Meeting My Best Friend on the Dance Floor - A Bromance Story

My best friend now, he is a best friend, sele. He has a lot, so unfortunately I only have one and he is it. I have a lot of good friends, a lot of really great friends, but he is my best friend. Meanwhile, he has like 20 others. 20 is an exaggerated . I'm kidding.

Did I change something? So I reached out to Chris and we became best friends, and I'll tell you that story here in a minute. But first Chris, what's up? How does it feel to have me as your best friend? Oh, man. , did we just do that? Uh, did. Okay. All right. Lemme do something different. Um, how does it feel to have you as a best friend?[00:01:00] 

Um, tell me how amazing I am. Well, I was gonna use the word wonderful, but amazing. Wonderful, wonderful. Yeah. But, but it's very great to have somebody like TV in your life who gets you, who understands where you're coming from. Some people you meet in life, and you have to do a lot of translation to expunge your soul into them so they can see things from your viewpoint and then interact with you.

Right. I don't need to really do too much translation with him, and that's one of the best things. I mean, Oh, so we gonna translate that? But , um, you know, just, it feels good to have somebody that I can talk to, that I can, um, You know, be vulnerable around and know that they don't have any malicious intent for me.

Mm. So love you, bro. I didn't actually expect you to answer that so well. Oh God. Okay. You know what? But all right. So that's why he's my best friend, , which leads us [00:02:00] into the first major topic. Um, a few years ago, I looked up, and I've told this story numerous times, so this is the first time I'm sharing it, like verbally, I've actually written about it.

But I looked up a few years ago and realized that I didn't have many male friends. Frankly, I didn't have many friends that I, I spoke to on a regular basis, much less a male friend. And I wondered to myself, why the fuck was that? Why don't I have any guy friends and, and males and emails. Females need females.

We need all types of friendships, but we need someone that can relate to us on, on multiple levels, especially when it comes to the same problems that we're having, uh, the issues we're going through in life. Um, relationships. I can talk honestly bluntly, vo with vulnerability without feeling like I need to filter myself.

Like I can just download and he can be there. That was my thought, but why don't I have them? Uh, and I made a resolution to myself that I needed to fix that. Clearly it was something that I had done, um, that or [00:03:00] I hadn't done, and I wanted to do more intentionally. I met him in a dance class. Uh, I take, uh, dance Zomba here in Dallas and very, very well.

He, he dances Zomba and we're gonna have him tell his side of the story in a second, but go to class and he's there. And. I, I think it was the first time I had ever seen him. There was not enough follows. Females typically follows in class, so I volunteered. Um, cause I was trying to get back into the scene.

I do this every two or three years, trying to get back into the scene. Mm-hmm. . But, um, I volunteered to be a follow and he was a lead and I would cycle around. Most of the guys in the room struggled embracing me, um, because I was a male and obviously they're males. And there was that, um, there was that, uh, hesitation, which is fine.

It's normal. I get it. But I'm trying to get over that because at the end of the day, I am who I am. I'm don't have, there's no malicious intent. I'm not trying to grab your touchy homie. Um, so we're cycling around [00:04:00] and, but it, it is what it is, right? We all have that. Um, I can't even think of the word I'm trying to say.

Like we have that, um, we're hesitant to touch another man in that, that way. And we weren't trying to grope each other, but we're cycling around. Everyone's keeping me at a distance. But I get to Chris and he pulls me in because he is comfortable in his sexuality. He's not worried about it. I'm like, oh, okay, this is different.

And then we're dancing and he's, they're leading the, the moves. And, uh, I was like, wow, wow. I do my thing. And I think I showed 'em a couple of things that I was familiar with. Like, Hey, you should try this, you should try that. Which is also great because I could give them immediate feedback as the lead.

Fantastic, right? Um, then we cycle around. We cycle around, but by the end of the class, the teacher, uh, asks, Hey, everyone, or at the end of that cycle, that, that particular moment, Hey, share some feedback, share some thoughts about what you experience. And everyone goes around and they [00:05:00] get to me. I'm like, . I'm like, ladies, I now know why y'all love Kizo, but why y'all love dancing?

Dude, this is different. I've never felt that. And it wasn't sexual. It wasn't bad in any way. It was neat. It was fun. It was, it was just strange. It was just cool. And second of all, Chris knows how to dance. Y'all need to, y'all need to connect with him. Y'all need to make sure to find him on the dance floor cuz this guy right here is amazing.

Fast forward a little bit and I continued to like see him and we're at some dance event. I finally, uh, turned to him once I made that commitment to.[00:06:00] [00:07:00] [00:08:00] [00:09:00] [00:10:00] [00:11:00] [00:12:00] [00:13:00] [00:14:00] [00:15:00] [00:16:00] [00:17:00] [00:18:00] [00:19:00] [00:20:00] [00:21:00] [00:22:00] [00:23:00] [00:24:00] 

I don't know exactly what I offer them in terms of friendship, but they, I'm, I interrupt him right now. Keep that thought. I don't want you to lose it. What he has to offer and is that he genuinely cares about people. He genuinely has a conversation. Am I in Focused? Yeah. . He genuinely has a conversation and makes you feel valued.

