Welcome back to Renovating the Soul Podcast. I am your host, Alexandria Robinson, and I am so happy that you are joining me for episode seven of Renovating the Soul. Before I get started in this episode, I don't know about where y'all live, but this allergy season is crazy. And I actually don't even have allergies. I think I get sympathy allergies. So you probably can hear it in my voice. Uh, that I do not sound uh like I like I normally do. I actually am um dealing with some allergy stuff, but you know what? I was not gonna let another episode go by and not do it. Um, but again, thank you all so much for um joining me for episode seven. If you listen to the last episode, episode six, I talked about how I was going to do a part two of the soul talk and really um take a deep dive into what is the soul from the view of ancient philosophers and kind of their evolution and trajectory on how their beliefs um evolved, right, about the soul. But I have been listening to you all, my audience, and a lot of y'all are like me. You work a job, you have children, you have other hobbies, extracurriculars going on, and you've been saying, you know, hey, I am I'm I'm loving the podcast, but I am trying to catch up, and so instead of giving you two heavy episodes back to back, I'm gonna um take a little detour and do a different episode this time for episode seven, and then we'll come back in episode eight to talk about the part two of the soul talk. So today's episode, we are not the same, and that's okay. And I would actually go further to say, we are not the same, and that's a good thing. Um, in this episode, we're gonna be talking about this idea that I had. This episode is really similar to Grieven Relationships, where I said in Grievan Relationships that I was kind of introducing these ideas that I've had. Um, I I'm always so excited for these episodes because a lot of these ideas and thoughts have sat with me for some years or they've sat in my notebooks for some years. So even if we have schedule changes or we have to shuffle the order around, I'm always really excited for the episode, and that's no different with this one. Um, but as I was saying, this is similar to the grievancips episode where I was saying that I was kind of introducing this idea. Well, we'll definitely come back to it, but I kind of want to put these thoughts out there. I always, I don't want to say always, but I like introducing these ideas because I'm hoping that they will help someone. I'm really hoping that um in a symbolic way, like certain chains and ideologies will start to come off of people, some certain pressures will start to come off of people from introducing these kind of countercultural or new ideas. And I'm not saying that I'm like the originator because when I can go, I can Google and see a lot of support for the things that I'm thinking of, but I just don't see this idea pushed as um in the mainstream, right? Or around us, even in our circles, I don't see this idea pushed, and that's really where this uh came from for me. There were two instances that inspired this topic. One is a mainstream event that happened. Unfortunately, it was a school shooting, and I don't want to go into super great details about it, but it was a young lady, which is rare to have young lady uh mass shooters. But the the thing that I wanted to point to was after sometime after the shooting, her manifesto was released, like parts of it, I believe, and or a notebook. I don't know not sure if it was a manifesto, but parts of what she what she talked about was released, and part of her motive came to light in the the news and everything like that. And reading part of it, she talked about how growing up in that neighborhood and in that school, she was felt to she she was made to feel less than because she didn't have the money and the fancy backpacks, the fancy things that other kids had. And so she talked about you know feeling less than and undervalued, and I'm adding in my own words, right? Um, but that was the general idea that these kids were always better than me, and as an adult, to this is my interpretation is that as an adult, it didn't seem as if her life had progressed where she thought, and she still held on to this idea that those with buddy, those with wealth, those with status and influence are then offered kind of a better hand at life. From what I gathered and from what I took away after reading her thoughts that were shared publicly, I immediately began to think about how society has really pushed this idea of equality, especially when it comes to wealth, but even more so when it comes to talents and opportunities. I think that there is a danger in any idea, right, when we do not confine it and def and define it and give it the constraints that it needs. And I see the influence of this idea of equality in the fact that we are being told that you should have the same amount of money as this person or or uh people who have these kinds of skills and talents don't deserve to be treated better than you or whatever it is, right? But the reality is we are not the same. The reality is people are born with other talents that I am not gonna have, but that does not disqualify you, and that's what I wish someone along the way, and maybe they did, you know, evil it can exist no matter what someone's told or whatever, right? But I wish and I hope that someone along the way would have told this young lady, as I'm telling you all, as I hope you would tell someone else, that just because you are not equal in status, well, talents, or opportunities to the next person, does not disqualify you from whatever portion that you have because you too were given talents, opportunities, you too are given