Why You Should Prioritize SELF-CARE Above ALL ELSE | Jeezy EP 466

0:00I am so grateful for you. I'm so grateful that you're here today, that you show up every single week to listen to one of our episodes on the School of Greatness. And did you know that this is our 10-year anniversary? That's right, 10 years of greatness. And this holiday season, I don't want to sell you anything. Instead, I just want to show appreciation and I want to do a big giveaway. That's right. Greatness is giving away$500 a day for 10 straight days to multiple members of our community. All you have to do is go to lewishouse.com slash giveaway. And that's where you'll get all the details about how you can be a winner.

0:39And again, we're choosing winners every single day for 10 straight days. 10 days of greatness is my way of saying thank you for a decade of greatness. So what are you waiting for? Head to lewishouse.com slash giveaway and enter the giveaway right now. Hi, my name is Lewis Howes, and welcome to The Daily Motivation Show.

1:26Gave them all out. Wow. I went to this club every week on the east side, and I gave them out. Then we were around town, gave them out, beauty supply stores, beauty salons, barbershops. And I did that. That was the first take. I sort of needed to move a little bit. Then my second take was Trap or Die. So I pressed up 500 ,000 of these. Oh, man. And I just started giving them out, giving them out. Best thing I've ever done, because my grandmother always told me, if you want something from somebody else, give them something first. Right. Best thing I ever said. I could still do those songs right now, any stage.

1:53Wow. Because it was like grassroots. and now I'm getting everybody starting to know who I am and then I put this DVD of all the footage of me just running around with the chapter diet tape and that when I knew it was real when I used to walk into my friends trap houses whatever like my homies or whatever and they would be watching my DVD wow shut up room it'd be like 10 people in there look at the DVD you're looking like y 'all know me it's like oh this is crazy you know I'm saying they're watching me and that's how I knew And then it went from there, because I used to hang out a lot. It's been all the premier clubs, whatever.

2:27And people come up on me like, yo, Jeansy, man, I love what you do, man. Like the six times somebody came to me, it just felt like somebody was paying them to say this. You know what I'm saying? Because it was weird. It just started happening more and more. And I'm like, oh, I want more than something. This is real. Wow. And I started recording my debut album. And while I'm recording my debut album, I was paying for it myself. They come to me about a deal. so I take the deal with Def Jam. And when I'm taking the deal and working on the album that I'm paying for, that they're going to reimburse me my money, I don't know how to perform and I'm not taking care of myself.

3:02And so now I do this show in Jacksonville at the Super Bowl, like in a club, nightclub. The system is terrible and I have problems on my vocal cords already. And I tore my vocal cords. Oh, man. So now I'm one foot in the street, one foot out. I got some buzz as an artist and I got to get surgery. And the whole conversation is, we don't even know if he's going to sound the same or how he's going to sound. So now, I don't know what to do. It was probably one of the scariest moments of my life because now I got to go in there behind you. I don't even have any shirts. So I paid for my surgery with a brown paper bag.

3:36So I made it through that. And then right after that, I got hit with Bell's palsy. Now, my mouth is crooked. So now I'm like hiding because I look crazy. I was scared. I remember talking to my mom. I was just like, Mama, I don't know what to do. But then I realized quickly, too, that I wasn't taking care of myself. At the same time, you don't have people around you that are taking care of themselves. They're not. You're drinking, you're eating bad, you're not sleeping. That was my thing. I sleep when I die. Right. Because you couldn't sleep, you know what I mean? Because you got so many things going on and your mind is in so many different places, but you're trying to navigate it.

4:14And that's why I say the new rich is peace. It is, you know, because, you know, you can have a billion dollars. You can put somebody in the Rose Wars. He's still going to have the same problems. He's going to have those problems in the Rose Wars. Once you become this place where you just have peace with who you are and who you're becoming. And like I say again, I had to give myself permission to evolve because it was almost like I wanted to grow, but I couldn't grow because of my surroundings. These weeds and these things that will hold me back. And when I started to clean that out, I started to like grow and bloom and blossom.

4:44I just started to understand, like, wow, the air is different up here. How did you get to a taste of peace? How did you start to even heal your thoughts, your emotions, your body? Because I'm assuming 40 years of some type of psychological or physical trauma, whether it be not sure where you're sleeping at night, mom's pointing a gun in your face, on the streets who knows what's going to happen every day, sleeping an hour at night, doing that for 40 years. Yes. Seeing friends die, seeing friends go to jail, doing that for that long, there is no peace. There's no healing. There's no time to think about, let my nervous system calm and relax.