He listens. Um, he has been one of the, the first people that had truly listens processes and takes it in and then will offer up whatever thoughts he has, but in a genuine way. So if he does this across the board with all his friends, including his counsel, of course they're want, gonna want [00:25:00] to be a part of his life.

That's what you have to offer. Sorry. Thank you. Thank you. Uh, this really sounds like a love fest. I'm sorry. It kind of is, but carry on. . Um, and I think, and the reason why I'm sharing this idea for counsel, cause I think it's a good practice to have, right? Um, because for me, because most of my friends are much older than myself, I, I get to witness.

From different vantage points. And because I have quite the vivid imagination, I can superimpose that on my current standing to figure out how I need to move with a combination of data, meaning pe uh, people's experiences or research, or my own internal compass and gut feeling. Mm-hmm. . So it, I I, I find that I, I avoid a lot of common pitfalls that most people do, and I find fresh new pitfalls for us to solve and have problems and, and, and enjoy working around that.

But despite how amazing I keep saying he is, he has plenty of shit and issues. So he comes to me with issues [00:26:00] from time and time that I feel like, oh, I got that. I can help you with that clearly why he has still had forehead of hair and I don't, um, but you know, when we talk about depression rates, when we talk about super suicide rates, when we talk about, you know, the rise of antidepressants, the rise of, um, various, um, substances and stuff like that, people coping, you know, I, I generally feel.

that self-care is the ultimate care. And meeting with having valuable people in my life that I resonate with, that pour nothing but love and good vibes into me is part of that. But of course, nothing matters if you lead a horse to water and it doesn't drink. So I have to be drinking from the same pond.

The I, I can't love myself less than the people around me. I can't value myself than the people around me. They're gonna reciprocate that. They're gonna mirror that. So kind of going back to when I was mentioning that system, you have to know yourself first and then put yourself on display. It's hard to do.

I think Bruce Lee said the, the hardest [00:27:00] thing for a human being to do is sincere, honest expression, right? But what happens when you express yourself, and this is a very artistic metaphor, but when you put yourself out there, not everybody's gonna like you. Some people are just, that looks weird, or nah, I don't, I don't, I don't approve of that.

I don't whatever. But there's gonna be a subset of people that do. I believe we just crossed the 18 billion mark from 17 billion in the human population. People. So if you just take 0.03% of that, you done the math? I, I actually did , but, but, but, but not with 0.03. I did it with 1% either way. Yeah. Okay. Okay.

You know, there are a couple hundred million people in the world that are on your same wavelength, your same vibe. Yeah. You just have to be good at identifying those people and then who're out there who are out there across different ages, genders. Yeah. Geographic location. Right. Which is why travel's also important.

Right. But more on that later. I feel like you have something growing. No, it's just, um, I've been blessed in life. I've [00:28:00] lived long enough to, to have, um, been able to grow. Um, I was in a real, I grew up in the hood in Dallas, um, I guess you could call it that. And it was, uh, I lived a real small minded life because that's all I had.

Not until my divorce and. The starting of my business is that I start to grow cuz I needed to grow. I needed to start, uh, to develop my skills cuz I needed to learn how to sell . I needed to network, I needed to learn all these things. Um, and I became, and and I'm 47 today, as of right now, as of this recording.

Oh. Anyway, what's his your birthday? No bad. I'm 47, but today's your birthday bad friend over here. Yeah. You're a terrible friend. Um, it's not his birthday. And I, I think to myself, like I'm finally in a position in my life where I've always wanted to be. I finally became the man I wanted to be. Woo. Okay, I gotta touch on that.

Can I interrupt? [00:29:00] Okay. So for everybody listening, like there's a hold on that. Whoa. That was such a damn good fucking point. Um, ah, damn. Okay. Focus. I know. Thank you . So, um, there was a point. in my life as well. Uh, somewhere around college where, I don't know, I was studying something, differential equations or some kind of whatever, and I just happened to look up and I'm like, wait a minute.

I mean, I need to pass this test, but hold up. There's a bigger realization that just don't upon me as I'm trying to figure out this equation. I am the man that I want to be. Mm. Then yeah, bastard, bastard . But is this about you showing up right now? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Because hear this out because See, but hear this out.

Okay. Because the moment I realized that I was calmly elated. Right? Calmly because right behind that [00:30:00] thought, literally right after that thought was antithesis. Now what? How can I grow if I'm already the man that I want to be? What, like, what's next for me? Now? What was that based on and what was that based on?

Was it an earlier goal or earlier version, uh, ideas that you had set for yourself at what, 10 15 ? What, what was that based on? Clearly you're not wrong. Okay. But, uh, you were there. That's fine. That's what beautiful. So the baseline for me was I wanted to be in a position where I was internally good with my internal environment.

I could process my emotions, I could, I could communicate, I could be calm, I could be responsive to life, not reactive to life. If I, and I had the, the, the, the, I don't know, the gumption to go after what I want. And that time, you know, I hadn't stacked. For me, I hadn't, I hadn't stuck enough successes [00:31:00] consecutively, so I was going based on faith.

