Minding Your Mind What High Achievers Dont Tell Us.
[Music]
minding your mind
with the great ones don’t tell us
we often in life we give attention to
this thing called the mind but because
we can’t see it
we can’t taste it we can’t smell it we
can’t hear we can’t
sense it with our five senses we just
kind of wash it away
we know it exists we’re not really sure
what it is so we just kind of we don’t
worry about it
but i’ve dug deeper i’ve always been the
type to want to know more i’ve always
been the type two
if someone tells me the sky is blue i
want to know why the sky is blue i want
to know how it got to be blue i want to
know if it’s going to be blue forever
so i started to go on this journey on
this dive of what exactly is the mind
and how do you cultivate it and what
does it do and how does it serve mankind
and i found some interesting things out
not only through my life
but through others lives who i’ve had
the opportunity to interact with
people see me now and they say wow you
got to play for the harlem globetrotters
what was that like
you got to play for eight years was it
an amazing opportunity
i tell them yeah it was i got to travel
to 70 different countries
i got to be on different tv shows such
as good morning america
the today show are you smarter than a
fifth grader
which by the way i was not smarter than
a fifth grader if you were wondering
but through this
it was all done through my mind
now don’t get me wrong there was some
physical ability that was there
but the physical ability was no good if
i didn’t have the mind
to back it so let me give you a little
background on me
so i was always a soccer player i didn’t
start playing basketball
ironically enough until my parents took
me when i was seven years old to see the
harlem globetrotters play in rochester
new york
and when i went to see them play i fell
in love with the game instantly
now i realize now as an adult there’s
nothing that you can ever be great at if
you don’t love it
and i instantly fell in love with this
game and
this was the beginning this was when the
seed was planted
of me having a goal of playing as long
as i could
being a professional basketball player
so let me give you a little background
on my parents my parents
grew up in rural south carolina during
the civil rights movement
so they were accustomed to being told
that they could not do something
or they weren’t good enough based on the
color of their skin
see my parents didn’t grow up playing
sports they weren’t the most
athletic my dad was not built like
lebron james and my mother
is not as athletic as serena williams
but here’s something they did pass down
to me
they passed down to me the belief
that you can do anything so long as you
put your mind to it
so i grew up with this this um
insatiable appetite for wanting to
improve but also believing that i could
do anything
so long as i believed it i remember when
i was four years old and my mom would
point to my heart she says
all that matters is in here nothing else
matters what anyone else says
so i grew up with this mindset
so coming up all through elementary
school high school
i always believed whatever i put my mind
to i could do it
well in fourth grade i had a school
assignment and the question was
what do you want to be when you grow up
i wrote down i want to play professional
basketball
now unbeknownst to me my mother actually
saved that
and this was the beginning
of my reality that i made come true this
was the beginning see
what you must do when you have goals is
you must write them down
this is step one of making it become a
reality
so you become a reality actually three
times first in your mind
second when you write it down and third
the actual dream will happen
in reality so i wrote this down
and i forgot about it and i just kept
working and working all
through um high school all through
college i just said i just want to
improve every 365 days i want to be a
better basketball player better person
than the year before i was fortunate
enough to go on to play
at a school called the college of new
jersey i had a great career there
my sophomore year i got a little more
playing time and
i wasn’t recognized within the
conference or anything like that but i
said to myself
i want to be an all-american i’m going
to be an all-american i’m going to be
recognized on a national level for my
skill set and i remember saying this to
my strength and conditioning coach at
the time
and he looked at me and he said how are
you going to be an all-american when
you’re not even all-conference
how are you going to be recognized on a
national level when you’re not even
recognized on a local level
i had a choice i could either believe
and feed into what he said or
i could stay within and say you know
what it doesn’t matter what anyone else
says i believe i can do this
so i chose to go to the track and work a
little harder and
put more time in when no one else was
around and i did this
because i always believed that i was
capable now fast forward two years later
to my senior year
and i ended up being an all-american and
here’s what i try to
um instill in people it does not matter
what anyone else says it doesn’t matter
what the external circumstances
may say all you must do is believe that
you are capable of doing this
achieving that regardless of the
circumstances and be willing to put the
work in
and the time in and it will happen this
is the beauty of the human spirit
there’s nothing that a human being can’t
do in 1903 when the wright brothers
first created this thing called the
airplane it stayed in the air for 12
seconds
here we are in 2021 and a plane can stay
in the air for
21 hours you’re here to create and this
is why you have a mind
nothing in nature is wasted a cat has a
tail for a reason
a bird has wings for a reason the human
being
has access to this thing called the mind
for a reason
