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Welcome back all the smoke Jacket's been a nice two day run. We get to end it off learning something, Yes, sure with some substance. Yeah, I'm excited about that. Excited about this next episode. Yeah, I started hearing about you maybe two, three, four years ago. I'm on no, I was late to the party. But glad we finally got a chance to sit down. This episode is for boys, young men, fathers, uncles, brothers, husbands that might be struggling
with manhood or suffering from suffering in silence. We have someone here to talk to. Six million men are affected by depressing the United States. Every single year. Men die by suicides at are rate four times higher than women. Welcome to the show. Glad to be here finally. Man, it's a pleasure, man, Jason Wilson, I mean, let's get to it. I mean we were doing a little bit off camera and wish the camera was on it because it was just in real and in depth, just this
mental game. We all fight for our physical appearances and then the strength muscular bodies and all, but there's not as much emphasis. There's a little bit more now, but just on the mental aspect of all this and that is to me, it is the most powerful aspect of all this. Talk to us about what got you into this space and why you're so passionate about her.
I saw the ill effects of trauma early on as a young boy. My grandfather was lynched in nineteen I think thirty five or thirty six, and my mother and her siblings had to live with that happening, but then also the aftermath because the police who beat him and lynched him for being just desiring to be a human being and treated that way, they continued their racial terror
after he died. They wanted to make sure that there would never be another estes righte to rise from in the family, and so that the entire community ostracized my family, my mother's family. So you in the black community, and everyone is scared to be around you. So now you're alone with that, and now you're feeling like you were the problem and almost blaming yourself for your own father's lynching.
On a psychological level, traveled down maybe another thirty years, I start to see it play out in my mother's life. My brother, Larry, she had to get her first marriage, was very abusive. My brother's father's father would beat them with the flat size of butchernies, would slap them at the table with that, shoot guns in the home, and
then beat our mother senseless at times. That trauma carried on and to me when I was born in nineteen seventy, but three years after that, my brother Larry was murdered. One day, my mother, while I was in high school, had a nervous breakdown, and that was the first time I saw that the brain wasn't created to hold all that. We've been conditioned to believe that it's like strength or admirable that we do, especially as black men, what doesn't kill us can only make us stronger. No pain, no gain,
even from childhood. Big boys don't cry when you tell a young boy that when he gets older, you wonder why he shuts off. He's apathetic and doesn't want to
communicate with you. He's been programmed at being expressive of his human emotions, and his right as a human is not only counter manhood, but also is viewed as weakness, and so growing up, never wanted to be appearing weak, and so seeing all of this, and then seeing my friends who fell into the trap of what I called misconstrued masculinity or misunderstanding of masculinity and seeing them die, friends getting shot and killed, and then my other brother
Keith getting murdered. I said, something is really wrong with us, and not necessarily with us and eately as men, but the way we've been programmed. And after all of that trauma and then seeing the ill effects of it on my family, when I got married, that's when I realized something was wrong with me, because I was conditioned to believe that got married at twenty eight, hadn't resolved my father wound, hadn't grieved the death of both of my brothers,
just the disappointments in life. I pursued music. I was sharing with someone off camera that I used to be a DJ. That was my desire, Chris Webber. We talked about him, I produced his album, and all of those dreams that shattered, and I had all of this unresolved anger. So when I got married, there was no room for empathy, compassion, patience. I never knew those characteristics. I only knew what it
meant to be strong, dogmatic, powerful, bold. If you're not a comprehensive man, it's impossible to truly be a husband because you have to be more than a protector and provider. One day, I'm talking to my wife in the kitchen and our son, Jason was born, and I wanted to spend more time with them, and I simply said, you know, I wish I had more time to spend with Jason. All Nicole said was I wish you desired to spend
that much time with me. What I heard was another knock on what I wasn't, another knock on who I was as a man, something else I wasn't doing. But my wife was saying, I longed to be with you the way you longed to be with your son. Because I wasn't an emotionally stable man, a verbal process, or a comprehensive man, I snapped, started yelling at the top of my lungs, hit the refrigerator, and within that moment,
my wife, my beautiful wife, Nicole, just sat down. And in the process of that, I saw that I had crushed her spirit. And that's when the most I said, you got major issues you need to resolve. You can't keep running from them. I can't even use you until you become a comprehensive man. And so that journey took me into psychotherapy. I was able to uncover where a lot of my unresolved anger came from. It was from
my dad. You know, like most of us, you know, if the hero in your life isn't invested in you, and you're not the apple of his eye but the worm and the fruit, you know, that hurts, and that creates an anger that I see often with working with boys. And so that's how I started the process to save my family. Here it is, we got married in nineteen ninety eight, two thousand and fifteen. We consider separation all because I hadn't dealt with what was really hurting me,
and so that began. And I could go on and on, but that's how the process started for me. Are you guys still we're still your twenty six years in and this is deep, So it's not like we still don't have problems. Right, We're scheduled to have another therapy session. You know, I didn't want counseling. We wanted therapykay, because typically typically what happens when we're arguing with your wife or your spouse, we think it's that grown person, but it's the broken child within. And as you and I
were talking, little Matt is hurt as well. You see what I'm saying, I don't know if stack I mean,
you haven't really talked on a deeper level. But we lived from that broken boy, and so I wanted to heal that boy so that I can be the man the moment demands, and instead of missing so many moments, I don't want to be an older man who has a lot, maybe financially as far as success and accolades, but failed so much in life regarding my family, and so something that I hold dear in my heart and understand, even from conspiracy, but from even from a generational wealth standpoint,
how important it is to stay in my family, how important it is for my children to see a man who could leave.
I could leave.
They're women I could sleep with, And but I wanted to model what it really means to be a comprehensive man, what it means to be committed, what it means to keep the covenant I made with Nicole at the Altar before the Most High, And it was just so much their brothers that I said, you know what, I fight for things that are far less worth than this. You know what I mean, like that are worthless compared to
my marriage. Why am I not putting that same zeal and saving something that literally could create a legacy that can last throughout maybe three or four generations.
When you say you started with psychotherapy and therapy, how far into that journey? I know we're always learning and always evolving. Did the light turn on for you?
I went to a retreat for men called the Crucible, and I didn't know what to expect. So imagine being in three days in the wilderness, no technology, no one can contact you, and maybe from fourteen to twenty therapists and counselors, and as being a man of the most high, these men were men of faith as well, and so I can't give a lot away because it would ruin
the experience if you guys ever tried it. But at that point in my life, I needed to hear what I missed from my father, and so being around all these men who were not only men of faith but were trained in psychology, they were able to help me go back to the times that has still kept me wounded as a man, resolve those issues. And so that's when I was able to finally cry about the neglect and the abandonment I felt from my dad, the lack of affirmation. But then to hear the words that he
actually has said that I missed due to my pain. Man, it was liberating, and so it takes you know, as men, we're jumping front the bullets for our loved ones, our families if we feel disrespected, But when it's time for us to deal introspectively with what we're dealing with, to go deep to that childhood, that pain, we run because I believe we're conditioned by society that whenever we feel weak, whenever we feel emotions of sadness, depression, with pusillanimous or
lacking courage. So that's why men with relationships, I don't want to marry her until I have everything together. What's the hesitation. The hesitation isn't that you don't love her or you unsure. The hesitation is that you really aren't the man that she thinks you are, because you can't hide. Once you're married, you know they're gonna see. We ain't impervious to feeling insecure, feeling fear, feeling self doubt, insecurities.
