THAT MIND IS THE SOURCE OF ALL POWER

I always have a lot on my mind. Today is no different. But fortunately for me I have learned what thoughts to acknowledge and what thoughts to laugh at and press ignore. We all are fighting a war, whether you have military experience or not. Our battlefield lies in our mind. It’s a battle versus good and evil every second of every day. Now I only know this from reading a book by Joyce Meyer “Battlefield of the Mind” while depressed in my redshirt junior year of college. That book helped me realize how ignorance is the number 1 killer of our people.  It’s funny how the universe and the mind connect 24/7. I’ve come to realize that there is no such thing as coincidences. Every thought we give focus to will manifest in the universe in one-way or another. For example have you ever been thinking about calling someone you haven’t spoken with in awhile, and then they end up calling you shortly after? Well It’s a million examples of the universe sending you things you’ve attracted. Well that’s how I got that Joyce Meyer book. I was seeking out ways to overcome the depressive thoughts I was having and out of nowhere a friend of mine hit me on face book and said “I have the book just for you”. And she was 100%. Correct. 

Joyce Meyer explained how the devil has been attacking us since we were children. Planting seeds in our mind that he would water and utilize for his benefit as we got older.  I’ve learned that pretty much every problem can be fixed with awareness. I actually learned that from a book called “ Change your Posture, Change your Life” by Richard Brennan. I was actually kind of pissed because I thought it would give me secret exercises or stretches that I could use to realign my hips. Well I quickly learned that the solution they were providing was simply posture awareness.  It gave many examples of how bad posture causes the undesired pains in our body. That made me examine all of the self help books that I have read in the past 3 years. I concluded that the concept of problem solving on a general scale began with awareness. If you aren’t aware of what the problem is, how can you determine a solution to implement?

 As I got older and experienced things, I often wondered why wasn’t I better equipped for the real world? But then I realized I knew all I needed to know to create the life I wanted.  Realizing the advice I have gotten throughout my life was perfect and without fault. No matter how much we know, its about what we decide to do. Its our choice to actually utilize the wisdom or knowledge we have during the heat of the moment. A lot of times we make the right choice. Especially when there is not much pressure. Then when the most critical choice needs to be made, we give way to how we FEEL at that moment. I have come to realize that our feelings should not be our deciding factor for decision making. Self discipline is something we all need in order to accomplish any our goals. Self discipline is the ability to get yourself to take action regardless of your emotional state (feelings). As we all know our emotional state fails us a great deal. Especially when we use our feelings to determine what action to take in any given situation. Awareness is everything. If you don’t learn anything from this post, please understand that ignorance will destroy you. Make yourself aware of all that surrounds you. Learn the true you by eliminating ignorance and negativity thinking.

As I began to write this I had no direction in where I was going with my attempt to start blogging again. As I finished that sentenced my true purpose surfaced in my mind. My purpose for writing this blog is to simply let whomever reads this know that they are where they are suppose to be in their lives present day. You are in complete control of your mind, body, and soul. Despite what your conscious mind just told you after reading what I said. I don’t care what your past was; you are in control RIGHT NOW! I was taught this the hard way over and over again. The past is gone, the future is yet to come, enjoy the present you have been blessed with today. You might not make it to see tomorrow and you cant go back in time. So don’t waste the gift of today thinking about something that only exist in your mind.

I have been the type of person that has battle depressive thoughts, and feeling shameful because I wasn’t where I felt I should’ve or could’ve been. It’s so crazy that when I think about it, it has all been circled around the injuries I have had in sports.  It wasn’t until I took a sport psychology course in college that I realized that fact. As an athlete I always felt like no matter what field or court or arena I was in I would excel. It came from the work I put in and the confidence that came from the work. So I had to soon realize that I wasn’t playing madden with the injuries off LOL. Injuries happen and all you can do is try to prevent them in your preparation. As a kid coaches would have you to thin that playing through injuries builds mental toughness, and it will benefit you on the next level. To a certain extent you have to have mental toughness to excel at the next level and play through pain. The pain of enduring and focusing while you are tired, YES! But the pain of an injury, NO! Playing with an injury causes more damage to your mind and body. 

 A by-product of playing through injuries became muscle imbalances. Something I was never made aware until just recently when I became a certified personal trainer. I believe that high school and college strength coaches should be required to make sure they are addressing muscular imbalances. Since coaches use their leverage of a player losing his playing time or being cut due to injury, no player wants to sit out and have that plaguing their minds. So they fight through it make our perfect bodies compensate for the weaker muscle,tendon or joint.  From a sport psychology perspective once an athlete deals with an injury that sidelines them, that athlete will come back from that injury having thoughts about re injury. This will in turn cause them to attract more injuries. Now in lies my real point , the law of attraction never turns off no matter what area in life it is. Our subconscious mind doesn’t make decisions. It simply repeats what we want like a tape recorder. If you play a tape recorder and you tell it to "stop dont say that" it will continue to say what it was programmed to say.  Nobody thinks, “ I want to be injured “.  It’s more like “ I hope I don’t get injured “. Now the subconscious mind doesn’t comprehend the word “ don’t”.  It actually hears “ I hope I get injured” and it sends those vibrations out to the universe and the universe sends back the  injury you didn't want. 