Right? Um, or based on just blind belief that I can't achieve something, um, graduate college, get this highly technical degree, all these things, right. And slowly I built up my repertoire of successes that I can pull when I'm in my down moments. Like, yeah, this, this, this situation will work out because it worked out before.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And just kind of, cuz I feel like a lot of times we, we recycle on negative, uh, failures. We do. And that gives us a lot of doubt and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So either way, when we should be recycling all the positive things. Exactly. I mean, it's, it's, it is a matter of perspective. Yeah.

You mean do the negative, that's what really brings you happy. I'm not gonna tell you what was, but for me, that didn't serve me. Right. So for me, I wanted to be in a place where internally I felt solid. I didn't, I didn't have a yearning too much for validation. I didn't have a yearning too much for like, I felt self su.

emotionally physic, like, you know, all the ills, I felt, I felt self-sufficient. ills. Right. Um, but then I was like, what next? [00:32:00] And then that what next part? Answering that is what led to all of this. Because then Okay. The you, as of as, what would you say at, at this time of recording, I'm 34. No, no. How old were you when you had this epiphany?

You were in college? 21. You're studying 21. Wow. Okay. 21, 22. Mm-hmm. , because I still had this couple more years of college left. Um, so cool. That's really neat, man. Yeah, but I only got there cuz I had pushed through the different things. But either way, my, my point is this. So the, so the next question is, okay, well if I, if I feel that way internally, everything else is gravy.

Everything is, is, is garnished. So if that's the case, let me spend the rest of the time I have existing in here to. allow my external environment to mirror my internal environment. That means the way that I talk to myself, the way that I engage with myself, I'm gonna need people that engage with me in the same way, the way I love myself.

I'm gonna need people that [00:33:00] engage with me the same way. So what'd you do next, though? What was the next, the first time I had to graduate college. Oh, okay. But after, what was the next big step based on all that? Like what did you, what did you throw yourself at? Dance? Yeah. I mean, dance salsa, um, it was salsa.

It was salsa. Um, love salsa. So you've been dancing salsa since, uh, 23? No, no. Maybe 24. . Okay. I was off by one year. . , like, am I off by 10 years? Yeah. But there are varying degrees of intensity. But, but, but really, uh, I don't think it was just a soft, so I put, I took internal stock of where I wanted to develop and where I wanted to grow and where I felt a lack.

And I really was very self-conscious around my dancing. Like, I'm African and, you know, my mom and people with family would be dancing as a kid. You know, like you see those kids dancing, those African videos. I was not one of them . I'm the guy like, just eating, you know, I'm the same guy. I'm, I'm, you know, I was just the Mexican, oh, that Mexican didn't dance, but I wanted to dance, [00:34:00] dancing.

Like, and, and, and you know what, uh, this may divert from the topic a bit, uh, cause I know we're kind of riffing, but dancing has been something that helps me map my internal mind process, right? because you are kinda moving in three dimensional space. Right? So the way you, the way you're gonna catalog your expression, the way you're gonna catalog, how you're feeling, the way you're gonna catalog life, because dancing is an expression of life.

Yeah. You know, music decorates time, um, wow. You've given this some thought art. That's awesome. That's a beautiful way to put it. Art decorates space. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Dancing decorat, life dancing. The movement of art. It decorates existence. Yeah. Yeah. You know, if I do this, it's, I'm never gonna be able to have this moment to do that again.

Yes. It's, it's, you have to, and you can't just look at it. You have to feel it. Right. But doing that challenge, challenge some growth inside me. So essentially all I'm trying to say with this analogy, as convoluted as that may have been, is I started throwing myself [00:35:00] at things that I wanted to grow in mm-hmm.

that I thought would be cool. I mean, cuz you know, I'm a hypnotist, I do dancing, I do all these different things. Don't you also do, uh, Tai Chi or reiki or, yeah, some. So Kiki. Like the Elise and Kiki anyway, um, and the town, the energy work, all that stuff. Right. Um, so I start, like I said, every once you, once you get to the place where I got to the place where I was the person I wanted to be, everything, it was just garnished.

So it's like, okay, what do I think is cool? I think it'd be cool to learn how to dance. I think it'd be cool to do that. And when you start get, now you start becoming proficient in things that you thought were cool and now the best version of yourself, that coolest version of yourself starts manifesting before your fucking eyes.

Yeah. So for me, it was quite the opposite. Oh, okay. For me, when I first started to make this transition, to start, I had to, it was my divorce. I, I, I've, so for me, my divorce mm-hmm. was the best mistake of my, well, no, the best [00:36:00] decision of my life because of the marriage being the. The best mistake. All right.

My daughters, uh, because of it. He is a wonderful father. He has amazing daughters. Nah, man, you got, they gotta know. No, we got, I don't wanna lose this. I don't wanna lose this point. Dammit, , feel free to, to shower me with things, uh, with uh, praise in a second. As I was divorcing and became evident to me that I really was not very much of a man, at least not the man that I wanted to be, I, I realized that I was missing a lot of skills, a lot of under awareness and understandings.

