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Mic check. Mic's on. Camera's rolling. Roll camera A. Roll camera B. Let's do this.
Good morning. Good evening. Good night. Good afternoon. Whatever time you're listening in,
wherever you're listening from. Shout out to my Spotify listenership, Apple and Google Podcasts,
Stitcher, and YouTube if you're watching in. Thanks for giving me a reason to get dressed.
Coming live from my voice to your phone, headphones, TV, or car stereo. You could
have been anywhere in the world, but you are here right now. Let's take a moment, be present and
recognize that it is now, right now. Whether you're right now is working, running, exercising,
cleaning, flying, driving. Let's just be grateful we're alive. Failure can be frightening. However,
as Winston Churchill reminds us, success is all about going from failure to failure without losing
enthusiasm. This is I Will Not Lose podcast where we set out to prove everything is learned from
failure, and we must persevere and recognize it as one step closer to success. I'm your host,
Tony Ortiz. Let's jump right in. Today, we're going to talk about the power of rest and reflection.
And the failure I'd say overall that we're going to overcome today is just this Western philosophy
that you have to just grind like this hustle culture. I mean, it's insane. I get it, work.
I work as hard as anyone, but it's all about the power of rest and reflection. So today we're
going to talk about what happens when you take a break, take time off, the dangers of burnout,
the importance of self-care, and my personal stories for how I've been finding balance in
my life recently. So I've got a little bit of personal stories to share about it. This is
coming off of somebody who is a self-proclaimed workaholic. And I've also gone through a nervous
breakdown earlier in my life, trying to burn the candle at both ends with my graphic business.
All I wanted was to be busy and have enough work to fill a whole day. And then a whole day
turned into 13 hours. And even if I would work 13 hours, there was still 14 hours worth of work
the next day. So I found myself in a vicious cycle. And I tried to learn from that. I remember
as I was away, just completely shut down, didn't reach out, follow up with anybody for about two
weeks, maybe about 10 days. And there were people that were upset, leaving me voicemails. And a few
of them said, okay, this isn't like you. And I'm not reaching out to find out of the status of my
project. I just want to know if you're okay. And those are the people that I still work with to
this day. When I did eventually get back into a creative business, I work with people that we
have a mutual relationship. If I'm expendable, if I'm just a means to get something done and an end,
and we're not really looking to build a relationship or grow each other's businesses
together, I only have so much time. It's all love to everybody. I love to help everyone. But
this is just something that I said, I got to find a balance in life. So this time around doing
things. I'm careful about which projects I choose and things like that. But I wanted to talk a bit
about self-love, self-reflection, and I'm going to have her on as a guest. We've been back and
forth in the inbox putting something together, but my Keisha Guider put out a book called
Self-Love is the Best Love. I have to purchase it still. It's on my list right after Dave Goggins
Never Finished. I'm listening to that audio book right now. But I want to make sure that I give
that book the proper dues. So I've known my Keisha for a while through social media,
always putting out positivity. Back in the Snapchat days, I was all about putting out
positivity. And it's one thing to go and see a motivational quote and say, okay, I want to become
I'm a conduit of this and I want to put it out to my followers and say this in a specific
way.
But it's another thing to actually live it and actually be a shining example of this.
So I just absolutely love the energy that my Keisha has been putting out and putting
out this book.
I told her I started a podcast and she was like, well, that's your moment.
She failed to mention that she's a published author.
So I'm like, man, you got to let me know when stuff like this happens.
So I want to get her on the podcast to talk about it. But I'm getting gems just in talking with her as I forget how the conversation came up. But she tells me that she's feeding her inner child. And I said, what is this? Tell me more about the inner child.
She tells me it's a psychological term, essentially a cognitive behavioral therapy where it's about feeding the joyous part of your life, just doing things that make you feel like a child in terms of personal development.
So she's giving me all sorts of examples of things she does, including, sorry to put your business out there, sis, but I just thought that it was amazing that she was able to just become a conduit of what self-love is.
I mean, when she literally wrote a book on it. So I'm going to listen to what she has to say. We started talking about hairstyles and how coming up, we never really knew what to do with our hair.
So part of my inner child that I had realized I had been feeding it without even thinking
about it, but growing my hair out, you know, this was something that I had grown it out
a bit in college, but I didn't really know how to take care of it.
It became unmanageable and I cut it.
For those of you who watch it on the podcast, my hair is about three or four inches shorter
than it was the last podcast I put out.
