This ONE WORD will CHANGE YOUR LIFE | Toure Roberts

The moment that you judge yourself for what you're feeling in mind, you, it might be something negative. The moment that you judge yourself, you have just stripped yourself from the ability and the power to change it.

I have been looking forward to this conversation for some time. I was just telling you a little bit that I really believe that what you're bringing to the marketplace right now is a very, very timely message. You know, one of the things that I read as I was kind of making my way through balance was this essence of most of us have balance figured out all wrong, or we think we're chasing this version of balance, but it's actually something a little bit different. What made you decide to come at balance in a little different direction?

Yeah, you know, it was for that very reason. You know, when we think about the subject of balance, and when you hear people talking about it, you never hear someone saying, I'm crushing it at balance. You never hear that it's always from this. This place of there's something that they're trying to attain to, and it's not because there aren't enough books out there on balance or work life balance time management. And so I really felt like, you know, I'm the type of person, if there's a challenge in society, I just feel like, you know, I'm on.

You picked a good one.

Come on. Yeah.

I go for it. And through the process of doing it, you know, I realize that there is a great misconception that we all have oftentimes or had with balance, and that is that you have to try to figure out how to give pieces of yourself away to things that matter. So I'm married. I'm a business owner. You know, I'm a teacher. I'm whatever, you know, and I've got all these responsibilities. How do I take who I am and give myself to all these different pieces? Well, that's a problem because I can't. I can't ration out myself. I can't give 10% of myself to my wife, 10% of myself to my staff, 10% of myself to invest. I can't do that. I've got to give all of myself. So we're redefining what balance is. So balance is not about giving pieces of yourself away. It's about becoming all of yourself and then bringing your best self to all the areas that matter the most so that you can have the most. The maximum impact.

Yeah, no, that's. I think it's amazing. I mean, one of the things that. That I think the marketplace has done is they put all this emphasis on self awareness or mindfulness or as. And they've almost become. There's been so much thrown at it, it's almost become like a buzzword. It's like a way of just kind of like saying, yeah, I'm being mindful today or I'm being self aware today. Like, and I know you come at that from a whole different angle. Right. It's not a. But you know that that environment's not a buzzword. Break us that. Break it down for us.

Yeah, I think, you know, self awareness, first of all, I'm glad that people are attempting to be better. You know, the pandemic happened. So many things have taken place that have put us in a position to really pause, take a look at ourselves, a lot of introspection and ultimately become better. To recognize even from a mindfulness perspective that life has begun has become so noisy. It's like noisy. And so, so I appreciate the fact that culture is moving toward becoming better and becoming more self aware. You can't be healed if you don't. If you're not aware of what's going on with you to become mindful because there's so many things pulled at your mind. I take it a little deeper. However, you know, in one place in the book, I talk about the difference between self awareness and soul awareness and I talk about how soul awareness is like self awareness on steroids. It's, it's understanding the deepest part of who you are. Self awareness is like, okay, this is what I'm doing and this is why I'm doing it. Soul awareness is to be conscious of the fact that there is something very deep to you. And if you don't understand, if you're not aware of your soul, then you'll be trying to feed a longing at the soul has with, you know, temporary, very out outer focus, physical type of thing. So, so you can have a longing in your soul for something. And you're like, well, let me, let me get drunk, you know, that'll fix it or let me, you know, do whatever. And so I really break that down. I talk about mindfulness, I talk about the importance of paying attention to what you're thinking. Because right now there are no boundaries. Everything's coming at you.

Yeah, well, one of the things that I loved about the book and just about your how you come at life, right. Whether it's the church body, whether it's your entrepreneurship ventures, no matter what it is, is this essence of the importance of living from the inside out. Rather than chasing from the outside in. And you know that it resonates throughout the course of the whole book. And one of the things that I've seen people struggle with so much is they think, well, when I get this next job, I'm going to be happy. When I. When I get married, I make my dream person, right? I'm going to be happy. Like, they put all of these things in front of them where they tend to struggle is that inside stuff. And one of the things that you mentioned in the book that I love so much was this, this willingness to do the deep dive soul search, to actually uncover the soul yearning. What types of tips or practices can people to kind of do, to kind of find themselves within themselves?

For sure, I think the first thing we have to do is we have to break the mentality that puts a negative stigma around alone or being alone. You've seen it before. We're out somewhere, we're at a restaurant, you know, we're laughing, all of our friends are there, and we see this poor little lady or this poor little man sitting in the corner all by themselves, and we want to maybe strike up a conversation. But the reality of it is alone is not a bad thing. In fact, you know, I talk about how that word alone is. It comes from a. The Latin phrase.

