A (0:01)

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. How we feeling? How we feeling? Feeling calm and collected and centered today, you know, we moving in the direction that matters. Yeah, we have gratitude. That is our main attitude. And, you know, sometimes we will waver. You know, we will waver in life. We will waver in ourselves, unsure of who we even are. Isn't that interesting that we can even question ourselves? Who are we? Can the bears and the deers do that? No, I don't think so. What an interesting experience we are having. This journey can be beautiful, right? It's cool. And I love that mystery, that curiosity. Because when you don't fully know who you are, many people see that as a negative. But really, you're opening yourself up to possibilities. We go and we test our own limits, try out different versions of ourselves. Take pieces of life and wear them for a while. Not to pretend, but to get a real sense of our own essence. To feel who we can be, to find what resonates, to feel what should stick around for a while. You know, we don't talk about this enough, but wavering is not a mistake or insecurity. It's a part of the becoming. It's a part of the returning. It's a part of the design. You can't be mad at the design. That's just how it is. It's like being mad that the water flows down the mountain and not up. It's just a part of the design. Embrace it. Learn to dance with it. You know, you don't wake up with your full identity downloaded. You don't come to this planet fully knowing who you are. You wake up with questions, with curiosity. Sometimes you feel a pull towards something, not sure what, but something is pulling you. Because what you seek is seeking you too. And sometimes we're not even sure what we are seeking, but we are searching. And that pull in life will lead us into different layers of ourselves. You know, I constantly feel like a new person. Constantly. Sometimes. That's exhausting. I'm not even. I'm gonna lie. Like, I'm always shedding something, rebuilding something, refining something. I'll look back at who I was just two years ago and be like, whoa, who is that? Honestly, sometimes my past self seems so distant, feels so distant. Not in a judgmental way, but sometimes in awe. Like, wow, we've shifted. We've expanded, we've grown. You know, our identity can change. Our mindsets should evolve. And our tastes and our dreams, they get refined. That's all a part of being alive. You are supposed to change you are supposed to shift. It means you are learning, you are listening. It means life is doing its work on you. You are having a living conversation with life and a symbiotic relationship with it. And sometimes we will waver, we will wander. It's a part of the journey and becoming and knowing and figuring things out. But sometimes we crave stability. We want to have a stable sense of self, too. We don't always want to be wandering, always searching. That's not freedom. Eventually, we want to land on something for a while, don't we? Yes, yes, yes. Yes, we do. We want to feel our feet beneath us. We want to know what we stand on and what we stand for, even if the rest of the world keeps spinning or going in a different direction. On my journey, what has given me the most freedom? Because I'm a wanderer. I waver, you know, I wander. I'm cool with uncertainty. Y' all know me. I always say uncertainty is a gift. As a spirit of a child. What do children do? They ask questions. You know, are we there yet? Mommy, do babies come from, why is the sky blue? They're curious. And when you're curious and you ask questions, it means opportunities arise, possibilities. So I'm cool with uncertainty. But I also need a sense of stability. And what has helped me hasn't been clinging to identity. It's not overly attaching myself to my race or my nationality or my creative titles or my accomplishments or my aesthetics or to any of the boxes that the world tries to put me into or that I put myself into at times. Because all of those things, a lot of those things, not all, but a lot of them can shift. Some of them can be taken, they can be changed. You can lose a job. You can pivot creatively. You can grow out of a community or a relationship. You can evolve past a label. You can shift to the other side of the political aisle. And often these changes, these shifts, they can be sudden and they send us or send people into chaos because their sense of self is tied to something that was always meant to evolve, but they didn't expect it to. If your sense of self is only built on. On things that can be seen on the surface, your sense of self will always feel fragile. Knowing who you are is knowing the parts of you that nobody else can see at first glance. Knowing who you are is knowing the parts of you that nobody else can see at first glance. That is what has given me real stability, is identifying what my principles, my values, the internal architect of my being, and then building from there, like those are the pillars. It's the foundation. And then our interests, you know, our identities, you know, those stand on top. And if they change, cool. We still have our pillars. And the pillars can evolve too. But I can look back on my life and see that while my mindset has shifted or my identity has been molded in different ways, my dreams have stretched and I've even forgotten large chunks of my life. There's like whole years I can't recall. But for some reason, like a lot of my principles really have stayed the same even since I was a kid. Like about 80% of them. The real core of who I am, it's still there. You know, I believe in kindness, you know, I truly do. And like, not. Not like people pleasing or just being nice, but like kindness, like understanding our humanity, like going out into this world and knowing every single person we look at is having a human experience, traveling the full spectrum of emotions. And we all are. And I just believe in having a gracefulness and understanding for that. So I believe in kindness, you know, leading with good energy because it's like a ripple effect. It truly changes the world. I believe in unity over division. That's why I create spaces online to bring us together, not to divide us. I believe in expression as a healing modality. I believe in radical forgiveness, often for ourselves and for others. I believe in most cases we should protect our peace. Sometimes it's best to turn the other cheek and remove ourselves from toxic situations and remove our pride and, you know, just move in the direction that matters. I believe the movement physically, emotionally, spiritually, creatively. And I believe we're supposed to keep growing and flowing, keep listening to what's true today to us, even if it sounds different from yesterday. I