Transcriber: Safa Outerqiss Reviewer: omar idmassaoud
It was a cold Friday morning,
and I was sitting on the edge of my bed in my apartment in Tallahassee, Florida,
during the fall of 2014. My father recently had a stroke.
There were several family deaths. I was under financial stress, heartbroken.
And my academics were suffering due to a lack of focus,
which resulted in me becoming academically ineligible to play football.
The sport I love. I thought to myself:
How far I have fallen from almost reaching my heart’s desires.
I heard a knock at the door. I got up,
walked over and looked through the people.
I noticed two familiar individuals, my mother and older sister.
After they walked in, they took one good look at me and began to cry.
The last time they saw me, I was a strong five foot eight,
183 pound, division one college football running back.
But on that day, stood a skinny
one hundred and fifty pound broken man.
How did I get there? Well,
it was a combination of a series of unfortunate events which included
mismanaging time, resources, and talent. I was at rock bottom.
I was good at math, but I could not calculate how
I was going to get myself out of that predicament.
After seeing my mother’s and sister’s tears, I knew it was time to move forward.
But how? And rebuilding my life,
I would like to share with you all three key factors that
I learned that helped me escape the abyss of rock bottom.
- Would you like to know what they are? -Yes
After analyzing many of the greats like Muhammad Ali, Michael Jordan and yes,
Dr Sybil C. Mobley, the founding dean of Florida A&M University School of Business
and Industry, identified three key factors that helped individuals,
groups, and businesses change their downward spiral towards rock bottom
and allow them to use rock bottom as a solid foundation.
The first key factor was their ability to have
a fresh vision of what their life should look like or potentially become.
Could you imagine the NBA if Michael Jordan would have quit
after he was cut from his high school basketball team?
His millions of fans are grateful for the excitement he brought to
the court in the Chicago Bulls organization for
the six championships he helped to win.
Indeed, Nike is grateful for
the billions of dollars they make year after year selling his Jordan
brand sneakers that he had a fresh vision of whom he wanted to become.
Sitting on the edge of my bed in my apartment in Tallahassee, I had no vision.
My recently filled pass was like a dark cloud over me.
The fateful visit of those who loved me.
My firm belief in God, in myself, helped me develop a new vision.
I decided to see something deeper and more meaningful in my situation,
being a firm believer in God.
In retrospect, I see that God was pruning me like a tree to help set me up
for healthy and rapid growth.
The second key factor was understanding energy in enhancing my emotional
intelligence. I discovered this when I was shifting from a survival mindset to
a thriving mindset. To enhance my emotional intelligence,
I had to understand the energy trends and transitions within myself,
which subsequently allowed me to notice
the energy trends within others that were consistent across the board,
amongst many at a high percentage of time.
Back then, when I was in survival mode,
I used to think that individuals could see through my poker face
and knew that I was going through a tough time.
Now I see that was more indicative of how I felt about myself,
not how the world viewed me.
When I shifted to a thriving mindset,
I noticed argued the world as limitless and I would abandon thoughts of scarcity,
which helped me create more solutions that led to more opportunities
for success along my journey. As I continued to master energy,
I notice what individuals would call a high in sixth sense
or a strong gut feeling. This is important because simply,
we do not walk this Earth alone. Other individuals inhabit the planet as well.
And guess what? We sometimes must interact with others.
(laughing)
If you live long enough to encounter individual people,
consider good or bad, based off their actions or moral conduct.
Unlike Touch, where you can label it as warm, hot or cold,
or smell being pleasant, unpleasant or not having a scent,
as well as many other descriptive words,
energy does not have as many labels for the things that you encounter.
The easiest way to group energy is positive, negative, or indifferent.
Based on the experiences that you've had in life or
the learned experiences you have listening to
the stories of someone else from their lives.
Energy comes in different levels of frequency, whether that's low or high.
You must have an instinct,
immediate or delayed response to that energy to allow it to have
a positive impact on your life or negated from having a negative impact on your life
The third key factor was executing in a timely manner
When I think back to the 1974 highlights of the heavyweight championship fight
between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman.
It taught me patience and increased my awareness on when to act.
George Foreman was the bigger and stronger man in that fight.
But Muhammad had more stamina and agility.
He was able to tire out for men to deliver
an eighth round knockout to regain the heavyweight title of the world.
When I received a fresh vision on how I wanted to make it out of my situation,
I knew the game plan would have been pointless if I did not execute on it.
In my last semester of my bachelor's degree program,
I had to take six classes and work three jobs in order to maintain
the normal matriculation timetable of my degree.
Despite the setbacks I had in 2014,
this was important because a few of
the classes that were offered that semester would not have been offered
again until the following spring, that would have pushed my graduation back nine
months. Wow. It's safe to say I'm glad I put in extra time
and energy then to save myself time in the future.
I learned the hard way that some opportunities had a lifespan,
and failure to execute in a timely manner could lead to you forfeiting your chance
or adding additional time to you reaching your goal
At the School of Business and Industry
at Florida A&M University, Sybil C. Mobley
used to always say a quote from Seneca.
“Luck is when preparation meets opportunity.”
Strive not to be perfect, but a constant state of evolution,
a never ending process of improvement. Thank you.
(clapping)