My junior year in high school I was set to start my second year as starting quarterback. I sprained my MCL the Monday before my first game that Friday. I cried and instantly thought I had no chance to play college ball. I never had an injury like that before. I didn’t go to school for 2 days. Then I played on that same Friday along with the rest of the football and basketball season. From that point on I had tendonitis or jumpers knee in my left knee. I remember during the basketball season the day before the state championship game I was icing and using a stem machine in the hotel room wishing I would have let it heal properly. But it was no way I wasn't going to play in that game. My team needed me. I didn't play in my true freshman year at qb. We had a guy by the name of Omar Jacobs at QB that was up for the Heisman. So I didn't have an injury that year needless to say because I didnt play in a game and I never got hit in practice. 

Now in my Redshirt freshman year in college I slightly tore my bicep tendon in my first game against Wisconsin. Then the 3^rd game against FIU I believe I fractured my ankle. I knew it was a fracture after getting an ultrasound treatment that week and when they swiped across the original pain site , I jumped and screamed from the pain I felt. I continued to play every game ( because of my mentality at the time) until it finally broke in the last game of the season. I received surgery in December on that ankle where they added 2 screws. Then sophomore year in camp 2 weeks before the first game against Minnesota I went to jump for a pass on a post route, a tendon popped over my scar tissue. I basically reinjured that ankle. So I had to play the whole season with pretty much the same ankle injury from the previous season.  Although I had these injuries I was very productive in my first year at wide receiver, posting 82 receptions 962 yards and 9 touchdowns. So in my junior year I just knew I was going to have the type of season I went on to have in my senior year in 2009. But guess what? In training camp while NFL scouts were at practice I dove for a ball in 1 on 1's and fell directly on my shoulder and separated my ac joint. Now mind you I had on my shoulder pads, so it was crazy to me that my bare shoulder hit the ground. So I played with that getting shots in my shoulder and all. Then when that healed weeks later,I later tore my MCL in a game vs. Miami of Ohio. Now this was the only injury that I couldn’t play through. I had to miss 4 weeks. We had a bye week then I had to miss 2 games after that. I’m from Chicago and I never got to play Northern Illinois at home. So that was the game all my family and friends would attend. I went to the movies during that game and tears ran down my face the entire time while checking the score of the game on my phone. Sports were my outlet from the world and I missed the first game of my life. I was in bad shape mentally. Nobody but my girlfriend at the time knew what I was going through. I wouldn’t let people in on what was going on with me. I would put on my fake big smile when on campus and in our facilities. I hated talking about football and that was the beginning of ever conversation I had. I definitely understood, but I only time I could escape it was at home.

At this point I had all the signs of depression. I didn’t answer the phone when my family and friends called during my college years. I didn’t want their sympathy. It caused a lot of problems. My friends thought I was too good for them because of the success I was having on the field in my career. And my family thought I didn’t love them. Now anybody that knows me, knows how much I love my family. My mom, sister, grandma, uncle, aunt, and cousins were my motivation to succeed in the arena of competition. I felt I owed my mother my life for not aborting me when she was pregnant with me at 14. So for her and my baby sister to think I didn’t love them hurt worst than any injury I ever had. So I withdrew even further. I almost forgot to mention after I came back from the MCL tear we had 2 games left in the season. And in the game against Buffalo I sprained the other MCL. In the last game I played with 2 big knee braces. I remember the Toledo sideline making jokes about it. I couldn’t do anything but laugh while in my stance at the line of scrimmage. I felt like a lineman LOL. I didn’t realize I was depressed until I had taken that sport psychology course. Along with the the classes that changed my life , human development and child development. . So it took me 4 years of college and 2 years of high school until I became aware of what was going on with me.

 I use my example about injuries because it explains how my subconscious mind was responding to my thoughts.And not to mention the studies that have been going on in football today about head injuries and athletes committing suicide or doing silly things off the field. I always wondered why is this happening to me. Where ever I went I was a hard worker. This led to my teammates following my lead in sports. So I knew I wasn’t lazy. I felt like I was being punished by God for reasons I was unaware of. I use to look at other people who didn’t work as hard and wonder how they were getting injured. I couldn’t figure it out.

