How to Get Out of Your Own Way Read online

  For a long time I blamed other people for a bunch of different things, and it boiled down to what I was doing to contribute to the situation. You can blame other people for how they are limiting you in some way, but you have to own it, you have to get clarity on how you are impacting the situation. Once you do, you have to do something about it. The first step to becoming the master of your environment and getting out of your own way is to own up to the part you are playing in affecting your life. Sure there are external factors, but there are ways to fix them. You can break the negative cycle.

  Every aspect of your life should represent the things you speak as much as possible. I now take more responsibility for the responses I create in people, by being more conscious of my habits, the way I come off and the things I say or do. I don’t want anyone to think that I haven’t made mistakes, or won’t make any more mistakes or bad choices. But you have to match your self-perception—how you see yourself—with reality.

  When you become aware of what you’re doing and how it’s affecting other people and even, potentially, your career and your life, you must decide if you’re going to change it or not. Success depends on your hard work and hustle.

  As you make these changes in your life, remember that every lesson is a blessing. It’s okay to hold up the mirror and look at your faults as long as each one of those lessons will help you grow and become a better master of your environment.

  Chapter 4

  Who Are Your Five People?

  Just as your actions represent your thoughts, the people closest to you represent what you think of yourself. It’s pretty simple. The people in your life—from your past and your present—make up your environment, and they can affect who you are and what you become.

  As I’ve explained in the previous chapters, you are a direct reflection of your environment. How much you love yourself will affect how you carry yourself in your personal and business lives. If you don’t love yourself, how are you going to know how to control your environment and the people in it so you can continue to get out of your own way?

  All my life I made a conscious choice to surround myself with people who were better or reminded me of people who were better than those I grew up around. It was something I decided that I wanted for myself, even back then. I learned early on that people were essential to my growth. People like Angie, Gayle Atkins, and Reggie Andrews had given me permission to want better for myself.

  Will Smith put this idea into words and made me look at it in a different way. During that same life-changing conversation, he told me something that really shook me up. He said, “You can often tell how far your life and career will go based on the five people you spend the most time with.” When I first heard that, I paused, sat back in my chair, and started thinking about who was in my own circle of five—some were friends and others were business associates. I had to take a good long look at what was happening in my career and business relationships. I had to get past how long I’d known them, all the history we had, and ask myself, Have we hit a wall? Do I really believe that my existing team can help me get to the next level? I wanted to make sure I would get the kind of results and outcome I wanted and felt I deserved. I realized that I couldn’t achieve the level that I was trying to get to in my career with the people I had in my immediate circle at that time. I ended up firing managers, agents, and lawyers and cutting off a lot of friends and associates. If I didn’t think people could help me, I got rid of them. I still love them, we’re still friends and stay in touch, I just don’t work with them anymore.

  Ultimately, you should be on a mission for a circle of five that represents your new train of thought and thinking. To simplify it, it’s like if we all grew up as Christians, and you decide to start practicing Islam. We can obviously remain friends, but your walk and my walk are just a little different now because you’re practicing a different religion. It’s not that we can’t hang out, but when it comes to religious talk and beliefs and our personal preferences, we’re not on the same path anymore.

  Right now, every person in my life—and I thank God that I’m able to say this—is in my life because I want them to be. There is nobody in my business or personal lives that I don’t want. I don’t hang out with people I don’t want to be with. If I do, it’s more for work, which is helping me along the way—that’s networking, that’s hustling, and you’ve got to do that to further your business. But for the most part there is nobody in my life that I don’t want to be there, because I’m very clear about who and what I want in my life. To be in this space is the greatest blessing because it’s such a level of clarity that I didn’t have before.

  Are You Being Celebrated or Tolerated?

  I now live my life by the phrase Iron sharpens iron. Will had explained the importance of a strong circle of five with those words. I did some research and discovered they are part of a quote from Proverbs, chapter 27 verse 17: “As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.” In other words, we need a strong circle of five because we need other people around us to make us better. Will told me that the reason I wasn’t getting as far as I wanted in life was because I was trying to do it by myself. Once you have a few of the basic things figured out you won’t necessarily need people around you all day, every day. If you get sharpened up, you’re going to have great taste in people every place you go, so you can duplicate your circle and find great new people wherever you are. But when you’re still trying to figure stuff out you have to submerge yourself in being around positive people because they will help make you sharp.

  Imagine if during a fight, Muhammad Ali never went to the corner or let his team help him when the bell rang. That’s what I had been doing. I had been boxing for twelve rounds without letting my team sharpen me up.