Um, I reluctantly cut it and I got a little too much off the top.
Uh, I just wanted to trim, but I'm instantly going to grow it back out because I'm finding
all new ways to keep my hair healthy and keep it growing.
And even after I cut it the first time, I still had dreams of long hair.
So it's part of who I am.
It's part of what I, it's part of my identity.
and it's not something to just be cut because it can't be managed. So in learning how to manage it
and having the ability to go and do it. So I took a note out of her book and I'm thinking,
what else can I be doing to feed my inner child? And as I realized, I'm trying to put my finger on
why I'm so much happier lately. And I'm thinking I've been doing tons of inner child work,
tons of it. So I try to always schedule time to game. I make sure that I get on the computer and
play a game with some friends or play some sort of strategy game for myself. That was something
I liked to do a lot as a kid. And I still play similar games. I mean, anybody, I'm 36 years old,
anybody who's grown up from the Super Nintendo age on knows that there's still marketing to a
ton of us. I don't believe GameStop exists for young kids. I mean, it's all hobbyists and kids
my age, but somebody could stand to correct me. But telling myself I'm too old to be gaming,
what are you doing wasting your time? That's the absolute opposite of what I need to be doing.
So taking time to reflect, I know I have a ritual on Saturday mornings, well, Sunday mornings at
this point where i fill up a large coffee and i play a game until my coffee's done and i don't
rush through it but i start to put together my week my whole week for sunday and it comes after
relaxing um i've learned as a creative that the not to get scientific but your prefrontal cortex
your thinking part of your brain like the logical part when that's constantly being pushed and
constantly being used, and you use it a lot in creativity, it gets sore just like any other
muscle, and you just can't flex it. You just can't lift the weight. You can't do the mental
gymnastics. So I know about the power of taking breaks in creativity, but I never thought about
it on the long term of taking breaks throughout life. So the last week I've been exploring what
I'm going to talk about today. And I started looking into things like how do creatives and
not just creatives, but how do highly productive people find the energy? How do they find the
ability to continue to create at such a high level? And I'm finding that a lot of them take
breaks and literally scheduled breaks are a part of what they do. So I was looking to put the quote,
I thought it was from Chris Rock or had said that, you know, a lot of creatives take time to live life and it makes them better at their art.
So I'm thinking about other things I did that gave me that inner child feeling and had a great time rapping and writing.
I mean, for like 10 plus years, I spent all my identity in writing rap songs and lyrics and rapping.
And it was just a great feeling.
So even though the goal is not to be the most popular or even have anybody hear anything I do, I started writing verses again and putting some things together for me to lay down some tracks.
A good childhood friend of mine reached out.
I had mentioned him on the podcast a little bit ago, and we may put out some bonus content of us just having a conversation about music, you know, two friends just chatting.
Not really on theme with the podcast, but I think it'd be cool for a bonus content.
So if I get the time to edit that, I will throw that out there.
So we decide we're going to spend a Friday rapping.
We're just going to put together some stuff.
We're going to start to feel good.
Oh, my God.
I wrote after maybe 11 or 12 years since I actually put pen to paper and wrote any sort
of rap.
And my God, have I matured like it's just night and day.
I mean, I went from having depressed lyrics to rapping about mental health, rapping about
self-love and reflection.
And this was just what came to me.
So what I'm podcasting about is something that I was rapping about, is something that
I feel has become a part of me because it just flows with my mentality.
I know when I was actively writing, I had spent about four or five years writing.
And then when I got to college, so from about 18 to 20 or 18 to 19, I didn't write at all.
I just practiced freestyle rapping, which is coming up off the top of your head with
the next line, the next lyrics.
People can do things like throw a word at you and then you come up with four worms that
rhyme with it.
Really fun lyrical gymnastics.
I mean, this is from when 8 Mile was a popular movie.
So battle rap is just a huge era of hip hop that had existed.
And when I went back to writing here, I thought, well, I haven't written in two years.
This is going to suck.
And the way I was able to put syllables together, it was like, wow, I definitely was exercising
a different part of the brain just in terms of rhyming.
But if you want to get to that level of storytelling, you have to live.
You have to have some sort of experience.
So I had an interesting conversation the other day with a fellow podcaster, Bardalis of the Empower 610 podcast. And I'm watching this kid put out. I'm sorry, I don't mean to call him a kid. He's a grown man. I just it's younger than me, but I still look up to him.
