It's Friday. Let's Talk - Your Voice, Who energizes YOU, and Dave Chappelle

Welcome to today's video. You know, we do a video a day, every day for 30 days. That's what I'm doing right now. Today I'm going to discuss a few different topics, including Dave Chappelle's special 8:46. I'm going to discuss who energizes you. I'm going to discuss sharing your voice. I'm going to go into all of those. Now, while I'm talking, you can leave comments right below. I'll take a moment every now and then and check out those comments so we can bring those in. We can talk with each other. I love that we're able to do that in the Daily Ask. So please feel free to use the ability to leave comments. It could be hello. It could be a response to what I'm saying. It could be a question. It could be a disagreement to what I'm saying. I will do my best instead of trying to watch them while I talk. Every now and then I'll pause, check out the comments right in front of you because I think that allows a better flow of conversation to occur. So that's what I'm going to do. First of all, I want to talk about who energizes you. And are you intentional about how often they're in your life? Are you intentional about inviting those voices into your life? Are you intentional about creating systems, creating a lifestyle, or maybe creating a career that surrounds you with people who energize you? Now, let me explain what I mean by energize, that when you get off the phone with them, you just feel amazing. And by the way, it doesn't— we're not talking here about yes people. You know, people who say yes to everything you say, cheer on everything you say. Yeah, that feels good. But if it's not sincere, if it's not coming from the heart, it's not really that wonderful of a feeling, right? And I used to do that. I used to make the mistake of just saying great job instead of saying, hey, you did an amazing job with this and being specific, right? You want to surround yourself with people who energize you. Now, that means they're willing to challenge you also, and they do it in an uplifting way, in a way that lifts you up and want to be better. Today I was on the phone with someone and we were talking about, they're taking our course, the 2020 Transformational Training Course. They're taking that course. And I was talking to them about how to develop speaking and how to become a speaker and potentially becoming long-term a professional speaker. And we spent a long time on the phone and I got off that phone. And while I was sharing the whole time and trying to help this person and support this person, I was energized when I got off the phone. I wasn't tired. I had been just, it was maybe an hour, hour and a half of just sharing and giving a lot of support, and it was energizing. I loved it, right? I loved it. And I knew right away when I got off the phone, hey, that's somebody that I would enjoy working with. I knew it. Now, I knew it way sooner than that, by the way, way sooner than that. And that person might be watching this video, and I've told them that, so they're aware of this. Uh, and so you want to surround yourself with people who, when you get off the phone, you're energized, you're excited. That if you live with someone, if you're married or you have a partner, you have children, And they heard the energy on the phone or saw you right after, they could tell you were energized. So I'm inviting you to ask yourself, what am I doing to invite those voices into my life? The voices that energize me. And I don't mean intentionally, accidentally. Oh, I had the call with them for the first time in 3 months. I felt really good. That's not intentional. That means somebody happened to reach out to the other. How are you being intentional? How are you doing that? If you have a job where you have the ability to help others, support others in a way that energizes you, how are you making time to do more of that? Maybe some of you are thinking, well, I've been considering doing this thing over here that would do that for me, but A, B, C, D, E, F, and G have been pulling me back from that. That's part of what we discussed today too. Why not go all in on this one? And let ABCDEF go, right? So that you can be in this space you love being in. I love training. I love teaching. I love speaking. I want to do everything I can to surround myself in a world that lets me do more of that, whether it's virtually, whether it's on site live somewhere, whether it's on a phone call. I love doing that. So I want to be intentional about making sure I'm spending my time doing that. And what that means is I have to look and go, well, where— what's causing me not to spend my time there? Because the more I can find those things and eliminate them, or just spend less time on them so that, that I don't put too much weight into things that don't belong having a heavy weight on my shoulder, that I could do less of that or make that less of a priority, or maybe even just let it go altogether so that I'm surrounding myself doing the things I love to do. So one, what do you love to do? What are you doing to make the time to do that? I think on a Friday It's a great time to ask that question because a weekend should be a time to recharge, reenergize. 