Rap to Riches the Ebb Flow of the Entrepreneurial Spirit
i’m coming here with questions but
nobody giving me an answer ain’t no
backup dancer i’m the man sir address me
peshy casino nestle it’s all white let
me tell you it’s all right it was all
fight never saw a bright future no shoot
shoot you if you want to come prove
you without the slug say otherwise they
never seen you guys you act surprised i
know why you don’t i tucked on you don’t
get high you choke don’t lie you broke
see the correlation
now see the situation you’re facing you
could accept me sneeze and bless me but
don’t bet me could only win i could
hardly see my ten minute round you want
to kill a win for what’s under your chin
listen
no more there’s no choice here gotta
suit up no holy this real life
taking a leave me faking bleeding i’m
treating me appreciate you hating
breathing escape escaping demons
right to my territory my self superior
respect ground inferior don’t ask
deliveries black diamonds
all i really want to do is talk to ted
enough said
was a mimic written lyric i pretended
was a freestyle in the same parking lot
where i was robbed by two guys
in 2005 on my knees gun in my mouth
in my underwear ten years later i signed
a record deal
i’m on a new personal and professional
high i
took a company from zero to 100 hit the
inc 500 list number 13 fastest growing
in new york
number 24 in global marketing and
advertising
i signed an awesome contract with
universal music group i worked with
amazing clients like katy perry and
samsung i produced 10 live two-hour
broadcasts for cbs
and i was creating amazing content with
some of my favorite people
on the planet personally i was traveling
the world
i moved into a new two bed two bath
balcony fireplace pool tennis court all
that
but what i learned is that
no matter the accomplishment and no
matter
how many creature comforts you surround
yourself with it doesn’t guarantee a
peaceful mind
see i was stuck with these thoughts and
i was always complaining and comparing
and criticizing it
i was never satisfied i was never
impressed
and you know it’s not the first time we
heard this right i mean jim
jim carrey famously said he wishes
everybody could be rich and famous and
live their wildest dreams so that they
could see it’s not the answer
and miss sonia wrote two great books one
is called the how of happiness and one’s
called the myth of happiness
in both she attributes only 10 of our
happiness to life circumstances
like marital status education wealth
things we typically
chase so for me this was new
and i was looking for an opportunity to
find a way to kind of combat this
so what i did was what i did almost
every morning i sit in front of my
computer in my underwear again
but this time i’m looking for solutions
and i made a list of the top 20 things
that i thought might make me feel better
some of them are a little bit ridiculous
but i’ll share with you three of them
today so
first we don’t feel good right so we go
see our doctor and i had a pretty good
relationship with my doctor
and um but you know despite my
autoimmune disease and despite my
thick cell wall around my heart and my
herniated discs and that my retinas are
attached by
silicone bubbles i was in pretty good
physical shape
so the doctor recommended that i see a
behavioral health clinic
so they studied my brain and besides 140
iq
they found that i was diagnosed with
bipolar 2
ptsd general anxiety disorder and
other things classified under the term
depression
and i was excited and the doctor looked
at me like i was nuts why are you happy
about this but
to me this was this was exciting this
was now okay there’s medical terminology
for what i’m feeling what i’m
experiencing the things that are going
on in my head this is now
now a real thing like maybe now we’re on
the path to treatment let the healing
begin
right well not so fast
they prescribed me with all kinds of
different medications some made me
really fat bloated sweaty others made me
angry and gave me nightmares and
most all the medication made me really
lethargic
and um you know i just this wasn’t the
solution that i was looking for
so i continued back in my underwear
again on the computer looking talking to
friends and family and trying to find
solutions
and um one of my friends i used to write
songs with recommended that i speak to a
natural channeler from israel
and uh at this time you know i had tried
eastern philosophies and
rituals and i tried western meditation
at this point i was ready to try
anything so i said sure why not
and boy am i glad that i did that
because this was my first
inclination of hope this was my first
introduction to the journey of the soul
and this idea that we’re all just this
kind of speck of stardust riding in this
meat covered skeleton floating on a rock
through space this was
foreign to me but nevertheless it
resonated
and i wanted to explore the study i
wanted to see it from every angle i
wanted to
submerge myself into it i wanted for
this idea
what every human being has wanted for
every idea since the beginning of time i
wanted
this idea to manifest into reality i
wanted it
to play an active role in my life
you know i read somewhere that the
definition of resilience is our ability
to adapt
absorb and anticipate shocks and
stresses
well life shocks and stresses certainly
