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The topics and opinions express in the following show are
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solely those of the hosts and their guests and not
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those of W FOURCY Radio.
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What's working on Purpose? Anyway? Each week we ponder the
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answer to this question. People ache for meaning and purpose
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at work, to contribute their talents passionately and know their
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lives really matter. They crave being part of an organization
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that inspires them and helps them grow into realizing their
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highest potential. Business can be such a force for good
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in the world, elevating humanity. In our program, we provide
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guidance and inspiration to help usher in this world we
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all want Working on Purpose. Now, here's your host, doctor
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Elise Cortes.
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Welcome back to the Working on Purpose program, which has
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been brought to you with passionate and price since February
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of twenty fifteen. Thanks for tuning in this week. Great
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to have you. I'm your host, doctor Elise Cortes. If
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we've not met before and you don't know me, I'm
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a workforce advisor, organizational psychologist, management consultant, local therapist, speaker,
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and author. My team and I at Gusto Now help
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companies to unliven and fortify their operations by building a dynamic,
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high performance culture, inspirational leadership, and nurturing managers activated by
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meaning and purpose. Many organizations are not aware of how
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critical it is to invest in developing their leaders and
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managers not just for their own effectiveness, but also to
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avoid burnout and keep them fulfilled. And did you know
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that inspired employees outperform their satisfied peers by a factor
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of two point twenty five to one. In other words,
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inspiration is good for the bottom line. You can learn
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more about us and we can kind of how we
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can work together at Gusto dashnow dot com or my
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personal site at Lascortes dot com. If you're just getting
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into the program today, my guest is dot org. Lamel
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mc morris a nationally recognized entrepreneur, activist, and change maker
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dedicated to advancing equity and revitalizing underserved communities. He's also
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the founder of Phase two Consulting. Growing up on the
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South Side of Chicago, he went on to find phenomenal
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success as a DC policymaker, a consultant in the financial
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and professional sports arenas, and a civil and human rights advocate.
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He is the author of the Power to Persist Eight
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simple habits to build lifelong resilience, which we'll be talking
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about today. Will be going into what is resilience and
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why is it important to cultivate habits to support it.
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He joined us today from Chicago, though his home base
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is Washington, d C. Doctor Lamel, welcome to working on Purpose.
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Thank you for having me. How are you doing well.
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I'm better.
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I'm hanging out with you.
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Sounds like a plan.
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Let's celebrate this beautiful thing you brought into the world.
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I appreciate how you birth this. It was a beautiful read,
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doctor mc morris. I really learned a lot and I
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learned a lot about you as well, which was incredibly inspired.
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Speaking of inspiration, so let's start with that. I might
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call you maybe a walking billboard for a person who
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has lived and illustrated resilience in life. And I got
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that both by reading your book, but also by the
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forward that you have from Reverend al Sharpton, who also
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writes about some of your your life instances. Let's just
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start with a couple of dustings of why I think
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you're uniquely qualified to write a book like this.
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You know, I've had seasons of life, and by the way,
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thank you very much again for having me this evening.
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I've had seasons of life that tested me, probably more
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than I expected. Losing a business and a business partner
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very suddenly overnight, right right over overnight, Navigating the uncertainty
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of you know, what it means to be an entrepreneur,
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confronting personal loss right just in life like all of
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us do, and learning to start again at various stages.
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Of my life.
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In the forward, you know, Reverend Sharpton, you mentioned him,
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he talks about, you know, some of those moments because
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he's known me for quite for quite some time. He's
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seen the highs and the lows, career pivots, he's seen
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my felt partnerships, he's seen me rebuild and yet you know,
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continue to still show up. So those experiences didn't just
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teach me at least resilience. They required me to actually
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practice it right, long before I ever actually wrote about it.
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And so you know, if you say I am a
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walking billboard, it's not because I did it perfectly.
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It's perhaps because I just kept.
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Going m I also have to tell you how much
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I was endeared by your story of getting through college.
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And you know, when the tuition came around, you were
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in the office, you know, dialing for dollars, asking for
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people to help you, and I just really I thought,
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how many people do that? How many people persist? How
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many people would just said, okay, I call uncle, I'll go.
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It was tempting, I mean, let me not. I don't
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want to, you know, over romantic romanticize it. You know,
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there were times where it was exhausting to run around
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every semester and try to add classes and beg professors
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to let you in, and to sit in the vice
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president of you know, financial affairs office every semester, you know,
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and doing that process over and over.
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But it was also the people.
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There were there were people actually who were close to
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me who said, hey, you know, why don't you just
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go home for a semester?
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And then come back.
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I did not want to do that because my fear
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was not finishing uh, and my biggest fear was disappointing
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my mother and my family.
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Strong motivations. Well, let's let's get into now from your
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vantage point, Lamelle, what what is resuliance? How would you
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define it?
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Resilience is the ability to adapt, recover and move forward
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when when life or if you're a leader, when when
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leadership becomes unpredictable. It's not just bouncing back, Uh, it's
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actually bouncing forward and using adversity as this fuel to
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continue to grow. It is, you know, the closing of
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one chapter, if you will, I found, you know, opens
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up and leads to another door, another chapter being opened.
