Your environment shapes you more than willpower does. The speaker recalls Tatida, an elderly woman in Port-au-Prince who, when he confessed feeling hopeless, held his hand and gave him a vision of a better future that rewrote his self-story on the spot.
Your environment is more powerful than your willpower. That's why we have to sanitize. There are some people that we don't need in our environment. If we have a choice, we have to stay away from them because they kept reminding me. Now, I had a story in my head and they kept reinforcing the story for me, making me believe that I would never be anything in life. Until, John, there was this old lady by the name of Tatida in Port-au-Prince. She was just as poor as we were, but somehow she had a vision. She could see in the future. And one day I was really starving and I went to her. I was crying to Tatida, was her name, and said, life is not fair and my mom has nothing to cook and I'll never be anything. I was just in my pity party like we Most people do, right? And I remember she held my hand and she predicted my future and she changed the story for me instantly. Because when you have a new future, when you have a vision of something you are looking forward to, right, you have a new story.
