How To STOP Seeking Validation & START Defining Your Life By What Matters w/Van Lathan EP 1260
29 Apr 2022 · 77 min
Van Lathan talks about his relationship with his late father, his insecurities, and learning to stop chasing validation. He shares how grief and self-doubt shaped him, and what it took to find creative freedom and accept himself.
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Disagreements are incredibly valuable, but when you have resentment in your heart, disagreements are not disagreements, it's a declaration of war. You don't win, I don't win, we win. But we have to be accepting of one another. And when I say accepting, I mean.
Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. I wanted to start by asking this question. We just got to chat and catch up for the last hour almost, which has been fun. You've had an amazing last few years. I mean, some beautiful things have happened, some also tragedies and challenges have happened. And I'm gonna start by asking you this. On a scale of 1 to 10, of self-love, peace and freedom. 10 being you have incredible self-love for yourself, 100% freedom and peace internally, externally. One being you feel trapped in a prisoner of everything in the world, and you have no self-love. Where would you be on a scale from 1 to 10 right now?
I could choose any number, right?
Any number from 1 to 10, where do you feel right now?
7.
Seven.
Yeah, seven.
What's missing for you to be an 8, 9, or 10?
Three different answers to that, right? One is, I have never in my life felt comfortable with my body. Doesn't matter. I can show you a picture right now of me standing up, shoulders popping out, biceps bulged, jacked, ready to go, shredded, right? And I'm taking the picture in a dressing room of a Zara. And the reason why I'm taking the picture is because I'm sending it to Kalika to ask her if I look fat in what I'm wearing. Wow. So growing up and like always having issues with my weight, I've never ever, ever just felt comfortable. It doesn't matter. And I've been in such great shape, man. I've been in shape. There was a point where I was doing 400 pushups a day while I was going to the gym playing basketball, boxing. I still am very, very active. I box every morning. I've never been a shirt off at the beach guy. I've never been just, Hey, we're hanging around. So that's something, learning how to like be completely free and at peace with who I am, you know what I mean? It's still something that I'm working towards even at 42. Also, I personally feel like there's gonna be a point in my life where I'm in control of my talent, meaning that I dictate sort of, the rhythms and steps that need to happen in my career because that's what I want to do. A lot of people say, oh, he's just talking about not having a job. And I'm not talking about not having a job. I'm talking about to where there's a group of people in my orbit that make sure I have all the little delicacies I need just to sit back and create. You know what I mean? I'm talking about, like, you know, your dates are ready. You know, like your cashews, are nicely worn. And I get up and I write all day and I'm producing and inspiring people. And not that I don't have any problems or responsibilities, just that I've cleared out all the cobwebs in my life to where I can be purely focused on creation and problem solving and solution building. And I'm not there yet. I'm getting close to that.
What would you need in order for that to happen? Is it an amount of money in the bank? Is it an amount of accomplishments? Is it letting go of certain things? Projects concluding at certain points.
It's understanding what that really, what it takes to build that. Which right now, I understand that I'm closer to it than I was before, but I have to be a little bit more intentional about it now. Now I need to understand where I need to be living, like what people I need to surround myself with, what I need to let go of. Letting go is incredibly difficult. because if right now I make my money with my mouth, talk, talk, talk all day long, talk, talk, talk all day long. Sometimes that's less than fulfilling. Like you say so many words, you end up sometimes filling the air with regret sometimes and with things that you didn't mean to say or with things that came out wrong. So for me, I think the intentionality that I want for my life is going to have to come with a certain amount of financial freedom because that gives me the space to like really sit in my thoughts.
Interesting. What's the number one thing you feel like you need to let go of?
Doubt.
What do you doubt the most?
If you're asking me seriously, what I doubt is that I belong here.
Belong where?
Where I'm at. I don't see anything special about myself, if I'm being real. It feels like this, So, what happened to me was working at TMZ, Kanye West comes into the room, me and Kanye have this moment, right?
And then all of a sudden, you- Things change. Take off.
Boom, right?
This was what, four years ago?
Four years ago, right?
And you were at TMZ for how long at that point?
Seven years.
Seven years, senior producer, producing shows.
Producer, producing shows.
So you were on TMZ as talent, I guess, every day?
Every day, three times a day.
But it was like 30 people at the same time. It was like the newsroom.
Right, well there were a couple of different shows. So there was TMZ on television where it's everybody on there. Then there was TMZ Live where it's Harvey and Charles. I was sometimes host that show, but then there was TMZ Sports where it was me and Evan and we would co-host the show. I think when you visited, we were doing TMZ Sports, you got a chance to meet Evan and Harvey and everyone. And so I'm doing all of these things and really in that little ecosystem, I'm the man, right? And I'm feeling good about that. You know what I think about? I think about what happens if Kanye never walks into the room.
Where would you be?
Yeah. What then? So he comes into the room. We have this moment. Everyone then sort of goes, Hey, this guy's talented this. And I get a chance to display all of these things to different people. I mean, great. After seven years of doing basically the same thing every day and putting on every day and proving myself there, one moment changes it. And I think to myself, if that never happens, then what happens to me?
Interesting.
And it's a weird way to look at life because it did happen, right? And a moment came and I met the moment.
And you stood up and you said something. You shared an opinion.
Yeah, and that's in my character to do, but it didn't have to happen, right? And when something, when a career comes from something that's not where my career came from. I was prepared for that moment. But when you look at all of these steps that happened along the way, all of these things that happened, sometimes I put it together and the more you give it to luck, the more you say, hey, there are some fortunate things that happen. Because I look at people all the time and I go, these people are brilliant. These people are absolutely one of a kind.
Talented, unique, talented, unique.
It's sometimes hard to think of yourself as somebody whose opinion matters or people want to hear from, or people need a book from. And when you're writing something sometimes or when you're going through something sometimes, no matter what comes from it, you think, huh, huh. What if? What is really inside of me that makes me think that I should be telling people anything? And I think that's something, and I think sometimes being where I'm from, coming from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, growing up in the neighborhood that I grew up in, I think imposter syndrome is sometimes something that a lot of people have to have to have to kind of get through. Because the most talented people I've known growing up, a lot of them did make it out of Baton Rouge.
They did not make it. And they were, quote unquote, more talented than you.
I've known beautiful, amazing, super smart, whip smart, the funniest people. I've known the most talented athletes all get caught up. Like people that just walk into a room and everybody goes, oh my God, she's here. Oh my God, he's here. Makes everybody feel better. And just like a Tiffany or a Kevin or any of these people times 10, and it just, you end up reading about them, you know what I mean?
Right, right.
And sometimes when that happens, you think of all the people, like, I'm in LA doing my thing, and I haven't made it to where I wanna be yet. I still got a lot of more work to do. But sometimes I think I have to be comfortable that I'm maximizing the gifts that God gave me, and that wherever I go is that I gave it my best shot. Meaning, I don't want anything more than what my talent guarantees me. So, I don't want to get anything just 'cause I was in the right place at the right time. Like, I don't want to get anything just because I know the right person, even though that's a very popular refrain in Los Angeles. I want to get the maximum amount that my talent allows me to have. And I don't want to get one scintilla less, but I don't want to.
Get one scintilla more 'cause I feel weird about it. Do you feel like that limits you.
