The art of reset

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december 2019

it’s one of those years and month i will

never forget

i was talking to a bunch of friends and

family they all had the same thing

2020 is going to be their year

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everyone 20 20 20 20. even my mom called

me she said

son jesus christ hallelujah 2020 is

gonna be a great year

i chuckle a little because 20 years

prior to that

my mom had called me 1999. i don’t know

if you guys remember remember y2k

the planes won’t fall off from the sky

well my mom is a devoted christian

she called me she said son december 31st

jesus christ is coming when the clock

strikes 12 he’s taking all his children

with you and i would love for you to

come with me in jesus christ to heaven

we know what happened after that right

so anyway

so i’m thinking about 2020 i’m not

really a social media guy

i go on instagram and i’m seeing

everyone posting

memes and posts about 20 20 20. i don’t

know what it is about 2020. i don’t know

the 2020 vision thing the numbers

i decided i’m not gonna go away

i’m going to stay home i’m going to

atone myself

and take 2020 peacefully

because i never understood this whole

new year’s resolution thing

right how do you just take one day to

change your life

i’m gonna lose my i’m gonna lose a lot

of weight but what happened for the last

12 months

right so anyway i go into 20

december 31st 2020 came in

felt like any other year a couple weeks

into january

i decided to go breakfast one of my

favorite places in la microbiotic please

eat my buckwheat pancakes i get a call

from a friend

he says yo did you hear what happened i

said what he said kobe died

i said kobe who said brian

so i go on instagram i go on google i

don’t see anything

now i don’t know about you guys but you

know how there’s some people you just

believe just won’t ever die right like i

remember

christopher reed superman felt like he

would never die

or morgan stanley i mean i’m 48 years

old i remember watching morgan stanley

when i was three years old sesame street

and he’s live and kicking to this day

you know he’s like god you just don’t

believe

some people would die it’s almost like

they conquer immortality

40 minutes later all the news outlets

reported

kobe tragically had passed away now it

hit a little bit hard for me because

a month prior to that i was with him at

diddy’s 50th

year anniversary and it hit hard now

while that was happening

in the far far far east there was

rumblings and whispers about

something walking to february

these whispers started to get louder

something about a virus

now we as americans in recent memory

we’ve seen a couple viruses

come right saws ebola remember the kid

who got on a plane to come to

america they switched the plane back

quarantined the dude

for like 20 days so we always thought

oh it’s like any other virus

geographically speaking they always seem

to contain it

where these viruses emerge from

but there was a word that they used that

made all of us say whoa

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locked down locked down

i remember thinking to myself what does

that mean

because we never witnessed it there was

no historical reference

to it i mean when you think about it the

turn of the last century

1918 the 1920s spanish flu no lockdown

world war one world war ii no lockdown

great depression no lockdown

cuban missile crisis no lockdown vietnam

war on lockdown

civil rights riots no rock down

70s 80s 90s no lockdown 911 no not

no lockdown the great recession no

lockdown

so what does a lockdown means

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one sunday morning march 15

i fly to new york with a friend of mine

we get to new york

about three o’clock we land i decided to

go take a nap

got up at seven starving it’s this

restaurant i love right down the street

for me

i go to the restaurant the restaurant is

closed

okay i go to bond street that’s closed

i try to go to my jamaican spot that’s

i call my assistant kim order me some

noble i’m gonna go pick it

up she calls me back noble 57th

noble downtown is closed oh by the way

your favorite cuban restaurant in

midtown is closed

now i didn’t put two and two together

because you know i’m in my space i’m in

my world

i’m not i don’t know what’s going on so

i’m like i gotta eat something i’m

standing right in front of wendy’s

i don’t like fast food i’m a quinoa type

of guy to be honest with you

so so i said i’m gonna get the best

of the worst there’s a restaurant i know

no matter what’s going on on this planet

it always

stays open i don’t care if there’s an

alien ship hovering around new york city

is going to stay open it might even send

some food to the aliens

i walk 20 blocks i get there

and subway is closed

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i call several other subways and they’re

all closed

i have to tell you ladies and gentlemen

i was sincerely concerned

it was around eight o’clock at night

sunday

about 74 degrees but it was eerily

quiet so i’m like you know what i’m used

to fasting

i go home i deal with it with the next

morning i get up

i have somewhere to go an appointment i

go to my appointment

when i get there everyone was like in

the mayhem

new york city just said they’re going

into a lockdown

i said whoa book me the next flight

back to la because if there is a

lockdown

i think i’m better situated to navigate

in la

so i fly to la as i get to la and i get

home it just dawned upon me

it was like i had an epiphany

what have happened now is the planet

is about to teach us the word

reset reset is one of the most

understated underappreciated

undervalue word it’s a characteristic

that we don’t attribute to us

like courage endurance resilience

when we think of reset we think of

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setting your clock you reset your clock

