies or aspirations
for a relationship.
And so you'll start to develop hope for that future.
Now that is a wonderful thing because it kind of sets you into a, into motion.
You start to go through the day by day, you start to develop all the little things that
you appreciate and that you love and that you, you know, so on and so forth.
But all of this is done with a guiding hope for a future, for the next day, for whatever
it may be.
Now that's not a conscious thing.
So we don't necessarily go into it saying, well, I, I'm going to hope for this, but you
will find yourself saying, I hope, you know, I hope that this works out.
I hope that, you know, all the time spent isn't worthless.
I hope that we can work this out.
You know, you'll use the term a lot, but you don't necessarily go into it with that exact,
you know, intention of hope.
You don't, nobody ever does that.
You don't say I'm going to hope for this, at least not in this, this particular case.
But what happens and what I mean by a necessity is what happens when you start to lose hope
in a relationship?
Now women, especially women will start to lose hope in a relationship very slowly.
You know, it kind of slowly peels away.
It kind of, you know, little, little things here and there.
And so they're the amount of hope that they have, like their hope reserve, if you will,
kind of slowly peels away and slowly gets smaller and smaller.
And as they start to lose hope, they stop doing as much in a relationship.
They stop, you know, they stop being whatever part of the relationship they are.
Men are a little bit different.
Men don't tend to lose hope gradually.
Men tend to hold on to that hope as long as they possibly can.
And then once they realize that they can no longer hold on to hope, they throw everything
away.
They have no hope anymore.
It is gone.
And once hope for a man is gone, there is no going back.
Now a lot of men will kind of hold a glimmer of hope, as they call it.
A lot of men will, once again, this is talking about in like romantic relationships, a lot
of men will hold on to a glimmer of hope.
But a lot of that is usually ego driven and not necessarily because they really necessarily
want to, you know, because once you've depleted that, all of that beautiful driving hope that
you have, once it's mostly gone, and you know, these are all terms, these are all things
that you've heard before.
And there's a reason why you've heard them.
But when all that hope is gone, there's really not much left.
You can love each other.
You can respect each other.
You can admire each other.
But if you don't have hope, the relationship is over.
And so it is very, very important that if you're in a relationship with someone, that
all of those things that you do, all of the things that you do to make them feel appreciated
and loved and confident about the future, all of these things, you know, safe, secure,
all of those things really do feed into the concept of hope.
Because if somebody has hope in a relationship, then they will, all of those other things
can be worked on.
All of those other things can be figured out.
All of those other things can be, they're like varying levels.
If you need to, if you need somebody to feel more safe, then you can make somebody feel
more safe, but you can't necessarily imbue them with hope.
That's something that is very difficult to give to some people.
Now the best way in a relationship, especially since we're using that example, the best way
to rekindle hope in a relationship is just through communication, just being as open
and honest as you can and making sure that there is a path, a shared path forward.
Now once again, once somebody loses hope, once especially a woman, once she loses hope,
that may be impossible to ever get back.
Like I said, men discard everything.
So you have to start over with a man.
And that requires, you know, you're basically starting in the negative because now not only
do they not have that hope, any glimmer or any shred of hope they're holding onto is
not going to be enough, but they also, you basically start in the negative because now
they're holding it against you, usually.
That's not the case every time.
So why do I use the relationship as an example here?
Why am I talking about that at all?
Because it's something that most people can understand.
You know, if you take and you're trying to quantify hope, we're trying to put it into
situations where we can really see it at work.
And when I was going through and I was reading a bunch of stuff about this, that was one
of those things that I was having a hard time doing.
You know, you can quantify so many things.
You can really put kind of a parameter around so many things.
But hope is not one of those things.
Hope escapes.
Hope is so, I don't know, effervescent.
I don't know if it's bubbly or not, but it's just one of those things that just always
escapes whatever box you want to kind of put it in.
And the only thing I could really find that made sense in almost every scenario was relationships,
was the hope that we have at the beginning of a relationship.
And what you find is that almost across the board, one of the things that ends relationships
is one side or the other or both losing hope.
They just don't see a hopeful path forward.
And so you lose your ability to fight for the relationship.
You lose the ability to not necessarily care, but you start to lose that patience.
You start to lose even kindness because you just don't have hope for it.
It almost seems, and here's where we get to that word, hopeless.
It does.
It seems hopeless.
And that can create all sorts of problems.
We can't talk about hope without talking about hopelessness.
And as somebody who has struggled with depression as long as I have, hopelessness is a key component
in my life.
For years, it was a driving force in my life.
And I know it very, very well.
So while I'm sitting here speaking about hope, there is this specter of hopelessness standing
behind me, mocking me.
You don't know anything about hope.
And I'm telling you that genuinely.
I sit here and I talk about this and to a certain degree, I feel like a fraud.
And I mean, I feel like a fraud because I've never been a very hopeful person.
Like I said before, the wishful thinking thing, I definitely play lottery, but I don't do
it with hope in my heart.
I do it because one in 292 million is better than one in zero.
That's really the only reason.
But the idea of hope has been foreign to me for a good portion of my life.