the whole point of your mind is to
create your life
through thought through perception
through imagination
this is all done through the mind so i
ended up
coming out of college and i ended up
this dream of wanting to play
professional
basketball was so real i could just i
almost had it in my hands now it’s time
to move from college to the professional
level
so i go to all of these um exposure
camps i have in my mind what’s going to
happen
i had it all played out i’m going to
sign a deal in italy or i may want to
play in the nba
but then it didn’t happen that way i had
a contract to go play down in argentina
and it fell through at the last minute
they ended up signing someone else and
my dreams were starting to fizzle away
but i still had a belief that there was
a miracle that something could happen
so the window to sign professionally had
already went by and i missed it
and a buddy of mine said hey let’s go
over to scranton pennsylvania try out
for this little local
semi-pro team they’ll pay you a hundred
dollars a weekend
so i said okay well i don’t have
anything else to lose we might as well
so i went over there
and i played great and the coach walks
up to me
and he says hey you’re a fantastic
player
but i already have my team picked from
another league and i’m bringing those
guys
to this team it was at that moment
that i had another choice do i feel
sorry for myself in the situation that
i’m in
or do i say you know what i’m still
going to figure out a way to make this
work
well because of my background and my
upbringing my parents taught me that no
matter what life may hand you
if it hands you lemons you still make
lemonade so i said okay well thank you
sir and he said hey
how about this i will give you the
number of someone who i think may be
able to help you
so he gave me the number of a guy who
was the general manager of a team called
the new york nationals now i’m not sure
if you know who the new york nationals
are but they’re the team that played
against the harlem globetrotters every
single night
so basically they lost every single
night now i went from being an
all-american conference player of the
year
leading the league in scoring to now i’m
going to go lose every single night
if you want to talk about a slice of
humble pie being served hot
with a side of ice cream this was what i
was eating
but i said yes and here’s why i said yes
because i understood
that for me to get to point c i must hit
point a first and maybe this was point a
see life does this right life goes up
and down the reason why it goes up and
down is
these low points in life these
undesirable situations the reason why
they happen they’re meant to teach you
how to get to the high points in life
so now i can look back on my life and
say the new york nationals serve this
purpose
it taught me humility it taught me how
sometimes the road is not a straight
path that’s a windy path
so i ended up doing that for a year and
then because i played with the harlem
globetrotters they actually saw me every
single night and they said hey
come on over we love your attitude we
love your smile we love your charisma we
love the way you play
you’d be an asset to be on this team so
i ended up doing that
i did this for eight years as with any
other
job in sports or entertainment it comes
to an end
and i got a call one day for my coach
and um he said hey
we’ve loved our time with you but it’s
time to move on now here i am
unemployed i lost my benefits
we were expecting our second child we
just made it
bought a brand new house what do i do do
i sink or do i swim
i swim so i started teaching kids at a
park two brothers at a park
all the knowledge that i had gained over
my years of playing basketball i started
teaching it
and those two kids at a park ended up
blossoming
to over 350 kids 11 months later
i had one of the premier skill
development companies in the midwest
and the reason why this happened was
because i always believed when i first
started those two kids i just i would
tell my wife every day i know
i can do this i know i can there were
days when it was tough there was days
when it didn’t look like it was going to
happen
but i still had this belief
so i as this grows i get introduced to
this
player his name was kyle guy a little
skinny 16 year old kid
and we start working together and i see
this kid i say wow
you have something that most people
don’t have and i got a hold of them
and i said if we can just cultivate a
few things
i think you can play at a higher level
and he said i want to play at the nba
and i said okay
how bad do you want to play the nba he
said i know i can’t i just feel it
when he said that i realized that he had
this belief and when you have this
belief that is constructed within the
mind there’s nothing that the human
being can’t do
so i said okay here’s what we’re going
to do we’re going to start getting up at
4 am we’ll go to the gym
we’ll monitor our diet we’ll watch film
we’ll do all these things that
are unseen that nobody else gets to see
and the reason why i had him get up at 4
a.m wasn’t because
um we had to the reason why i did this
is because i knew if he did something
hard it was going to
strengthen the mind i knew if he was
going to play the highest level
in this world he was going to have to
have a strong mind
so we ended up cultivating his mind
and he then ended up winning mr
basketball in the state of indiana
he ended up being named the best high
school basketball player in indiana
he ended up going on to college and when
scouts said no he can’t you can’t play
this level he’s not good enough to play
the university of virginia
he knew he could he told me after his
sophomore year he said i’m going to win
a national championship
what i didn’t tell you is he actually
lost the first round of march madness
they were the number one team the number
one team in the country
and he ended up losing to a 16 seed had