Now on the flip side after reading the Joyce Meyer book in the beginning of 2009, I strengthen my mind to focus on the good and godly thoughts. Positive thoughts, goal setting, and smart work created my record setting senior season. Ill never forget the night that I stayed up a whole day watching my favorite TV show “ Weeds’, literally over 24 hours watching the entire first season. Now this was after the new coaching staff told me that they thought I wouldn’t be an ALL MAC performer during our spring ball exit meetings. That pissed me off to the point where I immediately turned away from them and labeled them as another naysayer. I hated for somebody to tell me what I couldn’t do. This was after the Spring Game when my offensive coordinator told my mother that he would make me famous. Something I shrugged off and laughed about,but later realized he was very serious. But as it stands now I realized that my coaches indirectly or directly motivated me to dedicate my summer to proving them wrong and me and God right. I had all the motivation I needed to focus and reach my dream.

I wrote down my season goals. I wrote I was going to be an all American, and I wrote down all the receiving records in Bowling Green history. Now, Bowling green hadn’t had that many All Americans in the past. I didn’t score a single touchdown in my junior season after scoring 9 TD’s in my sophomore season leading the team. That summer I went to work and never doubted that God was with me. From game 1 of that season against Troy I broke one of the records I wrote down. And I knew then that it was real. I knew with gratitude, self-belief, and the pain of discipline my goals would be accomplished despite the odds. I was healthy the entire season. Imagine that!!!! I ended up reaching every goal I wrote down. I was selected an All American. I owned every Bowling Green receiving record, and I even broke the 20-year-old NCAA record for receptions in a season. That season was truly God in manifestation.

            Then everything changed as the season finished up. It was all type of media attention. The university made me my own website. I deflected all the media hype and gave thanks to God and my family and teammates . That is how I felt because I knew I didn't do it on my own. Before every play I would pray and ask God to allow me to make this play for my team. We ran a no huddle offense so I was in my own world every time I touched the field. Alot of hell came from off the field that season from family, friends, coaches, and teammates. But again my outlet was practice and game day. I had so much fun on that field it was surreal. I was a finalist for the Biletnikoff award. the award for the  best receiver in the country. I started doing the math and realized the media didn’t respect what I did because I was in the MAC conference. I also started thinking that Notre Dame and Texas owned the media. At that very moment I diminished God’s power by having wavering thoughts. James 1:6-8 “But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord. A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.I didn’t learn that until I was in Canada in 2011. It’s still 2009 LOL. And I didn’t believe I could beat the politics. I didn’t want to get my hopes up about the award. I thought I was protecting myself from disappointment but I was actually attracting it to me. So from the coaches, the media, not thinking I would win the award, I begin to allow negativity to penetrate my mind. So what happened? I attracted those very things I allowed to linger in my mind. I didn’t win the award. I knew after the ESPN College football award show that I caused it with my doubt. I couldn’t stop it from that point on. I didn't get an invite to the combine. Every person I spoke with ask me about the award and the combine. Training for the draft with guys like Eric Berry, Jahvid Best, Jacoby Ford, Preston Parker, Ricky Sapp, Rolando Mcclain, Major Wright and so and many other elite guys that went to the combine made me feel inferior off the field. My body started to fail me again during those times training for the draft. After what I have told you about my past I’m sure you know why I was going through this by now. This led me to run my pro day with a swollen knee and super tight hamstring. And not running what I needed to run in order to get drafted. This all came from negative doubtful thinking. I’ve had spells of double minded thinking since then and it all came from the depressive habits planted into my subconscious mind. Fear of injury, politics, and fear of losing a dream all manifested because I didn't believe God had my back.

So now I have a passion to help people clear their subconscious mind of any negativity. If we make it a habit to think about negativity from our past mistakes, childhood, or environment we will attract more of those things. If we aren’t aware of the thoughts that consume us we end up further and further away from our dreams. It doesn’t matter how hard we work if our thoughts contradict each other. I went and searched high and low for knowledge on fitness, nutrition, and books about conquering the mind. I didn't want to be injured again. I became a certified personal trainer to help people stay away from ignorance in molding their bodies. I read books like “ The tongue, a creative force”, “ The Secret”, “ Power vs. Force” , “the biology of belief” and many others to learn about my mind. I realized if I didn’t change the way I thought I would not have a chance at accomplishing my dream. I believe that my journey isn’t over and that I’m suppose to help other people end negativity and love themselves and one another. I’m 26 and just realized this. So I have a lot more to learn before I can just go and help heal people like I would like to. 

