You have to figure out the way you feel about you. Take that leap of faith, break the chain, and start surrounding yourself with people that elevate you. Does this sound easier said than done? Of course. It’s not easy to walk away from anything if you’ve made yourself believe it’s good for you or feels like love.
Telling and Hearing the Truth
Try your best to take your relationships slower. And more than anything—I can’t stress this enough and I’ve said this before—make your boyfriend or girlfriend feel comfortable with telling you any and all things. Women and men mess up in the way we react to the truth. Some of the things this person drops on you can be a shock to hear if you’ve already developed serious feelings, and with our reactions we can discourage somebody from telling us even more about their lives. We can scare them away so they may think the stories they’re sharing are turning us off. Be careful not to discourage somebody from telling you all the different things that you need to know about them, so that you can better decide how you feel about them and if they are the right person for you. Just hear them out and try to stay calm. Don’t overreact, and if you do, don’t overreact harshly. You’re having a conversation with this person and you want them to open up because they are your friend.
I’ll never forget one woman who told me the advice her mother gave her. She said when you have been in a dysfunctional and miserable relationship—if your ex ran you over emotionally, cheated on you, took advantage of you—you have to decide very selectively whom you will share that information with. As you’re getting to know each other and you’re giving your new boyfriend or girlfriend all the details about what your ex put you through, you’re basically telling this new person in your life, who thinks the world of you, how much you tolerated in a previous relationship. He may think he can cheat on you and you will pretty much take it. By revealing what you put up with, you’re giving this new man permission to do dirty by you. This person is thinking you’re A-plus, but you could end up devaluing yourself based on all the things you tell them about your past.
I would love to tell you that you will know someone after three or six months, but that wouldn’t be the truth. In some cases, a first impression can last a couple of years. It all depends on you and the level of comfort you create within the communication between you and your boyfriend or girlfriend. In some cases, a person could be a pathological liar—someone who is lying and more comfortable with lying regardless of how comfortable you make them feel. They just want to lie—but more than anything, they don’t want to allow another person to know everything they’re thinking or everything about their past. They’re staying in their comfort zone and holding you at arm’s length because of their insecurity that if the relationship doesn’t work out, you will walk off knowing all their business. They do this for self-protection and self-preservation.
There are two sides of the coin. Of course, you want to build your relationship on the foundation of truth, planting positive and trusting seeds will grow into a great tree. However, in some instances, opening up and telling this new person you’re seeing all the details about what you went through or certain things in the past could be used against you. I still suggest that you be open and honest but you must take it upon yourself to decide how much of the truth you want to reveal when you first meet them. It can be a progressive process, where you feel them out and gradually share the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Open up, tell the person you’re with all the things that you’re comfortable letting them know, but remember that you also have the power to create the mind-set of your new man or woman. You want to be the master of your environment. Sometimes, in order to stay in control, you have to limit what you share until you feel like you fully trust the new person in your life.
Powerful Women
Some men are intimidated by educated women with self-love and self-respect, so they go and get what I call “low self-esteemers”—people who don’t have any goals, who don’t want anything for their lives. They can talk a scantily clad low self-esteemer into believing they’re nothing, but they can’t do that to a woman who knows she’s something and has a lot to offer the world.
Some women may wonder why they are alone if they’re sexy, attractive, and successful. They make a lot of money, have a career, and can pay for dinner. Most likely it’s because men see them as a threat. A lot of guys are intimidated by women who are educated, goal-oriented, and want more and better for themselves. In addition, a woman who makes more money than a man is a threat to a lot of guys.
As I said earlier, a successful music producer once told me he was dating a lot of women from overseas because he had noticed that a lot of successful and smart women in the U.S. have a very masculine energy and an overly aggressive mentality. For many of these women the money, the independence, and all the materialistic things become the power. They’ve got a career and all this success but they’re still lonely. These women want a man but they have to know that straight from the gate they’re a threat until they make themselves not a threat. They have to recognize that if they have the power they don’t have to use it. A powerful woman should learn to not treat her man like an employee.
You should understand that there is something about the power and confidence and energy of a strong independent woman that can be very intimidating to a lot of guys. If a man is intimidated by who you are, you shouldn’t be with him because it’s going to be an ongoing struggle for you to try and make him feel more secure as a man. If you meet a man you’re interested in, even if you have more than him financially, get to know him and allow him to try and fill that void in your life. If he wants to be all the things you don’t have in your life, you should allow him to be the man he is.
Don’t ever dumb yourself down or lessen yourself, but in order to make people feel comfortable, you have to make them feel like you want to know more about them. Create a better playing field: Elevate them and make them feel important, because you already know you’re important. You don’t have to tell all about your success right off the bat, even if you are used to getting someone’s attention that way.
