How to Get Out of Your Own Way Read online

  My pastor said something that helps me with all matters. He told us that if we’re wearing a pair of faded jeans, we shouldn’t try and patch them up with silk, because it won’t match. This was kind of a perfect metaphor for what I was going through. In order to fix the hole in my life I couldn’t patch it up with something that didn’t make sense for my life, because it wouldn’t fit and would fall apart eventually anyway. The people in my circle of five were not giving me what I needed. You have to figure out what fits for you—what you want and need in your life, to get to that better place. What reason could you have for holding on to someone who you know isn’t the right match for you? Most people will decide to stay in something that they shouldn’t be in because they don’t want to start over. The process of getting to know somebody is very draining, grueling, and intrusive. Most people’s biggest fear is that once they remove someone from their circle, that person will take their anger and spread all their business, all those deep dark secrets they learned over the years. At the end of the day, if you wake up every morning and that same bothered, miserable, or frustrated feeling is there, it’s probably because you decided that you don’t love yourself enough to walk through that door. When it’s broke, it’s broke. Sometimes love and relationships are like a broken glass. If you decide to touch it, it can cut your hand and cause you a lot of pain. When it’s broken and you see that it’s broken, don’t touch it, just let it go. Grab your dustpan, sweep up all the pieces, put them in the trash, and move on.

  So how much do you love yourself? How much are you willing to tolerate? You have to know whom you can trust. Figure out whom to trust by looking at who a person becomes when you turn your back. Trust should not be defined by who someone is when they’re with you—it should be defined by who they are when they leave you. If they are the same person to your back that they are to your face, then they are people you can trust. Trust means staying consistent. I’ve got friends in my life whom you couldn’t get to say anything negative about me, whether you’re in their face or not. I’ve also got “friends” who have spread some negative and horrific lies about me when I’m not around but who put on all this positive energy when they see me. So you really have to look at the people in your life and figure out whom you trust.

  You’re going to have to make some serious decisions. Start by setting a bottom line. It’s about timing, and everything requires a strategy. I had to think about the consequences. If I don’t cut these people off, will everything I enjoy about my life go away? I had to ask myself if I was willing to say to my daughter, Baby, the reason we’re broke and I can’t afford to send you to college is because Daddy decided to stay with people who weren’t good for him. Or, I know you want that toy but I can’t give it to you, because I stayed with these managers who didn’t help my business. What do you want for yourself? If you cut these people off—family members and so-called friends that you know are talking shit about you—I promise you will feel like I do today.

  When I was thinking of what concerned me about people I had been doing business with for a long time, another bottom line for me was: If I cut them off, will they be on a mission to try and sabotage me? Will they run around and tell all my private and personal business? Those are the insecurities and concerns that anybody in the entertainment business has, but it can also pertain to people who work in other fields.

  Sometimes, due to these concerns, we end up keeping some people around we’re doing business with, even though we know they’re not good for us, because they know all of our secrets and it’s just easier—it seems safer. I had to make an adult decision and find out what my bottom line was when it came to these relationships. The bottom line was, if I cut them off they’re not going to kill me. That became a foundation of my being more comfortable with making these changes. I knew it by looking at their personalities and our history together. If I cut them off, they were literally not going to threaten my life or anybody in my family. I wouldn’t be concerned about anything else they could say or do or try to do to attack my character or public persona.

  I am now in a different space. I am so comfortable in my own skin. You can and should make these changes at your own pace, especially if you are uncomfortable with cutting off friends, loved ones, a boyfriend, or girlfriend. I always question how much I love myself if I want to keep certain people in my life. For me, I know there’s only one Tyrese, and if I allow people to take me down to the point where I end up dying mentally, emotionally, or spiritually, I need to remember to love myself enough to tell them to get out of my life. Someone who talks shit about you today may do it again in one year or in two years, so you might as well cut them off now. If someone you’re doing business with is not the best thing for you, then maybe it’s time to remove that person from your circle.

  A Season or a Reason: Necessary vs. Disposable Relationships

  The problem with making changes is that a lot of times the people in your life are familiar—they’re comfortable to you. They know you and you know them. I didn’t want to not have a familiar face or energy around me, but as you grow up and mature you start realizing that some people are in your life for a season, and other people are in your life for a reason. The season with some of these people had passed but the people who were in my life for a reason were still there, and it made sense for me to go on this new path and this new journey and keep them in my circle.

  People are either adding to your life or taking away from your life. There is no in between, and people who are not good for your life are disposable. Even if you grew up with friends and know how important loyalty and not forgetting your roots are, you will find that someone from your childhood can be in your life for a season or a reason. There are people whose thinking or approach to business doesn’t represent the new you or the way you want to go about re-creating your life, so therefore they’re disposable. You need to seek out and connect with other great like-minded people.

