Melyssa
I’m Melyssa Griffin. And while I was in my 20s, I turned a hobby blog into a multi million dollar company. Now what I’ve discovered after working with thousands of entrepreneurs is that the greatest thing standing in the way of success isn’t another business tactic or marketing strategy. It’s your own mindset. Now, I believe that you’re meant for more than just the status quo. So on this show, you’ll feel like you’re sitting down with a friend who’s here to help you transform your fears and roadblocks into a truly limitless version of yourself. It’s time to upgrade your life and business from the inside out. Let’s do this.

Melyssa
Hey, Sylvester, welcome to the show.

Sylvester
Thank you for bringing me on. How are you doing today?

Melyssa
I’m excited to chat with you and just learn more about your brilliance and all of the personal growth that you bring to the world. So I’m excited.

Sylvester
Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity.

Melyssa
Yeah. So I think your story is really interesting because you started in sports, and then went to sales. And then now you’re like this personal development ass, who teaches people through tons of different books and videos, and you have a huge following on Instagram. So I’d love to hear more about the trajectory that you went on. Like, how did you end up doing what you’re doing now and helping people with personal transformation?

Sylvester
really was, I think, a main event it still is to this day, I think it’s a journey for myself. First and foremost, I think it’s something that I mean, just like this morning is a perfect example, when I’m working out this morning, so I went for three mile walk this morning. So I got up at like 630

When I got up, my energy was just off. It was just not where I needed to be. So, you know, I gave myself this pep talk about how I wanted to feel. And, you know, I was just projecting, like the mood that I wanted. And even doing that it just like it wasn’t enough. So I went on my walk, did my three mile walk. And three mile takes me about an hour. So while I’m doing my one hour walk, I’m reflecting the light, the affirmations that I created, gave myself in the morning, but I was just digging deeper in I was trying to discover, like, what is triggering this? Like, why do I feel this way? You know? And then I figured out why it was a conversation I had yesterday that with my someone in my family that it just didn’t sit right with me like the conversation didn’t sit right with me. So what I realized on my walk is I was still getting closure from the conversation and I was still processing, you know the conversation.

So I use the rest of the three mile walk to kind of give myself closure and clarity on

In that situation, and then after my three mile walk, I went to the gym. And so I go to the gym, basically what I do is I run two to three miles. This morning, it was like three and a half miles, I just I just kept going, my body kept going. So I ran like three and a half miles. And then I lifted. So I like to lift weights being a football players are lifted.

And by the time I left the gym, the energy was gone. It was completely gone, I was restored, I was myself again, you know, I had to hide from working out I just felt really good. And so essentially, that whole process is a process I had to learn myself, you know, I had to teach myself, that healing process that I just talked about, that I just did this morning. So essentially, I think a lot of the things that I’m teaching within my books, my podcasts, my courses, our processes, you know, it’s kind of like a playbook really. And you know, as a coach you call different place for your team to win gang. And so what I feel like

I’ve developed over time is I’ve created this playbook of plays that people can go to, depending on their situation. So for example, like this morning, the first play in my playbook was affirmations. Well, that didn’t work. You know, that ran that play that usually works, but it doesn’t work. So I had to dive in to my playbook, then I had to call the playbook of the three mile walk, that usually restores me. Well, that helped a little bit, you know, but it still didn’t solve it. So then I had to fall back on my morning routine where I get my workout. And I got my workout end, by the time I was doing my workout by about 10. I felt restored, I felt bounce, I felt healed. I felt like I had a understanding of that conversation. So now it’s you know, it’s about 1215 I’m good to go. Like I’m back to my normal self, I’m back to like, my, my elevated self, my happy self, you know, so I had to run those plays. And so what I feel like my work has done, it’s been me learning different places to call, you know, for myself, essentially to try to Be happy. And then what I’m doing with the work is I’m showing people the place and I’m describing. Sam, I’m a big on, I’m big on why, okay? If you tell me something, I’m going to ask you why? Mm hmm. You could say, hey, if you do this, this isn’t gonna work for you. I’m going to ask you why, though, why is it going to work? Like, I want to know the process. So what I like to do in my work is I try to, I like to give the why I like to give the story I like to give the detail of the process. So then people can implement whatever plays they think is going to work for them. You know, hope that answers your question. Oh, it does. I feel like we could do a whole episode on just that story. Because there’s a lot in it that I want to touch on and unpack. The first thing is that I feel like our natural inclination So you said that you had kind of an off conversation with a family member and and that left you feeling different, not yourself fully the next day and so I feel like a lot of our natural inclination in those situations is

