Why You Should STOP Looking for Your PASSION! (It Gets Real With TK Coleman)

you've got to start small right you know like it's amazing how much you can change your life with just 15 minutes a day absolutely so just give me five push-ups yeah you can do five okay give me three cause if you do that long enough you're gonna get to five absolutely don't wake up in the morning and say i'm gonna run a marathon just give me put on your clothes and go walk for a block yeah because all of the power really lies in momentum yes the more you make those small decisions to invest in yourself the momentum will eventually build and that will carry you and make it easier to do more and more and more yo what's going on fam it's your boy anthony welcome back to the table with your boy ayo and i was cracking up laughing because at the beginning of the show they did the um whole movie thing where they you know they clapped to start off everything and it said t-t-a-o t-t-a-o and i was like no no no it's the table with anthony o'neil not the table anthony o'neil but hey it's all good because here today we're keeping it real relevant and relatable and i'm so pumped today because we have my boy my brother tk coleman in the building today and i'm really excited but before we jump to him listen um every single monday i'm dropping a brand new episode that's helping you when it comes to your money when it's coming to your relationships when it comes to just building success but i'm talking to a select group of people throughout the week every single day giving them encouragement giving them some free tools so what i want you to do if you want to be a part of this small select group of people i want you to text me right now i'm gonna make sure we put it on the screen somewhere and if you listen on the podcast or on youtube it'll be in the show notes so texas number 615-930-3431 again that's six one five nine three zero three four three one cause you never know i may have some more behind the scene footage with my boy tk coleman who's in the building what's up brother what's going on brother man listen man you know youtube world and podcast world can't uh see uh you know what's really making you smile behind you you know you have your beautiful wife your beautiful queen i won't call her out won't say her name um and i won't call her to the table but i see why you got a good swag to yourself bro you know cause your wife killing bro she's supporting her man uh but tk man tell the people a little bit about you before we jump in because i want to talk to you about something that's important to me that i think needs to be a conversation needs to be had uh but real quick let's say in 30 seconds just tell the world tell my listeners just a little bit about who tk coleman is i'm from chicago illinois i grew up in the michael jordan chicago bulls dynasty so those six championships i could really appreciate i'm a pastor sign okay first thing that my father ever taught me is that your number one priority in life is to discover and do what makes you come alive you were created for a purpose you're not here by happenstance and you've got to become who you were born to be and if you don't know what that is then that is the work for you to do yeah and so my mission in life is to convince as many people as i can that they have the permission and the power to be the predominant creative force in their own lives that's what drives me that's what gets me up out of bed to help awaken people to a sense of their own personal power so that they can get the most out of life and bring the most to it man that's what truly fires me up i'm not doing that because i think that makes me a good person i'm doing that because that's what makes my heart sing tk did it in 30 seconds brother he's a professional at this one i love it i love it i love it so let's dive in uh because here at the table i don't waste time i don't do a bunch of fluff yeah i get straight into the content so get comfortable drink your water drink your coffee don't look at your wife because you can't get distracted okay she's looking at you and she's giving you energy from you know from over there in a chair um so a few weeks ago i talked about really the difference between having a dream and a vision and i broke it down i broke it down like hey everything does start with the dream but sooner or later that dream has to become a vision and how do we go from dreaming to actually practically doing this i want to ask you this because you're about helping people define their purpose what do you do when you don't know what your dream is yeah well you've gotta discover what makes you come alive before you decide what you're going to commit to okay and one of the main problems i see with the way a lot of people approach dreams is they treat find your passion as if it's some sort of philosophical puzzle for them to figure out maybe i'll take a survey and ask everyone what they think maybe i'll read a bunch of books maybe i'll meditate and introspect and once i figure out the puzzle what i want to do i'll go out there and do it and that's not how life works that way okay imagine what dating would be like if we did that imagine if we went on a date and on the very first date we're sitting there thinking hey uh uh is this gonna be my husband is this gonna be my wife imagine if you're 19 years old and you're tormenting yourself trying to figure out who you're going to spend the rest of your life with yeah you probably shouldn't know the answer to that question the way you get the answer to that question is by being willing to go on a date how about just flirting with someone you like first how about just asking someone out for a cup of coffee and seeing how the first conversation goes well if that doesn't work out knowing what you don't like is immensely valuable if it does work out hey don't get married yet how about a second conversation it's a process of discovery you explore you experiment you try things out you find out things about yourself and that's where the guidance comes from so what i would say to anybody who feels like well i want to do what i love but i don't know what i love i would say don't force yourself to find your passion and set instead start with your curiosities and follow those if you're interested in choir just try it see what it feels like you want to take a math class but you're not sure you want to do math for the rest of your life take a math class try it some things are going to be more enjoyable than you would have anticipated some things less enjoyable and eventually that knowledge begins to come together and one day you wake up and you say man i'm in love with this person and i want to spend the rest of my life with them but you didn't get there by solving an intellectual puzzle you got there through experience by being willing to try things before you knew what you would end up doing for the rest of your life how do you now t.k i'm 44. 