And so I took an inventory and people asked me how I, how I did it, but I took an inventory. I literally wrote down, it may have been a, a Google sheet at the time. Um, may have been both, but I wrote down every single thing that I wanted to improve on my, um, about myself, both physically. The simple, the simple stuff is just getting a new wardrobe, some new shoes.

I wanted to grow, grow, uh, some facial [00:37:00] hair, cuz at the time I had none and I was. Not allowed to have any. Long story short, I was, I was married picture, insert picture of child tv. It was very, I looked like a child, but, so I grew a mustache. I grew up beard. I did all types of things. Got new hair, got new shoes.

That was external, right? Went to the dentist. Got, uh, I used to have bad acne around that. Age was, what was that like? Uh, 28, 29 when I divorced 30. I forget all these physical things. Uh, whitening my teeth, but then also internal and, and skill-wise, I started to, to study web design. I start, uh, I dough deeper into Photoshop.

I started trying to play with, with the photography and videography. Uh, I started taking improv. I started taking, I took all these things because it was clear that I was missing something. Now, on top of that, I didn't have a college education. Not that that really matters, but I didn't have exposure to groups of people.

One of the reasons that people like to go to college is you're gonna, they tell you, it's like, oh, the network. [00:38:00] The network. I didn't have any of that. I needed to work at that. And it, and it, it was all a risk. And even the divorce itself was a risk. And 10, 15 years later, I looked up and I realized I'm living the life of my dreams.

I'm not some billionaires, a millionaire, but I'm doing well. I I live in a nice place. I'm, dude, I can comfortably say I love myself and then I'm a good looking man. I can say that and not like laugh or, or, and that it's not just, it's, it's crazy to say for myself looking back, cuz I used to feel like I was the ugliest person in the room forever.

Now I feel like I'm a handsome, older, grizzled, gray haired, man. I have a beautiful girlfriend, I have great children and I'm living a life on my terms. And I am the man I've always wanted to be, but it came from a place [00:39:00] of pain. It was clear to me I needed to be honest, and I took inventory and then I took action.

So I find it very interesting how we started this conversation about friendship and now we've, we've really just gone into a whole dissertation and how to become a better version of self. Right? Yeah. And that's why we ended up becoming friends because we became better versions of each other and the like.

Yeah. That's the point of life. I mean, so kind of going back to initially you said, I was trying to figure out what made people say that college was the best years of your life. Because think about it. In college, no, not just youth fun, right? People. People connections. Most people, the most time, they're gonna be surrounded by people.

The. . Hmm. In college, after that, your social interactions drop off drastically. Either move, you go work, whatever, when your social circle drastically decreases right From college. Not only that, but college is a very big [00:40:00] exploratory time of most young adults' life. You get to try different things. You get to be in various situations, some good, some bad, and all of them hilarious stories.

I don't, I can't even speak on that. Exactly. Not, not with the camera . Um, but, you know, people are, ha there's a lot of novelty around life. There's a lot of variety about life. I see where you're going, but once they, once most people graduate, they for whatever reason stop living. And I think this is really why some, you know, some people say the idea is to grow up, not grow old, right?

Mm-hmm. , because you have to remain childlike. And the concept of me and TV have a lot, and we talk about this one key word, playfulness a lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because playfulness is how you discover and you know, some people just. Take life very seriously and I don't stop playing. Yeah. And let me be clear, there are certain realities of life that you cannot escape.

Like life isn't a whole bunch of roses. There, there are real stuff with real consequences, right? But that, that's [00:41:00] immutable, that's life. That's the ebb and flow. Don't overate on that. Likewise, don't overate on the, the highs, right? It's about having that balance. And the only way to get that balance is to have consistency and self at least, right?

Because that, and then when you have that and you have people that reflect you back to you, your life is, is, is, has no choice but to be beautiful. Work may suck now and then, but hopefully you're in a career. You love like all these something to play with, something, to play with something playful, whether it be dance, art, music, conversation, coding, video games.

We have to have something to play other otherwise growing like cats. Now you're my kid, . I'm like cats. Where that come from? . Um, too many people are, I get too serious too fast, and I, I. . Heck, I'm careful with that because life is serious, right? Yeah. And some real world shit that we can't escape. But there's also time to, to actually have some fun and grow, uh, and grow with others.

Um, but I wanted to transition a little bit. I [00:42:00] have, uh, I have a thought that I've been, I think I may have told you this, is there's this idea that I'm fascinated by that we live in a world of choice. By and far, we have choice, right?

What makes us, us . I know. Okay. Like what makes tv, TV Today, I'm a dancing artist, father, boyfriend marketer, and I don't know what else. I am this person, but tomorrow I could decide to be, I don't know what a, a fucking circus clown. And I can just start choosing that. I'll take circus clown classes. I'll start taking juggling.

Like, we can literally choose at any given moment something new. What keeps us from choosing a new identity or something that like, you know what, today I'm going to learn how to, I'm [00:43:00] trying to think of something really neat. I'm gonna be a truck driver, okay? And I would no longer want to be a marketer and I can literally choose that and, and join truck drivers, friend groups and whatnot.

