(00:00) on call recorder ecamm what’s your new year’s resolution um i’ll tell you after it gets asked to do with the ceremony oh that’s long duh you just always do it exactly the same why would i do it different i don’t know it’s just funny because i have to sit in this [ __ ] i’m literally in the splits right here i’m sitting here to get those squishy ball chairs yeah i put a reminder on my phone okay so i’m writing some squishy balls is what we need to do oh gross greetings boys and babes so glad you’re

(00:56) joining us for another episode of the magic hour i’m mercedes terrell and with me as always my majestic partner and shine jade bryce hey jade hey you guys today we’re having on cornell thomas cornell has written a couple of books all focused on being positive even in the midst of extreme adversity his first title is the power of positivity controlling where the ball bounces followed by the power of me army of one and his latest book is called extraordinary the distance between good and great cornell travels all over the world

(01:31) sharing his story and his third book was endorsed by tony robbins he currently does an event called the positivity summit that looks pretty interesting but i’m sure he’ll fill us in on all that yes and who doesn’t want more positivity in their lives we could all use a little bit of that so without further ado let me introduce a multi-book author and expert in positive self-awareness he has been endorsed like jade said by some of the top experts in his field including tony robbins and dr cornell west

(02:03) growing up with adversity his whole life allowed him to get past the why me’s and focused on on the what nows seven days away from playing professional basketball in europe he suffered a career ending injury that derailed his dream and through this he has become the perfect example of turning a loss into a win mr cornell thomas ladies and gentlemen yay wanna do that one more time yeah if we can get through that one more time call recorder warning this mac is not running fast enough to record the video from this call the recording frame will

(02:41) be lowered to compensate yeah i know you always [ __ ] do that to me okay let me see if i can fix these settings oh video frame rate maximum okay let’s do this again greetings boys and babes so glad you’re joining us for another episode of the magic hour with me mercedes terrell and with me nope try that again greetings boys and babes so glad you’re joining us for another episode of the magic hour i’m mercedes terrell and with me as always my majestic partner and shine jade bryce sorry they’re going to say hi jade sorry

(03:32) i can’t i will you want me to do it again well i’ll just start he can cut this part out sorry adam hey you guys today we’re having on cornell thomas cornell has written a couple of books all focused on being positive even in the midst of extreme adversity his first title is the power of positivity controlling where the ball bounces followed by the power of me army of one and his latest book is called extraordinary the distance between good and great cornell travels all over the world sharing his story and his third book was

(04:03) endorsed by tony robbins he currently does an event called the positivity summit that looks pretty interesting but i’m sure he’ll fill us in on all of that yeah that looks super interesting and who doesn’t want more positivity in their lives i know we could all use a little bit of that so without further ado let me introduce a multi-book author and expert in positive self-awareness he has been endorsed by some of the top experts in his field including like jade was mentioning tony robbins and by dr

(04:32) cornel west growing up with adversity his whole life allowed him to get past the why me’s and focus on the what nows instead seven days away from playing professional basketball in europe he suffered a career-ending injury that derailed his dream through all this he has become the perfect example of turning a loss into a huge win mr cornell thomas that was really good i like that one a lot um [Music] okay cool you want to act like you just got off yeah all right yay that was so good i know the world needs more people that

(05:29) have his mindset yes more cornell’s in the world please i love that i’m gonna use a lot of all that inspiration all that inspo for this this new year we’re in yeah all right girl what’s what’s your magic trick today give it to me late on me so um my magic trick today is just saying thank you this may sound super silly but me and my kids say um when we get home before turning off the car we say thank you carr for bringing us home or taking us to the park and then when we get home we say hi home

(06:04) thank you thanks for keeping us safe and you know i’ve talked about in the past how we touch the earth and think the earth and as silly as the sound it just helps us to stay in a state of gratitude it helps us to be positive about what we have even though we you know would like to be in a more spacious car or in a home of our own instead of an apartment we focus on being positive about what we do have and i believe that what you focus on expands and also that if you’re not grateful for what you do have then the universe

(06:32) doesn’t bring you more and you know the more grateful you become the more you realize how much you really do have to be grateful for saying thank you is just a great habit to form and it shifts your focus so you know as woo-woo as this might sound i find it to be really beneficial in my life i love that you just use the term woowoo first off but also also yes you i actually like see you know i know if any of you follow jade if you don’t you should but she’ll post stuff like this where her kids are thanking

(07:04) the earth you know for being under their feet and thanking the car for bringing them home safely or whatever it is and as silly like you said jade as silly as that might sound if you can put aside the silly part of it or the things that really like trigger our weird little egos that say we’re not supposed to do those things that’s not the norm the practice of just like what the feelings are that are being brought up in you every time you do that are so important to make sure we’re integrating into our lives on the daily so i think

(07:30) you’re setting a super good example for those them chillings and also just seeing for the world in general thank you for that magic thanks what about you so my magic trick is to i actually got this from cornell our guest yeah um to find ways little ways to pay it forward and one of the ways that he’s mentioned they do in their positivity summit i believe is just going to like a starbucks or go wherever you get coffee at or somewhere maybe it’s like a fast food restaurant or something that you’re going to go to anyway and just

(08:10) paying for the person behind you or if you’re feeling really you know wealthy that day or really grateful that day then pay for several people behind you whatever it is that you can you know put towards or even just this like hey put five dollars on the person’s uh you know whatever they’re buying whoever the person is behind it doesn’t need to be anyone you’ve ever known you don’t need to even let them know that you’re doing it it’s probably better that you don’t and just spreading that kind of hope

(08:36) that um cornell talks about and allowing people to see hope out there in humanity you know like hope in humanity i think we’re really lacking that in this day and age and i think a little gesture like that paying it forward um can change the world little by little be the change man yeah that’s all it is i love that so i’m gonna do another one too just in case he says that because he might say that about his positivity summit i don’t want to like double up on it okay but my other one does not apply at all it’s a mosquito one but

(09:14) it’s still i think it’s one that we recorded originally but yeah we did but we didn’t use that episode right okay yeah i wanted to make sure we didn’t use it i was gonna ask you okay um so my magic trick is super random not related to anything in this episode but sometimes i gotta throw out something that became useful in my life or is about to be useful in my life in this case so i asked the internet i asked the instagram really what i could do to stop getting bit my mosquitoes bit by mosquitoes i don’t know why i

(09:47) can’t talk today but if you guys have maybe the same blood type as me or i don’t know what it is the lotion i’m wearing something and are getting eaten by mosquitoes every time you’re out in the world in a mosquito-ridden place until you feel my pain yeah i know you feel my pain and especially when this mosquito season is upon you anyway so what i got back from instagram and the internet combined no idea you know how deep the science goes on this or um how it’s gonna work because i haven’t had a chance to apply

(10:19) it to my life yet however i did do some excuse me i did do some research and there was lots of people saying that this is the best method so what you can do to determine mosquitoes is use um vitamin b1 also also known as thiamine and i guess when you take this in higher doses it can help you reduce how attracted mosquitoes are to you and apparently it’s exerted by your skin and it masks the natural human odors that insects are attracted to so i’m going to give that a try i’ll let you guys know the results of that but in

(10:55) the meantime if you’re interested and you’re going to somewhere with mosquitoes or you know that’s going to be an issue in your life do some research on it and look it up comment to us let us know how it worked for you because we want to know hmm yeah i love that i’m going to try to find a kids form for that because my kids really really getting nap just like walking to the car and then they turn into little knots the bites and it’s just they can’t stop scratching so thank you for that i’m gonna use it i’m

(11:22) sorry i made you itchy because i heard you scratching while you were just saying that yeah that’s funny luckily it’s winter so i know that that’s just dry itch it’s a dry itch okay you guys thanks for listening we hope you found this conversation with cornell just super uplifting and that it was a light in your day if so please share it with your friends and family that would mean so much to us and remember you can always go to our instagram page at the magic hour to ask us or any of our future guests a

