Welcome once more to the “How to Be a Grownup Podcast Breakdown”! My name is Erik Andress and I am the host of this show. Today, I am humbled and grateful to bring you the compassionate wisdom and the ambitious advice of speaker and minister Jeremy Anderson! He has gone from a life of hopelessness to prosperity. Through his hustle he took himself from the ground floor to working one-on-one with luminaries like the world renowned speaker Eric Thomas. He has a fascinating story of grind and redemption that we all strive to emulate.
Check out this podcast interview with Jeremy to learn all his tips, tricks, and techniques that he wants you to know to live a empowered life:
While there were a lot of gems this ambitious entrepreneur dropped, here are the three most important ways Jeremy believes that you can do to revolutionize your business and personal life:
1. You are capable of redemption. You can live a life that makes a difference
It was only a few short years ago that my life looked very different. My outlook was bleak, to say the least. I was lost in murky depths of drug abuse and I was nearing 300 pounds on the tiny scale in my bathroom. I spent my evenings mesmerized by the glow of my television and I wasn’t taking any purposeful steps towards success. I felt deeply confined by the labels that had been placed on me by teachers, counselors, and middle school bullies. I was weighed down and shackled by the ideas that had been embedded in me. Of course I was a “loser”, they had all told me so. Of course I was destined to always be the fat kid, they had all told me so. Of course I was doomed to live a life of underwhelming mediocrity, they had all told me so.
My life changed when I decided to make it change. I decided that I would no longer accept feeling sluggish and encumbered by the weight that I had put on. I bought a pair of tennis shoes and I began to hit the pavement. I decided that I would no longer spend my nights held hostage by the media on my electronic devices. I began to put myself out there and attend social events put on in my area. I decided that I wasn’t going to accept the idea that I was stuck in this job that I despised driving to every day. I began to apply of other positions and I found a teaching position that allowed me to give of myself to the most vulnerable of student populations.
Your life changes only when you get angry enough with your current situation that change is a NECESSITY, not an option. So get disgusted with the things in your life that are holding you back. Get furious at the idea that you are not living up to your physical potential. Get livid at the fact that you are not in an occupation that allows you to fulfill your purpose. Get angry with the idea that you are not bringing your best self to your significant other or those in your life that you love. Use this as fuel to push you to take action. It is then, and only then, that you can truly start to live the life that you deserve!
“I’m gonna make the rest of my life, the best of my life.” – Eric Thomas
2. You are deserving of health and happiness
For so much of our younger years, the adults in our life that we trust focus on our deficiencies. They often do this with good intentions, in the idea that they will push us to bigger and better things by helping us to rectify our mistakes. However, for many young people, this strategy backfires. This often times convinces them that they don’t deserve to be happy. This often times pushes them to believe that they don’t deserve to be healthy. They might end up feeling that they do not deserve the chance to fight for the version of success that they hold dear and their mind’s eye. However, (and I want you to focus on the sentence because it might be the most vital one that you read today) you are a person of worth that deserves health, happiness, and an extraordinary life.
Yes, you might have had your feelings in the past yes, you might have caused hurt and heartache for others. However, your past does not dictate your destiny. Choose right here and right now to change the way that you have looked at yourself in the past. Choose right here and right now to move forward in your life with the assumption that your DEFAULT SETTING is happiness and that you can accomplish incredible vitality and health if you put in the work. Simply by being alive, breathing, and having that heart continuing to pump in your chest…you are worth it.
“Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn’t arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I’m going to be happy in it.” – Groucho Marx
3. Being of service to other people brings abundance into your life
Before I entered the transitional period in my life that brought about my own self empowerment, I was so used to having my credit card declined that it just became another frustrating part of my life. I was so used to feeling like I could never quite get a hold of success and that all good things in my life just seemed to continually slip through my fingers. However, there was one revolutionary moment, in which all of this changed.
I had just returned home from an evening interview at a high school. I desperately wanted that job. I was living paycheck to paycheck and barely scraping by. Shrugging my backpack off my shoulders onto my kitchen table, I felt compelled to go for a walk. As I trudged through a nearby park, illuminated only by the pale circles of light that were cast on the path in front of me, I dejectedly slumped over on a dilapidated park bench. This will be my seventeenth interview, and probably my seventeenth rejection, I thought to myself. On top of all of this, I had recently put my heart out there for a woman. I had left her a message on her answering machine while she was out of town telling her how incredible I thought she was and that I would be profoundly grateful if she let me buy her a cup of coffee. Days had passed and no response from her. As I surveyed the park and listened to the late night wind rustle through the leaves of the trees above me, I was overwhelmed with a sense of letting go.
I still don’t entirely know what compelled me to do this, but on that park bench I said out loud to nobody in particular, “If I get this job, I will dedicate my life to being of service to these kids. It will not be about the paycheck for me. It will be about helping them realize their greatness.”
I sighed deeply, feeling utterly helpless. It wasn’t even a minute later that my cell phone began to buzz in my pocket. I had gotten two text messages. Opening my phone, I was astonished to see that the first was from a teacher at the school I had interviewed at earlier that evening. It read, “Call me. We want to offer you the job.” The second message was, much to my surprise, from the woman that I tried to contact. Her message said, “I’d love to get coffee with you. Pick me up this Friday at 8.”
When I chose to let go of my expectations for myself and decide to be of service to others, abundance entered my life. As I began my journey as a teacher in that institution, and was able to bring those young scholars the kind of compassionate instruction they deserved to have, I started to get opportunities to speak and change the lives of kids outside my classroom. Oh, and the woman from earlier in the story? We’ve now been happily married for nearly three years. While it may seem antithetical to what you have been taught, giving of yourself is truly the quickest and easiest way to bring more love, more wealth, and more hope into your life.
“The measure of a man’s greatness is not the number of servants he has, but the number of people he serves.” – John Hagee
