[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, hey, grow squad.
[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to another episode of the Eugene Hamilton podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: How are you doing?
[SPEAKER_00]: Hope you've been having a good week.
[SPEAKER_00]: So far hope that life has been great and grand.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, I'll be preparing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're getting ready for the summer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh, kids out of school all kind of stuff and maybe you maybe not just yet.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, but as you're gearing up, I'm hoping that positive things are happening for you and your family.
[SPEAKER_00]: I hope that you are trending in the right direction and that all things, as you know, I'll continue in the work together for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's pray God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for this time together.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for my friend, my friends, no matter where they are, remind them that you are with them, you're right by their side, in your name, amen.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to talk a little bit today about your environment.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, you should talk more about your environment.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to mean talk more about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not saying complain about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not saying you should be out here doing the most with regard to talking about.
[SPEAKER_00]: You should be talking to yourself about what your environment is doing to you or doing through you or doing for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: What is your environment because you you do know for a while and I remember I was talking to a group of middle schoolers not to long ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I talk to them about, you know, this whole idea that oftentimes when you're in middle school, let's say you're 11, 12, 13, you cannot control your living environment.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to live where your parents, your grandparents, your guardian, whomever the adult in your life is, typically you have to live where it is they can afford to live.
[SPEAKER_00]: If that's in a nice community, then that's what it is.
[SPEAKER_00]: If that's in a not so nice community, that's what it is.
[SPEAKER_00]: So typically,
[SPEAKER_00]: People who are under the age of 18, or people who are living with someone else who who they are dependent on, you typically can't choose your environment, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't choose your environment.
[SPEAKER_00]: Remember growing up in my neighborhood, we called it the gap.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was so interesting because of the gap.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't like the official name of the neighborhood, but it was like we were, we filled in the gap between the hood hood, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And at neighborhoods that were decent in our city.
[SPEAKER_00]: In other words, we weren't super duper down in the ghetto and we were not lower middle class at all, but we were like in the gap.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'll give you a case of point.
[SPEAKER_00]: Most of the people in my neighborhood were working responsible individuals.
[SPEAKER_00]: For instance, the guy across the street from me growing up, he had his own plumbing business, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, it wasn't as booming as the plumbing business is now.
[SPEAKER_00]: But he was a plummet, decent living, had a decent home.
[SPEAKER_00]: The guy next to him had a little lawn care business that he, right, that's how he made his living.
[SPEAKER_00]: The guy next to him was assistant high school football
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, working class individuals who did not have a lot of money, right, but didn't, they weren't low enough on the earning pool, uh, to get food stamps, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And prior to my mother, uh, coming up in the world, we won't, we won't food stamps for a little bit, but that's neither here nor there.
[SPEAKER_00]: My point is, um, we're in the neighborhood where, where we, again, again, we were not the ghetto, but we were not,
[SPEAKER_00]: people who had Nintendo's and TV's in our rooms.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, so we think about that environment growing up.
[SPEAKER_00]: All of my buddies, if their father wasn't in their home, their biological, their elites had a stepfather in their home.
[SPEAKER_00]: Check it out.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that stepfather for the most part as I just mentioned to you was an individual who made it honest living they would go to work and they would come home some of them would play kept in the street with us.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact many of us in the summertime we would jump on my father owned a stump grinding in trigger mobile business and so we would be on the back of the trucks.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because again, we live in the gap.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so if you go to the main street and turn left and go down a quarter of a mile, you would hear gunshots and game banking, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: If you came out the street and went to the right, a quarter of a mile, you would see nice and hand-accured yards.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're in the gap.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we couldn't control our environment, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: What we could control, though, was the company that we kept.
[SPEAKER_00]: What we could control, though, although we couldn't control our environment.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were, they were crackheads on one inner of the street.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were people on the other street doing their thing, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we couldn't control that environment.
[SPEAKER_00]: But you can always control who you choose and who you allow
[SPEAKER_00]: on a micro level.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't control macro.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can control who you allowed to influence your thinking.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can control who you allow to get close enough to you to engage in things that they're engaged in.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when was the last time?
[SPEAKER_00]: You took an audit of your circle.
[SPEAKER_00]: and audit of the people, the three closest people to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: One was the last time.
[SPEAKER_00]: You took an audit of what they bring into your life.