(11:54) question talk to you guys next week until then be a light thank you to cornell thomas for being on our show today and to summer and dreyson for my mosquito magic trick she’s the one who passed that along to me and to at rayton royal for our intro jam and of course to our boy adam from red fox audio for producing the show adam i’m going to do one more of those exits without summer and drasen in it because if i don’t use that if we don’t use that magic trick then you’ll have to uh yeah okay cool

(12:27) thank you to cornell thomas for being on our show today and to at rayton royal for our amazing intro jam we are still very much enjoying and of course to our boy adam from red fox audio for producing the show you know we love you stay magical friends okay um let me thomas well he said he was ready so i’m going to go ahead and pump i mean he messaged me like 30 minutes ago said i can’t wait oh my god he is honest he’s like sitting at his computer like i know i feel so bad why i mean just i just like i just thought everyone was like this um

(13:14) but just because you know he was the one that we like uh why am i not seeing you anymore where’d you go i’m here i don’t know i could see you can you hear me i can hear you did you already try to add him no well i was about to but then you went away oh i don’t know i’m still gone it’s so dry here my voice as you can tell is like drying out every other word the wind has been insane i’ve never had wind like this it’s like freezing cold wind like in vegas hmm can you try clicking your video just in

(13:51) case sure but i could see you and i can you’re moving and everything yeah i know but i can’t see you okay i clicked it and it turned it off i’m gonna click it to turn it back on okay i’m back there you are awesome that’s weird now i’m going to add him oh there he is i just entered co again why can’t all guests be this way oh my god all right let me put one oh wait i’m back right that was weird i saw that flash too hey hi what’s going on ladies cornell hold on where’s your face push

(14:31) the video oh there you are there you go what’s going on what’s up how are you do i sound okay do i sound crazy you sound great awesome there’s not that mic yeah i’m so grateful you guys are the [ __ ] oh thanks i was like did they just send me a microphone i was like this is a microphone all right this is how they do it my bad we can’t do it any other way we’ve tried trust me but this is the best way apparently and adam’s i was a good adam’s a good dude he was like a person that doesn’t understand

(15:10) technology let me help you through this oh he’s the best yeah he’s great man so big shout out to adam too well we appreciate you too because you’ve been so easy to work with you can’t even imagine some of the guests that we have on our own maintenance are you already recording yeah oh you’re okay i was hoping that adam heard everything he said so yeah i’m super low maintenance mama raised me right so crazy stuff but i can only imagine what you guys have to go through only your mom raised all of her men

(15:42) i know it mama t but i appreciate you guys having me this is so awesome you guys yeah i love it i love what you guys do thank you thank you that’s awesome to you how did you find us by the way so you guys are friends with um i think his name is jimmy smith he’s uh yeah so jimmy was following me like a while back i do jiu jitsu i’m a black ball in jiu jitsu wow through the jiu jitsu circles uh i saw him and you guys and i was like the magic hour what’s that let me check it out so i listened to uh

(16:16) you guys had one of it was all about like mental like depression and like oh yeah jamie yeah and i was just like oh this is dope so i was like all right cool these are people that i definitely want to talk to so then i really shout because if i meet people that i think are cool i’m like i’m reaching out so i just it’s awesome and here we are mercedes i really like the intro that you already read for him but um add black belt and jiu jitsu on this one that’s a good idea that’s important we need to know these

(16:45) things well because most of our uh listeners are mma yeah yeah they’ll be they’ll listen a little closer yeah now listen um my son just started jiu jitsu last week so yeah it’s super cute how old is your son three three three and a half jets last week yeah i wanted to be a black belt by 16. no where where are you on the globe i’m in austin mercedes is in orange county how about you i’m in new jersey okay we used to have fights in new jersey all the time at um atlantic city yeah it was um in bellator who was um

(17:27) eddie alvarez yeah yeah a couple of my friends have fought in bellator before oh uh claudio ledesma he’s a one i think he fought in bellator 125 or 135. okay i always say he’s like the size of my thigh like one of my thoughts yeah yeah but we call that we call that a fairy weight yeah yeah i dated one 125 her and did you beat him up i i’ve i felt it just felt weird not safe someone being not safe that’s terrible you guys he’s an expert in combat sports i don’t think i didn’t feel like i was too big

(18:02) you know yeah but you’re so tiny that that’s really hard to do so yeah the only guy who’s ever done i’m sure how tiny are you let me guess let me guess okay yep pretty good really good thank you very much i will not walk out no don’t leave yet oh my mom it’s all just i figured but my mom’s tough she’ll punch you in the face twice before you can see it oh i’ve never avoided um okay so mercedes is going to read the intro and then we’ll jump into the questions right okay all right you’re going to just start

(18:41) with so without further ado so without further ado let me introduce a multi-book author who’s also a black belt in jiu jitsu by the way and an expert in positive expert let’s try this again so without further ado let me introduce a multi-book author he’s a black belt in jiu jitsu and an expert in positive self-aware awareness he has endor why can’t i not read this right now she already nailed it right before you got off right that’s why my brain’s like we did this already we’re done

(19:18) so without further ado let me introduce a multi-book author he’s a black belt in jiu jitsu and an expert in positive self-awareness what am i is this am i writing this in wrong just say an expert in positive self-awareness instead of and in because that’s is making you stumble i think that’s what’s going on so just cross out that d sorry cornell that’s okay he wants to hear us talk about his credentials over and over again go ahead so without further ado let me introduce a multi-book author he’s a black belt in

(19:55) jiu jitsu an expert in positive self-awareness he has been endorsed by some of the top experts in his field including tony including tony robbins and dr cornell west growing up with adversity his whole life allowed him to get past the why me’s and focus on the what nows seven days away from playing professional basketball in europe he suffered a career-ending injury that derailed his dream through this he has become the perfect example of turning a loss into a huge win mr cornell thomas ladies and gents thank you thank you you what’s up

(20:34) cornell how are you so cornell uh you shed a lot of light on your story in your ted talk will you share that story with our listeners sure yeah so my story for me starts when i was about three years old i was raised by an absolute lioness the great tina thomas my father passed away when i was three years old bobby thomas police officer in city pacific new jersey passed away from cancer and when my dad passed away my mom was left with the task of raising five of us on our own with no money and one of my brothers is on the autism

(21:09) spectrum so if you have anybody in your life with autism or you know anybody with on the spectrum it’s it’s more than just raising one child so growing up i just never dreamed of being really anything like kids want to be like you know like their father i know boys a lot wouldn’t be like their father you know they would be superheroes whatever i didn’t want to be anything i was just trying to do be as low maintenance as possible so my mom didn’t have to worry about me and i i recognized that at a very very

(21:37) early age i realized that even though we had the love of like 10 parents i knew that there are certain things that we didn’t have financially that i just didn’t want to be an extra burden on my mom and so i’m the youngest of the boys and then we have one i have one sister who’s younger than i am and i got to see what adversity was at a very early age and when i go out and i speak i say you know when you do when you experience that at three years old and you come home as a latchkey kid and you’re making your own meals your mom’s

(22:08) working three jobs it just gives you a certain grit and mental toughness it’s almost like gives you like that shield where everything isn’t as bad so going to school and you know having a test or going to school or someone calling you a name or whatever like i was just like what i got four older brothers like what are you gonna give me that i can’t handle and uh seeing my mom just go through it every day and seeing bill stacked to the ceiling and her never taking it out on us her never saying you know the you know being a

(22:44) victim of the circumstances basically you know and she could easily have been that you know black woman single no money we were in an inner city uh no help and she could have used every excuse in the book to just give up and she just never did she doesn’t have quit in her dna so just watching my mom really shaped who i was and it wasn’t until i was 16 years old where i actually found something that i was passionate about uh my mom is from birds nest virginia like bird’s nest virginia is the size of this room that i’m in right

(23:16) now super small area i was related to every girl in town like i had everybody’s my cousin so being a 16 year old boy in a place where every girl is your cousin it just was not cool at all and my mom used to just take me and my brothers and my sister that we’d stay there for a week and do nothing like there was nothing to do in birds west virginia so one day i’m sitting on my cousin’s bed my cousin carlos he enlisted for the army and i look under his bed and he has all these newspaper articles i’m like