From what's potentially could come your way? Sometimes. Yeah. Like, sometimes, like when we first hooked, like, When we first hooked up, I was thinking like, what's this guy's game? 'Cause I really was. I was thinking because we started talking and then you came out to the office way out to Playa Vista. You walk in there and you're looking around and everybody's like, I remember people was like, what's that? I'm like, yeah, yeah, come meet him. And it was like a whole deal. I was like, why would somebody be like sort of that open? and that interested. And even you gave me, those were the first time we met, this book, you gave me advice on it. That's four years ago. So, I don't know, man. It was just kind of a, it's just kind of sometimes a thing to where, like, even on this show, I'm hosting a television show right now, and I'll ask people how I'm doing, and they'll be like, Jesus, like, you're doing really well. And I'm like, really? Because I don't feel like I'm nailing it.
You-'Re asking other people, how do you think I'm doing?
Yeah.
Why do you feel like you have the need to ask people, hey, how do you think I'm showing up or doing?
'Cause I think- you- want the validation.
Or you wanna feel like you're in the right place?
Well, and we'll talk about this later. So, I recently lost my father and I don't mean to come off like I am not confident in who I am. I'm very confident in who I am. I'm more confident in things that are like, if we get to play in sports, if we boxing in the ring, I know when I hit you.
Dude, you should come to a boxing with me. I do it twice a week. Where are you boxing? I just got a private trainer that I do one-on-one with. Oh, for real? Yeah. We do no sparring in the head though.
It's just body sparring and fun. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just come out. I will definitely will. It'll be fun. Yeah, let's see what's up. So I know when I hit somebody, when I'm playing ball, I know when I score it. I can feel it, it's there, it's nothing you can say. Like I just scored on you. I run back down and see what you can do. Let's go, you know what I mean? I know it. All this other thing is up for interpretation. We made a movie, it won an Oscar. Some people hated it. Who's right? You know what I mean? And you can live your life in that. You can live your life in that thing of, I just did this thing. Am I going to be defined by who loves it or am I going to be defined by who hated it or I'm going to be defined by the thing itself. And sometimes it's hard to readjust that. and for me, a lot of that comes from, you know, the fact that my father, who passed away this past July, was this indomitable Superman.
Really?
Lewis, he was amazing. Wow. He was like a tell you a little quick story. So, like, my dad's from Meridian, Louisiana. Population, 1800, something like that. Across the river. Baton Rouge is here. You go west across the Mississippi River, about 30 minutes. you're in Meridian, very, very small town. Very small town. Mostly black, mostly farmers, sugarcane, whatever you want. Hunting, fishing, all of that. My dad was a man's man, horseback rider. He could, there's literally a story of an uncle at one of our family get-togethers drinking too much. He's got a Hennessy bottle in his hand. Everybody was laughing at him, like put the Hennessy down. And all of a sudden, the bottle yanks out of his hand and you see on the other side of a guy pulling the bottle, my father had thrown the lariat. Wow. And he lassoed it. A lasso, like lassoed it out of his hand, you know? It's easier than you think it is. Right. Especially if you're not drunk. But yeah, so he was that kind of man. One day we were all inside the crib, there's a big old wasp in the house, right? Big old wasp, big country wasp, big Louisiana wasp. And me and my boys are like, we're in there, we're like, oh man, look at that. I watched, don't let it get you.
Don'T let it get you.
My dad walks in and he goes, dang. Y'all right?
Jeez.
And then later on, I look at his hand and there's a big welt. It's not like it didn't sting. Just sometimes you got to kill the wasps. Wow. You know what I mean? And my whole life, I spent it trying to make him look at me the way I looked at him. I tried to overachieve sometimes. you know what I mean? I tried to defy him because nobody could tell him what to do. And I would figure the only person that he would respect is somebody who he couldn't tell what to do.
Right.
You know what I mean? So. But more than anything, I tried to hold myself to the mythical standard that I held him to, which is had to be the best, had to be this. And then at one point in my life, I felt like I realized that it was impossible. So I stopped holding myself to any standard. That's when after college, my weight ballooned up to 370 pounds. That's when I was just hanging out. That's when I almost used the inability of myself to achieve or the fact that or my slovenness or whatever you want to say or whatever my shiftlessness, my lack of direction to antagonize him, to make him see me as what he actually wasn't. I think part of that is now that he's gone or even before he was gone, I'm still searching for that validation, but from other places.
So you were searching for validation from him?
Yes.
And now that he's gone, do you ever feel like you got validation from him?
No. He didn't know. He didn't know how to do that.
It didn't matter what you did. You won an Oscar, he's not gonna validate you.
Won the Oscar, he get a call? My dad's a great guy. He was a great guy. Just his way, you know what I mean? Yeah. When I Oscar get a call. Boy? Yes, sir. Boy, I'm 41. Or I think 40 at that point. Boy? Yes, sir. What people keep telling me about some award that you won? I was like, oh yeah, so my company, we won an Academy Award, that's the highest honor in cinema, in film. So what you did for it? We made a movie and we won. He's like, oh okay, it's like a short film 30 minutes long. He's like, well why people keep calling me about it? Well they're probably calling you 'Cause it's a pretty amazing thing.
It's a big deal.
You know what I mean? And they want to know what you think about it. He was oblivious to it. Wow. You see if I had killed a ten-point buck and Phil dressed him, which I've done before, and then brought him back strapped or ground him up into some sausage, that's something he would have appreciated more. You know what I mean? It was impossible for him to validate anyone because nothing meant anything to him. There was like three things that would matter. If I had been drafted first in the NFL, that might have worked for a little while because if I had a bad game, I'd be on you. Right, right. So there was, he didn't, he's not the type of man that believed in validation because to validate was to be complacent. And so what he wanted you to do was to continue to strive to him. Pressure made diamonds. And like, he tell me all the time, he'd be like, I need you to be more concerned and more afraid of me than you are of what's going on in the streets, because I can't have you listening to them. Wow. So they asked you to do something, you got to be able to be. I know you'll be scared. You got to be able to say no to them. because you're afraid of me.
True.
So our relationship was based on, if you ask me, him trying to keep me alive and him pushing me to be something that it became apparent after a while that I wasn't, you know? They showed me Star Wars and then a year later he's like, you,'re too obsessed with Star Wars. It's like it's just a movie. You don't need 10 books and t-shirts and all of that stuff. You're too obsessed with it, son. You gotta learn what's real and what's not. And I was like, Nope. Going to Tattoo-E. You know what I mean? Like, I was just, that's kind of who I was. And so I think for me now, the unanswered question of who I am has a lot to do with the fact that I never really got a chance to define it with the one person whose opinion mattered to me. you know, and he never considered things in that way. It was action, reaction, responsibility, action, reaction, responsibility. This is my family. This is my son. I'm gonna make him a man that everyone, I'm gonna make him a man that everybody fears and respects, right? Because I'm a man that everybody fears and respects. And if he's not a man that everybody fears and respects, that he's not the type of man that I am. And nobody's afraid of me. And I don't want them to be. Right. People like you.
People love you.
You're right, you're right, you're right.
Why do you think it's, in general, for a lot of people, the need to be validated by parents or people in general? Why do you think there's a need to be validated in order to feel like we belong or fit in or we're good enough?
