Jimbo Paris Show #81 - The Process for Progress (Mark V. Smith)

Hi, I'm Jimbo Paris, and you're listening to the Jimbo Paris show. All right, how's it going, everyone? I am Jimbo Paris. Welcome to the Jimbo Paris Show. Today we have Mr. Smith, Mark Smith. He's a specialized speaker. And he has experienced a lot of different trials and tribulations and he's here to help motivate people, train people and give people bites.

Good afternoon, Jimbo. How are you?

Good, good. How are you?

Man? I'm blessed and highly favored. Good to see you today.

So can you kind of give me a brief summary of who you are, what you're about. And what's your messages?

Well, again, thank you for having me on today. I'm humbled man, I am what you see in front of you. And what everybody sees in front of you is not the person that I was. And I always say I always strive to be better tomorrow than I am today. So my brain grew up in Columbus, Ohio, great parents, mother and father. So I was fortunate to be raised, sometimes a lot of our our kids aren't raised with both parents in the home. So I was fortunate to and that both parents worked extremely hard to help provide for, for myself and going forward to help provide great education and good good background. But I like a lot of other kids. And I decided at some point that I thought, I use that word I thought I knew better. So I had made my mistakes in life. My trials and tribulations had some consequences, actions for those consequences that I took. But again, rose above some of those things and doing amazing things, not only in the speaking world, but right here in my city of Baltimore, Maryland today. So short, sweet, to the point, I'm sure what dialogue about a lot of things in detail.

That's quite interesting, why the process?

We all go through, to get through. And some people call it evolution, I call it growth and I'll dialogue in a few minutes are what I call what my backbone and my meaning of growth is. But I wanted to create something that everybody can utilize as a blueprint, a foundation, that when they do hit those times to where they don't feel that they can go any further when they questioning who they are, and what their existence is. And when they just really need that that guidance or that step, the ability to take a step back so they can grow forward. So I decided back in 2000, late 2018 2019 that I wanted to give all everyone an opportunity to listen to something that will help them move in a different direction. And I said, you know, I've listened to a lot of speakers, I've spoke quite a bit. But I said I want to do something different. So let's why not use acronyms to give somebody a message. I know playing football back when I was in high school, you know, our coaches would bark out different things. And they would use acronyms or signals or calls to make sure that we understood what we were doing. I inclined to not be no longer be selfish, share my life, share a vision and share a passion to help people as I say, Jimbo, grow forward.

What acronyms are your favorite?

Growth will probably be one of my all time favorites. And I said growth stands for gradual reminder, obstacles will test hope, growth. If we break down what growing means or perseverance means it means going through different things in our lives to push us to be better than what we then what we're truly going to be, you know, that gradual reminder, meaning that every single day, there's something in our lives or some significance in our life that reminds us where we are and should point us to where we want to go. And I've always said an obstacle is an opportunity, right? We just sometimes we feel sorry for ourselves and thinking of an obstacle is something that's going to prohibit us from getting to where we want to go. But we really need to rephrase our mind and think about that truly an opportunity. Something is coming for me that I truly need to roll with it. And then the world test hope aspect of things. You know, a lot of us including myself when I was younger, I didn't believe in who I was. I didn't believe that the skill level or the experience that I was going to eventually adapt would be enough. So I was always questioning what was to come. But you can never question the value of hope because without hope you have nothing. So you have to always remember that there will always be something that's going to test you but you have the capability with inside you to rise above because I'm gonna put it quite honest. There's not a situation that any one of us has not that has been presented to us that we have not gotten through. Right. It may not the outcome may not have been what we want it but we got through it. So our track record is 100%. And I liked those eyes. I really liked those eyes based on everything that we all go through.

That will just test. How do you test others now who follow you?

I try to be an example. I talk a lot about time, right? I talk so much so much, anybody who's heard me hear me always bring up the fact that we all got the same amount 86,400. That's the total number of seconds that we all have in a day, and you can't carry it over. You can't deposit it you once it's done. And that clock rolls over is then to the next day. So I challenge everybody to maximize what you do with your time. It's precious. It's something that we all need it to embark. No, I always say that, you know, it's price. It's time. It's priceless. You can't own it, but you use it. And you can't keep it but you can spend it, you know, once it's lost, you'll never get it back. So what is your task to do with that time that you have every single day? Are you going to lead somebody better? Are you going to lead somebody better, I challenge them to make sure that they're doing what they need to do to make everybody around them a better person. But it starts with you. You know, it starts right there in that mirror, when you first wake up, and you decide you decide, right, we control the thoughts we think, the actions we take, and the visions we see. So I challenge every single body every single day with that 86,400 to be the best you that you can be. And live with no regrets, man, we you can't live saying you know if I would? Or should or if I should? Well, you got to take control of your life and make things happen.

What's the first step to taking control of your life?

