Comedian Michael Jr. on How to Get Out of Your Way, Ask Better Questions, and Flip Your Focus

michael welcome to the podcast yo thanks for having me bro like for real i'm excited um even our pre-show conversation has been pretty doggone awesome yeah you from the home state so i'm ready to do this i think it's going to be more than great let's do it man well hey listen i want to start by going into your back story you talked about the things we learned early in childhood and how at first glance they seem totally unrelated to the things we experience later in life but you said in your book michael as we set this thing up these lessons start in childhood in fact you said in the book i will never forget what i learned as a nine-year-old boy growing up two hours away from me in grand rapids michigan michael take us back what happened yeah yeah so in the book i don't actually say growing up two hours from you yeah i just wanna because that'd be well cuz we we just we just met yeah so we kind of we know each other but so yeah cause you're in detroit he's way rougher where you're from so um yeah that is actually out of the first chapter of my book and it's so cool i don't know if i've heard a human outside of my team read that chapter so it really kind of brought back some some interesting memories man so that is literally one of the big lessons i learned nine years old i wanted to buy i wanted this bicycle and it wasn't just any bicycle it was a predator you're like the predator was the bike of bikes it's a bmx predator i wanted that thing so bad and through some my dad is just he's just a brilliant man and he said okay well i'm not gonna buy you a bike but if you get half the money then i'll put in the other half and i'm nine i'm like i got this the bike was only like 200 that's what i thought in my head i didn't know what two hundred dollars was i'd never seen two hundred dollars i had never seen um two dead presidents in the same place as i don't think i saw two white people be real with you just in general just i'm sure i have anyway so i didn't i thought it was gonna be easy but you know as you know growing up in the midwest first thing i did i'm nine years old i grab a shovel i start shoveling snow oh yeah and um as a result of shoveling that snow and reaching and working so hard to hit this goal yeah i actually achieved the goal and something pretty amazing happens that i was not expecting as a result of just going after that thing hard as you know just like with this podcast blowing up the way it is like you you've decided to dig into this thing wholeheartedly and now look what's happening so um i hope i kind of answered your question that was a great setup you do me a loop i was going to dunk it but i was like you know what i'm gonna i'm gonna leave him wondering a little bit maybe well let's go right there what was that core principle that that drove you i know it's early on in life um but even as you just said for me you know one of the things i've learned is slow and steady long obedience in the same direction like what was it for you so for me so so i i get this shovel and i i start shoveling away and one of the big things i learn is you need to negotiate your prices appropriately yeah like i learned that it's because this lady next door mrs elmer who was uh i think i ment even mentioned the book i think she i'm not sure how old she was but whenever she would tell us stories about the bible it was she would use phrases like and then i said to jesus like she was like she was really old anyway i finished shoveling her snow i showed the sidewalk i shoveled a porch i shovel it like it's perfect and you know when you shovel snow how the dark gray cement up against the snow and the contrast looks just perfect and got the piles i laid it out i was all proud i go knock on her door and she looks she inspects the work and then she does this she reaches into her purse and grabs 60 cents in an orange and she handed it to me and i'm telling you if i didn't know that she personally knew jesus i was like you know what because i was very i was bubbling mad change you gave me some change so i don't even know if i mention this part in the book dude so you're getting some stuff out of me but she gave me that money and i went home on my way home mad i kicked all the snow back on on her side kicked it all back she only gave me 60 cents well i left about 60 cents worth of snow not on her sidewalk i was furious and then after i talked to my dad i realized that i need to you know but i don't mention this part in the book either i'm sure of it but i actually um after i did everything that happened after that and went to shovel snow and raised all of that money i went back and show and re-shelled her snow but then i don't know exactly what happened man but because i understood the importance of a dollar because my dad taught me what he did in those moments i mean he really taught me the value of a dollar he taught me how um how important it is to negotiate the following day i went back to miss elmer's house because it snowed again and i showed her snow and never even knocked on her door it was such a cool lesson man so i think that's a big deal that like a lot of times we'll be pressing in and we really think we want something and the thing we're pressing towards to get once we get there we realize it's nowhere near as valuable as the lesson we learned trying to get the thing that was something really big that i pulled away from from that part of the book later in the story you talked about how you ended up i think it was 91 if i'm not mistaken dude i made 91 dollars let's go in one day i'm nine years old i make 91 dollars and i get to go get this predator now now my bike before the predator was a schwuffee it was half schwinn half huffy it was miserable it made noises that it wasn't supposed to make you know how some kids used to take the little uh they used to take like a playing card yes and put it in their in their spokes i didn't need a playing card my bike did that all by itself like it did my bike had a muffler on it i don't know how that's possible it didn't even have an engine it sounded like it had a muffler on it it was miserable so i want this i wanted that predator so bad and my cousin who had to predator his mom just bought it for him like she just bought him a bike like he didn't do nothing and she just bought him a bike so i was expecting the same thing for my dad i was like hey i just want this but if we're going to go a little deep sometimes that's how we turn to the father yeah like hey i just want this just do it where he knows in advance that it's going to be a process if we go through this process we're going to be better than we were if we just got the thing that we wanted so uh the lessons are just are just constantly showing up every time i read the book meaning i live the book i'm read the book and even hear you say it i'm getting so much out of it because now i can sit back and look at my story and that's one of the things that are very very uh powerful about testimonies in general when you tell your testimony you also get to listen to it and you'll learn so much as a result of it the sad part is if you don't tell your testimony first of all somebody else needs to hear it and one of those somebodies