Hello, and thank you for tuning in to another episode of the Backyard Barbecue Podcast. I am your host, Eric Cool Breeze. If you are tuning in for the first time to this podcast, thanks for tuning in. If you are a regular, we want to thank you for tuning in as well the last few episodes of this relaunch. I have been having a ball talking to you all and I appreciate all of the feedback that I've been getting. on the different platforms. For those of you who are new and you like the podcast and you want to share it, we are on a few different platforms that are, include Apple Podcasts, the Google Podcast, Spotify. iHeart Music Radio as well as Amazon Music. And if you are interested in giving us some comments concerns you have, questions you want to be a guest on the show even if it is through streaming or just actual telephone conversation where we patch you in, that's cool as well. You can reach me. Cool breeze@backyardbarbecuepodcast.com. Again, that's cool. breeze@backyardbarbecuepodcast.com and the barbecue part is spelled out in completion. So last week we were discussing the Senate committee and you and we were discussing how sometimes in. Life. You need to sit down and need to really examine yourself and ask all of the tough questions that you might not really want to ask yourself. You have to deal with some realities that you don't want to deal with, and at times you need to ask people that you feel that do not too much care for you because they might have actually some perspective for you to look at. Or some things about you or your qualities that are uncomfortable but not uncomfortable because they're not true. They're just uncomfortable because you don't like 'em. So this week we're gonna deal with the actual rebuild. So, one of the things that brought, got brought to my mind when I thought about this was build the. So, if you got a little kid, you or have had kids that were little, you probably are familiar with building a bear build a bear or if you got little girls, those American dolls they both are kinda one and the same, except for one is the doll and one is the beer. But with both of these particular items, you get to build these things from the bottom. Like with build a bear, you get to pick the stuffing, get to pick the type of fur, the color, the type of eyes that you want under the the bear paws for the bear. American girl. You get to pick the color of the doll, what type of outfit you want her to have. I'm not sure if it is a height. You guys have to help me out with that once that have daughters. But, and they come at a dismissal price. Like they're, they are not cheap. And building something, it never is. It's never cheap. And in life you shouldn't expected to be cheap either. And most of the time. it's quick and things that are expensive take time. Time and patience. And so in this process of the build to bear in you, you have to be very patient with yourself. You find you found out the things that are not your best qualities you found out. In a sense, got a survey from people about how they feel about you, how you react in certain situations, and how they see you in life. Not how you see yourself, but how they see you. And so now based on these perceptions and this positive feedback that you've got from them, you are able to build the person that you really want to be. We take all of these things and we say, Hey, we want self to be A, B, and C. And so how do we get there? And what to expect on the road to get there. So when a house is built, there are a lot of people that come out, but one of. Initial people that come out is the architect and the person that's laying the foundation. The architect really doesn't need the person that's building the foundation because he's just drawing up plans for the person that's laying the foundation to come along and complete. So point with that. In the beginning process of you building this person, you really don't need a lot of people around you. When I was doing my time when I was incarcerated, there was a long period of time when of me not having anybody, I didn't really have a whole lot of contact with the outside world, and not just because I was incarcerated, just because. I knew that's what I needed. I really needed to be alone and find out where I was going and who this person was that I was trying to build after I got out. And in some aspects, this person while I was in there too, because, There were certain qualities that I knew that I had to possess before I got out, and I needed to practice being that person while I was still in that situation. And so while you're going through that initial stage, be prepared to. it's okay to tell people that you are on a little hiatus in a sense. It's okay to take time away from social media some of your friends, family members, coworkers because you're in a rebuilding process and you want to make sure that there's nothing on that on those architectural plans for the new you. That's going to be a hindrance, prime example, sometimes like I drive with a co-driver at work and we're out on the road all week and so my co-driver, he loves snacks, I mean, he be having these, I don't know where he gets these brownies, and I refuse to ask him because I don't wanna, I don't even want to know where the story is. I don't wanna know who bake 'em or nothing. But I do be curious as to where he gets 'em, because every single one of these individually RA brownies is like