And that includes even my relationships, which is when I started to read about this and I
saw that discussion about relationships being a good metric for hope, I had to really do
a deep dive into my own life.
And that's when I realized that I could really start to chart out, I guess the word would
be, I could chart out the points in time when I knew that I had been my most desperate,
my most depressed, my absolute worst person that I was.
And there was an absolute parallel to relationship status.
And there's a lot of reasons for that, but it was always that I just didn't have any
hope.
And because of that, I couldn't fight for the things that I wanted or that I needed.
I would oftentimes just, when somebody would say, I love you, I couldn't even respond because
I just, I didn't feel it.
There was no feeling of that love coming through to me.
It never hit me.
And because I didn't feel loved and I didn't feel worthwhile, really, I lost hope.
I lost hope not just in the relationship, but in life in general.
So it's important when we talk about hope to understand that there is an immediate counterbalance
to hope.
And somewhere along the line between these two concepts, which are really the same concept,
but these two words about the concept, we have to understand that it's a balance.
Now this is where we start to get into maybe some of the negative aspects of hope.
So not just the hopelessness of it, but the kind of toxic positivity that I was talking
about earlier.
It is possible to have hope in your heart for something.
And trust me, this is coming from lots of experience on this one that you know is not
realistic.
You start out with a realistic path.
You start out understanding that there is a way for this to happen.
But then because of the nature of this world, there's all sorts of obstacles and all sorts
of things that get in your way and opinions and ideas and other people's egos and things
like that that will get in the way and make it so that your hope turns more into the wishful
thinking kind of thing, where you're basically rolling the dice because you really don't
have a path forward, but you don't want to give up because you hoped.
You had hope at one point in time and you don't want to give up on that hope, no matter
how unlikely it is to happen.
And so you end up throwing yourself into situations and into ideas and into momentum over something
that maybe you shouldn't.
And I don't mean you should give up.
Don't ever take anything I say on this podcast or my TikToks or anything like that as give
up.
That's not at all what I mean.
What I mean is we have a limited capacity.
We have a limited amount of energy and time and yeah, energy and time.
We have a limited amount of things that we can throw into people and ideas and experiences.
And because of that, because of the limited resources that we each have, we have to be
very careful not to throw ourselves so far into something that is hopeless.
Just because we don't feel the hopelessness yet, that doesn't mean that it's not hopeless.
And I'm not at all trying to tell somebody to give up.
Again, I want to make that clear.
I want to make sure that it is understood that in the way that hopelessness can just
destroy you slowly over time, having too much hope in something that is not feasible, it
means that you're no longer hoping.
You're just wishing.
And that doesn't really accomplish anything.
And that doesn't really move the bar.
Now, what you can do is take the little steps to kind of rekindle or start to try to peel
away and find the path through hope.
Hope is a very powerful thing in that sense, where oftentimes the world, the people, whatever
it may be, will come down around you and you won't be able to see a path out.
And all you have to hold onto is your hope, your hope of change, your hope of making a
difference, your hope of whatever it may be.
And if you hold onto that hope and you wait, then maybe you'll find a way out.
But if you hold onto hope and you wait for too long, then that hope will start to die.
And then you'll just be alone and in the dark.
And that's why hope is patience with a lamp lit, because that lamp will last a really
long time in the dark and it will give you something to hold onto and it'll make you
feel warm and safe and it'll make it so that you can see long enough to try to find a way
out, but sooner or later that lamp is going to run out.
And if you have not moved, if you have not made any changes, if you have not found something
new or a new path, then you're just going to be alone and in the dark.
And that, that is the height of hopelessness.
That is the height of desperation.
And that's when people like me start to do things that they shouldn't do and that they,
you know, obviously they won't regret it, but they will affect the lives of the people
around them and hurt people.
The main reason why I wanted to make sure I got an episode about hope done is because
it's kind of the central piece to really everything I've been trying to do here.
We're 14 episodes in and all I have is hope.
I've got 350 TikTok videos and 14 episodes of a podcast and I'm just getting started.
And all of it is based on hope.
Now the quote I'm going to use here is one that is relatively recent.
So I know that I tend to pull from deep history a lot of times, but this one is actually a
quote by Michelle Obama.
And she said, you may not always have a comfortable life and you will not always be able to solve
all of the world's problems at once, but don't ever underestimate the importance you can
have because history has shown us that courage can be contagious and hope can take on a life
of its own.
That quote, I can't remember where I first heard it.
I think it was actually at one of Barack Obama's inauguration things or I don't know.
It was something like that, but I remember being in the room watching it on television
and just being moved by that sentiment.
By that, and she's not saying anything new there.
She's not reinventing the wheel or anything with that, but the way that she said it, the
passion that she had when she said it, and that last part, history has shown us that
courage can be contagious and hope can take on a life of its own.
That's what I'm doing here.
That's what this podcast is about.
That's what all of this really boils down to.
I see a path.
I see a realistic, feasible way to make the world a better place.
I am one person.
I can't go out and change the hearts and minds of millions of people, but what I can do is
if you're hearing this, I can talk to you and I can tell you how beautiful and powerful
and important you are.