Because a lot of times I think, so society is full of these little treaties. Right? Like these little bitty treaties. Like right now, me and you are in an agreement. The agreement is that you'll sit on your side of the table and I'll sit on my side of the table. We did that just like instinctively. Because we need this conversation to go in a certain way. You need to ask questions, I need to answer questions, and we need to do... If I come right now out of no reason and just sit on your lap or try to get up and move you out of your seat, and make you sit in my seat and don't give any explanation why, you're going to be like, Society is full of all these little things that we do because we're supposed to do them to make things go along at a pace that works, right? And I think the only people sometimes that we don't make those treaties with or we make them too late with are our parents. Our parents don't, or at least in my culture, where I'm from, where I'm from, I made no agreements with my parents. All I got was directives. And because I got those directives from them, I learned to look at them as more of symbols for things than actual people, right. So, it was hard for my dad to validate me because I don't know enough about him. I don't know what even his, I don't even know what validation would mean coming from him. I don't know how he does that. Like, even when he died, I thought about myself. It's like I would say, people would ask me, what happened? I would say, my father died. I would never say Van Lathan Sr. died. I would center him in the way that I know him, which is as my dad, which makes sense to do. That's the definition of who he is. But if I looked at his life in its totality, I might understand what's going on. So, looking for validation from something that you truly don't understand is a losing game. And I often wonder how much we understand our parents how much we understand what their goals and dreams and aspirations for us are. Because they normally don't have to do with who we are. They normally have to do with what they think success and what they think being a well-adjusted member of society is. So when I meet you in a lot of ways, I give you more grace than I gave my dad. I give you more grace than I gave my mom. In many ways, you give me more grace than they gave me.
Right.
Right? Because the reality is it's like, okay, we have to make this work. being that we have to make this situation right here work, you're gonna do what you need to do and I need to do what I need to do. Now, we think in our society that we don't do that that much, but we do it all the time. We get on a bus, everybody sits in the seat that they're supposed to do. Right. Like you go to the bank, you speak to the woman in a certain way. She speaks back or he speaks back. And all of these things that we do, we do them so that we just make it to make it to the next thing. When your mom calls, that's different.
Yeah.
Right, when your mom calls, okay, make complete space for mom right now. Mom has a million things that she wants to talk about. I can't tell my mom sometimes, yo, it's draining to hear about everybody who passed away. I can't be like, you know, I didn't die. I'm like, I can't handle anymore. I can't tell her, that's my mother. And so our relationship isn't based upon any, real give and take it's based upon me understanding what she needs from me. And I think that's kind of the situation sometimes with not just our parents but with other people in our lives. Like, when you have a relationship that's based upon making sure that someone knows, making sure you know what someone needs you to be or needs you to do, it's hard to sometimes be yourself or understand what they have to say.
What do you feel like validation would have looked like for you from him.
Everything that my dad was interested in, I became interested in it. Louis, I can shoot, I can hunt, I can ride, you know what I mean? I can pour concrete, I can do all of that. He never took the time, like, to--.
To ask questions or be curious or--.
It was just always something else I could be doing.
Mm-.
Like it was just always something else I could be doing. Always something else I could be doing. Always like a incredibly strong man, a protector, a responsible, loving father in his way. But I would have wanted just, hey, who is that character right there? Oh, that's Magneto. What can you do?
Tell me more about your interests.
Yeah. Yeah.
Do you feel like you got to have Any healing conversations with him before he passed or?
One. Really? Yeah.
What happened?
So, I hunted all the way up, I hunted pretty hard all the way up about, till about, I'd say 17. After 17, I love to eat it all. Whatever you put in front of me, if it's rabbit, if it's deer, hey look, there's something called deer sauce piquante. You take the backstrap of the deer, the meat along the deer spine, Make a gravy, put it over some rice. Oh my God, venison is the best thing you can possibly eat. I love it. All of that stuff. Like, you know, some of my relatives in Louisiana get a little crazy with it. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Some of them like to eat some wild cat. Oh, no, no. Some of them like to eat a little coon. But if we're talking rabbit, if we're talking deer, Louis, even some squirrel. I'm not bad off some squirrel. Ain't mad at it. Yeah, I'm not mad at some squirrel. Y'all never had squirrel before. Squirrel is bomb. But one day we're rabbit hunting. Rabbit hunting is fun because when you see these things and they get like parallel to the, it's like he's gone, he's gone and you barely have time to think about it. It's like boom. And then that's that, right? It's not the way this rabbit came out. He came out, boom, boom. And he stopped. And the rabbit stopped and I did.
I went right in front of you, just waited.
From literally, I'd say no more. I had a 20 gauge. So the range is not crazy. I'd say no more, maybe 10 feet. He's dead.
Gone.
He's dead. We are eating tonight. He is dead. The rabbit stops. I'm like. And I looked at the rabbit and I'm like, a living thing. Right, right.
Looking up at you.
Yeah, like living thing. and I guess he went, all right, well, I'm not gonna do anything. I gotta get back to what I was doing. Hopped in the thicket, moving very slowly and deliberately, and goes back into the, into the other side, right? It's clear. Father comes out, dogs come out, dogs run through, dogs sniff where the rabbit was. The dogs are always gonna tell on you, always. The dogs are snitches. They're gonna tell on you. They're gonna sniff right where the rabbit went. These are six beagles. This is what they're made for. They're gonna sniff right where the rabbit went. Then they're gonna hop into the other side of the the ticket, right? So they do that. My dad comes out, he goes, he's like, you didn't see the rabbit? I was like, no. I was like, maybe my back was turned. He's like, why would your back be turned? I told you where this rabbit was gonna come out. If I told you to look this way, he was gonna pop out right there. Why would you be looking the other way? And I was like, I don't know. Maybe I heard, maybe I turned around. He's like, well, did you turn around? I said, I turned around at some point. and he was like, so you didn't see that rabbit? I'm like, no. He goes, huh? Dogs go back in, you move up, right? Didn't kill anything that day. I never told him that. Wow. I never told him that. I never told him. I never told him that I actually saw the rabbit.
So you held the lie until.
For one day, a father passes. July 4th, 2021. This must have been March 2021. 2021. This must have been March. Shout out to Coley Williams, my therapist. This must have been March. He calls me up randomly, going on and on and on about something, nothing to do with anything. And I go, you know, I didn't shoot that rabbit.
You just said that randomly.
I promise you. He goes, what?
This is 20 years, 23 years, 24 years later.
Longer maybe. I'm like, you know, I didn't shoot that rabbit.
He goes, no context.
No content. No context. He goes, what? I'm like, and I'll retell him the story. He goes, yeah, I remember that. He's like, you wouldn't come hunting after that. And I was like, yeah, yeah. It's like, I saw the rabbit that day. and I didn't show him. I didn't shoot him. He goes, I know. He's like, what do you think? And he starts laughing. He's like, I know you saw him. I know you saw him. I know he came right there. He's like, you, think the dog's gonna lie? We had this hund dog. His name was Boy. He was the best hund dog ever. He was an animal. He was obviously an animal. He's a dog. But he was like a just the most relentless hunter you have ever seen. Like, he lived for it. Beautiful, beautiful beagle. Athletic, just loved to hunt. He's like, Boy, stop and sniff that patch right there for literally a minute, and then got on in the thicket. I know you've seen him. You had to have seen him. And he was like, why'd you lie? I was like, He froze me. I couldn't shoot. And my father goes, you, think that's never happened to me before?
Hmm.
He goes, the most beautiful deer I've ever seen in my life, I couldn't kill him. Wow. He told me this whole story about how he was out past Big Pappas and he was coming back from a hunt. He had gotten off of his stand and he was coming back from a hunt. He's coming back from a hunt, he's making his way to his three-wheeler and in a field open, he just sees a buck and the buck turns and looks and my dad goes, his neck and everything. And right there, I had him, but it seemed like I shouldn't shoot him because I was out of my stand and I'm looking at him wide open in the field. It looked like a deer picture, like a painting he said, and I didn't do it. I was, so this is the thing sometimes. I was too ashamed to tell him that I couldn't do that because I thought he was a killer and I thought I was a coward. Wow. So after holding all of that, and my therapist had said, maybe you should talk to him about that. After holding all of that, I ended up telling him that made me think, have I underestimated him? Like this idea of him, have I conjured this? Like what about this is real? And what about this is me doing the same thing that I've always done, which is make up powerful characters. Sometimes for writing, other times in in my real life. And we laughed about it. He said, number one, it's definitely happened to me. Wow. And then he goes, number two, he's like, I'm your father. I know when you lying. I know everything. Yeah.