lucky terms. It's like magically delicious And so me, I try to watch my weight, I'm gone during the course of the week, and so, I really watch my intake on food. I bring my food to work. I put it in a little fridge and I eat during certain times. I drink a gallon of water every day. And so around maybe Wednesday or so, he'll pull out these brownies and he'll be like, Hey Eric. Hey take one for later. He's, I'm like, no, I'm cool, man. He'd be like, oh, take it. Eat it later. Eat it later. It's one's not going to kill you, Now, had I been by myself riding in that truck, I wouldn't have never stopped and got no brownies or no cookies, no cakes, none of that sweet stuff that he'd be trying to offer me. But if I wasn't a strong enough person, he would manipulate me. And there has been some times where like I had got off my regular eating regimen and then he would offer me something and I was weak at the moment, like I was trying to get there to where I was rebuilding my healthy eating habits and not him personally, but he also didn't help, like, because he was offering it to me and I eventually, after a little bit of peer pressure, I was taking it. And so my point is that, The reason why sometimes you need to be by yourself and cut off the outside influence is because, let's just say that one of the things that you need to, that you are trying to work on your drinking. You like, I need to stop drinking so much because I find that some of my bad characteristics come out when I'm drinking. And so then your friends, they're like, Hey, come on. We just going out for a drink. You be like, Hey, I'm trying not to drink that much. And they say just get one. Like you can get you a beer. It ain't even got that much alcohol in it. Well, you just might need that break from it, but you have people around you that are not those positive influences that you need at the time. And so during your building process, you might have gap. in some of the places where you wish to feel because you allow someone to come along into your building process and poke holes into your foundation. And so at the end of the build, it's not to say that the this is gonna fall apart, but eventually the foundation of it will get weak because you have these little holes in it, you have the holes for the alcohol and Once the rest of that dirt and those chemicals that's in the ground, get into those holes, then it's gonna make that foundation weak. So again, while you're going through the rebuild, you want to. put those certain friends to the side that you know that are probably not supportive of you a hundred percent, or that they're gonna apply a little too much peer pressure to you. So, the second thing during the build is they generally bring out the framers. So you have the framers that come out and they're kind of by their. In a, for a little bit, how the framers, and then you have the roofers, and then once that frame is up and that roof is up, now you'll see a bunch of people that. Are involved in the project. And all of these people, they kind of work side by side in a sense. They might not be doing the exact same job, but you have your electricians, you have your plumbers, you have your drywallers, and all of these people are working all in the vicinity together to help get this house built. Well, once you get past that foundational, And that alone time. Then you do want to incorporate some of these people back in into your life. But you want to be very careful on who you incorporate in. You just don't want to hire any plumber, any electrician, any carpenter to come in and mess up what's been built. Sure you have a good strong foundation. You have framing on the house that looks good. But as you're building that inside, you want to be very careful on who you get because you don't wanna have to come back and rework things. So, again, I. Use myself for an example. I have some friends that I grew up with. Most of them I have been knowing. Ooh. Since grade school, and one thing that I knew about these friends, and if they listening, I'm gonna, I ain't gonna say their first and last name, but I got a list of Fred. So I got will Fred, Kira, Stan, Ben, and all of these friends, they're all straight shooters and that's all they know. And. they keep it all the way 1000 with you. They not going and when we was younger it was worse. They would just call you out for whatever it was like right then and there. And so I knew where I was in life and I made sure that I didn't spend that much time with them cuz I didn't want them calling me out on whatever it was that I was doing, because I wasn't ready for that at that. But now that I was building this new me, I embraced their friendship. Those were the plumbers and electricians and carpenters that I needed, the ones that was true to their craft. and for me it was like an honor to have them in my life because I knew that there was no, there wasn't gonna be any short-cutting with them. I had to give it my all in developing these friendships. And so that's when you need to find those people that from the senate committee that you felt like didn't like you. Again, it wasn't that they didn't like you, you didn't like them because they probably were speaking truth. And so now during your rebuild process, you want those people around your life. You want people that are gonna be a hundred percent transparent with you and call you out even. In the midst of it. And if you have