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Goodpain Season 02 Episode 006: The Masculine Principle – Deremiah *CPE, Embracing Wisdom and Letting Go Poverty Mindsets
157 Plays4 months ago
"Whether you are rich or whether you are poor, life delivers challenges to you" and despite these challenges, our guest Deremiah points out how much embracing our choice and autonomy regardless of the circumstances defines how we live. We do not get to choose our challenges. Learning how to listen to ourselves, to listen to each other, and rise to the challenge, helps us differentiate between living fully or embracing an impoverished existence.
Deremiah is a contributing author to the Amazon bestseller, Yes, I Can and I Did!. In addition to being an author, Deremiah's interests and focus has spanned art, business coaching, athletics, music, and many others. Links to his work can be found below.
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Transcript
Introduction to Good Pain Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
When you entered that relationship with that young lady or that man, did you leave them better than what you found them? We can apply that to everything. If everyone was just like me, what kind of world would my world be?
00:00:12
Speaker
And if you think that what you're living is good for everybody, you better make sure you think through that thing really, really good. Am i thinking for my own selfish benefits or am I thinking for being selfish for mankind?
00:00:26
Speaker
I'm Jeremy. And I'm Tyler. Welcome to Good Pain, where we talk about life's true intensities without pretending they're easy solve. What if the things we're told to fix, optimize, or get over are actually where the real wisdom lives?
00:00:40
Speaker
Each week we gather for the kind of honest conversations you desire to be a part of more often about the relentless demands, the unexpected grief, the quiet victories, and everything in between. Because maybe, just maybe, the answer isn't to eliminate the hard stuff, it's to find the good in it. Welcome to the conversation.
Guest Introduction: Deremiah's Journey
00:01:09
Speaker
Today our guest is gentleman by the name Deremiah who is a consultant, an athlete, an artist, a mentor, a best-selling author, the list goes on. And in our conversation we discuss a wide range of topics.
00:01:27
Speaker
Jeremiah grew up in a house that was full of love and care. When he was in the middle of his high school career, his world fell apart when his parents decided to separate and he was moved from Oklahoma to Chicago.
00:01:44
Speaker
Jeremiah shares the story of what it meant to grow up in poverty and the difference between actual poverty and a poverty mentality. The lessons he learned during these periods that were deeply formative for him granted a wisdom that explores what it means to listen, to learn, versus hearing, to confront, and to defend.
00:02:07
Speaker
And that form of listening was so important as he moved from school to school, interacting with new populations and people, learning to adapt And how that continual renewal of place and situation and context for him gave him a wisdom for how he could see people for not their flaws, but their flourishing and to be a part of that and come alongside them. which he has forayed into a business where he helps people bring voice to the experiences they want to deliver in their businesses, in their leadership.
00:02:43
Speaker
And he has relayed that also in the various books that he has authored that are available on Amazon and other online booksellers. Links to Deremiah's books will also be in the show notes.
00:02:57
Speaker
But the real richness here is the conversation that he and I had a couple of weeks ago. We continue our discussion around the masculine principles with this conversation with Deremiah.
00:03:09
Speaker
We hope you enjoy it in Happy New Year.
Transformative Experiences and Mindset Shift
00:03:16
Speaker
What's Deremiah's origin story? how How would you answer that? Oh, it would be real easy. At the age of 16, I was on the verge of committing suicide after being a star athlete in Oklahoma and being moved 869 miles from Oklahoma to Chicago.
00:03:33
Speaker
As a result of being separated from the two people that loved me and I loved the most, my mom and dad, because they had went through a divorce the year before, I went through a very tragic depression myself. And um I call it a rites of passage. in the jungles you know i mean or in any real indigenous community they have the rites of passage and the young people are separated from their parents so that they can develop a sense of who they are in the world and for me that that's my origin story i was on the verge of like said on the verge of committing suicide and i had a life-changing experience
00:04:12
Speaker
One that transformed me from that 16-year-old kid into a man. And the world is better off because of what happened to me. And I don't i don't regret the tragedy of the experience. because And it was tragic because you know athletics and sports was almost like my sanctuary where I went and worshipped with my greater self and God.
00:04:38
Speaker
you know When I look back on it, I didn't understand what it was then, but having, you know, a lot of depth in psychology now, understand i lost my identity. That move took me out of who I was used to being every single day. That transformed my life because when I found it again, I found it for me, you know, and I found it for the true meaning of what it means to believe in yourself and to believe in a creator.
00:05:03
Speaker
And to walk boldly through the earth regardless of what you face, you know, money, lack of money, lack of resources, lack of contacts, lack of relationships.
00:05:14
Speaker
Those are all constructs in our head when we lose faith to believe in ourselves. Jeremiah, you you talked a little bit about loss of identity. You mentioned that you were athletic and and that was a big part of that.
00:05:29
Speaker
What did having that stature and that identity as an athlete in the worlds in which you were navigating, what was that feeding within you prior to that transformative initiating event? Well, I think it was just really feeding um my belief and confidence in you know in believing, you know if if that makes any sense. My belief in confidence and believing.
00:05:54
Speaker
Because every time I had to get on the baseball field, you know still a base, or every time I had to get on the football field and we were behind in the game and you know they gave me the ball and I mean... ah I had a miraculous run for a touchdown that brought us back. Every time I was on the wrestling mat and I was wrestling ah most of the time against people that didn't look like me, you know, because there weren't many black athletes in wrestling.
00:06:23
Speaker
at that time, but my team, which was predominantly white and we had a few Hispanics and Asians, they depended on me, you know, especially when we were in the clutch and I kind of became the guy you could depend on to pull things out of the clutch. And so, like I said, I think it taught me before I even had an understanding of what faith meant.
00:06:44
Speaker
It gave me a deep depth with understanding what real belief is and that, you know, belief is created through how we imagine the experiences that we're dealing with. When is the first time that you remember that you took some energy from, from realizing that you could be esteemed by others for your reliability, your dependability? And how how did that, how did that shape you?