is you because when you hear it that's when some real healing takes place so stop putting all of that stuff down thinking nobody will know about it and you don't want to discuss it sometimes it's cool to let that stuff out that's really good and what's interesting is correct me if i'm wrong did you you didn't end up getting the bike did you you end up saying like oh man i like my 91 dude my dad said he said all right 91 is close enough because the bike was 200 he said let's go get this bike and i was like shoo what you mean like spend this money on a bike uh-huh first of all it's winter time what do i want to bike for like i started i became an adult all of a sudden i'm like i don't think this is a good choice it's winter maybe later on in this year the price might go down like i started negotiating the same stuff that he would say to me because i had to earn this bike now so i took some of the money and i picked up i fixed up my shuffy and we just rolled on down the street it was just it was fine and that bike was not good as i mentioned even in the book i knew my friends better by the back of their head than i did by their faces because their bikes were so much better than mine like it was so much better but it was it was a sense of i felt a sense of pride and i took some i mean i just felt like a better person when i rode that bike afterwards because even though my cousin had the best bike out of everyone in our crew i actually had the ability to buy that bike myself and i chose not to that was a much greater place for me to live versus having this bike or or really should i say the bike would have had me yeah it literally would have had me but instead i released the bike and learned so much more in my uh in my travels that's powerful i'm laughing already in this conversation and it's so fun and in fact i want to ask you know what it what is it about comedy for you michael and maybe just in general that connects to people so effectively with comedy as you said you know comedy doesn't doesn't just happen because you're funny right so i i realize that um my desire is really to connect with people like i know like i know i'm here to help people yeah and i've known that since i was a kid like i if people if kids would come over our house and they're my age i'll go find all my toys lay them out so they could play with the toys whereas you know most kids don't even like to share toys but i would slay them out because i wanted my guests to be comfortable even though i couldn't really articulate that but even thinking back to it and now that i have this gift of comedy i want to do the same thing for people but it started with me just wanting to make people laugh and it really as i got older and started going through some things i would use comedy to get acceptance from people because if if they laugh that means i was accepted but then at 27 years old i met this dude named jesus right um my neighbor introduced him to him it was a miss elmer she she introduced me i'm just playing she's like hey um she uh she knew him personally it was cool she had a picture together she was she wasn't that old i don't think anyway um so i just always really really wanted to help people but it got to the point where i was starting to use laughter to get acceptance you know in high school make people laugh i would get accepted but dude after meeting jesus i had this encounter outside a club in los angeles california i'm getting ready to perform right before i got on stage i do i'll pray before i get on stage and i had this little shift take place and i felt like instead of going up there to get last from people i felt like i was supposed to go up there and give them an opportunity to laugh this changed everything it sounds like it's a small little adjustment my show the content in which i shared didn't change at all but the context in which i shared from my heart changed everything because i wasn't just coming from my head the content was coming from my heart because when you have a gift for someone you don't just shove the gift in your face you wait till you're invited in you assess the scenario when the time is right you present the gift and the most freeing part about this is it doesn't matter how they respond to the gift your job is simply to present the gift now i couldn't articulate all of that at the time but i just went up on stage and uh i probably didn't do a joke for the first 20 seconds that i was on stage which may not sound like a lot to an audience member but to the comedian who was used to get up on stage saying what can i get it's a lot of time but the reason i didn't do a joke just yet because i was assessing the situation and then i delivered the joke at the right time then the next joke and we had an amazing time and it was all because i changed this little question from what how can i get laughs to how could i give people an opportunity left now i'll pause right here say to your listeners you are asking one of those two questions without the word laugh in it you're either asking what can i give or what can i get by default every day you're asking one of those two questions so you have to articulate which question do you want to ask because if you don't articulate it by default you're going to ask what can i get and that's happened ever since the fruit like that's not like that's just who we are when we come out from the gate so i started asking this different question and that same night i leave the club and um there's people on autographs and we're taking pictures and i look across the street and i saw a homeless guy i had never ever ever seen a homeless guy outside this club before ever but that doesn't mean he wasn't there before that just means before my mindset was how could i get last from people so why would i even notice a homeless guy because when you ask a certain question you're going to get an answer if i say to all your listeners right now what does a blue giraffe look like your brain just showed you a blue giraffe like if i just say the color blue you'll start to look around the room you're in right now and notice in blue you probably didn't notice before so if i was asking how can i get laughs i'm only going to find opportunities to get laughs but when i start asking how could i give people an opportunity to laugh i walk outside and i see this homeless guy and his look on the look on his face is different than all these people who want autographs and are all around me and i said man what about him how could i give him an opportunity to laugh and then you when you change your question you're gonna get different answers so uh i asked that question in passing you know i kind of moved on and then a few days later this lady approached me at a different show and she said hey michael have you ever considered doing comedy for homeless people in skit row and i was like where in the world did you come from lady what what and i initially now listen i had never heard anybody speak out loud comedy and and skid row and homeless people so i kind of shied away a little bit i was like nah that sound crazy back up lady that's what i wanted because i was scared but i took her car and then four days later i'm on my way to skid row to do comedy and i remember getting up on stage there and uh first of all skid row in