To go back to the person and almost codependent, we need to solve it with them. And always kind of looking outside of ourselves for the answer to our happiness. But I love what you just shared, because it’s all about you taking care of you, and you re centering yourself by exercising or walking or doing whatever you need to do to get back to your own homeostasis. And I think that’s so important. When we’re not feeling like ourselves. It’s not really about going and seeking someone else. Typically, sometimes that can be a good support system. But yeah, I think that’s so important. And even just the awareness that you had, I think that that’s rare, because we’ll often wake up the next day, and we’ll feel off and we won’t know why. And so I’m curious, how did you begin to develop that self connection and that awareness to realize it

I’m feeling off because it was this conversation I had. I mean, that developed in my childhood, it was a lack of external resources. You know, it was a lack of just growing up with trust issues through due to the pain and trauma that I went through. You grew up with these trust issues, you don’t trust adults, you don’t trust friends, you don’t trust authority. So what happens is, I mean, you could keep everything within because you don’t trust people. Or you can try to figure out why, you know, you can try to figure out solutions to that. That was always my, my train of thought I never wanted to keep some of these things to myself that I was dealing with. They’re going through regardless of who I could talk to. My just natural being was, Hey, get this unruly energy off of me get these thoughts out of my head, if they’re restricting me from like being my best like I need to deal with it, I need to manage it. So the very first tool that I use was my notebooks and I will just write in my notebooks. I will

write stories, or write poems, I would observe a lot, I would observe a lot of behavior. And I will write people’s behavior. I would write what they did what they said. And I was so observant, I would write the tone of voice people would use, I would listen to people’s pitch, you know, like you could talk like, this is kind of a monotone flavor right now. But if I was to talk like this, like I’m on a radio show, or a TV show, it like carries a different energy. So I would just listen to that I will listen to how people will talk. I will listen to you know, my mother, she will have a very, like authoritative voice. She wasn’t timid. Then I will listen to someone who attended. Then I will listen to like my father talk. And he was he kind of talked like Barack Obama, he had a very good pace. And he had a very good spacing in between his words. So when he talked, you never really felt like you could talk? Mm hmm. Because he will put that space in. He will let you listen kinda like I’m doing now. And then he would take over he would just keep talking.

And when people talk like that you, you don’t know when to get in, you’re just like, Okay, I’m just gonna listen.

And you know, just listen to all the people around me when I will go to school and my teachers will talk, I will watch, I would observe, I would observe their body language, I will be able to tell like all that they don’t care about what they’re teaching. They’re just, they’re just teaching it. And then even the opposite like, oh, man, they love this subject. their soul is like entrenched in this subject. And I just became a person who always started studying people and behavior. And I would just write about it in my notebooks, everything I will see even things I think I didn’t even understand I would just write about it. And kind of like we talked about that, why question, our then after that, we’ll write about it. I would always ask myself why, like, why is this person doing this? Why are they behaving this way? I was really interested in the psychology of behavior at a very, very young age. And what ended up happening is, you know, by the time I got to college, so I took a field trip, it was my junior year, and went to college, went to the whole bunch of colleges and Illinois where I grew up.

And we’re talking with the admissions counselor. And the admissions counselor was like, hey, so, you know, what do you want your major to be? And, you know, I’m like a major, what does that even mean? You know, I’m, I don’t even know what you’re talking about. And he broke it down to me. He’s like, yeah, so you know what the major, that’s gonna be where, you know, the emphasis of your study is essentially so you can major in different things. So he told me, you know, psych, you know, Black Studies, you know, sports just went on and on and on. And I told him, I said, Well, honestly, I just want to write books, like this type of job I want to do I just want to be an author. I just want to write, I just want to do novels, right about self help, like, that’s all I want to do. It goes, Okay, he’s like, well, you need to study either communications, English or psychology, just depending on how you want to do it. And so he started breaking it down to me about you know, how each majors different in what they focus on. And then he asked me said, he said, Why do you want to write

Unknown Speaker
Books, you know, what’s one reason you want to write books? And I said, because I want people to be able to find their own voice. And he goes, why is that? And I said, because I’ve never found mine. And I think I’m gonna be able to find mine through writing.