But we can choose that why? What keeps us locked into this one version of ourselves? For me, for you? Not for me. And I think this is, this is, again, everything goes back to that like inflection point when you realize you are the person that you want to be. Um, Because you, you also realized the only reason why you got there is you decided to take the path of uncertainty again, until you built out the repertoire of success within yourself.

You don't know where anything's gonna lead, and with life you really don't. And either way, but you at least can convince yourself that it is gonna work out whether it does or doesn't. And that ability to face doubt and that ability to allow yourself to stretch yourself, that you can't achieve something.

You know, there are 60 year olds who are achieving full [00:44:00] splits when people think that it, I saw a video of a 90 year old, no, 85 year old lady. Oh, thanks. I just saw a video of a 85 year old lady doing some gymnastics type of stuff. I'm like, that's where I want to be. Exactly. I wanna be that. So exactly what do I gotta do?

And, and to your point, it goes back to choices. You are the sum of all your choices. Right? And the beautiful thing about that is that any day you can switch that around and. , you don't know yourself until you know who you are. When I say I became the man that I enemy, I, I became the man who makes the type of choices that I wanted to make.

Mm. Right. I'm the kind of man who responds to situations in a way that I, I think is a healthy to respond. And if it's not, I have a good group of people around me who will correct me on my mistake, who educate me on why it may or may not have been the best course of action to take, but I can with love, with grace, with tact.

Right. He can kind of be a jerk to himself at [00:45:00] times. To myself. At least not to everybody. No. He's gracious with others. Most, for the most part. Yeah. But that, that, that sounds very noble, but it can also have detrimental effects. Right. So it's a, it's a balance. Nothing's perfect, but I say all I say that to say to your question, we are who we choose to be.

So the question is, who do you choose to be? Yeah. I, I just, I find it so neat to think about that because it's, it's true. Like, . I'm not a smoker. I'm not a, I don't identify as a smoker, so I never, if someone offers me a cigarette, I'm like, no thanks. I don't smoke, so I'm not gonna choose that. Um, it, it's, it's knowing, like being aware of that, like, oh, one day I decided I want to be a writer.

So what did the writers do? Well, they write, they have experiences. They notate them. They, they start trying to figure out how to position them, how to put the characters in there, how to get the point across. I'm processing and I became a writer, and now I think I'm becoming a better writer. Slowly but surely.

Um, but we can do [00:46:00] that. And, and I, and I think to answer my question and another, and, uh, aside from what you said is we struggle because we don't know what that will look like. It's, it's the unknown. It's hard. It's difficult cuz I've had some pushback on that. Um, I've written about it as far as making choices just choose to do.

And if you fail, which you will more than likely if you've never done it before. That's fine. Now you improve. But somebody pushed back on me and said like, well, it's easy for you to say cuz you can just choose easily. Some people ch it's harder. And I, although I get that, why not just do it just to experiment?

I don't know. It's just, I have trouble with people saying that. It's easy for me to say, just choose, dude, you, you just chose to wake, woke up this morning, you just chose to eat easy pizza. You just like, you just choose things like, choose differently just for the sake of choosing differently. To that last point you mentioned, I was just thinking about it.

I, [00:47:00] I think that's why it's important for two things to happen. One, meet your heroes and realize that dang ain't shit. Oh, I love that. You know, because all of them are full of shit. I mean, they're because they're human, not because they're . Not all. Although some of them probably are secretly, like, I try not to idolize anyone, even my heroes, but.

They're humans. They're humans, right? So you realize, well, I'm a human too, right? So therefore, therefore it's either nature of their environment, their work ethic or happenstance that kind of got them serendipity. A combination of a combination of all that stuff, right? Exactly. Luck involved. So that's the first thing.

The second thing is, I keep going back to this. Recycle, accumulate successes. No matter how small. Learn how to whistle. Learn how to, oh God, learn how to learn how to do this thing, right? Right. Make don look like a wet noodle, right? , like this thing, this thing, right? Yeah, exactly. Whatever. It's learn snowball effect, right?

Accumulate little wins. Because then what's gonna happen is you're [00:48:00] gonna arrive at someplace and somebody's gonna tell you, I call it the brief. Wow. Damnit, I forgot what I called it. Ah, I do it, it to the girls. Continue. Okay, so , um, damnit, ah, I'm gonna remember guys. So essentially successes, accumulate successes, because damn, two things are gonna Thank you.

Two things are gonna happen. , right? When you, as you do that, you're gonna realize somebody's gonna come to you, man. Man, I wish I could be like you or something like that. And, and, and you're gonna be, that's gonna snap you out of your, like, your trance. Like, wait, what? I'm still struggling to get to where I want to get to.

Yeah. Because I think why I'm at ain't shit. Right. And you're trying to get to me, I need to take a pause and evaluate how far I've actually come because for somebody to say that, that means I have something that's demonstrable. Right. Right. And then two, go a sec, another layer deeper. Well, how did I get here?

