Cyclic Misfit

The speaker discusses their personal cycles of feeling confident and accomplished, followed by periods of feeling down and depressed. They reflect on the importance of identifying their why and structuring their life in a way that allows for personal time and self-care. They also mention the need to break negative cycles and embrace virtues such as kindness and diligence. The speaker acknowledges that not everyone will care about their problems but emphasizes the importance of taking responsibility for their own growth and being prepared for future opportunities. This is the podcast, let's get into it. So I'm sitting here and I'm kind of thinking about a lot of stuff that's on my head. It's been a minute since I've recorded. So a lot of growth, a lot of maybe setbacks potentially, however you look at it, right? It's totally in the mind's eye and sometimes I see my cycles that I have as setbacks. So when I think about me, I'm a very cyclic type of person with my emotions and with my feelings. Let me explain. So I may get up for two, three weeks feeling amazing, be that guy and I feel like I'm him. You can't tell me nothing, you can't tell me nothing. I know I'm dope, I know I'm the God and I'm like, you can't stop me, right? And then my actions move accordingly with that feeling, with that statement, the way that I eat, the way that I live, the way that I talk to people, the advice that I give, all of that just runs into a very positive, very outstated mode, you know what I mean? And then I get into this slump era where everything's just kind of mundane and then I come around to where I feel down and out, like where I feel like I've been beat down, I'm not him anymore, like I'm the opposite of him, it ain't it. And I start thinking about like, you know, what can I do to get out of this slump? What's the slump about? What is bringing me down? What's the hurdle? What is stopping me from getting to where I need to go? And recently I was able to sit down and kind of evaluate what some of my cycles consist of to make me go from, you know, feeling glorious to feeling notorious, which is, so I'll try to, you know, sit and say like, what is it, right? And a lot of it is the way that I'm pushing forward towards what I want and how my own response is for me, all right? So I know that's kind of a tricky statement, but let me break it down. A very important person in my life told me that you really have to identify your why. Before you do anything, you've got to identify your why. And when we're talking about life, we just talk about what we have to do, right? We talk about, okay, this is what we have to get up and we have to get into. And this kind of sounds like, you know, my first podcast, like we kind of talked about, you know, keeping calm and wowing out and not wowing out when, you know, you're doing some of the basic things, but this is a little different. So we know that we have to get up and we have to go to work because we have to sustain life. We have to sustain, you know, our households and things like that, that's a given. You can make the choice to say I'm not doing it, but we're not doing that. So once you have that given, it's the way that you structure the rest of what you want to do that can make it hard or make it make sense. I feel like I was structuring my life to a state of convenience for everyone else, convenience for everyone else. Like I would make sure that I would get up early in the morning. I have a job that allows me to come in whenever I need to and, you know, it's hybrid. So I get to work from home on certain days. But still, you know, I may come in at a certain time, I leave at a certain time, which definitely benefits, but there's times where I'm not utilizing my downtime the way I need to. Or can I do a little bit more here and there and a little bit in between, right? So I take off because I definitely have to be home for when my kids get off the bus and go get kids from after school. And then I pretty much oversee or run the second shift of my house is what I like to call it, which is the making sure dinner gets done, making sure everybody eats, making sure everything gets handled before bed. And then the cycle continues. Out of that basic plan, I feel like I blocked off time to make sure that things got done, but I didn't give me any me time. And that was what put me in a cycle of if I felt a certain way, then I felt like I didn't have the time to deal with it, I would put it to the back burner. Then when it erupts, or it hits, it comes to a head and says, hey, you have to deal with this now. Well, then it puts me in a position of feeling like down and depressed. And it's like, well, now that I'm facing what I've been holding off, I have to deal with this. And it's super not smart, just so not smart. And it's so common, it's so common, it's so easy, like you can just put off today's problems for tomorrow's prize or whatever. I don't think that's the way that it goes, but that's what happens. I feel like Wimpy from Popeye who says, I'll gladly pay you on Tuesday for a burger that I could get today. And if I'm getting this metaphoric burger, then I'm happy now. But then when it's time for me to pay up, well, I don't have it emotionally, physically, I don't have it. I don't have the money on me to pay for what I promised before. And the cycle continues. So I think that one of the things that I really had to get back into, and today being one of those days, this was a really trying day for me, but one of the things that I really sat down with and started getting into was I got to get into my journal, got to start journaling, got to start speaking on how I feel so that way I don't repeat my cycle. But if I do, then that's okay, I learned something from it and I don't do the same thing over and over again. And then find a break where I can create a new cycle. I used to say that when I was married, me and my wife used to argue and it was probably every three weeks. We were on a cycle, we were on a heavy argument cycle, it was crazy. But it was roughly every three weeks and it was like the same argument and I almost timed it to a T one time, but I put it in my calendar. And which turned into an argument, because you know, you don't time your wife, don't do that guys, trust, it's not a smart move. But you know, you have to break the cycle somehow. You know it's a cycle, you have to break the cycle. And one of the important things that I did when