followed, everything correctly, if they do tell you about something that's not so, pleasing, it might be a little difficult for you to hear. You won't take it the same way as you did before because you've worked through that part of life and making yourself feel that the fake. oh, I'm this, I'm that. So whatever you're saying that goes against that's not true. You actually embrace that particular advice or constructive criticism that they give you at that point in time. Out of all of my friends one of my buddies will, I talk to him more frequently, and you. That's my boy, like, a brother, like, and we, me and him have been through, some ups and downs in our friendship and relationship with being, like a brotherly, that brotherly relationship and. That friendship. And we've had a time where we actually wasn't talking for a couple of years and I think during that time we both were going through a rebuilding process together, but individually, and I remember when we did talk and sometimes we still discuss some of those issues. Today, but we both are able to look at it objectively and positively. We're able to tell each other exactly what the problem was at that time. Kind of go through a situation of just knowing that, hey, I just was immature at that time. And that's the beauty of the rebuild is that you, when you think of a house that's being. and before the carpenter comes to put the walls up, you could just see through the whole house. The whole thing is transparent and that's how it is. And when you get to the point of rebuilding yourself, you're just looking for a life of transparency. And you build on that, even your relationships with your friends and your coworkers, it goes so much smoothly because man you're open, you're open book, so you don't have anything to hide in a closet. You like, Hey, this is me. This is who I am, this is what I've dealt with. I'm just letting you know if, hey, if you still want to be my friend, or you want to be in this relationship with me, this is me. And those relationships just flow so naturally because everything is there. And I'm not saying that you won't ever go through anything and those friendships or relationships, but they'll be a lot easier to deal with, and because, hey, as I say, you're bare bones, you've gotten it all out. One of those foundational things that I want to also touch on is just love. There's so much, there's so many people out here that just lack self-love. I did talk about this a little last week, but when you look on social media, like, it doesn't. Pop up on my timeline as much because I don't be paying attention to some things. Facebook and social media is all based on different algorithms. So when you get to looking at, like, I look at stocks a lot, so a lot of the posts that come up on my. Newsfeed are about posts, I mean, I'm sorry, are about stocks and stock training. You want to get involved with this stock, I can train you to do this. And when you, anything that it is that you look at the most on there, that's what's gonna pop up. And so people. One of my friends, they posted up about self-love and I was just like, where do they be finding these post that, you know, but that's because that's what they be looking for. They be looking for, topics that discuss love and a lot of times people that are looking for those topics that discuss love, they are lacking that, there's so many people out here that just lack and have the inability to. love themselves. And ano, one of the main reasons why I started at this point in this podcast with talking to individuals about their selves or and how to look at themselves, how to build themselves up, is because I don't have it all together and I'm nobody's therapist or psychologist, but I just do know a lot about. people because I, I talk to people a lot and I listen and I'm very transparent about me and my journey. And in listening to people a lot of time it's just, they just, I just be wanting to tell 'em, just go sit down and just go love yourself. Like, just love you. You don't need anybody else to love you. Every day, all day, just because that's what you want. I mean, you just need to find a sense of how to love yourself unconditionally. Flaws and all. And when you find that and you're transparent with yourself, and you go through that process of really just trying to refine yourself. And rebuild yourself. You'll find that you don't, the people that you wanted to love you, you don't even want them people to love you no more because you find out those people shouldn't have never even been in your life anyway, and, It just flows with everything else that goes on in life. Like, from your business relationships to your marial relationships or sexual relationships, your friendships, your relationships, your appearance, kids. Like, that's just the foundation of it. Just love for yourself and I just really want people to take that in and do more give yourself more time to get to know you and who you are at this point in life. But we gonna get back to the build to bear. And you, so as you're building this build to bear in a. you want to be very careful of everything that you put in it. You want to make sure that you have a literal list of things that you want to do, things that you want to be, and whether it's accomplishments that you want to achieve. But all of these ver need to be very intentional, and it doesn't matter how small or big it is, just write it. I