00:07:12
Speaker
Well, I think that um that came from my parents. You know, my parents instilled that sense of understanding that if you do good works, good things happen to you. If you do bad works, bad things happen to you. And so my dad, who was born in Missouri,
00:07:28
Speaker
Missouri is a show me state. And, um you know, I hadn't really met anybody from Missouri, you know, until a couple of years back. And hey, in Missouri, if you go there and spend some time there, you know that people are, you know, always talking about show me, don't tell me. And so my dad, you know, he was, he was, that was his, his words, you know, I, I don't really want you to tell me about what you're going to because doing is about doing.
00:07:59
Speaker
And so my dad, um and and I don't even say that my parents like instilled these things in me because I have a different kind of perspective on the world. I believe I came into the world to present these sides of who I am and that my parents, you know, as I tell people, they weren't perfect but they were perfect for me for what i had needed to accomplish and the things that i've done in this life my parents were the ideal parents for me you know and that is what um like i said you know became the support system my parents nurtured it's kind of like an apple seed an apple seed is an apple seed no matter who gets it you know now some people can cultivate it properly and get you know the full growth out of it and other people you know they may complain and say well i don't have a green thumb
00:08:47
Speaker
And so the apple that come from their trees don't look the same as someone who applies the diligence. So again, i came to this earth to show the examples of what it looks like to gain and understand esteem and and and even outward esteem. But inward esteem is just as important.
00:09:10
Speaker
And my parents, although they weren't rich or wealthy, Both came from very humble beginnings. You know what i mean? The Chicago Projects, my dad and my mom, whose father was an Arkansas farmer, you know, they came through poverty. You know, anybody knows anything about Arkansas? I mean, it's got a history, you know, of poverty, and that's where they came from. So while they didn't have all of the materialistic things to give me, you know, they they gave me something more valuable.
00:09:38
Speaker
What was your observations in relationship to poverty or the or the adjoining descriptions like wealth? What did you know of those things through your experience of
Poverty and Mentality in Chicago
00:09:51
Speaker
watching your parents and experiencing some of these things for yourself?
00:09:54
Speaker
Yeah, well, i was I was born in the the south side of Chicago. i started my early years in the Chicago housing projects. So i know what poverty looks like, but I also know what a poverty mentality looks like.
00:10:09
Speaker
The two are different. You know, when when when you have a poverty mentality, you know, then you don't push through the poverty. But when you just live in poverty and you have two parents who don't have poverty mentality, you realize that every day can be just as joyous as someone who lived in a million dollar, you know, or a 10 million dollar mansion because it isn't really about the outer circumstances. And as they say, our outer world
00:10:40
Speaker
reflects our inner world. So when we have an inner world of wealth, we could be in a situation that looks like poverty the most, but you don't see the impact on the life of the individual because they know that, you know, these are just challenges.
00:10:58
Speaker
And whether you're rich or whether you're poor, life delivers challenges to you. How did you start to make that an active choice for yourself? Recognizing the circumstances, but choosing that that mentality, you had a choice. How did how did you make that choice?
00:11:15
Speaker
Those things still fall back to having parents who were inspiring, you know, and you saw them make choices every day. And growing up, seeing people...
00:11:27
Speaker
make good choices is a powerful experience. You because you can be like i said, you could be in a wealthy situation and have parents that make bad choices and those choices can impact you or not impact you, depending on the story that you tell yourself about those experiences. For me,
00:11:43
Speaker
My parents, you know, modeled what they wanted us to do. Not perfectly, you know, but for the things that really count and matter, they did it well. And so whenever we had to be out on our own or alone in a situation, it was easy to reflect, you know, on the steps that we needed to make and the things that we needed to do. wow we were in poverty, you wouldn't have known it from the joy, at least especially in me, you know, the joy that I exemplified on a day-to-day basis. I was grateful for every moment, for every experience. It wasn't until, like I said I ran into that identity crisis when I was 16 that I found myself becoming, you know, bitter and mad and disappointed and angry. And I had to hear it from myself. You know, that no, no, this this this is still your decision to make choices. When I felt like, hey, the two people that and I love the most were no longer going to be together. And that um I had to reach it real deep and identify for myself what it means to love myself.
00:12:57
Speaker
And that, like i said, the world is better because I found that. How long were you in that space of of anger, of sadness, of grieving? What did that feel like being at the bottom of the hole? um it it was It was dark. That's all I can really say you know about the experience. It was just really dark. It was like you know a moment where everything was hopeless.
00:13:22
Speaker
the moment when when everything was um where everything was you know disappointing It was moment where everything... you know and And probably what what instigated it, you know, a lot was that the team that i had played football with, it was predicted from the, I mean, when i when I left Germany, I came to a city called Lawton, Oklahoma, and that's where I was at, and that's where i restarted playing football again. And so it was predicted that by the time we became seniors, we would be state champs, because all those previous years, eighth grade, ninth grade, we only lost one game. Yeah.
00:13:57
Speaker
And so we were just, you know, we had winning streaks, you know, for seasons, you know, for years. And then i'm in the middle of my junior year football season and my mom decides we need to go to Chicago because she can't support us in the town we were living in.
00:14:14
Speaker
We, love you know, she got, she she wasn't able to pay rent. We got evicted. We got put out and each sibling went to a separate living space with a friend, except for my sister and mom went together.
00:14:26
Speaker
But me and my brother were separated. We both lived in separate places. And and i was I was really fortunate because my best friend, his parents loved me. They were like my second parents. you know is is His mom would always say I'm your white mother.
00:14:42
Speaker
And she was. I mean, that woman, she's she's no longer with us, but that woman loved me. Boy, I'm telling you, nobody could mess with her, Deremiah, because she she loved me that much.
00:14:55
Speaker
True to form, if she said something to you, hey, like, I'm going to kick you in the butt if you don't get up, you know, and and and deal with this, believe me, you knew she wasn't playing. Mm-hmm.