I can explain to you how you may have spent a good portion of your life doing the things
that society and whatever else tells you is the right thing to do, and you will be miserable.
But if you just follow your heart, if you follow your passion, if you follow your dreams,
if you take time to love and to accept and to really appreciate not just the people around
you but yourself and the moments that you have, then you will find that you can change
things around you.
You can change things in your personal life.
You can change the dynamics of the relationships around you.
You can really start to believe in the magic that is our reality, the magic that is this
wonderful, beautiful, gleaming ball of gas and water floating around in space.
You really do start to feel your place in the universe.
And once you get to that point, and I'm not even there yet, but once we get to that point,
we will start to see these changes.
We will start to understand exactly what it means to be courageous and what it means to
have that hope for a better future, for a better world.
This entire podcast, the name of it, A Pebble in a Pond, my TikTok channel, all of it, all
of it is centered around hope.
I am hoping that I can make a difference.
I am hoping that I can maybe change a few minds.
I can maybe help heal a few hearts.
That's what I'm hoping for, and I see a realistic way of doing that, but I have to be able to
reach people.
I have to be able to get this message out.
I have to be able to talk to people in a way that is honest and true and that people understand
that it's just coming from the heart.
That's all it is.
This entire thing is built on hope.
And so when I sit here and I talk about hopelessness, I want you to understand that in my search
for trying to understand how I've arrived here three, four months ago, this never could
have happened.
I never would have allowed this to happen.
My hopelessness was so great that I would never have been able to see a path through
this.
Never.
I never could have put myself out here like this.
I never could have recorded myself like this.
I never could have done the TikTok stuff.
I never could have done it.
My hopelessness was in control.
I just didn't see it.
But now everything's different.
I have, like I said, over 350 videos, making three every day, more and more every day.
I'm pumping these out once every two weeks, sometimes not on schedule, but as close as
I can get.
And I'm really trying as hard as I can to put as much out there as I can with the time
that I have.
I really do want to change this world as much as I possibly can in the time that I have.
There's another quote that really fits this.
It says, my hope still is to leave the world a bit better than when I got here.
You know who said that?
That was Jim Henson, the creator of The Muppets.
Now all that guy did was make puppets talk.
And honestly, just saying that last sentence makes me want to hit myself.
Is that all he did?
No.
You're talking about a man that inspired generations from the point in time that he started working
the Kermit puppet till now, till forever, until we no longer have the ability to tell
the story of his puppets.
This is a man that has inspired so many people to so many things and brought so much joy
and so much positivity into the world that, I mean, it's the idea that a man like Jim
Henson could say that my hope is to leave the world a bit better than when he got here.
Tells you just how powerful hope can be.
Because his hope became reality.
And he has literally changed the world for the better.
And there's literally no way that anybody can look at The Muppets or look at what Jim
Henson did in his life and say, oh, what about this?
There's no drawbacks.
I'm not taking anything away from that man.
He brought nothing but joy and happiness and an escape to literally billions of people.
Over time, it will be billions of people.
His life, his one life changed the course of history with puppets.
Now think about that, if Jim Henson using the magic of childhood wonder and the appreciation
of fantasy can change the world in that way, then what's to stop you or I?
What's to stop us?
If we hope and we follow our hearts and we believe in ourselves and we believe in the
message that we're trying to get out and we believe in the idea that it just takes one
person, it just takes one person to have courage and hope and then they can affect the people
around them.
They can be the pebble.
Each one of us can be the pebble that disrupts the pond just enough to make a massive sweeping
change.
Each one of us has the opportunity to do that in our lives.
Each one of us has the ability to spread love and kindness and positivity and light into
this world.
Every single day that we don't do that is a day where everybody goes to bed with the
world just a little bit darker than it could be.
I'm not happy with that.
I want this world to be a better place and this is how I can do it.
I appreciate everybody that listens and I appreciate everybody that watches my videos
and it's slowly growing and the message is slowly getting out there and I know that I
can sound self-important when I say things like the message and things like that but
that's not the intention.
The intention is simply just to get these ideas into people's heads and make them start
to act on them.
Make it something so that it's not just, oh that's cool, oh yeah that seems nice and then
they just move on and they go back to doing whatever.
I really want to help create an awakening of people.
I want people to understand their power and not in like a weird astrology, tarot way and
I'm not shitting on that stuff.
I'm just saying like I'm talking about in a real like in your heart you feel it, that
change.
There's excitement, there's a tangible feeling of it's going to happen.
That's what I want.
Now I don't really have a whole lot of time left in the episode because I kind of went
off there.
I lost track and I got so excited about talking about the hope that I have for this whole
thing and the hope that I have.
If you're listening to this then you are part of that hope.
You are literally holding my hand as I walk through all of this and I need every single
person that hears this to understand how important you are and how much I appreciate you.
That goes for the TikTok videos as well.