a life, right? To do something with. That if you just stayed focused on what you were given, that is probably what you were meant to do in this life. And I know we have a lot of influences, our our work culture, right? Uh performance awards, um, spell and be awards, you know, like I said, uh best attendance, like uh, or you know, uh uh yeah, best attendance or the best reader. And these, if you hear what I'm saying, I'm talking about like these things start at grade school level, you know, we we were constantly making everything like a competition, in a sense. So you do naturally have this hierarchy, but then you have to even look at um the world of Hollywood or the um, oh, when YouTube, when YouTube became big and a lot of people were getting quote unquote overnight success. Do you know how many people started to uh get on YouTube thinking that they were gonna be the next overnight sensation? And some people did become overnight sensations, not for the right things, or how many people want to jump on uh uh an American Idol or these shows, right? And these don't have to be your aspirations, and that's why I said it's not just about the the um, or maybe I didn't say this, but I'll say it here. It's not even just about society, it's not even just about these um being a celebrity or be getting all the lights and the attentions, it happens right in your own circle. So a second example that inspired this thinking for me was I had a speaking engagement, like a year or two or two. No, I'm sorry, let me go back. Before that speaking engagement, I had met a young lady, and I met this young lady and we hit it off and we were talking about our kids, and we're just cracking up. And so every time we had kind of read into each other and seen each other, it was like, hey girl, how you doing? I'm doing good, how are you? Da da da da. And mind you, we had just met, we really didn't know much about each other. I have been I've been doing speaking engagements, which is primarily peep preaching when I say that, but panel discussions, all those things. I've done um speaking engagements for since I was a young kid, kid, like um, but more consistently when I started college. And so I had already been, you know, on stage in front of hundreds of people at times, uh, over a thousand people at times. I've already I had already been doing that, and so I had, but I don't, I don't let me just say this I don't walk around saying that to people. That's not a conversation starter. So me and this young lady never had that conversation where I'm like, yeah, I do such and such such such. Like we just did it. We just hey bye, you know, just good vibes, like we're just we we really hit it off. I was like, I I like her so much, but then I had a speaking engagement where she came to, she happened to be at, and after that speaking engagement, when I went to go, hey girl, how you doing? I'm not even exaggerating, she would barely make eye contact with me. She would barely make eye contact with me. She kept turning her body away, very cold, very stoic. And I'm thinking, like, I all y'all, I always check me first, so I had to go back through my mind and say, Did I do something? Okay, maybe maybe we didn't hit it off like I thought. I was like, like the switch up was crazy. I'm like telling my husband, I'm like, I don't know if I'm in my head. He wasn't no nobody else was around to experience it that I could talk to, so that was difficult too. But I just was mulling it over, mulling it over, and I finally came to the conclusion that, like, nah, girl, you're not tripping, something's weird. And from then, every time I see this lady, like this young lady, it was just weird, right? So, flash forward a few months, and we finally have this conversation, and actually, it was she really randomly kind of said it within this conversation that had nothing to do with what we were talking about, but she says it and she's like, Yeah, I was jealous of you because I thought that I was the only one who talked like that and had those gifts, but then you realize that you're not the only one. And and she said it made her question her uniqueness, it made her question if she was special because she'd been told she was special all her life, but she had never heard anyone else who could, I guess I don't want to say compete, but who I who was like on a similar level as her. And she said she was jealous, and when I tell y'all that blew my mind, because in my mind, we her and I could exist in the same space. In my mind, you have a portion and a community and people to reach that I don't. I I really was like, and I I honestly in that moment didn't even say much. I was just like, yeah, we can exist. Like, yeah, you're still unique, yeah, you're still special. But I was processing so much in the moment that I didn't have much to say beyond that. And we never really talked about it again. It was definitely confirmation for me because I was feeling this type of way, like, dang, oh girl, switched up real quick. And I figured it has something to do with jealousy, but I'm just not that type of person to want to assume that, you know. So when she said it, it was a relief that I was like, okay, I was on the right track with what I was thinking, but it was also unfortunate because I'm like, dang, I wish you would have just said that from the jump so that we could have this conversation so I could remind you. Like, I in no way walk in any room saying that, you know, you can't get it because I have it. I don't walk in any rooms and say, because I'm a public speaker and a great one, or because I do this or I do that, you also can't do it. In fact, my whole model in life is to push other people up, you know, if that's in the