  I had to figure out why I was settling for certain outcomes—the level of business execution, bad manners from friends, and other crap. If you’ve got people in your life who are keeping it real with you but whose advice is falling on deaf ears, then they have no value in your life—or at least they didn’t in mine. Sometimes you have people in your life who are keeping it real with you but you’re just not hearing them—like if your mom gets on you constantly, telling you not to do things. Unfortunately, a mother’s nagging voice will usually fall on deaf ears when it comes to certain things because it’s the voice you’ve been listening to your whole life, so you’re just not hearing it anymore. But if somebody else’s mother were to give you the same advice, you would probably listen because it’s a new voice. So advice from Will Smith—the biggest movie star in the world and one of the most influential African-American actors in the game, a man who has been able to cross over practically every racial and discrimination barrier there is—was definitely going to hold a different kind of weight with me.

  Is there someone in your life who is not contributing to your life or helping it move forward? Why do you keep allowing them in your life? Is it because you’re lonely and you’ve only got so many friends, and if you cut off friends you’ll be alone? If you’re sad and miserable it’s only because of who you have in your life. Happy people who want to enjoy life and embrace all of life don’t hang out with miserable people. It’s like oil and water—they don’t mix. If you want to keep swimming in sadness, in misery, you’re not going to hang out with people who enjoy life, because misery loves company, because that’s how you want to feel. If you want to eat bad food every day like bacon cheeseburgers and all that, you’re not going to hang out with a healthy person who eats salads or chicken. You won’t mix the two, because your conversation isn’t the same. If you’re out of shape, it’s because the people in your life are comfortable and will never say anything to you about it. Friends can tell you the truth or they can emphasize your addictions. If you want to change your life, you’ve got to change the people in your life. So you have to ask yourself, What do I want for my life?

  You shouldn’t hang out with anybody who you don’t think deserves to be in your life. You may be runni
ng around complaining about your friends, but those are the people you decided to deal with. You may be complaining about your boyfriend or your girlfriend or a friend or the father of your child, but those people are who you decided to have in your life. In your mind at that time you had an idea about what you wanted for your life, and that’s what you signed up for. So you must stop playing the victim and blaming other people because you invited those people into your life. Anything that ends up happening after you decided what you wanted is what you signed up for.

  Think about the day you met that person you’ve been complaining about. Go back to that day in your mind and think about this: It doesn’t matter how charming or how nice-looking they were. Think about how many people tried to talk to you that day, or even tried to talk to you that week, and you brushed them all off. You were thinking, No, I don’t like you. No, I don’t want you. No, I don’t wanna talk to you, I don’t wanna give you my number. You chose to ignore all these other people that week, that month, that hour, that day, but there was something about this man, or that woman, that made you decide this is what you wanted for your life. I’m sure you have a lot of reasons to go along with all the drama, all the problems and issues in your relationship. Well, some people need to hear the truth: You have horrible taste in picking friends! You have horrible taste in picking boyfriends or girlfriends! With all the people trying to hang out with you, roll with you, and inspire you, you’re ignoring good people and single-handedly picking the worst person in the room. What does that say about how much you love yourself?

  You have more control of your hour, your day, your week, and your year than you think you do. Sometimes we need permission to take control of our lives. So let me tell you now: Stop dealing with your negative friends. If you want a better life, you have to change your environment and that includes those friends who are doing nothing for you. Stop hanging with that man or woman who is putting you down.

  Decide today that you want to be celebrated, not just tolerated. What does that mean? To me, I’ve been in so many personal and professional situations where I’ve damn near devalued myself hoping to prove my value. In the beginning of my career my own insecurities made me act a certain way—being extra loud, cracking jokes, always wanting to be the center of attention—because I was fighting for acceptance, doing and saying too much to get people to notice me so that I may have even turned some people off. There are those who can be way over the top trying to win people over, jumping through hoops for their bosses or potential friends, but it doesn’t take long for someone to decide how they feel about you. When it comes to relationships, one of the oldest rules in the book is: When you run, I chase, when you chase, I run. If someone is blowing up your phone and you get irritated, as soon as they decide to quit and let you be, all of a sudden you start chasing them. Now I’ve realized that if someone has already made it clear to you that they’re not going to deal with you, you should find it in yourself to be okay with it and move on. Fighting for acceptance could literally drive you crazy. As long as you know your value and what you stand for, if one person doesn’t see it, eventually somebody else will.

  The truth is, your actions speak volumes—more than any words you could ever say. Even if you can talk a person into something, that doesn’t mean you can live up to all the things that you convinced them of.

  How much do you really love yourself if you still have people in your life you know aren’t good for you? The people you surround yourself with—those you call, e-mail, and hang out with on your lunch break—are a direct reflection of what you think of yourself. If the people in your life don’t have your best interests at heart, then you need to think about whether you’re being celebrated or tolerated. You’ve got to switch up your circle so the people in it can contribute to your positive spirit and survival.

