Its Says “One Bad Muthafucka
How Jules Teaches Attitude Is Everything
I hit a wall a couple of years ago. A proverbial wall. I was spiritually, physically, and emotionally spent. I had spent ten years fighting the good fight or so I believed. In politics, it takes a certain amount of confidence to push a person forward. In reality, confidence is an attitude any person can choose. Pulp Fiction, the seminal film by Quentin Taratino, has a number of great characters that have confidence. They are from all walks of life, proving everyone can have confidence, even you if you believe. Even Zed had confidence, and Zed was one sick bastard.
Warning: Spoilers ahead. If you haven’t seen Pulp Fiction. Thats your fault, its over twenty years old. If you’ve been waiting for some magical moment to watch it, then you have found it. I am your shepherd, leading you to a new point of view.
How Attitude Affects Everything
Napoleon Hill writes in his book, Think and Grow Rich, of an old poem that says questions attitude or more so question your attitude. What you ask from life you shall get. I was in highschool the first time I saw Pulp Fiction. I had a boot leg VHS copy from a comic book convention. Comic conventions were even cooler before they went main stream because people attending truly cared. People there were wearing costumes, selling books, bootlegging videos, not because it was cool but because we did not give a damn.
You could find copies of everything in those days, not comic convention sponsors are so afraid of offending Hollywood they won’t allow bootlegs because the billionaires lose a few cents on the backend. The rebellious nature of the comic convention was thriving in 1995 when I got my tape.
My attitude is a result of the gumbo that my parents put before me as a child. They both are very successful in their chosen careers, but as with most parents they wanted more for their children. I took all their lessons to heart, even the bad ones, parents are not perfect, just people doing their best. That summer I ignored the red FBI screen watching Pulp Fiction in my mothers suburban basement. Like Tupac Shakur aka 2pac, “my attitude is fuck it” What can I say, I told you I’m made from American Gumbo.
Developing Your Attitude
There are many things which shape us as people. The most important aspect that many people forget is your own thoughts. Thoughts are things. So many people today forget. Curt Vonnegut said,
We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.
Today you can make a decision to become a new person. It is just that easy, but so many will have a million excuses instead of making the one decision to change their life. I know I make up an excuse every day. The reason I am writing this because I am calling myself out. I am also calling you out, together, right here, right now, we are making the decision to take control of our lives. The excuses are the minions of fear, they are monuments to nothingness, which build bridges to nowhere.
Taking control of your thoughts is the first step in growing your confidence. Our brain is not transmitting random signals like you believe. It is our greatest ally but it can also be worst enemy. It is time to start feeding and controlling what goes into your brain. Our conscious thoughts are a result of information. Today we are changing our information diet.
Creating A Confidence Diet
The information you feed your brain is a large part of the new you. Being confident is not the absence of fear, it's being scared but not letting the fear stop you from acting. I understand you may not believe in the power of positivity. Why? It is okay for you to believe that you are capable of achieving great things. What great things is up to you, but I encourage you to choose goals that you can create a real plan to achieve.
Create an information diet with the information you need to help you achieve your new state of mind. Your confidence comes from you. The thoughts and information you put inside will help you form a new sense of self, fuel your new purpose. Life is never over, until its over. Everyday I get up to write, yet I have thousands of unpublished pieces.
The fight for confidence is one that will never end. I choose to read on a daily basis. At the moment, I am reading Master Of The Senate, a book on Lyndon B. Johnson. The last in a trilogy written by Robert Caro on one of the greatest American politicians in the history of our nation. It is part of my information diet to learn from those people that achieved their goals. The more you read the more you will find they had times of doubt as well.
With Ups There Will Be Downs
I made history at the age of 24 by becoming the youngest person ever to be elected in Missouri. Many of you see Missouri through the prism of Ferguson and Michael Brown. I am a black man that made history in a State that had the Mason Dixon line. No one thought I stood a chance to win. I knew I could win.
I had seven great years, but the last year of my last term was closest to hell I have been. My world fell apart, I had flown close to the sun, but unlike Icarus is was not the sun, it was my arrogance. I was pushing to expand what could be accomplished except I forgot to take care of the one thing which means the most. I forgot to take care of myself. I began letting the negative thoughts fill my head. My information diet consisted of all the negative rumors and articles being written about me.
People were saying horrible things about me. The accusations of drug use, my old friend was inflating the rate of my abscence. He knew I was sick with Lupus, but he chose instead to tell our colleagues that I was no longer a great Representative. My father asked me to make a vote that would change the political landscape for at least a decade. Turns out the alone feeling I felt, was burnout with a touch of clinical depression.
Fall Down Seven Times, Get Up Eight
I can not blame and do not blame anyone for the mistakes I made. My arrogance, the darkside of confidence, had brought me to my knees. As my so called enemies were delighting in my turmoil, I was blaming myself for everything from the Ozone layer to putting an ineffectual leader with a napoleanic complex at the head of my party. My mind was feasting on negativity fed by my own ego. I had let myself down by letting the rumors fester inside my head.
I won’t tell you it was easy to get over. That would be a lie. I had let my mental and physical health deteriorated to such a degree I could no longer function at a level I thought acceptable. Instead of reaching out to ask for help. I built a tower to isolate yourself. I share this with you to illustrate that you are not alone. I have grown into a different man since those events, and because of those events I have more confidence than I ever had before.
Life is not always fair. Life is not always sun shine and rainbows, but life always gives us the opportunity to change. The most important change is our attitude. I spent some time in my own pity party after my incident. I left town to travel to escape my shame. That was fear filling up my thoughts with nothing but negativity. It was a dark time, not just due to my thoughts but my health was bad. Really bad.
Mind & Body Connection
A few years before I took office, I had a brain tumor taken off my pituitary gland. The pituitary gland let loose a flood of hormones like a dam bursting. As a result I developed Lupus, an autoimmune disease which effects the body in a multitude of ways. In my arrogance I had not only paid no attention to some deadlines, but I also neglected my physical health.
Our minds and body’s are connected in a way that we must pay attention. I learned the hard way, so you do not have to. Today we are choosing to take care or our mind and body. It took me two years to recondition both, but I made a decision to end my pity party.
Today Is Your Day
The most important moment of your new life is this moment. You are making the decision to be your own shepard, taking control your mind and body to achieve the life which makes you happy.