los angeles there's like a four block radius where there's ten thousand homeless people oh my goodness four block radius like it is i saw a lady eating oatmeal out of a shoe like it was a really it was just it's just a really sad place so i'm walking the skid row now here's the thing since this since this experience i've started a non-profit called uh funny for the forgotten where we go to homeless shelters and prisons abuse children facilities and we take comedy because you know the bible says laughter is good like a medicine well god said to me we'll take it to the sick so so we do that with this non-profit but my first time i'm walking down skid row and i'm scared because you know how am i going to get laughs from people right so i get up on stage and uh we're at the union rescue mission and it's about four o'clock and people are in the in the cafeteria area and they're coming in and i'm doing my jokes and nobody's laughing and i'm sitting here like snap i'll do the next joke nothing and i'm sitting here doing them i'm like and i'm feeling a little bag because nobody's laughing i'm like why is nobody why am i not funny why am i not getting laughs why am i not getting laughs i reverted to my old question without even knowing it so i had to re-up in my brain i'm like no no no no no i'm here to give them an opportunity to laugh that little shift change everything because now it's okay it's i'm not here to get anything i'm here to give so it caused me to calm down and uh and i started paying attention that there's more and more people coming in it's about 3 45 at this point why are there more homeless people coming in here so my mind as i'm doing a joke another joke my mind is doing a math on well what's really going on and i realized what was happening was they were all coming in for a meal and the room was a little and the room started getting a little more tension in it and i couldn't figure out what the tension was so i asked someone up front i asked a homeless lady up front i said hey excuse me um do they feed everyone here at four o'clock she was like yeah yeah they just have four and then on instinct i said to her is it possible that they don't feed anyone until the presentation is over she said that's right we don't get any food until you're done on stage and i said huh i said well i guess everybody here should start laughing there they should start laughing right away and the place explodes in laughter they explode in laughter now it wasn't because they felt threatened it was because i noticed where they were at it's because i recognized what was really going on it's because because they knew that i knew what was important to him so i went on and did another 12 minutes of comedy we laughed extremely hard i went and sat down shared a meal with him and that's really the inspiration behind me behind me starting our non-profit funding for the forgotten just being in that place but it only happened one because i started asking a different question and i had to keep asking that question you have to keep asking what can you give because by default you're going to want to ask what can i get so i want to create a teaching point for everyone checking us out on youtube or listening to the podcast right now because michael what you just said is so huge because i think there could be people joined with us today who have gifts talents passions and even a sense of where a need is in the market right and they're waiting for a moment for the key to turn so to speak and what i heard you say in this moment is that we just have to perhaps ask a different question ask a better question and then look where people are at it's it's flipping the script and in so doing nothing has to happen with our gift with our talent with our output it's the perspective change the paradigm change that allows us to actually be more effective without changing a thing in the mechanics of the model of what we're doing what do you think oh my goodness that is so great you know i do this thing with my kids sometime where i will uh i'll just look at them i'll stare at them for a little while and what i'll be saying with in my head and my brain is i'll be saying over and over again i love you i love you i love you i love you but i'm not saying it out loud and i'll say to them what do you what do you uh what do you think i'm feeling towards you right now and then i'll just stare at i said i'm gonna stare at you for five seconds i want you to think what am i do i want you to just feel what you think i might be thinking and i'll say i love you i love you i love you i love you i love you in my head and then they'll kind of smile and say i don't know what it is but it's something good they could naturally feel that so so when you're asking what can i give and you show up people intuitively know that that's what's on your heart intuitively like they may not be able to articulate it but they kind of know it and as a result more doors can open up to you and what the doors i'm talking about aren't necessarily made out of wood or steel but if they're made they're made out of uh they're made from the person's heart so and comedy allows me to do that too comedy opens up a heart in such a way that allows me to make a deposit which is awesome but the other thing people need to know is comedy opens up a heart in a way that a deposit can be made and what i mean by that is you have to be very careful at what you're laughing at and what you're bringing in while you're laughing so if you're looking if you're laughing at some negative things or you're watching negative things while laughing that stuff gets into your heart and it will be revealed in your walk so you want to as a side note you want to be very careful about what you're laughing around so someone's in business listening someone's in arts someone's in entertainment like you and i think the point i want to drive home with people and please correct me if i'm if i'm off base with this but the point for you isn't comedy comedy is the vehicle to a greater point so someone listening today whichever sphere of life you're in the point isn't what you're doing the point is that that what you're doing is simply the vehicle to reach to connect and to add value to people in fact i i love this because john maxwell wrote the forward to your book he's a hero yeah yeah he's awesome john's whole thing is adding value to people you know i've been reading him since i was 12 years old and his whole thing is how did i add value to people today and michael what i hear you saying even in describing the foundation and helping people and noticing people on skid row like it's number one the power of story and i'm gonna rabbit trail for a second guys because i think the power of story is huge michael i don't think i will ever forget when i see you or hear you or watch a youtube video or watch this interview back i don't think i'm ever gonna forget when you mentioned the woman eating oatmeal out of a shoe on skid row boom folks we gotta notice people this whole thing called life this whole thing called living a life of intention and wholeness starts with realizing it's not about us and so michael i really appreciate the perspective that you're bringing comedy isn't to fill yourself up it's to add value to people so you just reminded