my wife passed was I did study the seven deadly sins and the seven heavenly virtues, which helped me put my mind at ease a little bit. The simple fact that like, if anyone's familiar with the heavenly virtues and the deadly sins, there's definitely a difference between the two columns and you know, after you start breaking it down and seeing how it pertains to you personally, you start saying wow, like I've acted on all of these sins. Now no one's perfect, no one's perfect, but it's the combination, it's the concept of how you use these virtues or try to be as virtuous as you can. I was talking to a person earlier last week or late last week and the statement that they made was, why can't people just be kind, right? Why can't people just be respectable and respectful and kind to each other, that's it. And I said, that's a great statement, as simple as it is, but look how weighted that statement is sometimes, like you know, if I give you a phone call and I'm checking on you, I'm being kind, if I call you and I tell you how I feel about something that you said, am I still showing kindness because I'm being honest? I don't think that I came with any ill will or ill intent, but you might take it in a sense of, you know, oh that was harsh, right? So then you have to just be clear and I don't want to ramble too far into the small stuff, the details, but what I'm saying is, I agree, like we have to try to show kindness in some kind of way. How do we stand on our business and say this is the kindness or this is the humility or diligence that I want to show today versus the sin that I'm being presented with? So I took that along with the first statement that I had made about being in a cycle and I realized that my cycle, me personally, is a cycle that's caused by sloth, laziness, which is what I want to call it. I know that there's people who know me who might hear this and say, no you're absolutely wrong, you do a lot, I get it, but this is me calling me out on what I feel, right? I need to be a little more diligent with the opportunities that I have and in life you only get so many opportunities. Push through them and be diligent. Show that diligence and make sure that when you get the opportunity to do what you need to do, you're ready. So that's where I'm at now, I'm going to exercise my diligence because next time opportunity knocks for me, I'll be definitely ready. And it's a scary place, it's sometimes embarrassing, it's sometimes embarrassing, but it's a very powerful place to be in also. So don't feel like you have to back down because of how you feel or what you're going through or anything to that extent. The main thing is that you show one of the virtues, the virtue that you are called upon to show at the time and for me right now is diligence. You know, I've been dealing with a lot of other stuff recently, you know, outside of my normal day to day and nothing to it, right? I'm here and I'm able, if I'm able I'll do it. But I remember like a quote, it's one of these quotes that like I heard, you know, and it was a bar actually, it was a bar as always, everything I get comes from the book of rhymes or hip hop, the book of hip hop because I'm a student of. And it's simple though, this one was real simple. I heard it from Ransom, if I'm not mistaken. And take it how you want when I first say it, but this is me, like, so what's the point of speaking your problems when 90% don't care and the other 10 glad that you got them? What's the point of speaking your problems when 90% don't care and the other 10 glad you got them? And I took that and I said, two different things, this was the two mentalities that I had of this statement, I said, you're absolutely right, no one cares if I'm in a cycle, no one cares if I'm stuck in a loop where I need to get myself out of it, they just care that the piece of how I contribute to their life is covered and taken care of. I'm playing my part because I said I can, right? And then there's the 10% that, you know, if they don't know you, then they really don't care about you or there's some 10% that like literally hates on you, they're envious, right? They hate on it, they don't like it, or they'll come up with something, right, but let's not harp on the 10%, I want to talk about that 90. The 90% that don't care are the 90% that I don't have to deal with, I don't have to deal with you, and then guess what, I don't even have to deal with the other 10%, like if you happy that I'm struggling, then I really don't care about you in the first place, period. And then the 90% that don't care, think about how many people are in the world that you go past every day, that you live, that you drive past, you walk next to in the store, and this is part of the 90% that don't give a shit about how you feel throughout the day. They don't. But here's the fun part, here's the, this is the kicker, when you have an opportunity to change people's lives, you change a dynamic in people, you spark something. It's just like the Grinch, let me get my Christmas bag, because the Grinch did not care who liked him or not, right, but then someone showed him a bit of care one day, they said, oh, he's not so bad, and it changed his trajectory, it changed his perspective, right. So here we are trying to please people that don't know who the hell we are, and I'm speaking on it in this way because I'm speaking to myself, you know, I'm not trying to entertain a bunch of people or whatever, but I'm being very honest and upfront with the fact that I put me on the back burner, I put me all the way to the back burner. So my cycle has to now change. What is the most important thing to me, okay, so my, I'm important, I'm very much important, and then it's my kids, and then it's my love team, and that's how it goes, but I'm first, because I've got to be me in order to do me, right. So I think that it's crazy how most people don't show themselves that love and that grace, and then allocate the time to pay themselves what they're due. So that's what I want to get into, that's my thing this year, and I say this year, but moving into the new year and starting tomorrow, because tomorrow conveniently another Thanksgiving, so show love, you know, like it's the easiest thing to do, and as always, thank y'all for listening to me, whoever listens, I appreciate it, it's all about love, it's all about love and this mission to peace, and as long as you do it with love, it shall be dope, have a good one y'all.