44. i'll be 44 in november let me give myself that don't look like your brother i'm going to be real i'll say dang tk44 what i thought you were younger than me but no you bro you got swag what's your dream now as a married man at 44 years old so for me at this stage of my life my dream and my sense of mission are one and the same okay and my goal in life is to to really help other people make sense out of their own dreams okay i have given myself the permission to try everything that i want to try in life and so i don't have any dreams that i haven't tried yeah bro i auditioned for american idol and did not win yeah i've been on are you smarter than a fifth grader and made a fool out of myself on national tv every girl that i have ever liked i asked her out and a lot of them said no right everything that i wanted to try i have tried and so i know what it's like to go after the things that you want and i want to help other people embrace the beauty and the power and the wisdom and the joy that comes from giving themselves permission i love it to just go after what god has put in their hearts yeah yeah yeah what about on the family size in any any dreams on that side for you your wife your family oh yeah man we want to have children okay and i i will look at that as the the greatest extension of that dream that i just described yeah to give that gift of faith and give that gift of love yeah to children my wife and i we get along so well we're great friends we're great partners and i wouldn't i would love to know what it's like to experience my wife as the mother of my children oh i would love to know what it's like to have that partnership with her she's smiling at you right now it's once you know don't look at it but she's smelling it yeah you know when i hear you talk about that tk man you know that's my dream and a lot of people may be not really surprised i think when it comes to the career aspect that second you know when i think about my ultimate dream is i remember um little kids i remember pictures being you know two three four or five years old my mom would say and i remember um pictures of my parents struggling i remember pictures of me my mom and my um father in california having to sleep on the couch that turned into a bed you know at night time but then at daytime like bed turned into a couch and we slept on it you know i remember um struggling and and driving a van with with no seats in the back because we just didn't have the funds to get it and so when i remember all that stuff you know i grew up with great loving parents of some some strong strong strong parents who have made me the man i am today but then also i remember not having the things that i wanted not being able to have some of the things that we needed when we needed them eventually we got them but not exactly when we needed them i remember seeing my mom cry sometimes because um you know she was kind of hurt that her kids say this christmas wasn't a good christmas we didn't get everything we wanted i remember not going out of the country not having having family vacations and my ultimate dream is is i want to be the best father you know the best uh husband uh to my family the ultimate dream for me when i think about this is i came into the world crying but i'm going to leave this world smiling and i'm going to be looking up at my wife and my kids and their spouses and hopefully their kids and i'm smiling because i'm leaving my family uh with wealth with joy with peace with freedom i want my wife to be like yo my husband served not just you all in the community but before he served you all in the community to help you all get out of debt to help you accomplish your dreams and your goals and success he served us at home well yeah and it's like that dream just inspires me to go and so when i hear you talking about just get out there and just be curious you know my dreams came from what i saw and then when i came over here to this world that i met with the dave ramses the mark cubans and the bishop td jakes and stuff like that i'm like yo wait a minute over here growing up i didn't experience this but when i stepped out and i started seeing yo you can be financially free i can drive a real nice car be debt free i can have nice things and not live paycheck to paycheck yeah that taste changed everything for me yeah and so when you say go out there and really experience it brother i fell in love with this debt-free life but we're not here to talk about money today well can i say one piece about that well hey go ahead talk to me we got time brother i love everything you just said because we need to at least spend a minute on this because i feel like whenever the subject of financial literacy and financial education comes up especially in christian context that message is often rebuked as oh you're just preaching the prosperity gospel and you're telling people that everybody needs to own five cars and five houses come on t.k and i think one of the best ways to diminish the truth and keep people from receiving things that are going to bring freedom into their lives is to oversimplify it and attack a straw man okay most of the people that i meet that are passionate about financial education have stories like you yeah where you know what it means to wrestle with anxiety and frustration because of a lack of resources and i don't believe that god has called any of us to live in financial anxiety jesus was talking about something when he said seek ye first the kingdom of god and all else will be added unto you now i agree with my brothers who say when he when he was talking about the all s all else he didn't mean your own five cards right but he was talking about