GoodFellas
We help our listeners discover what it means to be a modern man. We focus on how to heal and grow past mental, physical, and emotional traumas. The goal at GoodFellas is to provide men with the tools for us to thrive, not just survive.
Episodes release weekly on Thursday at 2am PST/5 am EST.
Throughout the show we invite the audience to meet some interesting and impressive humans who have navigated some of the deepest valleys as they journey to some of the highest peaks. Join me, Hosea Chanchez, as we seek to discover the GOOD in humanity and uncover some of the secrets to living a purpose-filled life.
About the Host:
Hosea Chanchez is a prominent actor, producer, and director, from Montgomery, Alabama. Soon after graduating high school, he relocated to Los Angeles, California to pursue acting. He immediately began booking commercial roles which kickstarted his career, where he has found long-lasting success.
He has appeared on shows like Girlfriends, Black Lightning, and All American, but is best known for his starring role as the quarterback football player, Malik Wright, on the CW/BET sitcom, The Game, and its 2021 revival.
Hosea has built an impressive career over the years and a large fanbase as a result. He started his company, A Very Good Company, in 2022 to provide black men and women with luxury products, reliable services, and quality content.
GoodFellas
Ep 104: Hope in Hopeless Times with Dr. Isaiah Pickens & Hosea Chanchez
How has the COVID-19 pandemic impacted Black men and the broader Black community? In this Goodfellas episode, Dr. Isaiah Pickens joins Hosea Chanchez to discuss the profound effects on mental health, social isolation, and the breakdown of key support systems like the church.
We explore how these changes have altered relationships, increased social anxieties, and posed challenges for both children and community leaders. Dr. Pickens also reflects on the losses endured, from loved ones to the ongoing process of grief. Together, we emphasize the need for compassion, communication, and vulnerability in healing the community. This episode offers insight into personal resilience, redefining success, and creating spaces for joy and healing.
A lot of black men feel that they're being punished by society. A lot of black men feel like there's nowhere for them to go and grow to. Goodfellas is a simple mental space to heal and grow by a black man. For everyone who's listening, I'm Hosea Chanchez and this is Goodfellas. I'm Hosea Chanchez and this is Goodfellas. I'm Hosea Chanchez and this is Goodfellas.
Speaker 1:And today we're going to have an in-depth conversation with Dr Isaiah about the aftermath of COVID-19. How it's ruined so many lives and still is how we are coping, how we're healing and how we move beyond. Dr Isaiah, yes, sir, the COVID-19 virus was globally one of the worst things that happened to all of us on record, and I don't think we talk enough about it as a community, but particularly as men and black men, and discover how we can be of service to one another through what we went through. So today, you and I are going to talk about how COVID has affected our lives and the catastrophic damage that has done to our communities and still to this day, although we think we've moved on, we want to be able to say we've moved on. It's a thing of the past, but unfortunately for a lot of black people, black and brown people and just people all over the world. This is still a very big issue for us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's so important for us to understand where we're at in history. Yeah, we're in a place in history where we've gone through a global pandemic and's shifted the way that we relate to one another. Being able to be in a space where you need to protect yourself by social isolation makes the relationships you have change, the dynamic of those relationships you have change and I think, the aftermath of those shifted relationships. You're right, it's not something that we talk a lot about and, on top of that, it's changed the way that we show up as people in life, whether you're talking about remote work, whether you're talking about how we're thinking about our health, whether folks even believe COVID exists. Those are some real issues.
Speaker 1:Still are. Still are some real?
Speaker 2:issues that are at play, but I think the biggest issue that we've seen is how mental health has shifted post-pandemic. I'm not sure if you had this experience, but I definitely had this experience during the pandemic. I was like I'm at home. You know, that bottle of wine looks kind of good.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, I'll take a glass, I'll take another glass and and you're in this space where you don't have anyone who helps you kind of navigate the world, because you're isolating right out of necessity and I think you start picking up habits that you don't realize, start to become habits of being by yourself and not getting feedback from other people yes and I think that that's been part of this aftermath of COVID is that we really had to go into hiding or retreat from what was going on, and when we came out of it, I think a lot of people not only didn't necessarily know how to reconnect with each other, especially in real life, but I also think that there is a lot more social anxiety think that there is a lot more social anxiety.