Melyssa
Do you feel like for people who don’t identify as a writer, that they still can gain value from something like journaling or writing out their thoughts and feelings?

Sylvester
Well, I think most people are creatives a writer is just a creative. I think most people are creatives, I think most of us have some type of creative energy or power inside of us that has been hidden. Because what happens is you go to school, and they’ve just put you in this system where they teach you who to be. They don’t teach you how to be yourself. They teach you to be they make you go to college, you get debt, you get out of debt, you get a car you can afford. Now you’re in a situation where you have a car you can’t afford, you got rents that are super high, you have debt to college. So how do you have time to be creative? Where’s the time for that? So to me, it’s like the way the system

is set up. It’s pushing people away from their creativity. But creativity is one of the paths to happiness. What did you do when you were a kid? You play, you have fun. You build Legos you play with Barbies. Use your imagination, you race cars on tracks. When you were in the grocery store, you skipped over imaginary blocks, because some the white part was fire. So he had to skip over it. So why is it that we become adults, and all we care about is these bills. Everyone has creativity inside of them. So, you know, we all in my opinion, need to identify where our creative with our creative side, even if that’s not what pays our bills. So what we all need to identify with our creative side, even if it’s once a week, twice a month. At some point, we need to build habits of touching our creative sides, you know, painting, doing yoga, going for a walk to me is creative because you’re going for a walk and you’re allowing your mind to just roam freely. That’s a creative process. You know, drawing singing

singing in the shower if you could sing, sing. That’s creativity, dancing. You know, to me, we all have creativity inside of us in I think you know, my book for your energy. That’s one of the things I’m talking about. You Free yourself when you allow yourself to be yourself. Mm hmm. You know, so for me, writing is a part of who I am. So if I was to not allow myself to write because I had to do whatever I have to do, I think I’m selling myself short. That’s what I believe about creativity. Like we all have creativity inside of us. Yeah. And it’s about not judging the creativity. Oh, well, I’m not as good as Mozart. I’m not as good. It’s not that it’s not what it’s about. It’s about saying, Hey, I like to draw. I like to paint I’m just gonna do it doesn’t matter if you make money from it. Right? You know, it’s not about some people can be creative, and they can use their creative job for their career. Some people can’t. There’s no shame in that. For me, it’s about if you have a creative genius

Keasha
If you and you’re suppressing it, get back to it. Allow yourself the space to get back to it. Because creativity is one of the paths to happiness. So to me, the more paths to happiness that we can open up for us, the better off we’re going to be.

Melyssa
Yeah, I completely agree. And it feels like, you know, as humans were driven, to be creative, the ultimate creative thing you can do is like, procreate. And that’s a huge part of just humanity. And so I feel like channeling that energy into creativity in other ways is so valid and so important too. And when we’re not using our creativity, then we’re disconnected from a piece of ourselves. And I like to think too, that, like, you can do anything creatively. If you make that choice for whatever task you’re doing, whether it’s like writing a resume or cooking dinner, like you can infuse creativity into it instead of just going through the motions. I feel like creativity is a lot about presence. To just being present to the moment instead of trying to control or think about the future, how it has to be something that I like about what you teach is that you’re very much about questioning the status quo, questioning the systems and authority that’s been passed down to us and actually helping people to develop their own way of seeing the world that’s more authentic to who they are. So, I’d love to know, for anyone who’s listening, what can they do to start reconnecting more to that authentic part of themselves, even if it means they’re gonna have to let go of the status quo?

Sylvester
think you’re gonna have to ask yourself, what do you want to experience before you die? I think if you ask yourself that question, that is probably the only way you’re going to be completely honest with you. So if you’ve lived a life where you’ve lied to yourself, your whole life, why would you all of a sudden start being honest because you heard some guy on the podcast you’re not it’s not gonna happen.

So you have to actually ask yourself, what life Do I want to experience before I die? And some people will think of that, and they’re gonna say, Well, what I want to experience is not possible. I give up, I’m just going to do what I’ve been doing. I believe in free will. So you’re entitled to do that. Some people are going to ask themselves that and they’re gonna say, well, damn, you know what? I have to at least try. Now that I asked myself that question, I have a vision for the life I want to live. And I need to at least try. I may fail. I may get there Who knows? But I have to at least try and I’m the latter. I’m the person who asked yourself that question. And I said, Well, I need to at least try. I might fail. And I and I did. And I do continue to fail. You know, that’s another thing. People’s association with failure and success is backwards. We look at success as if it’s the epitome of existence, and it’s not. success and failure are literally the same.