something yes he was calling us to a life of inner freedom yes where we feel like we are capable of doing what god has called us to do without feeling like we need the permission of money like i'm sorry but if if a lack of money is capable of defeating the promises of god then you've got to ask yourself whose promises are you really following one of the best definitions of prosperity i've ever heard is prosperity is having enough of god's provisions to complete his instructions for your life yes i also heard it said where jesus leads jesus feed i also heard it said where god guides god provides elijah didn't have a million dollars he didn't have a bank account okay he didn't have five cars but when he was alone how am i going to eat god says i'm gonna send you a raven come on and the raven will feed you and i see the message of scripture all throughout the bible is i have been young yes and now i am old yes yet i have never seen the righteous forsaken nor their sea begging bread everybody's going to have a different amount of resources but if god has called you to do something you better believe it that when you walk the path that wears your name and go the places that god has called you to go even the seas will part so that you can go where you need to go and do what you need to do if that's what's required god's provision always accompanies god's purposes so don't dismiss the importance of financial and financial financial literacy and financial education it's just some oversimplified message of everybody needs to be a millionaire irrespective of their calling in life uh ladies and gentlemen that's uh the end of the show that was the table with tk coleman uh where we keep it real relevant and relatable bro you just shut that down because here's the thing i hate those preachers that come behind the preacher and try and preach behind them so i'm not gonna do that with you uh but i would definitely say this why is it that the kingdom we are the broke ones we follow the world how come we cannot have enough money to start schools how come we can't have enough money uh to build homes for the community how come we are not leading the world the bible says be in the world but not of the world and we need finances to build something strong it shouldn't be your beyonces and your your jay-z's your lebron james that's leading the world no the kingdom should be doing that and it takes finances to have that that's why i'm so passionate about this message bro yeah i i think we we need to make a distinction between contentment and incompetence yes sir god calls us to be content yes he does not call us to be incompetent content is when you live a life of appreciation for all that god has given you and you do not allow yourself to envy other people who might have more because you don't know what god's purposes are for their lives incompetence is when you experience all kinds of unnecessary frustrations in your life because you have not been a good steward over the opportunities god has given you to learn to develop new skills to expand your network and so forth god wants us to study to show ourselves approved he wants us to develop competencies and so many problems in life we're trying to force ourselves to be content with and god called us to be more than conquerors and to overcome those problems you can't be content with everything because some things you are here to change t.k tk man t.k give me some love do you my guy brother you you know what you you my guy we can move on man i know i don't know i made us talk no no i'm trying to i'm trying to figure out how to move on and it's because you're hitting on something all right let's let's stay there all right so let's talk about this let's say someone's dream right now so uh 70 of the people who listen to me on a daily basis right they want to get out of debt they want to build wealth so let's just say their dream is to get out of debt build wealth start a business right so let's talk about this how do we take that dream to a decision to an actual item to where we are going to now go after and accomplish this dream yeah ooh just one more thing anthony uh oh cause you talked about how so many people like want to get out of debt right yeah and everybody has a different story yeah but but back to this point about the unfair criticisms of people who preach messages of financial literacy isn't it something isn't it something that we can make all kinds of bad decisions to get ourselves into debt and and somehow it's it's ungodly to have a conversation about making good decisions to get out oh my gosh we didn't have a problem with the sin that and the total violation of biblical principles that led to the accumulation of debt but all of a sudden we want to attack any message that tells us let's focus on what the bible says about that come on man yeah come on yeah okay you're okay any good you're so how do we go from yeah a dream to what's actually happening yes so we have to make a distinction between um preferences and priorities yep your preferences are the things that you want yeah if i could wave a magic wand and give you something would that make you feel good okay that's your preference your priorities are the things that you're willing to put first yes the things that you're willing to do difficult things in order to obtain yeah your life will never be a reflection of your preferences it's always a reflection of your priorities and so if there's a pr a preference you have and you want to actualize that preference well you've got to ask yourself how can i create space in my life to put that thing first where a lot of people get it wrong is they assume that in order to transform a preference to a priority they got to do it all the time so if you work a job and you work 12 hours a day well i don't have 3-4 hours to work on that thing you've got to start small right you know like it's amazing how much you can change your life with just 15 minutes a day absolutely i i have a video on on youtube called non-zero days and it's a concept about how much you can transform your life just by committing to making every day a day that's not zero yeah so just give me five push-ups yeah you can't do five okay give me three cause if you do that long enough you're gonna get to five absolutely don't wake up in the morning and