They're obviously for me a 10 minute video is a bite size but it's still a good, it's
still me, it's still a portion of me and I'm hoping that between these two things and hopefully
the other social medias as I'm able to get them out and get them going it's taking some
time but I'm hoping that you know more and more people will start to come along for the
ride and I can really start to see some changes and people start telling me their stories.
I'm so excited for that and I want to be able to tell more people's stories.
That's really what this is about.
It's never about me.
It's never been about me.
My hope, my hope is that people start to understand that their voice, their story, what they bring
into this world is what this is all about.
Finding that magic, that power, your abilities, your voice, finding that and showing it to
the world.
That's what this is about.
So what can we do?
What can we do to rekindle hope?
What can we do to keep it strong and keep reminding ourselves that it is the fuel that
keeps us moving forward, that keeps us steady, that keeps us fighting against incredible
odds, that keeps us wanting to change the world.
What do we do?
Well, because of the kind of nebulous nature of hope, there's not a whole lot out there.
I mean, people have kind of greeting card sentiments that are supposed to help, but
there are actually a few things that have been kind of proven to, if not necessarily
rekindle hope, but bring a positivity that will allow hope to kind of survive, if you
will.
And as long as hope survives, it can build.
As long as you can keep hope in your heart for whatever it may be, it will slowly rebuild.
As you start to make momentum, as you keep your momentum and you start to make progress,
that hope will get greater and greater.
That's how you build hope.
Progress, change, appreciation.
So let's go through just a few things that I guess you could say exercises, they're not
really exercises, just ideas, just things that you can do in your everyday life that
are going to help you hold on to hope or rekindle hope or maintain whatever level of hope you
have.
One of the most important things is understanding that one of the first things that kills hope
is being overwhelmed and feeling that hopelessness seep in.
Being overwhelmed emotionally, being stressed to the point that you just don't see a path.
You just don't see a way forward.
So simple things that you can do is just reduce your stress, reduce the amount of stress you
feel on a daily basis.
Take a minute, take two minutes, sit quiet, do breathing exercises, go outside, go for
a walk if you have a park or something like that.
As they say, touch some grass.
If you need to reach out to friends, listen to music, anything that you can do to reduce
your stress levels.
Now for me, this is counterintuitive I know to what I just said, but for me I tend to
work very well with stress.
Stress doesn't really have the same effect on me, so for me I want to get in there and
really I want to keep fighting.
That's how I work.
I've always been that way.
Stress doesn't tend to have the effect on me that it does on a lot of people.
So for me, it can be difficult.
There's a lot of times when I've had people in my life tell me, I can't handle this and
I will, being who I am and not really understanding why everybody isn't like me, I'll keep pushing,
I'll keep pushing and I'll keep pushing.
That has caused a lot of problems in my life because some people just are like, I need
to step away.
I need to, and I'll be like, why?
Why do you want to do that?
Let's finish it.
Let's get it done.
So for me, this is actually as far as stress skills and things like that, this is something
that I desperately need to learn to appreciate and work on.
The idea of taking two minutes to breathe and things like that, you would think that
my blood pressure was through the roof and for a while it was, but now it's not anymore
and it's kind of funny how that works.
But when I was feeling hopelessness and depression in my life, that was when I was absolutely
like my body was just falling apart.
That was the stressor.
But now that I'm hopeful and not through the depression, but I understand that depression
phase a lot more and I know that I'm on the other side of it, the stress just doesn't
even bother me anymore.
I welcome it.
I get excited about getting into tough situations.
So depending on which side of that you are on or if you're in the middle, just do the
things you need to do to relieve that stress.
I don't care what it is.
It doesn't matter what it is because each individual has their own stress relief.
There are some things I could say that would make this a little bit more raunchy, but people
do those things to relieve stress.
So if you have that outlet, go ahead and use that outlet too.
But management of your stress is probably the single most important thing to holding
on to your positivity and your hope.
Beyond that, and this also kind of leads with the stress thing as well, is just live your
life in a way that is healthier for you.
We will often sink into poor habits when we're depressed or when we don't see a way forward.
People don't bathe as much, people don't eat as well, people don't exercise.
You really start to let yourself go.
And I know this better than anybody does.
As I record this, I still have in my, where I record, I still have, there's just a pile
of stuff in the corner that I haven't been able to get the, I just haven't been able
to go through it because every time I start to, I start to get depressed because it's
literally like a depression pile.
It's been there for months where I just look at it and it's difficult to get through because
I know that I kind of created, it's like a pile of clothes and other stuff.
And it's like, just looking at it, it doesn't stress me out, but just looking at it and
thinking I got to clean that up, that stresses me out because I know that I'm going to start
to have all these memories of, oh, I threw this over here because of this.
So I start to have this recall of how I got there and why this was there.
And that stresses me out.
That gets me, I start to have anxiety over that.
So I have a literal reminder of how, I don't want to say slovenly, but how you can kind
of really let yourself go.
You can really allow things to get out of hand in your life and with your body.
And that, if you start to take care of those things, if you get up and you shower, you
enjoy getting up, doing the thing, brushing your teeth, brushing your hair, whatever you
need to do, make yourself feel good that way.
Get out, go for a walk, if you go to the gym, whatever it may be.