Being accountable, being accountable, being accountable of your of who you are not passing the blame, not saying you know, it's such and such as fault that I'm this way my my father was an alcoholic? So I'm gonna be an alcoholic? No, no, no, no, that doesn't define your story. Be accountable to where you are in your life. And then also think about where you want to go. So you need to truly be accountable for who you are and what you need to do. Secondly, you need to have integrity, and integrity doing what you know you're supposed to do when nobody's watching. When the fact of the matter is Jimbo, somebody's always watching us. Whether we know it or not, somebody's watching. The next step I would say would be you need to take responsibility for your life. You have that power to take responsibility for your life. It's not up to anybody else. It's up to us. And the last one is respect. Man, where's that gone? Where has that gone? See, individuals can agree to disagree, but you still are owed the respect of who you are as a man and as a woman. And then you shake hands or you not shake hands you uh, you know, as I said, you agree to disagree, and then you move on with your life. So that's how I feel that you take control of where you are to get to where you need to go, you must be accountable, you must have that integrity, you must take responsibility. And you must show some form of respect and respect yourself enough to take those steps to get to where you want to go.

Now, you mentioned challenging yourself as well, is this where we get into your belief system on growth and change and those sorts of things?

It starts with that, because I did, I saw again, I saw so many of my friends that were you know, incarcerated, passed on individuals who weren't doing anything, staying stuck in the realm of of what they were doing, not having the aspiration to grow. And I wanted more out of life. It I just couldn't be that status quo. I mean, they, they look at, they look at African American men as a statistic anyway, right, they think you're only supposed to achieve so much. And then that's where the ball stops. Now, they look at us sometimes and say that, you know, their doom for the destiny for Doom. And I wanted to help rewrite some of those things. Because I again, I have to be I'm responsible. I'm responsible for helping young men and young women and I've been that way. When I played sports in high school, I was responsible to 48, 49, 50 guys every snap that I took, I was responsible to execute my job. And so that did make make a difference in my life making sure that I was taking the accountability of what I was supposed to do. And again, it's all growing it's going through your ups and going through your downs your wins and your losses throughout everything that you do in life. But if you don't learn something from everything that you go through man it's not it makes it it towards the successes that you have. So man i I've learned for myself just like most everybody's listening today. I'm sure you learn more about yourself in the last thing you have any wins, right? We forget the wins. We do some of them, but we show the heck remember some of the losses because they caught us what some of the things we truly needed to know to help us move to the next level.

When it comes to this, you said that you learn a lot from your losses, what were one of your biggest, or one of the most educational losses you've had?

I'm gonna say it was probably the loss of my father. And I say that, you know, we all have lost in our lives, right? We're all going to lose loved ones, we're all going to lose good family, friends and things that people like close to us. And I say that because, you know, I went through an ad Chronicle about and seven of my episodes inside of the process, we had a strained relationship growing up, and that relationship was strained due to my own self absorbance and self ignorance. So he worked extremely hard to provide for us, but I took that I was being selfish and saying that he didn't want at that time with me. And it grew, it went to 2003 when he had when he was diagnosed, excuse me, 2001 and he was diagnosed with cancer, prostate cancer. And I felt so bad. I felt really, man, I wasted so many years of my life, not being a good son, and not trying to mend the relationship that I put the wedge through. It wasn't him. He always was there. And from that point on, I mean, we we mended, that he never had any harbor feelings. We took trips together, he will call that time I was living in Arizona, he will come out the Arizona see me, I would taking the Las Vegas, we'd have a great time. Again, we just built that relationship up. And then in 2003, on November 19, I got a phone call that from my son, though, let me know that my dad had passed away. And coincidentally Jimbo, that day that he passed away was November 19. That's my birthday. So he passed on on my birthday. And I went for so many years, man being angry at that day, you know, why? Why would God do this to me on this day? Why did this have to happen? It had not been for the blessing of a beautiful woman, my wife, who basically got me to really think about the bigger picture, not just the now. But the bigger picture of Mark, this is a day that God took your father at home, but he gave you life, you had an opportunity to rebuild a relationship with a man that you respected more than anything itself. So why wouldn't you feel rejoice or happy on this day, because this, that's exactly what this day has meant. So that would have probably been another step, or what I like to call it defining moments in my life that really made me grow. And I had to accept the fact of that loss was not a loss, that loss was a gain, you know, he's no longer suffering. He gave me a lot of wisdom I write, I think a lot about some of the things that he said, while he was in the basement with his friends watching the Cleveland Browns. And I was at the top of the stairs, being nosy and listening, some of the messages, some of the things that I go back and say now, or results of some of the conversations that I heard. But that man, I think that was probably one of the most challenging times, one of the most demanding times and one of the times are really caught for me to understand far beyond what I could see. That started the vision aspect of who I was going to be. Listen, I tell everybody, we all have things that have gone on in our life, and we have to deal with, take a moment and find something that resonates and help you get to the next level. Right? We're never called to be stagnant in life. We're all called to grow in life. So I that's my message. That's what it's been predicated about. But also what my signature tagline Jimbo, I always tell individuals that your y is greater than your situation, which is part of your process.

Excellent, excellent. And, you know, this has been a great talk a great interview. Um, do you have any additional words you want to say to the audience any final words?

Yeah, I do. Believe in yourself. Right. You know, there's an old old adage that says nobody believes in you, but you. You have to be the one that that dwarfs what society thinks of you. Thoughts? What sometimes your friends think of you, but believe in who you are you are you individually, your purpose. You're created different. You're designed to be different. You're designed to take things to the to the next level, embrace who you are, and live life, the very best that you can every single day with no regrets.

Excellent. Thank you again, Mr. Smith. It's been a pleasure.

Thank you. I appreciate it.

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