similar gift is that I have or in something different. But the whole point is I was so sad in that someone would question their value and their uniqueness because similarities or or uh dissimilarities that someone may have. But this is a common theme. She is not the only one. I've done it, you've done it, we do it. We constantly put ourselves in these positions where we question our worth and value when we're looking at the next person. So if we go back to the last episode and the idea of that renovation process, right? We could think about it in terms of having neighbors. Um, our our neighbors are next door to us, right? If we're constantly looking at what the next person is doing, how focused are we on what we're given? An even better analogy to this is another HG TV show that I'm not gonna bore you guys with, but I'm just gonna touch on really, really fast. It's called Rock the Block. It's a competition show between HG TV designers, and crazy enough, a few episodes back, um, so in this season, they're actually doing these huge condos in Florida. So when I say condo, they're not, they they are they're not your normal condo, but they're huge, and this is the closest that they've ever been. Normally they're in houses, they they're still next door, but they have a good you know width between them. But in this one, they're they're like right next door, they're like literally right in each other's backyards. Um, and one of the designers changed her design completely because she could see what her competitors were doing next door. Anyways, the whole idea is that in your process, in what you have going on in your life, you can take inspiration from other people. I'm not saying that. The problem becomes when inspiration turns into envy and jealousy and comparison, and then it seeps into our value and our worth, and we start to question our uniqueness, our purpose in life, what we're called to do. When instead, I think the message should be focus on your portion, focus on your talents and your abilities. And no, you may not play basketball like LeBron James, no, you may not sing like Beyonce, no, you may not be a good as an accountant as your coworker, no, you may not be the next uh best-selling author, right? But those things don't disqualify you from whatever you were given in this life. And I think that I'm using these kind of like bigger goals because I see this happen a lot. I think again, so much of it even stems from the people around us, that in all of our communities, there are these like local celebrities, right? Or the popular people, the popular kids. It it's a it's a trend in everything that we do. The person you have a party, there's always that one or two people who are what? The life of the party. You rarely have a party where everyone is the life of the party, okay? So it's just this, it's all around us where we could look at someone and go, oh man, I wish it was as funny as them, or oh man, I wish that I had whatever, whatever that they had. And again, my issue with this idea is that it seeps from I think the bigger picture of this idea of equality. We've made so many subsectors of equality that it starts to get confusing on what equality means, and there's actually articles that talk about that. But listen to this Pew Research Center did a survey in 44 countries asking which among five dangers was considered to be the greatest threat to the world? The five options were nuclear weapons, pollution and environment, AIDS and other diseases, inequality, religious and ethnic hatred. Which of these are the five which among these five are the great is the greatest danger in the world? I'm just gonna highlight the United States, but I'll put the link in the description so you can go and see the whole survey. In the United States, we ranked inequality over all the other options. It was inequality and then religious and ethnic hatred, and then nuclear weapons, nuclear weapons, and then pollution, and then AIDS and other diseases. Now, this was in 2014. I haven't looked to see if they did an updated survey, but the fact that we rated inequality in the United States as the greatest danger in the world speaks to exactly what I'm talking about. That this idea that like we are so afraid of being unequal to people around us that we are continuing to pass this message that I think then is being disseminated or filtered in a way that is stemming to the um to our generation and to other generations coming behind us, that is creating now this worth disparity. We have the wealth disparity, but now we're starting to see the worth and the value disparity. Even if you don't want to be the next Michael Jordan, everybody wants to be great in some way. Everyone wants to be successful, whatever that looks like to them in some way. Whether success is being at the number one, or whether it's having the most money, or whether it's getting the car, or whether it's having the family, or whether it's just having like a stable job, whatever it is, like we all have this idea of how our life should be. We all have this idea of how our life should be. And what I'm questioning is how much of that idea of your life comes from you, and how much of that idea of your life comes from what you see other people doing. Are you assessing your talents, your gifts, your opportunities in your own backyard, or are you constantly peeking over at your neighbors, going, What are they doing? Oh, I see they're doing that. So let me start to shape my stuff like this. It becomes a very dangerous game because then when I'm doing it exactly how I see other people doing it, and it's not coming out the same, I'm starting to get frustrated and angry and unsatisfied with my life. And then I start