2, who are the people in your life that you want to work with, that you want to have those conversations with? Be intentional. Create a plan for doing that with those individuals so you can lift each other up. It's beautiful. It's wonderful. So that's about energy. That's about your voice, finding people to help you find your voice. But now I want to talk about a different area of voice. And this one's completely different. This area of voice that I'm going to discuss is people holding back their own voice. And even though I'm a speaker and people think, well, speakers don't hold back at all, that's simply not true. Many speakers, and myself included at times, are very fearful of judgment, are very fearful of saying the wrong thing. I had a sort of a mantra slogan for many years, for the many past several years, because of a lesson that happened to me speaking live once. I always told myself I would do no harm. Now, that's a beautiful statement— do no harm. The problem is, if you are focused on do no harm, you might never speak certain things or language because you're— that could help a lot of people because you're thinking, well, that possibly over here could somebody be offended? And we mistakenly think harm and offended are the same thing. They can be night and day apart. You might not be doing harm, but somebody over here could be offended, right? But what you're doing is leading with love, leading with respect, caring for others, and somebody here is still offended. So you have to be able to understand that to do no harm, I think I need to change it myself. And I think through all this happening in the world, instead of telling ourselves, I will do no harm, I'll do my best to do no harm. That means I can't absolutely know how somebody else is going to respond to everything I say. But what I can do is be intentional about, could this do harm? If so, how? How could I say this in a way that wouldn't do that harm? That's caring. That's loving and still not censoring ourselves from saying what needs to be said. Which takes me to discussion point number 3 today. Dave Chappelle's 8:46. It's a special on Netflix. 8:46 is how long George Floyd was kept down on the ground with somebody's knee on— I'm not remembering the officer's name right now off the top of my neck. It actually just came to mind. Uh, knee on top of George Floyd's neck. 8:46. And so Dave Chappelle's special that just launched today is called 8:46. It is incredibly powerful, incredibly powerful. Now here's why I'm bringing this up. In the past, I might not have mentioned Dave Chappelle's 8:46. Some of you going, Mike, why wouldn't you mention if it's powerful? If it's got poignant points, why wouldn't you mention it? Well, in the past, I might have thought like I thought watching it a couple times. Oh, I wish he had not said that. Word there because in my line of work and what I do, that word can cause harm to others. I really wish he had not done that. There's some language in there that is gender-based and degrading. There's no way to hide it. And I thought, oh, and in the past I probably wouldn't have brought up the special because I would have thought, well, I'm not going to bring up something that has anything in it that is something that I disagree with that I could find harmful. And then today I recognized that's a pretty insane level of privilege that I'm only going to bring up or recommend resources, material, or content that's perfect, where nobody says anything wrong. And can I live up to that standard? Am I perfect when I talk? Do I ever say the wrong thing or say something that maybe culturally for me seems like the right thing, but for others seems like the wrong thing? And if I was held up to that measurement stick, would anybody be recommending me if I had to be perfect? Would anybody be saying, hey, you gotta bring Mike in if I had to be perfect? And I had a wake-up call after watching that of saying, stop expecting perfection from others. If there's a lot of good in there, bring up what concerns you like I just did. Language and some parts that are gender-based that I find degrading, and that there are many parts of the program that can be very powerful and can be eye-opening and poignant, which I believe about 846. My commitment to you today in watching this and thinking about it afterwards is that I need to be more careful. Of not censoring myself, of not— it's not any of us censoring ourselves as long as we lead with love. If we're worried that if I recommend this there's some harm in it, bring up the harm, bring up the good, and trust people to decide. You decide. I'm telling you there's language in there that is harmful as far as gender bias, gender degradation. Degradation, absolutely. And I'm telling you there's parts in there that are incredibly powerful. So you, the viewer, know that now and can choose whether you want to watch this special. Personally, I found it very powerful. I was able to go, okay, there was that and there was this, instead of saying, oh, there was that, but there was this, which discards the whole thing, right? You know the old saying, anything you say, once you say but, everything you said before that is thrown out the door. It's only the next part. It's like, uh, look, I'm gonna say this with respect, but— Well, that just means you're about to likely disrespect me or be offensive or do something. So, and, right? And there's this in it and there's this in this. So one's not taking out the other and you decide. That's what we want to be able to do in this world. You decide for you if this is helpful, if this is something you want to check out, which means you need to share your voice. We're 360. We're back to the beginning. Share your voice. Do it with love. Yes, do it with respect. And keep in mind that if I lead with love and I lead with respect and I think, could this do harm? And then I alter it so it doesn't do harm and still speak my language, right? Still speak my heart, my soul. And then when we evaluate others, stop evaluating based on perfection and instead be honest about there's this and there's this. You decide. And on that, I let you decide what you want to say in the comments below. Of course, that's always your choice to say. And I'll let you decide whether you see me tomorrow in our next daily video. I thank you for joining me for this one. Thanks. Have a great weekend.