But for me, I chose like it's nothing more liberating to tell my wife, Yeah, I'm scared of this decision, but I'm gonna move through it. But that in that moment, Nicole has told me that the fact that I can acknowledge the fear but don't succumb to it, in her eyes, makes me even more of a stronger man. And so I just I didn't want to in my life the way it was kind of given to me. You know, I wanted to. I want to have my mind and just everything I'm involved in liberated.
You know.
I don't want to live for wounds. I want to live from a healed heart.
It's a bar new book out, The Man, The Moment, The Man. Can you explain that to our our followers?
The reason I titled that, that's my third book, probably my last, in regarding the whole Manhood series, how many of us as men are the wrong man in the moment, And we talked about that as well. Often the subtitle is Master the Ten Characteristics of the Comprehensive Man. So comprehensive is just another word for being complete. Most of us are stuck in the first gear of manhood, which I say is masculinity. And when you look up the word itself, it's just an adjective. It's not a comprehensive
definition of what it means to be a man. But when you have a man who only can live by the attributes of strength, bolden, its aggression, or being just a protector and provider. Now his life is only performance based, which a lot of athlete's lives are, then you wonder why you can't trust anyone. It's hard for you to
remain faithful because you can't. You feel that they only the women in your life is because of what you have and who you are, well no, what you do and not necessarily who you are, and so unpacking that you say, wait a minute, you're telling me there's more to being a man than just providing and protecting. And there is. And the issue is a lot of us. And I tell women this as well, because they'll say, well,
why won't my husband go to the doctor. Do you expect a man who entire life is based on giving to go to the doctor, to live longer, to continue to give and don't experience anything of what he works so hard for. They all get quiet. But to some extent, my brothers, that's our fault as well. If we keep wearing a superhero costume, why would we get mad at
those who expect us to save today? You know we have to realize and say, and if anything, we need to be masculine about standing for the life that we design and deserve and take the cape off the strangling us. There is no freedom in the facade. And when we can stand on that, now we can experience the other characteristics. So the ten are I start with the fighter because I knew that would draw men in. The issue is that we fight, but we don't fight the right way.
How many intellectually gifted men we know who are incarcerated from any emotional decision. So you got the fighter, you got the provider. The provider is an issue for me because we give to everyone but ourselves. We forget that we too are a part of the family, and then we get angry when we don't take care of ourselves. The lack of self love. We have the affirmation. So I don't say self love anymore because it's so foreign to us. I say self maintenance. So as men, we
understand what it means to maintain something. As an athlete, you understand, I got to maintain this body for me to perform well and provide for my family. After the provider, you have the leader. Do you lead by intimidation or cooperation. Then after that you have the lover, you have the nurturer. We're all nurturers. Some of the greatest coaches in history were the greatest nurturers. You have the gentleman being a
gentleman or Chivalry isn't dead. And when I studied that, chivalry was not a system to pander to women, but it was a code of honor amongst the medieval knights. So here it is these are warriors of their day, and they practice chivalry as their code of honor. But we've allowed society to make it seem like it's pandering to women to be chivalrous. After the gentleman, you have the friend, and then the deeper with the devotion characteristics, the husband, the father, and the sun. And I close
with the sun, similar to you, Matt. You know my mother lost my mom. I wasn't a comprehensive man when she dubbed this she developed dementia. I was a masculine mail. I knew how to provide and protect.
That was it.
But the most I showed me, says, the only way she's going to get the care she needs from you. You got to become a nurturer. You're going to have to become long suffering and patience. You're gonna have to by all her nails, you may have to wash her, massage your scalp. I would have never done that, but when she almost died from a mini stroke, I had prayed for her to die. I said, most High, this isn't life. Why don't you just take her from me.
She's not experiencing it, and it's really causing a lot of pain, not only to her.
But our family.
And he made it very clear, he says, Jason, that's not love, nor is that sacrifice. Sacrifice is not doing what needs to be done. Is doing what needs to be done that you don't want to do. And the greatest example of that is Messiah or yes Sure or who they call Jesus. Many people don't understand. We see that he died on the cross for our sins, but we missed the part in the garden of Gassemite where he was wavering back and forth like I don't want
to do this. It was something that needed to be done that he didn't want to do, but he pushed through it. So for me with my mom, the sacrifice was yeah, you're gonna cry a lot now, Yeah, you're going to have to answer her forty nine times after you'd told her to answer to her question forty eight times. Yeah, you're going to have to get up at two in the morning, the same way you would have her worry when you were out hanging and didn't call and she
had to get up at two in the morning. But when I became a comprehensive men, in that process made me who I am today, and it made me even a teacher I am amongst boys. And so that's why I ended the book with the sun chapter, because many of us aren't serving sons with still dependents, and it's important when you become a man that you get in a place where you can serve your parents.
It's crazy, how I know. You talk about a lot about how life can force you to be the person that you're supposed to be. You know, they'll tell you. I've always been a protect and provider for like I got to jump in front of everything for all my friends. I've always been that guy. But losing my siblings it
changed me a lot, you know what I mean? And I can see I to never I hate to say I don't have them, but I would never be the person that I am today if I didn't experience that, because my mama tells my wife that she has the best version of me because of everything I went through. You know, I lost my sister and my younger sister, my longer brother two much apart. And I don't think I still handily right. But it's made it made me a better person. It's making me a better person.
I mean, that's all we can do. Brother. Even when I my best friend dropped out of a heart attack on the job with us, my other best friend here Vic, he was in the room with him, still holding onto that. I've been in the gym many times, but I used to love lifting weights and I would grab the waights and just break down cry. And it's been years since he's been gone. But his absence and not releasing it like I thought I.
Had, Yeah, man, it.
You snap it things that like, man, where did that come from? Where is this anger coming from? And that's why I tell brothers, tears when you're really leased them in the natural way through crying, it really stress hormones. All Right, you may now if you don't cry that way, you're crying in other areas. So you're crying with depression, you're crying with suicidal ideations, you're crying with.
Yeah, you name it.
And so these crutches that we lean on eventually slipped from underneath us. But it's a good thing, brother, you're becoming. You became a better version of yourself. Like even in parenting, one of the characteristics is the father and I transparently share. I failed many times raising my daughter Alexis because I was just like you, hard protector and provider. That was just my lane, that's all I ran in. But being a father, the children need you, not to be perfect,
but to be present. They don't need someone who's infallible, but someone who's faithful. My son has a better father than my daughter had, you know, But I still have to go back and make sure I'm still a better father to her.
Now.