  Emotional Access

  I used to feel really bad about not hanging with some of my boys, the guys I grew up with. Even though we had a history, there were several times when I experienced someone saying one thing to my face and another thing behind my back, or found that people did things to put me in a state of jeopardy. I felt guilty about having more, about being the only guy in my whole crew with a car and money. Some of that was my own issue but there was some tense jealous and negative energy coming my way. But right now, at this point, it doesn’t matter if I grew up with you or not, if you’re not adding to my life, then you’re taking away from it. There is no in-between, there is no gray area. It’s not Well, you add to my life sometimes and take away from my life sometimes. No. It should always be about moving your life forward, progressing not regressing. Now, the people that I heavily associate with every day, whether on a business or personal level, add to my life.

  At this point, I’m very clear about whom I give emotional access to, because when you interact with people you are giving them access to your emotions and mind-set and they can decide whether to mess up your day or not. Someone with access to you and your spirit can purposely cause you to become angry, disappointed, or uncomfortable or they can make an effort to be positive and uplifting.

  There may not be an actual word to define this characteristic, but I believe there are some people that get off on trying to mess up your day. It does something for them to know that they can call you and say something or do something that will dampen your spirits. You know the kind of person I’m talking about. Your goal should be to try and get these people away from your circle as fast as possible.

  Think about how your friends affect you on a daily basis. You could wake up in the best of moods and all of a sudden you get one phone call that completely messes up your day. This happens when you give wrong people access to your emotions. If you notice that there’s a pattern with a particular friend so it seems like every time they call you or send a text message it always involves drama, dysfunction, bullshit, issues, and rumors, then you must decide to slowly but surely back away from this person because they’re just consumed by negativity. Every time you answer the phone and actually sit there entertaining all their stuff, you’re telling this person who keeps calling you with all their drama that it’s okay to keep calling you—and that you’re interested in what they’re saying or support their calling you with the dysfunction. If you’re listening silently, then they’re not getting the message. But if you say to them, Please don’t call me with this stuff, man, you will be discouraging them from calling you with all their negativity and at some point they will stop.

  The old-school way of keeping it real is to tell them to stop calling you because they are killing your spirit with all their stupid issues. If you ask and they don’t stop, there are some other solutions for getting away from these negative people. You could stop answering the phone when you see their number pop up, but that might not get them to stop calling you. I suggest you change your number, change your e-mail address, change your screen name. If you really think about it, how many people do you really talk to every day? If it’s not that many, call those people you talk to regularly and give them your new information. Tell them to not give anyone your new information unless they call you to ask if it’s okay to do it. This way, none of those negative people will be able to track you down. More than likely at some point, somebody may slip up and give away your new number to someone you’re avoiding, but that will at least give you three or four months of them not calling with all the stuff that was driving you nuts and making your spirit negative. You will feel a real sense of peace.

  Every situation is different and every friendship and relationship will affect you in a different way. Sometimes your friends may be going through a rough patch or a trying time. These friends are not out to intentionally mess up your day. During those times you should be there for them and have their back, and do or say something inspirational to help them go through it.

  You have to be careful and guard your heart. You may meet so many people who seem like angels, but they’re not—they’re just trying to find a way to get in and chop
you down, so don’t let everybody in. Guard your heart and love yourself. You have to create walls and barriers, and realize there are certain people you have to block out, people you’re only going to see once a month, especially if your relationship isn’t healthy. Like I’ve said before, a lot of people talk about being selfish as a negative thing, but remember that it starts with self.

  Your circle of five is a part of whom you allow into your environment. You’re trying to get out of your own way and sharpen yourself up—this is being selfish in a positive way. As you work toward becoming the master of your environment, take better care of yourself and be aware of how people affect your spirit.

  Making Changes

  When I had to make changes in my business life it required a whole other kind of thinking—it was like a game of chess. You have to figure out the right time to make the change, you have to look at the history of each individual relationship and how it’s going to affect how people perceive you and how you feel about yourself—the outcome of the way the world sees you and what is best for your life and business. A lot more goes into those decisions. When you do something that’s going to cause a reaction, you must do it strategically. Don’t do anything irrationally or without thinking. You should try and plan out your every move. A great first step is knowing how much you love yourself, and working on improving your positive energy.

  It wasn’t easy for me to make these decisions, so I went to church, which is usually what I do to get clarity and confirmation. I was thinking about firing a few people in my life whom I had been doing business with for a long time and who were, at that moment, technically in my circle of five. I got to church, and Bishop Ulmer, my pastor, just happened to be preaching a sermon that related to my questions. I cried and cried, because he was dropping it so heavy and giving me more details about how to go about getting rid of the negative people in my life. Ultimately, he made me feel more comfortable with the decisions I knew I had to make.