Are You Acting Out of Insecure Impulses?
I met a very successful woman who owned a company with dozens of employees. We had just met and she dropped so much information on me—how much she was making, how much her house cost, how big her house is—and I was sitting there the whole time listening to her, thinking, That’s a whole lot of information you’re dropping on someone you just met! I thought she was trying to impress me, but it also showed me that she was insecure. She wanted to impress me and get my attention, but she was also telling me that she thought she was nothing without all this stuff. It seemed she didn’t think she was nearly as special as all the things that came with her. She didn’t think she was impressing me herself, as a woman, so she felt the need to tell me about all the things she owned. I would love to believe that she was telling me all that because she was proud of her accomplishments, but it felt like it was coming from an insecure place. I’m sure you ladies out there are able to say you’ve met plenty of men who have acted the same way, giving you too much information about what they’re worth, the cars they own, their jewelry, and other materialistic stuff. They just met you and volunteered all this information. I see this behavior as the result of insecure impulses. What they’re saying is, Even if you’re not impressed with me I hope that you’re impressed by all this stuff I have. And the materialistic stuff says nothing about their character.
You don’t have to tell everybody your business. Most people are not aware that their bragging and talking about all the things they have shows that they are coming from an insecure place. You don’t have to be desperate for a reaction, that feeling of being sweated. You don’t have to run around dropping names to make you seem cooler.
Talking about the things you’ve accomplished is cool. You have to be proud of what you’re doing, but it has to come from that space. If it seems to others like your material success comple
tes your self-confidence and you show off to make sure the other person is impressed, you’re probably not impressing anybody.
The more you brag about all the things that come with you, out of insecure impulses, the more you’re setting yourself up to have a man or woman take advantage of all that. Don’t allow the money and the materialistic things to define who you are.
The difference is in the mind-set and the thinking. You want to get to know someone—and vice versa—based on who you are, not what you own. Think of it this way: It doesn’t make me a great man because I’m pulling up in a Maserati. There just so happens to be a great man sitting in that Maserati. A woman should be able to say I love the man in the car.
From my experience, I’ve found that if rappers, singers, and athletes take off all their jewelry and bling, they can seem like the most insecure people in the world. One night a few years ago I went to a club with a rapper. There were a ton of fly women all around us. He leaned over to me and said, “Man, these women are all going crazy—and I don’t even have any jewelry on.” Of course I knew that it didn’t matter if he wore jewelry or not—the women were sweating him because they were fans. It was surprising for me to find that some of his strength and his confidence was connected to his jewelry.
A similar insecurity can be linked to women and their makeup. Some women believe that a man will flirt with them, trying to get their attention or a phone number, only when they’re all dressed up and wearing makeup. For women, the idea of going out without their makeup on makes them uncomfortable, but men will still find them attractive. Most men like the natural look; some women have told me that they’ve had more guys try to talk to them when they put less attention into what they wear—like when they run to the supermarket in sweats and Ugg boots with no makeup and their hair barely done—compared to when they’re all dressed up. It’s not always about what you have or what you’re wearing that can make a person interested in you.
A lot of people don’t know when they’re doing things out of insecure impulses. I was in a relationship for several years and every time I made a mistake I tried to fix it by buying things for my girlfriend. When she wasn’t impressed with me because of something I did or the way I acted, I would take her on a crazy shopping spree and buy her stuff to get her to forget what I did.
I needed to buy her something and have her so consumed with what I was buying for her so she would decide to stay with me. Back then, I wasn’t as mature or confident. I didn’t know how to sit down and have a conversation and work things through. I thought that with all the things I bought I could keep her contained and happy. But it wasn’t real—it was just smoke and mirrors.
Try your best to get to know the man who comes with all the stuff he comes with, and really figure out how you feel about him. If you’re clearly hooking up with him because of who he is and everything that comes with him, then have a ball—but don’t try to make it into anything else than what it is. Don’t create a fantasy too soon in your relationship.
There was something about the foundation of love back in the day, the way love and marriage was instilled, so that marriages and relationships lasted. It seems like only the people who have been married for more than thirty years know how to fight for love or have the patience for love. Today, we don’t seem to have the same integrity, patience, understanding, bond, or connection to live up to the vows. What were they doing back then? We know they were reading the same words in the Bible. They were exchanging the same vows, but how is it that they are still married decades later? With all the divorces and broken relationships, it seems like we’re not working at it at all. I go back and forth sometimes, wondering if I was a coward for giving up on my own marriage, even though I know there was too much negativity in front of our daughter. What was it back then that made it possible for those long-married couples to actually stick to commitments? Did they know themselves better? Did they take the time to get to know each other and to love each other? That’s something I always think about.