He's like, I know when you, I'm.
Like, I know when you lying, I'm your daddy. Yeah. Wow.
He was like, yeah, that's something else.
And then the conversation changed. He's like, they ain't even got them woods no more. Like building up everything. And then, so he went off on a tangent, like taking away all of our woods, we can't hunt no more. But as stupid as that sounds, that felt good, man.
That was a healing moment.
Yeah, that felt good. We didn't get many of them, 'cause most conversations seemed like they had to be on his terms. But that felt good. That felt good. And at the same time, it was a little sad, because I wonder if I would've started missing hunts because of that moment, I did know at that particular time that as much as I loved to do that as a kid, that just wasn't a lifestyle for me. That wasn't like, I wasn't that into that. To his dying day, deer antlers to rattle with, camouflage stuff, bowie knives, different scopes, three or four different caliber rifles. He had his bow. That was his thing.
He loved it.
Loved it. A bloodthirsty Louisiana, you know what I mean? And that just wasn't me. It was cool, but we was doing that on Saturday, bro, and it was college football on.
Yeah, you were right.
You know what I mean? We was doing that on Sunday and the Saints would be on. I know. You know what I mean? So like, for me, it wasn't that type of deal. And I think, in a way, I felt ashamed about that. And I felt like that would other me to him.
Interesting. Do you feel like you got to share everything with him you wanted to or heal everything else or?
Not really. I mean, aspects of him and my mother's relationship just were off limits to talk about.
Really, with him?
Yeah.
Were they married until his passing?
They divorced in, I think, around 2003. Yeah. So aspects of him and my mother's relationship, things that might help me, you know, that were off limits to discuss.
Really?
There were some revelations about other stuff that came out after he died.
Right, right.
And so obviously, you know, there were things like that that he would never discuss with me. We would never discuss any other family members I might have or anything like that until after he was gone. So it felt also kind of interesting that some of those secrets he took to his grave. Wow. rather than let me in on them. But all of this stuff, to be honest with you, it's cathartic talking about it just because there's nothing that can change the love that I have for this man. This man was like the other kids' dads looked up to him.
Yeah.
Oh, interesting. Just imagine you're there. Imagine you're there with your friend's father. and your friend are dropping you off from basketball practice. They're dropping you off from basketball practice and all of a sudden your dad walks by with a deer on his back. That's pretty epic.
You know what I mean?
Hey, hey, how y'all doing? Yeah, okay, cool. Boy, come back here. We about to get him right. Okay, I'll be there in a second. Skin him, yeah. Skin him, like the whole night. And then mom's gonna take him apart and cook him. Jesus. And then like you, then your father, then your friend's father stands there and watches you and your dad prepare the deer in awe. And that was who he was like that. And so, but there were just other parts of it that you feel like you didn't really have access to.
Yeah, I hear you. Some unavailable emotional parts. You talk about in your book, fat, crazy and tired, Tales from the trenches of transformation about kind of anxiety, shame and insecurities, things like that. What do you think was the root of the insecurities and shame and guilt that you had that might have been part of the cause that led to the overeating, the obesity, all these different things that you piled on?
Yeah. Food is a very devious ally. Food is... Can save your life or.
Can kill your life.
Food is a cagey ally. Food never tells you no, but what you don't realize until you get older and then is in your life, you have to be told no. And you have to tell yourself no. Like right now, if I want to leave here and go to Jack in the Box, Jack in the Box is ready to have me. That's my open arms.
Tasty.
Tasty, right? So sometimes in spots in your life where you don't feel accepted by anyone else, you know that there's one thing there that'll always make you feel good. Food.
Food.
I would go to Bennigan's, right? You know Bennigan's at all?
You ever heard of it? Just the Southern restaurant.
Irish pub. Irish pub. It's like Irish type of restaurant. No one remembers Bennigan's now. I hope Mr. Bennigan and his family are doing okay. So it was like an Irish type of pub, right? So I worked at Best Buy store 495 Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Shout out to Best Buy store 495. my formative college years. So after I would leave the Best Buy, I would always go to Bennington's, always. And I would get Bennington's had these gigantic chicken tenders. You know how you get chicken tenders sometimes? It's like eight tenders. But you know how sometimes you go to a restaurant and it's like four because they're huge, massive. So I would get the chicken tenders, big chicken tenders, and I would get Loaded mashed potatoes and fries. Ooh. Going nuts.
Sounds good, man.
It's a lot of fun. And I had this trick that I would do. I would also want a dessert. But I didn't wanna make the people at the banquet feel like I was piling on too much. So this is what I would do. I would call, make a fake call, pick up the phone and be like, Yo, Louis, hey, what's up, man? Yeah, I'm just at Bennigan's. You want something?
-Uh huh.
Oh, you said you want the double chocolate fudge brownie a la mode. Okay, cool. Y'all got the double chocolate fudge brownie. Okay. Yeah. All right, you, what else you want? Anything else? Shake? Oh, okay, cool. All right, dope. Bet. Cool. Can you add a chocolate fudge brownie and anything there?
I would get that.
I would get that whole thing home and... Wow. There was a moment right before 'Cause the more you eat it, the more you eat of it, the worse you feel.
Right, right.
So there's like a moment right before where you're looking at all of this and you go, man, this is about to be good. And then you take a couple of bites and you're like, oh. And then you get to the point, there's a point in a meal that.
Big where you go, I'm sick.
I'm sick. Or then you go, should I finish this? I should probably not finish this. But you can't stop like you have to finish it, right? so I would do this all the time. One time I'm leaving the Best Buy and I look over at the parking lot and there's only one car in the biggest parking lot. It's obvious that Bennigan's is close. Obvious. I was working a holiday shift and it was so hectic inside of Best Buy that I have forgotten. Maybe they can open up that. Maybe they can make a shake for me, maybe some fries. Maybe it's a grill. Maybe somebody in there that can still cut the grill on and I can get some.
You throw some fries and chicken tenders.
We can do something. So I literally go, I drive over there in my car, one parking lot in the thing, and I'm literally looking through, like, Hey, is anyone in there? I never forget this. Never. I go back, I get in the car, and I cry. Oh. Like, I was in a relationship with food. I didn't have a relationship with food. I was in a relationship with food. This was a time when I felt my utmost undesirable.
How big were you then?
Probably around 370 pounds.
Dang, how old were you?
I'd say 24.
Dang.
So, I felt at my undesirable, I was just out of college. I didn't know what I was doing. I was literally at the crib. My mom had moved out of the house. The minute my mom moved out of the house, the house started falling apart. Because having, I don't mean to be, I know people get mad at me about being heteronormative or anything like that. I'm just telling you how I grew up. There are things in that home that only she could see. That only a lady who was taking care of her home could see. When my mother left that home, There were two men in there, two men in there who didn't need to see when certain things needed to be fixed or taken care of. Two men in there who didn't see when something was kind of going wrong, when the washing machine was making a certain noise. When somebody need to go out there and power wash, even if these weren't things that she was doing, these were things that where she would look at it and just the spirit and the beauty of a home, waking up, going to work, going to sleep, like running ladies, running ladies throughout there, just like, just, it was falling apart without her, right? It literally was. And so, like, all of that stuff in my life was just coming to a head. I'd be in there, the days I didn't work, I would stay in there and play Madden all day long with my cousin, drink Minute Maid, whatever, the whole nine. Like, that's all we're doing and go back and forth to work. It's just nothing else going on in my life. I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know who I wanted be. I didn't know exactly where I was going to go. And food was always there for me. Food was always there for me, always there for me. And when I wasn't, I felt rejected by it, even though it was just that the store was closed.