[SPEAKER_00]: One was the last time you took an audit of what you bring into their lives.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's just as important, understand this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because we live in a society where everybody wants to take.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: I will kind of value are they adding to me?
[SPEAKER_00]: valid question.
[SPEAKER_00]: What kind of value are people bringing my way?
[SPEAKER_00]: At the same token, ask yourself my friend, what kind of value are you adding to other people?
[SPEAKER_00]: I see people all the time who want to create content, who want to get a following.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, well, what kind of value are you adding to people?
[SPEAKER_00]: Are people better off because they listened or they consumed your content?
[SPEAKER_00]: As the needle moved by the fact that you took a camera out or you took your phone out and you shared a message or you has an information to give, you know, it's funny because there are people who, um, there's a lot of noise.
[SPEAKER_00]: I put it that way.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of noise in the world today.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whether it's the internet, whether it's, it's, uh, one of those apps who loop peacock to be all the above.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of noise today and here is the interesting part.
[SPEAKER_00]: You and I, with the push of a button, can choose what noise is the loudest in our lives.
[SPEAKER_00]: With the push of a button, you can even listen.
[SPEAKER_00]: The other day, I sound like a old man now.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I was like, oh, you can actually influence your algorithm on social media.
[SPEAKER_00]: you can influence what shows up and I went into my little profile editing my profiles like oh wow.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know that you could block certain things and and do all so you can control
[SPEAKER_00]: What comes in your feed and a lot of people have chosen.
[SPEAKER_00]: Listen, I only want people that come into my feed talking about finances because I'm struggling with my finances.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so the lot of people who say, you know what, if people are going to add value to my life, I want to be able to consume content that's going to help be make better financial decisions.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are people who say, you know what, I need some relational information, some relationship information with my kids or with my spouse.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so their feet, their search window, their feet only brings to them things that's gonna help them in that area.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can choose who you turn off and you can choose who you leave on.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can choose that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't wanna hear all this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, oh, no, no, no, just as advanced as the world is, the world is advanced enough for you to be able to click a button and say, you know what?
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want that noise, I'm not, come on my way.
[SPEAKER_00]: And not just on social media, I would encourage you to do that in real life.
[SPEAKER_00]: And some of you don't want to do this because you don't want to hurt people's feelings.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, what danger it is for you to make decisions in your life, based upon how someone else is going to feel,
[SPEAKER_00]: as you are striving to do something that's best for you and yours.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, in times I've set with people who depressed, they were disappointed because they made a decision to stop hanging with somebody or stop
[SPEAKER_00]: That person began to slain over their name, they began to talk bad about the old, this person thinks that they're better than us or she thinks or he thinks this let them talk.
[SPEAKER_00]: Himia, himia, himia.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you already know that I'm a Jesus follower and they talked about Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, the Bible says he came into his own and his own received him not.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're going to talk about you.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you do something good, they're going to talk about you.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you do something there's not good, let people talk.
[SPEAKER_00]: I need you because we're just about halfway through the year.
[SPEAKER_00]: I need you to take inventory of these last five to six months and twenty twenty six and ask yourself who in my life that I've been hanging with, who has been adding value and who's been sucking the wind out of me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Who's been bringing me hope?
[SPEAKER_00]: Who's been giving me great ideas?
[SPEAKER_00]: Who's been building with me?
[SPEAKER_00]: And who's been tearing down?
[SPEAKER_00]: See, there a lot of people we hang out with who, it's almost like comfort food.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know how it is.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what you should.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, somebody did a nice little real, they were talking about how they, and it's funny.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's applicable now.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it was the manual archo who is former NFL player,
[SPEAKER_00]: From a studio analyst in Trump for one of the football networks, and now he's super blowing up with his own show called Speak easy, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Did it get some layoffs at Fox Sports, and he was a part of that that network group of people who got laid off And so he's making his way doing his own content, but he did a real and he showed up Friends, I may not be accurate, but he showed a piece of Chicken breast and he pointed it said this every day
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, let me show the piece of, let's say fried chicken and he said this wants a week.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me show the picture of like a big bowl of ice cream with like six to seven cookies.
[SPEAKER_00]: He said this wants a month.
[SPEAKER_00]: In other words, he said, the thing that's best for me, I eat it every day, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: He's talking about that chicken breast and thinking a little bit of broccoli beside it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I eat this every day.