Think they are a part of the exact same journey. They’re the exact same thing. You know, you can be in the hall of fame for baseball by batting 35% you can hit 35% of the balls, and you can be a Hall of Fame.

You know, when Michael Jordan won his MVP, he never shot over 35% from 3.2. He won MVP, which is the most valuable player in the whole league. So for us, you know, just civilians, why do we have this concept that we have to be perfect? We have to be the best we have to be better than everybody. Look, you don’t have to be. We have a sitting president right now. Donald Trump as a sitting president of the United States. He never held a political position in this man became the president. He convinced over 62 million people to vote for him. So people have to break up with this. This self judgment is self sabotaging. And you literally just have to ask yourself, what type of life Do I want to live before I do.

You have to To be honest with the answers, and when I asked myself that, I don’t want to work all the time. working all the time is not fun. That is such an outdated mindset. Grind. You got to grind. You got to grind. You gotta hustle. You got to work. sunup to sundown. Got to outwork, everybody. I used to believe in that, because that was what was given to me. My dad told me, you know, you’re black. So because you’re black, you’re gonna have to outwork white people because they have an advantage over you because they’re white. And though that’s how these systems are set up. This is what my father told me. Okay. All right. I’m an athlete. Well, you wouldn’t have to outwork people because you’re an athlete, they’re gonna think that you’re stupid because you’re a jock. So you’re gonna have to prove that your intellect your intellectual, you’re gonna have to prove your intelligence. This is what my mother told me. And my opinion took for your energy. You have to ask yourself, I know what society may think. I know what my parents may think because all of our parents are expressive. All of our parents tell us about us about ourselves, right? All of our grandparents tell us what they

All of our family, they love telling us their opinions about who we date, we should date, what schools we should go to. Who do we want to be before we die?

That’s it. When you ask yourself that, then you don’t worry about what the society is thinking about you. What stereotypes they have about you what boxes they want to put you in. You don’t worry about your parents anymore. You don’t worry about your grandparents, you don’t worry about the pressures they have. You literally allow yourself to be free, or do I want to be before I die? I don’t want to be a person who works all the time. Why? Because I want to be able to enjoy my life. I want to have a healthy relationship. It’s work. I want to have a healthy relationship with even working out. Working out can be too much it can be people can be you know it can be obsessive. So I have a routine for when I work out. I work out Monday through Thursday. And then on Fridays, I do yoga for an hour and I run Saturday and Sunday for life.

I relax. But even with that, I had to break up with the outdated mindset that I was given for being an athlete. Because when you’re an athlete, what they tell you is if you’re not working out, someone is getting better than you. Someone is getting ahead of you. So what happened for me was I got into a rut of I worked out like 47 days in a row last year. On like, day 48 I ended up tearing my groin. Okay, I tear my groin. This is one of the most excruciating pains I’ve ever felt. I started crying. I just started crying. I just, I had so much pain, I could walk, I could carry myself. I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t fend for myself. That was like such a big lesson. I sent a group text to my friends to my guys and I said, this is not a joke to Mr. Grind. I’m at this LA Fitness. I need help come get me. And there was this random guy in the gym. I asked him to help me walk to the front. He literally it’s like

Pick me up, and I carry me on his shoulders. And I was just so embarrassed like walking through LA Fitness needing help. And then once I saw that there was other people in the gym, we talked about this shame, imagery. I don’t want people to see me needing help like this. So I told him, I say, I’m good, bro. I’m good. I walked the rest of the way. I walked through the whole gym with a torn, torn groin in so much pain and I just held the wall the whole time. I just inch inch to the wall. Took me 25 minutes to get from the back to the front. By that time, my friends were here. So my friends literally had to pick me up, put me in a car took me to, you know the ER and so anyways, what happens is, when I get home that day, you know I needed help getting up the stairs. I was living in a two storey loft at the time. So I’d go up two flights of stairs. It was brutal. And I got home started crying. I just cried. I just cried. I was just in so much pain. I just cried. You

And it was that day that I realized that was a final step for me because we were talking about how you can break up with old mindsets. The final step for me because my mind was free already, but my body wasn’t free. So when I tore my groin, that’s when my body became free. Because when I laid in my bed for three months, and couldn’t do anything until December, the only thing I told myself was, I need balance in my life, in all aspects, I had a balance in work, I had a balance in, you know, social life. I had a balance of family. I didn’t have the balance and fitness, I was doing way too much. So what I did was, that’s when I started going on my walks in the morning, all I could do was walk so I said, you know, I’m gonna get up every morning and go for a walk. So it started off as a quarter mile, because I will walk a quarter mile and I would just be exhausted or be so tired. Got up to a half a moon. I just kept going. Just kidding.