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And you have to have that mindset right that the
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door isn't just closed, but there's going to be an
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opportunity for a new door to open.
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And it's it's it's a.
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Skill that can be learned through intentional habits, not necessarily
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only a personality trait.
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M h.
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I'm going to quote that use adversity as a fuel
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to grow. That's that's one for the for the books, Lammeel.
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Thank you so so this show has you know, as
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I said, been on air for a good more than
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ten years, and I really is a place for people
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to come and individually grow and cultivate themselves, but also
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a place where leaders are coming to cultivate themselves and
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their organizations. So I like how in your book you
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you you take on both individual resilience as well as
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organizational y'all talk about community as another places, but let's
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just distinguish or situate individual resilience. How that's come to
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be and why that's important.
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Yeah, you know, so life will always serve us know uncertainty.
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Uh, life has a way of distributing you know, loss
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and transition and pressure, but also opportunity. Resilience helps us
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individually stay steady, think clearly, manage stress, and keep going
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when things get hard, but also keeps us moving in
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the good times. And it's easy to you know, coast
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when when things are going good, it's it's emotional emotional
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UH and mental strength and that well being that allows
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us to lead through both struggle and UH through success.
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So you know, in business today, you know they business
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runs on chains. You have you know, economic shifts, you
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have technological shifts, we have AI, we have uncertainty and
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a global crist and workforce burnout. Resilient leaders and teams
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adapt faster, they innovate more, and they recover more quickly
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from disruption, so they can you can be bent without breaking,
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if you will. And a resilient workforce actually and culture,
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you know, foster's engagement. It fosters retention, and it fosters performance.
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But you have to have resilient individuals and leaders to
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help manage that change and foster that level and that
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culture of performance.
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So something I read in your book that I just
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has really been sticking with me Lamel that I really like,
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and I just think it says so much and says
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a lot about you too. And you say in your
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book that if you started life on third base, it
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can be hard sometimes to tap into your resilience. Obviously
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I read your story, I read your book. I know
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that you didn't start on third base, and so it's
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your book is all the more important for anybody that
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who has started on second or third base or whatever
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it is to be able to develop these these things
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that life has maybe more naturally taught and given you
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lessons for. So I wanted to celebrate that idea of this.
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You know, where people are starting from working from and
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like that that you so beautifully situate in your book.
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Yeah, it comes from a saying at least that some
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people you know woke up on third base and thought
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they hit.
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A triple.
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Right, you know sometimes you know. And by the way,
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let me let me be very clear, there's nothing wrong
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with being born on third base. There's nothing wrong with
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having familiar and even cultural and society advantages because of
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how well your your parents did in life and they've created.
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But even in that environment, right, even in an environment
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where a success abounds, and there's still a need to
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be resilient and not become comfortable and learn how to
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survive and thrive, you know, beyond your familial and cultural
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But if you're me and you're born on the South
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Side of Chicago in an underserved area without the family
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you know wealth and generational wealth, then you know I
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am made and molded out of adversity. It is adversity
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and challenge that has propelled me to grow and strengthen
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me to become more resilient and know how to survive
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through the ups and through the downs.
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And so neither.
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Resilience is built in either circumstance, It just so happens
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that mine and many people like me. You know, I'm
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now talking to you literally in my child at home.
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My mom's upstairs. I'm in the basement of my child
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at home. This is actually this, Yeah, this is actually
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where we film our podcast by the same name of
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the books, The Power to Persist, Because my my feeling
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is if I'm going to ask at least to come
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on and talk or frankly, to come here and talk
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about her resilient journey, I want to be able to
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do it in a place where mine authentically started. And
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so this place you know of, once perceived as challenge,
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once perceived as a place that it was underserved, it
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actually now this is a full circle moment because I
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get to bring leaders and influencers and folks who've been
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successful and who've had to make it through resilient to
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a place where mine actually started.
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And so.
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What was meant perhaps and what sometimes is meant perhaps
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at least to break us, actually ends up being the
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thing and make us. And if I'm a billboard for anything,
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perhaps I'd like to be a bill board for that.
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One of my values is empowerment lamel So that really
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speaks to me that people listening would say, Okay, these
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things that I think have been breaking me could actually
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really really strengthen me and turn me onto something even more.
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I also want to celebrate this beautiful intentionality that the
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way in which you host your show from the family
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home that you grew up in. And then, just briefly
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for people who don't know this, and one of the
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things I want to talk about later is the notion
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of reaching into other circles to help expand your thinking
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and also cultivate your resilience. For those of us who
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don't know what it really means to grow up in
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the South Side of Chicago, what does that mean?
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Well, that means in my environment, I had the constant
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daily threat of gang violence and you know, perhaps even
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gang initiation. I you know, I had to walk past
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folks who are not just addicted, but dealing drugs. I
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had to deal with alcoholism, and you know, just a
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sense of violent and a violent environment, if you will,
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plenty of which is one of the reasons why I
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started the effort to rebuild and invest in my neighborhood.
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Plenty of vacant lots, abandoned buildings, that is, you know,
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that was my environment. But you know, I was never
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shaped by that. I was I was never defined, if
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you will, by that. You know, at least when I
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was a kid. Upstairs, we had books like this, and