And it has, it doesn't have any negative connotation at all. The phrase means all one.

All one.

So to be alone is to learn how to. First of all, to be alone is the opportunity to become all one. And listen, this is such a fragmented society. Listen, you can be on social media and you can go through 90 different emotions in 30 seconds as you scroll down. You know, and so we're so divided. So. So being alone allows you to become all of yourself. And quite frankly, even as it relates to, you know, believing that, you know, things are going to get better when you find the right person. Like. Like, I wouldn't even want to present myself to the right person until I have become all one.

Yeah, no, and I think people go wrong there a lot is, you know, they. What is the old adage if you want to change your relationship, change you. Something like that. You know, it's kind of that same thing. You know, when it comes down to being alone in a reflective state or being in the zone where.

You are spending time with yourself, what types of things are you asking yourself? What kind of techniques are we using to kind of maybe reflect with grace and with peace rather than judging yourself for mistakes? Because that's one reason I feel like people don't want to be alone as they're too busy judging themselves.

Exactly. I think that, first of all, you have to recognize that within yourself there's a path forward from a discipline. Let me back up a little bit. From a discipline perspective, what I like to do is I like to ask a lot of what's and whys. So I believe that for every feeling that I'm experiencing, there is a thought connected to it. I firmly believe it. So self awareness, soul awareness is, wait, what am I feeling? And first of all, it's okay to feel that way, no matter how crazy it might be. We oftentimes, to your point, Stephen, we judge ourselves for what we're feeling. The moment that you judge yourself for what you're feeling in mind, you. It might be something negative. The moment that you judge yourself, you have just stripped yourself from the ability and the power to change it. Because. Because if you judge yourself, first of all, that's bringing in negativity, you know? And then negativity makes you afraid, so you start running from it, and now you can't heal it. You're stuck in this thing that you are, quote, unquote, ashamed of. And so. So being okay with feeling. I don't judge my feelings. I can have a crazy, crazy feeling, you know, And I've learned not to, you know. No, Terry, don't think that.

Well, hold on.

Wait a minute. What. What is that? You know? And then what is the thought that's creating that feeling? You know, because. And then is that thought worthy? You know, because if I can change my thoughts, I can change my feelings. If I can change my feelings, I can change my entire essence. And so. So I like to break down. I like to understand what. What I'm feeling, what thought is creating that feeling? And.

Is that thought worthy, or should it be supplanted with another thought? I'll say this last thing on that point.

Sure.

Insecurity. A lot of people struggle with moments of insecurity. Insecurity itself, for me, is the evidence of some negative, untrue thought that hasn't been contested. And so if I'm feeling insecure, hey, no problem. Let me deal with it. Let me address it. Don't judge myself. I'm not going to judge me. I'm going to, hey, this is what I'm feeling. What feels thought. Oh, there's the lie. And then I put a proper thought in there, and the insecurity goes away.

Yeah, no, that's so good. In fact, you know, my audience knows I'm a person of faith. And we got our audience about 50. 50, right. And one of the things that comes to mind, anytime I'm thinking of self worth issues, I'm having worth less issues. Right. And I think we've all dealt with them at some level or even different levels that you climb along the way is going all the way back to Jesus, sitting down with Peter, and he's saying, peter, do you love me? Yes, Peter, do you love me? You know, he goes through this, this correspondence of helping Peter rebuild his identity, which is one of the reasons why I lean on Jesus so much, is because I feel like when I, when I'm leaning into him, I get to see myself clearer. Right. Rather than seeing myself through whatever my experiences are, my situations are, and stuff like that. If you don't mind, let's. Can we dig a little bit into, uh, the differences between self awareness and soul awareness one more time? Because if anything of this conversation, I want the audience to take away of this essence. There's more to them meets the eye, and I really want them to take the time to use balance and other tools to get there.