00:15:07
Speaker
She was a very powerful example and so was her husband, Charles, Marilyn and Charles McDonald. They were both from Texas and they were living in Oklahoma and they were the two most inspirational people to me, you know, in my life. And they, you know, they never forgot me, even though I was separated from them moving to Chicago. And um again, just Just inspiring individuals who who tried to make a difference. you know They begged my mom, Shirley, can you just let him stay with us? We'll take care of him. We'll make sure he graduates from college. We'll pay for his college.
00:15:46
Speaker
So i was like I was really fortunate. you know i mean you know for First of all, um most of my friends who were black, they didn't have parents together. So I was just fortunate from that standpoint. My parents, you know, were together for 15 years and that was enough to give me great foundation, you know, which allowed me, even though I moved back to Chicago, you know, to eventually, you know, after dealing with myself, get back on my emotional feet and thereby begin to approach everything differently.
00:16:19
Speaker
What was the turn after that coming out of that? What was that that spark, that light that said, i have some direction now. I'm i'm pursuing that. There's woman that we were living in a basement apartment with. and my mom's, I think it was my mom's second cousin.
00:16:36
Speaker
Her name was Lenzora Elliott. And shes she's no longer with us either. But Lenzora Elliott, you know, when I was struggling to make sense of all the the chaos that was happening to me. And I had hit a place where I wasn't believing in God. And she was a Sunday school teacher at a Seventh Adventist They church, you know, and not the true, not the traditional faith of my um mother father. but Both of my grandfathers were ministers. One of them was a Baptist minister. my mom's dad and my father's dad was pastor.
00:17:14
Speaker
Church of God in Christ, more Pentecostal minister. And so, you know, off and on throughout my life, I had heard, you know, about all these different, you know, ways to compartmentalize your belief of faith from a religious standpoint.
Belief, Faith, and Perspective
00:17:28
Speaker
But it was Lenzo or Elliot who, when I was going through this bout of confusion about why i should even believe in God. And I was like, well, you know, i remember in in this question, I'll never leave me. I remember asking, I said, well, you've never seen God. So why should you believe in God?
00:17:43
Speaker
And her response shook me to my core because I didn't expect for her to say what she said and next. And she said, well, you can feel the wind and you've never seen that. I'm a 16 year old walking away from Nat. She gave me something. if if she was a philosopher, she she asked the ultimate philosophical question.
00:18:03
Speaker
What do you do with the things that you can't see? You can't say that they're not real because you can't see them. And that was the turning point, at least, you know, from the mental standpoint, that kind of shifted thinking differently. And because she loved me, you know what i'm saying? Because she was willing to to love me.
00:18:23
Speaker
regardless of where I was at. In other words, she didn't, she wasn't distracted by my anger, my disappointment, my pain, my grief. And I'm not saying she didn't acknowledge what I was experiencing. She just wasn't willing to let me, she wasn't willing to let me go.
00:18:39
Speaker
into the world thinking that, you know, I didn't deserve to think about this deeper. And that shift, like I said, the world is better because of it. Because I can't tell you how many people that have come to me even, you know, this year a couple of times already, you know, i don't I wouldn't want to say rescue people, but I stepped in the middle of their, you know, hissy fit party, wanting to not be on the planet, wanting to die. And there's a lot of people And I'm probably speaking to who, when they hear this, I'm speaking to them because they look at the chaos of the world.
00:19:15
Speaker
They look at the destruction of things and the way things have changed from what they thought that they believed that they were. And a lot of people, you know, you can listen to it. You can hear it, you know, in their voice, you know, this loss of faith.
00:19:30
Speaker
You know, not knowing when, not knowing what and being overwhelmed and thinking that because things are going wrong in their outer world, that that is a reason to walk away from this earth.
00:19:43
Speaker
And I'm the voice of reason to say, no, you don't get to walk away. You know what i mean? You don't get to step out. You don't get to cancel your flight. you know, in the middle of flying, you have to go through the experience. And if I can do it, I am an example that it's possible for anyone else.
00:20:06
Speaker
Love for you and expressing it and embracing it is important to you. well Talk to me a little bit more about what does love mean to you relative to yourself and relative to the people that are important around you?
00:20:21
Speaker
Love means caring, you know, me at an an extremely deep level, meaning you care to the point where you don't walk away. You never leave someone. You never abandon someone.
00:20:32
Speaker
People, you know, because people are the real, they are the real value of this earth. you know It's not the money. It's people. It's human beings. It's living souls. you know You can dice it up probably in many different ways, but you know your friends, your mom, your dad, your relatives, the stranger you meet in a grocery store, they all need love. And we all live for love.
00:20:59
Speaker
knowing how to approach it too properly is important because you know everything kind of has boundaries you know i mean if you don't think that things don't have boundaries then just look at your body you know and you'll see that that's the boundary for who you are. And another person's body is the boundary for who they are. And so beyond the walls of your skin, you know everything inside of that skin is protected. And it's you know that entity's responsibility to look out for, to protect, to even you know the blood cells to even go to war for you know if there's an inner attack by germs or bacteria.
00:21:42
Speaker
So your body does that because it loves you, because if it didn't love you, you know, then it would destroy you or it would abandon you and your body doesn't want to abandon you.
00:21:54
Speaker
You know, i mean, you know, death is almost kind of like the a form of abandonment, you know, but it's not. You know what i mean? it's It's just the body's way of saying, hey, you know, we can't do anything else to sustain your life.
00:22:10
Speaker
But love, like I i say my parents gave me what that looks like. And I know when I see it, you know what i mean? I even know when when they didn't even have it for themselves, you know, I was able to call, you know, call them out on it.
00:22:27
Speaker
You know what i mean? Because they taught me what it means. And I'm like, you don't get to not love someone because, you know, they don't agree with you. They don't believe the things that you you believe.