Those are all things.
It seems like those are right in line with the stress relief stuff and they are, but
more importantly, these are the things that people do to make themselves happy.
There's a difference between relieving stress and being happy.
You can relieve stress and just kind of stay at a baseline, not really be truly happy.
But we're talking about doing things that truly make you happy.
And this is scientific here.
If you go to the gym or you go for a walk or whatever it is, your body actually produces
hormones that will make you happy.
And so that's what we're looking for here.
Control your stress and then find things that make you happy.
If you, like I said, if you listen to music and that makes you happy, do that.
If you play an instrument, do that.
If you enjoy going out and sitting in your car for two hours and making TikTok videos,
then do that.
I don't really enjoy that, but it is starting to get fun.
If you're somebody like me who kind of feeds off that kind of human connection, go out,
go to the grocery store, go to the gas station.
Well, maybe not the gas station.
That can be kind of sketchy.
But you go to places where people are.
Go sit at a fast food place and just be available for people.
When you go, I say fast food place intentionally.
That's not, I'm not saying go to a restaurant.
I'm saying go to a place where you know that people are not necessarily, where they don't
necessarily feel gratitude, where they don't necessarily feel love.
You go to almost any fast food place in this entire country and the people that work there
will feel shitty.
Like they're in a shitty job.
The people that come in, treat them like shit.
They're not really happy with what they're doing.
They don't make a lot of money.
They're just doing it to get by.
And the people that go in there, a lot of people, a lot more than you'd like to think,
treat them horribly.
That's something we need to change.
And that's something that I've talked about before and something that, but if you can
go in there and you can lift their spirits up, you know, just go up to the counter, order
your food and then just talk to people.
Just be like, hey, you know, how you doing?
You know, how are you feeling?
You okay?
I really appreciate you guys making this food for me.
I promise you two things.
You're going to make their day better, one.
Two, your food is going to be the best you've ever had there because they will put in the
extra effort.
Now make sure that you start rubbing, you know, start making them feel good before they
start making your food.
Otherwise you won't get that second benefit.
But if you can really go in there and if you go in there enough, if you become a regular,
they will be so excited to see you.
You will get the best treatment, the best food.
And that's because you're going in there expressing that gratitude, expressing that love, showing
people.
And those are the things that you can do that bring happiness to yourself and to others.
So it's really important when you're trying to, you know, keep hope alive that you do
these little things, control your stress and try to build happiness.
Another thing you can do that, and this is something that I'm really not good with.
So I actually read this and I thought it was a good idea and I wanted to throw it out there,
even though I really can't speak to any experience with this because I'm, that's just not how
my brain works yet, is setting goals.
Now obviously I have a goal of, you know, changing the world, but that's not really
like I can't, I have to do little things.
So my goals, if you want to talk about me setting goals, my goals is to make enough
videos in my TikTok account that I can put out three a day.
That's a goal that I have.
My goal is to get a new podcast episode out once every two weeks and hopefully get enough
listeners that at some point in time and then start bringing people in to do interviews
and stuff like that, that I'll be able to do, you know, once a week again.
That would be awesome to be able to put out more podcasts and be able to talk for longer
periods of time.
So setting goals, but this is the important part, achievable goals, attainable goals,
goals that matter.
Not just silly things, just, you know, oh, I want to, you know, like I want to drink
four cans of soda a day.
That's not a goal, right?
That's just what you do because, you know, you don't believe in your health.
But I'm not judging, I drink, I drink soda too.
But no, it's just one of those things where you want to have attainable goals that are
going to help you move in a direction.
So like I said, for me, it's making these videos, it's working on the podcast.
These are my goals.
These are the things that I'm working on every single day.
And I'm trying to, you know, the reason why they're kind of a little bit out there is
because there's not an end goal, right?
The end goal is forever away.
That's never going to, I mean, I even see that, but every day I have those goals of
three videos and I try to read or at least look up a quote or something about the topic
of the podcast every day I do that.
So if you can, if you can start to establish those little things that you can do, the day
by day goals, you know, even if it's something as simple as like I said before, if you're
having a problem with depression or you're having a problem with, you know, just not
being motivated, set the goal of every day, you're going to get up at whatever time, you
know, set a time, say 9 a.m.
You're going to get up at 9 a.m., you're going to go get, you know, get your coffee or whatever,
and you're going to shower, you know, brush your teeth, you're going to, you know, do
all the things that you need to do to get up and start to feel motivated and start to
feel better.
Even if you don't have anything to do, even if you like, maybe you don't have a job, maybe
you don't, maybe you're, you know, whatever, but you just do those things anyway.
Like you don't have to get dressed up in a business suit.
You can just get in other clothes, but just, just go through the things in the day that
motivate you.
And what you'll find is that a lot of times you'll get up and you'll be, you'll get up
and do other stuff and then you'll be like, oh, I don't have anything to do.
And so what you do is you go out and you go for a walk or you go out and you, and you'll
find yourself accidentally being productive just by accomplishing goals like that.
And trust me, I am accidentally productive, accidentally productive a lot more than I
care to admit.