me one time i was walking down i was in los angeles somewhere yeah and there was a homeless person and i had a uh i gave him something like i don't give money to every homeless person i see because i think it's better to be uh obedience is better than just sacrifice so because i don't know what their circumstance is meaning the analogy i like to use is if you have two bottles of water and you're walking down the street and you see a homeless person that's thirsty what should you do most people would say give them a bottle of water well my theory is a little different i don't think you should give them the water i think you should pray and ask god like what would he have for you to do wow because for all you know there could be a lady behind you with a stingy heart and one bottle of water and god's been working on her and this is her opportunity to give the guide to water yeah in the first scenario you play god in the second scenario you play for god so i remember one time walking down the street i don't think it was skid row but it was somewhere in los angeles and i just stopped and spoke to this homeless person i don't know if i gave him money or i just said hey how you doing and this guy was like wait you see me you you mean you could see me you mean i'm not invisible because i'm sure i was invisible because ain't nobody saying unto me in three days uh you could see me like i'm really here and i was blown back like he went on a theatrical performance about me seeing this dude and it almost brought tears my eyes even thinking about it right now i'm like snap he is on a busy intersection how many people haven't noticed this guy like how many people haven't even even even seen him at all not i mean it's not about giving them some money but just to notice them just make eye contact like the dude is a is a human being so but if you start asking a different question if you ask the question what can i give or how can i just start asking whatever you do for a living what can i give i had i did this teaching i did a keynote uh at a um i think it was a teacher's conference or something and this teacher came up to me really in tears and she was like i've been saying i've been thinking that i'm a teacher but she said the question i need to ask is how can i best pour into these kids future so she just starts so now she goes to class asking okay what how can i pour into their future which changes everything versus how do i tolerate these kids what do i got to teach them gotta teach them is different than how can i pour into their future like that gives you energy that gives you an opportunity to give and it doesn't even now if the kid doesn't receive it it's okay you still did what you're supposed to do you were supposed to pour into their future and you did it even if they seemingly didn't receive it but but they did i have a teacher named mr george who i've been looking for for a while this dude was awesome i would crack jokes in his class he would always say at any rate and then move on and continue to teach me i learned more from that guy than i did of any of my other teachers and i had one teacher in high school who i won't mention who literally said to me you should skip class sometime you're not going to be anything anyways you don't have to be here every day no literally with michigan public schools but i even feel for that teacher to this day i'm like man what was she going through what was her pain was anybody in her in her circle asking what can i give or was everybody taken from her so now she feels like she had to take from me or even the police officer that you mentioned in the book like dude i literally think about that police officer when people because i just wrote the book people asked me about that officer who put the gun in my head and i'm like i feel bad for that dude like what did he go through like what happened where he felt like that was necessary like what really happened to him dude i'm telling you when you start asking what can i give as a default question because we all have questions that are running in our head whether we realize it or not yeah like if you were a kid and you got uh abused which is bad but chances are if you're abused really bad as a kid you may have a question that's always running your head a primary question that says how can i be safe which saved you when you were a kid but now you're a grown person and god is causing you to go out and do some public speaking and your question is how can i be safe which will keep you from going out and speaking publicly so you have to be you have to kind of take time out to notice wait a minute what am i what am i asking what what's going on what am i really cause i'm asking some sort of question and i'm getting these kind of results so what how can i ask a different question you just tipped your hat to it so i want to go there your stories are just so phenomenal uh you had a gun pulled on you at your apartment as you mentioned take us into the story what happened man it was a banana so i'm working to get uh i'm 19 years old i'm about to buy an oil change business like i'm literally about to buy one i've worked in an oil change since i was 14 years old i'm putting in 76 hours a week working at an oil change place literally 72 hours a week i'm putting in and i'm working super hard and i already know like the neighborhood i lived in at this apartment complex was a little sketchy but uh actually the complex wasn't bad but some of the people the people living across the hall i felt like they were selling drugs i wasn't 100 sure and then i noticed that there was a gas company truck outside of our apartment complex which was weird because we had electrical our gas was electrical so i already kind of knew something wasn't right so i didn't care about that i was like whatever i got to do with that now my apartment by the way i'm 19 years old and i'm a dude i don't got to tell you what my apartment looked like right i had a mattress on the floor some ketchup and refrigerator and some cornmeal or something like it wasn't i didn't even know utensils plus i'm working 72 hours so anyway i go to work that day and i come home and it's dark and i'm pulling up in my car and i see like the people's legs they're in dark clothes and they're jumping behind all of these bushes and and in the dome light in that uh in that electric gas vehicle or that gas company vehicle turns off and i already know that vehicle represents the police i already know they're on some sort of stakeout but they turn it off so i pull into my spot like i know i need to because i couldn't just keep going because that was going to be all bad and i would have to turn around because it was like a dead-end thing so i just park and i sit in my car for a second and i know that the police are in hiding right now as soon as i get on my car i know they're coming out so i take a deep breath i turn the car off i roll the window down and i stick both of my hands out the window and i say officers i'm just coming home from work i don't have anything to do with while you're here and it's completely silent like you don't hear anything at all it's silent and then uh which is really scary so then i reach my hand in to unlatch the door and then i use and i put my hand back outside the window and i'm and