say i'm gonna run a marathon just give me put on your clothes and go walk for a block yeah because all of the power really lies in momentum yes the more you make those small decisions to invest in yourself the momentum will eventually build and that will carry you and make it easier to do more and more and more so but a lot of people hinder their own growth by convincing themselves that in order to be true to my dream well i've got to do it all the time and so then people get caught up with this idea of like well i must not really be a writer because two days have gone by and i haven't written anything and it's not easy for me to do all the time and i don't make a lot of time for it don't do that to yourself right start small within the context of your life as it is right now create the space to just do a little bit every day and build momentum you know and i could be saying this wrong there's a philosophy that i that i saw and that i actually love it's like hey we don't want you to if you're going straight we don't want you to hit a heart left what we want you to do which is take take a degree and eventually as you're moving forward you know you're going to see some separation you're going to see some change and i think oftentimes people feel as if you got to do a hard complete left no like you said start small if you only do three a day three push-ups a day cool great if you only can save a dollar a day cool great that dollar would turn into 30 that 30 would turn into 60. that 60 would turn into 120 start small and i think when we can really get that down in our heads like hey you know what it's cool i don't have to sit here and and be like this person do it like that no what's the difference between your priorities and your preferences one person called me uh on the dave ramsey show and she said hey i need a car i said okay cool i agree you need a car i said so what do you think about buying well i'm gonna go buy a bmw yeah no wait wait wait wait let's talk about this you need a carb but your preference is a bmw but that's not the priority the priority is you need a reliable car to get you from point a to point b now if you're really going to get out of debt you can't go out there and buy a 50 000 vehicle you know you got to start with what are your clear priorities and i think priorities let me ask you this question priorities come from really identifying your why yeah like why do you where are you going why do you want this and then when you really identify that then your priorities really help you get there and they can even change yeah i think that's right on the money brother well listen man you need a button you can push you get the little crowd now listen bro listen listen man listen man for those of y'all just joining in man this this this is the table with anthony o'neil i got my boy tk coleman in here man we're just diving in and he preached the first first five minutes he talked um if you don't know him we're gonna put all of his social media information uh in the show notes so make sure you check it out don't forget if you wanna join uh this little private group of people that i'm building right now i want you to text my number 615-930-3431 i'm sending out some um some tips some tricks uh some uh some really cool stuff to really help you reach your goals but today we're really talking about how do we do this thing with dreams and with vision so here i got a question for you yeah uh tk i got a real good question for you let's say someone has a dream right but they're scared of failure let's say someone says all right this is my dream i want to be out of debt i want to be this i want to do that and when they look down the road they see there's a possibility a strong possibility that they could fail not just once but several times trying to get to that dream that goal that vision what would you say to that individual right now um who's saying you know what i want to be debt-free but i know people are going to clown on me because i don't have this car and or i want to go out and pursue this acting job but i may fail at the at the you know um tryouts i mean i want to i want to join this basketball team but you know what i can't shoot like that i may fail um hey i want to be in a relationship but i may fail at some things in a relationship what do you say to that individual well first i'm going to be the bearer of bad news uh oh when you follow your dreams i don't think it's possible that you may fail i think it's absolutely certain that you're going to fail oh wait wait wait wait wait bro bro don't say that i think don't say that so i reject this idea that when you wish upon a star it makes no difference who you are i believe that if you're the type of person who follows a dream you will probably be heartbroken and disappointed in ways that you could never even imagine wow here's the problem though we live in a culture that tells us that the best reason for following a dream is that we may get everything that we want but i believe that dreams are a form of spiritual practice okay the purpose for following a dream isn't that we might get everything we want yeah but it's rather we will get to become a superior version of ourselves in spite of the failures that happen along the way on the other side of your fears on the other side of all the challenges that await you when you pursue a dream yeah is a version of you yeah that is funnier than the person that's listening right now that's wiser than the person that's listening right now that's more empathetic than the person that's listening right now and you don't get to become that version of yourself unless you face your fears and go after the things that are in your heart you know what's funny when i grew up my father's a pastor yeah i heard a lot of preachers coming up there was this one preacher that my brother and i loved to listen to man and the reason he was so interesting to us is because he used to be really passionate about basketball and he thought he was going to go to the nba he tried out for the golden state warriors actually and he never made the nba are you serious the preacher that was the most interesting to us was the guy who tried to become an nba player and failed yeah every time that guy taught we wanted to listen because there was something about a man who knew what