Absolutely. So, so your soul is the deepest part of who you are. We were created living souls. It's, it's, it's the depth of who we are. And our soul has a longing, and it has a longing for balance. It has a longing for peace. It wasn't created in the context of chaos. So chaos is disruptive to our soul. And when we, and so, and so our soul is after something. It's after balance. You know, I'm a man of faith. It's after the presence of God. It's after wholeness. It's after our honor being all one, not fragmented, not broken. And so, and so when we don't connect with that, we can sense a longing, but we don't know where that longing is coming from. We can sense an uneasiness, we can sense a lack of contentment, but we don't know where it's coming from. So we start trying to feel it, you know, and so we pick up the phone and we call a friend, you know, or we pick up a remote control and we turn on the tv and maybe we want to laugh at some comedy or, you know, in some other cases we pick up, you know, drugs or we pick up, you know, we go pick up somebody on the corner, you know, it can be sick. It can be anything, trying to feel this longing that is deep beneath the surface. And so the question then becomes, how do we get to connect with our soul. Like, how do we tap into the longing is there? But we misinterpret the longing. We try to make it physical, you know, we try to make it maybe even psychological, you know, how do we get to it? And my advice and what I have discovered works well is you stop. You stop. You know, I was thinking it takes for. I used to think that it the most amount of faith to start something is take a leap of faith to start something new, to launch out into the deep. But I realized that that's not true. It takes more faith to stop than it does to start. Because in our mind, we think if I stop, then I'm going to lose something. If I stop, my world is going to fall apart, my business is going to go down, whatever, you know, it's just everything's going to go to poo poo if I stop. And the reality of it is, it is not. When you stop and you silence the noise and you give yourself permission to be still, that's when that still, small, faint voice of the soul can be discerned. And so it's work a lot of people don't want to invest, but it is the greatest investment I believe a person can make.

Well, I think that when you get to that place, you're able to elevate pretty much every area of your life all at one time. You know, I'm a big believer. I've learned to listen to the Holy Spirit when he leads me as much as possible, and to stop challenging, stop distracting. You know, I would look at, you know, some things you mentioned as distraction, right? Just distracting you from actually focusing on you. And I felt like one of the things, I'll speak for me personally, one of the things that I used to struggle with was I used to feel uncomfortable with the fact if I stopped long enough to have that, that be still moment, right? Whether it was a day, two days, a week, or whatever that was to go inside, right? I would start to feel guilty. And I'm like, well, you know, I'm feeling guilty because, you know, one my, you know, my worth wasn't necessarily there, but I was also feeling guilty because I should be doing this and I should be doing that, and I should be doing this and I should be doing this, you know, and. And so I began to feel like, selfish every time I decided to stop for a moment and look at my life and look at myself and kind of figure out where I'm headed and all that good stuff. And then you said something interesting in the book that I That I. That even challenged that concept, which I thought was brilliant, which is, it's not selfish. It's self full. It's becoming full of self. And I help, I guess, in the healthiest way. Would you mind breaking down the. The what you meant deeply by self full.

Absolutely. You know that that's from the chapter there's no team and I, which is obviously a play on the popular adage, there's no I in team. And it is about the significance of self prioritization and how we have kind of been tricked into believing that to prioritize self is somehow selfish. But it's not selfish. I had to come up with a new term and I said it's self full. It's to be mindful of self. Now you brought up Jesus. The other. Just a second. So you brought up Jesus. I'm going to bring up Jesus too.

Come on.

So Jesus. So Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was. Now, for me, when I think commandment. Commandment for me is the instruction that if you align with will bless you in the greatest way. And so for me, when he says, what is the greatest commandment? I interpret that is him asking Jesus, what do I need to align with to be blessed in the greatest way. Yeah, Jesus says it's not an unfamiliar passage. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, strength. And then it says, love your neighbor as yourself. Now, I think that we have misinterpreted the sequence there because it sounds like if it says, love the Lord your God with all your heart, then love your neighbor as you love yourself. It looks like the sequence is God, neighbor, self, but it is not. It is God, self, neighbor. How do I know? Because it says, love your neighbor as you love yourself. Which means that how you love your neighbor is predicated by the benchmark that determines whether or not you're loving your neighbor well is set by how well you love yourself. I can't love my neighbor as I love myself if I don't feel first love myself. So the sequence is God, self as it relates to relationship, loving, focus, God, self. And then out of the overflow of self, you're able to love your neighbor properly. And so here is. Yeah, we all get guilty. Like when I have to take a few days away, a week away. You know, sometimes as a father, as a parent, you know, I got a staff, you know, all this sort of thing, I start feeling guilty. But I learned that I am not helping them by not helping me. In fact, it's the opposite. If I can't get away to get centered, to get grounded, to get fresh ideas, to get new strength to be recharged. I'm not going to be the best husband. I'm not going to be the best dad. I'm not going to be the best leader. I'm not going to bring the brightest ideas to the investors. I'm not going to do any of that. And so I learn that to really, that to be self full is actually to be mindful not only of self, but those individuals or organizations or circumstances that I'm responsible for.

Yeah. No, it's so good. That's so good. You know, it's funny, I was just thinking to myself, most of the. Most of the people that I know that really struggle with other people also struggle deeply with themselves. Right. You know, the person that struggles with being easily offended is often someone who, you know, basically talks trash to themselves on a consistent basis. Right. And obviously we want to, we want to free people from that, like, in a big way. You know, one of the things that you also mentioned is this. There are key barriers. There's really strong barriers that keep us from actually having soul awareness. And as I began reading through them and really kind of dissecting them, almost like. Yeah, that's true. That's totally true. That's totally true. Right. So break down some of the barriers, if you don't mind, so we can, we can start to work through and help people kind of see themselves in a different light.