What I mean by that is because of the memories and in the lack of affection, because I didn't get it from my mother. Not that she didn't love me, but I didn't realize till recently that because of my brother dying, she was scared to really commit all of her heart to me because she may lose another son. Until my brother sent Claire said he saw it but
never told me. And so here it is. I'm wondering why that lack of affirmation turned me into this teenager and even in my early twenties a man just seeking it through women and never could find it there. And so the goal is always to evolve as men. We always want to have a standard, a goal, or a point to reach. There is no master level in manhood. You keep evolving. You keep evolving, You keep evolving, and
that's the beautiful thing. When you can allow yourself that space and that freedom, mistakes then become instead of condemnation, they become our best teachers. And that's what I tell all men. It's like, look, I've never been a grandfather. When it's that time, I'm gonna have to find a man to teach me how to be one, because it's different from being a father, and I just you know, the goal is to live from the good in my heart. Growing up, we had to wear a facade. We had
to look tough. You know. One of the songs I used to joke about was E forty song practice looking hard. Literally, you know that's what we had to do. You know, you look soft in Detroit. You wouldn't make it so you had to practice looking hard. You were conditioned that way. Even Drake says in one of his songs, I pop bottles because I bottle my emotions. So in the club, you may be doing this, but you miss what this brother is saying. He's saying because I can't express how
I feel, I got to get drunk. I gotta get high. And that's not the path of freedom. That's why I think it's almost over eighty percent of homicide in the United States are committed by us. This is a lot of unreleased aim, trauma and emotional loss, and crying is not something especially from what you went through and myself and even you, my brother, you just don't get over some of this stuff. It's a journey. And I tell my brothers who read my books and hardened street brothers,
they called me, like, man, why am I crying over everything? Jay, Like it's just a cartoon. I'm watching with my son, and I just start crying. I said, my brother, you backed up your entire life. You've been programmed to be stoic. A stoic you can't really express or experience life, and that's why we so quick to commit suicide. And so I tell my brother's like, look, you ain't tired of living,
You're tired of not living. Instead of us complaining about this, and that let's finally fight for what we deserve, and in the process of doing for ourselves, others would benefit.
We kind of started talking to it earlier because I saw an interview able to cray and you spoke to the power of crying, and I, you know, kind of briefly shared my story of growing up by racial black dad, Italian mom, drugs abuse, alcohol, violence, losing my mom at twenty seven. So it'll be eighteen years this November, and I haven't cried. And I mean, like I said, last time I think I cried was maybe ten eleven twelve when I got my ass whipped. But outside of that, like,
have not cried in so long. And from that time, from being the breadwinner, the provider, through college, through the pros, through post career, starting a business and hiring my friends and looking out for everyone and taking care of everyone, like always taking care of everybody, and it gets to the point where, ibbi shit forty five next week, like I'm starting to feel it now, you know, and I feel like I'm almost pouring from an empty cup, and
you know through my actions, I literally just lost my family through being what you talked about, like not I was a strong provider, I wasn't there emotionally, I wasn't empathetic. I wasn't willing to share those emotions, and that was stuffed in my expotement like I don't, you're a wall. And then again trying to dig back and understanding and starting counseling that, like you said, little Matt from back then is still hurt and still trying to find his way.
Although grown Matt feels it seems like he has it all, Little Matt is there more than I realize. And how do you? So? My question is like to all those men that can't or feel like they can or just won't, tears won't come out. I know it's such a refreshing and helpful and good thing to do as a man, But how do you cry if you don't? I don't want to say I don't know how to cry because I've cried before, but I haven't cried in probably thirty years. Your guard it too much.
You have to change your perspective of what crying is. You still deep inside of you, you still believe it's a sign of weakness. It's really is a sign of you being human. And until we get to the place where we can release it, that's when you always feel this raise, this anger, never feeling settled. You gotta smoke some weed, you gotta get something to drink, You need to call that girl, and you don't even hear it. Taught enough about contentment, like when is enough is enough?
You know? Why do I have to keep grinding and keep going? That's not peace, you know? And then speaking of peace, which it seems like the majority of us, that's all we want. Peace is not the absence of chaos, trials, tests, adversity. It's having a calm heart in the midst of those things. So the only way you can have a calm heart in the midst of all of that. For me, you had to start with my relationship with the Most High
through is sure Christ. After that, I had to put the work in, because faith with our works is dead.
Okay.
Once I started putting the work in and digging deep and then shattering the misleading mantos we've been programmed to believe it, I had to start there. I had to unpack why can't I cry but we honor you guys are athletes. When you win a championship, no one dog's Jordan for crying over a trophy or Kobe. But I couldn't cry when my wife walked down the aisle. My best friend linked up in my ear. Dog, if you cry, I'm hitting you and your kidney?
What is that? I cried, Yeah, but you should.
My wife when she lost had the fifth miscarriage, lost our daughter Olivia. I'm next to her and the doctor and he's rubbing the ultrasound the jail over her stomach and we don't hit a heartbeat show boy, And I'm sitting there stoic, because that's all I knew. I got to just be strong. I'm saying, I can't cry in front of her. That's my daughter gone. But if I won a Super Bowl and cry holding it in the locker room, no one would say a word. That's crazy,
that's insanity. So you have to start unearthing the lies when we get there and understand. Look, that ain't manhood. I want to be able to feel even like the concept of the alpha male, that's a lie. There is never a battle between two wolves male wolves to see who leads the wolf pack. The man who created the study. These wolves were even in captivity, so they weren't even in the wilderness. Come to find out, the alphas are
the male and female wolf leading a wolf pack. So in the essence or the example of humans, you want to be the alpha, stay married to your wife and lead a family. That's the alpha, you see. But it's like the society in the world wants to keep us boxed in and locked in, and then they complain when they have a man who's less sensitive, less kind. That's empathetic, let's considerate, volatile, lax patience. You can't have it both ways.
And so with you, I would just ask, you know, for me my mother, I could cry if I see a few pictures of her.
I'm gone.
You know you're still guarded. Something happened in that time that you're still holding on too. And I will work with you till you come to Detroit. I got you, but I see it in your eyes now, it's right there. It's like a damn ready to break. But you got to be willing to say, look all of this you got here, this ain't your identity. This isn't your identity. See when your performance based which is my heart stays heavy. For a lot of athletes that I work with, everyone
wants something from you. You graded as soon as you start dribbling a ball? Are you a five star, four star?
Whatever?