For now all I have to give is my experience and the things I learned along the way to help those athletes or any other person who are plagued with negative thoughts and cant get rid of them. I would recommend meditation, prayer, and positive affirmations. They have all worked for me. If that doesn’t work try hypnosis. I’ve learned that hypnosis helps you to plant positive affirmations directly into your subconscious mind by turning your conscious mind off. I came across this book called “ Happiness Genes” by James D. Baird PH.D and in the back of the book it has a self-hypnotic induction script. It says to use it for 21 days in a row in order to get the full benefit.   The script is created to plant happiness habit suggestions into your subconscious. I tried meditation, prayer, and affirmations but I couldn’t seem to get those injury thoughts out of my mind. I know this to be true because I bruised my heel on March 3^rd in camp with this Arena Football team Chicago Rush. I was running an IN route full speed and the ball was behind me and I jumped and reach back and came down heel first into the turf. My heel swelled instantly. I prayed for strength so I could continue practice. I was blessed because I couldn’t walk on it but I was able to run but not stop. Now there is no way to train your heel, so I know it was something I attracted to me. I instantly remembered the times I had thoughts about getting injured practicing in camp before this regional combine I was to attend on march 10^th. I wasn't gonna report to camp until after the combine. But I didn't want to lose an opportunity to get film. These were my thoughts i battled with leading up to the March 1st report date. Again me fearful of losing my opportunity at my return to the NFL I continued to play on the bruised heel. I was able to play through with much strength from my God in the pre season game on March 7^th. I had a decent enough performance for my first game in the past 2 years. Enough where the coaching staff placed me as a starter. The injury can only be healed with rest and ice. I had the ice but no rest. So needless to say me favoring the heel caused me not to be able to run full speed and cut like a receiver needs to. This led to me being released on the 17^th. I was ready to end my professional career thinking, “ How the hell I’m going to get back in the NFL and I got cut from an AFL team”. Another injury had me in my thoughts losing a battle on the battlefield of my mind. I was tired of losing those types of battles.  

Although I believed I handled it well and kept my faith. I figured I was stronger now and would not get depressed again like I did junior year in college. Or like in 2010 with the draft and the bears, or even in 2011 in the CFL. Or when I ruptured a tendon in my the belly of my foot while in Los Angeles training in January 2012 smh. I was hurt but calm and relax and simply thinking what God had planned for me. I can honestly say that God was speaking to me through my wife that day and the day after. By her having His spirit dwelling in her, He was telling me the very things I knew to be true from my studies of His Word. If it weren’t for that I would still be saying I was done with football. So I prayed and prayed and talked to God for a few days to try to understand why this happened again. He gave me these scripture in my bible app I read daily in the “ Word of the day”. 6 days ago, out of nowhere I came across a scripture in my bible app word of the day that I knew was Him answering my prayers. In the New International Version it says:

Hebrews 12:7-8 “ Endure Hardship as discipline; God is treating you as His children. For what children are not disciplined by their father? If you are not disciplined--- and everyone undergoes discipline---- then you are not legitimate, not true sons and daughters at all” Hebrews 12:11 says, “ No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.”   

This got me out of my funk and back thinking positive and back ready to keep fighting for what is rightfully mine. Whether I make it back to the NFL or not, I know that what He has for me will be for me, and that I have a gift that he requires of me to share. I can’t share that by being shameful of the hardships I have experienced. Later that day I also came across another scripture that put the finishing touches on me coming out of my doubtful thinking and vowed to NEVER return.

James 1:2-5 “ Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that your testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without fault, and it will be given to you”

That was all I needed at that time. Then I went back to the “ happiness genes” book I bought in November of last year. That would speed up the process of reconditioning my subconscious mind. Because I didn’t do something right before I had those thoughts of injury prior to reporting the Chicago Rush camp. I was ready to do anything to clear my subconscious. I began doing the self-hypnotic induction for the past 6 days and I haven’t had one negative haunting thought about my past. I implanted some things from the bible that I needed and with that I feel healed from all negativity.

I feel like I have been writing a lot LOL. I promise that wasn’t my intention.  But I honestly feel I was supposed to share this with people. We all have battles that we need to endure. No matter how tough or painful we have to shake it off and keep going. I actually came across a scripture today that was perfect for not thinking about the past.

Proverbs 4:25 “Let your eyes look straight ahead, fix your gaze directly before you”

We can’t change the past we just have to let it go and move forward. I’m thankful for all of my experiences, whether good or bad. So I hope you can learn from my mistakes and create the life you want with gratitude (being thankful for what you have), a powerful self-belief, and the pain of discipline instead of the pain of regret.

I haven’t been the best at consistently being a part of the social media community for various reasons. But I now realize if I'm going to give my gifts and help people with fitness, nutrition, and promoting positivity I have to make it happen somehow. I will do my best to write a post everyday with something that can inspire you to keep going in your pursuit of love, health, wealth, and happiness despite how you feel some days.  Because I know that’s what every human hopes to achieve. Remember you can control your feelings, words, and actions by controlling your thoughts you obsess over. I can honestly say I love you all. Thanks for taking the time to read this also. Have a blessed day.