to question my value, my worth, right? When I start to look at someone and say, dang, she a better speaker than me. Oh man, there's no room for me anywhere in that industry, then I I count myself out before I could even be counted in. But if I just look at Alexandria's portion or insert your name, your portion, and I say portion as like uh like your lane, right? You know, they say stay in your lane. We don't say it in our lane ever. But you know, if I if you just look at like your portion, what you've been given, look at where your life is. Ask yourself, who can I influence around me now? What can I do to better my own life now? How can I use my gifts and talents to leverage where I want to be in this world? So what my best friend had was born rich, or so what that person is a better singer, or so what? Like, do you see the people who who we think kind of aren't as skilled? I don't want to say they suck, but they suck. But someone who may not be as skilled and as gifted, how they make a name for themselves, or they go on to be this public figure or whatever it is because they stay focused on them. They stay focused on what they have, they stay focused on. I'm not worried about my competition or you know what other people are doing or how they're doing it. I'm looking at what I have, who I can support, who can support me, and I'm staying focused on that area. I like to uh well I don't like to, but I was thinking about this, and I was thinking about like superheroes. We have no problem with super and I don't know why we don't have a problem with it, right? Because it's all make-believe, you know, some people they go a little crazy in that industry, superheroes, Star Wars, and all that stuff, right? But if you look at superheroes, how were superheroes created? No superhero is like equal to the other, they all have different powers, skills, and strengths. And then what you have, what I like DC because I like how um, and I'm not trying to start a DC Marvel War, but I'm just saying I'm gonna tell you why I like DC because you have Superman who covers um Metropolis, you have Batman who's in Gotham City, you have Wonder Woman who was in child, I never got where she was from, but I don't remember it's like Athens, I think it's the Greece like, but I cannot remember the island that she was on. But anyways, my whole point is in DC, you have these superheroes, right, that cover their areas, their portions, and their skill strengths, right? Work for that, and when it doesn't, you have them team up and work together to you know come together in whatever area they need to be. Whereas when you look at Marvel, Marvel, a lot of them are in New York. I'm like, how do you have 30? Superheroes in New York. You don't want those superheroes in Utah or California or Washington? That's probably the thing that bugs me the most. Is I'm like, um, why aren't there superheroes for Texas or for other areas? Why is everybody in New York? Why how could you have 50 plus superheroes all living in the same city? And it just doesn't make any sense to me. And that I think describes how we see this a lot of times. That you're trying to bundle how we actually how we don't see it. We we think that we're doing our portion and we're not realizing that we're more like Marvel characters where we're all trying to bunch ourselves in this little bundle, not realizing that there's a whole world, a whole earth, a community. You right now, you listening to this, know people that I will never meet. You talk to people that I will never talk to. You are friends with people that I will never be friends with. You have children that are not my children, you have family that are not my family. I'm saying that to say you have an influence, uh portion, an opportunity around you to use your gifts and talents for what's been given to you, not for what's been given to someone else. So we've talked about how equality influences this idea, but the last bit that I want to talk about is this idea of manifestation. Before I start talking about that, I just I want to say that hard work will take you more places than we realize. That a lot of people who have made a name for themselves or who are successful, a lot of them have worked hard. And the reason why I wanted to talk about manifestation because manifestation has become this new trend. This this and it's not new, it's not new, but it's become a new trend, right? In the last few years. Spe we called it in church like speaking into existence. Um, manifestation in this way in our society now, and how it's kind of taken over um culturally, is this idea that you think positively and it will happen. Think positive thoughts, think about it, write it down over and over, wake up every day and say it and it will happen. I have always been annoyed and frustrated by this idea. Always. Always. There's two there's two reasons, right? First, I'm gonna say this, and I and I'm gonna jump on this and jump off real fast. I that if I can do that, that means that evil people, bad people can manifest bad things. Even though you're saying pa like, like this is what I'm saying about when we are not clearly defining a scope of what we're talking about. And in fact, I was reading an article, and they were the the girl said, Oh, I wish I could remember exactly how she said it, but she was saying how um pretty much anything you think will come to come to light. But then she quickly had to in her comments say how, oh, but we don't we don't um manifest our trauma. See what starts to happen? Then you when you make these um crazy claims or you say these things, right? That oh, we don't manifest our trauma. But then some people do believe that if you are sick, it's because you manifested