then i use my hip to kind of or my leg to kind of push the door open when the door comes open i still remember taking my hands from in the window so it's so they're not outside the window because the door frame and then as soon as the door swung open just a little bit i stuck my hands back in the air and then i had to balance myself out with my hands and my air in the air and the police i know they're watching me like i know they're watching me and the reason i'm doing the reason i'm giving you so much detail about this is because it's kind of burned in my memory because at any second i don't know what's about to happen so i'm standing outside my car i got my hands in my air in the air and then i said again officers i have no i am not a part of the reason you're here i'm just coming home from work and then uh i closed the door all the way and boom 15 17 officers come out of nowhere guns pulled get out get out put your hands up my hands are already up once somebody's saying get down somebody else saying get your hands up i don't even know what i'm supposed to do right now so they all surround me and they're loud and i'm just trying to be as calm as possible because my like instinctively i know that i can't move at all as long as i see my hands hopefully it's gonna be okay so they're all around me and i understand that they have a job to do somebody was selling some drugs or something somewhere in my apartment complex they don't know if i'm a part of it i fully get that like i get it but then after they um after they searched me and i realized that they asked me for my id i don't have id the reason i have id is i left it in the apartment that day so now they got to confirm who i am and i said listen i'm sorry i left my id upstairs i have a key to my apartment as soon as i if you let me go up there and you and i twist the key you're gonna realize this is my apartment i have nothing to do with why you're here so that should clear everything up it's what i'm thinking and uh there was one officer in particular i don't know why he personally didn't like me i've never met this guy before ever but you can clearly tell he specifically did not like me or something about me or whatever the case was so i head up the stairs and all the officers are around me it's almost like a huddle and i'm in the middle and they just follow me up the stairs it was the weirdest thing ever i'm walking up the stairs i had a key in my hand and i twist the key and i remember and the door unlatches and i take a deep breath really probably for the first time and i'm thinking oh this thing is over they know i live here not over there it's going to be great boom i open the door and they all bust into my room and my door put me back on the floor and they're searching the whole apartment now keep in mind uh i mentioned i get in detail in the book about this but the um keep in mind what the apartment looked like it's just a mattress on the floor yeah catch a ball it looked like a retrospect it looked like a crack house right but clearly i'm not a drug dealer because i don't got no furniture the reason i got furniture is i'm trying to buy my own business i'm trying to start my own business or at least be a partner in the business so then um i'm sitting on the floor i probably try i'm holding back tears and um and and they said where's your id where's your id after they checked the whole apartment it's a one bedroom apartment taking that long i said my id is over the stove and that one officer that for some reason didn't like me says to me go get it first of all why do you want me to get it like everyone sees where the stove is it's three officers in the kitchen area we're all around here you guys are standing up i'm on the floor why do you want me to get up and reach into a cabinet this is what i'm saying in my head but i didn't say it out loud because i don't want to get this dude mad at these people i don't know so i slowly get up i mean when you talk about slow it's crazy slow when i get up and then um and then i talk them through everything i'm doing i'm like listen i'm about to i'm about to i'm gonna use my left hand i'm gonna reach up to this cabinet like i'm taking them step by step of everything i'm doing and as i reach into the cabinet and i fill my wallet there at the same time i feel the barrel of a gun on the back of my head and i filled a hammer [ __ ] back and it's that officer and then i remember a tear going down the side of my face on my cheek and i'm like like this could really be it right now so all i can do is continue to be obedient to these dudes and i slowly pull my my the wallet down and i just let it drop out of my hand i can't remember if i handed the idea where somebody took it they looked at the id that officer immediately took the gun down and left the apartment the other officer stuck around for a little while to see if i was going to complain but who could i complain to what am i going to do call the police and i remember when they finally left my apartment i was sitting on the floor and i was done like i was mad i was angry i was frustrated i didn't know what to do i had nobody to call i couldn't call my parents because i didn't want them upset when when this happens there's certain people you can't call because they'll get so upset that they in they could get in trouble with the police and they'll tell them what the police would do then like it's just like your corner so i remember sitting on the on the carpet with my back up again and i'm just done like actually i'm in the middle of the floor just done i don't know what to do and then there's a knock at the door not even a knock the knock is so hard this is probably 30 minutes later the knock is so hard the door blows open and it's actually the girlfriend or the wife of the of the guy whose house got raided the drug dealer and she comes in and she's inconsolable and she's saying they took everything they took everything they took everything and she's speaking broken english and i can't hear i don't understand anything she's saying she's crying she got these two kids with her and she's she's all in tears she's crying and i don't know what to say i don't know what to do with her and i'm thinking it's because of you guys that almost got shot that's what i should have been thinking but i'm not even thinking that instead i'm thinking how can i help her like what's going on i'm sitting there i don't know what i'm standing there now and i don't know what to do and then um i reached for this i i reached for my wallet and uh i had like 14 i think and some change in my wallet and i reached in there and i pulled it all out and i put it in her hand and i gave it to her and she can't speak english at all and she gives me this hug and then she picks up her kids and then they leave and i never see him again now the thing that was so amazing to me about this when i when i thought about it later was it was just the same wallet that the officers tried to use to take my life it's the same wallet i was able to use to help somebody else with the other big thing was i didn't realize it but when i was on that floor i felt like the the biggest thing that those officers took away from me and i just want to say all officers do not represent what took place that night of course um the biggest