it was like to face a dream yeah follow it and say all right absolutely it didn't turn out the way i wanted it to but i came out on the other side a better person that made us new he was our guy yeah the pearl of great price when it comes to your story in life is to be the kind of person who can represent to others what it means to be true to yourself yeah yeah and if you're going to teach people if you're going to influence people if you're going to serve people you don't want to be caught up in the business of telling folks to follow their dreams when you can't say the same about your own life i i never want someone to look at me and be like mr coleman did you follow your dream oh no i just wrote a book about it so you can pay me 20 to follow yours no way no way brother i'm gonna be ready for that question every day all day young man i follow all of my dreams and some of them i actually won some of them i actually lost but with the ones that i lost i developed more courage and everything that is good in my life is the result of either a dream i succeeded at achieving or a dream that i failed at they're all valuable because you know what the real prize is it's not the thing that you get when you follow a dream the real prize is the actualization of your own potential it's becoming who you were born to be moses did not get the opportunity to enter into the promised land but by walking the path that god called him to walk he became something that he could not have otherwise been man bro you you you teaching good here man i i agree with you i'm a golfer do you play golf no oh man i got to teach you on that i i i'm open man i mean that that's the sport that i believe every wise man should be playing um so i picked up the game of golf and um i'm a member of a of a private club here in tennessee right and so hole number uh 10 is like the hardest hole on our south course and every time i get to that whole tk every time for the last three years i will i would just say you know what i'm gonna i'm gonna double bogey this one and double bogey means that i i don't hit it on time like i hit two over uh because to really make it you have to hit over a long long long lake like a lone pond yeah and i'm like i don't want to lose no balls because i spent a lot of money for these balls i don't like a fool right you know so i'm like and then here's the thing i'm sitting there one day and i'm sitting there golfing and there's just this old old old old man and he's gets up there and he hits over the lake and he sees me i line up to hit on the safe side yeah he said young man what are you doing i was like somebody hit no no no no no go for it i was like no no i can't mate that i'm scared you scared you scared to learn how to do it son i was like scared to learn how to no i'm scared to lose my ball you say you son you know how many balls i've lost in this pond i was like how many he said probably about like 500 balls but you're younger than me and stronger than me if i can do that so can you but you have to be willing to lose some balls come on and i said ah so i i i changed my position i go grab a longer club to to do it and bro i i failed i felt so we get over there to um i had to drop because when you land in the water you got to drop near where you you uh failed that right here's his first question he didn't say it's okay he said so what did you learn i was like what do you mean so what did you learn and it was like let's talk about your swing what did you learn not to do the next time you come to this hole and i was like yo and we literally talked about and dissected my swing and he said hey son when you fail you learn when you learn you improve when you improve you grow oh wow and now today i can get over that pond so easy because earlier last year i said yo i'm going to lose as many balls as i need to lose so i can learn how to play golf so now when i go over to in when i go to any course anywhere else when i see long water i'm like yeah i'm gonna do it i'm gonna do it because i wanna fail because i wanna know what am i capable of doing and if i'm always staying with inside my comfort zone i'm not growing nothing extra ordinary is gonna happen if i want to beat the course i have to get over that water and if you want to beat life you have to get over your sweet spot your comfort zone you got to be willing to step outside of your comfort zone and be willing to fail michael jordan was willing to take the last shot he was willing to fail that's why he is michael jordan lebron james huh well let's leave that alone uh because you know lebron ain't willing to fail sometimes he'll throw the ball up hit the ball lebron if you're watching me right now keep the ball black anyways he's still the best player right now but boy good gracious anyways um basketball stick with it go ahead what you want to talk about because if you're gonna talk about basketball brother wait a minute you know i'm not a i love football but i love basketball more so let's let's talk about what you're going to say for those who are listening don't worry i'm not going to go too deep who's your team in the basketball world i'm from chicago man so you still a bulls fan right now the boys fan man what's the point of being a fan if i can't root for you when you do you and your wife live in chicago right now no where do you live we live in south carolina oh yeah y'all yeah yeah i ain't got no team chicago exactly exactly but hey man i i was a cups fan ever since i was a kid well we finally got that world series yeah yeah all that losing yeah yeah yeah that's what made it feel so amazing yeah yeah but when i was in fifth grade and we were at basketball practice the coach had us doing those figure eight drills where you learn how to work on your handles yeah yeah and for me looking good was very important absolutely and so i did the drills well yeah and the coach was walking around and he looked at me and he said it to everybody because he was a nice guy but i knew he was talking to me he said if you're not messing up you're not doing it right one of my favorite definitions of learning comes from chalmers brothers in a book called the pursuit of happiness language and the pursuit of happiness he says learning is the process of doing what you don't know how to do while you don't know how to do it come on man