He puts together, um, content rapping in English and in Spanish while running multiple businesses
working and, um, something else he does, uh, podcasting.
Yeah.
As well as doing podcasting.
So I'm like, you know, it's definitely possible.
It's definitely something to do.
And I'm telling him about how I just felt good writing a rap.
I don't know if I'll ever put it out, but I may share it out with him.
and he says you know hip-hop is not a young man's game so what are you talking about he says and he
drops a real gem on me he said we only think that because hip-hop you know you had tupac and biggie
who were killed rest in peace in their 20s so you never really had artists that were at the top of
the game grow and mature it had to wait for jay-z's it had to wait for artists to still be
putting out music that has aged well. Pusha T, there's plenty of older rappers still putting out
music. But on Jay-Z's 444 album, he's rapping about investing in art. He's rapping about real
estate. Those were bars that had completely grown from the person growing. So hey, it's great that
we've seen some people mature like if you take Eminem and you take some of his earlier music
I mean he was really popping and I'd say like 1999 and then he's taking breaks throughout music
but you go from somebody rapping about drugs and all sorts of terrible stuff he was rapping about
and um he has a verse last year about God it's a song called use this gospel he's on with a
um not even gonna mention who he's featured on i don't know now my man yay he just
puts out great music and then goes on an anti-semitic rant it's like so hard man so
hard he's one of my heroes in music now it's hard to even bring up his name without thinking of hate
but it is what it is won't get on my soapbox with that but uh let's hope we never meet our heroes
um you give somebody time to grow somebody time to evolve and you go and you say oh i want the
old artist i want that old artist well that person like like jay-z said you think i worked
this hard to stay the same like yeah i changed you know i think that it's important to give
people room to grow it's important to give people's art time to evolve because the art
really evolves with the person. Writing a rap was an example of that. I'm like, wow,
my mentality is just going straight towards success, towards positivity, towards growth.
I'm at a part of my life where it's not so much about the hustle. It's not so much about the
struggle. So I'm not worried about an old man M rapping or old man Jay-Z. I'm sorry to call you
guys, old men, we'll call you OGs because you guys really influenced the game and helped us put
stuff out. But when I got into taking a break, it didn't feel right. I had my son, he was about two
years old and I had spent time with him on his birthday. And then later on that day, I went to
a performance and I just thought, I am not where I'm supposed to be in life. And I haven't actually
ever been vocal about why I stopped rapping because I mean I went from something that
defined me and I spent every day multiple hours a day doing it to literally just stopping cold
turkey and the irony is it is I quit rap so my son would see that I spent my time with him
and now my son wishes I had more music out wishes I had more bars out he listens to the stuff that
I do have out. So he gave me a little reason to at least put a song, maybe an album or an EP,
but we're going to put something together and go from there. Let's see what I got. Jay-Z,
mature rappers, art is reflective, early Slim Shady, gospel verse. Yes. So you really have
no such thing as wasted time. A lot of people try to think, and I was guilty of this, you think that
you need to be doing what's going to be your entire life, and you need to go 100% with it.
And the truth of the matter is you evolve, you change. You can spend 10 years of your life
mastering something and then still start something new and go from there. I mean,
you look at a Joe Budden who is a successful podcaster and spent a time after a successful
rap career. And some would say he's not the best. Some would put him up there as part of a group
that was one of the most vicious emcees, Slaughterhouse, and now he's podcasting full
time. I mean, you know him as the Joe Budden Podcast. He still has hits out, but it's important
to give people room to grow. You're not who you are the whole life. I mean, I saw a Post-it come
on. It was a picture of two figures. One on the left had a couple of spots, and then the one on
the right was like a complete rainbow with flowers growing out of it. And it says, you've changed.