(23:45) why does he have a hundred newspapers in under his bed and i opened a newspaper and there’s a picture of my cousin dunking a basketball never played basketball before in my life never cared about basketball for my life but something about seeing my cousin on the front page of a newspaper it just resonated with me so deeply because i was lost i was lost in terms of there’s nothing i wanted to do so i was just kind of drifting through life and seeing my cousin and just reading every single article i was like ocd i

(24:17) just read every article multiple times and then i looked on his wall and he had 50 senior pictures of the hottest girls i’ve ever seen in my life i’m just like this dude is an athlete he’s like in newspapers like all these girls like them i’m this cat that has like hammer pants and my mustache doesn’t connect and my brother’s cutting my box and it’s crooked i’m like my identity is struggling like i was like i gotta do something so i’m gonna play basketball i’m gonna be a

(24:46) professional basketball player and so we drove back home i found this little pizza hut basketball when pizza hut i think i don’t know if they’re still in business but when they were these like give out free basketballs and i walked three miles to the nearest court i said okay here it is like i’m gonna be a basketball player i’m six foot four black dude this is going to be easy so i look at the hoop i throw the ball up the ball goes over the basket rolls down the hill so i’m like oh okay let me try that again so i did it

(25:17) again same result so i did that for about two more hours and i realized something like i suck at basketball like i’m horrible and i when i tell this story to people they just like there’s no way but out of the woods like literally out of the woods came this little five foot eight korean guy and he started walking towards the court and like i would later find out that like his house was by the woods it’s not like some creepy dude was like i like i have a van with no one that’s what happened like it wasn’t that story

(25:47) and he comes up to me and he goes my name’s ray you want me to show you how to shoot a basketball wow i don’t know sounds like a fairy god father karate kid seven yeah right and so that’s more masculine so he goes you should shoot a basketball and i tell people like five foot eight korean guy six foot four black guy and i said never judge a book by its color you know we say cover what color we’re so quick to stereotype you know what people can do based on what we’re fed right and this guy for the next two hours

(26:20) showed me how to properly shoot a basketball and when he left i still sucked but i was a little bit less suckier than when he arrived and he what he did for me changed the course of my life it literally changed it changed the trajectory of my life because he gave me his time that’s priceless something did you feel seen yeah it’s like wow here i am this guy that i don’t know what i want to do this dude the stranger comes up to me takes two hours out of his time to show me a skill that i so desperately

(26:50) want and he was only in my life like three other times after that and i was just like wow like okay he planted this seed in my head of belief that if i work at this i can get better and i you know i tell people all the time like our minds are gardens whatever your plant’s gonna grow if you plant negativity it’s gonna grow if you plant positivity it’s gonna grow now that’s not saying your garden is gonna be without weeds happens all the time but he planted in my head hey you keep working at this is

(27:17) you’re gonna slowly get better so i said okay i’m convinced every day i went to the court for six hours every single day rain sleet i don’t care what the weather was i’d walk three miles go to the court for six hours because i had my mom’s work ethic so watching my mom work three jobs come home feed us and then go back out to our other job she didn’t have to tell me to work hard at things i just mirrored what she did so that was such a great example of okay if you want to get better at something

(27:46) if you want to achieve something for her it was if i want to pay this bill i’ve got to work three jobs if you want to do this basketball thing you better put the time in and she’d have to tell me that i just heard her say it like i heard her through her actions yeah so i tried out my junior year in high school tried out for the basketball team for the first time uh got cut got cut badly and i ended up playing jv uh junior varsity and i never played organized sports really so i didn’t know junior varsity uh was if you’re a junior

(28:17) on junior varsity you’re probably not very good at the sport that you want to play and uh my friend was that cornell you know there’s two other juniors on the team and two other juniors were not basketball players like one was in the marching band didn’t care about basketball the other guy was like the size of like he’s up to my kneecap right so i’m like wow i’m with these guys i want to play in the nba and i’m not playing jv as a junior and then my senior year came i played like a

(28:43) minute a game like they take me in like take me back out i just hit got good at handing out waters and at the end of the season i’ll never forget the coach sat us all down in the circle and he went through everybody and said you know kevin you know you’re our best shooter and anthony you’re you know you’re going to be great next year and he went to down to everybody and when he got to me he said cornell you’re going to be a great businessman um let’s say anything about basketball nothing

(29:12) and it like crushed me like it crushed me the fact that he couldn’t muster up one sentence about basketball and i love basketball more than anybody and he can even say hey you know cornell you know keep working you’ll get better yeah he tried and i had this humongous chip on my shoulder and i was all about i’m gonna prove everybody wrong and when i get better blah blah blah and a lot of people ask me well when you were bad at basketball did you want to quit which is a very valid question usually when we’re bad at something we

(29:42) stop it right most people and i said i never let doubt stop my do and that was like one of the most powerful things because i know there are times that my mom doubted that we’d be able to get through i know for a fact but she never let it stop her action i think that’s the mistake that we make as human beings like when we go after things that are you know we’re like can we get this like this is a high reach goal and we start to go for we’re like man and you get that doubt as soon as that doubt creeps in you say you know what

(30:13) i’m probably not going to do that i’m probably not going to get it so then you stop and you never know if you could have right so i just never did that and i was also willing to sacrifice some of the things that i like to do for something that i love and that’s humongous right because i like hanging out with my friends yeah i like talking to girls i liked all that stuff but i love the idea of my mom never having to work again because i i got a professional contract i love that idea so i just kept working my mom sat me down

(30:44) and she said baby boy she goes i can’t pay for college she’s like i can’t just letting you just being honest i just can’t pay for college it’s okay mom i said that’s that’s fine i’ll figure it out and she took me to this tryout at the school and she said she never saw me play before so she thought like maybe if she takes me to a tryout out of college she’ll give me a scholarship like she didn’t i was horrible she was like she’s like oh you know i’ll just take this the next michael jordan to this

(31:11) school and those the blank okay here’s a scholarship you know let’s name this laughter so she takes me takes me to the trial and for two and a half hours i was by far the worst player there and the coach the kindness of his heart sat me and my mom down in his office and he essentially said like you can come to school here and you can even be on the team but you’ll never play like ever like everybody has to die before you play and my my limited mindset i was like yes let’s go like i’m gonna get a college jersey

(31:43) and i look to my right and my mom is just like stone-faced like no expression i know that look like it means someone’s gonna die so i’m looking at my mom i’m like oh wow what like what’s happening to her face and three people in the room me my mom the coach my mom raises her hand and the coach is just surprises me and he’s like miss thomas yeah and my mom goes my mom goes coach gemma like hard next shift to the left you know how many players from sentence college that’s where i went she goes

(32:17) have gone to the nba not have gotten their mba have gone to the nba where the professionals play and the coach looked at me like did he change into somebody else because you know this guy sucks and looked at my mom and he goes miss thomas none and my mom rolls her eyes and she’s like oh like let’s go boo boo it’s time to you know like this isn’t the school for you and we drove home she said nothing to me and me and my mom were to this day super tight said nothing not a word and in that silence i had an epiphany in that

(32:53) silence i realized that this woman who i love so much believes in me more than i believe in myself and if anybody believes in you more than you believe in yourself whatever you want to come to fruition is probably not going to happen like you have to be your biggest cheerleader you have to be your biggest fan and you have to believe it you know we’re society makes us think that we can’t be confident like we can’t have swagger like we can’t believe in ourselves we can’t say we’re going to be

(33:19) great right so i told my mom i said i got a plan i’m going to work two jobs i’m gonna go to a two-year college and go to a junior college and i’m gonna get a scholarship from that junior college and then you don’t have to worry about paying for school and she said okay make it happen so i work at this place called foot action and in where i live in the east coast there are no foot actions like that’s how old i am and i worked at a pharmacy selling cigarettes and lottery tickets okay and i and i went to a junior college in my