Your whole life? Now you're okay, good. So who I am is based on what I do. You're programmed. Now, then you wonder why you give? You give, you give, and you can't say no, or I give you this, what's the plan? I can't just give it to you. I want to teach you business. So I'm gonna give you a loan. But if it fails, I got you. But if you succeed, you get me back. You can't do that because you're worth. You have been hoodwinked into
thinking your value is based in doing, performing, protecting. That's why it's so hard to take naps. Your brain never consists still because you got to keep thinking how I'm gonna make things happen. The beautiful thing with me, I can my wife, she runs our nonprofit. When our boilers went out when we first bought the building over sixty
thousand dollars, I wasn't worried, she was nervous. I said, God called us to do this, that's his responsibility to replace those, to be able to settle in that and become confident. And then I got called for interview for my second book, and I prayed over the host. It was a Christian show in Texas. The vice president comes down and says, I'm gonna give you twenty five thousand dollars because you can't fake that. So that hit me and caught me off guard. Still wasn't enough to get
the boilers. When I told him the price, he says, all, I give you thirty. But that still wasn't enough. I fly back to Detroit. I wasn't trying to figure out, worrying about how I'm gonna make this happen. He cost me, he says. He texts me. He says, can you jump on a call? I said sure. This man tells me. I thought about this and I prayed, and it hit me. How am I helping a man only giving him half? He sent sixty thousand dollars directly to our nonprofit account,
and I just met him. That was the power. The scriptures say that the power of crisis affected in our weakness. Me allowing myself to be weak and powerless in that moment allowed his power to be perfected in me. So even if you can call yourself a man a god, you'll say a brother. Steph Curry has it on his shoes. I can do all things through Christ, who strengthen me. I say that is possible for many of I mean that is the truth. But can He do all things
through us? So if we're only protectors and providers, he's limited. If he needs us to go to an orphanage and just serve and wipe the faces of babies who are crying and can't can't are they blind or have disabilities, or help parents with children who are autistic. And because you're scared of crying in front of people, you can't even be used by him in those moments. And so who wants to live a life where all I got is based on just doing? It's misery and that's what men want a scare.
I will tell you this too, Matt, Like what I have to learn to I from losing four out of six siblings is.
When you cry, is you know we do a lot of people do.
Think it's a sign of weakness, But that's that's your way of showing you miss him and the way you love him.
Say it you know what I mean. That's why I love.
That's why I'm cool with crying on the short like I was, just like you mad but like y'all know, I cry all the time when something bothered me. I let him out because that's that's the only way I can show those people that I miss him and love him. And if I don't do it, it'll drive me crazy.
No, I feel it's definitely boughted up. Like you said, there's a damn ready to be broken. Also, another thing I've wondered too is I feel like I can give love but can't accept it. I feel like I can't accept love. We don't really get what we put into.
It, or we don't. Again, where workhorse is not war horses, She a workhorse. All he does is work. A war horse not only works and it is ready for battle, but he is maintained, you know, a war horse because he is for workhorse. They send him to off to somewhere to die when he's no good anymore. That's how we feel as men. It's somewhere in little Matt's life where you missed that, somewhere where you didn't feel valued or loved or appreciated, just in our ten minute conversation.
I hear it just from what you shared about certain individuals. So you're guarded. Your brain wants to protect little mac because the pain of facing it feels too great. But that's where we need to go. And as men, it's like, look, yeah, you can be strong. You say you're a dog on the court, football, boxing mma, but let me see you be really a dog and face the issues. Is stopping you from being the man that you need to be.
And men, but once men are in a safe space where they feel that there's no chance of condemnation, that they see the other brothers open up like what you just shared. I've never seen when men stay stoic. They start dropping their guards and they open up and they break down. Majority of men are carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders and are waiting for somebody
to say how you doing and really mean it. I had one guy h engineered for my audiobook one of his children, but both are autistic, and he had shared he he was watching the son trying to do something we do effortlessly every day, brush his teeth, and his son was just struggling just to accomplish this one thing. And so as a man you may know, may have a friend like this, but it's not your problem. So you really aren't really empathetic towards your man's Imagine driving
to work with that. He broke down crying. He just needed an ear. Somebody said, Man, I just acknowledge your pain. I acknowledge the hurt so many of us we never hear. Man, that's a lot what you've been through, Matt Man, I see the tears well up in your eyes. I couldn't imagine all of this happening. And then not knowing why are you so guarded?
Now?
It lets like you know now I'm not crazy for the way that I feel, And maybe let me take another step to go a little deeper so that I can heal and break free from that. And like you said, my brother, about tears, it's honoring those that we've lost. A friend of mine, grandmother, had died. At the funeral and I'm sitting I mean at the funeral, I'm sitting next to him. He couldn't cry, and as I'm listening to her obituary being read, this woman was a pillar
not only in the community but their family. I just leaned next to him. I leanked into him. I said, hey, your grandmother deserve your tears, and I just leaned back. Matter of seconds, he broke down. He just needed the freedom. Yeah, it's a mission to cry. It's okay. And we tell our sons what to be fearless, right, No man is fearless. No one is fearless because we all have something we love that we don't want to lose. When you tell a boy to be fearless, it'd be like one of
my students. Well, he wasn't the stude. He wanted to be in the cave. He went to a party he knew he shouldn't have been at because there was a rival game there. Guys that didn't like him were jealous of him. He went anyway, Why I ain't no whole. Ain't nobody gonna stop me from doing what I need to do? Beautiful young boy. That was Saturday. I get a call he got shot and killed. N watching his father, beautiful man standing next to this casket like a soldier,
wouldn't move. I'm not saying his dad told his son that, but look how many boys we teach to be fearless and it's impossible. Then once you got to understand too without fear, there's no room for courage, no need for it. But when you scared and something is at risk, that's when they say, Wow, he was courageous. But for me to get walk from here to there, that don't take no courage. But let this be a pool of sharks
and it's only a five inch board. I gotta walk across to get to my daughter, who may walk into this pit of sharks. That takes courage. What's even deeper, it takes love. We have to start becoming human again. When we do that, start living from the good in our heart, because we got bad.
In our heart.
We all know that as men, definitely. But the comprehence of man is courageous but also compassionate, strong but sensitive. He lives from the good in his heart instead of the fear of how he'll be perceived. And that's how I can move man. I have battles every day, mentally, spiritually. I'm attacked often because of what I do.
Look at the.
Boys I'm trying to save in my community, and the fathers who lives are changing, and they no longer coming home yelling because they had a bad at work. Oh, I got an adversary who don't like me and I have wars. I wage every day, but I keep going because I make sure I reflect on what's bothering me, release it before it becomes toxic, so that I can reset and rest. I call it the four rs. I do that every day. I can do it while I'm fighting.
I can do it while I'm talking with Nicole. I can do it right now here, even if I'm talking now and I'm like, man, I'm with Matt and Stack. You know, I got to release that so that I can stay in this moment. And that's the power of being a verbal process. So that's a the power being emotionally intelligent. So now when these feelings arise, you're used to them. When sadness come up, I don't have to get angry, I can express the sadness. When fear comes up,
I don't have to get angry. I can just express the fear. When depression arises, I don't have to get angry. I can just say, hey, I'm depressed and then dig deeper why am I depressed? And that's the key, and that's comprehensive manhood. So, brother, Matt, I'm this ain't really no interview, no more.
Yeah, because I'm not trying.
That's over with.
That's over with.
But yeah, I just met you and I'm looking in your eyes. I can see it, Little Mad. If you would have digged deep and close your eyes. Can you tell us one emotion Little Matt feels mm close your eyes and it ain't no rush? What one emotion? Little Matt Fields?