believe that silence is sacred, that in a loud world, that stillness is power. That the loudest voice in the room doesn't mean it's the most powerful voice. That sometimes we turn the volume down low so we can get closer and more intimate with ourselves and others. And I believe in presence. Because if we're not here right now, if we're just reliving yesterday and worried about tomorrow, then where are we? We are divided within ourselves. And I believe words are like spells. That what we speak becomes what we see. That what we repeat to ourselves starts to form our identity, our reality. And I believe in building, not escaping, not numbing our way through life, not outsourcing our self worth, not waiting for someone else to tell us we are good enough. No, no, no, no. I believe in resilience. Carving our own path. I've always believed in that. Like, leading our own way. If something doesn't make sense, I'm like, no, we'll. We'll form our own blueprint. These aren't beliefs I just read in books or picked up on the Internet. They came from living. They came from falling. They came from rebuilding. They came from choosing peace over performance. They came from failing in silence and healing through it all. And these principles didn't arrive overnight, but once they came, it seems like they just haven't really left. And none of these things can be assumed by just looking at me. None of them can be, like, captured in a clever Instagram bio, even though I try. That's why I say my credentials are in my spirit. Yet they are the very things that make us who we are. A stable sense of self isn't built on how we appear to others. It's built from the inside out. It comes from valuing our own experiences, honoring our lessons, and then, like, shaping our life with the things that can't always be seen at first glance. Like when someone you meet and you can tell they're judging you, and then you get offended in reality. I think you should chuckle. You should laugh because you know who you are. You know your depths. Their judgment comes from their own perceptions of the world, their own past experiences, their limited. Their fragmented view. They're just judging what they can see on the surface. Not your heart or your mind. Only you can see that. They have no idea about the architecture of your being, the infrastructure that you have built, what you stand on. And why should they? It's taking you a lifetime thus far to build. So we chuckle because we know who we are. Knowing yourself is knowing the parts of you that nobody can see at first glance. So when we are being judged, we laugh because we're like, you don't even know me. You don't even. You can't even see. You know, that's freedom and knowing who you are at our core, at our essence. This is why I always advocate for what we built in the process. Over the. The title, what we have attained and experience, over what we look like on the surface. Because the world will try to sell you identity as stability. But that's backwards. It's backwards because identities change. You could be a full time creative one year and a full time parent the next. You could be loud in your 20s and quiet in your 30s. You can outgrow your dreams, your wardrobe. You can even change your name if you want to. That's life, right? Like my Identity. People may see me and be like, oh, he's a speaker. He's a healer. He's Jamaican. He's a Canadian. He's a creator. He's a spiritual person, whatever it may be. And all those are true. But my principles will say, man, I honor energy. I create what's needed in this world. I protect my peace. I tell the truth. You know, I move with love. I understand. I believe in healing not as trying to fix something, but as a lifestyle. It's a lifestyle that the things we do, the things we engage in are nourishing. Believe in kindness. These are our pillars, something you can build a life on. Someone the other day asked me, like, yo, like, how do I find myself again? I feel so lost. How do I create a stable sense of self in a world that is just changing so fast? And I was like, don't chase an identity or even a purpose, but build your pillars. What consistent themes have you noticed in your life? What do you find yourself speaking up for? What qualities do you admire in yourself and in others? What parts of you seem to remain the same regardless of your wardrobe change? And start to value and nurture those things more often? And just understand that the world might not care about those things at first glance. Because the world will always care about how pretty you look, how handsome you are, how much money you got, what you can flex on the gram. You have to value the intrinsic parts of yourself first. You have to value those. Don't expect that validation from the world. This world is very shallow. This world is very surface level. But where does God live? In the depths of your spirit and the depths of your heart. And once you know your value, you'll know who you are in your essence. No matter the season that you're in, no matter how lost you feel in the material world, in a career shift, in a relationship change. Where do I want to live? Ah, your reality could be crumbling because it's changing, but you'll still know who you are and your essence. That's how you truly get to discover yourself and fall in love with yourself. It's in your spirit, where you will feel anchored. You'll stop being afraid of change as well, because your center won't be shaken by it. Because you trust in your instincts, you trust in your abilities. Sometimes I question if I. If what I'm doing right now, I can do forever, right? I don't know. Can I make it through this AI tidal wave or will I get swallowed? But even if the position and the titles change, I still get to carry my essence with me in whatever I do. And that brings me a sense of peace, that I can move with the tides if it goes in and it goes out. If the seasons change, if I change, if I waver, I still have a stable sense of self. In my spirit. I can journey into the unknown. You can journey into the unknown. You can explore. You can stretch. You can shed old versions. You can try new things. You can make mistakes. You can double back. You can evolve and still know what truly holds you up. We will always waver at times. We will always go into the unknown. We will always go into seasons of uncertainty. You will have new dreams, a new vision. Maybe even a new home or a new name at times. But through all of that, you'll be able to smile. Because the core of you, the essence of you, it never wavered. It was there all along. It just got stronger and stronger. More in alignment, more true, still kind, still resilient, still rooted. Still you and you done know in hindsight, every Tang is going to be more than all right.