Part 1 of 5 of my origin story.
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Full Transcript
Hi Everyone, welcome to the You’re Daily Cup of Joe Podcast, where my goal is to give you 10-minute lessons on how to grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually so you can have better careers, better relationships, and better personal finances.
I’m also the author of the book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to Get Better Every Day”. In this book, I wrote down over 30 tips to help you grow in those four cornerstones.
Yesterday I talked about what your daily cup of joe podcast about and here is part one of my origin story
I grew up in a small town in Oregon. My dad is immigrant from Oaxaca, Mexico and my mom was born in Oregon and my parents met in a bar. My parents basically worked in blue-collar jobs. My mom was a cashier and my dad worked hard in the fields digging up trees and grafting them. I grew up in a mobile home, but my parents made sure that I went to a great public school in Oregon. It was safe and I pushed academically. I especially liked math. I feel like one of the best skills that my parents taught me was that anytime that I asked a question, instead of saying “I don’t know” and leaving it at that, they would say “Go look in the encyclopedias that we bought or I’ll take you to the library to go find out”. Now that I think about it, I didn’t see many other classmates at the library. So my parents taught me a very valuable lesson in life. If you have a question, go out and find the answer. Now if you ask me a question and the answer is out there, I can go find it, which is very helpful in a world where there is a lot of noise. If I have a question, I go out and find it. Sometimes it takes me 15 minutes and other times it can take me days but I get it done.
I’ve always been ambitious as a kid and try to do well academically or if there is a contest I can get competitive. As a Latino, I feel like I was blessed that my parents made sure that I went to a good school. Not in the sense that there were a lot of good teachers but because I was interacting with students who came from various economical backgrounds. Since I was performing just as well as academically or being better than folks, it gave me the confidence to know that where I started in life, was not going to determine who I was. I just need to follow a process to help me get to my goals. One of my economic teachers in college once told me that what he taught at this State School is what he taught at private colleges. The only difference is the confidence level that the student has at the private college. I also heard this same message in a podcast. The grades and papers written by public and private were the same but it was a confidence thing that separates folks. Now when I see someone that is in a position of power, I don’t put them on a pedestal, but I do respect them for the work they put in and I know I can do the same. Since I wanted to have a good career so I could have a good salary in the future was probably the biggest reason why I put so much energy into my school work.
Another thing that helped me to believe that I could change was that a kid I was overweight. Right now I’m 6’3” and 195lbs but in sixth grade, I was 5’5′ and a 190lbs, but thankfully I had a growth spurt over my summer break before the eighth grade and I lost a lot of weight from a trip to Mexico when I had a stomach flu. This got me more into running and watching what I ate. I still had insecurities about myself that made me shy interacting with others so I just focused on school work and my core group of friends. I would get over this shyness which I’ll explain in the future. Since I was overweight, I know what kind of negative things it put on your body. It gives you less self-confidence and you have less energy. I make working a priority now because I tell myself I will never go back to that feeling. Now it’s nice to see old friends and hear how much I’ve changed. I’m a big believer in that the body follows the mind and the mind follows the body so if my body is feeling good, my mind is going to be feeling good. As a tip for your posture, just act as if a string is being pulled from the top of your head. This will make you stand taller and help your cheekbones inline with your collar bone and pull your shoulders back.
One thing I was not good at was writing in school. The problem was that I would just write the paper and turn it in without proofreading it all. I would constantly get Cs on my papers because I didn’t want to review my work. Years later I would take a personality test it said I was good at executing on my ideas but I was not very good at exploring the different paths that could make things better. I guess I was good enough to get into college. I was accepted into Gonzaga University and the University of Oregon but once I saw the tuition bill, I knew I decline. That’s because, like many other parents, they didn’t save for college because it was something that was new for them and they were focused on helping me and my sisters out, so I had an obstacle in front of me and I decided to take this one path to get me through it. Which I’ll talk about in tomorrow’s episode.
Thanks for listening to today’s episode.
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