don't know if some of you believe in making vision boards, but that's a part of that process as well. And most people do 'em at the end of the, at the end of the year going into the new year. But you can make a vision board at any time that you want, people have their own ways of doing it. A lot of people do it on the poster boards with the cutout images of where they're trying to be. It doesn't have to be a poster boy. It could be whatever you want to be, but although I'm not a religious person, I am spiritual and I grew up around religion, so I kind of know the Bible a lot. But there is a scripture in the Bible to say where there is no vision of the people per. And so if you don't have a vision for yourself, that's renting out. And some, it doesn't matter, the poster board, if you wrote it down in the journal. Candace does poster boards. I and I used to do the poster boards too. This year I did something different and I went out and brought a nice little notebook and I put all of my plans down in it. And I've been writing in it since then with, every idea that I came up with for this podcast, this was, the big thing for me this year was really working this podcast consistently. And so I, I wrote down a lot of my ideas what I wanted to do and I closed it up, I made a copy of it and I closed it up and, I said that I was gonna keep these journals and if something, when it's not my time to go or something ever happened to me, I wanted my kids to be able to look at, back at and see my journey, to rebuilding myself. Because all this information that I'm telling you all is stuff that I still go through myself or have gone through, like from me coming from being in. it was, man, a journey. Like it was tough, at times I didn't like it a lot of times because I had to face really who I was and I had to deal with how people perceive me and how they still would perceive me because although I have made some great leaps and bounds in this journey, like some people just still look at me for. the old person that I was, but I've reached a point in my character where I'm also after I apologize to them and I did my part and they still see me for who I am, not because I'm doing the same things, but just because they want to. Then I'm okay with accepting that part of them. I'm okay with accepting that they haven't gone through. In their lifetime for them to actually forgive me, for them to look past me. Because when you suffer from a lack of forgiveness, you also go through that because you've never seen yourself for who you are. You have enough pride in yourself. And not the good kind of pride, but the pride for pride. You have so much pride within yourself that you can't even look and see that in some aspects. This person went through the same thing that I went through because for the most part, we all deal with the same type of stuff. I might be a different level. It's almost what I talked about before about addictions. We all have addictions. It. the matter of what your addiction is. And so when I run into somebody that's absolutely can't forgive me for something that happened over 15 years ago that didn't even directly affect them, how do you not forgive someone for something that they did that didn't even involve you? I don't even need the actual forgiveness to be honest. I mean, what did I do to you and. If you're still in the mindset. I just can't believe you did that. I, well, I'm, I, look I'm sorry that you feel that way, but that lets me know also that this person has never been to anybody's quote unquote senate committee. They've never been through the build to bear process. They're just out here and they just living and they just, looking at other people and passing their judgments on them. as they say. Don't act like your shit don't stink, but, and that's that person they don't smell themselves. Everybody else might see 'em, but they just don't see themselves like that. And, sometimes people just die like that. And I think that's just the ultimate worst, just to die thinking that you that you just didn't need any improvement that you had just. Arrived in a sense, but that's for those people to deal with. In this journey, in this podcast, my, my ultimate goal, and I'll say it every week, every podcast, that my ultimate goal is to help you build you, to help us, build us to a place that we can. Interact with each other when we have disputes, when we have business falling outs, when we have business problems, when we, as we are succeeding, things to keep in mind, and that's what I look forward to, but again, we all have to starve from the bottom with ourselves. And first, in order to be able to do any of this, we have to be able to communicate with each other. We have to be able to interact with each other and just above all, again to love ourselves. And so, gonna wrap this up for this week. Again, thank you guys for tuning in. I really appreciate the, of everyone that has been listening in I hope you guys are, will continue to enjoy the show every week. This is, what is today's date? This is March 27th. So April's around the corner. We do have a live guest that's gonna be coming out. For a Facebook Live interview on April 2nd, so at four o'clock. So, everybody, I encourage you to tune in for that. I'm gonna have a great time. And I'll let you tune in to see who and what the discussion will be about. And you guys have a good rest of your week and we will talk to you later.