Lately I’ve been thinking about the concept of bias. 
Where are we biased? If you spend enough time on Twitter or on social media in general, everybody seems to give off the impression that we’re all perfectly adjusted, self-aware people who know our blind spots and all the areas where we fall short or we can be biased for or against people or things.

I’ve come to find out as I continue exploring myself more that there are biases that I carry, sometimes I’m not even fully aware of them. 
And that’s the thing with biases. They’re often largely unconscious, rooted in different micro-aggressions, your background, your experiences and things like that.

For example, if you were scammed by someone of a particular nationality or race and you proceed to navigate the world with that lens of, feeling like you can’t trust that group of people and that becomes normal for you, people might look at you and say ah, you know, you’re negatively biased in that regard. But who’s to say that you, your truth is any less important because of how you arrived at said truth, right? So I’ve been thinking about that a lot.

For example, since I started working out in 2022, I have lost a lot of weight. And oftentimes I have to check myself whenever I look at people or see people who may or may not be at the beginning of their fitness journey. There’s a second, a microsecond where my brain almost goes,
“hmm, I did it so why can’t you?”

But then again, I find that that’s not my place to do that, right? I can’t determine where people are at in their journey or in their story and I have to check myself and check my biases because again, I can imagine when I started my fitness journey in 2022 or when I ballooned in 2020 that people were probably looking at me and saying why can’t you just, you know, get fitter? 
When in reality, you know, I had been nursing a bad knee for years where I stopped playing sports and wasn’t able to work out as much as I wanted to.

So it feeds into something I always say that kindness needs to be your currency of how you navigate the world. Kindness and understanding. Full stop.

An understanding of people and their experiences and knowing that you don’t know it all. When you come in contact with someone, you don’t know it all. And today, something got me thinking.

I was at the gym working out and someone just being super friendly came to talk to me. I typically don’t like people talking to me at the gym but this person came to talk to me and a part of me was initially almost irritated but then I thought to myself, you know, within seconds of the person talking to me, I was like, hmm, what if today was that person’s day? 
And what I mean by that is, let’s say everybody has prepared for a day, right?

A day, the first day you’re going to go to the gym, the first day you’re going to perform spoken word, the first day you’re going to go on a solo date or whatever the case is, right? 
And then they come in contact with you and you or I shun them or make them feel less than in that moment. That, you know, we always joke about people’s 13th reason but that could be the interaction that sets them on their way towards even greater success or that could be the interaction that pushes them back and takes away all of the work that they had done to get to that point.

So in all your interactions after you read this and going forward, lean on kindness. Let it be your default because you never know what stop you are on someone’s journey. Let it be a memorable one, a memorable for good.

Speaking on bias, I continue to find that I am biased towards action less than ideation. 
I think growing up with my grandparents, my grandpa was very principled. I won’t say strict because he had his moments but I would say he was a very principled and disciplined man.

And I found from observing him that there was a tendency for people to be afraid of offending him or afraid of disappointing him with the standards that he set or the standards that he had. And I find that when people grew up in those types of environments where they are criticized for their actions or their thoughts or creativity, they often spend a lot of time thinking. 
So you hear, “oh, I was gonna do that.”

I find that as I get older, wiser, more experienced, that I am just more appreciative of doers. People who just do.

Look, life is hard work. Anything you want is on the other side of hard work. Whether that is your life goals, your career goals, even your creativity, right?

Oftentimes, unless you’re born with like God-given talent, you can be Usain Bolt, but you still need to learn how to come out the blocks, right? Not false start. 
You can have the arms and legs of a Michael Phelps.
The agility, strength, determination of a Serena, but if you don’t know how to wield a racket properly, it won’t be anything, right? So life is about doing. And I find that for us to have the lives that we want, to enjoy the life that we want, we have to be doers more than we have to be thinkers.

Thinking is important and thinkers are essential to any society and environment. 
But ultimately, you want to spend most of your time actively doing something that you want. You might not be the best at it immediately.
You might not be the best at it for a long time, but you’re doing. So here’s my thing to all of you out there, whether it’s that content you want to post, whether it’s that, chapter you want to start, whether it’s that project, whether it’s that trip, do it. 
Just do it.

You’ll be better for it. And the world around you will thank you for it. 
Till we talk again, take care of yourself.

Be well and stay up. 

Wordsmith, Out!

It’s 7 p.m. Friday, it’s 95 degrees, I ain’t got no, and no, nigga ain’t got me.
Well it’s not actually 7 p.m. nor is it Friday.
It is 12:58 a.m. and this is fresh off the press.

Welcome ladies and gentlemen to this week’s edition of Words of Wednesday.
I’ve just returned home from one of the most relaxing vacations that I’ve ever been on and I just took a shower, took my night supplements, and I’m about to post this for you all.
This is hot off the press because I typically would have written this days or weeks in advance before editing and posting it.
Sometimes not editing, but you get the gist. But yeah, wanted to deliver this to you all and share my thoughts.

I’m very thankful. It was a very restful vacation, very slow. Waking up whenever I wanted, had an all-inclusive situation. So breakfast, drinks when needed, slept well, had really good food, great views, mingled with locals. Very relaxing.

For the last few years I’ve worked for a company that gives us a week off during the summer and then a week off between Christmas and New Year and I just decided this week that regardless of where I work going forward, I will always make it a note to take time off and be completely unplug during the summer months to just recharge.

There’s a lot that I want to share with you all today but there’s a few things that I wanted to get off my chest first. First is stay true to who you are.