This next one is probably one of the more difficult things to do, but this is something
that I have, I have really found in these past few months to be the most important for
me.
And I think it probably will be for most of you.
And this, this next one is try as hard as you can to be as honest and open as you can
with the people closest to you, your best friends.
If you have, you know, a parent that you look up to that you have a good relationship with,
you know, siblings that you really love, people that you trust and that you know believe in
you.
Now that can be difficult for some people.
And I know that and I, I, I, I'm sorry to even bring it up for those of you that are
having, you know, that those kinds of issues where you just don't feel like you can trust
anybody or you feel alone.
And if that's the case, reach out to me, you know, I'll talk to you.
We can be friends.
I am here for you.
If that's the case, if you feel alone and you feel unloved or where you don't feel like
you have somebody to confide in or to guide you, help me.
I will help you, you know, help me help you to Jerry Maguire that thing.
But the reason why this is important is you really want to be able to build a network
of people.
You want to be able to build a kind of a backbone for what you're doing.
For me, you know, my, my kids for the most part don't really care about the stuff that
I'm doing.
Like they, they know about it.
But when I have had moments where I've been emotional or I needed to talk to them about
it, I have been able to, I have been able to, they're not really receptive to the day
to day stuff and they think I'm kind of silly doing all the videos and stuff, but they have
been supportive.
The other people, my mom is a huge fan of me and it pushes me and it drives me and it
makes me want to do more.
And I, you know, she doesn't necessarily understand the ins and outs of all the video making and
all this stuff, but I know that she appreciates it.
I know that she watches what she can and you know, it's, it's one of those things where
I know that if I went to her at any time and I said, okay, I need help with this or I'm
having a hard time being motivated, my mom would be the first to, you know, give me,
give me a pep talk.
My sister a little bit less, but you know, these are people in my life that I have, I've
kind of formed the foundation for what I'm doing.
And really even more so than those, my, my two best friends.
I've been friends with them both for 30 plus years and they have on multiple occasions
said the, the things that have mattered the most to me.
One of the things, one of the sentiments that has really driven me and has really empowered
me came from all, well, I have, I have two friends that I'm in constant contact with,
like every week I talk to them and I have another one that I don't talk to as often,
but all three of them, when I first started to do the Tik TOK and the podcast, when I
first started even talking about it, all three of them in separate conversations said the
same thing.
And it was, it was one of those moments where I realized that it was kind of like confirmation
of what I was doing and the direction I was going in.
And so I would, you know, I'd whether it be through text or whatever, I would be having
this conversation telling them, okay, so this is what I'm thinking about doing.
I'm going to do this Tik TOK.
I really want to start spreading this message.
You know, I really feel, and every, all three of them all said, it is really, really good
to have you back.
All of them had seen, all of them had lived through years and years of me being depressed
and all of them had seen me before that depression hit me.
And so for them, me being passionate about something, me wanting to do something like
this, me being, you know, positive and excited was, they got to recall who I used to be.
And in that moment, that's when I realized that, you know, especially for like the Tik
TOK channels, things like that, that my, my way to the future is by bridging that gap
through that depression.
I have to be able to tell those stories.
I have to be able to make people understand how I got, you know, how I went from somebody
that people really looked up to, somebody that people considered to be a leader to somebody
that was sad and alone and crying out and ready to end himself, how that, that dissent
happened and then how I'm where I'm at now.
So you know, it's really important for me that their sentiment is, is always in my mind.
That is the network.
That is the fallback is the people in my life that are saying, Hey, welcome back because
they understand the value that I once had and the value that I am trying as hard as
I can to find again.
And it, you know, it can be difficult.
It truly is difficult, but you know, every day I'm setting these goals.
I'm accomplishing these things and I'm trying to push not just myself, but others in a,
in a positive direction.
And I'm trying to make a difference in this world.
The last thing we're going to talk about here and the last thing that you really can do,
and this is, oh man, this is, this is the hardest one of, of any of these things that
you can really do to work on, on, you know, maintaining your, your hope.
And that is, this is, I feel like such a hypocrite, even saying it, you really need to start to
control your negativity and stop doubting yourself.
There is nothing that is going to stop you from accomplishing or maintaining your dreams
faster than yourself.
There is no outside interference that is going to destroy what you're trying to build quicker
and easier than you will.
There is nothing out there, no person, no thing that will do more damage to you than
you can in a very short amount of time.
If you allow yourself to allowing yourself to fall into those pits of depression, allowing
yourself to ruminate over things that you can't control, allowing yourself to believe
that you are not good enough or you are not capable enough, allowing yourself to believe
what others may tell you that feeds into that negativity.
Instead of believing in what you're doing and finding that positive energy and that
light that is there to guide you, you, you know, you allow others to kind of mess with
your head.
Any of that is going to stifle your ability to move forward, your ability to change your
life, your ability to continue to push through whatever you're trying to do, whatever you're
hopeful for.
It is very, very, very, very exceedingly difficult to fight the world and yourself.
That's impossible, really.
You have to have, you have to have your own back.
You have to believe in yourself.