Right.
Ooh, wow. Actually, in that moment, like something weird about me is I remember all of these seminal moments in my life that kind of, in that moment, because I always laugh at this stuff, I go, Bro, you got a problem, bro.
Wow.
Like, I'm looking, I'm like, I'm laughing. I'm like, yo, this is nuts. I still went right to McDonald's and got a Band-Aid from Power Mill. But yeah, so it just became a relationship that wasn't based on nutrition, it wasn't based on health, it was just me soothing myself.
Yes. When was the moment where you realized this has gotta stop or I need to figure out how to self-soothed in a healthier manner, whether that's addressing the problem and learning how to heal the wounds, whether that's just, or did you not do that? You just masked it and said, I gotta go cold turkey and try to, you know, muscle my way to eat less and be fit. What was the thing that got you to start shifting? So a lot of people are going to watch this and they're going to.
Say, hey, this guy's still fat. Now let me talk to these people. Okay. I gained some weight after the pandemic. I've been. I've lost this weight for years and years. years. Now I'll go back to what I'm saying. I'll be right back shortly, guys. My body will be back. Don't worry about it. I'm not nearly as big as I was. I'm literally a hundred pounds less than I was in my heaviest. But so I moved out to Los Angeles and how old? 27.
Okay. So 370 still.
350.
Okay.
350.
Cut back on the I I was.
I worked out a little bit I had actually lost like 30 pounds but then I gained some back like when you first come to LA you know so I was around 350. and I ordered some pants from the Gap because I couldn't buy pants in the Gap store I had to order them online.
Yeah what size was that 48. nah 52 maybe 52.
50 52 something like that okay so I ordered some pets maybe over 48. they were it was four it was between 48 and 50. I know I got up to 52 but I might not have been 52 at that point. So I ordered some pants from the Gap. Get the pants. One of our producers, I was working at this place called Capricorn Programs, Burbank. One of the producers thought that that was coming for him, opened it, and pulled out the pants. I remember I come out of my office and I see somebody looking through at, like, looking at the, looking at the thing, and then I see somebody do like this, and I'm like, oh, but that's me. Like, throughout my life, God has put drop these little angels in my life because there's always somebody there for me when I need it. It just, I remember I walked, I lived at that point, like, I lived basically Pico and Fairfax is basically where I lived, so. I look online, what's the nearest LA Fitness? The nearest LA Fitness was La Sena, and like, whatever. I went right there on La Sena, we played basketball in it. I walked around there. Walk was tough. I walked around there, and I remember I got there, and this is in the book, I got there, and I cannot remember the name of the guy who was working in the front. Young brother. and I'm talking to him. I remember he, and I didn't have much money at the time. I wasn't making good money. So this gym membership was, it wasn't something that, like, I could really afford like that. You know, I was making maybe, maybe 400 a week and, you know, 35, the 30 for gym membership. That's not nothing to me.
That was a lot of money.
That was money to me at that point. So nuts that I was 27, making 400. $50 a week, nuts. But I remember he helped me. He rather than have my, because I didn't qualify for a California discount because I had a 225 number, which I still do. And he said, okay, this is what I'll do. I'll put your number down as 323 and the rest of these numbers so that you can apply for this discount. And he looked at me, he goes, because I can see you tired of this.
Ooh, wow.
Yep, wow. He goes, I can see you tired of this. Oh, wow.
And that was nice of him.
Yeah, so he did that and I would see him from time to time. He ended up getting transferred to another gym. So I would come in there and at first all I could do, all I could do at 27 years old.
Just walk. Just walk.
Walk on the treadmill and I started getting to the point to where I could ride the bike for 15 minutes and hit the heavy bag for 15 minutes. Wow. Ride the bike for 15 minutes, hit the heavy bag for 15 minutes. And I would just do that every day, just 30 minutes was talking on the phone to my boy, my homeboy Ryan Davenport from Baton Rouge. And like, talk 15 minutes, put the heavy bag, and then after a while.
It just started coming off.
Wow.
What do you feel like was the, so you were pretty consistent for a.
Long time with that then? I was Gucci until the pandemic. The pandemic was hard, but we working our way back.
Yeah, we'll be fine. 'Cause when I saw you, you were lean.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think pandemic got me for the 15-20 also. I feel like I'm back in college.
Again, that freshman 15. Yeah, yeah, we'll be fine. We'll work out.
Exactly, exactly. Do you feel like you were ever battling, was it a full on addiction, do you feel like? Yeah, for me it was. What was the root cause of the addiction? Not feeling enough, shame, relationships with family, what was the- Probably loneliness.
Loneliness. the. The. The root cause of it was probably loneliness. It was probably being in a room with all of your friends and all of these people who couldn't love you anymore, who love the very thought of you, but still feeling like you were the only person in the room.
How does it get to a place like that?
It gets to a place like that when you've been called weird long enough.
Weird. By who?
By just people, even as. Even though they didn't mean it in a bad way. Look, I wasn't an outcast. I was a good athlete. I was a good student. I wasn't an outcast. I just always felt like it was. It was a weird thing. Like, I was. I was educated. I was in the gifted program, so all of my classmates were white, right? But. I lived in the neighborhood. So sometimes the diffusion wouldn't work. Right, right, right. Sometimes it would be like, I would come back and it would be like, yo, we all playing the video game and we listening to AZ, we listening to Nas, we listening to P, we listening to Silk, we listening to cash money.
I say, okay, let's listen to Sound Garden.
You know what I'm saying? Oasis. Love Oasis. You know what I'm saying? And it wasn't, and a lot of my friends were very eclectic in their taste and stuff like that. But some of my homies are not trying to hear them white boys from Seattle. Right, right. What's wrong with you, bro? We listening to that BG. I'm like, all right, whoa. This is Justin. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. And I love all of it. I love everything. Very connected to my culture, right? So you want to watch a movie? Like, I tried to get some of my friends to come with me to see again to see Pope Fiction. Nobody was trying to see Pope Fiction. Mr. Bobby always passed away now. One of my AP World History teachers would do movies during lunchtime, right? And they let he let us choose the movies. So I chose Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Oh, wow. It's like, yo, y'all come watch this movie.
It's really funny. I promise you, it's really funny.
And then you do that a long enough time. You feel like you're the outcast. You start doing it by yourself. Now, I'm not even gonna ask you if you want to come with me. I'm not gonna ask you. you know what I mean? Like even with my girlfriend, like my girlfriend at that time, I fell in love, I experience sexualities, we can do whatever we're doing or whatever, but this right here, I'll do it for myself. And the list of things that I needed to do alone just started growing. So it becomes that you have all of these things that you only want to do by yourself and a couple of things that you like actually want to do. Right. You know what I mean?
So you said when you started, you're seven out of 10, right? In the scale of self-love, peace and freedom. Where were you the day, the morning before the Kanye thing?
Oh man, like at that point, I think I was probably like a nine.