(33:46) first year i was still like okay and then my second year everything took off you know all the accolades like first team conference all-star teams blah blah blah and everybody was shocked except for me and my mom because everybody sees where you land they don’t see all the work you did to get to where you landed right so people see what you guys do oh man that’s great you have a following blah blah they’re like no man like when we started there was one person that listened to us or there was no one that listened to us you

(34:13) know people used to tell me all the time every day how bad i was at basketball like every single day my brother’s friends were like yo you suck at basketball bro you’ll never get better i had to hear that every single day and so when i got better everybody was like man i knew you’d do it make it and i’m just like okay so i get a scholarship in north dakota i’m in north dakota i’ve never even i’ve been on plane twice in my life i’m in north dakota right from new jersey i mean i

(34:40) didn’t know where it was i thought it’s where the monuments my mom was like no dummy that’s south dakota [Music] so i go there for two years play come home playing with all nba guys now guys that play overseas in this gym uh and it’s me like i’m pulling up in like my 1990 mercury sable i have my headphones on because my radio doesn’t work and they guys have like bentley’s and mercedes-benz and i’m like i belong here so i uh i was on my computer and i checked my aol again i’m dating myself

(35:12) and i got an email from my agent and i said cornell you got a contract to play professional basketball on lisbon and i’m just like okay this is this real so i read it we read it like a hundred times and i was like okay this is dope like i’m gonna play professional basketball so my mom gets home i run up to my mom i go mom guess what and she goes what i go i got a contract to play professional basketball and i [ __ ] you not my mom said that’s great baby what do you want for dinner like no nothing no french like okay what of

(35:46) course you got a copy yeah like death duh you know what what else would you get and that’s how much faith that she had in me so i was a week out from going overseas at this big going away party of three people it was like me my mom and my girlfriend and uh that sunday before i was out with some friends just shooting around and i went to go to the basket and i heard a pop fell on the ground my friends came running over tried to get back up walk it off i couldn’t put any weight on my right foot and so i drive myself to the hospital

(36:19) which isn’t smart uh i drag my foot up to the emergency room i’m sitting there and i’m not calling my mom because i’m thinking to myself whatever this is if i call my mom it’s going to make it real and finally i called her and i think we’re like 45 minutes away from the hospital my mom got there in like 10 i don’t know who she killed to get there but she got up there and uh we’re sitting there talking to this guy dr braddish and he goes chronology grab the back ear calf muscle

(36:45) if you feel excruciating pain that means you ruptured your achilles tendon we have to do surgery on thursday i’m supposed to leave that following sunday so i’m sitting there and he grabs the back of my calf i feel the excruciating pain and to this day that monday tuesday and wednesday i have no recollection of what happened those days the only thing i can remember is thursday morning they wheeled me in for surgery thursday afternoon i was out thursday evening my contract was avoided and friday morning

(37:15) my mom came in my room uh kissed me on my forehead and i watched her walk to one of those three jobs that told her she never to work again that was the hardest day of my life to that point because i felt like such a failure i felt like i let her down i put everything on myself and i said wow like i failed this woman and when she left i cried for hours like i was just i was so angry and as i got older i realized that whenever you have to go through some you know crazy change like a drastic change it patterns like when you’re when you find out you

(37:50) have a terminal illness right like there’s these five stages that you go through you know it’s a it’s denial anger bargaining depression and then acceptance and i was in that denial phase at first and i realized looking at that hard cast that oh this is happening and i was so angry for that day like i was so and that’s not me i might it’s never been in my character to be like angry quick i was so pissed and i tell people that the thing that got me through that was realizing that all the things that i’ve been up been

(38:24) through to this point was harder than this injury all of it i could pick any day of my childhood it’d be harder than this injury like this injury is going to get better but like seeing your mom you know talk to bill collectors on the phone right and then like this specter you know what i mean like there’s nothing harder than that nothing harder than seeing your parent get disrespected and wanting to kill someone so i called my bus my best friend off my friend kevin i said kevin pick me up on monday we’re gonna go to the gym and he

(38:53) sounded like i died he’s like cornell i’m gonna go i said just pick me up and for the next six months i shot from a chair and that did nothing for me physically it did everything for me mentally because i was back in my space it’s not like i sat you know in my room in these four watched look at these four walls and did nothing and just let my mind run crazy i was able to just go somewhere and just for that hour to shoot and get my mind away from the fact the reality that i have this injury and i’m not going

(39:21) overseas anymore and so my mom raised this on everything happens for a reason and that’s it’s a really tricky phrase a lot of times when you’re in the [ __ ] you’re like come on like what’s what’s what’s the reason you know i lost my job or someone died or all you know all these things that you can all these scenarios but for me personally speaking of my life a hundred percent everything has happened for a reason uh and so i said to myself well what’s the reason for this and it was august into august and my old

(39:55) college coach from my junior college he was now the athletic director he asked me if i wanted to coach basketball i was only 26 years old and i said no i said why would i co i’m 26 i’m working my way back so i put him on that chip on my shoulder right like anybody that was against me i was like throw them on and the problem yeah put them on the chip because the problem with the chip though is we try to prove people wrong instead of proving ourselves right so if you set the bar for yourself high it doesn’t matter what you say right so

(40:28) if i’m like this is what i want to do a mercedes you’re like you know what you probably can’t do it i can think about what you’ve said and contemplate on that and waste my life thinking about that or i can go after what i want to go after right so um my girlfriend at the time was like you should you should go out for it you should coach and i hung up on her and i learned were on the phone i was like okay i’ll put her on the chip and then my mom said baby she’s like you should at least go for the interview out

(40:58) of respect for your coach went on the interview two days later i had an orange whistler on my neck and like 50 guys calling me coach and i said wow i said like if if basketball is something i was supposed to play this wouldn’t have happened and then i have all these kids from the inner city and we’re in this rural area they don’t know how to love one another they don’t know how to go to class they don’t know how to you know be respectful i mean these kids were like me you know i was at least i was respectful

(41:26) but i hated school i was not a school guy right so i’m 26 some of these guys are 23 and i have to show these guys how to be how to you know conduct themselves and be men and as i was going through my career i used to visualize myself coaching and like you know national championship and beating duke and i was like this is what i’m gonna do like i’m gonna be a coach like blah blah blah and i end up transferring to this uh getting a coaching job at blair academy they’ve had some nba guys and it’s like

(41:56) it was a step up and uh my son was about to be born and i remember thinking to myself uh if i coached division 1 basketball high college basketball i’ll never be in his life ever traveling all over the place traveling all over the place like i don’t control my schedule and i was a good friend of mine was a coaching at a school and i said dude tell me what your schedule is like it’s coach at division 1 school and he goes in season or out of season i said in season he goes in season i probably go to the gym around 6 30 a.m i

(42:29) was like when you get back home he’s like who knows sometimes 11 30 and sometimes it’s midnight sometimes whatever i said how about out of the season no i get to the gym like eight when you get home i like nine o’clock at night so i’m thinking of myself like i grew up without a father right how would i ever disrespect me having a son by not being in this kid’s life and i started to get this hard pull that that coaching basketball was not my purpose in life like i was meant to do something else

(43:01) and i was on facebook one day for whatever reason i guess i want to be depressed that day i just started reading my timeline right like the most depressing stuff in the world is just like read your facebook timeline and it like these are your peoples right like these are your friends and it’s like you read and it’s like everything’s omg like life is so bad blah blah blah blah like my cappuccino got spilled you know like all this crazy stuff and i said man people like set their day to this like this is their

(43:29) morning coffee they wake up they read their timeline and then they go out throughout their day and obviously you guys are saying like we’re energy people right so like you’re getting all this negative energy as soon as you wake up so i said okay i had a book of positive quotes and started taking quotes out positive quotes and putting it on facebook people started to like it like even the drama bomb started to like it so okay cool and one day i woke up and i couldn’t find the book so i wrote my own

(43:55) quote people still liked it so i was like well screw the book i’m just gonna write my own quote every day and then my quotes became blogs and then after i started writing started blogging i was like well i’m gonna write a book and my boy was like how you gonna write a book i was like i’m gonna ask google she knows yeah she knows she knows how to write google’s definitely a girl by the way like when she finishes your sentences yeah way too good um so i asked google i said google how do you write a book google’s like yeah