it. It gets really muddy and really dangerous really fast. My other frustration with manifestation is that the people that I would see talking about manifestation, selling books on manifestation, uh doing classes on manifestation, you know, they're people were really making money off of this idea of manifestation. And the same people that I see talking about, they manifested a million dollars or they manifested their success were actually working hard. That's all they were doing. They were writing down something, saying that they wanted something, a goal, even if it had been 10 years ago, whatever it was, right? But from that 10-year mark, from from the from the time that they wrote it down 10 years ago, they have been working towards it. They didn't write it down, sit there and just think about it. They got up, they went to work, they they made connections, they networked, they did whatever they needed to do to make it happen instead of and then y'all probably hear it in my voice. I'm gonna calm myself down. And then what's so frustrating is that these people who are working hard and they know the hard work that they're putting in, are then trying to sell you and I a dollar and a dream by saying, Oh, just think about it and it'll come to fruition. Baby, I didn't thought about a million dollars a lot of times. I still don't have a million dollars in my bank account. But I also haven't worked towards a million dollars. So in in my little idea bubble, in the world that I would like to live in, I would like the message of hard work and working towards your goals to be the prominent one over just thinking positively and writing it down 33 times. And you guys know I be coming with my little uh receipts, my articles and stuff, and my definition, so y'all don't be thinking that I'm just over here, you know, mad and and heated for no reason. No, I want to I want to read you the Webster definition of manifestation. It says manifestation is to make evident or certain by showing or displaying, manifest is to make evident or certain by showing or displaying, and then on Webster, where they had the definition, um, you click evident, evident is clear to the vision or understanding. But then, okay, so then let me read this. What are in this article that I'm gonna put in the description, they describe manifesting, and this is how manifesting is also described by the people. It is the practice of thinking, aspirational thoughts with the purpose of making them real. Like, I hope you can see the distinct, and I hope you can see how when we get caught up in some of these ideas, right? Um, and ideologies, and they go just kind of untamed, everybody starts making it what they want it to be. So I'm gonna read you some quotes from this article because it was so good. It says, they offer a portrait of the world that is extraordinary alluring, one where the only obstacle to achieving every dream we might have is to focus very hard on it. As though pretending like we're already gorgeous, successful, deliriously happy human beings will make it real. This is what they're this is what society is trying to do. This is what our culture has been trying to do for us to us for the past few years is make us think that um we if we just think about if we already have these things, then we already have them. But then the article goes on to say that the act of manifesting either has a ton of complicated rules or is whatever you want it to be. Listen to this. One popular TikTok claims that by simply coming across it, you've already manifested the video. That in fact, you've unconsciously manifested everything that has happened in your life. And this started right here. This is the girl that quickly or God, because I don't know. No, it was she. She quickly clarified in the comments that nobody manifests their trauma. How can you make that distinction? How can you say if if you've manifested everything in your life, then you are saying that I have manifested my trauma, my sickness, the hurts, the pains, the things that people have done to me, I have manifested those. You can't come back and say, oh, but you don't manifest your trauma. You have no evidence on that, you have no backing to say that. And then, as I said, there's this thing called scripting, which means you can write it down, like write down what you want one time, or you can write it down over and over and then finish with a certain saying, Y'all, let me tell you something. I'm an avid writer. I have been writing things down for years. There are things that have definitely come to fruition, but when I wrote down the event that I wanted to do, I had to then book a space. I had to pay money. I had to get speakers, I had to get the food. Like I had then I had to show up the day of the event. I had to have my content ready. I had to have my clothes picked out, my hair done. I had to make sure that people were in the room. I had to sell tickets. I had to market. There was no way that I just sat, I sat in my room a long time ago and thought about these things. But in order to make them an actual reality, I had to work hard or I had to at least put in effort to make it happen. I'm talking about this idea of manifestation because I think that uh uh concepts like manifestation and equality plague us and affect us even when we claim that we don't prescribe to them. We could catch ourselves saying and falling for the okie doke because you see people saying that they're manifesting um things and they're and things are actually happening for them. And we're like, huh. Well, again, here comes this idea, right? Of I'm looking at this person going, she manifested a million dollars, and I want to be rich, so let me go on ahead. It's the it's