Speaker 1:Oh for sure, I want to start at the inception of the thing and the direct thing. I'll speak about it as a community issue first and then I'll speak to my own personal issue after. But as a community, we could literally see the disenfranchisement, we could see the separation, we could see it was going to fracture one of the most vital parts of the experience of being black and that's the church. Single-handedly dismantled the house of worship, the place of God, the place that humans collectively go to to find their center, to reset their minds, and not only in America but in the world. Our churches are still the place where we commune and you don't even have to go to church. But the humans that do a vast majority that do go to church, they become rejuvenated through what that word does to them. And when you take our community, the black community was founded on the church. When we had nowhere else to go, the church was always our sanctuary. That's why you know, back early on, you know they were bombing them and burning them down is because everybody knows, if you teach a man, if you give the man the tools to being themselves, if you show them God's way, you show them a way to live their life in a healthy and happy way. You can break generational curses, you can break stigmas and you can change people's lives. And so, as a community, the biggest thing I noticed then was that our church members and our, our stewards in society have been broken and fractured because of this, and a lot of our leaders, the, the leaders that we had had, died off and are dying off. Um, a lot of the influential voices in our community have become aged out or, you know, doing their own thing in certain ways and and sick and, you know, trying to make themselves better in so many ways too. But we lost our voices during COVID. That was the time that I saw it was a strategic move by this damn virus, if you will, to separate us in a way as a community, will to separate us in a way as a community. So I really think that we have to have a conversation in society where we unpack what is done to us individually and as a collective.
Speaker 1:I also noticed, you know, when children can't learn. You know there are a lot of reasons why in this country, kids can't focus on things, but when a child cannot learn the tools that they need to survive and thrive in this lifetime. What type of humans are we creating? What type of society are we creating? And then, if you, that's the macro as a whole.
Speaker 1:But when you start to dwindle down to certain economies and certain races of people and sections and societies, and it becomes more and more difficult for those small, individual sectors of society to thrive, when they have no place to commune and worship and learn, our children are already at a disadvantage in society with the education system, the way it is, the foods that we eat, the lack of focus, the so many things that it takes to get a little brown and black child to school and through school in their lifetime, and anything that impedes on that, because it's already so difficult for our parents to do that, you know, as black people, the more it becomes a bigger issue, a compounded issue, for us as humans to thrive in all spaces that we go into, because children learn decency and how to protect themselves in school and they learn how to deal with conflict. In school. We all learned right, we learned how to deal with life there, and so when we have a virus that can come along and shapeshift our society, I've seen spaces and places where other races have discussed these things. They commun about them.
Speaker 1:I've seen online the Jewish community had done like a YouTube or something that I saw a while back, where you know they're rebuilding their people and that's what they do, you know, in their synagogues and in their churches, in their homes. That's what they do for their community and I felt inspired to possibly do that myself with our people. And you know, thankfully now we can just do this on camera. But the truth is, you know, we need to have these conversations about the aftermath of COVID and we want to hear, obviously, what people have gone through, but definitely how do you get out of it. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and what I hear, too, that you really hit on is we've lost our havens the places where we find our safety, where we find our guidance, where we find peace. And when you lose havens, you go into survival mode.
Speaker 2:And that's really what trauma is right. We've experienced a collective trauma, especially with the amount of loss that came with COVID-19. And that's really what trauma is right. We've experienced a collective trauma, especially with the amount of loss that came with COVID-19. And trauma is any event that makes you feel like your life is threatened or the life of someone you love is threatened, and if your mind is in that space, it becomes harder not only to find havens, but it also becomes harder to not respond to things that feel like a threat in hostile ways.
Speaker 2:One thing you've seen since the pandemic is, hostility between people has grown tremendously. Unbelievable, if you look at some of the statistics around incivility at school, at work, I mean between faiths, right, that has risen not only kind of in multiples within our community, but we've seen it risen within families between family members. We got some family stories around Some conversations around some of this, but that idea of how do we deal with challenges when we've been socially isolated, we haven't gotten feedback and we're in survival mode.
Speaker 2:It really makes it hard to show compassion, and I think that that's really, you know what, not only you shared that is needed, but I think it's the remedy for so many of the hurt that people feel post-pandemic, that they may not even know that they're experiencing, but will help all of us collectively start to recognize the pain people experience, cause what compassion is is being able to recognize pain and then do something to alleviate it.
Speaker 1:That's actually different than empathy.
Speaker 2:Empathy is like I see your pain, I get it, but compassion is like no, not only do I see your pain, but I'm going to do something to change it.