00:22:39
Speaker
They don't, you know, walk or look or talk or think like you think. I think we're at a kind of like a dangerous time in the world where people, you know, have lost a sense of understanding that, no, you have boundaries. Mm-hmm. And so what you believe, what you think, you know, you may, you have every right to believe and to think what you think, but you don't have the right to impose that on anyone else. Because if you have the right to impose that on others, then you don't have the right to experience what that means yourself.
00:23:12
Speaker
within the boundaries of our own self, we have a responsibility to learn how to continue loving ourselves. But love amongst people is also being enrolled and being participant and collaborative in in helping people, helping each other, those people we claim to love in their decision-making, something you experienced.
00:23:33
Speaker
The opposite of that, and what what I hear you saying a little bit when people cross that boundary, and and seek to impose is a is a form of either contempt or or even the most visceral of of a form of hate. what Where do you think that comes from?
00:23:51
Speaker
have one word, and I think it's called entitlement. When people think that they have the right to impose their perspectives on others, especially when those others aren't willing, you know what mean, to receive their perspective.
00:24:05
Speaker
i'm I'm open. you know I've always been taught you know to listen to everybody. And I've grown and learned so much from listening to people that I don't agree with, but I listen to them. And i and when I say listen, I mean really listen, you know not just, gonna let you pass at what you're saying just so that I can get out of my mouth to hear what I'm saying. no No, I mean to really listen to the person to the point where I can walk away from the experience and I may not ah agree with you, but I can see how you got to that place.
00:24:41
Speaker
You know what i mean? Because I was willing to listen to you. I was the kid who, when I would be told what teachers not to take, I've just kind of always been like a contrarian. You know, not on every issue, but on those issues particular. I mean, I always took the teachers they said not to. Because I'm like, I got to identify for myself what it is about this person. Because what I had learned from my own life experience is...
00:25:11
Speaker
What people might say or the majority of people might say for me wasn't true when I interacted with that person. And I think it was because when I showed up, I didn't show with my guards up.
00:25:24
Speaker
I showed up with my guards down. I showed up ready to receive. I showed showed up like a sponge. I didn't show up, you know, ready to repel, you know, mean before I even knew what was being said or what, you know, perspective a person had.
00:25:41
Speaker
And I think that that, again, you know, made me all the better. And wiser, too, because I began to learn that while a person may have an experience, I mean, I'm not just talking about friends. I mean, sometimes your relatives could say something to you about a person, but their experience isn't relative to you when you approach it being open with that person. So those things taught me that it's really important to engage and to allow others, you know, the autonomy to have real true expression.
00:26:14
Speaker
Talk to me more just about that importance of mentality and how you see that's where the real tensions and conflicts really reside, not in even necessarily trying to convince and persuade the world that a professor is one way or the other, but actually wanting to learn it for yourself.
00:26:35
Speaker
You have to recognize that people aren't 100% dirty. You know what i mean? All of their ideas aren't bad. In every human, we have good attributes and we have bad attributes. I mean, we have negatives, you know, and we have positive. We have strengths and we have weaknesses. So, you know, how would you want to dissect it, those things are true. i mean, it's like some people, you know, I can say no wrong.
00:27:03
Speaker
Yeah. And in other people, I can say no right. And we know that that can't be true in either one of those cases. Sometimes when you blame others, it's because of what you see in yourself.
00:27:16
Speaker
You can't pick out the the bad in another person unless you understand what that bad is. And so you have to have some exposure to it, whether it be actual experience, practical experience, or you know imaginative experience.
00:27:31
Speaker
So at some level, how do you know it's wrong? Yeah. You know what i mean? if you don't understand what wrong is. Those things that we seem to be so judgmental and hyperbolic in in making a certain population the enemy, categorically the enemy, are really is also an invitation to look within and say, what am I scared about? What's the thing that I'm ignoring? What's the thing that I'm protecting against? what's the We need to learn how to listen to our own stereotypes and dogmatism that comes up.
00:28:10
Speaker
A lot of my exposure to growing up, you know, i lived ah in 13 cities across the United States and, and um, Spent five years in Germany all before I was 12 years old. So you you do the math. That's a lot of moving, you know, for a 12-year-old. I mean, even if even if it was one city across the United States and it was 13 cities and I was 12, that means almost like, what, every year? every yeah And some some it was twice, you know,
00:28:36
Speaker
And one year i'd I threw myself off because I looked, I was fortunate my mom was a good record keeper and she had a like a journal book where you know she kept all my grades and pictures and in in marks in school. And I looked up and I'm like noticing one year I had three you know report cards from three different schools.
00:28:54
Speaker
I bring that up just to say that again, and not that you know I'm any better than anybody else. That's not why I'm saying this. I'm just saying that I found that I have way more touch per touch points with dealing with humans than most people.
00:29:10
Speaker
Because when you do all of that moving constantly, you're having to come into new environments. And if you see yourself like any other animal, like if you took an animal in the jungle or took animal in the forest and you move them outside of their habitat, they would instantly have to become sensitive and aware of, where am I? And what do I need to protect myself from? And what's okay for me to go and, you know, and experience. And so I, you know, because humans are animals too, you know what I mean? We have the same mechanisms. And so a lot of times we bring our own fears, you know, into a situation. Because again, whenever you're moving outside of your own, you know, domicile or your own, environment, then you become extremely acutely sensitive to what is the harm, what is the danger. And so we have to be careful that a lot of times it is our own fears that we're bringing into a situation. And I'm not saying that our fear isn't important. It is. It protects us, you know, from
00:30:22
Speaker
predatorial people, you know what i mean? Negative situations, being in the wrong environment when you shouldn't be in the environment at all. You know, it gives us an inclination that, okay, be careful, you know, and that protects our life.
00:30:38
Speaker
And so we too have to be careful, you know, about the way we overreact to people. You know, because we become familiar with ourselves, but we haven't become familiar with others. We haven't become open with others, willing to allow others the autonomy of being who they are.