Yeah. I think one of the biggest ones is pride, believe it or not. And because pride says I'm okay, I.

Got it, I know how I am. It's all good.

Yeah, you know, I'm fine. I don't need anything. As long as you are good, then you can't get help. You know, the reality of it is we're not good. You know, it just. If every time I talk to you, you know, how are you? I'm thinking of someone right now, how you doing, man? I'm fine. How are. And then here it is, I'm good. And then they turn, I'm good. How are you? So it's almost like they immediately take the question away from themselves with this, this knee jerk response. I'm good. Because I feel like I have to be good. You know, I'm talking to Terry or I'm talking to whoever I need to be good. No, you don't need to be good. In fact, it's fake to me, like every time I see you, you're good. Let me tell you something, Stephen. You May call me next week and you may ask me how I'm doing, I'm saying, yeah, I'm hanging in there.

You know what I mean?

Because I realize the importance of being honest. But a lot of times someone has been convinced by something that it's not okay to not be okay, and that's not true. And so I think pride gets in the way of being soul aware. I think another thing also is substitutions. And we kind of talked about it a little bit more. But, you know, I'm doing something. I'm behaving a particular way. I'm engaged in something to cloak the fact that my soul is really hurting. You know, and here I'm in la, and so, you know, I'm in, you know, Hollywood and the industry, and I've met some, you know, everybody in this town, you have to be on. Like, you know, no matter what, you.

Got to be on for sure. Yeah.

You know, and the reality of it is, don't. I don't want you to be on if you're off.

Yeah.

Because I can't help you. You know, God can't help you. Your therapist can't help. Nobody can help you if you are on, but you're really off. And so I think that, you know, substituting things, activities, behavior, you know, I'm on social media, and now because my soul is broken, you know, I'm half naked on social media. But what is that really about? Like, that. That is your soul after something that you're trying to, you know, some void you're trying to feel through getting attention from others. So they're just things with substitution. But then I think that pride not being able to say okay are two big blocks to soul awareness.

Yeah, I mean, pride was a huge one for me. You know, when I was homeless, the reason I became homeless was because of pride. I didn't want to tell people I was struggling. I didn't want to tell people that I was showering in a public restroom. I didn't want to tell them anything. I just, you know, I just. Because, you know, I had. The year before, I had had a bunch of stuff and I was doing well, and everybody, you know, he's finally. The high school dropout is finally going to do something, and then, you know, just boneheaded decisions, you know, lead you down a dark path. And one of the things that I remember as I was looking into a public restroom, I raised my eyes almost like one of those movie moments where you're just kind of staring back, and I just remember going how the heck did you get here, dude? Like, a year and a half ago, you were like, you know, on top of the world, so to speak, in our area. You know, 19 years old and making a bunch of money and all this kind of stuff. And I had to remind myself, or just solve the problem by actually being radically honest, right? I've had so much growth the times that I've leaned into becoming radically honest, right. Radically transparent with myself. And I find that when people stay stuck, they stay stuck because they're not being radically honest and transparent with yourself. And I feel like it's because they're scared to go on the inside, right? And I know for me, that's where the pride really kind of kicked in for me specifically. And then to your point, one of the other reasons that I ended up homeless, because I kept trying to distract myself with stuff that wasn't going to serve me or feed me or help me grow. It was just so I didn't have to basically confront who I was becoming. And I've always been a big fan as you can't conquer what you can't confront, right? So it's like trying to figure out, how do you get to the next step and what does that look like? And one of the things that I picked up on the book is getting rid of a limitation mentality and going into an abundant mentality. How do you see building an abundant mentality, especially if you've been hit really, really hard by life?

I love everything that you're saying, particularly about that radical honesty. And I think the first step is to be radically honest. And the reason why sometimes we can't do that is because we are.

We believe that if we open this door and get honest and get real with the fact that there's a monster behind that door that is growling at us, don't open that door. You know, don't deal with that, you know? But the reality of it is you can conquer that monster. It's typically. It sounds like this big monster. You open the door, it's a little mouse, you know, And. And because the hardest thing to do is to actually open the door and that there's a solution. That's the thing. A lot of times I don't want to face it because I don't think there's a solution. And if there. If I don't believe there's a solution, I'll never confront it, right? But there is a solution. For every single difficulty, there is a solution. And. And you have to know that. And so once I once I do that.

You asked me there was a two part of your question. Give me that question. I'm sorry.

Yeah, no worries. No, I just had how that plays into shaping an abundance mentality when you've been for so long.