(44:23) player this is what you do and i write a book and i said okay now i want to travel the world and share my story but how you can do that i’m going to say yes to every single opportunity my first time i spoke was in front of seven people in a dance studio like seven they’re all eating two which is the worst case scenario for a speaker ever all you hear is that like smack i’m just sitting like i was like okay your only goal be so impactful they stop eating that’s it and i just started going and traveling and speaking and i started

(44:53) realizing how powerful our words are and i was blown away like i get stories from people that you know hey i read your blog and this impacted my life and this helped out and this and i’m not saying anything new i’m just sharing my story yeah right and that’s people understand like all the speakers that you hear all the no one’s saying anything that has not been said before it’s just how they say it it’s unique to them so people like my story because i keep it real with people i’m not saying

(45:22) that you never go through adversity i hate when people look at positivity and they think positivity is smiling all the time positivity isn’t the absence of human emotion it’s just not living in negative emotion that means if something bad happens to me on tuesday two tuesdays from now if i’m still worried about that thing that happened bad to me i’m not living my life anymore i’m just dwelling in it right and it’s easier said than done but you have to try to do your best to work through

(45:49) and that’s what positivity is to me and i think that’s a real definition it’s not like a a fake you know like just smile your dog died it’s okay get another one right like it doesn’t work that way so i’ve been i’ve been blessed with being able to travel all over the world and write books and share my story and uh you know run events and just try to change the way people think like i would love to be one of the change agents and there’s millions of us that like helps unite the planet instead of

(46:19) divide us you know the powers that be for whatever reason doesn’t want to it doesn’t want to see us together so they try to divide us and separate us through all these different uh you know race religion politics all this crazy stuff instead of realizing that we’re all humans you know and that’s the beauty of travel like we never traveled anywhere we didn’t have money to travel anywhere but i started speaking i’m like man i said i could see what the world is like you know like i think to

(46:48) combat ignorance travel like yeah a hundred percent it really wakes you up what you go through go to a third world country and then you tell me what your hardship is yeah and i think in this day and age too it’s so accessible and we’re coming into this place where it’s becoming even more and more accessible and as we get into this you know autonomous vehicles and things that make like the internet or like social media that make us be able to connect with people across the world instantly um we’re just going to open up more and

(47:24) more to that unity you know we have to we have no choice which is amazing yeah it’s a little unfortunate that we have to wait till we have no choice but that’s kind of the condition i suppose yeah for sure yeah but it’s awesome yeah i think you put it really eloquently when you um talked about how the the darknesses in your life have actually been your biggest you know um places that have pushed you into learning or pushed you towards your real calling you know and helped you find the light in your life or like we say on the

(47:59) show a lot seek the pain for positive gain you’ve gone into those places that were painful and of course you’re probably kicking and screaming not wanting to a lot of the time especially when we’re younger we don’t know you know we’re not consciously going towards that stuff necessarily but you came out on the other side and in order to come out on the other side you had to have that conscious thought of like your mom taught you you know look back and see why um everything happens for a reason and what

(48:25) is that reason you know if you can um i i’m not sure the words you said exactly but it brought to mind that if we can find ways to stop externalizing all the things that we we consider happening to us and make it essentially integrate it so that it’s happening for us it your perspective can only be positive yeah one hundred percent you can only be positive after that perspective change so has a book called the uh vantages of disadvantages um that’s one of the big chapters and he he did like a study you know he does

(49:03) crazy studies like why is there so many uh mustards and only one ketchup you know like he’s like mine is really fascinating but he was talking about the advantages of disadvantages and he was saying when you go through especially at a young age when you go through like a big like this what you people call disadvantage there’s an advantage to it that’s exactly what you’re saying because you look at the world a little bit different and for me i have so much gratitude for everything coming from nothing

(49:30) right like coming from like not a lot in terms of you know finance you know lots of love but like from finance yeah man i appreciate everything which is interesting because some people who had come from a childhood similar would be angry at the world and bitter and even become maybe even like um a kleptomaniac because they feel like the world owes them you know um so i’ve seen i’ve seen both um both effects on people it’s really interesting what um even in siblings how one can go one path and the other can go ahead that is

(50:03) interesting that’s weird right like in the same house yeah and like one is like it’s like cane and able it’s you know like on the right side everything’s going great and the other one is a completely different path but they were both either you know provided for the same or they were both beaten just the same you know and yeah really sometimes because my sister and i are super different like if you were super similar in some ways and i think people outside of us see that more often than not but when it’s her and i

(50:34) like i know we both think we have a lot of differences and i think there’s something in there um when it comes to siblings about wanting to stand apart like wanting to have your own shine and make it different than your siblings because you’re always and especially i’m the oldest so i’m always like stop copying me you know so yeah um but cornell i wanted to tell you that something that really touched me in um one of your speeches was when you basically said that we are the lottery um i believe that’s how

(51:10) you termed it because we have a what one in 400 trillion chance at being born so we innately have purpose we already have purpose are literally born um by winning the lotto essentially yeah so what is your biggest tool or practice to keep that feeling alive when all things seem to be working against you yeah uh well first thank you by the way and uh and second it’s i always tell people i’m not immune from storms i’m not i’m a human being things happen to me it’s me off i’m not gonna be like oh

(51:52) thank you sir like i’m a human being right the one thing that i concentrate on the most when i’m going through the absolute craziest storm is cornell no matter what you’re going through today you have to understand you have your life and you have your breath and if you have your breath you can change your situation and that’s the most fundamental thing that you can get like some people don’t have a house right i have a house some people don’t have a car i have a car some people don’t have

(52:19) a phone or a computer but if you don’t have that and you have your breath if you have your breath that means you have the opportunity to change your situation now if you have no breath there is no opportunity and when people like try to combat that and argue that i’m like the breath that you’re using to argue that is the breath you could be using to make something happen yeah that’s a good point i can’t remember who said this but it brings it to mine um and i might be misquoting who it is but i want to say

(52:48) mel brown says stop living like a dead person you know you have breath in your lungs so you can make a change just do it i mean i love that it’s it’s and it’s not an easy thing and that’s what i want to tell people make no mistakes working on your mind getting your mind stronger is like working on any other muscle it’s gonna take time right a lot of people have atrophy of the mind they never work on making it stronger so you can’t just expect them one day to just snap oh i get it right

(53:19) i’m gonna change everything no it takes a while but i work on this every single day and because life throws so much stuff at us every single day i have plenty of practice so i just look at it like man you know you got a breath corner you can change the situation and i always tell myself okay what now it’s happened already any advantage that happens in your life it’s already in the past once it happens the act has happened get a flat tire it’s already happened right so it’s a good way to think yeah yeah so like now what are you

(53:50) going to do about it it’s either why me or what now so i’m just a complete what now person yeah i love that and also um i loved what mercedes brought up and another thing that had really stuck out to me and your ted talk was um how when you talk about your mother um you you say that people’s purpose doesn’t have to be grandiose you um you know her whole purpose was to keep a roof over your head and food on your table so do you have any tips maybe for people who um need to pull the reins in on their

(54:26) expectations of themselves to focus on their smaller but more immediate needs in their lives so that they can be the best person you know to maybe meet those bigger goals you know a lot of people are focused on being everybody’s hero um but then their immediate goals in their homes aren’t being met yeah i would say be honest with yourself that’s the first thing right i used to have when i was coaching basketba basketball i’d have players come into my office and say hey coach i want to play at you know villanova

(54:54) university i want to play it and i’m like you’re five foot two and you have a 1.6 gpa and you’re never in the gym so why don’t we sit back and figure something out because the first thing you have to do is take care of your grades and the second thing you have to do is actually work on basketball and the third thing you have to do is work on your aim because your aim is way too high way too high because you’re not there and you’re not going to be there so i think just having that honest