First thing come of mind is scared? Good? Why of the unknown? Good?
Keep your eyes closed? What about the unknown? What is the unknown? Stay with Little Matt, not Big Mad.
Because there's just so many people depending on me that I'm gonna let them down.
Why do you have a fear of letting them down? Because I never have? MHM. Who told you had to take care of him?
A good question. I just felt like I was the chose and wanted to do it.
Did your father ever tell you that What messages did you receive from him?
Tough love.
Got it? So Little Matt really didn't experience the love that he desired or needed to get from his dad.
No, not even close.
Did you ever feel that you had to perform for his love or be the best kid ever?
No? I didn't to be honest with you, but I found out after my mom died that how fucked up his childhood was, so he was trying to learn on the fly and try to make up. And now it's funny you mentioned grandfatherhood. He's got nine grand babies now and he's amazing grandfather, Like it's almost like his second act because as a dad to us, it was volatile.
Most grandparents said it, it's the second chance to get it right. How does that make you feel, the fact that you see your father love on the grandchildren in the way that you desired.
I mean, it makes me happy that they get to experience that.
That's cool. That's a good, politically correct, excellent man.
I mean there's still times, you know, like me and my dad. My mom died when I was twenty seven. My dad had never hugged me or me recalling hug me and tell me love me. Up until that point, I don't even recall it, you know what I mean. So it's just like now now we get along great, and I'm to the notion it's never too late to be a father. So when I see him be a
great popa, I love it. But there's still something me at times it'll be kind of like you the same motherfucker used to beat my mom in front of me.
That's where it's at. That's everything you said, That's where it is. Have you ever shared with him how you feel? No, super deep service level. Let me give you some advice. My father was the master of tough love and he had a cause and effect just like your dad, which is why I was able to forgive him and reconcile. It took for him to develop Parkinsons disease for to slow him down, for me to have some time with him,
to really get to know him. The first time I heard my father say he loved me, I was thirty seven years old. But that couldn't have happened, Matt until I confronted some things till I asked him, why was he so hard? Why did you curse out your middle school age son for making a mistake and turning on the heat instead of the ac and the barbershop and
humiliating me in front of everyone. When I was able to hear his heart from where it came from, I was able to forgive him, and in that moment, the Holy Spirit said, tell your dad, thanks for being the dad you needed. So in me, I'm like, that's crazy. Because I needed a different father. And I said that, and I kissed him on his forehead. That's the first time I would kiss my father. As I was walking out the room in the nursing home, I hear him breathing heavy. He was crying. The first time I saw
my father cry. And I went back to him and I laid my head on his chest and we just cried like man. It was so liberating because for so long I didn't know it. He held the guilt of not being the dad that he even wanted to be because he was hardened by his situation. He was the things he went through in Florida when it was racist, the pimp culture. In Detroit, he was actually called to be a pastor, but a lot of the pimps became pastors.
And he says, I never want to be a hypocrite, so I just rather live his life and he ran from it. And as a result of that transparent moment, I asked him, what would you like me to promise you that I could live out? He said that I would preach the Gospel and then he would hear it. Both of those are fulfilled while your father is living. Don't get the enemy. Two stones. What I mean by that is when he died and you're not reconciled, you're
going to have heavy regrets. Just allow one stone, meaning you get hit with one stone is death, two stones is man. I wish I could have shut it and would have.
I wish it's so much I could ask my father right now.
So you have a chance that many young boys and men don't get and your father may need you.
To help him.
Dude, they didn't have men of that era, couldn't talk like this in that so that the realness was you the same. Whatever you said used to beat me. That's resentment. That's hurt.
So your guard.
So you're living from the anger instead of releasing those real emotions. That's why I said, where's the what's the real emotion? When you start expressing the real emotion, then the tear is gonna come. The anger is it's a front. It's safe for us to express that real say we go there, real facts. But to say, man, you neglected me.
Dad.
I tried my best to to to be your best son, and you still missed me. Here it is, I'm in the NBA, I'm doing great things. You still missed me. That has to come out. And that's why you backed up. You need emotional enema. That's what I tell me. You gotta release it. It's gonna it's gonna lock you in. Like my best friend Vick here struggle with PTSD from
being a police officer and other things that happened. He was driving his car, his truck and he got overwhelmed with anger and he was clinching the stern with or so fierce that he imprinted his fingernails, imprinted his palm. And he has a big pickup truck. But for him to be that intense with anger and not knowing where it comes from. But his wife died. I can go on and on and on, and if you're not crying about that a lot, and you got to be strong
for everyone else. He has a young son, and how many friends are emotionally intelligent where it can be there with you and not judge you. That's why we lose it.
I mean, that's always been a thing, man, And that's another thing I fear. That's just like one. It could be something small like me flying off the edge and jumping on somebody's ass, you know what I mean, just because it's that's the quickest emotion, the easiest emotion, just that anger is.
Do you want to be free from that?
Yeah? Absolutely, I would love to.
All right, you get with.
Me, Yeah absolutely, We're gonna do it.
Help you work through that with all these lights and can Yeah, your.
Youth Development Group Union, which is your old record label, how did you transition from you know, we skipped over a little bit stuff, but you DJed, You found some piece in DJ in and worked with a lot of big people, big names in that space. Where did the transformation from DJing into giving back to comming men?
It came first and foremost when I was a second of DJ, just producing music, just wanted to become the number one producer and DJ. It didn't matter what type of music I put out. But when I surrendered my life to the most high, that all changed. And then I saw myself as a hypocrite because here it is I'm trying to mentor youth out of the life that could lead them astray. But yet my music was the soundtrack for it. When we started the Union, when I got the vision to do that Union Records, all the
music was christ centered, It was encouraging, empowering. But what we noticed is that when the songs stopped. The kids still had their issues, they still had the trauma, they still had to deal with the environment they were in. And that's when I decided to go after our nonprofit and we transform from you and your records to the nonprofit, the Union, and we've reached over seventeen thousand youth since
two thousand and three. And the Cave of Adullam, which is the Transformational Training Academy, where I use the martial arts as one two to help men with boys to navigate through the pressures of this world without succumbing to their emotions by first teaching them that it's okay to be emotional, and then with the biblical principles and of course the presence of their fathers there, it's truly a transformational space. You'll see the boys have their emotional breakdown.
We call it a moment on the mat when I'm able to get them to see, Okay, this is why you're failing in school, this is why you're talking back to your mother, this is why you fear walking your own path. The father who is watching starts getting emotional because he sees himself.
On the man.
So if you were there and I'm working with your sons, you not only see them, you'll see a little mad on the man, and in them finding freedom, you're going to request the same. And then you actually learn how to become emotionally intelligent because you watch me help them process their emotions as well. And so that's how that all started. And we're trying to make it a school now because I want to scale the Cave of Adelum.