And to a lot of people in this world, believing in yourself will look like arrogance.
It'll look like bravado.
It'll look like undeserved confidence because they don't understand it.
They can't, they can't begin to understand how anybody could be so, you know, they just
think they're right.
You know, that's, that's, I hear that a lot.
I actually have heard that somebody has said that to me multiple times over the past few
months.
You just think you're right about everything.
Well, no, I don't, but I'm confident in what I'm seeing and what I'm saying.
And I believe in myself enough that if I say something or I set myself on a path or I'm
trying to give somebody advice, that, you know, I spend a lot of time working on it.
I have every right to be confident and I'm not going to let somebody's doubting, somebody's
naysaying affect that.
You know, if, if you get up every day and you go outside and you shoot a hundred jump
shots on a basketball hoop, you're going to be pretty good at it after a while.
And when somebody comes on there, they start telling you, you know, if you hit, if you
hit a hundred of a hundred and you have somebody come in and start telling you, I don't know
why you're so confident about that.
I mean, are you, I, cause I work at it because that's what I do.
I get up every day and I do that.
I get up every day over the last three months, three plus months, I've gotten up every day
and almost without fail, I've gone out and I've sat and I've recorded videos or I've
talked to somebody on, you know, in indirect messages or I've, I've engaged with people
in other ways where I know that I'm having a profound and positive impact on their life.
I'm very, very proud of what I've done for these past three months.
And I know that there is a ton more to come and I'm excited for it.
So I just sit here and I think about these people in my life that have told me that,
you know, they basically, they don't believe in what I'm doing or they don't believe in
my ability to do it or, you know, they don't want to, they don't want to partake in the
quest if you will.
And that's fine.
I've, you know, if you're doing your own thing, I get that.
But for a lot of these people, it's just a matter of doubt.
They just cannot believe that I'm, you know, I'm so arrogant to think that I could do this.
Who are you to change the world?
That's the sentiment.
Well, I'm me and I'm the only me that exists.
And I don't think like other people.
I don't feel like other people.
I don't, I don't talk like other people.
And so my voice is going to be heard because I don't sound like anybody else.
The things I say aren't like anybody else.
And I feel really good about that.
And you know, a lot of you, I know some of you from Tik Tok that listen to the podcast,
a lot of you have given me that confidence.
A lot of you have instilled that confidence in me and have made me feel really, really
fucking good about myself.
And not in a way that's unhealthy where I'm, you know, I think I'm like the second coming
or anything, but in a way that I just feel like I can make a difference.
And I have made a difference.
You've told me I've made a difference.
And I appreciate that more than you can possibly understand.
So when you're going through trying to maintain your hope, trying to remember what it is you're
fighting for, trying to stay determined in your path, you have to, you have to start
to destroy the parts of yourself that don't like yourself.
And I mean that, I mean that word destroy.
I mean that.
It sounds aggressive to people, I know, but I mean that.
You have to start to kill that shit.
You have to stop doubting yourself.
And these people around you that are going to feed that doubt, do not let them feed that
doubt.
Indignant, defiant, fight that.
That's your new enemy.
Your new enemy is your own self-doubt and the people around you that want to feed that
doubt with their jealousy and their lack of understanding and their inability to see the
goals or the desires that you have.
It's not your job to pull everybody with you all the time.
It's really hard for me to say because that's my inclination, but you can leave the door
open.
You leave the door open for these people.
You approach them and yourself with love, grace, understanding, appreciation, and everything
will work out in the end.
That's one thing I can promise you.
I think we're going to go ahead and wrap it up now.
I think we've pretty much covered most of what I wanted to talk about and even some
stuff I didn't really want to talk about.
But I think we're going to go out with another quote.
And this one is by a Greek Stoic philosopher, not necessarily well known for a lot of people,
but his name was Epictetus.
Epictetus.
And kind of a weird word to say, kind of a weird name to say, I should say.
But we're going to go ahead and end it there with a quote by Epictetus.
And it is really, I don't know, for me it kind of hit home.
I found this quote actually, it was in a book that I've actually had for like 20 years,
25 years.
It's just a book of quotes, and I was, I didn't want to sit at my computer, and I was just
flipping through this book, which I don't tend to use the books.
A lot of times I'll just use the computer to find quotes and things like that.
So I have these books though that I kind of go through and I reference.
And I was sitting there thinking about, okay, well, Epictetus is going to be about hope,
and I have to come up with something, I have to come up with these quotes because that's
what I do, I like to do it.
So I just went through reading, and for some reason this was not in the hope section or
anything like that.
I don't know why, but it struck me as a quote that should very much be about hope.
And he said, be careful to leave your sons well instructed rather than rich, for the
hopes of the instructed are better than the wealth of the ignorant.
And I know that maybe that was, you know, maybe it was in more of a like, you know,
lessons to pass on, whatever section, but to me that quote defines what hope can be
for us and how powerful it can be.
So I'm going to read that one more time.
Be careful to leave your sons well instructed rather than rich, for the hopes of the instructed
are better than the wealth of the ignorant.
