It's Love in the Friend circle

The podcast discusses the importance of self-empowerment and having the right friends to support your goals. It emphasizes the need to be your own cheerleader and recognize your own potential. It also highlights the significance of celebrating both wins and losses. The speaker shares a story about teaching their 10-year-old about cause and effect and power isolation. They encourage listeners to step back, listen, and learn from their surroundings before jumping into a situation. The speaker also emphasizes the importance of having a supportive friend group and how they can help elevate you to another level. They acknowledge the fear and vulnerability that comes with asking for help and the need for support. The speaker concludes by emphasizing the impact of surrounding oneself with the right people and the importance of having open and impactful conversations with them. Grand Razz, it's Willie Whittle, it's Shobby Dope, this is the podcast, let's get into it. So check this out, early morning, early morning this time, I woke up with a little bit of a vibe on my heart this morning. We all got friends, we all got friends, and we all have this algorithm going through our Instagram feeds right now, and our Facebook, and our, I don't know if anybody's on threads or anything like that, but the algorithm is cooking right now for people to empower themselves and to either cut off the friends that they don't need, or really identify the friends that they do need. You know, one of the things that I keep hearing is, you know, you're there by yourself, you're your biggest supporter, you're your biggest cheerleader, you have to be the person who is the driving force behind your own goals. I do not disagree with that. You have to be the person who's going to get you up every day, who's going to push you to that next level, who's going to take you where you know that you want to go, because you're the only person who knows where you want to go. There's not a lot of people who can say, hey, I know that path for you, I know where you want to be in five years, ten years, whatever, like, heck, six months from now. So you have to really be the person who understands what you can do. And I have a powerful, you know, statement from one of my friends who created a vision board, and when she created this vision board, her vision started speaking it into her life. So we suggest these things to ourselves, and unless we put it into a place where we could believe it, we ain't going nowhere. But that's one of my points, right? We all have to be our best friend, our biggest supporter, and we're always going to be our biggest critics, because we're always going to be harder on ourselves, because we know the intricacies of if we did everything that we were supposed to do. Did we get up? Did we push hard enough? Did we sacrifice a Friday, Saturday for the grind? How do we feel about that? But we've got to give ourselves some grace and celebrate some of the losses, too. A lot of people don't celebrate those losses, and one of the things we do is we definitely be down on ourselves, and we feel like we've got to recenter. I urge you guys to think about something. When you do something right, like when you get the he's so awesome or she's so great and she's fantastic, everybody roots for you when you win. Everybody's there when you win. When you're losing, who's there, right? That's not a bad thing. It's just a realization. We dump information and we dump energy into people who may not be there to support us like we need them to for the same wins, and that's okay. It's real life. We're here. We're grown. We need to have the hard conversations about people, about people, about our feelings, about what we know, and about our drive, right? Funny story. I was talking to my 10-year-old yesterday, and he told me a story about him and some kids on the bus or whatever, and one little girl, I guess, told him a secret. She was like, hey, something, something, something. He's like, oh, where? He takes the secret and he goes and tells his boy. He's like, I mean, it's my homie. I got to tell the homie. He runs over there and he tells the homie. He says, you know, this, that, and the other. Now, I think the little girl's plating because another little girl came up and said, why did you tell him? He was like, or no, she said, you told somebody the secret. He said, I just told this person. I told her myself, right? Then they started going off on him like, well, you know, it was a secret, and da-da-da-da-da, and he wasn't supposed to say nothing, right? They kind of put him in the ringer, but they was right. I mean, they was right. They was wrong. I mean, you know, we got a code. We always had the G code back in the day of, hey, my boy about to go. You can't tell me nothing. It's like, you tell me, I tell him. We the same person, you know what I'm saying? But in the grand scheme of things, you know, she gave him a secret, and it was like, okay. He could have just locked it away and kept it cool. Now, what ended up happening is when I taught him about cause and effect. So I said he had an occurrence, and then afterwards, he ended up getting his feelings hurt because the little girls told him, like, you know, you're not trustworthy, and you lie a lot, right? And that one hit him in the heartstrings. He was like, man, okay. At 10 years old, you know, words hurt. Words hurt kids. People don't understand that. And so he took that to heart, and that's why he told me that story. And I was like, well, this is what we're going to do. We're going to talk about cause and effect, and we're going to talk about a little thing called, you know, power isolation. So most people know what cause and effect is. You know, something happens, and then something happens after that, right? So we had that conversation, and I was like, you understand the cause and effect. You're like, I do. So I was like, so let's talk about power isolation. This is where you get a balance of your power back by isolating yourself from minor situations. It's not the world. It's not everything. It's just minor situations. I urge you, I encourage you, and I challenge you to step back and in these situations where you would be the amped up person, you would be the first person to talk, you would