I don't want it to die with me. And we get a lot of requests, can Chicago, Atlanta, La, can you please bring it? Quest for Ghana. So we want to make it a middle school with the Cave of Adelum as the physical education piece. So imagine all of the core subjects are surrounded by that, that principle of emotional stability, mental resilience, respect, and all the other codes that we teach in the Cave of Adelum. Now a student takes those principles into the classroom, then they's community service.
We teach dining, etiquete, grooming, etiquete, financial literacy. All of these principles now are in one hub, and that's what can be skilled. If it stays the way it is now, it'll die with me. Because I'm annoying it for it, which I believe the next person who has it has to have that as well, because it takes more than martial art skills to help boys navigate through their trauma and emotional pain. But it's a lot easier when it
isn't just that. So that's my desire. We're going to pilot it this summer, as we'll call it the Cave Camp, and they get to go study math and science other ages eight ages eight through twelve. We have them for eight hours, which is really good. Yeah, we want to see how it really work in the school environment, and so we're really excited about that.
Sounds great.
Do you wish more rap artists making powering songs to empower youth instead of talking about guns and violence and stuff like that.
I mean, yeah, of course I would. You know, I would love to that more rappers would have that on their heart when they're writing their songs. But more importantly, I want them to live in you know, it's it's you know, you could find one or two good songs on the album, but then we listened to.
The whole album.
Yeah, so exactly, you have one good song and then one of my students here it and now you buys your album. Now he don't like women because of this other song. So I understand where they are because I was there, you know. I compromised my gift to try to get record deals, you know, started producing music for rappers, my good friends. We you know, the lyrics didn't match my heart, you know, but it was the only way to get a record deal.
You know.
We started with Ka and Mashra was my first group. We're friends with Chuck Depublican and me. He even let us open up for him twice, you know. But that shifted when the music industry shifted, and now you can only get a record deal if you rap a certain way, you act a certain way, you talk a certain way. So I get it. But now the power is now back to the artists, and you have the power to
really shift the culture. So yeah, I would love for them to do that because I see the result of what's being produced when the kids come to behavior their mindset. And as a DJ, you can't tell me there's no power in music to change. I would throw on certain songs when the party was kind of dead, or I just wanted to go meet a girl. I knew what songs to throw on and make them fight, and I just throw on certain music. Just wait next to you know, a chair, bag bag. I'm packing up, ready to leave.
Give me my money. I'm going to get something to eat and meet this girl. So you can't tell me there's no power in music and we have to hold each other responsible for that. It's a powerful too, it's a powerful gift. But the thing is because I'm reached out by a lot of rappers you know who are real popular, I'm like cool. I appreciate the DM. I admire the fact that you're seeking. But let's go deeper. And that's the stopping point for a lot of us as men because to many of them, like a father
they didn't have. So when you finally could get with a man who cares for who you are and not what you do. Even when I work with NFL players or basketball players, I'm not really a fan of what you do. I'm a fan of who you are as a man. When you meet someone like that, now you got to drop your guard and I'm not going to crush your heart. I'm not going to crush even your ego. I'm gonna give you the space to feel and to
fail in that moment so that you can heal. Once you get them to see that different, they won't even want to make the music that way. And so that's my I'm a principal person. So making one song and your heart hasn't changed won't really change the culture.
You know, the sense of the community has been lost.
We have a real mutual friend that I wish he was in every state the United States because a lot of things will be different in new era.
Zeke, you know, that's my brother.
What do we need to do to continue to support people like that, just to get that contagious in every state, because what he's doing is showing how we need to take care of our community, provide for our community, and care about the children in our community. He's showing that on a high level, and for it to be like with social media, feelingly be doing it.
It's still not contagious as it should be in every other state.
How do we support people.
Like that and get that going everywhere because that would make a big change.
The mind of our people. Zeke actually had posted something recently. He said that more parents are concerned with big meat paperwork than their children's school work.
Mostly that the other the day year.
Okay, that resonated with me because of the work we've been doing for over twenty one years. Now, you can help the child, but send them back to the parents who are still wounded and dealing with unresolved trauma.
You name it.
So you see how passionate Zeke is. His commitment and zeal. When I look at my brother, even myself to some extent, and you really look at the problem, we're sowing seed on infertile ground. We haven't broken up the trauma, the lies, the systemic racism, all of this that has our minds like this, and as a people, we like this. And until we can til that soil of our minds and open it up and renew the mind, all of the seeds will stay on the surface and the birds that
keep coming taking into the way. That's why millions are spent on this type of work. And then you're like, well, wait a minute, why is it worse now than it was twenty years ago? And we have more money. People see what Zeke does, but they don't understand what he's been through to make him that way. You see, his mind isn't like the majority of people. Again, we got to go to the principle as a people, as a fighter. For instance, let's stay in sports. We were talking about this.
If you had to play, I don't care, say the bulls and you' all on the same team. Do you only look at the bulls film and don't look at yours? Or do you look at both both both? In our community, we tend to only look at what was being done to us instead of same.
Okay, cool.
What do we need to do to improve? What are our strengths and weaknesses? How do we eliminate these weaknesses and become stronger? That's what has to happen.
First.
See, our minds are not renewed. We've fallen even from the faith where we used to be. We've been in church, but we weren't in Christ like literally walking that out. You know, you can't just pray things away, you know what I mean. The scriptures even say faith without works is dead. I'm a doer, don't be It's also written, don't be a hero of the word, be a doer of the world. So it's so much there that we
have to heal our people. So even with parents who you know, who may not be doing the greatest of job raising their children. When you talk to them, pull them aside. They break down.
Man.
I had mothers literally say, can's you get a hood? I can't contain it and just cry weeping fathers. You know, I've never in all the years I've been doing this, I've never seen a father who didn't love their children. I saw a father who didn't love himself. He would feel less of a man because he couldn't do more, and so he felt that isolation was the answer, and it's not.
So.
My thing is helping our people, heal, helping our community hold each other responsible in love, meaning I'm not on you just to be you. I'm on you because I.
Love you, you know.
And then that's when I believe things have changed. Zeke is a unicorn brother, you know what I mean, And he's he's a solid brother. And if it just stays him, the problem gonna keep existing. The issue is is that Zeke is running his lane. But when is everyone else going to start running there running their lanes? You know, how did martial arts become a staple in the development of the youth you work with? I always wanted, you know, that father figure, that man who could teach me the way,
you know, to manhood. Of course, every young boy wants to know how to fight, and so you'll see the sense the old martial arts movies. The students come in and bout and instructed all wise, and no one could touch them. So I longed for that, and so I started training in that and it became my outlet. But the marshal art isn't enough though. When I started the Cave of Adullum, it was the popular thing. Was Scared
Straight programs, you remember those. We'll take a kid who was troubled into the prisons and hopefully the prisoners would scare him straight and he would pay the prisoners. It didn't work, and now everyone realized, how can you help a kid overcome trauma by re traumatizing? It didn't work. What about the boot camps? You don't see him anymore, the kids they would put on the front, yes sir, no, sir, yes, sir no sir. All you doing is yelling at them.