Well, I just started working out one day a week. Then that went to two days a week, then went to three days a week. And then all of a sudden you do that consistently over a lot of years. You have the physique [00:49:00] that people want. You ha you, you, you know, well you learn about it took 10 years to, it took 10 years to get there.

But people just see that you now and they're like, man, I just wanna be. Exactly. Cuz it's like, people say overnight success really doesn't happen overnight. You just, it just came to your awareness. Right. Overnight. But they've been wor like, you know, like what is that flower? The, the, the bamboo. The bamboo tree.

Uh, I don't even know if that's true, but the story goes, I don't know if that's true either. It, it doesn't, but I got one. That is true. It, it doesn't, bamboo doesn't grow for 10 years. You water, you watered and then all of a sudden in like a week or something like 10 feet up in the air. Yeah. I, I, I, I get it.

We don't know if that's shit, but at the same time, the metaphor is there. The metaphor is there. I got another metaphor that now I think about it. I don't know if it's true. So , so any metaphors, any veterinarian or anybody here, this is an animal thing, let me know in the comments or let him know if this is true.

But it's like when you're, when you're going through that, that that tough place to make a different decision, like, I don't know. The, the relationships you've been cheated on or you did something wrong. Or let's say you, you failed [00:50:00] some tests, you lost the job, whatever. Something that's like, okay, I want to, I wanna make a different decision.

I wanna be healthy. I wanna do something, something that initiates that type of thought and creates that, churning that, that, I don't know if I should do this. I don't know if I should confront this person that I'm feeling something for and talk through this issue. Maybe I should just be emotional, right?

Like, you know, you should never just be emotional, but you should not. But even the fact, if even having that level of dialogue, that level of awareness to say that it's cool. But the analogy goes is if you're going through something right, get through it. Because like the buffalo, the money Buffalo, right?

They hate, they hate getting wet, they hate getting stand and dirt on them, all that stuff. So what they've realized, I've never heard this as a speech. Yeah. Come on, I gotta keep new things coming. I gotta grow so I can share my growth with you. Yeah, exactly. The buffalo, right? So they hate being wet. So what happens when they see storm clouds coming, what they do is they start running towards.

The storm class cuz they've realized that they've run away from it. No, it's gonna catch up to them and they're gonna spend the most of the time getting [00:51:00] wet, getting sand, all that stuff on them. So they run towards it because by running towards the storm, they spend the shortest amount of time getting wet.

Right. And then they're free to freely free forward to Oh, ah. They feel free to graze and all that stuff. So just like with shit that is going on in your life. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, if you're already going through, hell go through it. That's the only way to get through the other side. And when you get to the other side, you, you retain something valuable that gives you the gumption and the fortitude to make different choices.

Yeah. In highly stressful, highly pressured situations. I mean, not, we all have situations like that. I know personally you're going through situations. I'm, we're all going through situations, but having the ability to respond to life. . That's the energy you're putting out. That's the kinda energy you're gonna get back in a new people that you meet from friends and how people interact with you and how you interact with yourself.

So, wanted to put that out there. Portfolio of success, that's [00:52:00] what I call it. Repository. I mean, it's the same thing. We're talking about the same case of six. Yeah. Now we're just being jerks. We are portfolio success. It's something I've talked about numerous times. I've written about something that I did with the girls since they were a little bitty, is I, I started to get them to do little things.

Mm-hmm. , um, with the intention of them feeling successful about it. Uh, throwing in Frisbee, catching a football, shooting at basketball, uh, jumping. They did part core , but I have pictures of them like, uh, walking across a wire, not a wire, but like a Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or beams and doing tumbles. , art, music, editing, poetry, public speaking.

Um, his daughter's all phenomenal, but all these things, they didn't, they weren't like, oh, chess. Like, they weren't great. They weren't world class, but they were successful at doing it [00:53:00] at a, at a low level to where as time progressed, my intention was as life got started to, you know, hit 'em in the face, which will, I would be able to go back to them, or even before they get to me internally, they would be able to say, but I've been doing, I've been doing hard things all my life.

I've been doing things I wasn't supposed to be doing all my life. So you have those stories to refer back to those experiences, because too often what ends up happening is we're like, oh man, I'm, I suck at this. I suck at math. I, I've always suck at math, or I'm, I'm terrible at anything athletic, or I suck at music and, uh, and therefore I can't dance.

Everything's a fucking skill essentially, aside from certain things in life, almost everything you see is a skill and it just takes time. So if you can look back and realize like I, I was able to do those things and do them well when I was a child. I can do this now. I can go through it, even if it's something tough that they've never done before.

Too many times we referred to old experiences of failures, and [00:54:00] we talked about this before we got on camera. We refer to those old experiences of when we failed, instead of the positive experiences of when you succeeded and even when you've, it's all about the story is what it is. It amounts to me, what it's been clear to me.

If you just tell a different story of like, yeah, I try it, I failed, but I can try it again and see what happens now based on the learnings that I had from this previous 2, 3, 5, 20 experiences of. , too many people are telling a terrible story. You didn't fail. You learned. I mean, you failed. I mean, fail accomplished the goal, right?