(55:23) conversation with yourself like i always i do my best not to put ceilings on people but that’s it’s a difference depending on who the person is like if i know that you’re a worker like if i know that if i give you information you’re gonna go crazy and work on it that’s different but if i know you’re a dog like you ain’t doing nothing and you’re lazy and you’re trying to tell me i’m gonna be a millionaire next month i’m like bro you ain’t gonna be no millionaire next

(55:49) month you know and what i was saying about my mom like sometimes your purpose is raising you know just raising your kids or doing there’s nothing wrong with that like there’s nothing wrong with that there’s nothing wrong with having a smaller purpose like not everybody is going to change you know try to change the planet you know is it even smaller like is that the right word for it you know because we’re just this pale blue dot as carl sagan would have put it right we’re i’m also as a whole so i just feel like

(56:19) yeah yeah yeah it’s not that there’s no small purpose right yeah yeah every everybody is part of this uh moving evolving situation called humanity so for sure and we’re all i mean you need people like same thing with entrepreneurship like i just wrote a book on entrepreneurship you need people you need worker bees you need like everybody plays a part in this all of us everybody’s important in this right for this for this whole for this rock to that we spin on to keep going we all play our part and if you take pieces

(56:52) out of it then it’s no longer whole right so yeah i think that it’s just being having a real conversation and then having people around you that will check you i have my friends will check me like if i say like i’m gonna do this and i’m not working for them like now you ain’t getting i have like real friends that helps too yeah yeah definitely um i’m also curious um when it comes to your mom you said that she doesn’t take she never took her stress out on you what would be your number one advice to

(57:27) parents who do struggle with taking their stress out on their kids you’ve got to separate your stress from your from your kids like you have to separate it right so my mom would have a really hard day at work and i know we weren’t good all the time like we were like knuckleheads right but my mom would do this thing where she just breathe like she’d take a like a deep breath and she would just and i know that like now i can rationalize like what she was doing like she was just taking kind of like setting

(57:56) herself and understanding okay they had nothing to do with my job at the icu unit like they had nothing to do with it they’re just being kids right now and it’s hard like for me so i have a five-year-old a three-year-old right you have a long day at work or you’re working really hard or you know i just fly in from traveling and you come home and like something crazy happens and it’s very easy to add on you have to stop it like i always tell people like you know positivity and negativity they work the same way in terms of they both

(58:25) need momentum right like they need momentum to get bigger so if you have if i’m working and i’m say i have a speech or whatever and i’m traveling back home and the flight gets delayed and then whatever you know whatever happens when i get home and then i get home and open the door and my kids get in trouble or they break something or whatever if i add on to that snowball now it’s not now it’s an avalanche but if i can separate it and say look work kick it’s right they don’t flow together

(58:53) like that uh you know i can handle a little bit better so when my mom would get home i could just see in her eyes sometimes where she would just need a second she’d just be like you know or she’d go to her room and come back out it was like a new tina thomas she go to room and just come back out and like okay what do you guys want to eat and it’ll be like a new tina thomas so i think just give yourself wonder what she did in there oh probably she had a wine cabinet right like hit the like come back

(59:30) all right so you have something called the positivity summit and we are very intrigued on this situation you tell us what all happens there yeah so the positivity summit i was actually at a uh a tony robbins event uh in 2015 and one of my friends actually you know sponsored a ticket so i can go to it and i was sitting at the event i was like this is cool you know like he’s you know has a big presence and blah blah blah and i was just like man but it’s like the average ticket price was like 3 500 or something crazy

(1:00:03) so i was like okay there’s only like the one percent of the population that can afford that if that i said so there’s a lot of people that aren’t going to be privy to some of this information that’s great you know like self development’s awesome like it’s it’s great to get yourself better so i’m like i started writing down for like two hours i wrote down this positivity summit and i said okay i want to do an event where it’s just not me speaking i want to do event where i have men women

(1:00:29) black white asian you know muslim christian i don’t care i want the days to be completely different and diverse i want everybody to come up and share their story because within our stories we’ll see the commonality that threads us all together and that’s that we’ve all been through some type of adversity so i was like i want to have some diverse speakers and i said on top of that i want people to interact in this workshop and i don’t want you to just know the person on your left side and

(1:00:54) your right side i want to get people up and have them have conversations and i want to have group conversations and how can we make change and have uncomfortable conversations like i want to i want us to interact we don’t talk enough because we’re afraid of what people like this person i might offend this person this person might get angry so we don’t have conversations and then i said okay well i’ll make it two days and on the second day we’re gonna not just talk about doing something we’re gonna actually go out

(1:01:20) and do it so i was like if i have all these people at my disposal let’s let’s do let’s act so the first positivity summit we did in new jersey i loaded up two buses with like food toiletries and we went to this parish in clifton new jersey and we dropped off like 250 pounds of food and they were like oh my you know they’re so excited but i saw what it did to the people in attendance because when you get back you get back exponentially right there’s nothing greater than when you give and everybody was just like so fired up

(1:01:53) that we were able to help people and so we did the next one in new york and i’m like okay this time we’re going to just walk the streets we’re going to make sandwiches at this the venue we’re going to walk the streets we’re going to get them out then i’m going to go to random coffee places and i’m just going to put you know 30 bucks on the counter and say pay for the next whatever coffee and just walk out and we started doing that and like people were going nuts like buying someone a coffee

(1:02:19) soul power there’s one lady trying to chase me out of the coffee place just to thank me for buying her coffee right and i’m like man this is what it’s about so we did one in l.a um in october and we went to this place called union rescue mission it’s right you know right in skid row right in the middle of skid row and we walked everybody to skid row and i did a speech uh at union rescue mission for the male population and the the women they did the other the women’s nails and they had conversations with

(1:02:51) them and they talked to them and it was just such a beautiful thing so i’m like okay i need to make this bigger because i don’t have a team of people it’s just me yeah like that’s it like my wife does the website and that’s it right so just trying to figure out how to do all these different things like the next one’s going to be into toronto uh in the in april and i just have a lot of speakers that are just great friends of mine that come and they share their story and they’re not trying to like upsell you on

(1:03:16) anything they just want to share with you yeah and it’s it’s worked out it’s worked out great so i want to do three a year all over the world like that’s my goal i love that um hopefully you have one in austin um i love to pay it forward too because um it reminds me um there was a lady having trouble with her parking meter uh in downtown austin and so i just paid it for her and she chased me and gave me this silk scarf and it’s funny because i just found it i could have swore it was like right by me um i just found it

(1:03:47) today i was like trying to get rid of a bunch of stuff and i was like and it was like that was like two years ago but i pulled out that silk scarf and it was just like a reminder of um like that random encounter but just also that um people just aren’t used to kind gestures anymore that it takes them by surprise you know and that i wish that it was something that was so regular not that it would go unappreciated but just so regular that it’s like that’s just how everybody treats each other you know

(1:04:15) that’s so true that’s such a good story because think about it i tell people all the time when you give to someone you do something nice for someone it’s like a chain reaction so when you’re walking in a building and someone holds the door for you what’s the first thing that you do if you’re a human you hold the door for the next person right and then you have this chain reaction of everybody holding the door i’ve seen like 15 people hold the door for each other right yeah and the same

(1:04:38) thing can be optional said the opposite way if you’re walking the door and the person just kind of closed the door closed you’re not going to hold the door for the next person right it’s it’s a man people think that it’s like woo-woo or whatever but like this energy thing is freaking real subconscious sheep for sure like being promotional models like jade and i have spent a long you know long part of our career doing when you’re trying to talk to people or interact with people or even pass out a pamphlet

(1:05:08) or whatever the thing is that you’re trying to do to interact with humans if you’re watching big crowds walk by you the first couple people that walk up if they deny you if they don’t pay attention they don’t look up from their phone if they don’t want to take it or they say no thank you whatever the thing is the whole anyone who’s witnessed that even in their peripheral behind them won’t so you have to wait for a gap and start fresh and hope this next one you can you know get a better reaction from