  When you’re making changes and deciding that you’re going to do something, you’re not always going to be joined by your friends, family, or loved ones. Some of these people will even try to discourage you from being whom you want to be or from doing the things you used to love to do because they’re not as interested in those things as you are. When you set your mind on making changes in your life, that feeling of being alone—that feeling of not having support or love—could discourage you. When I was making my own transition, like when I was working on getting back into shape, it was really hard to get some people in my life to be on board with me. At some point they joined me but I was so fired up about it at first, I was so full-steam ahead, that they were probably shocked because it kind of happened out of the blue. Soon after that I started to see more clearly who my five people were.

  When you decide to take that step and go in a more positive direction there are only so many friends in your life who are going to be able to handle or even wrap their heads around the new you. When these friends can’t understand or support you, or they’re just not within your thinking space, you don’t need to stop dealing with them. However, you have to distance yourself from the people who aren’t on your playing field, as far as the plans and ideas that you came up with for your life are concerned.

  You may find yourself trying to get them to accept your plans for your life. If for whatever reason they decide to not approve or support what you intend to do and if your plans aren’t firm and solidly etched in your mind, there’s a strong possibility that they may talk you out of your goals, plans, and dreams. I’ve learned to shut up and stop telling people about all my plans because I don’t want to get discouraged, and regardless of whether you end up succeeding or not, most people aren’t happy for you in the first place.

  If someone decides to not support you or have your back it’s not always connected to jealousy; sometimes people just don’t want to see you any differently from the way they already see you. Originally, your relationship worked because you were both broke; I call this being broke
in harmony. You got along so well because you were in the same situation. Neither of you had anything going for you. So if you’re going to step outside of the box, there’s going to be a shift in the dynamics of some of your relationships. I will never forget when I did my first tour on the road, I came back and most of the people I had known forever weren’t the same. Even if I tried to get them to look at me the same way, they just didn’t. It took me years to come to terms with that. At a certain point, after fighting over and over to prove to people I hadn’t changed, I had to sit still and say, you know what? I have changed! I’ve changed for the better. There’s nothing about me—my thinking, my surroundings, the things I’ve been exposed to, the people I’ve met and things I’ve been able to do, my spirit, personality, confidence, knowledge of self, and my spirituality—nothing is the same as it was before. I have grown. Everything has changed, so therefore I have changed. Most people are in their own way and when you decide to get out of your own way they’re still stuck, so they may not support you. It took me a long time to realize I could let some of the people from my past go.

  Family is a much more delicate topic because these are people who will be around for the rest of your life. Most of us have people in our family we don’t really get along with, whom we don’t think very highly of, and vice versa. My suggestion is to limit the time you’re around these people, and see them only when you have to. Keep your dealings with them under your control and within your comfort zone. Stop letting people enter your life against your will. Then, when you do have to see them, you will be mentally and spiritually prepared because you will already know what the outcome is going to be. Don’t do these people a favor by hanging out with them, because your effort is best spent on those relationships that are a necessary part of self-love. We’ll always have to deal with family members who do not have good intentions toward us, but we have the choice of when to deal with them.

  There are certain people in your life who are necessary and can help you achieve your desired outcome, like your boss. If you don’t get along with your boss, he or she is still necessary, so you have to deal with that relationship in a mature way. You have to recognize your role and your boss’s role. If you don’t like your boss or the way he or she talks to you or treats you, you can’t let him or her get in the way of whatever mission you’re on. If your boss makes your life miserable, think about coming up with a plan. Stay on the job for six more months to see if things change, save enough money, and around the third month, start lining up job interviews to try and transition from working there to somewhere else.

  And then you have those people who are necessary, the people who do share the same thoughts and intentions as you. On the business side, you may say that you still want to clean house and just start all over. Remember that there are some people who are in your life who are still necessary to your success business-wise, because as you transition, these people have the thinking capacity and the spiritual capacity to transition with you.

  In business, we will all have to deal with interesting and sometimes difficult personalities. There’s no way to get around this. We have to endure these relationships for the sake of our future because they are necessary for us to get to where we want to be in life. When it gets hard, remind yourself that it’s all connected to self-love. It may not seem like it, and it may sound like I’m contradicting myself by telling you to keep negative people in your life. I keep some high-stress relationships going because I care about my future and my daughter’s future. I love myself enough to battle through. It’s all about perspective.