most of us like to avoid failure yeah and avoid looking bad so we say i'm gonna figure out how to do it first yes so i can get some guarantees of success then i'm gonna do it that way i don't look bad yes but if that's the way you're going about it you're not learning yeah if you're not opening yourself to the experience of failure you're simply not getting better so whatever success you're experiencing man how can you enjoy that when you're such a shallow version of who you're meant to be second thing i want to say about this fear i think a lot of people only allow themselves to experience fear as a theory fear as a theory is when you can form a mental picture of something bad that might happen and you avoid doing things that could bring about the manifestation of that picture yeah that's experiencing fear as a theory yeah experiencing fear as a lived reality is entirely different good that's when you go after the stuff that you want even though you know some things may happen that you may not like and one of the most interesting things about fear is that when you experience fear as a lived reality you find that it's far less scary absolutely than when you experience it as a theory as a theory an idea in your head a boogeyman about all the different ways your friends are gonna laugh at you oh it's so frightening that's what i thought yeah but then when you actually go after stuff the lived reality is all of those things that you feared are the very things that make your life most interesting 20 30 40 years from now when you're telling your story people are not going to want to hear the part where you're like for 20 years i showed up to work on time i didn't make any mistakes and i read a bunch of cool books that is so boring people are already asleep yep the part they're going to want to hear is tell me about that time you asked that girl out and she laughed in your face that's the most interesting part of this i've got several of those that's probably why i'm still single [Music] you know not but that's real man you know i'll tell you one of the greatest fears i got over was coming here um you know i grew up in a very black culture uh in a very strong black community um uh went to the second um largest oldest baptist church black baptist church in the world before coming here and when i told people i was coming to work with ramsey and be a personality and really take my message to a more diverse audience everybody and i say everybody but a lot of people within my world within my coaches say you're going to fail a lot of people my and my coaches say you're not going to be accepted over there because you're black you're not articulate as them and you don't sound as polished as them you're gonna fail you're gonna suck and it almost worked on me bro cause i remember the day before i signed the agreement uh to come over here to the speakers group i remember getting a phone call from a family member and my family member saying you're not going to win over there and i got scared and during that time god said do you trust men or do you trust me and he told me you will make mistakes you are going to fail at some things but i'm still going to be with you because you're doing what i'm telling you to do not what men are telling you to do and tk i came over here scared i came over here in fear because i'm like okay do i change to who i am and i'd be real i changed a little bit of who i was and god said i ain't tell you to change that's where i felt that i made some horrible mistakes by trying to change a little bit of who i was to fit into a world that i wasn't familiar with and god said that was the first failure i made so many mistakes but i was willing to trust god and to do what he told me to do and because i was willing to fail and when i was failing i was learning that's that is setting not just myself up man but i'm so grateful because i'm gonna have so many stories to tell my kids i'm gonna be able to educate them on uh why the world is divided but hey because i'm inside of both house yo listen i love my black brothers and sisters just as much as i love my white brothers and sisters and here's why here's uh me making this decision was the main reason why i'm able to build the wealth that i am and leave my kids with wealth because i was willing to fail i was willing to be in an unknown space but while i was failing i was learning and still to this day i'm making some mistakes still to this day i'm generating stories and i love it i actually look forward to failing and for real it's like i the team here knows i have no problem trying something i have no problems well you know anthony hill just said i sure will like you know anthony he'll just do it i sure will because i believe when you play it safe you don't experience and really get to experience everything god has for you he didn't play it safe so why am i going to play it safe now do i want to purposely go out there and fail no but am i just going to sit here because i know i'm perfectly safe no i'm not going to do it i want to fail so i can learn and i want to learn so i can improve and i want to improve so i can grow and reach and accomplish and do everything god put me on this earth to do but if you're not willing to fail you're not willing to be successful man that's it life itself is inherently risky it reminds me of a moment in uh c.s lewis book uh chronic his book series chronicles of narnia okay uh lion witch in the wardrobe when when the kids are first hearing about azlin the lion king of narnia one of the animals tells the kids that aslan is good and she experiences such comfort and she says oh it's so good to know that he's safe he said safe who said anything about safe i said that he was good good not safe wow you know your story reminds me of um wow one of my favorite stories dr neil degrasse tyson heard of the uh director for the hayden planetarium probably the most uh influential popularizer of physics today okay when he he's always been interested in science ever since he was a kid he would look up into the night sky and wonder what was going on he would look at his toys and wonder how things came together and so he knew that his place was in the sciences and when he was in college he had a friend a guy that was a rhodes scholar he respected him and the guy was a black guy and