(1:05:35) and if they give you a good reaction then everyone even with free [ __ ] you’ll be giving away free [ __ ] and the person says no everyone behind them will say no it’s like you guys are are you actually looking at what i’m giving you we did a in new york we did a uh a high five challenge so i was walking the streets and if you high five me i gave you five dollars nice and like people were like running away like running like what is this funny yeah like does this this guy gonna chloroform me right like they were

(1:06:05) running from it like high five here’s five bucks they’re like no no but you put on my hand yeah exactly you know that’s sad though like um especially as women like this man i dropped twenty dollars uh leaving a pizza place a couple weeks ago but austin has become such a risky place um at night you know in certain spots but um pretty much the whole city really and um this guy came up and tried to give it back to me and i didn’t feel comfortable rolling my window down and it wasn’t because of how he looked it wasn’t the

(1:06:39) he didn’t seem aggressive i just i was in a dark parking lot by myself and i didn’t feel safe rolling down the window so it’s it’s sad because you hear your story about the high five and it’s sad but it’s like you know like the weird it’s i don’t know where i’m going with that but it’s just it just makes me so sad like even as mercedes saying uh doing promotional modeling um it came to a point also like in the grocery store um you know a lot of times making eye contact and smiling people can get the

(1:07:10) wrong idea so you like bee line for your you know whatever item you’re there for almond milk whatever and you bee line out because you don’t know like you know how people are so it’s just so so frustrating because i want to be this like person who brightens everybody’s day at the grocery store and like you know tells everybody something like to you know be a light but then it’s like a lot of times when i’m out there by myself i feel so like um yeah in a not safe way i don’t know it’s

(1:07:41) so it’s it’s kind of frustrating but how crazy is that right that we can’t smile at each other yeah it’s it’s really crazy how nuts is that well sometimes then they follow you to your card because they think that you’re you’re ready to yes so it’s it’s sad because i want to live what you’re saying interesting because we just uh earlier this week i believe in the last week we had on um someone we were discussing feminine masculine energies alpha omega paradox and this idea of femininity um being

(1:08:17) the energy that allows us needing help to make eye contact and to have a more confrontational which seems adverse to what it is but um it allows us to have a more um that type of more confrontational and intimate i guess intimates a better word intimate connection with humans that we don’t know like even with strangers to make eye contact and that um and jade i know you you’re you have that feminine energy and you really do try to do that with people and i’ve seen it go wrong like in person yeah well and you

(1:08:47) saw how many stalkers i got yeah exactly and i’m like the type of person who right now i’m trying to embody my feminine energy because i have almost none and so i am consciously trying to make eye contact and like me and do the things that we’ve discussed on the show of how to bring that up in yourself and boy i’ll tell you it’s scary it’s literally scary because you have to be vulnerable the only the energy only comes through this vulnerability really you know and it’s it needs to be mixed equally with the

(1:09:18) masculine so that you have this balance you’re not trying to be fully vulnerable and just let anybody you know hang out with you but um it is a strange time where we’re living in and maybe with you know the feminist movement and people focusing on that energy it’ll change and and maybe that’ll change for you know all of us and your interactions too cornell maybe they’ll get easier i’m hoping well that was my point i hope that this becomes so regular that the eye contact and the smiles aren’t

(1:09:47) misread because that’s just how we treat each other that’s yeah you know oh i feel like with movements like the feminist movement and etc i feel that movements i think the one thing that we do which kind of hurts movements is we make it exclusive right so i was raised by a single mother you know respect women love women uh when you separate guys that are for the cause it could be even more powerful because now got other guys in their period like see their peers like bro this is not how you talk to women

(1:10:26) this is super disrespectful yeah we need to raise the bar we gotta like there’s just thing like whenever even movers like when you see like you know uh the black lives matter all these movements right man there are people that are for your calls that will ride with you that may not look like you but a hundred percent are for your calls and if you separate them and generalize them with everybody else then what are we doing yeah right like there’s sure and that’s where a lot of the damage has come yeah i think too

(1:10:57) when we i mean i don’t know how deep want to go into the feminist movement i know that’s not the direction for this show but wherever um i think that and the way we’ve expressed it before in the past too because it’s called feminist you know this movement it’s called the feminist movement um men are instantly turn off against it you know like oh well that’s not for me yeah but we all embody the female masculine energies like we they embody us you know we couldn’t have one without the other it’s

(1:11:32) the end of the other’s yang and we need to express both of them um because otherwise you end up really off kilter and it’s it’s no good for anybody especially all the people you react or you interact with in your life so yeah the feminist movement is not just the feminist movement is a movement for this planet for equal rights just women yeah this has to do i don’t know for me but what you’re saying is such a great point right now look what are we told that feminists are like what do like what we’re told feminists

(1:12:03) are and what we like what they look like and how they act right the the images that we’re portrayed is not what you just said it’s the same thing with like like the i talk about the you know the black panther party and i was saying how john lennon was like best friends with one of the black panthers like people thought they were like anti-white there are white people that support the black panthers spanish latino asian they’re anti-tyranny they’re anti-government right so it’s like we are the media

(1:12:31) portrays us in a certain light in people in a certain light and we start associating this with what the feminist movement is and this with what that movement is and you’re right we don’t like guys immediately think feminist i’m good like why it’s a stereotype it’s the same as any other stereotype you know we’ve decided we put a label feminine we’ve defined feminism and as soon as you define something it’s no longer evolving it’s it’s dead and i think the word feminism is literally

(1:13:00) like if you could define what the female energy is its creation and evolution so to say that it even has any sort of construct you know any sort of definite definition is kind of like the antithesis of what the feminine energy embodies what feminism should embody which is this evolving always changing conversation of how we can be more um receiving and receptive to yeah to everything that’s going on around us that’s what that’s what the female does receives yeah i love it i’m getting educated [Laughter]

(1:13:35) on this show we try to find those little gray areas that people have decided are one way or the other way yeah i love it so we have a question from the magic mob russell on instagram asks in the midst of all the polarization in the new stream and online do you have any tips for people to not focus on the negativity and combativeness that’s been seemingly encouraged these days this is really good for where we you know we’re just headed perfect well first russell thank you for your question and second i

(1:14:06) would say this uh my mom used to tell me all the time right before me and my brother would get in trouble for fighting she would say it takes two to tango so super important the problem is we get baited into arguing with ignorance we get baited into it so arguing arguing with ignorance is like me yelling at a wall so if you guys are walking down the street and you see me just going in on this wall you’d be like cornell what in the hell is wrong with you right and you it’s just a passage in the bible as well it’s like you know don’t

(1:14:38) argue with fools because people from a distance can’t tell who’s who we get baited by trolls we get i mean everybody the biggest celebrity or whoever ends up getting into some battle with someone that is behind a keyboard saying oh you suck or saying whatever right it’s just our human nature to go after this ignorance for me personally i just don’t get into it like my block or delete or whatever i don’t care like i’ll hit it quick because i don’t want to get into like uh there’s a coach called they’re not gonna

(1:15:12) stop they’re not gonna stop they keep going and especially if they get a rise out of you there’s a coach uh legendary coach by the name of don meyer and he goes don’t wrestle with pigs because they like to get dirty right that’s this is where they live ignorant people live in this every single day we don’t live in this every single day so why would you get into it with them online like me personally i don’t watch them i don’t turn the news on and have it play 24 7 at my house why because the

(1:15:39) news is going to show you what the news is once going to show you it’s opinionated it depends on what channel that you’re watching so if i want to know what mercedes and jade is about you know what i will talk to mercedes and jade period so i just don’t get i don’t get baited into arguing with ignorant people because it’s just gonna what it’s gonna do for me i think that’s the harder um choice obviously it’s the choice that we are promoting you know here and even having this discussion um

(1:16:08) and i think people don’t take response and i don’t want to say people because i’m one of those people like i don’t always take the responsibility of saying hey you’re externalizing mercedes you’re you’re allowing this [ __ ] to come into your life you’re making the choice you know to watch that show or look at your comments on uh the gram or whatever it is um when we have the choice like the choice is always right there no matter what it is from moment to moment to moment and we can just decide which sometimes