Okay, I'm sorry. Thank you. So once you do that, once you give yourself permission because there is a solution, then you can come into this place of rest. And there's a chapter in the book where I talk about the gift of rest. When I think about everything that is significant that has happened to me in my life didn't happen because I was striving. It didn't happen because I was stressed. It happened when I found this rest, this place of rest. And this place of rest says, I have no lack. I have no lack. Now that obviously can sound like something that is absolutely crazy to say in a moment when all you see around.

You is evidence that it's not what.

You think it is. You know, but, but here is the thing. The abundance mentality doesn't say that. Everything I need I have in my bank account, I have in my house, I have in my pockets. It says everything that I need is out there. Yeah, that, that from a faith perspective that God has supplied all, all of my need. And all I need to do is get into alignment with, with. With God's plan, with his purpose. And it's there. I believe personally, no, no matter how far you get off track, there is a restoration available. And, and that pat, that quote was from something that King David said in Psalm 23. He says, the Lord is my shepherd, I have no lack. If you dig into that, he literally is saying, the Lord is my shepherd. I don't perceive lack.

So I believe it's coming to a place of rest where you say, I may not have it, but if I can get my insides together, if I can get my thinking together, if I can get aligned, if I can move away from the sense of I don't have to, I do have, I just need to find what is for me, then it will appear. And I bet that is probably something that you experienced bouncing back from.

Yeah, absolutely. It was real. The reality was, is my, my first mentor told me a long time ago, he says, you, you, you have to be willing to do today what others won't. So you can have tomorrow what others don't. Right. It's probably where I got an affinity for quotes. I love quotes. I love quotes, I love reading them, I love studying them and everything. Right. Cause I love how it make you think. And in that particular segment. He forced me to change the way in which I was thinking. Change the way in which I was coming at the. Coming out the problem. You know, I find that when we're. If our perspective is so, like, pinpointed into our pain, then we can never see the path to prosperity.

Right.

You can never see it, you know, and as a result, you know, I think that I specifically knew that I was going to have to take big steps and they stay and stay consistent on the steps to kind of get to that next level. You know, another thing that I love so much about the book is you actually talk about and this was this. This hit home really closely because I've dealt with some of the same imbalances that they're. Imbalances that kind of, like, keep you from having balance. Like areas of. Of either focus or intention or action that keep you from that. Would you mind breaking down a handful of those imbalance things? Right, right. For everybody. Because I feel like people can see those identified.

Yeah, yeah. It's important. There are signs because to our point earlier, we talked about how, you know, everyone is saying that they want balance, which is ultimately saying that I'm out of balance. But if everybody's saying that I'm out of balance, that means that imbalance has become normal. And so. So your question is poignant because, you know, how do I know? How can I define it so that I can pursue balance? How can I define imbalance like a pursue balance? There are some telltale signs. One of them is stagnation. You know, all of a sudden, you know, there's no move. You can't see things clearly. You're not moving. You feel absolutely stuck. When about maybe three weeks ago, you were rolling, but now something, you know, you're like, whoa, what happened?

It can't even be as early as yesterday.

Early as yesterday, I'm stuck. Like, wait, something's going on. Well, imbalances come in. You know, you need to get back to your disciplines. Weariness is another one. Weariness is a big one because there's. And by the way, there's a difference between being tired or tiredness and weariness. Weariness I define as the gradual gravitational pull down to the tarmac of disaster. You know.

I will tolerate being tired because I can take a nap and fix it. I will not tolerate being weary, because when I'm weary, you're going to have slips in judgment. You know, you're going to have slips and you're going to. I'm just a different person when I'm weary. But weariness is a sign of imbalance, a decline in your thought life. All of a sudden, now you're skewing negative, you know, and so that's a sign. Hey, you know, I'm imbalanced. Jealousy and envy is another one. You know, when you're balanced, you know, you're in your flow, you're in your zone, you're happy, you celebrate success no matter who it's on. But when you're imbalanced all of a sudden and you, you know, again, you, you don't. You can't see your way forward. Your lack of clarity is another one you can't see. You know, you're, you're stagnant. Now all of a sudden, I am actually offended by someone else's success because I can't access it in my place of imbalance. So those are signs that let you know, hey, you know what? I need to stop. I need to pause. I need to get. I need to connect with myself, connect with my soul and get back to balance so that I can get back in the. In the game of life.

Yeah, man. Dude, that's so good. That is so good. You know, I'm reminded Jesus said, come to me who are weak and weary and heavy laden, and I'll give you rest. And I was just thinking if the, if weariness is. And I've a lot of my very bad decisions that I've made in my life, and I've made quite a few, thank God, I've survived most of them.