he told dr tyson he says you know you're really intelligent brother and i think the plight of our people is such that you shouldn't waste your intelligence on physics that's just so far removed from what our people need right now yeah you need to be in politics so you can focus more directly on the civil rights movement that really weighed heavily on him and he thought long and hard about his decision to you know continue in physics but when it came down to it he says i can't deny what has been put in me yes i can't stop wrestling with these hard questions about science and so he's stuck with his gut years later he's in grad school yeah a reporter from a news station calls and he happens to pick up and they say hey there's this weird phenomenon happening in the sky we're wondering if anybody there in the department can explain it he gives a scientific sounding explanation that i won't try to emulate the person says okay would you mind saying that on tv yeah and he said sure we're gonna send a car to come get you and have you say all that he comes down to the station he gets on television and he gives a message to the world about what's going on in the sky he didn't say hey black people everything's gonna be okay this is a message for the world yeah he talks about it and someone hears that and they say hey we love the way you talk about science would you mind coming over to this school and giving that talk sure he goes there someone there is like hey man we really love the way you talk about science would you mind coming over here years later he notices an interesting trend a young brother comes up to him after an event dr tyson today i'm a mechanical engineer because when i heard you speak years ago i knew that success in the sciences was possible for me young black woman comes up to him dr tyson today i'm studying medicine because when you talked about science you made it so interesting i said i think that's my life calling to black person after black person and all of a sudden he realizes that he has been having a positive influence yes on black communities yes not because he did something out of guilt not because he did something because it was safe but because he did what god put in his heart to do howard thurman civil rights activist and a minister said ask not yourself what the world needs but rather what makes you come alive for that is what the world needs yes people who have come alive yo man listen bro i where we could talk all day long i just i i just want you to know man you quote so many books you make me feel like i need to just cut off the tv and just read every how many books do you read a month i don't keep track but i will tell you this i don't read books because i think it's an important dignified intelligent thing to do i read books because i love it god has put that in my heart i love ideas and i think the worst way to become smart is to read books for the purpose of becoming smart i think the best way to become smart is to follow your curiosities and be loyal to the questions that keep you awake at night because those questions have an angelic function they are messengers of god the questions that you know resonate in your heart are designed to point you to possibilities that have clues for you about what you're here to do in this world yeah and so i read irresponsibly and recklessly i pick up a book whether it's on the best-selling list or not if it's interesting to me i read it are people going to respect me for it i don't care and the best books to read are the ones that make my heart sing man brother you're good man i'm reading two books a month and i'm like man dude do i need to read more like this conversation has been so good um and i wish we had another 30 minutes but i want to leave with this you text me something and you said follow your dreams but don't forget to let your dreams follow you um when you say follow your dreams but don't forget to let your dreams follow you break that down bro as we come to a close who you are at the moment you are conceiving a dream is different from who you will become after you go through all of the action steps necessary to pursue that dream when you have a vision of what your life can be let's say that's point a but there are all sorts of questions you need to ask places you need to go things you need to learn risk you need to take yeah those things transform you yeah and one common mistake we can make is we can be so unconditionally loyal to dreams that we have had in the past that we forget to upgrade those dreams in order to reflect the person that we have become over time come on it may be the case that when you were in sixth grade your idea of the good life was this very narrow concrete thing yes okay but after you pursue that idea of the good life you start to mature you meet new people they put new things on your mind you know what i mean you started to change yeah and then when you look back you say well wait a minute i don't really want all of those things my idea of the good life has evolved yeah and so one of the ways that we can unwittingly enslave ourselves is by persisting in pursuing dreams that no longer matter to us out of loyalty to a self that we have now transcended so i don't think there's anything wrong yeah with following your childhood dreams if you wanted to be something as a kid and you still want to be that now have at it but please understand the person that you are today is superior and wiser in so many ways than that kid and you need to add layers to how you dream so that your dreams are keeping up with you don't spend all your time trying to keep up with what your dream once was spend some time making sure that your dream is keeping up with who you are becoming yeah evolve and your dreams will evolve with you that's it that's it that's it don't go to the past um that's so good man cause growing up i thought rich was the the the bmws the big houses now i'm like no i don't want rich i want wealth you know i want i want leverage i want um you know i want margin i i want freedom and it's easy to feel like you've been a sellout when you've been vocal about those dreams in the past right let's say if you're like me and once upon a time you you wanted to be a professional musician and you were vocal about it yeah it's hard not to feel like when you do