00:31:00
Speaker
Yeah. I think in our conversation um throughout the season that we're we're exploring right now, we use we we compare between kind of the mature and the immature people. is that the situations, you going back to your your professors and and making that choice is is that you very well may find that you choose to go with the professor and find out for yourself, hey, yeah, this is one I'm not going to take again.
00:31:29
Speaker
But the for you, that reaching for maturity required you setting aside, anchoring to the judgments of others, to their stereotypes, to their experiencing ah what they did about that professor and and reaching for that experience for yourself and that that's a more mature way that we all know we want to be. And yet we find ourselves oftentimes making the immature, the impoverished decision to, to just trust somebody else's experience or to go with what we claim to be the easy answer. And what I hear you advocating for is, is that when you when we do that, it cuts off access
00:32:11
Speaker
to a whole portion of the world and to an experience that that we don't actually want to miss out on. We want to be surprised. We want to experience much more of the world. And you got to purely pragmatically get to experience that because you moved 13 times and somebody else. might have moved those 13 times and based on that experience chosen to become more reclusive, smaller in their worldview, more stereotypical because they didn't want to expose themselves. But for you, there's a maturation I hear that says, I'm going to open myself up to the risks of keeping an open mind.
00:32:52
Speaker
That doesn't come naturally. I think we all can talk about wanting to be that way and and knowing the nature of that we have biases and stereotypes and and prejudices. and but But it seems like a lot of us say like we acknowledge that that happens, but the work that it takes to swim against that or at the very least to open ourselves up for risk seems like...
00:33:18
Speaker
we all have an excuse for why we don't want to do that.
Wisdom in Curiosity and Exploration
00:33:21
Speaker
What are the things you must do for yourself to to continue to cultivate that sense of openness? When I was a little boy, um well, I loved to read, period.
00:33:31
Speaker
but I'm an insatiable reader. And there was a character, cartoon character, and his name was Curious George. Now, Curious George always got into trouble with, you know, at some point with his curiosity. But the lesson for me was that, you know, wasn't that the being curious was bad. Just a matter of how you use your curiosity and don't be curious, you know,
00:33:58
Speaker
Like, you know, I always was one of these teenagers that, you know, when people go with to the the the horror movies and all of that, I mean, you know, I've seen a few, but not not my party, but because I'm one of these people like, no, no.
00:34:13
Speaker
we don't walk into buildings where we sense that something is wrong. It's like, we we just we just we just don't do that. You know what I'm saying? It's like, if you hear something creeping in the other room, it's like, bro, it's not time to say all that just to say that my curiosity is what keeps me open to dealing with people and to allowing myself to experience, you know, their true self. you know But there's also, you know you know when you get that hair on the back of your neck you know what i mean going up, again, don't ignore that. Don't let your curiosity keep leading you in the wrong direction on that. But many of us who don't understand that person that we've brought judgment against, and so we have to be careful you know sometimes to, they say, delay judgment. In other words, don't don't put on your judge hat too soon.
00:35:12
Speaker
You know, sometimes you have to wait and put on your judge, judge had a little later in the experience. It makes me think about a ah Chinese proverb where, you know, this individual had a bad experience and something happened negative and their response to it was maybe good, maybe bad.
00:35:32
Speaker
And so every experience that that person had, it looked like a negative experience, but he wouldn't make judgment. he That's why he would say, maybe good, maybe bad. In other words, I don't know at this point.
00:35:44
Speaker
And every scenario seemed to play out, even though it seemed bad on the surface, that experience or the lesson that it brought was good. So sometimes we ignore, you know, those kind of experiences too, where, you know, there are times when you know, good experience comes dressed in a negative costume or, you know, bad experience comes dressed in a beautiful costume.
00:36:12
Speaker
I hear you talking about the wisdom of discernment and in starting to cultivate not just knowledge for the purposes of making a decision, but starting to cultivate different types of knowledge and knowing in the formation of wisdom wisdom is discerning and and most people don't have wisdom we don't start out with wisdom wisdom is like to me like a muscle you have to cultivate it knowledge will only take us so far in my experience wisdom is the application of knowledge
00:36:53
Speaker
And so the only way you get application experience is through exposure and through practice. And and and um you have to it's almost like you have to test everything to prove the validity, you know, of it, you know, prove, you know, but verify. In other words, you just you can't just assume nothing, you know, i mean, they're like, verify the truth of what you're telling me here, you know. And so when we start verifying, you know, when we do, when we take on those attributes and that's why i say every culture has that built in. So every culture from, you know, the earliest days of their civilization began to incorporate, you know, verify.
00:37:34
Speaker
How do you know that you know? and and and if you And if you cultivate wisdom enough, and this has just been my own experience, my own experience you know, because I've practiced intuition a lot.
00:37:47
Speaker
you know i'm an I'm an artist. you know I have two degrees, one in art and one in accounting. So there's a part of me that's you know really linear. And then there's a part of me that you know blows linearity out of the water. So my I've always got both of those parts of my brain, the right and the left brain, in full functionality.
00:38:09
Speaker
So I'm going to be critical to a scientific level. I'm going to be critical to a legalistic level. But wisdom allows me to be able to discern, you know, when I am being too legal, when I am being too scientific.
00:38:25
Speaker
and and and um and And I know some people might read this wrong, but i'm I'm saying you can make science a crutch, you know, to the standpoint that you don't apply discernment.
00:38:37
Speaker
Intuiting is that intu in the intuition, you know, to look at something and observe something and to think about it, you know, i mean, from a linear standpoint, but to leave room to be able to, you know, intuit or see the what isn't obvious.
00:38:56
Speaker
what you have started to cultivate was the wisdom of understanding the spirit of the game itself and cultivating the discernment that says how i win matters and and that even if i decide to play the game at the end of the day the scoreboard is not in my favor the discerning questions i ask myself is is more around how did i go about playing the game and and that When we allow ourselves to be dictated by just whether or not we believe we're going to be triumphant at the end of the game or not, it steals something from us from a wisdom perspective.