Yeah, you and me both, right?

Exactly.

Is. Is the, is the recipe or the antidote for weariness rest? Right. My team has even been on me. We're in a, we've been in a push season for quite some time. We, you know, we hosted a live event back in October. I've got Ed Milet and a few others coming for his book launch at our live event center. And we're doing some exciting stuff and everybody's working super hard. I'm, you know, we're all working, you know, put in a lot of hours, a lot of time, energy. And Brian on my team, he's one of our video technicians, came to me today, said, dude, you need to get away for three days. Like, you're, you're, you're like. My team has become my barometer. Like, they know when I'm operating in flow, when I'm operating in the best of me, and they also know when I'm not operating in the best of me, you know, so. And I was beginning to feel that Weary. Right. That, that it was somehow related to tiredness, but it was more like I'm just almost to the point of exhaustion. Right. So is the, is the antidote for weariness, rest, or is it go deeper than that?

It definitely goes deeper. I think rest is a part of it because, you know, sometimes the tiredness and weariness get together, get married, have a baby, and it looks like us.

Yeah, that's right.

So you definitely. Because sometimes you can't even really access the disciplines, the spiritual disciplines that you need to access when you, when you're tired. So I think that there is a physical rest that you should avail yourself to. But if all you get is physical rest, you may not get the breakthrough that you need. And so physical rest, for me, it's been my experience that, that, that the first thing I know sometimes when I'm in that place and I need to get away, the first day is just straight out rest, you know. But then once I get a physical rest.

Yeah, okay.

Yeah. And then once I get that, and I kind of get that monkey off my back, now it's time to go deeper. And now it's time to get still. And now it's time to. I like to go and revisit the things that I've been told in the past. You know, words that I've received, insights that I've received about my life. Am I still aligned with that? And if I am not, that doesn't necessarily mean that there's something wrong. There might be a new instruction. So I'm really taking inventory of everything that's happening. Where am I? And then I asked the question, who am I? One of my disciplines, one of my daily disciplines. I spend typically between 30 minutes and an hour in the morning, and I'm looking at, you know, you know, I'm meditating, I'm praying, and. But, but what's important? Well, all of it is important, but I'm looking at things that I know or things that I should know, things about myself, my identity. And I'm asking the question, who am I? Because life will change, and the next thing you know, you'll. You'll lose sight of who you are. You'll lose sight of where you're going, you'll lose sight of what matters. You know, all this stuff happens when you get weary. So I'm going back to the drawing board because for me, that time is my mirror time. So. So when I go away, yes, I'm going to get some rest, but I'm also going to raise that mirror up to me. And I'm going to raise that mirror up and find out if I am in. In that moment who I know I am. And I mean, I even do that before I even say hi to my wife, because I want to make sure that the right version of me is talking to her. But no, it's physical rest. But then you also got to get in there and do the work, make certain that you're being and are aligned with the highest version of yourself.

Dude, that's so good. That is so good. You know, I think. I think too many of us, we get lost in ourselves without actually searching ourselves, right? We're lost in our I just got fired or there's inflation coming like crazy, or God forbid, another Covid, or, you know, just all these different things that we put in front of realizing that we have created value that we get to exercise on a daily basis, but we only find that created value and if we choose to exercise it in those moments of rest and replenishment, stuff like that, you know? Dude, I love it. You and I could talk for days. One of the things I love most about the book here and yeah, so everybody, I actually have a copy. In fact. This is a highlighter book, folks. This is not a book. I recommend you actually read one chapter at a time with a highlighter and a notepad, folks. So make sure you do that. But probably one of my favorite chapters is chapter six, the power of no. Let's talk about no, because yes, it's got me in a lot of trouble.

Absolutely. Well, no, it's one of my favorite chapters of the book and I have to resort to it because the reality of it is, for a lot of us, we don't necessarily like to say no, you know, to say yes to something we're asked to do something, you know, to say yes has immediate gratification. Instant gratification. You didn't disappoint someone. Everyone wants to be liked and loved, et cetera. But what I realized was my yes is expensive. And this is why no is important. No is important because your yes is expensive. And what I mean by that is that if I give out yeses all of the time and again, I get that instant gratification. Everybody likes me, you know, I'm people pleasing, everything's good. Oh, he's such a nice guy. When. When life presents me something that I've been praying for, working hard for, you know, went to school for whatever for, I don't have a yes to give because I availed myself when you say yes you're availing your. Your time, your energy, your availability. You're giving that all the way.

Yes.

It's expensive.

Yeah.