Going, finally got up to a mile finally got up to two miles finally got up to three miles by the time I got to three miles, which took me like 21 days without being tired. Then I said, Okay, I’m scared to start lifting again. I’m scared to start playing basketball again. Then that’s when I started doing yoga. Once a week, I started stretching every day, because my body was tight. So I started doing research. And I realized that when your body is tight, and your hips are tight, shoulders tight, stress, glutes tight, you’re holding on to emotions, you’re not allowing yourself to deal with emotions. You’re holding on a pain, you’re not allowing it to escape your body. So when I started doing this research on what happens when you have a tight hips, tight glutes, then I realized that in order for me to really heal because I had done at this point in my life, I had done all the healing internally with my emotions and my thoughts from past things. But in the present, my body was not set up for me to deal with myself in the present. That’s why my body was

tight. That’s why it’s where my grown, my body has snapped me out of what I was doing. My body was saying, hey, you need to listen to me right now,

Melyssa
even if it was healthy, and you’re able bodied and capable of playing sports, but your body was holding on to like the residual of those things that needed to be more processed. You have a quote that I found on your Instagram that says, Don’t be good vibes only if that’s not genuine to how you feel it’s better to process your true feelings and present fake ones. And I feel like that, in a way speaks to everything that you’re sharing right now where it’s like, you might do all the work to process through your emotions intellectually. But what work are you doing on your body to allow yourself to release those things, and something that you touched on was around boundaries, and I think boundaries are so important. You have this quote about boundaries where you say every single time you set a boundary in your life, you improve the relationship you have with yourself. I think that’s so true that we see boundaries only as this thing that’s going to disconnect us from other people, we think it’s going to create separation, when in fact, it creates more connection with us internally. And then we can use that in our relationships and connections with others.

Sylvester
Gotta set boundaries. So my book care package is one of the main topics setting boundaries. That’s one of the best selling books since 2018. That’s one of the best selling books in the world on healing, spirituality on one of the things that I say in the book, that quote is from the book, by the way, and one of the things that I say is that no one is going to respect you until you respect yourself. All right. So when you set boundaries, you are creating self love, you’re creating respect. You’re creating a pathway to your higher version. That’s what boundaries allow you to do.

And sometimes there’s other emotions that come with setting boundaries like guilt.

Because sometimes it may feel like you’re taking away right a lot of people who deal with codependency have a hard time setting boundaries. Because codependent relationships often put you in a situation where you have to give, give gifts. That’s how you feel. But you free yourself when you realize that yes, you do need to give like we all need to give. That’s what I personally believe. I believe that being a human being means you need to give to the collective consciousness you need to give to your society, you need to give to your friends, give to your family, like you offer yourself as a way to make the world better. That’s one of the things I believe. But that doesn’t mean you offer yourself in an unlimited fashion. Like you don’t have unlimited energy, you don’t have unlimited resources. So it doesn’t make sense to think I’m going to give in a finite way because I don’t have finite within myself. You literally go to sleep every night because your body needs to recharge. So why would you ignore that like homeostasis is your body, always seeking balance? We literally

really need balance. So as much as you give, maybe you don’t get back as much as you get, which is fine. I don’t feel like I get back as much as I get, which is fine. But you do need things to come back to you. You get that with boundaries. A perfect example of how I set a boundary this weekend. One of my best friends, and this isn’t even a serious thing. It’s not even like a serious boundary. One of my best friends is absent minded. She’s very intelligent, but he’s absent minded. Every time this man comes to miles, he asked me for my address every single time. I don’t like doing work more than once if I don’t have to. I was the type of person in school what I was gonna do my homework. I was gonna do it one time. I was gonna go over my answers one time and that’s it. If I got it wrong or right, cool, but I’m not doing the work again. That’s just the way out. That’s just I personally but my best friend. I call him my brother.