Gosh, man, I have asked this question so many times to people. This is crazy, this theme now. I don't know, maybe not that many times, maybe five times.
Right.
Where I asked this to Manuel Acho, I asked this to my friend who came out right before his Steven, who has gone through this incredible growth spurt on social media and everything in the press over the last like six months. And I asked the same question. And every person before they hit a big spurt of success was at more self-love before the weight of gold, the weight of success, the acknowledgments, all those things. Why do you think you wrote a nine then and a seven now?
The more people that know who you are, the more people have an opinion on who you are. And the more people have an opinion, the more people tell you what not to love about yourself.
Ooh, snap.
You know what I mean?
Dang.
It's like, it's like the more opinions, the more people tell you, this is what you need to change and this is what you need to do better at. And it's not that that's bad, right? It's that you have to know how to accept that energy. Like you have to know how to accept what's constructive and destroy what's corrosive.
Or just let it go.
Or just let it go, right? Actually letting it go is better because even if you destroy it, you're spending too much energy on it. So letting it go is much, much better.
So what if three-- or go ahead, pass your thought there.
So no, I'm just saying. I thought I was okay. And so I was loving myself. And it was only until more people knew who I was that I realized, ah, maybe I'm not okay. And I'm like, maybe there are things that I need to change. And you start to be obsessed with the perfect version of you or the version of you that you feel like people need to consume. Interesting.
What are three tools you wish you knew before that moment when More people started to know who you were. That over the last four years you wish you had these skills or tools to prepare you for greater success, greater acknowledgement, Oscar Awards, bigger celebrities working with you and all these opportunities. What are those things? Maybe it's an internal tool or, you.
Know, we're about to get a little, so-- Bring it. Therapy? Yeah. breath work and the mute button. Yeah. So I can tell you one thing that would have changed my life had I knew how to do this earlier. During the pandemic, I was trying to reconnect with my breath. This is so LA. I'm sorry, guys. I'm sorry to all the people at home. I've changed. I was trying to reconnect with my breath, right?
What had happened to your breath?
So I went through a very, very debilitating stretch of anxiety and-- When?
During the pandemic.
During the pandemic.
Was it because of the pandemic? Was it because of work? Was it because of movements happening in the world? Was it because of societal changes?
It's because my anxiety has programmed me since I was a kid. I could talk more about my dad here, too, and, like, how. How my father didn't realize what kind of kid I was sometimes. He didn't realize how precocious I was. One day we were watching Silverado, great movie, Lawrence Kasdan, Kevin Costner, Danny Glover. And my father looks at the movie, he goes, one day the world's going to be just like that again. I'm like, what do you mean? Why? He goes, oh, like his eyes lit up because he's imparting new information onto me. He goes, oh. 'Cause Reagan gonna drop that bomb. I was like, what bomb? My father goes, well, they're bombs that if the Soviet Union shoots their bombs, and if we shoot our bombs, the chain reaction destroy the whole world. We'll be riding around on horseback again.
Genius.
And he kind of just goes, and goes back to watching the movie. I'm like, oh, I'm gonna die. I started like, I remember I won a drawing contest because I drew a Soviet soldier and a United States soldier, like hugging. I was like freaked out. They put up in the classes. My teacher's like, Yo, Van, why are you, you know? So from that moment on, it's like that's kicked off my anxiety and I was always waiting kind of for the end of the world. It was like, I've gotten to the ozone layer. I've gotten to North Korea. I got into all these different things and- It's happened, now it's happening. It's happening. I tried my best, by the way, I tried my best not to get caught up in it. But there was one particular time, shout out Jamel Hill, that me and Jamil went to, so March 6th, 2020. The week before everything went down, right? For the NBA shutdown, Tom Hanks got COVID.
It was literally like, 'cause March 16th's my birthday and it was literally that day was a Monday when no one went to work.
Right.
And then I was like, well, this is interesting, you know?
Yeah, yeah. So we went, March 6th, we went to dinner with this guy, I don't remember, not dinner, we went to lunch with this guy at Kings Row Cafe. Great producer, very nice guy. And he looked a little sick. And I remember I looked at him, I was like, Hey, 'cause it wasn't to the point, like we knew, but we weren't freaking out yet. People were still talking about putting me on panels and stuff like that. It was enough that I had hand sanitizer on my keychain. Interesting. But not a mask. No mask, nothing. We sat outside, we ate, he goes, oh, there's nothing. He's like, this is not a big deal, it's nothing. We went to a wedding in Mexico and people got sick. it's not that big of a deal. It's like he didn't think that he had COVID. And then he said that even if he did have COVID, COVID's not a big deal. But he didn't have, he said, I don't have COVID, I have a cold, right? He was fine, older guy, it's fine. So you have that, everything shuts down, right? The next week, whatever, a couple weeks. Two Fridays later, it's like, oh, I got COVID. I had COVID. So now I've sat next to this guy who has COVID. We don't know anything about COVID I'm like, yo, I'm gonna die. Am I, yeah. We're done. That's a called Cancel Christmas. It's a rap. I definitely have it. And also, I was taking zinc pills on an empty stomach at this point. I was doing everything to try to boost my immune system. So the zinc was upsetting my stomach. Oh man. So I'm thinking to myself, upset stomach, sign of COVID Guy had COVID, I have COVID, and it sent my anxiety into a tizzy. And so after a while of dealing with this, of having all kinds of issues, this is months and months and months, I started researching breath work. I started researching HRV breathing and just laying down on your back, putting on an audio cue and just taking six breaths a minute.
Slow, deep, deliberate breaths.
Deep, deliberate breaths. I utilize it in every aspect of my life.
It's such a powerful tool that is free and available at all times.
To everyone, anytime you need.
And it can change the state of your body, your mindset, everything.
Yeah. And like people, like they make fun of me at the boxing gym, like we'll be sparring and everybody in the middle of the sparring is like, everybody in between rounds is like, looking at that coach and I'm like, yeah. Diddy ding, let's go. And like snap back into it, like just, in and out. Had I, that right there is something that after you do it right, and I can do it for long spells now, like it started off, I did it for five minutes. I did it for 10 minutes. Now, sometimes I'll sit down there for 45 minutes. I'll just zone.
That's powerful.
Just zone. I'll be in a hammock, or I'll lay down flat on my back and just zone. Sometimes these videos are on YouTube. Sometimes I have to reach over and tap them and start them over. you know what I mean? And it just brings you, for whatever reason, you start to feel in your skin again. You start to feel like, oh, that's my hand. Oh, like, I like, oh, like, like, I'm okay. Like, you don't feel out of your body. And that would have helped me a lot. So that's one. And also, I don't like blocking people, but I love muting them. I don't like blocking people. I don't like knowing that I've put a wall in between someone because I can't handle what's going on. That feels like defeat sometimes. Muting things is important because not everything needs to be in your brain. So sometimes you have somebody that you love, but you need to love them from a distance. That is the mute button to me. So on social media, if you're getting a little too critical of me, if you're getting a little too frisky, I'm.
Gonna need to hear this all day.
If every time I do something, you pop on because it starts off cool. Hey, man, I love you so much, man. Do this. Okay, cool. Hey, man, after a while, I'm gonna mute you. I'm not gonna block you. I'm gonna mute you because I don't just need to hear your opinion on my life every single day. I just don't need that. You know, there are people in my life who I entrust, who I've given them permission to give feedback and opinions on my life. And, like, random people on social media and some people that I even work with are not those people, so. There you have it.
Yeah. Those are three powerful things. Therapy, breathwork, and mute button.