never happened before
and he said we’re still going to win a
national championship i believe it i
know it
and it ended up happening a year later
he had to have the valley for him to hit
the peak
so i i realized something
the mind is what dictates all the mind
is what creates
the mind is what gives the human the
ability to think that it can achieve
something
so i go through my own um tough times in
2019 where i got involved with a
business partner
and this business partner said hey let’s
move down to southwest florida
sunny paradise and we will start a
business
and we will it’ll become successful and
it’s all going to work out i said yeah
sure
why not who wouldn’t do this i know the
guy so we moved down there me and my
family
and before i know things go south
quickly
this this guy who i thought was my
friend ended up doing a complete 180 and
now here i am i’m involved in fraud and
i’m not on the good side of fraud
before i know it my car was stolen my
credit was ruined
we had no more money left we were
trapped we didn’t know what to do
and i remember sitting on my living room
floor crying and my three-year-old
and my five-year-old come up to me and
they say daddy what’s the matter
i felt broken i felt lost i didn’t know
what to do
i couldn’t even think straight i had
never felt anything like this before
i realized that this situation
had taken control of my life not in a
physical sense
but a mental sense so
me and my family decide let’s move back
to indiana so we moved back to indiana i
get a knock on the door one day
and there’s a young guy who walks in and
says hey i want to let you know i’m with
the fbi
now let me tell you something when the
fbi comes by your house
you better open the door you better let
him in so he comes in he sits down with
me for four hours
and he tells me that the guy who i was
involved with they had been chasing him
they’ve been wanting him for a while
and i had all the answers that they
needed so as we proceed to talk
he he he says to me i hope you figure
out who’s going to play you in this
movie
because this stuff that you’re telling
me right now is
a movie i can’t believe it now when the
fbi says that to you
don’t take that as a compliment
but as this situation unfolds and i see
how fortunate i was to make it out of
this
i realized at that point in life
i could continue to feel sorry for
myself i could continue
to think this is the worst thing in the
world or i could use this as a positive
some way shape or form so i said you
know what i know how it feels to be down
and out i know how it feels to feel
hopeless
so i’m going to take this situation and
now i’m going to use that to help others
so i started a coaching firm i started
public speaking i started doing this
because of that situation so now i
mentally
transmuted the energy the negative
energy from that situation and i turned
it into a positive to help millions of
people
so was that situation really that bad
i’m no more special than you are this is
the way life works
every situation that comes you have a
choice to perceive it as
half empty or half full the choice will
always be yours this is what we refer to
as
free will so
i start working with world class
athletes
not only um on the court but then also
in other sports
i start working with nfl players wnba
players nba players
off the court with their mindset and i
start seeing that these high
achieving people who we look up to these
influencers
what separates them from most people is
their mind i started working with
corporate executives from fortune 500
companies
and their mindsets were different and i
realized this is what separates
the good from the great they have
control over their thoughts they have
control over their mind see what they
don’t tell you is
they take time they practice mindfulness
they journal
they’re still they meditate so i tripped
into this
uh practice the spiritual practice of
called meditation and now
here i am practicing what these crates
practice
and i never forget i was folding laundry
one day and i looked over i was watching
the documentary on netflix and they
asked bill gates they said hey
what’s one thing that you are afraid of
losing i think he’s going to say his
fortune his health maybe a family member
you know what he said he said my ability
to think my ability to control my
thoughts
at that moment i realized this is how
powerful it is
one of the most influential affluent
people in this world
understood that his thoughts the mind is
what creates everything
so i started meditating i started
practicing mindfulness i started writing
down
what i was thankful for i started taking
time to be quiet and be still
putting my cell phone to the side going
out in nature and sitting in the woods
for hours with no distractions
and this allowed me to control my mind
see all meditation is
meditation is like doing bicep curls
to strengthen your your your biceps
instead of doing
strength and exercise for your mind so
now when thoughts come in
i don’t have to just act on them i can
control them
this is what meditation is this is what
mindfulness is it gives you
the ability to control your thoughts
you’ll realize that you’re not your
thoughts you realize that you’re not
your body
you are just using the body you are just
using the mind
this is what meditation has done and i
realize now from working with all of my
clients
this is what the great ones don’t tell
us they tell us but they say it in a way
that unless you fully comprehend you’ll
never
understand what they’re talking about so
now my mission my goal
the reason why i feel as though i’ve
been put here on this earth is to teach
everyone
there’s something that is laying dormant
inside of you the seed of greatness
and if you can cultivate this greatness
you can achieve anything but in order to
do this you must be able to control your
thoughts
you must be able to mind your mind