thing that those officers took from me in that moment was they made me feel like feel like i didn't matter like i just i didn't even matter like it wasn't any point in like i don't matter but what that lady did the spanish lady i don't even know her name what she did was she came in there and it seemed like i gave her a gift she gave me the gift of saying you matter i need you like she is literally like god had to send her at that moment because she walked in when i felt unneeded unnecessary unnoticed and said hey i notice you i need you can you help me my goodness like that was the greatest gift that i could ask for for in that moment because had i just sat there and been upset and angry i really believe that anger has a way to perpetuate um pain it really does so i know even that quick the healing had already started to begin for the uh for how i felt about the officer and what they had done once you decided to move past the anger i'd like to propose something and i don't want to fill in gaps that don't exist but here's what i heard you say is you were able to move beyond the anger and in so doing you saw something in her that probably you wouldn't have seen now let's connect that to what you said earlier about noticing where people are at you saw the homeless people but you never noticed the homeless people so what's the thread now for everyone joined in this conversation with michael and me michael what's the thread homeless people ten thousand in what four blocks you said in skid row four block radius yeah all of a sudden you start to notice them when you get your eyes off yourself and you start to ask different questions here you are in an absolutely horrendous traumatic situation you could stay and sit in the anger but even you said in your book the sooner we let it anger go the faster our hearts will heal and grow when you pivoted beyond that you were able to see something in her she was able to receive from you and vice versa draw a line through this for the listeners what sort of money is the fact just the fact that you're listening to this puts you in a really unique position because we don't know how many people will but there's a it's almost like a checkpoint so to speak meaning when you get angry like it's easy to give when it's easy to give like when when it's available to give then that's when it's easy on thanksgiving on christmas is easy easy but to give when you're when you yourself are hurt it sounds like it should be an oxymoron if you're hurting why would you help someone else while you're hurting it just it does it doesn't even make sense why when jesus was on a cross and the two dudes next to him was tripping why did you just say hey forgive them for they did not know what i'm like let me please be clear i am not comparing myself with jesus he got way more hair than me uh i i'm just saying that in those moments when it hurts turn and look instead of looking to hurt somebody look for a hurt somebody that is instead of looking to hurt somebody look for or hurt somebody because i heard people hurt people yeah so look for the opportunity it's evidence that that some healing probably needs to take place so the next time you get cut off in traffic instead of getting angry at the person who cut you off like what's going on in their life like what happened you may not you'll never know because they cut you off and they're gone but a quick prayer or at least a kind thought towards that person could change the game not just for them but for you as well that is that the pain and the hurt or people lashing out at you is evidence that they're in pain so look for the opportunity to deposit what you can and it's easier when you're already asking the question what can i give when you're already asking a question what can i give you literally we found an answer and they're all around us especially with this pandemic we got random storms showing up for sure people have the tendency to get super uh about themselves but there's people around you who really need you too so i i think the uh i think thanksgiving is now like let's let's start giving right like right now oh you know what i love michael is the power of story and you framed your book with a lot of stories and yet the teaching sticks even longer with me because of it i'd like to hear about another story demarcus and the trans am that's a powerful teaching point oh yeah that was fun man so so yeah we wrote the book in a way where um it literally is funny how life works that's why we called it that because you know you're gonna laugh but also you kind of learn some stuff and i didn't realize until i sat down and wrote this book how much we learned so i had this boy one of my boys i grew up with demarcus great dude awesome and um the difference between man demarcus though is he didn't he didn't have a dad my dad was like the neighborhood dad and he didn't really mess around at all like he my dad was pretty pretty doggone serious pretty strict and uh demarcus used to uh you know his dad wasn't around but he would uh he was let's say strategic in his ability to manifest things what i mean is he was still cars let me just cut to the chase like he was still cars a lot so uh my dad would always tell me i remember my demarcus and all my cousin and predator he would and they would have all of this stuff and i said to my dad i'm like 15 years old i'm like dad won't you buy me all that stuff they got he was like he was like i'm not buying you anything any time i asked my dad i said hey could i have five dollars he'd be like yes you could have five dollars for me too where you gonna get it from like he never gave me anything like even though i learned from the predator it's still good to kind of check once in a while to see if he gonna you know give me a little something so he doesn't so one day and my dad would always give these lessons and if you're a dad out there i try to apply this to my kids too when it's time to have those conversations with your kids that are a little harder let's say it's about sex or drugs whatever my dad was brilliant my dad is so brilliant at this he would never sit me down and have a conversation with me he just wouldn't because it's weird when you sit down you straight especially guys when they like to talk you're sitting down and crossing each other hey i need to talk to you instead my dad would take us he would take me fishing and the focus would be on fishing and the conversation would happen in between catching the fish so it wasn't awkward it wasn't weird and i was able to receive so much insight and understanding not even knowing that i'm receiving it so one day demarcus rose up in this he would steal cars on a regular basis and one time i got into a stolen car with him and that stuff was like it was pretty doggone scary because we're doing we're doing like 110 miles an hour down uh burton street in grand rapids michigan we moving so fast there was a police officer outside i'm at this time i think at this time i'm probably uh 17 years old 16 years old or something yeah 15 16 years old he flying down the street anyway we're doing silly stuff and after i got out of the car i was like i ain't never doing that again only did it because he had some girls in the car and they look all cute one of them had this long hair but