What's the biggest lesson you've learned from therapy? You have to control whatever it is for you.
Stress, anxiety, fear. It's not going away.
Self-doubt, yeah. It might not get worse, but it's not gonna get better unless you deal with it. It's not going away. It's not, sometimes you can be in different places, like, nobody feels, you might not feel stressed when you're in Turks, you know what I mean? You know, you might be there, you know, drinking a rum punch, and you think, oh, two weeks, I'm feeling good. Well, you're gonna get back to a place where the environmental triggers are going to be back there, and some of the personal triggers in your life are going to be back there. And sometimes I. I would wonder whether or not I really wanted to address these problems or whether or not I was more comfortable having them. And therapy helps you, or it's helped me. It's helped me learn that there is a prescription in a way to get around some of these. might not, you might not never cure them. It's like my homie told me, one of my trainers, I told him one time, I was like back in the day when I was dunking all the time, dunking all over people. And he goes, but I could never jump off two feet.
I can't jump off two feet either.
I'm a one-footed dunker, man.
I'm a one-footed, I'm a one-footed. I could, maybe like, maybe five times I dunked off two feet.
I've never once in life done it.
Dude, it's so hard.
I like, and some guys can't jump off one foot. I know. And it's so weird, people will ask me, you know, 'cause if you're trying to get to the rim super quick, one foot is better. But if you try to do something crazy in the air or take a hit and finish, you need to jump off two feet. I can never jump off two feet. It's just not a thing, right? And so I remember I was talking to a friend of mine. I go, yo, can you teach me how to be an explosive two-footed jumper? And he goes, I can't promise that. He says, you know what I can do though? I can make you a better two-footed jumper. and I'm like, huh, that's life.
But you may never be able to explode out of the gym.
You know, it may never get to the point to where you're boom off of that doing whatever you want that might not be for you, right? But you can get better at what it is that you're doing. You can get better. I might not ever be at the point to where I'm never feeling anxious in the world and never feeling anxious in my life. But I can be better. I can be better. And like therapy, even though he taught me about the two-footed jumper thing, that was years before, right? I actually looked at that and I was like, huh, all right, I'm with that. When I talk to her, I'm thinking life is about learning to jump off two feet. It's not about putting some sort of artificial goal in your head. I mean, you should have goals, right? Sometimes you need a finite goal. Sometimes your goal should just be to do be better. Be better at what you're doing.
What would you say is the biggest challenge, obstacle or problem that you want that you know you need to face and find a better solution for in your life right now?
Resentment.
Towards who?
I feel like as a black man in America, if I didn't have some issues, I wouldn't be paying attention, right? Having said that, I need to always let those things inspire me to make change and actually do something. When I say actually do something, I mean awareness is great, using my voice is great, talking to people who have solutions are great, but I'm gonna feel better served and I'll be a better servant if I'm actually initiating things and following people, not necessarily always leading, right? Maybe not leading a majority of the time, following people who are on the ground with answers that are doing things. I told you I met a guy in Chicago named Pastor Corey Brooks. I met a lady in Chicago named Inglewood Barbie. I met a guy in Chicago named Chicago King Dave. When I was out of Chicago, we were in some of the worst areas of the city. People would call them the worst areas in the city. I call them areas where people are looking for solutions. And talking to all of these people, what I learned is that anywhere there's a problem, there's somebody looking for a solution. And being that they're looking for a solution, you can be a part of that. And the reality is being mad about it is only useful. Being mad about it is only useful if it inspires you to do something.
To take action, yeah.
Other than that, the anger will be corrosive, it'll stop you from experiencing things, it'll stop you from expressing things.
What is resentment, holding onto resentment in all these areas of your life done for you? Or how has it hurt you?
Well, one way that it's hurt me is it's probably cut off some relationships. Really? You know what I mean? and it's, it's probably made me the social economic resentment hasn't really hurt me at all, but I think resentment for other things has hurt me. Like some of the resentment I felt towards my parents, some of the resentment I felt towards friends of mine, some of the resentment I felt towards other people I was competing with. I think it caught me, it stopped me from viewing these people as human beings and looking at them as obstacles. Because once you, once resentment is inside of you, it just, it chokes inspiration. Right. It just, it like, it chokes it. It resentment just chokes.
So this is still a big part of your life right now, resentment?
Not as much.
What would it take for you to let go of it?
Totally? I don't know, Louis.
And what do you think is available on the other side? when you let go of that.
As long as there are black women in this country who don't have access to adequate health care and who have a significantly higher chance of dying during childbirth, as long as there are black children who don't have what they need, I'm gonna have some resentment. I think getting over the resentment is not as important as channeling it, like recycling it, like not letting inside of you. Inside of you.
What happens when you fester the resentment?
When you fester the resentment, it turns, it infects you, right? So like it, something inspiring you is one thing, something infecting you is a different thing. Like when you're infected with resentment, when you're infected with anger, when you're infected with these things, they actually shut off avenues to solutions to me.
They should block them.
They blocked them. like you can't think past what it is that's going on. And you need to be able to think. You need to be mentally limber. You need to be spiritually limber. You need to be nimble in these ways to solve problems. You need to be open. You need to be able to look into the world with open hearts and open to in order to have a conversation with someone that you disagree with. You need to be mentally open. You need to be mentally limber. You need to be spiritually open. You need to be spiritually limber. You need to have that look in your eye that sometimes like, and I'm so I'm from the South. So there are, there's Christianity as is portrayed in by people that would like hijack a plane at 30, 000 feet and play their songs without asking anyone. And then there's like real Christians, like someone who really loves God. And that's, this is not just Christians. This is any single mantra or religion or whatever. Like, I know this rabbi, Rabbi Ari Lam, you know what I mean? Him, some of my Muslim brothers, some of the Hindu people I know, the people that are really believers, there's a certain certainty and a grace that they move with. Like you could talk to them about anything and they're like, oh, okay. Oh, nice. Okay, I disagree with you. Let me tell you what this teaches you. Let me tell you what this teaches you. Let me tell you what this teaches you. But there's an anointing, there's a circle around them. And this, even if you don't have like a religious belief, if you are really devoted to like, that can humanity itself, doing good for humanity can be a religion if you ask me. It can be a spiritual calling devoid of a higher power if you don't believe believing in that, right? And when people are truly anointed to do that, they sit and they listen and they absorb what you're giving them and they turn it around and give you back an energy with things that you never even thought of before or with disagreements that you can use to make your foundation stronger. Disagreements are incredibly valuable, but when you have resentment in your heart, disagreements are not disagreements, the declaration of war. And if every single disagreement is a declaration of war, you'll never stop battling. So in order to remove the resentment and really find what society is based around, it was just compromise. Compromise. You don't win, I don't win, we win. Not my world, not your world. Right. Our world. Right. And it's just hard to do. with resentment. That's why we have to push ourselves a little bit to be a little bolder, all right? But we have to be accepting of one another. And when I say accepting, I mean, you know what I mean? Like we have to talk to each other. I might have got that backwards. You have to talk to each other and say things to each other that aren't easy to hear.
Sure.
And it's much easier to do that if I can temper my resentment towards you.
Right. But you said, that you might always hold on to some resentment, right?
It's always gonna be a little bit. I'm a human being. Sure, sure. I'm a guy. I'm a dude. You know what I mean?
I'm a dude. But the, I would love to challenge you. Okay.
In a loving way, to challenge you.
