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Season 1 Recap 2 - New Episodes Drop May 6th!
26 Plays1 year ago
Season 1 Recap 2 of Vulnerability Muscle - New Episodes Drop May 6th!
Welcome to "Vulnerability Muscle with Reggie D. Ford," the empowering podcast that challenges societal norms and invites you to explore the transformative power of vulnerability. Hosted by bestselling author and motivational speaker Reggie D. Ford, this show is your guide to finding strength, connection, and personal growth through embracing vulnerability. In a world that often portrays vulnerability as a sign of weakness, Reggie D. Ford believes it is a source of tremendous strength and authenticity. Through insightful conversations and thought-provoking interviews, "Vulnerability Muscle" aims to redefine vulnerability and help listeners develop a new perspective on their own lives. Reggie D. Ford, renowned for his bestselling book "Perseverance Through Severe Dysfunction" and his captivating motivational speeches, brings his unique expertise and personal experiences to the forefront. With a deep understanding of the impacts of trauma, the importance of mental health, and the power of vulnerability, Reggie inspires and empowers his audience to embrace their own vulnerabilities as catalysts for growth and change. Each episode of "Vulnerability Muscle" delves into a variety of topics, such as mental health, social issues, and mindset shifts. Reggie and his guests explore the power of vulnerability in healing, building resilience, and fostering meaningful connections. They provide practical tools and strategies to navigate life's challenges, overcome adversity, and create more inclusive and just environments for all people. Whether you're seeking personal growth, struggling with your mental health, or looking to create a positive impact in the world, this podcast offers a safe space for deep exploration and transformation. Reggie's compassionate and engaging style invites you to step out of your comfort zone and embrace vulnerability as a path to personal empowerment. Join Reggie D. Ford and his inspiring guests on "Vulnerability Muscle" as they illuminate the path toward self-discovery, authenticity, and true strength. Prepare to be inspired, uplifted, and equipped with the tools to unlock your full potential through the power of vulnerability.
📲 Connect with Reggie IG - https://instagram.com/reggiedford FB - https://facebook.com/reggiedford LI - https://linkedin.com/in/reggiedford X - https://twitter.com/reggiedford YT - https://youtube.com/@reggiedfordWebsite - https://reggiedford.com Book - https://amzn.to/487OqJD Podcast - https://reggiedford.com/vulnerabilitymuscle Podcast’s IG - https://instagram.com/vulnerabilitymuscle Podcast’s FB - https://www.facebook.com/vulnerabilitymuscle
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Transcript
Podcast Announcements and Engagement
00:00:00
Speaker
What's up Vulnerability Muscle fam? Just wanted you to know that new episodes of Vulnerability Muscle are gonna drop May 6th. That's Monday, May 6th. The next season of Vulnerability Muscle will drop, so mark your calendars. But in the meantime, I hope you enjoy some of these clips from season one. Please like, subscribe, share these episodes with everybody that you know so that they can get a taste of Vulnerability Muscle. In the meantime, keep flexing that Vulnerability Muscle.
Reflections on Self-Love and Personal Journey
00:00:30
Speaker
it was that I wasn't loving me. And I was using those things that I loved as a way of not having to deal with the love that I was not giving to myself. I was 70 pounds heavier than what I was now. I wasn't hungry. I was just chewing on stuff because those emotions that were within me that were starting to come out, I didn't want to deal with those. So I was eating foods that was really junk. And not only was it junk, it was spiritually making me full of junk.
00:01:00
Speaker
And let me go further. I'm not even gonna say I made a decision. I think the universe, God made a decision for me and said, no, you're gonna go down this road. And for me, for the longest, for within the last three years since the pandemic, I was trying to get off this train every time.
00:01:18
Speaker
This train kept going faster. I wanted to get off. And somebody said, you know what? I'll pay
Impact of Success and Identity
00:01:23
Speaker
for that ticket. Even from a business standpoint, you get a company that starts off small and then all of a sudden they break into the Fortune 500.
00:01:33
Speaker
the fact that that company reached that pinnacle, every single person that was on that journey, their lives are impacted too. Absolutely. Right? Their lives and their championing folks and looking up to the CEO, you have a responsibility to make sure that you don't take those people for granted. Because without people, the business never gets there. Right. Exactly. Right. Like you think about companies like Amazon, for example.