(1:16:37) it usually is the harder choice to decide to um move out of that mindset or that negative drama or whatever it is that’s sucking your energy out you know that’s that’s the type energy you can decide to live in some people even thrive off of it these are the drama queens you know these are the people who thrive out of that drama they make up the stories they probably even you know might lie to make something sound worse than it is um or you can decide to live in this other energy i mean it all exists here on this

(1:17:08) planet you have access to all of it yeah for me it’s for me it’s ego right like back in the days when i would get into these like heated arguments over nonsense it’s ego it’s like because you’re like i don’t want to be the person that walks away from this i’m right yeah okay so waste another couple hours in your life that you can never get back again would you rather be right or would you rather be happy yeah just tell them to kick rocks yeah ego of deepak chopra i was listening to

(1:17:36) him earlier he calls it edging god out so yeah just like you know whatever you want to call god in your life that energy that is the the beautiful uh infinite force that we invest on you can decide to allow that to thrive or not guys i love that question though so uh we have a pick your poison from jesse on instagram would you rather be famous when you’re alive and forgotten when you die or unknown when you’re alive and be famous after you die it’s a weird question for me because honestly like fame to me is like

(1:18:17) whatever but uh i would say i’m all about legacy so if famous in the terms of people know what i’ve done like i made a positive impact for sure i don’t care about people noticing me when i go to whole foods you know like that that’s never interested me so yeah if people know i still talk about me when i’m gone 100 that because that means i at least made a dent on this planet i would go with famous wall alive because i consider the word fame in the like feng shui bagua idea of it being being seen so like

(1:18:55) if i can really be seen while i’m alive i think i’ve made my incarnation like i think that is being able to experience life too it’s to it’s one of its fullest points if that makes sense um the fame of you know how like i’m literally a hermit crab like i i don’t leave my house unless i have to have to or i’m getting paid to usually from work um which is terrible like i need to definitely be better about just socializing generally generally not through skype um so yeah i think if i could

(1:19:28) find ways to interact with other humans on a regular basis and really allow them to be seen and and at the same time you know feel seen i think that would make this existence on this planet that much better i mean i already get to do that with a lot of the people that i do interact with but yeah and this podcast is allowing that’s for for sure yeah it’s like quadruple you know it’s exponentially allowing that for us so we’ll see how that goes yeah i think i’d choose the same mercedes for similar reasons but

(1:19:59) also because um while alive um my kids would be able to benefit from that um we’d be able to um you know have a bigger platform all together and things like that um and i would hope that even if i was forgotten once i passed that my kids would carry on that legacy and how they lived and what they did with whatever that fame was you know because i would hope for it to be positive but that’s interesting though because you’re you know the man in this threesome here um that like we were talking about energies

(1:20:37) earlier the male energy would ask for legacy over um and a female energy is actually specifically for being seen yes that is funny yeah okay so there’s a few short questions we’d like to ask everyone who comes on the show sure first off what advice would you give your 25 year old self oh god 25 year old self listen that would be the biggest advice i give my 25 year old self listen i was when i was 25 years old i really i was super super super head strong so like masculine energy to the point where i just never let anything else in like i

(1:21:21) felt like okay i know it i can do it i can handle it blah blah blah so i would say that’ll be the main thing just listen and be open to other ideals be open to other things i mean this was also 25 year old cornell never traveled anywhere you know only been to like new jersey and north dakota so i’ve never gotten a chance to had any type of experiences outside of that so yeah listen cool i love that um so the next one is if you could have the whole world read one book which would it be oh man are you a big reader

(1:21:54) yeah yeah um [Music] you know what this is an outside one i would have the whole world read how to be interesting by jessica hagee it’s a small like little pocket book like i know people like all the alchemists or whatever that book is it’s such a cool book because it’s uh there’s like graphs and stuff like that it’s like an easy read and i know if i told people to read that book they’d actually read it like 150 pages i like that you know so that was a that’s a pretty good book it just talks

(1:22:25) about you being your unique self and being cool with that like not everybody’s going to accept you but that’s fine like as long as you’re true to you um i like that put that over the toilet guys bye bye the toilet swap in and out between instagram and that and listening to the magic hour you know um if you could whisper one phrase to everyone on the planet cornell what would it be one phrase it would be you are limitless um i love that one so much potential so cornell before we let you go where can people find you and your work

(1:23:08) my website is www.cornell thomas.com on instagram i’m cornell thomas34 twitter cornell thomas facebook cornell thomas and i always tell people if you have a question or concern you can always email me at cordon thomas365 gmail.com cool and i’ll hollow back at you right away like i get back to people right away yeah you do that’s good to know too i think people really enjoy that type of interaction cool awesome god this is so fun thank you so much for taking the time and being with us i got to bring the positivity

(1:23:43) something to austin yeah i’m going to be in l.a uh the end of january yeah i gotta figure out how to bring the positivity summit back and have you guys speak at it and be a part of it like i gotta work and work all that stuff out yeah that’d be amazing i’m so honored thank you so much for having me on here this is great yeah we loved it um you uh seemed to know already what you got to do with your sound wow yes your audio okay i’m gonna stop it and i’m gonna send it to uh adam and we’re good to go okay

(1:24:17) good cool so um we we want to air this as soon as possible but where right now we’re doing a backlog of episodes because mercedes is going to be out of the country february and march so um most likely this will air around february 20th sure and we will send you um like the promos that we’re going to post like whatever videos we’re going to do whatever um and um all that the week of just so you know and um yeah if you want to share them you can and uh we’ll be tagging you a ton so i will share them all over the land thank

(1:24:50) you thank you mercedes you be safe i will do i’m going with bellator so i’ll have lots of fighters around me and seriously i’m so so grateful that you guys had me on this is awesome you guys are the best thank you for taking the time no problem i will talk to you soon okay yeah yeah for sure yeah thanks bye all right sweet that was really good yeah that um that first answer was really long um but i i didn’t tune out like for a minute yeah it was a good story like it was like 26 minutes his first answer where

(1:25:24) he was telling a story so i was like wow this is really interesting that i’m still hooked yeah i know it was a story like he had refined the story too from other times i’ve heard it so i think it will play well it was better this time i thought for sure i mean it was much more refined yeah um so should we use just the mosquito one or should i kind of double back on that magic trick and say the way to do what cornell said is go to any fast food restaurant or like a place that you would just be already spending

(1:25:54) some money i don’t know because you kind of already said that a little bit so i think just use the mosquito one okay all right i don’t know because it’s still a really good one yeah use the mosquito and the thank you with summer and andreessen included please thank you okay and then let’s send this while we rehearse first oh one more time i need to record his intro because i felt like even the one i did was choppy when i add them well the thing is is the one you did um earlier was perfect i think if

(1:26:21) adam can just take out the word let me just try it and see if i can do it with the same twang now that i’ve been talking for long enough it’s because i drank last night for new year’s and so my brain is like okay while you do it i’m gonna go pee okay so without further ado let me introduce a multi-book author he’s a black belt in jiu jitsu an expert in positive self-awareness and he has been endorsed by some of the top experts in his field including as jade mentioned tony robbins and dr cornell west

(1:26:56) growing up with adversity his whole life allowed him to get past the why me’s and focus on the what nows instead seven days away from playing professional basketball in europe he suffered a career-ending injury that derailed his dream through this he has become the perfect example of turning a loss into a huge win cornell thomas ladies and germs do that one more time you’re done i’m gonna do it one more time okay so without further ado let me introduce a multi-book author he’s a black belt in jiu jitsu and an

(1:27:46) expert in positive self-awareness he has been endorsed by some of the top experts in his field including like jade mentioned tony robbins and dr cornel west growing up with adversity his whole life allowed him to get past the wymies and focus on the what nows instead seven days away from playing professional basketball in europe he suffered a career ending injury that derailed his dream through this he has become the perfect example of turning a loss into a huge win cornell thomas ladies and germs mr cornell thomas

(1:28:29) okay um okay i’m exporting right now um so stop me too let me just focus on this so we can get this done and then get the next thing rehearsed ooh my computer’s warm girl i gotta turn this fan back on