Speaker 2:And I think that that has been one of the biggest, not only pain points of the pandemic, but it's one of the biggest losses, because I think we don't necessarily, coming out of the pandemic, have the same sense of I am responsible for your wellbeing, I am responsible for someone other than my immediate family. Myself I'm responsible for other people and that has been a part of our community since we've been brought to this country. We have to support those who are in pain, even if they have nothing to do with us.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I think what the pandemic did in some ways is say we're all out here for ourselves and you, you know, take care of yourself. I'm going to take care of myself and don't you cross me. I will let you know. And that's what we really need to start to think about how we shift within the community.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. And speaking of specific to loss, that's one of the things that I could track a lot of and I'll actually I can speak about it, but not necessarily just loss of things or people, but loss of relationships. The pandemic really fractured a lot of the relationships that I thought were solid in my life. It exposed so many weaknesses in my relationships, and that was probably more so than the physical loss of people, cause you know, we all lost a lot of people, but I feel like I lost a lot of people, um, and never got a chance to mourn those people because, remember, they were burning bodies or burying people other places. When COVID first started, there were quite a few funerals of people that I was related to that I wasn't even able to go to.
Speaker 1:You know, zoom funerals, and historically I'm not going to dwell on this too long but historically we know that funerals are a place that the living get an opportunity to say goodbye to the people that we love. That has been, historically, something that humanity has celebrated and whatever and however you consider the person to transition, it's always been a sacred thing for humanity. It's always been something that we have been able to send people off in a way that honors their life. But more so, that we've learned now, or that I've learned now, is that funerals are for the people you leave behind, having the ability to say goodbye to somebody that you spent a collective conscious and physicality with and that you love and shared experiences with there. For us who are here because that's a tool, it's a specific mechanism that was invented way before us, that humans figured out this thing right here this honoring will allow the humans left behind to thrive through the transition and not mourn because they don't get to say goodbye.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so a lot of us are in mourning right now in men who aren't aware of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think one of the biggest pieces with that is that not only are people not aware of it, but they're not aware that it is okay to mourn.
Speaker 2:I mean, I know you were bringing up as something that we sometimes do and having a funeral, to say goodbye and honor people will make that less, but it's mourning in and of itself, is a healthy part of us being able to make that transition for folks who are no longer with us. And I think the thing about grief folks don't always understand is one grief is a process and not an event. And part of healing from grief means that you learn how to have a different kind of relationship with the person who's gone now.
Speaker 2:You don't end that relationship, you learn how to have a different kind of relationship with that person and when you start to see grief and you start to see death which we saw during the pandemic as a part of kind of revisiting our relationships with people and understanding it from a lens in which how can I continue to honor this person's life, their existence? A lens in which how can I continue to honor this person's life, their existence? It becomes something that can really put you in a place of being restored, and restored from not only the pain, but also restored in a way where you have that inspiration to connect with people without some of that hostility we talked about.
Speaker 2:Because I think a lot of the hostility that we see is people feel cheated. Yeah, they feel like they they missed out or have missed out on things that they deserve, that they belong, whether that's you know you lost out on a graduation, you lost out on a job during the pandemic, whether you lost out on relationships you should have had. This person should have lived to be 70, 80, 90 years old and they didn't, and and that can make you feel so angry that's mourning, that, yes, all of that is morning, yes, so much of that is a part of mourning.
Speaker 1:The thing that can happen, though, is that mourning in that way can become who you are if you do not process, handle it right, handle it in a way that yeah, allows you to kind of really honor that lost relationship and that's the trick too is because mourning is an action, you know, and I really haven't thought about it this way until you just said that. But mourning is an action, it's a thing that you, it's a process, and it's not about saying you're mourning meaning this is a moment in your life. Right now you're mourning, but you're mourning through things. We're all mourning through loss of life, loss of job, like you said. I mean further back than that immediate thing. We're still mourning not being who we thought we'd be, not having the family we saw.
Speaker 1:We're mourning our childhoods.
Speaker 2:It gets deep in some ways. Yeah, it does get deep but yeah, it's, it's a. It's a perpetual state in some ways, and the best thing you can do for yourself is to know that you're mourning yeah, to acknowledge that fact and and to acknowledge it in a way that it becomes a part of how you're experiencing the world, as opposed to it consumes you as the only thing that is your world.
Speaker 2:And I think that separation is hard for a lot of people because when you're just doing everyday things in life, you can be triggered, you can be reminded about this thing that you lost this person, that you lost this experience that you lost. And you know, part of the way you start to move beyond some of that loss that just feels so overwhelming is by being able to find meaning in what that loss has meant and in that meaning, finding ways that you can really incorporate that into rituals.