  I try not to surround myself with negative energy, or negative people. I have very few bottom lines but one of them is simple: I put out so much good energy, I take care of the people in my life, and if they don’t mean right by me, I allow them to get rid of themselves. In other words, once someone has shown me their incompetence, once they’ve exposed that I can’t trust them, once they have shown me who they are, then I’m going to recognize that they don’t belong in my life and then I get rid of them. I’m not saying they can stay in my life and mess up my life as long as they want, until they decide to get rid of themselves. I allow people to show me who they really are. I don’t want any negative energy bringing me down, or it will start a negative cycle that I can’t afford.

  If I can’t trust them or find out they’re sharing or telling my business, I say Thank you! It’s a real blessing when people show me who they are early in a relationship because that’s one less person I have to deal with. Thank you for showing me who you really are, because you painted a totally different picture when we first met and first started doing business or started dating. I first was hanging out with your representative, but now that I’ve gotten to know you, I see your true colors, so thank you for allowing this to happen early on. They dug themselves into a hole and they have to lie in it.

  Those are my exact thoughts and feelings, but to take it to a more spiritual level, I’ve noticed in the last few years that God has stepped in and seen to it that things that don’t belong in my life are revealed to me so I can get rid of them. For example, a while ago I was about to do a major business deal with someone and then decided to attend an event where I randomly met that person’s friend. He started sharing several details about his friend that I didn’t know, activities that I never would have wanted to involve myself with. I looked at the conversation as a sign from God, because I knew the odds were slim that so much information would be conveyed to me in such a random way. As I sit here writing this I don’t even remember what led him to start mentioning this information. I let him ramble on about it and when our conversation ended, I thanked God over and over because I was a week away from signing a contract that would have made me partners with someone I now realized I didn’t trust or know. My potential business partner had never revealed this information, and my own discernment, instincts, and intuition had never led me to associate this person with any sort of illegal activity. As much as I know about people and their energy, there are still individuals out there who know how to conceal who they are really well. But as I’m covered and protected by God, even when I can’t see that something isn’t good for me, God will eventually reveal it to me. I’ve learned not to question God when things are clearly laid out in front of me, so I immediately shut the partnership down and moved on.

  When people dig a hole—if they lie, cheat, or do whatever they’re doing behind my back—it’s as if all I had to do was hand them a shovel. They say God is a forgiving God, and I know I’m supposed to forgive people for their mistakes, so I will help them get out of that hole just so they can walk away from me, because I don’t want to bury anybody. I’m going to give them a shovel, and when the mistakes they made and the truth in who they are reveals itself, I’ll make them aware that I knew what they were doing. If they’re still digging and digging and the hole is getting deeper and deeper, they will end up falling into that hole. I’m going to reach out to help them get out of it, but once they’re done I will be sending them on their way, because there’s no second part to the hole. I only allow this to happen once.

  This may sound harsh, but I’ll never forget one time somebody said to me, “When you can’t stand somebody and you know they can’t stand you, just make believe they died in your mind. Picture them in a coffin.” As crazy as that may sound—of course I’m not literally wishing death on anybody—when someone dies in your mind, they can’t possibly affect your everyday existence because they don’t matter anymore, they don’t exist. That may be a little extreme, but there are some people who may be able to identify with that. For example, if you get out of a horrible relationship, it’s going to make your life hell to keep thinking about the fact that your ex lives up the street, so it may help to get it into your mind that he or she doesn’t exist anymore.

  For a long time I was in the same broke, messed-up environment—gangs, drugs, killings, murders—but I decided to tap into the right people. We all know positive people, but
the question is: Why don’t we seek them out and include them in our lives? It’s as if we’re consciously making the decision to seek out dysfunctional people. Nobody talked us into doing that. Sometimes it’s the result of peer pressure—people don’t want to be seen doing anything positive because it doesn’t seem cool, so we end up staying in dysfunctional situations because we’re afraid to be the one turning our life around. An example of this is if you try to get some insight into your life and seek help from a professional, but your “friends” aren’t supportive and try to make you feel stupid for going to get counseling and therapy to better yourself. They’re refusing to even be associated with therapy because it’s seen as a weakness. If they do this, they’re trying to discourage you from growing or wanting better for yourself. How can someone you consider a real friend make you feel stupid or crazy for trying to get help because you’re going through something that you cannot figure out? To me, it’s crazier for someone to be crazy and not be willing to seek help for it. Don’t let their negativity stand in your way. I can tell you that I wanted better for myself and was going to do it by any means necessary.

  If you surround yourself with people who make you think you’re not special, you need to get back to self-love. Find your own direction, be your own person, and don’t be ashamed of who you are.

  Don’t think your life is going to end because you’re not dealing with these friends anymore. Take the time to consider all of the relationships you have in your life, and decide for yourself whether each one is necessary or disposable. How much of your precious and valuable time is spent building relationships that don’t help you get where you want or need to go? How much time and effort have you wasted on people who are trying to talk you out of your greatness?