This man makes me do my same work again, I’ve sent him my address at least 100 times. So he texts me the other day, he’s coming over to the house. And he goes, Hey, send me the address. And it triggered me now not in like an angry, I didn’t get pissed off. But it was like a funny thing. I’m like this mother. So I texted him, I said, Hey, man,

you need to save my address to my contact field. So when you come over here, I don’t have to do this again. So then he’s super petty. So he responds, and he’s like, all this typing you’re doing, and you could have just sent me the address. So then I responded. And I’m like a man and my close friends. That’s how I transition into setting boundary with them. I say, Amen. Like, I dressed him like that. And I go, Hey, man, all this typing I’m doing is me setting a healthy balance with you saved my address to the contact. Here’s the address. And then I put like lol at the end because we were joking with each other. We were playing around. So

Unknown Speaker
Then he gets to the house. And he goes, I saved your address to my contact field to respect your boundaries. Now, he said it in a trolling fashion. Now, that’s just the way our relationship is like, we’re always just joking with each other. But the thing is, if I don’t tell him, Hey,

Unknown Speaker
this behavior bothers me. He never knows. He never ever knows. He never knows. So now I just suffer, because I haven’t expressed to him that he’s making me do the same work over and over and over. Honestly, it’s such a perfect example for setting a boundary. This is someone I mean, I love them to death. We have on those relationships where we could be super serious, or like super joking and just playing around. And that is something that is not you know, serious. It’s not something that needs to be, you know, like, I need to have to sit down with you, you know, we need to talk about it. You know, it wasn’t like that type of thing. But it was a Hey, let me respect this moment because you are making me do more work. I’ve text you to address

Unknown Speaker
100 times to just save it. Why don’t you remember where I live by now? He like you really need the GPS every time. He’s like, yeah, I need to GPS every time. But you know, like I said, He’s absent minded. So

Unknown Speaker
we joked about it, we move forward.

Melyssa
So what I love about that story is that there’s such an emphasis on just communicating your needs. I feel like a lot of the times, we will see something like a behavior in somebody that is an issue for us. And then we’ll try and rationalize all of the different things that we could do to eliminate that behavior. While like ask our friends, what should we do or will do something passive aggressive or just something that’s not effective when the solution is really just to have a conversation? And I think we can be afraid of that and afraid to just communicate our needs and our boundaries because there’s so much underneath that a fear of rejection, fear of the other person abandoning us all of those things, but yeah, like you’re saying

Unknown Speaker
I think just communicating those boundaries and our needs is how we stay with ourselves and our authenticity.

Sylvester
I 100% a second that I remember the very first girl in high school that I just said on the phone where we used to talk all the time, just like every night we used, we just used to talk. And she ended up dating this other guy, which wasn’t my goal. I got put in the friendzone. So she ended up dating this other guy, but I mean, by this time, we were like two years deep in our friendship. So it was cool.

She’s like, yeah, just don’t feel like he’s this or that does dah, dah, dah. And I was like, Well, have you told him that? And she got Oh, no, I haven’t told him. I said, Well, why are you telling me? Oh, I just feel like I can talk to you more. I’m like, well, you should be dating me then if you feel like I’m the one you can talk to more. And she was like, Oh, yeah, but you know, uh, you know, we’re like, really good friends. And I’m like, oh, okay, so you don’t want to date someone you’re really good friends with you want to be with a guy you can’t actually be friends with but you just like him for some intrinsic reason that

I can’t really rationalize. She’s like, yeah, I guess it doesn’t really make sense. And I was like, well, you should be with someone you could talk to. She’s like, yeah, I think you’re right. And it was in high school that I realized that because that’s a behavior that I’ve seen ever since then that people will take like intimate things that they’re struggling with. And they’ll take it to someone else who’s not even involved with them that way, it makes no sense. Makes no sense. So I support what you’re saying.

Unknown Speaker
Yeah, it is a fascinating part of human nature that we don’t just inherently know to go and, and communicate and share our needs with other people. So I have just one more question that I want to ask you. And I just appreciate so much your wisdom that you’ve brought to this conversation. And this is a question that I asked everyone who comes on the show. So the name of the show is limitless life. We’re all about figuring out what are the blocks that are preventing you from living your most limitless life and version of yourself.

Unknown Speaker
So, what is one piece of advice that you’d give to our listeners about how to live a life with no limits?