Mindsets: Scarcity vs. Mutual Thriving
00:39:39
Speaker
i I learned very early on that I don't have to destroy you, you know what i mean, to win. you know In other words, there there there there can be a time where you know everybody wins.
00:39:54
Speaker
steve Stephen Covey taught in the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People you know how to create a win-win-win situation. You know and and most people don't think in that that way they I mean even competitors, you know, they're like well I'm your competitor. Well, you know, what are you what are you thinking here? I mean, there's enough room for us all to prosper matter of fact I like Jay Abraham who's like one one of the most brilliant marketers, you know that I've ever met on the planet and he's very discerning and and we have a lot of similar similarities and that Jay went through a lot of iterations with different jobs and going through those iterations, you know, and and and that's why i say too, you know, it's not that, not necessarily the iterations as much as I think Jay Abraham came into this life wanting to, you know, personify this thing.
00:40:44
Speaker
And so he had experiences that allowed him to be able to do that. And, and, and Jay, he was of the belief that, you know, at the point in which everybody sees their strengths and weaknesses and they can refer businesses to the competitors, They don't even understand, you know, the growth and the expansion that money can have.
00:41:04
Speaker
I mean, this, Deremia, this just sounds like this is something we've forgotten collectively is is that we we've gotten to a point where... We believe that there's a number of us that are are believing collectively that no, the only way forward is by a clear determination of of of making sure that we win and the opposition loses. yeah And that sounds like both you and i understand and and and hear that that's that's a lie. that's that that is It's not true. And it's it's a reflection of our limits of possibility, our limit of our own imagination, because because our ability to transcend the fear and the anxiety of there not to being enough
00:41:54
Speaker
and embrace the fact that that goes back to your your mentality, that's that's that's a poverty mentality. that's Absolutely. That's one that says that in order for me to survive, I've got to grab as much as I can at the expense of the person, the human standing right next to me. Yeah. Am I hearing you correctly? Yeah. Absolutely. and um and And I don't think I saw anybody perform it better than Peter Drucker.
00:42:20
Speaker
If you've ever heard of Peter Drucker. And um Peter, I think he died in the early 2000s. So a lot of people have kind of forgotten you know about Peter Drucker. But Peter Drucker, a phenomenal man and And I had and one of his mentees was my mentor. There is a way in which we all can win. But the problem is for most of us is that our selfishness won't allow us to do that.
00:42:48
Speaker
I think there's a time when it's good to be selfish. And I think there's a time when it's bad to be selfish. So I think, so you know, selfishness has, you know, two indications, two meanings. yeah You know, sometimes you have to be selfish to protect your life.
00:43:03
Speaker
And then there some times when you're being selfish, you know, and you're destroying someone else's life. And that is the one that I don't believe that we have to do.
00:43:15
Speaker
i believe, again, there's room for us to function you know together holistically. it's like It would be like if I said, okay, my my Baptist grandfather and my Church of God grandfather, you know they they can't get along. Now, this is not true. I'm just hypothetically making this up. But I'm just saying, you know the my Baptist grandfather doesn't shout in church and doesn't dance in church.
00:43:41
Speaker
yeah and doesn't believe in speaking the tongues and moving by the Spirit in church. you know So he he isn't going to accept that from my you know Church of God in Christ grandfather. And likewise, I can say, well, my Church of God in Christ grandfather, ain't going to accept sitting a pew. He ain't going to accept singing a hymn.
00:44:00
Speaker
And not that you know they didn't sing hymns, but they didn't generally sing hymns from books. you know So... There are things that you have to realize that, okay, both of my grandfathers, they got to find a way to get along. You know i mean? Because this this this belief that they have about being Baptist or being Church of God in Christ, that is a construct. you know And it has nothing to do with first being human.
00:44:27
Speaker
You know me, that is the family we all are from. It's just like, you know, when I'm dealing with my friends across, you know, um you know, cultural lines or racial lines and I'm like, bro, I don't want to hear you can't get along with white people.
00:44:43
Speaker
You know me and to my wife, friends, I want to hear you can't get along with black people. I mean, black and white, that's a construct. Somebody invented that, you know what I mean, in the 30s or 40s. I don't know what year it was, but it's like these are all constructs. And so if we keep building constructs at some point, you know, I'm an artist and I know this is true.
00:45:04
Speaker
You keep building constructs at some point, you're going cage yourself in. And you're going to become so legalistic. Whatever time is allotted to us here, there we do need to construct. We do need to create um stability and security. and And what I choose as part of my story for that uh in my autonomy in my agency that that that sounds like your positive reflection around selfishness but that moment that the relationship starts to believe that in the pursuit of my own security i decide i'm going to take whatever i've built
00:45:47
Speaker
And I'm going to dictate that somebody else needs this as well, maybe for reasons of increasing my own power or increasing my own confidence that what I chose and what I built is valid. um Me doing that and encroaching on the very autonomy and agency of somebody else is immature at best. it is it is it is invasive and dehumanizing at worst.
00:46:16
Speaker
And in many ways, you're saying that, you know, the other person doesn't deserve autonomy. You deserve autonomy. You know what mean? And that is entitlement.
00:46:27
Speaker
You know, when you think you deserve something that other people don't have the right to experience and deserve as well. um One of my favorite historical mentors is Benjamin Franklin.
00:46:39
Speaker
and And while I'll be the first to say to tell you, Franklin wasn't perfect. Franklin was amazing. I mean, he he had he had a saying that guided him you know most of his life, you know and that and that saying was, leave things better than what you found them.
00:46:56
Speaker
So if we lived by that principle alone, leave things better what did did you leave it better than what you found it? you know When you came to that restaurant, did you leave it better than what you found it? you know when you When you went to your friend's house, did you leave that better than what you found it?