be eager to say something, I want to speak on this, I challenge you to just step back and listen, right? I want you to just listen because sometimes if you do that, you learn a lot more about your surroundings and the people, the variables around you before you jump into the equation. You start seeing the equation a little different. And he was like, okay. And I said, I challenge you to do that Monday, tomorrow, well, today is Friday. I challenge you to do it today, Friday, and Monday. And then if we go anywhere over the weekend, I challenge you to just pay attention to your surroundings. He's like, okay, I'll do that. Because that's the only way that he'll get the, you know, the emotional intelligence of the child is a little different from us as an adult because there's a lot more variables that we have to deal with. But he can start recognizing it a little earlier. And that takes me back to my point of we have to work on ourselves. You know, we definitely got to work on ourselves and see where we can take us, expand our mind, use our creativity and our imagination to push the boundaries and get us to another level. But here's the other caveat to this, right? Your friends are important. And once you identify the friend group, to me it's my love circle. I have a love circle. And these are the people that I literally have in place that if I need something, I make a phone call and they got me. I can pour into them. If they need something from me, they can call me and I'm there. That's my love circle, my core love circle, right? And I know who to call when I need it. They pump me up the way that I, like we know each other. We know each other. And without them, you know, I know a couple, two years ago, right? And it was two years ago and a couple days where I needed my love circle the most, the most. And they were there. They caught me. They held me. They made sure that I was going to stand back up, right? They held my crown when I put it down for a little bit. Like it was, you know, me really needing to adjust myself, me needing to grieve. And the moral of the story is like you can do a lot of things by yourself. You can be strong by yourself. You can push. You can be magic by yourself. But when you identify the right people that can support you, that can feed into you when necessary, then you can take it to another level. You know, people don't talk about fear a lot. People don't really get into the concept of, hell, I'm scared. I'm weak. I'm tired. I'm scared. I need a little bit more. I need that push to get me to another level. What's pushing me? What's driving me? What's helping me? And I don't ask for help. Like I'm the guy. I'm stubborn. Like Willie Whittle, this guy is stubborn. Like I don't ask for help. I'm like, no, I got it. I got it. But I also am the guy who may lash out later and say, where's everybody at? You know, so that's counterproductive to me, something that I'm definitely working on. But you got to call it out, right? And you got to get the support. It's funny that, you know, I talk about this because everybody, you know, looks for the support. And some people wish they had some support. And some people are just like, nope, I'm driven. I'm driven. I'm cool. I don't know the right equation. I don't know the right answer to this. I just know that there are times where some people need it. And, you know, your vibrations will urge that for you. Your energy will urge that for you and put it in front of you if it's necessary. So, you know, I love my friends and my friend circle. I can definitely go far without them. But with them, I will continue to go far. I will hit new peaks. They'll help me open new doors. And, you know, I want people to understand the people that surround them. Somebody holding you down, yeah, you know what to do. But you got to be strong enough to have that conversation with the right tact and the right, you know, what's the word I'm going to use, in the right way, in the right form. Just have that conversation, right? Make sure that it's impactful to you. Make sure it's impactful to the person and you didn't diminish, you didn't deteriorate anybody's spirit, soul. You know, you can do that. It's a nice way to do that. But also, you know, I link a lot of things to, turn that alarm off real quick. I link a lot of things to music. And this one, you know, this one, I'm a, first of all, you know, I'm a rap fan. So a lot of my stuff goes back to a bunch of rap music. And then I woke up to Jill Scott. Jill Scott. Queen. Queen Jill Scott, by the way. Dope. Dope person. If you're new to it, listen to it. Jill Scott's been around for a real long time. But just a little bit of It's Love, you know. They say I'm buggin'. The way you got me feelin', baby. Don't ever judge my singing voice, but I be in my bag sometimes. And when I feel it, I feel it. So it is what it is. But it ain't a question of pride. It's love. It's love. That's the quote from the song. That's the song. It's love. It ain't about none of that. We can't sit here and wonder why. It's love. Whatever we do in this lifetime, we got to make sure that we love each other. You're going to move in this path. You're going to move in your energy by yourself. And that's true. You got to love yourself. It takes a lot to love yourself sometimes. It takes a lot of hard love. You got to speak on the hard stuff. You know the hard stuff. You know the dirty, naked truth inside your mind. You still got to love yourself. And then, at the end of the day, if you got a team, you got to do a love circle that's going to support you. And your ups and downs, they see the best in you. They see the value in you. Then cherish that. Cherish that, too. So when your friends line up, make sure they're on that line for you. You know, make sure they're defending the quarterback. The quarterback being your heart. Make sure they're defending it. And you're doing the same thing when it's their turn to play. So, yeah, I love my friends and my friend circle. And, you know, I couldn't get where I wanted to without them. So it's love. It's love. Continue to go down that mission. Continue to take this journey with me. The mission is peace. That's a warrior's mission in life. And as long as you pursue that mission with love in your heart, it shall be dope. Have a good one, y'all.