You think yelling is going to help a boy who's wounded from his father not being there or his mother not being there. That's like stitching up a wound with a needle and no thread. That's all you're doing. You're hurting him more and more and more. I came to the mentoring space that way, discipline, focus, strength forty two. The kids in Highland Park, Michigan, which was a tough
neighborhood at the time, they didn't need that. They needed love, They didn't need more discipline, They didn't need to be scared straight. They needed to be healed. So from the martial arts, I said, cool, I'm gonna keep some of this, but let me get these boys a space where they can express how they feel. The kids I was given for the pilot program, I think about six were in
danger of not graduating. They all did one of the evaluations of the Cave of Adullum that over seventy eight percent of our students improved their grade point average by one letter grade. Without tutoring what's happening. I'm allowing them to unpack what's stopping them from performing to their potential. When you give a boy or a man that space to be human, he sells you can't stop them. He's going to be the protector and provider. That's an eighty
in all of us. But now you're telling me I can be a nurturer, and it doesn't mean I'm feminine. I can be compassionate. It doesn't mean I'm weak. I can have empathy for someone, and it doesn't mean pusillanimous or naive. Man. The whole world would change when that happens, and that's my desire. The martial arts what I love about it. You can't hide sports. We can hide when the fist coming at you. You can't hide when someone gets your back and starts choking you and you fighting,
you can feel it. You can't hide. That's going to bring up some emotions. It's gonna bring back some flash. It's like, whoa, I remember that kid bullied me. We had a man literally going to feet a position remembering the time he was bullied. Thankfully I was the right man in that moment could help him come out of that. Talk to him like, where are you what are you feeling when when he was behind me? Remind me of
this happening, and this happening or pressure at work? That pressure get off me and you lose all your technique. In sports, we see emotions ruined games that should have been won easily. I had a young guy worked with in the NFL. He correlated being pulled out of the game as abandonment associated with a wounding childhood. I had to help him unpack that lie. Beautiful young brother in the NBA, you see it all the time. I was working with one brother. I can't see the team and
the NBA team. His fear was missing a free throw because he didn't want to get talked about, and he traced it back to other womns. I said, well, let's eliminate anybody. Yeah, okay, of course good.
So you' hilarious.
So let's eliminate the threat I mean. He said, So, what do you mean? I said, well, we can stop missing. I mean his fear was the airball, That's what it was. We can stop that. He said, how, I say, just hit the rim, don't try to make the shot.
Hit the rim.
Then that led to other conversations. He had his best game that season that night because he was allowed to express how he felt. And then he shared something else I appreciated. He said that when the coach pulled him out of the game, he thought it was because he wasn't performing well. I said, did you ask him? He was like no, Like, why are you assuming that? The coach right there?
Ask him?
But it's this invisible wall between the players and the coaches. I can't let them know I'm feeling this or this way, because they may not play me. I know a lot of players play injured, like serious injuries, because they don't want to lose their spot. I know coaches who are struggling mentally personally can't fear. They fear they fear letting the team know that they then they will lose their respect. But they don't understand when you allow your team to
see that you just a man just like them. And and don't let the coach be a comprehensive man where he could possibly shed a tear because of something personal, not because he lost a playoff game. Now those men that come around him and support him, So now you won't just have the same uniform on, you actually be a team. And that's the power of comprehensiveness and being
a comprehensive man. And that's the benefit as well from community camaraderie, just having open conversations and the word what is it they say, let's be vulnerable, Like no, no, no, no, I tell men, never be vulnerable. That's the wrong word. We're trying to tell you to be emotionally open and transparent vulnerability or being vulnerable is actually you're putting yourself in danger or risk of death. If we had no guns and ten guys came in here with guns, we're vulnerable,
all right. No good man, she say, very no good man. No good father would ever want himself or his family in vulnerable positions. So we want to be transparent and open when you allow that to happen. This will happen. If we were alone without these license cameras on, Matt would be crying me too. Yeah, And so that's what it takes. It's just like, okay, let's be open with
each other. Like I don't even that just my first time meeting you, and I care about you because I know what it feels like to hold on to all of that.
I want to be there too. You need to be there because I know, you know, I cried when his mom.
Passed, and I know that's how we became closer with his teammates. Would have happened, and he was there every day, bringing me something, coming to watch a movie, bring me some weed we can smoke. That's how we, like, we really went from.
You have to be there because I probably would need you as far as in some.
Role playing and I got my own stuff that I need to let out.
Okay, cool list, We'll make it happen.
We go make it. I told you were coming to Detroit later in the summer. La, we're in the home of the gang capital. You know you grew up in Detroit. You know, pimping and that kind of stuff. What do you tell brothers in the cycle? Because I think a lot of times you can't see it while you're in it. How do you break free from that or what is the first step of breaking free from that vicious cycle?
Because we want them to put the guns down, but then what you know, we want them to stop pimping, but then what like, they're doing it for a means of survival most of the time, and we're telling them to stop, But then we don't replace what they were doing with anything else. So what is the first step in your mind to start walking down the right path or a better path?
We as men who are successful at doing it, need to model it, like really modeling everything else. Yeah, you have to model that. I remember I was going to the airport. I was lax, and a guy looked just like Nipsey stopped me. Tattoo tears and he had the marathon tattooed on his chest, and he says, there's something about you. I just want to tell you something. I didn't know what this was going. He says, God is with you, and he says, don't lose the faith. And
so we just started talking. And I looked at his hand and he had broken his two knuckles here, and that's typically the knuckles. Yeah, it's from fighting because you're punching incorrectly. You're supposed to strike with these two. That's why these protrude out further the needs to I can condition these to break. And so I said, can I
help you with something? I use that moment, even though I didn't know him, to pour into him, and he thought I was talking initially about teaching him how to punch. I said, yes, I said, but let me teach you how to hit the things in life that are breaking you. I said, so, if you're using the wrong tools for that moment, you're going to break instead of you breaking it. And I wish I could see this young man again because I love. That's what I love, not necessarily the cameras,
the attention. If you can put me with the game, I don't care who it is. Put me in a room with them because I love them. I know they just misguided. I know they what happened. The system was setting them up. But yet they're so gifted and beautiful and they can navigate if we teach them. So many of us get to a place in life where we're good, and then we complain about them. And that was the
issue I found with the boys. When I first started the Cave, I was going to many schools, the hallways and the lockers, was kicked and punched in When I started asking, like, what's going on? Where is this anger coming from? The general census was everyone expects us to act like a man, but we ain't got one here teaching us. So the first step is us teaching them. Being there with them. We all got some influence. That's why I use my platform. The young boys would come
up to me. I had game members stop at the cave. I ain't have my gun on me walking out at the time, I didn't know what they expect. I knew the car they hanging out, you know, And I got middle school kids walking to see their parents. The war in me. I said, okay, cool, they can't feel fear or then I'm not prepared for this. So I just walked straight to them. Fast guy, get out, look broken. I said, what's up? He says, mister Wilson. I said yeah. He says, I just want to come shake your hand.