Sylvester
I’m going to leave you with these words. The words are all I have is my effort. You know, I have the word effort tattooed on my left arm, all I have is my effort. I believe that when you judge yourself, when you look at your life, it’s easy to look at, I have this degree, I have this amount of money in my account, I drive this type of car, I live in this neighborhood. My friends are of this type or this type of clothes. Like it’s easy to judge yourself on these kind of external statuses that they’ve given us these kind of external things. I have this type of computer, this type of phone, I have this many followers, you know, like, there’s so many things that you could judge yourself as, like my friends see me as this person, all external, all external, but all I have is my effort is

Internal assessment. And when you look at effort, right, like the actual effort you put forth your effort, there’s a duality to it. Because your effort, there’s a mental effort as well as a physical, what you physically did, all I have is my effort. When you allow your effort to be the thing that you’re assessing your life off of, then I feel like you’re getting a feedback, you’re getting a response that’s very realistic, and rooted in self versus being rooted in the external world. You know, it feels good for some people to save. I want to have a book out. I want to become a best selling author, again, external. And this goes back to the question, why? Why do you want that? Why can you tell me why you’re gonna give me an answer? And then I’m gonna ask you again.

But why? When I asked that myself, why do I write books? To me? The answer is the effort it takes for me to write a book makes me go to the next level of myself. Every single time that I’ve written a book, I feel like I’ve graduated a little bit to the next level. I’ve had books that have been on the bestseller list, I’ve had books that no one has really read. If I was a judge myself on the external ranking, where the ranking is, how many people posted how many people love it, I would lose every day. Every single day, I will lose it will be I will feel like a loser. Because that’s such a fleeting external way to to assess what you’re doing. But if I just like this book I’m working on now. I’ve been 14 months in I haven’t spent that long writing any book. I’m 14 months in. It’s one of the most concentrated efforts I’ve put forth for my best efforts.

When I hit go, when I hit release, and I put this book out, it doesn’t matter what happens to me, it doesn’t matter if it becomes a bestseller. It doesn’t matter if people love it, it doesn’t matter if people leave bad reviews. It doesn’t matter if people buy the book and burn. It doesn’t matter if the Library of Congress gets it and distributes it. in universities, it doesn’t matter. Because what matters is the effort that I put forth in the why, why did I do it? What was my internal motivational factor? I think when you move from that space, of your internal effort, your internal motivations, I think you’re completely free. I think you give yourself freedom. I think you give yourself a limitless life. Hmm. Well said. Yeah. I love that just moving from the external validation to our internal connection. I think you totally nailed the definition of what personal freedom is. So thank you so much for all

Hear wisdom, where can people go to learn more about you buy your books, your courses, all the things? Yeah. So the first thing you’re going to want to do if you’re in Canada, America, anywhere in the world, actually, I have a text message community. So I’m going to tell you that number is 310-340-1677. So you could just pull out your phone right now. And you can text me there are some countries that you can’t get it right now, but you can still get your contacts saved. And then once the app enables me to reach you, I’ll be able to so that number is 310-340-1677. So text message community, free to get in. I send out daily texts, usually Monday through Friday, as far as social media, same username. My real name, Sylvester McNutt is my real name. And you can find me on Twitter. You can find me on Instagram. You can find me on Facebook. I have a YouTube channel as well. If you just type my name in

The only me the outcome of my podcast is called the free your energy podcast. So you can find that wherever you found this podcast, they stream on the same apps. And, you know, I do have a website. Our website is just my name, Sylvester McNutt dotnet. And that houses everything that I was just, you know, my books, a podcast that houses my courses, I do a weekly email as well, you can find that on my website, and I’ll send out an email once a week. It’s called the Monday mantra, email. And essentially what that is, is, you know, it’s me writing journal entries and letters to people, just giving them longer form content that’s not on social media, but it’s usually a little more personal. I’m a very private person. And so I’ll use that Monday mantra to open up some of my thoughts and feelings or use a podcast for the same. So whatever type of media you like, if you like podcasts, you’re listening to this podcast.

So definitely jump over to mind for your energy podcast. But whatever you like, you know, and if you like reading books, I have a couple of good books you might like on Amazon as well. So thank you, anybody who just listened to that, thank you for considering checking me out. And if you connect it, let me know that Melyssa sent you. would love to know exactly where you came from. Let me know that you came from Melyssa’s podcast.

Melyssa
Amazing. Thank you so much. I appreciate you. Thank you.