[SPEAKER_00]: The thing that's not so good for me, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh, that fried chicken, I eat a little bit, once, once a week, but then I'm gonna check it.
[SPEAKER_00]: My ice cream and cookies.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's all the way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing but sugar.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's tearing me down.
[SPEAKER_00]: I like it though.
[SPEAKER_00]: I eat it once a month.
[SPEAKER_00]: See, there's some people.
[SPEAKER_00]: They need to be in communication with you every single day.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's some people who may not bring you good news, but you can give them a little bit of good news once a week.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's some people who you should on a connect with once a month because that's all you can handle at this point, based on what they offer and what you can give to them.
[SPEAKER_00]: You should spend more time.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm trying to tell you, trying to build upon who you are, trying to become who you supposed to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then you should, sitting around, looking at social media, judging with other people are not, or what they are doing to the lens and what you're watching there.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let me implore you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me encourage you to identify the environments.
[SPEAKER_00]: that truly shape your success and spend more time in those environments.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, we can spend a whole episode talking about success and what the definition of success is for certain people.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some people's definition of success has everything to do with money.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some people with definition of success has everything to do with family.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some people put a lot of emphasis on education and all of those things are wonderful.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, and we'll think about success if you get money, if you get education and you leave your family behind.
[SPEAKER_00]: got ask yourself was a worth it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it was Larry Miller, um, who was once the owner of the Utah Jazz talked about how he worked his fingers to the bones to become a billionaire 90 hour weeks grinding traveling, but missed recitals, miss school soccer games, miss uh, graduations and his kids, uh, don't want to have anything didn't want to have any, he's passed away now, but they didn't want to have anything to do with him because he wasn't there.
[SPEAKER_00]: He gave financial stuff, that to them, money, free rides, cars, all their stuff was fine and dandy.
[SPEAKER_00]: But to them, that blessing success.
[SPEAKER_00]: The other week I had the travel for work as I was providing.
[SPEAKER_00]: training for a group of teachers on the East Coast.
[SPEAKER_00]: My wife had to travel because of a family emergency.
[SPEAKER_00]: And my son had to stay back with my brother-in-law.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he was just super duper confused as to why.
[SPEAKER_00]: My man was gone.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then my man came back and immediately daddy left and then the following week it reversed.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he just wasn't having it.
[SPEAKER_00]: The second week he almost broke down.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I had to travel the third week.
[SPEAKER_00]: he needs to go with this.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, I want to take all the credit my wife and I decided together, hey, he needs to go with us because he's missing us, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Even though you have to go work, and I'm blessed to be able to take my family with me every now and then.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when I can, I need to capitalize on that even more, why?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because these moments are precious.
[SPEAKER_00]: My son is already five.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's crazy because when we started this podcast, my son was three.
[SPEAKER_00]: My son that this time is just moving.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's moving.
[SPEAKER_00]: My second anniversary for this podcast is the next month.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as time is moving, as time is fleeting, those things are important that feed me, those things that are really, really the picture of success.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to spend more time doing those things.
[SPEAKER_00]: So ask yourself, this week,
[SPEAKER_00]: What three things in my life are helping me to grow?
[SPEAKER_00]: And what three things in my life are stunting my growth?
[SPEAKER_00]: Make one intentional swap.
[SPEAKER_00]: take out those things that are stunting your growth and replace them, do more of the things that are helping you to grow.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, if you can, let me know in the comments what it is that you're going to try and do, that you can swap.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're watching on YouTube, let me know down in the comments.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's the one thing that is not serving me well, but here's the thing that serving me well.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna do more of what serving me well.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I can grow and develop and become everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was born to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this is how to somebody who's struggling with success, and this is how to somebody that you know needs to take inventory.
[SPEAKER_00]: of what's helping them to grow and develop and what's stopping them from growing and developing and why still lives being impacted by what it is that we discussed at our hope that you were impacted the hope that you were given some insight that's going to help you go.
[SPEAKER_00]: Grow Anglo please keep tuning in.
[SPEAKER_00]: Please keep leaving reviews.
[SPEAKER_00]: Please keep please rating our podcast our podcast as high as listen It is it is it is growing on Spotify Thanks to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: So thank you for your support.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for your time and thank you so much for your attention I'll see you next week when we come back together for another episode take care Peace