00:02:03
Speaker
all the folks that go and pick these products and make sure that they get sent to the proper, those are the people who make Amazon what it is. And like they say, comparison is the thief of joy, right? So it leads you into this very performative space where a lot of your identities built on like doing rather than being, that it becomes toxic. And the weird thing about it is though, that mentality would actually help you be very successful financially.
00:02:29
Speaker
But it would actually leave you broken on the back end, right? Because you see a lot of Nigerians that are very successful because they're like, man, I got to go get it. I got to go get it. I got to go get it. And having that little bit of competitiveness is a good thing sometimes. But it has to be balanced, right? Your whole identity cannot be around all those things. Because you'll meet people that are very successful, but they still can't find
Family Revelations and Past Challenges
00:02:50
Speaker
happiness. And it's because of that. So for me, there was a lot of comparison. There was a lot of those things that were going on.
00:02:56
Speaker
Why aren't you like that person's kid? Care to comment on your relationship with your father at all? I don't mind commenting on it. It's not much to say, to be honest with you, Reggie. I met my dad when I was 20 years old. My mom was married to a man that I thought was my dad up until I turned 14 years old. And my sister, who is now deceased, we were joking one day and she said, she's made a joke like, yo, daddy or something like that. And from that joke, it was revealed to me that
00:03:26
Speaker
you guys don't have the same dad. And I was 14 years old. And from that moment, I was just like, you know, back in the day, like Mari Povich, like those types of, you know what that show, I'm like Asian. I was back in the day, right? And they would have these paternity tests and they're trying to find the dad. I was like, man, I want to be on that show so I can find out who my dad is because I had no idea who he was.
00:03:52
Speaker
Yeah, they pulled me. I had a disdain for judges. Yeah. Because I was like, she just she was standing right next to me. I could. I wouldn't even know who she was. I just remember was a white lady and she was trying to hear nothing I was trying to say about me wanting to live with my dad.
00:04:07
Speaker
period. You know what I'm saying? And so I just had a disdain for judges and courts since that day. I just had a hatred like, man, nah, just fuck the judges, fuck the courts. That was my initial
00:04:27
Speaker
interaction with them and then that was my last. Well, for starters, you know, it was an automatic bullying fiasco, you know, because right off the bat, obviously my skin color, but I do remember back then, I mean, there was an accident and obviously my ability to read, comprehend. So for me, it was that. And essentially, I also had to battle the, I would say the
00:04:55
Speaker
the blunt racism that came with it. You know, the, oh, you wet bag, you just crossed the border last night. And so, you know, and what's interesting is that when you, when I hear that now, then it didn't hurt. How much, like when I say regret and shame, like she has a lot of regret and shame for sending me away because she feels like she could have controlled that or she
00:05:20
Speaker
You know, it's kind of like if you had a kid and you sent your kid to go live with all your family members, and you know how you left, you know how you sent that kid off, you know who that kid was. And then when that kid comes back, completely different from how, you know, you left him, it does something as a parent, it's like, damn, like, this shit, this decision that I made, affected my child in such a way that it broke him.
Mindset, Environment, and Growth
00:05:48
Speaker
And there's nothing as a parent that I could do to fix it because that's 16 years at that point. And then it got to me to thinking about if I really wanted to do something, I could just put my mind to it and do it. And I think about all the things I had accomplished all my life. Once I said I was going to do it, I done it. So now it's like, OK, my mind is opening more and more as I'm reading books, I'm studying, I'm studying Greek philosophy.
00:06:18
Speaker
And that's how I came up with the mindset versus state of mind because now I know I can accomplish whatever I want to do once I put it in my mind. And I can't let my moods, my environment, the people around me affect how I think. That's my state of mind. And I so long let the stuff around me guide me instead of my own both.
Societal Influences on Violence
00:06:48
Speaker
right? Because they're so lonely, because they have a hard time creating connections. So I would argue, we're all suffering under these systems, because these systems don't favor anything but domination, right? And we cannot live in a world of domination and use these tactics and expect results that are anything but violence, whether, yeah, whether it be, you know, interpersonal violence, whether it be
00:07:15
Speaker
intrapersonal violence, people doing harm to themselves. That is a consequence of people learning that it's okay for other people to treat them poorly, to other people to harm them. It's okay for political violence to occur. It's okay for economic violence to occur. So when somebody's homeless, they're like, if the government doesn't care about me, why should I care about me? And so I can harm myself. So it's understanding that violence comes from
00:07:44
Speaker
society first, right? People are not inherently violent. People learn what's going on in their environment, and they learn to cope in ways that keeps them surviving. Yeah. And so what we need to do is create a society that is not so inherently violent. And the ways to do that is to censor everybody, you know, to censor everybody's humanity.