we were driving so fast the dog on here it was a weave it snatched off and i was like wait a minute you went from you went from diana ross to grace jones like like what happened to myself anyway so i was scared the whole time it was miserable the entire time i just wanted to get out the car and i said to myself i ain't never doing that again but patrick shows up in front of my house around four o'clock in this black and red t-top trans am cool i'm talking about it was amazing the engine had the dual exhaust and he had a he had a um a a jacket tied around the steering column and that which clearly means this this is not your car plus you don't have a job and your mom barely makes any money so he was like yo you won't go to kalamazoo with me about to go pick up some girls and i'm telling you i'm leaning over in the car and that car was dope i'm talking about dope there wasn't any girls we couldn't roll up on i'm sitting there leaning in the car and i clearly hear my dad's voice saying to me uh you're going to see what's going to happen to them one of these days and and that he said that to me some years earlier when i would ask dad won't you buy me this all my friends are getting all of this stuff and he said to me unfortunately you're gonna see what's gonna happen in one one of these days right by the way um there was three main guys i would hang around with my cousin this other guy named martin and this guy named uh and then the guy in this story right now well one of them got third when he turned 30 he got 30 years in prison the other one got has 22 kids that he doesn't take care of and the other one is dead so my dad did what he could but he knew what was happening so anyway demarcus just pulls up he said hey you won't go with me and i'm leaning in the car and i'm like yeah i really wanted to go but i was like i could hear my dad's voice i was like nah i'm cool so he leaves burns rubber like he always does he's not mad he's just burning rubber because he can anyway he takes off the kalamazoo to pick up these girls right and then i gotta go cut the grass like this dude is in his car hang out and i gotta cut some grass and that's just miserable i've got grass stains and the lawnmower never started on the first pool i'm like 67 pools and i'm getting madder matter each time and the string will break sometime i use a little needle nose pliers to try to fix it and tie the thing back i'm just furious i remember that in detail i was all upset i finally finished cutting the grass and you can't just cut it you gotta get all of the grab rake it up and do all that stuff and we need a ride in line more that's what we needed i should buy one now just in retrospect just so i could say i got one finally anyway so my uh so i finally go back in the house and my dad's home from work and he's watching the news like the five o'clock news or something and um and i'm sitting there and i sit down i watch the news with them i smell like earthworms and gravel because i've been in the backyard all day and uh i'm sitting there and a news story comes on and uh the lady is reporting i think it's a lady or a man they're reporting that there's been an accident on the 131 freeway and i'm just watching like okay cool and then they explained that it was a uh that a trans am driving at a high rate of speed flies over uh hits a pole the driver is thrown out of the vehicle the vehicle flips four times lands on the driver my heart is beating like crazy but i don't want my dad to know that i'm trip like and i'm thinking this is the market i'm like please don't be demarcus please don't be demarcus please don't be my heart is just pounding and pounding i'm listening to the story and i there's nothing i can grab on to to tell to tell it's not demarcus and it's not my friend i'm listening i'm like please don't be here please don't be him yeah and they took the person to the hospital in critical condition and they didn't they're pretty sure he wasn't gonna make us the way to describe it and i'm like please don't be him and then the news person gives a little more details and and one thing i forgot to tell you was demarcus was so cool he was the only person in our school uh he was the very first person to have any black tennis shoes like black tennis shoes was not the thing he had a pair of black reeboks which was dope anyway the news person on the story sitting there telling the story and they say it's uh michael daniels uh uh from the 131 freeway reporting the last shot was on a black reebok tennis shoe and my heart just sank like it just sank and i got tears running down my face and i turned my dad and i'm like dad that's demarcus he's like what and i explained the whole story to him we get in the car and we're going to see what we can do to help and and demarcus was like he was done he's in the hospital they said that he would never walk again uh they said he would never be able to talk again if he was gonna live now listen let me just pause for a second and say if it wasn't for my dad being the dad that he is and and constantly have being willing to have those hard conversations with me i know i would have gotten a car if it wasn't for me listening to the to a voice in my life that had some influence that i knew loved me i'm telling you i would have gotten a car and there's no way two people were going to survive that accident it's just there's just no way that was going to happen so i go to the hospital and he's done he can't nobody can see him like he's and then he gets out of the hospital i'm visiting him every day at the hospital then he finally gets out of the hospital and i'm going every day after school and this dude can't talk and then one day i'd get there and he could talk he sounded like an eight-year-old girl when he talked but he could believe he's like yeah yeah yeah man that's like talking i was laughing at him with that you sound like a little girl and i'm bringing funny because i know he needs to laugh somehow even though it hurt and he had like a yeah one of them i don't even like to say the words like you know the catholic you know he had one of them in oh no anyway so one time i go to his house and he's not in his hospital his nurse isn't there and he's not in his hospital bed and i'm like no what happened and this dude has found his way he crawled himself to the bathroom pulled out the thing caught himself to the bathroom i'm like dude what are you doing you're a superhero or something i come back like a week a week or so goes by and this dude is stronger his voice is deeper to this day this dude is in complete amazing it was like a miracle wow but it would have only probably been one miracle because there's no way i would have survived had i not listened to the voice of my father i'm telling like i'm telling you i know my dad has so much to do with me still being here right now i mean of course he has something to do with me being here in the first place but still being here as well because i was willing to listen to him flip that around for people joined with us today there's a voice inside there's a level of intuition there's a level of deep knowing what's the teaching point so there's a not not only is there a voice inside but sometimes it's not that complex right sometimes there's a voice outside that you can hear or a