You didn't accomplish the goal. But, but however, unless you're dead, like you could still try again if it's something you truly want to do. So, example, let Matrix, unless I just don't wanna, one thing I'm, I'm sick and tired of hearing about it. Like, oh, we, they're trying to re reframe certain words to where Positive words or not negative words.

Negative. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. That's why sta you didn't hit the gold. Yeah, that's the truth's. Fine. You fucking failed. You just, that's, it's fine. Yeah, exactly. I didn't win. I fucking tripped and fell on, fell in my face and [00:55:00] broke my ankle. But you heel you'll be up fine. Exactly's what? I'm just saying. No, like, like you lost your hair.

You failed at getting like luscious. Yeah. Like, oh, I had it when I, I had to punch of hair one time, but hey, everything ends, and now we start again. Exactly. To that point on failure. It's almost like, you know, the matrix, they have this concept of you can just like download skills right near I know karate, right?

I love that. Cause it's true. I feel like you can, okay, I'm wanna take the adverse look at that now. So yes, you can. , there's one thing to just download the skills, right? Let's say if he was to take his brain and implant into me and whatever, that's one thing. Now, if he was to try and execute those skills, if, if his spirit was in my body trying to execute skills that he has, I may be able to execute it, but I may not be able to fulfill it completely.

Why? Because I haven't gone through the repetitions to gain the muscle memory repetitions. The the tendon strength. Like if I was to do a punch Oh yeah, yeah. Like a martial artist, right? Absolutely. I may not even have the [00:56:00] flexibility because I'm in a different vehicle right now. You need those reps. You need those reps, not just, yeah.

You know, you. Fucking failed because there's, there's a lot of things that people understand through theory now. Put them in some real shit. How is that theory working out? What did Mike Tyson say? Uh, everybody has a plan until they get punched in the fifth. If you didn't eye that Uber , I was gonna look stupid on camera.

Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face. And I would've failed and I would've learned. I I heard something else similar to that. Yes. You're not gonna learn how to ride a bike by reading the manual. Yeah. Is there, I don't think there's even a manual, but the point is, you can only read something you gotta do.

You gotta fall, you gotta bust your ass. You gotta scrape your knees. Like stop trying to be a, you not going to learn how to love. You have a broken heart. You can sing to me until you start giving some loving. Give loving out there people. You trying to, what are you trying to do? Become a meme right now.

Whatcha are you trying to do? Homie? , bald black man. Give him loving and [00:57:00] give some loving. This is, uh, um, some Luther Vank shit. . That's what that sounded like. . Um,

we may have to edit this. I'm trying to think of like a way to bring it home. So bringing, bringing all back. We, we, we went through a lot today, right? We started off talking about how we became friends and what that looked like. Mm-hmm. the journey of life to, I don't think I would've become, I know I wouldn't become his friend if I hadn't gone to dance class.

The journey to self-improvement takes you through. all types of faces in life. And you get to meet a whole bunch of people and a whole group. Like it's just by working on yourself, take life by the horns. Travel. Right? Put yourself in new, new places. Because if it doesn't even have to be another country, it doesn't.

Thank you. It doesn't, doesn't go to a dance studio. Uh, go learn, go play competitive Frisbee. Yes. Like I've seen that. I want to do that. I want to meet those [00:58:00] guys. Like, yeah. What do they call it? Like, uh, I don't know, but it's competitive. Frisbee. Some competitive, I wanna do that. Okay. That looks like fun.

That I'm gonna do that next year. He's gonna do that next year. Um, so we, we, we, we've circled the gamut, you know, coming a better version of yourself so that you can attract the people who you will want to have as friends. How do you become a better version? Like just recycling success, building a portfolio of success.

Damn. And just, this is good. This is good. You, you wanna host this? I'm just . This is beautiful. He's gonna bring it home. Let's go. So we, we, we, we talked about a lot of different things and, um, . But I think that if I, if I was to bring it home, as you say with one thing, right, people just love yourself, right?

Do unto unto others as you want done to yourself. Oh shit, we went there. Love yourself, . I mean, it is true. There's a lot of stuff going on in the world right now. There's a lot of stuff. There's a lack of empathy, there's a lack of sympathy, there's a lack of connection. There's a lack of conversation, you know?

And what's the essence of friendship? [00:59:00] The, my soul in this galactic space suit that he cannot feel my soul physically, but we can interact like verbally. I can give him a hug. All this stuff, sharing my thoughts, sharing my, my, my dreams of consciousness with him allows him to understand where I'm coming from and him doing the same.

What does that do? It connects us. And once it connects us, we realize how similar we are. And if I love myself the way I feel like I love myself, I'm not gonna do anything to harm. I'm not gonna do anything to harmony of you guys if I can do it. And the life has its own hep stance, but for those of you going through tough times, just keep going.

It gets better, you know? Um, and, and you meet fellow warriors along the way, right? No matter what age, we're all roaring the same stream. His boat may be a little bit ahead of me, but we're going in the same direction, right? So, yeah, his boat just happened to pass mine at a younger age. Okay? No. Mm-hmm. . And this, this is not enough.