very few people. That's why I love Sarah Blake. Sarah Blake is the founder of Spakes, and Piki Cole is the founder of Slutty Vegan. And if you listen to their stories, if you listen to the stories on Shark Tape, Kevin O'Leary, Mark Cuban, they're not sitting around talking about they manifested it. I mean, you know, Kevin O'Kevin O'Leary be saying some crazy stuff, so he might have talked about that before. But they're not sitting around talking about how they manifested it. Sarah, Sarah, sorry, Sarah Blakely, I said Sarah Blake. Sarah Blakely, uh, the founder of Spanx, her story is just it is a story of grit and hard work and determination. That when she relaunched Spanx, it she it didn't stop it, just oh, I launched it and I did it. She had to then go into stores and start moving her product around, she had to work super hard for people to start to recognize her brand, this new thing that came to the scene, right? And she didn't become a billionaire overnight. So it doesn't matter what your goals or your aspirations are. It doesn't matter if you want to be the best mom or if you want to be the best engineer at your job, or if you just want to um again, like if it doesn't even matter, it doesn't have to be like this grandiose thing either. Let's just say you want to have a beautiful, peaceful life. Let's say that you don't want to be what has hurt you, and you want to pass down love and peace to other people. It doesn't matter how big it is or how simple it may seem, your portion is your portion, and how you can use your portion is what we talk about every episode. Hard work. That's why I say that this renovating process is not easy, that looking within and looking at your soul is not easy, but we shouldn't want it to be either. I think there is more that will come from hard work that'll ever come from manifesting. Because listen at the differences. If I'm just manifesting something, I'm just sitting around thinking about it, and then it comes, and I never actually really learned what it take, what it could take, or what it took me to actually get there. I don't even have the same appreciation if I just get um get it handed to me, right? Or if or if it just pops out of the sky because the universe decided to give me. But I could give someone back greater lessons when I have worked hard for something, I can be a blueprint for someone in my community, even now. Me starting this podcast, several of y'all have reached out and said, I'm I've been wanting to start a podcast. How did you start? I do not withhold information, I think I'm an oversharer. And I say, What do you want to know? You want to know what equipment I have, you want to know what platform I use, you want to know what research I done, you want to know what book I use, but if I just manifested it and I just thought positively about it and then it popped up in my lap, I wouldn't have any of that to give to any of you or to anyone. I'm not trying to be the next big podcaster, right? I always said that coming into this, that like I'm not worried about what the end looks like. I had to really start sit down and focus on who do you want to be to the people around you? Who do you want to be to the community that you do have? Who do you want to be to the little bitty followers that you have now? Who do you want to be to the people that know you? Who do you want to be to your children, right? Like, I am okay not being the same as someone else. In fact, I think that that makes me more valuable. The fact that I am not equal in my opportunities and talents and skills as the next person, I wouldn't want us all to be Michael Jordan. Where's the fun in that? I wouldn't want us all to be LeBron James or uh uh Serena Williams or I don't know why I can use this for examples. I I wouldn't want us all to be Beyonce. Where is the fun in you having your community and you having your portion and you having the people that you could touch? Listen, we were all put here on this earth to do something, and a lot of people believe that part of our a big part of our life is how we influence others. If you believe that, then the very people in your home, you get influence. If you believe that, then the very people that you're friends with, you get influence. And it's not about going around trying to indoctrinate people with stuff, right? But like I said, maybe you were not shown love, maybe you were treated just like that young lady was, right? Less than because you didn't have money or because you didn't have the latest and greatest. How do you then take what's happened to you, what's been given to you, and use that to make yourself better, but to make better people? Do you become what has hurt you? Do you then go out and take it out on people who have nothing to do with your hurt and trauma? Or do you see somebody that is similar to you, or you see someone who um, or you see someone who is struggling with the things that you struggle with, and instead of tearing them down, you be the thing that picked them up. Instead of saying, I didn't have that, so I'm not gonna help them, you say I'm gonna help them because I didn't have it, and because I have an opportunity to help someone where I didn't get that. Because I know the difference that it would have made had I heard that, or had someone just told me they loved me, or had someone just told me that I don't have to be the same as the next person, but that does not disqualify me, discount me, or make me less than. I want to read one more quote from this article. It says the the more positively people dream about the future, the better they feel at the moment. People relax and their blood pressure goes down, but you need the energy to implement your wishes, and