He said, my father just died and you're like a father to me on social media. And I just hugged him. I prejudged him because of what society teaches us about our boys who look a certain way. Brother was just grieving, and he says, please keep these kids away from what we do. This is not the way. So right there, lets you know they don't want to do what they do. So as you says, how can we help them? It's
not about talking, it's about doing. And it's even deeper than doing, it's about really modeling it, like what does it look like when the cameras ain't on? Do your kids really love you? It's easy for me not to cheat on my wife, because what can a woman say to me that my wife hasn't already said? My wife means it. You don't even know me. You know what I mean? And I'm a trip at times, you know what I mean. I admit it, But my wife still
loves me. When kids can see that, they can see the unit of a family and their family's not breaking down, like oh snap, this is cool now, so how are you tough? But you can't deal with the emotions of like our wives or kids or whatever. When they can see a man, no matter what's going on, he's on fire and he's still moving through. It's like Moses when he saw the burning bush. It wasn't the fact that the bush was burning. It was the fact that the
bush was burning and it wasn't consumed. That's what made him stop.
Like whoa.
So when they see us on fire with the stresses of life, the things that we've gone through, and we ain't consumed and we keep moving, they'll stop and say, yo, some of I'm mad. I like the fact I didn't know he went through that with his mind. I didn't know his father. I didn't know this and he made it. I can make it stack. I didn't know this about you. I didn't know that you cry, man. You look hard as hell.
You know what I mean.
It's like you cry too, Okay, cool, I want to cry because my best friend just got shot. We normalize our children hearing gunshots. That's not normal. When we model it, then they set free. The Cave of Adulum is successful because I gave them what I longed to have. A man who's committed but won't condemn you, will teach you the way of a warrior of y'all and still be
with you regardless if you fail or not. I tell him at the door of the Cave of Adeloma, I said, you ever seen a door at the mouth of a cave? They say no, I said, you'll never see a door here. You can come in and out as you want, and I'm gonna love you the same way when you feel this training is over. As long as you don't stop before the right of passage is complete and you want to do something else, I'm here for you. I've had students couldn't make it, couldn't complete it. Still there, still
love them, They said. Man, I don't know a lot of men like that, but I know one on Oakmen Boulevard in Detroit where I can go to if I'm struggling. How many former NBA players have their heart like you? Guys, what you've been through wasn't meant to destroy you, It was to refine you. We allow it to destroy us. When we hold on to it, you can't hold it, supposed to release it. It's not yours anyway. A lot of times we think that we weren't good enough for
our parents, but it's actually the opposite. They weren't good enough in their lives for us. Whatever happened, who knows, they just weren't in the right place. That's the power of forgiveness. You ain't letting no one get away with nothing. It's releasing you. It's freeing you from the pain, the hurt, the resentment. I forgive you and I mean it. And that's deliberation, and that before.
We get out of here, remind us of the four urs again.
Four RS is reflect, release, reset, and rest. So in the morning and in the evenings, I practice it and I practice it throughout the day. I reflect on what can be troubling me, what's it can be good things as well, But if it's something bad, I think going and meditate, pray. And then if it's something that I don't need to revisit, like if I offended my wife earlier, I don't want to release that. I want to hold that. I want to retain that. That's another R. So we
can revisit it, and I can apologize. But if it's negative or it can become toxic, it's not good for me or what I'm.
Called to do.
I release it, let it go. It's called sherlock, cast it away. After I release it, now I'm able to reset to my baseline where I need to be. Then after that, I'm in a constant state of rest. We don't need when we say retired, we don't need sleep. We want rest, man, freedom from whatever we'res assume. And that's the key. And so when you practice releasing and resetting or reflecting releasing and resetting, then you can finally find rest.
Beautifully said the man. The moment demands is out. Now you could follow Jason at mister Jason O. Wilson on socials. Man, we want to thank you. This was This was dope. And I'm definitely looking forward to picking this up man the man, and and and really because like I said, it's been something I want to do. Like I said, I have a quote this Statadamy from Tupac Up dying inside but outside I'm looking fearless, Like I feel like that's the story in my life, Like I've always been
damn He's a tough, light, skim motherfucker. He's always But I don't want to have to be that's just who I've been.
You're saying so much. I wish I had time even in how you had to be because you're life skinned. You see, it's a lot you've been programmed to feel that's not accurate. And so when this we get out of here, we can we can dig it's you right there, Yeah, your brother see it.
Yeah, I think it'll be you know, I know, like the time, people don't like to have the stuff, you know,
recording and for world to see. But for me, the way a lot of people look at me and think about me, I would love to have mind tele advised because it's gonna touch a lot of people, a lot of stuff that I've been through, even with the George Floyd me calling off the wed and like it resonates to a lot of people, a lot of young men, to a lot of them attext, like bro, I appreciate you because I was about to get married in no
same type of situation. But I didn't have the guts to do that, you know what I'm saying, Like, so a lot of stuff in my life I have touched a lot of young men. But I know me releasing a lot of stuff that I have built in for the world to see and seeing me vulnerable it will help a lot of.
People transparent yeah, tradual Yeah, oh yeah, I'm the same way.
That's why you're transparent instead are vulnerable.
Yeah yeah, yeah, So I allow myself to be seen because it's freedom in that.
Yeah.
So, like you know, if if you're sure Jesus was walking through the streets of Jerusalem openly crime because the people were like sheep without a shepherd. What do I have to be ashamed of?
Nothing?
So I want that freedom.
I don't.
I should be able to cry in front of anyone express how I feel. Now if you're not the person who can receive it or value it, thank you for letting me know. But I'm not going to change. I'm not going back into emotional incarceration just to be a part.
Of your emotional incarceration. And this is that's where you are.
Yes, we're gonna break you free.
You used the P word earlier.
I couldn't umous.
What does that mean?
It means lack of courage and strength, hu solanimousmous Yeah yeah, Instead of I would often pray, you know, when I was trying, when I was not trying, when I was crossing over fully into walking with christ. I wanted alternative curse words. I like Malcolm X when he said that, uh, he's too intelligent the curse so he read the dictionary. He had a vast vocabulary. So I had prayed for alternative curse words. So instead of saying the P word
p U S s Y, I use pucenanimous. So I don't I don't ever want to have to conform to the way I was, you know, I want to be more intelligence, to grow.
Yeah, yeah, yes it, yeah yeah. This has been one of the most enlightening, not the one of the most enlightening episode We've had. My favorite episode personally, and I want to thank you for that. This was a This wasn't an interview. This was a conversation. I hope you guys enjoy it. You can find this at all the Smoke Productions YouTube and the DraftKings Network. We'll see y'all next week.
Mm hmmm, mm hmmm.
Speaks to the Plannet. I go by the name of Charlamagne the God, and guess what, I can't wait to see y'all at the third annual Black Effect Podcast Festival. That's right, We're coming back to Atlanta, Georgia, Saturday, April twenty six at Poleman Yards and it's hosted by none other than Decisions, Decisions Man, D B and Weezy. Okay, we got the R and B Money podcast. We're taking Jay Valentine. We got the Women of All Podcasts with
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