I also wonder why so many parents and adults talk and talk about wanting their kids to marry and settle down, but they don’t advise us on how to maintain a successful marriage and get through all the trying times. So many couples will end up filing for divorce because their parents have not made them aware of how to make a marriage work—and maybe their own marriages didn’t work. How do you make anything work if you don’t have all the tools or information to make it work?
Sometimes when I think about my childhood I remember my parents and my friends’ parents emphasizing two things. They told us, When you grow up, be successful and go make a lot of money. When you grow up, find the one you love and get married and you’ll live happily ever after. Back then, it was a very exciting thought but as I got older I wondered, After I make all of this money what do I do with it? After I get married, how do I stay married? Most people anticipate getting engaged and it’s a confidence booster and it’s beautiful but have they really sat down and thought about all the ins and outs of marriage, or if they even have what it takes to be a husband or a wife?
Today’s version of love is very different. If you have parents who were married for thirty, forty, or fifty years, they may have instilled in you what love is. But they fell in love back when the dynamics, challenges, and issues we have today didn’t even exist. Some of you may disagree with that. An old man I know who was married for forty-seven years once said to me, Tyrese, y’all ain’t going through shit. Y’all ain’t doing nothin’ new when it comes to love. There have been the same challenges and obstacles that have been around for all these years. I wasn’t willing to argue with him, but I walked away and I had to disagree. I feel like sex on television, nudity in magazines, girls in music videos with their bodies out, all of these things weren’t as prevalent or in-your-face. Things were more tactful. There was drama because parents were concerned with the images that were on television. Now, unfortunately, all of these graphic images are available.
I still believe in love. I know that true love exists in the world and I still believe in the morals of love, whether it’s old-school or new-school. But there are many different challenges right now to making love work. Maybe if we get to know ourselves first, and try our best to get to know the one we’re saying we love, we can achieve the love we’re picturing in our minds.
Chapter 7
What Is Your Purpose?
I dream with my eyes open. I want to become what I see. When I was younger I was always looking around for something better—because anything had to be better than what I was exposed to. And I still do that. Sometimes we need to see things in order to discover what we want to become. I want you to be able to say I see the invisible, I hear in silence, I climb invisible stairs, having faith in God with no points of reference.
I wanted to become more like the people around me, like the mentors and pastors who impacted my life in a positive way. I saw what they were doing with my own eyes, and I was influenced by what I saw. We should all dream with our eyes open. Look around and see the positive things in other people’s lives and actions and imagine better for yourself.
A lot of times the people around you are going to make you feel uncomfortable about what you’re doing or where you’re going in life, when you’re trying to do something on the next level and special. You should always expect people to be negative and not get behind you, but don’t pay attention to any of that. When people are discouraging, I like to say Only those who can see the invisible can do the impossible. What that means for me is that others might not see what I see for my life. People will try and discourage me or create the spirit of doubt in what I want to do with my life and the different directions that I want to go in, because they don’t see what I see. I am seeing the invisible and I’m looking to do the impossible.
I was that kid who got laughed at because I was trying to sing. When other kids at my behavioral school hated on my singing, I didn’t listen to it, because that’s what they were supposed to do—badas
s kids were supposed to be down on everything new or different. Even some friends and family made comments and laughed at me, because I was the funny guy—but years later they were calling and asking for concert tickets. So at the end of the day, be comfortable with your individuality. So many people are going out of their way to fit in and be accepted by everybody. Forget that. Do your thing.
Get comfortable in your weird. The word “weird” from my understanding means quirky, different, being an outcast of some sort. People that are different see things differently; they don’t really go about their life trying to be a part of the things that normal “cool” people would be a part of. I have a great deal of respect for people who are considered weirdos, especially smart weirdos. Weirdos have been forward-thinking revolutionaries, game changers, and world changers. People used to call me weird because of the way I think and my outlook and my approach on life, and I used to have a problem with it. But I finally said, if all these amazing things I’ve accomplished—all the blessings coming back to back, the success I’ve had in different areas of my life and career—if all this came from my being a weirdo, I’m going to wear my weird as a badge of honor.
I stayed positive and I stood my ground because I loved what I was doing. Nothing people said could take away my joy. And the thing is, a lot of my confidence comes from my knowing I’ve already heard my worst no—being a kid, standing in a parking lot, asking people for their shopping carts so I could make twenty-five cents to pay for the DASH bus to get to school, and they said no. It was a quarter! You can’t destroy my life and my dreams and make me sad and miserable because of what you say. I’ve already heard my worst no. There is no “no” on earth worse than that.
How to Get Out of Your Own Way Page 18