Education - How I see myself. Why LS Pt.2

Welcome, and thank you for tuning in to the Leadership Sovereignty Podcast. I'm your host, Ralph Owens, along with Terry Baylor. In today's podcast, we'll cover topics such as our leadership beginnings and those who inspired us, maintaining through adversity, requirements for leadership, leadership education, and how we view ourselves and what causes us to view ourselves the way that we do. Enjoy the show.

So the, you know, I've seen leadership all my life. I've been fortunate enough, man, where, you know, my dad, and here's the thing I've learned about leadership. Leadership has nothing to do with education. That was one and I learned that early in life because essentially my dad had a third grade education but he led dozens of men who are leading today are the outcome or the result of the leadership that my dad had thirty, forty years ago. And then having six brothers, in their own right took some part of my dad and led their lives, led on jobs, led in the private sector, in the public sector.

So I've seen leadership, but it was the aspect of the sovereign aspect, which is, you know, I can sort of speak, right, don't take this out of context, but I'm the God of my experience, right? How I think about my experience, how I think about my life is going to be the result and the outcome of my experiences. So I don't have to be subject to what another thinks or believes about me. Although they may have a very positive or could be negative opinion. Again, the only opinion that really matters is mine.

So it's the sovereign aspect of it that has really driven me to want to be a part of this platform and to share those ups downs, treading sometime and I had to just tread.

Absolutely.

Just don't go under right now. Just try it, stay strong. Just keep being in the because right, you were in the the navy. Right? Is that right?

Yeah.

Mhmm. So so in the navy, you had to learn how to tread. Right? You had to be in the water. Right?

That's right. That's right. They make you jump off that that tower and get in that water. Yes, sir. Yes, sir.

I love what you're saying, man, about, you know, it doesn't require, leadership doesn't require certain level of education. Leadership can be demonstrated from any level. Some people think that it requires a title. It does not. You can lead from any position that you're in.

All you have to do is make up your mind to move forward. Another thing I love about what you said was it all starts with how you view yourself. That's a very powerful thought that how you view yourself will dictate how you interact with everyone else. That that's so heavy. I'm I'm like really chewing on that right now because then I my mind goes to, well, what systems have been presented to me to help me curve how I think about myself.

Because they know if I think about myself a certain way, I'll only achieve a certain thing. Right? So being able to look at yourself and say, you know what, I am sovereign. I am sovereign in who I am, how I function, how I'm going to interact with people. It's not based on them, it's based on me.

And we know that leadership is also pointing the finger back at us and saying that it is up to us to be able to make the situation better. I've heard someone coin it this way. They say whenever you point the finger at someone else, you completely absolve yourself from being able to change the situation. So when you point the finger at yourself, because that's what the leader does, they say, hey, it's up to me. I'm gonna get in there and make it happen.

Now you have the ability to change. Right? And you start with yourself. I just think that's a great, great, great, great concept you touched on it.

You know what, too? I wanna emphasize on something you said earlier where you were exposed to leadership. And so I wanna make sure that the audience understands when I say education. When I say education, I mean formal. Right?

Because education happens every day. You know, Ralph, as you know, again, you know, Shamika and I, we've taken a very unconventional route. Probably just about a lot of things we do. Man, I don't know how God got us together. We man, we own the edge.

We own the friend somewhere. But you know, again, and being in an African community, African American community, know, we were, you know, one of the few families who homeschooled, right? And so we understand that education in and of itself is about what we give, and what we are looking to get. Right. So that's one of the great things that I man acquire from you, which is when you start being part of that leadership program, you were like, you gotta get this book.

Tee, you gotta get this book. And so, to be honest, man, you really helped, know, and ask Shamika, but it was from a different way. I'll be like, honey, what's that book you read? She was like, I ain't telling you. Better go get the book.

I've grown up, didn't read a lot. I just didn't. And I will get into that a little later. But when you started referring books, and I remember man, the first Christmas man, one of Shamika's friends, I had a book list and she bought me like three or four books on my book list. And man, I really felt some kind of way when I got those books.

And so I really want to just emphasize education is a personal journey. I'm not knocking going through the formal system. There are some pros and some cons to that. To your point earlier, you said, what were we programmed to think about ourselves? Right?

So that system kind of puts us in a position, especially as African Americans, right, where I don't necessarily know in that, you know, I'm just speaking back in the early days, and it's probably still some of that going on. And I see some of it, know, because I got kids in high school right now, that you're kind of framed, right, because you are an athlete or because you're from a, you know, middle to low income family or you could be from a low income family. Brilliance is not predicated on what how many how many commas behind the dollar sign, right? Brilliance man comes in all shapes, forms, and sizes. It's really about exposure.

And again, back on that education idea is that when we get the tool in our hand, whether it's the right conversation, it's the right podcast, what we're trying to do, it's the right book, it's the right person sharing the right story. Right? So education comes in a lot of different forms. So I just want to make sure I am not, I am an advocate for growth and knowledge. So I just want to really emphasize that.

Absolutely. I mean, that is a lifelong journey. Right? That never ends. Nobody ever gets it all.

And in this leadership journey, it's it it was sparked by an organization that I was able to join and then some people who came out of that organization that hopefully will be able to get on the show, who really said, hey, man, you would need to start reading these books. And to Terry's point, reading books, really? I wanna work hard. Now think about what I just said. I wanna work hard.

I don't wanna read a book. That is programming in itself. Because the big piece of my life that really impacted the direction that I went was exposure. When I got exposed to other people, there was something already inside of me even as a young person that said, man, I wanna be successful. I wanna be successful.

I wanna be more successful than what I see, but I just didn't know how to get there. I remember one of the of the movies everybody has a movie that really touched them when they were younger. One of the biggest influence influential movies that I saw growing up that helped me continue to own this journey even when I didn't see it in my own personal surrounding was the movie Boomerang by Eddie Murphy. When Eddie Murphy did Boomerang, I saw a black man in a way I had never seen one before. Wow.

He was successful. He was articulate. Right? He had his game together. And around that time, the Cosby Show, stuff like that was starting to happen.

And I started seeing that. I wasn't seeing that necessarily in my family, not a knock on them or my community, but I saw something that I wanted to become light. That was exposure. Right?

Wow.

Then I moved to Virginia in the military. I got exposed to other people. I'll never forget the first church that I attended there, the pastor, he now I'm in my twenties. Right? Very, very new to this stuff.

He had told me he was like, hey, man. He was very wealthy. He had owned a lot of land. He was like, hey, man. You can get these.

It was like 16 acres, for like, I don't know. It was like $30,000. He was like, that's like $250 a month. You could do it. He had a picture from a helicopter of all the land.

He And was like, man, you could do it. And in my mind, was just like $250 That's like the world. I can't do that. Right? Wow.

So that exposure opened my mind to what was possible. Right? So going back to exposure, you don't know what seed is in a young person until you expose them to what's better. And then you start to see that seed start to come out. And that's what happened, with me.

Thank you for listening to the Leadership Sovereignty Podcast. We hope that you not only enjoyed the content, but gained something to help you on your personal leadership journey. Feel free to reach out to us on x and Instagram under the handles Leadership Sovereignty. Until next time, stay safe, peace, and blessings.