And what happens when something that really matters comes along? But I committed myself with something that I should have said no to. Now I'm frustrated. Now I've got a missed opportunity. So I love no. And here's another thing I love about no. No will qualify the relationships that are in your life, because some relationships, they only work because you always say yes. So I think it's almost healthy to throw a no out there every once in a while to see if that's going to disrupt the relationship to qualify it. So no. No is everything. Yes is expensive. And you have to have a healthy amount of no's. And in order to make certain that you can say yes to the things that you've been praying for, things that matter, and the things that you have invested so much of yourself into.

Yeah, absolutely. And it's funny, a good friend of mine, Dave Ramsey, always says that no's a complete sentence. It's a complete sentence. Um, you know, it's interesting as I'm. As I'm kind of like thinking through the nose and stuff like that. And what it is, I feel like. I feel like when we say yes and we're looking for the instant gratification, it's not so much people pleasing as much as it is insecurity. It's like, show me that I'm valuable. Would you say that's accurate?

Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. If you don't, if I'm not affirmed by you, it's almost like selling your. It's like selling your soul a little bit. I'm so desperate because of my insecurity for affirmation that I will even sacrifice myself. I'll sacrifice my yes to get it. I completely agree.

Yeah. So for sacrifice and our yes to get it, then we're giving away the most valuable commodity that we have, which is our time. Right. And I think for me and I. And I assume for you, because you obviously, you guys have a ton of things going on, not just with the church, but with business and everything else. Books and everything. Right. And family. Right. Because I've been. I've been trying to really focus in for myself and saying no to a lot of things I would like to say yes to. Maybe they're things that I enjoy. Maybe there are things that I would want to invest my time, my talent, my energy and resource. But if I do, then it takes away from time with my wife. Takes away from time with my kids. In fact, I've told my audience here before that one of the biggest things that I've. In fact, the only thing I could think of after everything that I've lived through in my life, which my story is a bit like. Joseph.

My one regret. I have one regret, and that was that I chased a personal brand while my wife was still healthy.

Wow.

I missed two years of quality time with my wife for an extended period of time because I thought I was chasing an impact. I thought I was chasing this, I thought I was chasing that. And out of that, it kind of taught me the importance of saying no. But at the same time, it also taught me something else that I think it's in the book through and through, but it's something that there's. That I want to talk about, which is the importance of confident humility, like being humble in oneself and to kind of get yourself right. How important is being humble in the air and how you approach life?

Oh, it's everything to not take yourself so seriously. It's funny, you know, this. You know, on Easter Sunday, you know, my whole message was around the mind of Christ.

Yeah.

And it basically spoke to his humility, you know, being in the form of God. Thought of, not robbery. I don't want to make this a Bible study, dude, you know, but people.

Know I'm a person of faith. I don't hide it. So you're welcome to speak how you want to speak, bro.

Okay. But it basically talked about how. It talked about his mentality, and in the context of that. Of that passage, it talks about how he could have made himself of, you know, amazing reputation. He was the son of God.

Yeah.

But he makes himself of no reputation. He comes in the form of a servant. Well, first of all, he comes in the form of a man. That's a major downgrade.

Yeah.

And then when he finds himself in appearance as a man, he humbles himself again. He could have said, oh, no, no, this is beneath me. But he says, no, this is. I'm going to submit to this process in humility. And he submits to this process, and the next thing you know, he is being highly exalted, giving a name which is above every name. And everything around him now is. Is celebrating.

Yeah.

Be celebrating him and who he is because he made himself low.

Yeah.

And I think that sometimes we take ourselves too seriously. And at the end of the day, you know, you shouldn't think less of yourself. There's a passage that says, don't a man should not think more highly of himself than he ought to, which means that he ought to think highly of himself.

Yeah.

But for me, humility has been the ticket. It is not self deprecating, but to acknowledge, you know, go stand on the. On the shore of an ocean or go stand in front of, you know, the Rockies, or go stand under the. Feeling really important. Go stand out under a night full of stars.

Yeah.

And then tell me if you can make just one of those things happen.

Yeah.

You know, so, so, so, so the reality. Yeah, just one. Or how about this one? Tell me how you are making yourself breathe right now. You know, and so to. To move through life. Here's a definition of power. Because everyone's. Everyone wants to be powerful. The definition of power is the ability to move through life with grace. To move through life with grace. And so for me, humility is everything. 1. It puts me in a posture of always searching, always seeking to improve. I haven't arrived. I don't have it figured out. It makes me a good listener to God, to life, to those that are around me. And I think, honestly, some of the great things that have happened to me is because I keep. How unimportant.

Yeah.

I really am in front of me.

