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