Like you're, you're further along in life in a positive way. You, you, you've had some, uh, some help and some resources that I didn't [01:00:00] have, which is fine. This is not, I'm not sha saying that to make you feel bad. I'm saying that, that it's not, although it is a competition. It isn't a competition. Um, it's me versus me out there.

Yeah. I always would. I literally just told that to my girlfriend. It's, it is you versus you like she's trying to grow a business. It's you versus you. Yeah. Um, it's you versus. for the most part. I mean, I'm sure I, I know for a fact I'm gonna get somebody so else easy for you to say. Of course. Of course. But oh, they sound like some privileged people who've never had any like, like I, I can hear it already.

Yeah. Mine and Dandy. Yeah. But given where we're at, we have a lot of access. We have a lot of information. It's a lot of it can be even free. Um, and we can all, if we choose to grow, we can grow. Sorry, something just popped in my head as I was saying that last statement. I, I know we're trying to like wrap it up, but this No, but maybe we're not, maybe we're not.

Make a tour. Boom. There we go. Here we go. You thought we were done. Let's talk about sports. That's tough. . . We could, he didn't follow [01:01:00] sports. You know, talk, like when we mentioned the privilege and stuff like that. So I'm, I'm from Africa and I've seen, I, I've been to places where there's this humongous economic disparity.

I've, I've, I've lived in places. I, I've had family members in places and it's very, and a lot of people may, may understand this, sometimes the people who have nothing actually have a better life. So happy. They're enjoying life. They're so happy, they're enjoying life. They don't have the dumb desires that we have.

Exactly. But it's the, you know, that's a whole nother topic. Yeah. That like, you know, hi Buddhist in the, in the audience. Right. Like, that's something I definitely wanna talk about in the future podcast. Something I've, I've been learning. Uh, but on memetic desire and desire, we don't want what we want for our sake.

We want it because the person over there has it, or des desires it, which is interesting. But that's a, yeah. Like I said, another conversation. It's another conversation. So, you know, um, if there are people who think that like just. Keep going. Just keep going. I, I just wanna [01:02:00] send some love. I just wanna, like that's what, that's what I'm trying to do.

I'm just, okay. So I'll wrap it up with this. Thank you. Cause I'm getting all like, yeah, like if I'm making this up to you, you're gonna be talking about tomorrow's gonna be better. Yeah. Just keep pushing. All right. Now you, okay. So that, that actually leads right into what I wanted to say. Cliches, , we just, we just talked about this, we talked about that earlier.

He sounds cliche as fuck, right? Oh gosh, yes. But that, that's what makes something cliche is because it's rela relatively true. Um, we talk a lot, we have a disdain for things that are cliche, but the reality is cliche is the, the good stuff. It's the good true stuff. Love. Oh, friendship. Oh, personal. It's cliche because it's true.

Fall in love with the cliche. Do the cliche. Um. . You know, wake up early, go to sleep late or whatever. Huh. But think about it, that repertoire of success, until you have that figure, until you make it imagination, [01:03:00] right? I mean, that's a cliche, but so it's, it's cliche because it's true. I think we need to be careful not dismissing what's cliche.

And actually it is true because it's been true for thousands of years. Up is up, down is down. I mean, we can, without getting into weird shit. That's relatively true. . Okay, . How do you make that weird? Well, you got weird on me when I say one plus one equals two , you're like, well, see, I'm like some people, like I'm always watching for that idiot in the corner.

Yeah. But, okay, so yeah, in classical physics, that works. But if you go down to the quantum world, yeah, like we're talking like, anyways, this is it for today because me and him can talk for hours. I just wanted to let you in, wanna let you in. Wanna let you in a sneak peek into what it is to be a friend with this guy and what got us here.

Uh, some of the things that we're talking about we're working on personally as well as between our friendship. Um, I appreciate you. I like to think that we can [01:04:00] do these often. I'll have some. It's the only way I get to see him. No, he's, he's been gone. And I'm not gonna, dude, let's wrap this up. Godammit. I don't wanna chew you out in front of everyone for being a terrible friend.

Um, he's a great friend. Find you one, like who in your circle right now need you? One of these. Find them. Like, get you one of these. Stop hiding. Find a friend. And chances are you are, you may already be doing things. You can just, Hey, you want to hang out? Or an old friend that maybe you just lost touch with.

Reach out to them. Yeah. Say, hi, what are you up to? Let's hang out. The more you do that, the more likely you are to connect with someone. And if it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out. You can break up with them like you do your partner. It's perfectly fine. Yeah. So if you guys want us to do this again, we're gonna do it again anyways.

Oh, no, we're not asking for permission. You right. Oh, I'm not asking for permission, . I'm gonna talk to my best friend because this is the only time I can see him too. Thank you very much for watching. Make sure to [01:05:00] subscribe, follow, comment. What? What was your favorite, uh, takeaway? What was the cheesiest thing we said that you heard that you really wish we could, you really wish you could do more of whatever.

Tell us that we're full of shit. Do that too. Until next time. Thank you for tuning in to the TV show podcast. This is TV, Chris. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.