One of the most difficult things I have come to face as I have gotten older is this need to satisfy all the areas of my life, all the complex pieces of who I am, you know, manage people’s feelings, expectations, oftentimes secondary to mine.
But this week I just decided to go cold turkey on a few things, change some things up and put me first. I find that I spend a lot of time trying to find me as priority in the eyes of people that I believe are priority in my life.

And that often leads to disappointment because maybe they don’t match my energy or maybe they don’t match it the way I match it for them, or things like that. And I’ve had to have a very difficult conversation with myself. As you all know, I have various review points throughout the course of the year, mostly twice, middle of the year now and end of the year, but usually delivered in the beginning of the following year.

And I’ve come to find that I’ve held on to things that I should let go of. I have cradled the feelings, thoughts, impressions of others, oftentimes over myself. And I just can’t do it anymore.
Very tired, very spent. I feel like I’ve been doing it since I was a little boy. Some of the intuitiveness or, you know, ability to connect with people, I believe, was born out of being on high alert from a very young age.

And part of me is exhausted on that front. But a part of me also knows that I’ve thrived because of those elements. So, you know, what may seem harsh, mean, selfish to some people, is just finding ways to finally put me first.

And understanding that at the end of the day, you’re responsible for your own happiness and your own evolution. Never forget that. Never.

I came home to a spotless apartment, which makes me so happy. I took a lot of time before I left to clean and tidy up and put things in place. And I cannot tell you the amount of satisfaction I got when I stepped into my closet, and it was spotless.

Of course, there are a few things that need to get tucked away here and there. But I just loved how organized it was because I put time into organizing it before I left. And that made me very happy.

I find that I am saddled with the responsibility of being very complex. There’s a lot of things that I feel like I’m good at. There’s a lot of things that I want to do.
There’s a lot of interests that I want to explore. And I often feel crutched by the fear that I’ll get to some point in my life and I wouldn’t have done them. As I was walking into the house, I had to remind myself that there is a childlike excitement that I never want to lose.

So no, I won’t stop doing my GRWMs or dancing anyhow in my apartment, or singing worship songs in the hallway, or just breaking out into a dance in the middle of the grocery store. Because I don’t want the child in me to die. And some of you might think me saying I don’t want the child in me to die might be extreme.

But I find that life kills the child in you a very slow death. They’re like tiny little paper cuts until the arteries bleed out. And I don’t want that for myself.
So I want to not be too serious, not be too focused on the worst case scenario, not be too concerned about what you who’s reading this might think. Randomly, I also want to put it out here. There’s someone that keeps asking me whenever I do those anonymous question things on my Instagram when I’m going to get married.
You live in the same state as me. I know who you are.
Please stop asking me.

I know why you’re asking. But I’m not going to answer your question. I actually have made it a purpose of mine to never answer your question because I don’t care what you’re doing with your life.

I don’t care what people are doing with their lives. I just want to be left alone.
And I know that because of the light that God has put in me, because of the things that I’m doing, because of the exposure or visibility that you have to me, you feel entitled, you feel encouraged to care about my personal life.

But anything I give to you is what I give to you. I don’t care if you buy a new car. I don’t care if you buy new shoes.
I don’t care if you’re having a baby. I don’t care if you’re having three babies. I don’t care if you’re buying a range or ice cream.
Please stop asking me about my personal life. I’m just not going to answer you. I don’t care.

It might sound insane to some people. But during my day to day, the only time I talk about anybody else is if somebody else initiates the conversation to ask me about something or someone else. I genuinely cannot think of a day where I care enough to gossip about someone or to talk like I just, I was never raised that way.
And my friends know not to bring gossip to me, I don’t want it or want to be part of it

And as I’ve gotten older and older, I just don’t care.
I want to be left alone. But it brings me back to this vacation I just came from, and how it highlighted for me the evolution of who I am.

As many of you know, I’ve just moved to a new city and I’m enjoying it, despite the fact that the heat keeps slapping me in the face. But on my vacation, I realized that I enjoy the solitude. My phone was on do not disturb literally from the moment I got on the plane heading to my destination.

And I only just took it off right when I landed. I loved that the calls didn’t come through. I love that somebody was trying to reach me and the person was like “can you please take your phone out dnd?” And I was like, “ No”.
I just like the peace and quiet.
And it brings me back to when I was ATVing with my friends in the Dominican Republic, we were going through a local rural area full of green.

And I just thought to myself that I would really love to own a house and like a farm, like a house on top of a hill with a farm connected to it. Grow my own greens, use it to cook like my fresh basil, fresh time, mint, make my own lemonade with my fresh lemons.
My grandpa used to grow lemons when I’m when he was alive.

And just be within myself in my quiet. I need that.
I don’t know what how I’m going to balance it because I feel like there’s so many things that God has put in me that would force me to be in the in the in the sort of light if you want to call it that. But I would love maybe like a balance of an Ed Sheeran type life where like I have like this huge farm on an acre kind of like my parents house right now.
Tucked away from the world. But then like I would have to come every three months to do a book tour or something like that. I don’t know but I just want that.

And I pray that God gives that to me.

Lastly I somebody told me recently that it will never be enough. The abs will not be enough.

The physique you want will not be enough if you don’t feel that happiness and joy from within completely. And I truly believe that. And I’m seeing that now.

That’s by the fact that a lot of people appreciate what I look like now and how I feel. I still feel like there’s more that I can get for myself. So we’re back to March to August 2022 form.

We are going to be going back to eating small, eating early, drinking less, and being diligent with shredding the next 20 pounds. 20 pounds is probably a stretch maybe like 10 to 15. But yeah, I’m back at it.

So hopefully I’ll take you guys on on this journey with me.

Comment, repost and share. Thank you for your continued support.
You are highly appreciated.

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