wore me down
i didn’t want to make music i didn’t
want to tour i didn’t consider myself
worthy of the satisfaction of applause
most days i didn’t want to get out of
bed
and so i looked for another reason i
thought maybe
maybe this definition of resilience is
incorrect and when i visited president
moon in south korea and when i moved
last summer to san juan and missed the
protest
this idea was reinforced that maybe
resilience is not about anticipating the
negative things bound to happen in our
lives
maybe it’s more about just the knowing
and the understanding that we have
inside of us
everything that we need that we’re
connected to this infinite source of
knowledge and wisdom
and i’m not talking about your wi-fi
connection to google
see we have 70 000 thoughts per day
about 50 thoughts per minute you’ll have
700 thoughts
just during my talk alone my thoughts
were out of control
and i felt like a victim of them instead
of a co-creator
and so this was essentially my my
issue is that you know how do we become
aware of all these thoughts that are
bouncing back and forth how many of them
are we really aware of and what are the
thoughts doing
to us that we’re not aware how do we
manage this process
and so i discovered a tool that i want
to share with you today it’s a tool that
it’s called the scale of thought and i
picked this up along my travels and
so the ocean of knowledge reads that
we’re this tiny point of light
in the center of the forehead behind the
eyes and that our purpose here on earth
is to experience and express
the innate qualities of the soul that’s
peace power purity love bliss happiness
knowledge wisdom
and now during our time here in this
world of the five senses
we encounter these five vices
and the vices have a tendency to kind of
dim our light and block our shine
the five vices can be represented by the
acronym algae anger
lust greed attachment and ego now we
have eight spiritual powers to combat
these five vices but i’ll get into that
in another talk
so what i learned is that i never had an
issue managing things out here i
practiced all my life i studied in
school
at work i practiced managing people and
situations and circumstances
no problem my issue was managing here so
i didn’t have the tools
to manage my thoughts until now
so i’d like to introduce you to the
scale of thought it’s really simple
picture this
this ascending diagonal line okay you
have thoughts in essentially five
categories
negative thoughts are down here the
negative thoughts are rooted in those
vices anger lust read attach your ego
then we have wasteful thoughts and
honestly during this time in my life
most of my thoughts were wasteful
wasteful thoughts would be the shoulda
would have could have complaining
comparing criticizing
things that we necessarily don’t have
control over things that don’t help us
to think about
and certainly don’t help someone else if
we share our thoughts with them
then we’ve got our neutral thoughts um
generally observations about the world
around us things that we perceive
through our senses it’s
it’s 10 o’clock your shirt is blue
did i leave the oven on these are
typical neutral votes then we’ve got
positive thoughts and divine thoughts
which is where we want most of our
thoughts
to be so let’s walk through a couple of
examples let’s say i’m
walking down the street and it’s a busy
street and i see a watch in the middle
of the street
a negative thought might be um well the
next car that buzzes by i hope that
watch
watch gets smashed to bits and pieces
right that would be a negative thought
um scaling up up the scale of thought
would be a neutral thought it might be
the watch is shiny silver whatever i i
observe about that
a positive thought might be that’s a
beautiful watch a divine thought might
be
i’d like to give that watch to someone
less fortunate let’s walk through
maybe a better example um let’s say
we’re walking down the same street
um eating a sandwich and in the middle
of the street there’s this massive dog
just
foaming at the mouth no collar maybe
most of us
in that situation might have a negative
thought that’s i hope somebody locks
this dog up in
an account um escalating that up the
scale of thought
to a wasteful thought might be hey i
should have crossed the street a block
ago i wouldn’t have to deal with this
a positive thought might be i hope
someone gives this dog a good home as i
kind of tiptoe around
and the divine thought might be here let
me give this this dog my sandwich
so you kind of get the feel the goal for
the scale of thought is first
to be aware of the thoughts that are
happening
second to pin them down along this scale
understanding what kind of thought it is
and then third to rephrase the thought
to escalate it up the skin
and what i learned is that see the brain
learns on repetition and rehearsal right
so the more that we do this
the more that our brain will start to
produce positive thoughts
on its own and when that happens you
start to recognize the positivity that
you’re surrounded
and my goal for sharing this with you
guys today is not necessarily
just to help you to kind of get through
the day but and not just
to create more positive thoughts in the
community but really so that we can live
more meaningful
and happier existences no matter
how much of your life you spend in your
other way thank you