with your watch

right we don’t think of it like it’s the

natural progression in life

that you need to because what is reset

reset is

you rethink you re-analyze recalibrate

revalue readjust

rebrand redefine all of those are the

subtext of reset

so i get home in la

i didn’t want to do what everyone else i

think was going to do

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stay locked down hope for the best

eat netflix amazon prime

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my partner out of london we got a

startup we decided we’re going to

continuously work

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call strategic partnership fortune 500

companies

because we want to be ready for when

this does open

we was continuously working

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so for the better part of march april

may was home doing our work may i

decided to

start traveling go back to new york

but unfortunately a tragic happened in

may that almost

pinned down the country the killing of

george floyd

we started to see the whole country

protest

more than 40 states we’ve never seen

protests and

unrest like this not even during the

civil war

it wasn’t just here in the states it was

60 other countries

europe africa australia

new zealand south korea

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may june july

protest i witnessed it in l.a

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new york miami

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i get a call from a friend of mine dave

chappelle and all this

say hey prize i’m doing a birthday party

love for you to come and celebrate with

i said no problem the timing was kind of

perfect because i was heading to la

anyway

so i said let me stop in columbus he

said by the way you think the fugitives

could come and perform i said come on

dude that’s never gonna happen

so i get to columbus drop my back to the

hotel now dave

he doesn’t want anyone around him until

you first get tested

so he’s actually the first person that i

saw

had a covet testing facility

when he got tested i was clear so i meet

with dave

i said what’s this thing with this party

you know where he’s going at the house

no you know i do shows six days a week

and it’s gonna be my party’s gonna be

part of the show i said what do you mean

show i thought

the country was on lockdown he said no i

spoke to the governor

he allowed me to do shows in a corn

field

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corn field but everybody practice social

distancing so

dave chappelle said man i don’t want to

just sit around home i’m able to just

perform every day and every other week i

invite my

friends to do something special like

last week chris rock was there

so dave chappelle understood he had to

reset so now he readjusted

right bill maher came that week kevin

hart came

we had a great time fly back to l.a with

kevin

we get to la kevin said hey listen man

if you’re around

i’m doing this rehearsal at a hotel for

my next special

can you come down just let me know what

you think you know

i invite about 20 people they don’t know

what’s what’s going on

they just come and i just do my gig and

see

how people feel like oh okay

he readjusted now by that time we’re

going towards the end of august

i think this point we all realize 2020

it’s not the year we thought it was

going to be right it’s pretty much a dud

but we’re going into the fall i think

most of us is like man i just want to

get this year over with we’re hearing

about second wave

third wave let’s try to get out of this

peacefully and

then get to 21.

but there’s an elephant in the room it’s

an election year

doesn’t matter what your political

affiliation is

the company is either going to get back

or ex-vice president is going to make

history with a woman vice president

we knew what happened i’m back in

december

2020 now the irony

of a year ago compared to this year

all my friends all the posting all the

means

now one person said 21 is going to be

their year

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so i decided i’m going to do a repeat

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i’m going to go back and tone myself

get prepared for 21. the same thing

happened the year came

in like any other year we had a little

bump in january

but now we’re in real time we’re in may

remember everybody said new york is dead

new york will never come back again i

don’t know about you guys

looks like it’s live right now to me

there’s traffic people walking down the

street

right

we’re new yorkers we’re resilient that’s

what we do

but i’m gonna say this the few of us

that saw what transpired in the last 18

months

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what we understand is this

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to continuously pursue your goals

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to continuously pursue greatness

there’s a couple of things that you have

to know and understand

the main thing is this no matter what

happened moving forward

we know in a couple months from now

country’s gonna be completely open

they said it’s gonna be i think it’s

gonna be one of the greatest summers

in our lives comparing it to the rolling

20s

right but

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you know how we are we tend to forget

things right as

we move on right but the few of us

who understood what happened because

if the planet was

speeding at a thousand miles per hour

and the pandemic made it suddenly stop

it’s like

speeding on the highway going 150 miles

an hour you see a police officer you

pump the brakes right so what happened

with this planet

it happened because for the first time

when it stopped the pacific ocean you

started to see all these dolphins

swimming now because we weren’t

tempering with the ocean

china for the first time the skies were

blue

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even in india they were able to see the

himalayas

because everyone was home i don’t know

we all took advantage

of this reset but the ones who

understood or understand what that meant

it means we just mastered the art

and the philosophy of reset

thank you very much ladies and gentlemen

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you