5:23Let me process these memories of my past from parents to childhood friends to other stuff that maybe you haven't talked about and really allow my body to feel whole. Right. When did that start to happen, and is that still a journey for you? Yeah, it's still a journey. I learned that when my mom passed. I didn't agree with you. Really? because I'm numb. I've been through it so much. I don't feel that part. Like, I don't know how to connect with that, right? And that's something that I'm working on every day because it's like when you're going through all these things, it becomes normal life to you, right?

5:57And then you have to understand this is what's going to happen. You got to deal with it. You got to keep moving, right? And when my mom passed, I knew that I didn't grieve right. I was just like, something's not right. What's sent me on another mission? To answer your question is, how do you get to that? I'm still working on that now, And that's why I'm even opening up and being transparent about what I'm going through. I think at some point, as black men, we all in that space, bro. We didn't come from a certain type of life. And for me, it took me to get around other people to understand that everybody's went through something, right?

6:29And you got to be different outlets of how you can, you know, just start to dump some of that stuff off. And the craziest thing is, even when I started listening to your podcast, John Maxwell's, and, you know, just different people I just respected, their perspective, I started to get a lot of information about how to deal with those things, who I should reach out to, which is why I'm so passionate about the book, because there's information in there, right? There's information in these shows and these episodes that you do that you wouldn't even expect. I didn't know what processing means. Right.

7:01You know what I'm saying? I didn't know that something from my childhood could affect me worse in my 40s, right? I didn't know all these things, but I'm working on those things every day. I'm working on trust. Wow, man. You know, I'm working on emotions. Like, I love my kids, right? I'm just making sure I'm intentional about connecting with them. Because I know there's some times with me where I get caught up in my world and I'm thinking about everything that I got going on that I might not be present. But then I didn't know there was a such thing as being present. So now I got to check myself on that.

7:31You could be present. You're always hustling for the next thing, probably. So now it's checks and balances. Wow, man. It's in the information. And that's one thing I do like about social media. These days, I hate all the, like, it's terrible. But there's a lot of information there, if you know how to sort through it. It's like YouTubes, like books, like podcasts. There's information that we need that we just can't get from people that are around us because they're searching for the same thing. And I think that's what helped me get on the mission of healing because I didn't know I needed to heal.

7:57I feel like I was Iron Man. You know what I'm saying? Like, I'm good. Like, nothing hurt me. Wow. I felt like that. And then when I started peeling back the layers, I'm like, wow. It's my purpose and my responsibility to open up. That's beautiful, man. Because we don't make it to our 40s and 50s. You know what I'm saying? And we don't make it there being us and still being cool and still being successful. So you have to put things around you and put things in place that keep you held accountable and that fulfill you so that you can go out here and be the best that you can be. And for me, that's what keeps me going, keeps me on the journey of healing.

8:32I don't got a problem saying that now because I got my friends and people that tell me, you know, things like, yeah, I'm really going through this. I'm like, well, I'm here. What can I do? Right. So I'm already knowing he needs to heal. I understand that. So now I give him space to heal. Right. Checking in. Let's go have dinner or something. Let's just get out for a minute. For my coaches, when you go through things, you isolate yourself. You know, and that's like the worst thing ever. You know, and a wall is for real. Yeah, man. You know, a wall can keep people out, but it can also keep you in.

9:01You know what I'm saying? So it can keep the bad things out, but it blocks the blessings as well. It does. I had a wall up for, you know, my first probably 30-some years of my life. Really? A big one. Because that's how I was surviving. It's different to live for love and to live for survival. I was living for survival here. Now I'm living for love. What does love feel like now that you have the wall coming down, or at least a partial wall? It feels like trust. It feels like a village. It feels like community. It feels like support. It feels like understanding. It feels like grace. It feels like those things because, again, you never had it.

9:34And not to say that it wasn't there, but I wouldn't let anybody in. You weren't allowing yourself to experience it. In this world, there's conflict that's loose, and there's, I'm wrong. You're right. You know what? There's, you know what, next time you lose somebody, we ain't there for you. You know what I'm saying? You're going through something, you got help. You know what I'm saying? And if you're feeling depressed, I want to be the one to call and make you laugh and tell you something crazy. You know what I'm saying? Or if you got some issues with your business, I want to introduce you to my lawyers and my friends and their friends.

10:02So now you're like building this community of we all we got.

10:19Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of The Daily Motivation, and I hope you have an amazing rest of your day. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to click the link in the description. That will take you to the full episode of our main podcast on The School of Greatness. And if you are loving the daily motivation, please follow us over on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review over on Apple Podcasts right now. And if you want more exclusive content and ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcasts right now. And if you want to get even more inspiration from our world-class guests and learn how to improve your life and take it to the next level, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter.

11:09Again, have an amazing day and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.