friend and they've said this to you before or someone else and you may not even like the person that much and the reason you may not like them is because you know they're right and what you wanted to do look like fun like we always get a choice in life we can do the right thing or sometimes we can do what looks like fun and it's funny because you know god has a couple names and sometimes you know you got a bunch of names one of his names is something s-o-m-e-t-h-i-n-g something and sometimes you'll choose the wrong thing to do and then you got to deal with those consequences yeah one of the first things to come out your mouth is man something told me not to do this but that something is clearly that voice that's inside or that voice you heard from a friend is telling you this may not be the best move for you so it's important that you just at least take a moment and breathe and do the math on what really is the best choice not just for you but for the for your entire environment like what what is the best choice and then make that one i want to bring the conversation kind of full circle because you were what 1617 i think you said with demarcus in the trans am so about a year later in the chronology you told your first public joke at 18 in a movie theater yeah and that kind of set up your career because i want to i want to get behind the story a little bit and how you got onto public comedy and even ended up on the tonight show so take us in oh that's right i have been on tonight so i'm plugging this thing in right now you're good because it's not boom there it is uh so tonight's show wait which part of the question are you going to take us let's go first at 18. you told your first public joke in the movie theater and really how that set up the trajectory for you using comedies becoming a career really yeah so me and a friend went to the movie man some friends went to the movie theater and right years before this i'd made a deal with a friend and we wouldn't curse anymore now i wasn't a christian i didn't know anything about god we just told each other we wouldn't curse anymore if we curse he he said he could uh this was our deal if he cursed her of our curse the other person the person who actually used a bad word had to stand there while the other guy hit him in the chest hard it was just we were just ridiculous we just wanted to show that we was tough whatever so duke hit hard kind of so i start i stopped cursing immediately i was like i'm not doing that fast forward some years later we're at the movie theaters me him uh some girls and i'm a german exchange student from from uh germany i don't know it's funny to me he's from he's from china he went no uh stu nae labari from germany and we're on our way to uh we're at this movie in the in the middle of the screen the movie goes blank yeah like in the middle of it the movie goes blank and it bring the house lights on there's like this stage in front of it and my friend a german exchange student from germany i'm gonna say that every time now anyway he nudges me and said i dare you go tell a joke a dare you i don't tell a joke that's my german accent okay she's wondering sound like andre giant yeah so he uh he went on ahead and he um he dared me and at the time i'm like 17 18 years old if you dare me to do something i'm gonna do it like just flat out except for getting a stolen car with a friend again anyway so i go down here and and the only joke i knew was a dirty joke right and i had to and because my friend was i had to rewrite the joke in my head so i had like 12 seconds to rewrite this joke in my head and i get down there on stage and i tell this joke and all these moviegoers who were disgruntled moments earlier start to laugh they're laughing and then they want another joke but i don't know another joke and i know it's i know when it's time to get off stage right so i get off stage and i go sit down and the security comes looking for me to kick me out and this white lady who i don't even know she stands up and she says if you kick that young man out i want my money back i don't even know these people and she said and then these biker dudes with long hair and tattooed and all the black people stood up they said yeah if you kick them out we want our money back i was like man that's amazing like all i did was give him a little pointed piece of me and in return it gave me all of this love it was amazing now in retrospect i look back at it and i used to say this right here i used to say i really believe that was god giving me a glimpse of what it is i'm called to do it's good but i realize now it was bigger than that because it is true he gave me a glimpse of what i called to do but i was thinking it was just the part about making people laugh but the truth is is i was able to use laughter to bring people together for something that was bigger than any of them individually which is exactly what i get to do now whether it be through funny how life works book yeah of course doing some keynote speaking that's what i get to do i get to comedically inspire people to walk in purpose and that purpose is all about people helping people michael this has been such a rich conversation i really have such an appreciation for the power of story and even your story today if we could distill the conversation down today for the listeners for the viewers and if you were to say one thing to tie a bow on this what would it be well first of all the fact that you believe this is a rich conversation is awesome i'm honored that you would say that and does that mean i'm gonna get a check is that how that works out i don't know because it's a million is spelled with an m i think i guess so i guess i would uh i would say to the listeners um it's super important that you think about what you're thinking about so good i mean are you are you thinking about what can you get out of a situation or are you thinking about what can you give yeah because if you're really interested in what you can get the best question you could ask is what can you give because you're going to get so much more from giving that you than you could ever imagine by simply just trying to get so that's what i highly highly recommend that you do folks win today dot tv slash episode 235 he is michael jr the book is funny how life works michael this has been such a great privilege to have you on the show i'd love for people to stay connected to you where can they do that oh yeah so yeah for sure get the book but just go to um a michael jr comedy on all platforms and here's what's really cool if people would like a free chapter to the book just to get a feel for it in fact they can get the details of how this whole thing uh the orange story actually went they can just go to funnyhowlifeworksbook.com bunnyhowlifeworksbook.com they can actually get a chapter and check it out i think you i think they'll like it a lot this show is dope you do a phenomenal job like you're really really good at this you

Channel: Christopher Cook

Views: 23,216

Keywords: christopher cook win today, win today, chris cook, chris cook win today, win today with christopher cook, michael jr., michael jr, michael jr comedy, michael jr. comedian

Id: 2ev5VS5F-3k

Length: 56min 45sec (3405 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 24 2021