over time they actually get more depressed. Partly because they're putting in less effort and have less success. While optimism can be extremely helpful in situations that are out of a person's control, living during a pandemic, for instance, those who focus solely on a dream outcome in their own lives, such as a new job or finding a soulmate, are perhaps setting themselves up for failure. You were born with skills, abilities, talents, most of which we are given a portion of, and then it takes our work into how good we are at that or how bad we are at that. I used to think that you could only be a seeker if you were born a seeker. It wasn't until I was older that I learned, oh, I could have trained my voice. But how much are the things like we've been given things, right? That we didn't necessarily choose for ourselves. We have these passions and desires that lie within us that we didn't necessarily manifest or put within ourselves, but we follow. We follow the lead for what is happening within us to lead us to what we should do in this life or lead us to how we should live out our purpose in this life. But when those things are out of control and then we only focus, that's what the end of this article is saying. We only are focusing on this dream outcome. It says that we could be setting ourselves up for failure. When she says that you need the energy to implement your wishes, and I think that's just kind of like a nicer way of saying, like, you gotta get up and do something about it. It says because over time they actually get more people get more depressed, partly because they are putting in less effort and have less success. What is she referring to as less effort? Manifesting. What is what I would also say is less effort is sitting around crying and whining about how everyone needs to be equal, or how this person has this many skills and abilities and you don't, and how they did the no, no, no. Take what you have, take what you've been giving, make it what you want, but you have to work hard in order to do it. We say it every episode. Hard work, your hard work will pay off. Embrace the fact that you are not the same, embrace the fact that you are unique and you've been given a portion and a community and people and dreams and passions. Listen, last thing I'ma say to y'all, then I'm gonna I'm gonna get out of your way. When we're looking within, we find jewels. Some of us have a nagging feeling where we keep thinking about something that we want to do. We have a nagging feeling about something that we wanna start dedicating our times towards, time towards, or a hobby, or a big dream, or a goal, whatever it is. There's the nagging feeling in us that I should be doing X, Y, and Z. Sometimes we ignore that. Sometimes we're trying to figure out what it is. A lot of times we start looking outside of ourselves for what we should be doing. I don't want to challenge you to look within yourself for what you should be doing. I used to run from being a giver and loving people and wanting to bring people together. But that is such a gift. And I have other uh the fact that I want to help people, that's been a real big struggle for me. Because while I want to help people, I also have to deal with the reality that people are broken and that betrayal can happen, hurt can happen, frustration can happen, right? And so I either say I'm gonna lean fully into this, help people no matter what it looks like, or I also have the opportunity to make a choice and say, huh, I think I want to use my gifts, my talents to help people, yes, but to help the people that um need my help the most in this moment, and that's my children, and that is a real decision that I have made as of late. I said, I've been trying to give so much to everyone else that I'm missing the fact that I have three young boys and another boy on the way that I am responsible for alongside my husband. But me and my husband are not the same. The way that he parents, the things that he has to offer our boys is vastly different than what I have. And if I'm constantly looking outward, trying to help everyone else be better and improve their quality of living and renovate their soul, but I'm not instilling that into my own children, and if I'm constantly comparing my life to the next person or feeling like, when am I gonna make it? When am I gonna be on the big stage? When am I gonna get my big break? And I'm not actually cultivating the relationships around me and building the relationships with my children and pouring into these little human beings that God has entrusted me with, I will miss an opportunity. I will look up 10 years later and go, Oh my gosh, I missed out on what is supposed to be my portion. That doesn't make me less than a person, it doesn't disqualify me, it doesn't make my talents meaningless, that I could use them for my children, for my husband to bet to have a great successful marriage. That's a huge goal. But if I'm not actually focusing on bettering the marriage, right? If I'm still walking around bitter and angry and I'll just have a moment of transparency with y'all, a lot of I told my husband the other day, a lot of my bitterness comes from the fact that I'm comparing even his successes with mine, that I'm comparing where he's at, even though I'm done with my degrees. My kids didn't get to see me go through college, and so I struggle with well, they get to see him go through school and he's doing all these great things and he's getting all these opportunities, and I'm just kind of working my nine to five. I'm not really, you know, trying to climb up a ladder there, and then I just have these kids. But I had to change my mindset the other day, and I had to look and look at myself