Yeah. You know, it's funny, my grandfather was very patient with me as I found my way to Christ. Took. Took me a while. And I remember I would go to him every so often and I would say, hey, granddad, you know this, that the other thing is going on with life. And he would say, well, you know, Bible this, God this, Jesus that. I'm like, whatever, you know, whatever you think, whatever he's like, I'm telling you, son, you just need to dig deeper. You have to dig past the answers that you want.

And as I began to do that, I ended up finding my faith along the way. But more than that, I had trust to be able to move on from my shortcomings and the adversities and the deaths and all the things that had happened in my life. And I know one of the core themes in the book that I love so much is the power of trust.

My question that centers around trust is how do we trust again when we've been through major life adversity so we can actually set ourselves free?

Absolutely. It's hard because when devastation comes, it attempts to redefine you and reshape you and redefine life, and we have to fight against that. But one of the reasons why we can't get past it is because we don't honor the pain. You know, we and when I say honor the pain, I mean taking a minute and honoring the fact that it, hey, ouch. This really hurt me. Because that's really the beginning of the grieving process. So a lot of times people don't grieve. If you don't grieve, you can't trust life. Grieving is a part of the process of getting back to trust. And so. So I do believe it's important. You have to have a seasonal mentality. You have to remember that no matter how devastating something is, it's just a season, you know, and you might say, well, yeah, but man, my season has been forever. It seems like all my whole life has been a season. Well, I'll tell you this. And again, I'm going back to the word. There's this passage in Deuteronomy 28 where the promise is, if you get aligned with God, he will overtake you with blessings. And so if you can experience and come to believe that life can deal you a series of blows, then you have to find it within yourself that you can also enter into a season. Well, life through God will deal you a season of blessings. I, like you, have been through some challenging things in my life. I remember at 18 years old, my mom threw a birthday party for me and these words came out of my mouth. Wow, I can't believe I made it this far. Steven, I'm 18 years old and it almost hurts to think that at 18, I felt like it was this major accomplishment. Why? Because my life up to that point have been marked by so much, you know, difficulty and I lost friends and all that sort of stuff, you know, but it was just a season. And. And so we have to work to believe that. Hey, I just. I'm just crazy enough to believe that if I can have an abundance of wrong, then I'm going to enter into a season. If I can just stay positive and do the work, be radically honest. I believe that I'm going to come into a season where, if that was, if I experience perpetual disaster, I just believe if I'm still alive and there's breath in my body, I don't believe that God is keeping me alive to take me down. I believe that my finest work and my finest hour is yet in front of me.

Yeah, no, that's so good. I really strongly believe, and I'm sure, I guarantee you the answer to this question will be yes. I know for me, everything that I thought was going to destroy me ended up building the exact steps that ended up building me. I assume that happens to you, that.

Is so emphatically true. Let me say this. I have a saying. Never waste a perfectly good failure.

Because if you will do an autopsy on your failure, you will find principles, tools, insights that will set up your success for decades. If you see it right, it's all about perspective. There's a difference between failing and being a failure. There's a difference between losing and being a loser. And it all comes down to perspective. I do autopsies on my failure because there's a treasure in finding out what went wrong. How can I do better next time, man?

Dude, the next time I'm in la, you and I are having lunch. A long one.

Oh, for sure, for sure.

I'm having a blast over here. Well, I know we're out of time, and I know I went over time a little bit, but I appreciate you hanging in there with us. I. It's rare that I have a guest on. I've been very fortunate to obviously have Sarah on as well, and I've been. It's rare that I see so much coming out of so many, so few people. And when I have them on, I just. I just want to. I just want to squeeze like an orange. Get that orange juice out right kind of thing. Where can everybody else pick up balance? This amazing book. Again, this is one of my favorite reads so far of 2022.

Wow. That means a lot coming from you. They can go to thebalancebook.com thebalancebook.com and they can get it anywhere books are sold. But there's, you know, there. There's a bunch of things that they can. Extras and stuff. They can get@the balancebook.com.

Awesome. How about anybody connecting with you on social. What's your favorite? What's your favorite place? And by the way, guys, if you haven't found a church yet, check out one for sure.

I love Instagram. I'm on all the platforms. Instagram is my favorite. I spend the majority of my time there. And it's just at Torre Roberts. T O U R E Roberts.

All right, man. Dude, I can't thank you enough for spending some time with me. Dude, thank you so much. And yeah, you have to keep me. Keep me in the loop of everything you're working on, man. You guys work on some pretty exciting stuff.

I certainly will. Looking forward to continue to build. This is great.

All right, take care. Peace.

Okay. Blessings.

Okay, if you love that interview, go ahead and check out this next one right here.

The end of the day, whether we are moving or staying stagnant, we're giving ourselves permission to either stay stuck or to evolve. But there is permission being given in some capacity.