And it's like, yeah, you're supposed to, you know? So I truly am happy with where I've matured,
where I've grown and spending four days working and going down to four days in my work week,
having a fifth day to reflect, put things together, create, catch up so that I'm not
sacrificing time with my son on the weekends has been working absolutely phenomenally. I'm in a
nicer place. You can probably even hear it in my voice. I'm just calmer in general. And I had the
pleasure on the phone before I recorded today, I was speaking to somebody who had a bout with
pancreatic cancer or pancreatitis. I'm not sure the exact disease, but they almost died. And
they're explaining how they live their life afterwards. And I have the pleasure to speak
with multiple people who have had near-death experiences, and I try to get their perspective
to figure out what really matters in life. And he's not super worried about bank account or
retirement. He put together a dream house. He has things that he needs. He's spending time with his
family. And I think that's absolutely a way to live. I mean, not everybody's in a position where
they don't have to. So shout out to you if you're grinding, if you have to work, if you're at a
warehouse shift right now and you're listening to this podcast, just know there is a light at the
end of the tunnel. There's opportunities for investment. I mean, it's 2023. You can drive
DoorDash or Uber and make 50 grand plus. That's coming from multiple Uber drivers that I've
spoken to. If you're in an area in the Midwest or you're someplace where Uber or things like that
aren't as much of a thing, you can still do Amazon dropshipping and pretty much set up an
online storefront anywhere in the world. So there has never been a better time to create opportunity.
And I think post-COVID, we're seeing the fact that people have found other opportunities. So
when you ask people, why did they not go back to work? Some of it's fear. Some of it's they just
started to realize the things that were important. Some people, I mean, people were dying two,
three years ago. I know this is not a matter of playing it up or playing it down. I don't want
to bring the politics into it, but we suffered a pandemic and people were dying. You know somebody
that knows somebody that died from the disease. And my condolences if it was somebody close to you.
but this is there's very real reasons why the workforce has completely changed i mean even
workers who were around for 30 years that had tenure that were doing great they're asking for
different benefits they're asking for different work force things so there's there's a shift
happening in this all over western society um this all-out work grind till you die you can rest
you could sleep when you die. It's insane, but it's starting to come back. The yin and the yang
is starting to even itself out, and we're starting to see that people are asking for four-day work
weeks. People are taking FMLA leave super seriously. There's a pushback for people taking
spare time and taking time to live life in order to be able to be more productive.
I would argue that somebody working for four focused days versus a slump on Friday, I mean, you're not getting as much done.
There are people, but let's be honest, if you've worked in an office and if you've done stuff, especially if you've worked from home and have something to compare that to, it's night and day, the matter of productivity versus how many meetings or people talking to you or distracting you.
So let's not just go and say that adding an extra day of work is absolutely benefiting anybody. But this is just my own personal perspective. How else have I been feeding my inner child? I had some people over to record on the podcast. That was a blast, man.
got two guest episodes coming up. We've recorded two episodes, but it's probably going to take a
week or two till we get it done in post. I want to make sure the guest episodes last a little
bit longer. They're made to be viewed years, decades from now. It's not so much the flavor
of the week. So I don't have guests on talking about what's going on in the news, but I am going
to have Lawrence Wright, Law the Barber. He's a serial entrepreneur, podcaster, motivational
speaker, and he's looking to do some endeavors. So we just talk about overall business, referrals,
a new venture that he's going to get into, and we'll definitely have him back on the pod. So
I'm excited to put that out. And then we also have Ryan, who is extremely brave, man. This gentleman
in going through some things and overcoming some dark times. And he thought to be completely
selfless and share his story about recovery. And we're going to have that on the podcast. So
that's really a success learned from failure. So I'm excited to edit that one. After recording
tonight, I'll probably spend some time and edit those together. If you guys, well, the numbers
are showing you guys definitely like the episode with my son, Jaden. We had a conversation about
misogyny and just recording an episode and putting it in a time capsule so he can look back at it and
check it out. You know, we have a power as podcasters to document and record. You know,
this is the new radio. So it's absolutely insane. Let's see. Got one more thing in my notes,
but I'm at about 20 plus minutes. So we're going to land the plane here, ladies and gentlemen.
any announcements um big shout out to johnny melendez who came up with a little agreement
and he gifted a uh if you're listening if you're only listening in this is being recorded on an
updated microphone so give me about a week to get all of the levels correct but this is absolutely
an upgrade to the audio experience and if you guys are watching in you know what mike this is
this is that baby man it's my baby so shout out to everyone that supported the show that has made
some sort of gift or contribution dropped a tip uh we really appreciate you man you give us a
reason to keep doing this everybody who reached out either personally through text message
instagram dm youtube comment let me know that you're real let me know that you're listening
and getting something from the show, trust me, man, sometimes I think if I just didn't drop on
a Monday or didn't drop the Tuesday or Wednesday and just didn't drop again, it would just sit
there. I don't know that anybody would notice it was gone. But the fact that this is giving value
to the people that it is giving value to, that gives me a reason to keep going. So thank you.
This is I Will Not Lose Podcast, stories of success learned from failure.
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