and say, What you have is beautiful. What I have is what I've always wanted. I've always wanted a family, I've always wanted to work from home. What I have, I've always wanted, and yet here I am disqualifying what I have. Uh that's the word, watering down. I can't think of the word that I'm looking for, but I am, I am just um, I cannot think of the word I'm looking for, but I am I am just making it seem so small compared to the things that I want to accomplish, or or the idea of who I think I'm supposed to be, which a lot of that comes from watching people do the same things that I've done or seeing so many of my friends have these fun, successful careers where they're out, you know, doing all these cool things, and I'm just like, yeah, I work for the government and I have three kids and I'm married. But it's like, no, change that up. Yes, I work for the government. Uh I've I've wanted to be an FBI agent for a long time. I work for the government. Crazy how I got that job. I work from home, an opportunity that I've always wanted. I homeschool my son and I get to see his growth. I have three beautiful boys who I can instill um worth and value in as boys growing up in this world, right? I I can make sure that my boys don't get overlooked or sucked into some of these ideologies that when my son comes to me and he asks me questions, I can answer them because I'm doing the work here thinking that I'm doing the work for just this podcast and for a bunch of people that I probably will never meet, but I'm really doing the work to first help my home, my children, the people like my family, right? Like the people that I love the most. So I'm just saying that to say you have something. You have something to give, you have something to do. It doesn't matter if that's being a world changer or being a home changer. You have something. And you are not the same. We are not the same. But that is a good thing. That is okay. Do not let these ideologies ruin what you have. Do not let this comparison, equality, manifestation, all these new ideas that are trying to take the easy road. Think about it. They're trying to get us to take the shortcut. And a lot of times we gotta ease on down the yellow brick road in order to get to Oz. But seriously, we gotta work. We gotta skip. We gotta crawl. We gotta cry. We we we we we we gotta we we gotta do the work. We gotta make calls. We have to network. We have to put ourselves out there. We have to be friends with people that we may not really be fond of. We have to um confront our traumas. We have to start healing. We all of it goes back to looking within and and healing ourselves and making sure that we understand who we are and we love that person and we're confident in that person, and we're confident in the things that I've been given, and we're confident in uh in who in what we have, and that we don't spend our time in a cycle of frustration because we're spending, we're making less effort, but and also having less success. And so we started this episode off by just talking about how we each have our own portions, our own gifts, our own community, and that instead of looking at so it's not just about not looking at someone else's process, but even instead of just looking at their talents, their opportunities, their like you're the blueprint. You create your own blueprint if you need to. And again, it's okay to be inspired by people, it's okay to look at someone else and want to have what they have, but don't let that come. Don't let that become your entire goal in life, don't let that become your entire trajectory in life that you would just go after what someone else has. We are not the same, and that is okay. I hope you all enjoyed this episode. I, as always, would love to hear your thoughts. Would love to hear if you agree or you disagree, um, or just your thoughts surrounding equality, manifestation, um, comparison, all of these things that have kind of plagued us how you've seen them play a role in society or how they played a role in your own life. I was gonna share this story about the parable of the talents that comes from the Bible. Um, but I I would encourage you just go read it. It's essentially hinting at the fact that you're given a portion and what you do with that portion matters. If you are given something, you should use what you are given to make it better. You should use what you are given to double it, don't bury it, don't hide it, thinking that if you hide it, um it then nothing will happen to it. I could just give back what I've been given. No, I think that in in my belief system, right, that God does want us to use what we've been given as we've been given it. Doesn't mean that that's the beautiful part about life and growth, is that how I started at age one is not how I have to be at age 33. But it also doesn't just happen overnight, and it also doesn't just happen from me thinking positive thoughts, and it doesn't happen from making everybody equal to me either. I think there's so much beauty in us being different, so much beauty in us having similarities and commonalities, but being our own unique individuals. I would hate for people to walk away and feel like, oh man, I can't do that because uh or I'm not unique and I'm not special, just as that young lady felt. I don't want people to feel like that. You should feel unique and special and valued and worthy because of who you are and who you were born to be. So I am done. I am done. No, I am I am done for real. Thank you all so much for listening to this episode. Again, please let me know your thoughts, questions. I just would love to hear what you think about this episode. And until next time, let's keep doing the work to renovate the soul.