The reason why I want to go out with that quote is because when we talk about, when
I sit here and I wax poetically about my goal here with the podcast, and I talk about the
hope that I have, and I didn't touch on a lot of the negative stuff.
I'm going to full transparency here, I did record a part of this episode that was a lot
more negative.
I did not, I cut it out.
That's one of the reasons why the episode came out a day later is because I went through
and I was listening to it and I didn't want to leave people with hopelessness.
I know that it's important that people understand the negative sides of it, but in the world
we live in today and the way things are, I didn't want to bring people down with that.
And so just being completely transparent here, this is actually, this is actually me going
in and recording over something else because I didn't want to, I didn't want to do that
to folks.
You know what hopelessness is.
You felt what hopelessness is.
And you know the truth of the world.
You can look around anywhere and see that feeling that people have.
You feel it yourself and you know we're fighting against that.
This quote hit me because so many people in the world today have fallen prey to the idea
that you know if you just get out and you do the things that you're required to do to
make the money that somehow that's winning.
That's the be all end all goal.
And don't get me wrong, having money would be great.
I mean I wouldn't know, but having money would be phenomenal.
It would be a wonderful thing.
But you know it's said that money doesn't, I can't remember the quote right now.
I can't believe I just blanked on that.
Money doesn't change character, it reveals it.
I know myself well enough to know that if this thing blows up and I start making money
or I start to, you know people start to know me or whatever, I'm going to still be who
I am because I don't know any other way to be.
And so the idea of this quote of passing on good instructions, you know how to be, who
to be, how to behave, how to love, how to appreciate, the lessons that I'm trying to
really spread now, the message that I'm trying to spread, these are the things that matter.
The money that gets passed on, all of the things that go with it, all of the things
that go with you know society and fame, especially on social media, all of these kind of cheap
things, they don't equal success, true success in a generational way.
You know I'm not here for me.
I'm not here making this podcast for me.
I'm not here talking about all of these things for me.
I'm here because I want to see a change on a much larger scale than just me.
I can only do so much.
You can only do so much.
But if we do what we can do, we can make a difference in this world.
And that's what that quote meant to me.
That's how I read that is if I take my sons and my daughter, I mean obviously back then
they didn't factor that in, but if I take my children and I teach them the right way
to live their lives with honesty and love and positivity and appreciation and acceptance
that I've done my job and it will work out.
It may not work out for me in my life, but it will work out for them because they are
leading with the principles and the pillars of being the best possible people they can
be.
They are getting the advantage of starting life with all of that inside of them.
And that's not to say that life won't beat them down and that they won't lose their way
or that they won't step off the path from time to time, but they will be successful
with those things.
And I don't mean financially, just in life.
They will be happier and they will bring joy to the world.
But if you just have money, if you just have fame, if you just have power, those are all
great to a certain degree, but they're not going to equal change and they're not going
to make, I mean think about the billionaires that we have in this world.
Think about the people that have millions and millions and millions of dollars and think
about the state of the world today.
Those people are not making it better.
Those people are not making it a better place.
They could.
They have the means.
They have the ability, but they don't.
So you're talking about people that haven't learned what's important.
And then you have people like me who have nothing.
I just have my voice.
People like you that listen to this and all you have is your voice.
We don't have the resources.
We don't have the ability to do what these people do, but we can speak up.
We can speak out and we can help and try and do to make changes in our lives and the people
around us that will bring hope and courage into this world.
If we do enough of it and enough of us are doing it, we will change this world together.
We will.
I promise you it will happen.
Thank you all very much for listening.
I know that I probably went a little bit long on this one, but just got to get it out.
You know what I mean?
Two weeks from now, we'll get out another episode.
I'm still up in the air on the topic, but I will let everybody know on TikTok as soon
as I nail it down.
I've got a lot of reading to do, so there's a lot that is going to change.
Also something to be excited about.
I've had a few people now mention possibly coming on and doing an interview.
If I do interview episodes on this podcast, those episodes will be longer.
I'm not going to be able to do a real interview in an hour.
Those episodes will be longer in length and hopefully more engaging than just hearing
me talk for an hour.
I just wanted to give everybody a heads up.
Everything's loosey goosey.
There's nothing being nailed down just yet, but this podcast that you're hearing now,
just like the podcast that you episode one, they're growing and they're changing.
I'm trying new things and different things each time.
At some point soon, very soon, I'm going to be recording the podcast live.
I will be streaming it on TikTok and possibly even on Twitch or YouTube.
That's something for those of you that may want to watch that.
That's something that I will be doing.
Not as soon as I'd like it.
I would like it to be the next one, but we're probably talking, I'd say a month, month and
a half before I can get it done.
That is something that we're going to do.
Now you'll see everything then.
I'm not going to hide how my process is for creating.
It can be a little boring because I have to stop and check my notes and things like that
as I'm recording.
I just want to let everybody know that that is something that is going to be happening
very soon.
We've got guests coming up.
We've got live recording of the podcast coming up.
Things are changing and we're going to try to get this message out and be as positive
as we can be.
Thank you all very much.
I very much appreciate it.