00:47:11
Speaker
When you entered that relationship with that young lady or that man, did you leave them better than what you found? We can apply that to everything. If everyone was just like me, what kind of world would my world be?
00:47:23
Speaker
And if you think that what you're living is good for everybody, you better make sure you think through that thing really, really good. Ask the question, am thinking for my own selfish benefits or am I thinking for being selfish for mankind? Hmm.
00:47:39
Speaker
Hmm. And I know even just within my own self is that I have to be very cautious with that because even in my justification sometimes for believing that I'm doing things for the better amount of all, it demands a sitting with it a little bit longer and actually evaluating and being transparent with myself of what some of my motivations are and that I'm fallible and that i can I can believe that I'm doing something and sometimes I'm deluding myself.
00:48:08
Speaker
um and and And to me, that's why you need to hear the other person fully, because they will let you know. And if through them letting you know, you all can't come to a mutual resolution.
00:48:23
Speaker
and in In other words, there's a saying that, you know what i mean? Is it good for, you know, is it good for everyone? You know what saying? Does it does it work? Mm-hmm. You know, does it does it really work?
00:48:35
Speaker
You know what I'm saying? you you You know, if if if you drive a Mercedes Benz, you know, that could be for the good of you and it could work. You know what saying? It doesn't offend me. but if you But if you start telling me that I got to, you know, um drive a you know ah a skateboard, you know what I'm saying? In order for you to drive Mercedes Benz. Exactly. Yes. then that then that's a problem. yeah and And you can't even see, you know to mean, that you're so high up on your high horse that you can't even see how that is imposing, you know, your very statements are doom and danger and imposing restrictions on others. But you want me to believe in a world of expansion. No, expansion, you know The world is ever-expanding. That's a universal principle.
00:49:25
Speaker
None of us can stop that from happening. you know No different than you can't stop yourself from aging every minute you're here. you know That's something you can't stop. You might want to stop it, but you can't stop it. That's because the universe is forever expanding and everything should be growing. and If it's not growing, then it's declining.
00:49:46
Speaker
so So if you want to try to stop something and hold the world, you know what mean, into this moment forever, that's not going to happen because everything is always constantly expanding.
00:49:59
Speaker
And we should likewise be expanding too. we should We should be able to say that the things that we believed, you know, five years ago are not the same things that we believe today.
00:50:10
Speaker
It's kind of like Einstein. He said one time when a student of his said, hey, you know, Professor Einstein, you know, I noticed that you gave the same tests, you know, that you gave last year. and the And the student was appalled because he was like, you know, i mean, man, anybody that had the test from last year or anybody that, you know, knows somebody that took the test could easily come in here and circumvent this.
00:50:30
Speaker
And Einstein wasn't even a bit, you know, uh, desponded. Einstein told him, he said, well, the reason why I gave the, the same tests again this year, he said, because the answers have changed.
00:50:45
Speaker
So, so likewise, we, you know, our answers at some point should be changing. I mean, there are some things where they should remain the same, you know, the principle of caring for people, looking out for people, making sure that people are okay. You know, to, to me, that should be a principle that shouldn't ever change. If I met you, you know, in real life, you know, it would be the same, you know, is is is as I feel right now. And that is, hey, I want to make sure that you're good, that you're OK. You know, and I think you saw, you know, you've got a chance to personally experience that, you know, from hearing me express, you know, how your family is doing and that kind of thing, you know. So again, Those kinds of things speak volumes about, you know, not just who I am as a person, but how I think that as a society we should be caring for each other, looking out for each other. You know, I don't i don't know what you went through today. i don't know what you've already been through.
00:51:40
Speaker
So I should be cautious, you know, to, you know, to believe that it could be possible that you had a rough morning today. I don't know that. And so I'm going to error in the position of caring. You know what i mean? Looking out for my brother, making sure that you're all good.
00:52:01
Speaker
I'm not just going to step into our relationship, you know, ever where you think that, man, Jeremiah, he could care less. You know, I mean, he's signed that contract with so-and-so and man, he's just like a whole different person now. It's like, no, no money. Money only amplifies what is already in you.
00:52:18
Speaker
You know, if what is in you is good, then giving, you know, somebody that's good, more money is not going to hurt them. It's going to only benefit the world. See, I don't have to, you probably won't ever see me on Forbes, you know, for, you know, the billionaire list because I got too much to do, you know, that's good for others. Yeah.
00:52:38
Speaker
You know what saying? the the The money is just an opportunity for me to bless somebody else. To leave it better than you found it. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. It's like, you know, what could I care about becoming the first trillionaire? Really?
00:52:52
Speaker
what's What's wrong with your head? You know i mean? Where you are just so obsessed about you, you know, where you are lost in thinking that, you know, you're an island. Mm-hmm. I'm not an island. Every person on the planet I'm impacted by, a whether I even know it or not, it doesn't matter. They say the butterflies, you know, flapping their wings and in in in in Japan right now are impacting the wind that I'm experiencing over here. You you might think that.
00:53:19
Speaker
You know, you might think that your, you know, situation doesn't impact others, even your grief, even when somebody you love dies, that energy is being transmitted and passing along. I may not even understand why I'm feeling you know, the emotional, you know, feelings that I'm feeling, but I'm not, you know, I'm a receiver of energy. I'm a receiver of vibration. I'm a receiver of love. I'm a receiver of pain.
00:53:47
Speaker
You know, they, all these things are in our environment, in our world, in our atmosphere. So even if I shut off the news and the television, I could get out and, you know, take, take the dog out for a walk around the block and meet somebody who, you know, I know they need a hug. Mm. Mm. Mm.
00:54:04
Speaker
They don't have to even tell me they need a hug. In other words, that's how tapped in I am. I know they need a hug. I can look at them. Their energy just isn't, you know what mean, where it needs to be at. Or I can have a conversation with a friend and a friend can I'll say, are you doing? They say, oh, I'm doing just great.