something like going to education that you're really giving up bro bro i i thought you wanted to uh bro be the next brian mcknight no and now i see you teaching you know financial literacy at a high school it looks like you're selling out no no i haven't sold out i've gotten answers to my questions exactly and i have evolved and i've given myself permission exactly to lean into who i am now exactly yeah nah bro you you man you boy you you you talking my talk brother you talk in my talk because i i get that often yeah um anthony you gave up you know because i vote i was vocal one time like i want to be a youth pastor you know that's my dream to be a youth pastor and then when i left youth pastor i was like oh you're a sellout no i can still pass through youth but i can pass them in this way over here yeah i can make sure that they are good that they are going to college debt-free i can help them out in the world perspective uh because i've evolved i've done what god has called me to do over here for this season now i'm in a new season and it's like man there's nothing wrong with evolving and i want to say this to everyone listening let go the people who will not let you evolve let go the people who will not let you grow mature and change and experience new things get around people who are pushing you to to evolve who will accept you changing who will encourage you to challenge and to do new things and and just be there to pray for you man yeah because you know those are the kind of friends that i'm i'm around right now my friends in the past but i probably have maybe one friend from middle school through college years one friend and it's because none of them wanted to evolve they wanted to stay in the same place um they wanted to have some of these old mindsets and living excuses and i believe that the greatest enemy to our success is our excuse and what's that excuse is our fear of failure yeah can i say one more thing about dreams yes deliberate then you can kick me off nah i'm never gonna kick you out brother but bruh i wish i had an hour show bro one one more piece on this idea of letting your dreams keep up with you i i think about the story of joseph okay and how it's a powerful illustration of the importance of not equating the vehicle with the destination yes right the vehicle is how you get there yes the destination is where god intended you to be and our dreams are by their very nature limited we're finite there's always going to be more to who we are than our dreams and life in many ways is a process of coming to make better sense over time of our own dreams in many ways dreams are these symbolic representations of a more fundamental idea of what the good life is yeah so you think about joseph his dream was very symbolic yeah it's doubtful that he knew that that meant you're going to be a leader in this geographical region and your story is going to go down this way he didn't know his story was going to go down that way his dream appeared to him symbolically and he knew that he would be a great man he knew that he would be a great leader he knew that his brothers would bow down to him yeah but he didn't know the journey that was ahead so he ends up being sold out and he is now a slave and then he found favor in the sight of the slave master and that man elevated him to a position of leadership could it be that this is the fulfillment of my dream but then something goes wrong there and now you're tossed in prison and in the midst of prison you're serving to people using your gifts to bless them could it be that this is what my dream is all about it's not until the end of the story that his dream really begins to make sense yeah and so sometimes we have these symbolic representations and if you get attached to the symbolic representations you lose sight of the power that those symbols represent ultimately your dream is about your journey with god your dream is about the adventure of life that is god that is with god and as long as you're walking with god you don't have to worry about missing out on any kind of good life because there is no good life outside of him if god is faithful enough to to make sure that jonah ends up in his proper place when he is deliberately trying to run from him how much more can he do for those who are seeking to do his will ladies and gentlemen tk cole that's his name i don't know i don't need to close another way um this conversation has been rich it's been it's been wealthy there's been some wisdom there's been some jewels in this um i want you to go back and listen to this conversation again this year bro i'm really challenging my the people who rock with me to go from dreams to actually practically accomplishing their dreams turning it into a vision getting out of debt getting married building healthy relationships starting families starting businesses it starts with the dream but let's go ahead and turn it into reality yeah and i want to thank you for this conversation bro um how can my people connect with you um on social you got a website you have anything like that check out the revolution of one that is my podcast that's where you can find all my content go to feed.org slash rev1 f e e dot o r g r e v the number not the word one yo we'll make sure to put put all that information um inside of the show notes man so you all can check it out uh connect with tk man this guy is wise you can see him on with my brothers the minimalist you just did their documentary um and they'll be on my show here in a couple of months as well so i'm just i'm just excited man so y'all that's it that's all i got for you today this is the table with your boy anthony o'neill my special guest tk coleman and today we kept it real relevant and relatable so i'm gonna see you next week peace out [Music] you

Channel: The Table With AO

Views: 102,500

Keywords: anthony oneal, anthony oneal debt free degree, anthony oneal student loans, money, budget, how to save money, personal finance, debt free, how to budget, debt, how to make money, how to get out of debt, student loan debt, student loans, african American, black, hiphop, culture, millennial, student, Why You Should STOP Looking for Your PASSION! (It Gets Real With TK Coleman)

Id: QU_WxzDQhhQ

Length: 49min 8sec (2948 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 05 2021