00:08:06
Speaker
not just the humanity of those who have been chosen on the basis of they have the different systems working for them to make sure that they're not disproportionately impacted by some of the harms that exist. But I guess another way is getting people to understand this whole issue of privilege in a way that white
00:08:34
Speaker
just because white supremacy exists in the society doesn't mean that there aren't white people who
Challenges and Growth for Black Men
00:08:39
Speaker
are suffering. It's been hard, bro, because, uh, as black men, we get faced with so much, man, so much. And it's bad when we put the so much on us, you know what I mean? And I put that on myself. Um, I put that on myself. I remember everything I did, how I did it, how it was done. It hurts me, but she has every right to feel hurt and be hurt. Again, that moment,
00:09:05
Speaker
molded me to be who I am today. Every right, every single right. The black man, you have to, somebody said it on Instagram, you gotta feel it to heal it. It was a moment that I found out that even in prison, I could be free and freedom is so valuable to me. And so being able to kind of find that and then find it through the screen and tears and screams. And it's like, it was a really,
00:09:35
Speaker
hard way to find out the way to be free. But I wasn't free as a drug dealer with a lot of money. I wasn't free as a college basketball player with a lot of potential. There were all these other times that things looked better. And finding it in that moment allowed me to have this moment. And so, yeah, I mean, I think that finding a way to
00:10:01
Speaker
get to the core of what's going on with you is going to be vulnerable. There's kind of no way to get to the truth of who you are without
00:10:13
Speaker
exposing yourself and she made me realize that I was dealing with that but she also made me realize who I am in going through that and the fact that like man you're still here you haven't taken your life you haven't taken another person's life you've never been to prison you've never been to jail you've never been in handcuffs that's rare for a black man in general and with everything that you've been around to say that and you you're educated you work in corporate America you're an artist
00:10:39
Speaker
you're a recognized artist. Like she just started putting all of these things in one box. And when I got to look at that box, I was like, it just made me it made me so self aware in a way that I never had been before where I look at the collective
00:10:55
Speaker
birth to now. And it's like, dude, like, that's something to be celebrated. You know, absolutely. That's how you heal these broken parts of our society is realizing that we are all the same. We're humans.
00:11:11
Speaker
And if we can heal and come together on that aspect and then have the empathy of, okay, I am this person over here with privilege. You're this person over here without the privilege. We share all of these similarities of human experience.
Season 2 Reminder and Listener Engagement
00:11:24
Speaker
How can I make your human experience a little bit better?
00:11:28
Speaker
What's up vulnerability muscle fam? I hope you enjoyed season one of vulnerability muscle. If you haven't already done so, check out all 12 episodes of vulnerability muscle season one and tell me who is your favorite guest? What is your favorite quote? Let me know, send a message, send a DM, send something so that I know what you resonate with.
00:11:49
Speaker
Be looking forward to Season 2 of Vulnerability Muscle that is said to drop on May 6th. That's Monday, May 6th. Episodes start at 2 a.m. Central Time. That's U.S. Central. Monday, May 6th mark their calendars. But in the meantime, every Monday this month of April, we will be having clips from our favorite episodes of Vulnerability Muscle Season 1.
00:12:13
Speaker
So if you haven't already checked out the full episodes, go check those out, but you're all caught up for season two. Thank you for joining another episode of Vulnerability Muscle. I hope that the stories and the insights shared really resonated with you. And if you want to help podcast, you can do a few things. First, hit the subscribe button. If you've been moved by the conversations of redefining vulnerability, please consider leaving a review.
00:12:38
Speaker
Share your thoughts on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're tuning in from. And don't forget to spread the word. Follow us at Vulnerability Muscle, where you can keep up with me personally at Reggie D. Ford for additional resources. And remember, embracing vulnerability is a strength. Thank you for being a part of the journey. And until next time, stay empowered, stay vulnerable, and keep flexing that vulnerability muscle. I'll see y'all May 6th.