00:54:20
Speaker
I mean, I can't tell you how many times I've called friends out. I'm like, no, no, you're not. They're like, no, yes, I am. I'm doing great. I'm like, no, there's something. I can't tell you what it is because I'm not in your life, but I can feel the energy.
00:54:35
Speaker
And then they'll change because they realize they're like, man, their minds picked up on this something. I don't know what it is. We wear our countenance. So again, you know, I mean, people sometimes look at me and they say, you okay? And I say, yeah, I'm okay. I say, if if you're talking about that real serious look that's on my face, I said, that's a part of Jeremiah when Jeremiah is like extremely focused. So, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm good. And again, that's because like Benjamin Franklin, I know my true self. Yeah.
00:55:07
Speaker
Yeah. Jeremiah, you, going anchor back to that phrase that you shared of leave it better than you found it. but Talk me through some of the pragmatic things that you have on the horizon that are a part of delivering your mission for leaving, leaving things better people, the world better than you found it that you're hopeful for.
00:55:32
Speaker
Man, i got so much going on, Tyler. It's like amazing. Sometimes I wonder how juggle so much, but i learned, ah you know, when I was a teenager that, you know, the gifts that you've been given were given to you because you have the ability to be able to do that.
00:55:51
Speaker
You have the capacity to be able to manage it. But Man, i've I've got a book that I worked on this summer called The Power Smile Breakthrough.
Deremiah's Literary Contributions
00:56:01
Speaker
While I'm not going to probably release it until maybe December or maybe January, um it is a powerful book about how we can shift our own energy neurologically you know through smiling. And so i you know I have a certain you know regimen of things that I do periodically. One, like clockwork every day, you know get up. you know When I get to the bathroom and there's a mirror, I look in the mirror and I smile at myself.
00:56:29
Speaker
And it it it triggers me, you know, there's nothing narcissistic about it. I'm smiling because, you know, I'm activating the energy in my body. That smile is something that, you know, I've done all my life. So even if I even if there wasn't a mirror. Yeah. You know, I'll smile knowing that that smile shifts my physiology, you know, and thereby allows me to experience every single time I've smiled. Now, while I can't calculate, you know, the, you know, thousands or tens of thousands of times I've smiled in this lifetime, it it still triggers all of those experiences and moments. And so I decided that, again, I do things differently. And so I go with my different.
00:57:15
Speaker
And I'm like, I'm going to write a book about, you know, the power smile breakthrough, how that shift in your smile shifts not only your own energy, but it shifts the energy of everyone else around you as well. And so that that book will be coming out in the next, you know, um anywhere from the next 60 to 90 days. But um I have and and a collaboration book that I'm that I've been a part of that's coming out December the 2nd, you know, about, um you know, it's called, you know, I did it. You know what I'm saying? It's about showing people, you know, how how you.
00:57:56
Speaker
can do something and persevere against, you know, everything. The title of book is called Yes, I Can and I Did, The Power of Perseverance. And I'm one of probably about 15 authors, most who are women who share their experiences about how they persevered through their life. And um I wrote a ah chapter in that book And it's called um Silenced in Arizona. And it's ah it's it's about a personal experience that I had myself, you know, that where I was kind of being shut down, you know, and I had to find the perseverance to push through because I'm like,
00:58:37
Speaker
No, this thing that I'm doing, this thing that I'm about and this experience that I'm having, this is for the greater good of the people. And right now, for some reason, I just sense that, you know, the administration, you know, figures in our political system aren't.
00:58:53
Speaker
you know interested in what I have to share about this experience. And to me, again, it goes back to what I said earlier, that we have to be willing to listen to everybody. Your your your title, you know what i mean, in a government position doesn't give you the authority you know to project your experiences on everyone, even if you think it's for the greater good of everyone. I think that you should still listen with, you know, good ears, wide open, hearts open when people are sharing with you the things that aren't working for our society. And I and and i believe that, you know, sometimes political figures, you know, um
00:59:36
Speaker
miss you know misbelieve that they are in a position to operate on you know as an authority for the people. No, you are a servant operating on behalf of people who voted you in. And not just only the people you voted that voted you in, but even also to consider the people who didn't vote you in.
Responsibility of Political Figures
00:59:59
Speaker
Because just because they didn't vote you in doesn't mean that you have the right to mistreat them or treat them any different from those who vote you in. so in other words, that's a different mentality. And I know because I've ran for office you know in Illinois and i and I know that my beliefs are different than most of the political people that I encountered. You know, it's it's almost like, you know, well, you know, you you can, you know, there's a time when you can hate people. It's like, no, there isn't a time when you can hate someone.
01:00:29
Speaker
You know i mean? You may not like their behavior, but you still need to love the person. Yeah. Yeah. So, so that, that's, again, that's another book that I'll, I'll be rolling out. And, um I've got, uh, a art gallery that I opened up called Arizona galleries.com. And there you can see my artwork, you know, the images that I've created. I've been drawing since I was four or five years old, been in, major museum shows, been in,
01:00:59
Speaker
a winner of five museum awards for the Museum of Science and Industry. Like said, I've done a lot in this lifetime. I think that, like I said, that coming off of that suicidal moment when I was 16 unleashed in me that, boy, you you know, you got too much to do.
01:01:17
Speaker
It ain't time to die. You know, so I tell people that often, you know, it's not time to die, it's time to live.
Engagement with Good Pain Community
01:01:25
Speaker
Thank you for sitting with us in this conversation, for bringing your own story, your own questions, and your own hard-won wisdom to what we're building together.
01:01:34
Speaker
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01:01:53
Speaker
Good Pain is recorded in Colorado on Arapaho, Ute, and Cheyenne ancestral lands. And let's remember, we are not alone in this. Our struggle is not our shame.
01:02:05
Speaker
Whatever we are carrying today, we don't have to carry it alone. We will see you next time.