Gotcha. To reframe the word then. Okay, give it to me. Maybe it's not resentment, maybe it's frustration, it's upset, it's sadness, it's, there's a wrong that you wanna see right, or there's a struggle that you wanna see peaceful in the world or within a relationship or whatever it might be and have the feeling of anger, frustration, whatever, sadness, hurt, all these different things. Feel the feeling, but don't hold on to it consistently. This is something I'm learning still. Because if I'm holding on to it, it's hard for me to see the person from a beautiful place, even if they're doing the most messed up stuff. Not saying I need to agree with them, but to be able to find a solution. with that cause or thing or person.
Right.
It's not easy. It's a constant thing I'm working on. But as opposed to holding resentment, I'm coming from a defensive attack mode when I'm resentful, personally. So something to look at.
I will.
I'll try.
Something to consider. Yeah.
Got you. Try it on, as a therapist would say.
I love this, man.
I'm excited for your journey. And I think it's interesting to see that you were a nine out of ten, now you're a seven out of ten.
Right.
What do you think it would take for you to get back to the nine?
Oh, I think it's coming. I think if you'd asked me this question last year, it was a six.
Oh yeah. So it's coming back.
Yeah, yeah. Or maybe even, and there were points in 2020 where it was probably a five.
Oh yeah.
Like low. So I think I'm trending up where things are coming together. I just gotta stay the course and continue to grow. Right.
What is the thing that you wish you would have been able to say to your dad that you maybe didn't get to tell him?
I appreciate what you were trying to do. I appreciated it.
In his way and his, you know.
In his way. You're all right, man. Like we could have, like, you did the best you could. Right.
With the tools you had and yeah.
With how you were raised, with your measure of it, You did the absolute best you could. You know what I mean? And I got my hugs from Mom, so it's okay.
You got the effect of you needing a kiss from the hugs. Your book, Fat, Crazy, and Tired: Tales from the Trenches of Transformation. It's out now. People can go get it over on Amazon or bookstores. They can follow you on social media, Van Lathan on Twitter, Instagram, and all the different places. You've got your podcast, Higher Learning Podcast on the Ringer Network. Were you doing that how often every week? How much a week? Two times a week.
Two times a week.
Yeah.
Higher Learning Podcast.
They can find that if they go to your Instagram, follow you there. You always got great clips on there. I love seeing your stuff, man. It's always very entertaining and inspiring.
How else can we be of service and support to you right now? Oh man, nothing. That was amazing. I would like to thank Talika, my girl who put all of this together, who like helped me. She was in contact with you guys, playing a little assistant role. She's a big fan of yours. But yeah, no, I think, listen, I've appreciated your friendship. I've appreciated being able to bounce things off of you. I've appreciated you challenging me sometimes 'cause Lewis's answer for everything is just do it yourself. Lewis's answer to everything is I remember, I remember like we were first talking about, I started about leaving TMZ and starting my own, getting a podcast deal. He was like, Just do your own deal.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Just do it yourself.
Just do it yourself.
Why do you need a network or this? Why do you need a network? Why do you need that? And to be honest with you, that is in the back of my mind every single time. The point, I'm not gonna rush it, but the point to where the answer is, just do it yourself. And I'm doing it. And all of this is a big.
Time inspiration to me, so I appreciate that.
That's cool, man.
I'm excited for that, man. This is a question I ask everyone towards the end called the three truths. So imagine in a hypothetical scenario, last day on earth, many years away. You live as long as you want to live. But eventually you gotta turn the lights off and this time on your earth is gone. And you accomplish all your dreams. You're making movies, you're doing books, you're doing content, whatever it is you want to create, you do it. Have family, anything, you make it come true. But for whatever reason, you've got to take all of your content with you to the next place. So no one has access to this book, the podcast, anything you've ever said, it's gone. But you get to write down three lessons that you can share with the world. Three truths. And this is all we would have to remember your legacy by, essentially, these three messages. What would you say are those three truths for you?
You're bigger than fear. Hmm. Two is it's not that big of a deal. And the third one is this. This is the most important one. Every single problem has a solution. Nothing on this planet is bigger than our collective understanding and our drive and will to be better, more healthy and well adjusted people. All of these problems that everyone keeps shoving down your throat every single day, all of these things that are wrong with the world, all of these things that are wrong with human society, we can figure them out. We can figure them out if we get on the right wavelength. yeah. So concentrate on the solutions. Concentrate on getting better. You can fix it. Like, you can. Like, I swear to God, man, it's frustrating. Sometimes you can fix it. Yeah, you can be a part of it. So I just don't. I want everybody to feel super empowered to go out and make the world as they need it to be.
That's beautiful, man. I want to acknowledge you, Van, before I ask you the final question for your constant journey of growth. I think it's challenging to go from one position and then pretty much overnight get a lot of opportunities and have this awareness about you and take on the weight of these challenges and take on the weight of the responsibilities that come with it and do it in the face of having an addiction that you've overcome and facing all these different challenges that way as well. I think it's really hard to overcome an addiction. I think it's one of the hardest things people have to learn how to do, especially a weight addiction or a food addiction that causes a weight and then it creates guilt and shame and all the stuff that happens there. So I acknowledge you, man, for being on the journey, the imperfect journey. And grateful for you for using your voice to share a message for people. to let people know they don't have to be perfect, but they can be on the journey as well just like you and for constantly developing your own masterpiece. I appreciate that. It's beautiful man. It's a beautiful journey.
Final question, what's your definition of greatness? My definition of greatness is peace. That's what I'll tell you. So you have all these things you want to do. I think about your story, right? So you have all this stuff that you want to do. You came from, you know, living on your sister's college and all of that stuff like that. The world isn't designed a lot of times for us to find peace. There's always something in order for you to go out and be a cog in the consumer wheel or if you have to feel danger and pressure and all of these things, you have to find, you have to feel that way, right? You have to feel all of those things. You have to feel all of those things. You have to feel like, okay, I gotta do this or the light's gonna get cut out. I gotta do this or this is gonna happen. I gotta do this or this person's not gonna wanna have sex with me. I gotta do this, I gotta do this, I gotta do this. Greatness to me is when you're at a peaceful place in your life and you can seriously look back and look and you have all the latitude to figure out how you want things to be. And you have to build towards that and you have to get there. To me, Michael Jordan was the best on the court, the greatest on the court because he was the most peaceful. He wasn't rattled. Like you couldn't rattle him. You couldn't get him out of himself. He was intense, but he knew the shot was going in. He knew that he would succeed. He knew that he was the most, he had the least amount of chaos in his body. When you see a situation to where like, you see Dr. King and he's talking to someone, you might see people yelling at him, you might see people throwing rocks at him, you might see people watch how he comports himself. He comports himself in a way because he is absolutely at peace with who he is, even at peace with the fact that who he had to be was going to mean that his life was going to be cut short. Yeah. Peace gave him the opportunity to be completely dead set on what he was doing. And in the face of any adversity, never lose himself. So every single great person that I know makes you feel like things are gonna be okay. Makes you feel like you're at peace and confident with them when you're around them, right? Yeah. And so that's what I look at it like. And that's kind of what this place has, man. It's a very peaceful place. I walk in here, I walk in here 10 minutes I'm in here, somebody show me a picture of that son's first step. You know what I mean? Like you guys see a peaceful and humble and ready to serve. So I think greatness is peace.
My man, thanks so much for being here.
No problem, my guy.
Appreciate it, bro. Appreciate you, man. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's show with all the important links. And also make sure to share this with a friend and subscribe over on Apple Podcasts as well. I really love hearing feedback from you guys, so share a review over on Apple and let me know what part of this episode episode resonated with you the most. And if no one's told you lately, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.