Speaker 2:You know you talked earlier about kind of the funeral is really a ritual.
Speaker 1:It's a ritual to process it, but that's just one ritual right.
Speaker 2:There are ways that you know. We may, you know, get up in the morning and we do our you know morning salutations or devotions or whatever else, and we do it because we were taught that by the person we've lost.
Speaker 1:Pray.
Speaker 2:Yep absolutely.
Speaker 1:Meditate.
Speaker 2:To pray, to meditate, get your life right, to start your day Right All of that. All of that is a part of how we really create that kind of inner balance and peace when it feels like the outside world is chaotic, and I think sometimes we don't think about those experiences as honoring someone specifically.
Speaker 2:And so if you start attaching that ritual that you do, or that you're starting, to you being able to honor that person, it starts to break up the form of grief that feels angry, that feels cheated because of the loss, and instead it redirects that energy to something that you're already doing but allows you to really be more inspired by what that person has left you to be able to continue to do. Think that because we don't actually talk about the things that happen after we dap our boys up, after we, you know, go home and we're in the room by ourselves and we're starting to think about these folks who we've lost or these situations that we lost. We all think that, man, everyone else is either okay or it's not that big of a deal to them when they're really struggling behind closed doors. And I think for us as men, it really is powerful when we just, out of the blue, text your boy and be like yo, you good, like how are you doing Right, because I think sometimes we feel like we're intrusive.
Speaker 1:But I also have a problem with that too, so I'll let you finish with that too.
Speaker 2:So I'll let you finish and then I I think. I think that folks sometimes feel like that's intrusive, especially, like we said, people had have gone into this kind of socially isolated mode and it's like yo don't come for me unless I call you don't come for me, just leave me alone, just leave me alone and and and I think that because we have mean this is a bigger conversation but I think we've created a society of exclusion and isolation.
Speaker 2:What I mean by that is we want to live places that are elite. That takes you away from people. We want to create spaces where it's exclusive and it's just for us and it takes you away from people, and while that can feel nice, it actually erodes these connections that we have. There's an author, his name is Matthew Desmond. He wrote this book called Poverty by America and it's an amazing book around why we have poverty in America, but a big part of it has been we've created societies and neighborhoods where we are actually designed to separate people, because we are striving to create like my own family, my own home, when there used to be multi-generational families, multi-generational homes how is it possible for a man to move through mourning, as you speak about so clearly?
Speaker 1:how is it possible for any, let alone a, but a human in general, who feels hopeless? See, I don't believe it. I know that the fundamental basis for progression and thought is to have hope. Thoughts are very similar to building a house or anything. You build on one, you take one, you build on another one. This is how humans have become so intellectually advanced. That's why we're the apex predators is because we know how to solve problems and fix them and grow. As we learn, we learn, we grow, we learn, we build, and so, but the only way we built is because we felt hope, period Meaning because we felt that there was something past the first thought. We kept going, we kept thriving, we kept trying, because we felt like there was another level or another place to get to.
Speaker 1:What I've noticed that exists now because of COVID-19, specifically with black men, is that we feel hopeless. There are so many of us that don't feel like the work we put in every day matters, don't feel like the hard exterior that we go out into the world with and then we have to keep it up when we get home. We don't feel like we can take our suits off at home. So many men feel that way. So many men feel like they're not seen in society because we have the advancement of gays, transgenders, women, you know.
Speaker 1:A lot of men feel invalidated by the correction in society and a lot of them had nothing to do with the reason why these things are fucked up as it is now. So a lot of black men feel that they're being punished by society. A lot of black men feel like there's nowhere for them to go and grow to. At its core, healing from any trauma, it starts and ends with belief because it's all here, like it's in our minds, that society values you. You don't feel that. Your community, your family, you know, and the world most of all. How does one properly mourn and heal if they feel hopeless?
Speaker 2:Yeah, hopelessness takes out everything that you need within yourself in order to keep putting one foot in front of the other. And when we talk about this idea of being able to restore hope, that is the key to us being able to not only help men in general black men in particular start to heal from not feeling valued in society but, especially with COVID-19, it's a magnifier right For systemic issues that were already in play, and the magnifier around that was that there are so many men black men who put their heart into so much work and into achieving for themselves and their family and not feeling that there was the return on their investment that they put in. And at the same time, you know, I want to challenge you a little bit, because I do think that when we think about creating a society that's fair for everyone and that includes, you know, gay, lesbian, women, trans, we are creating a space where the systemic issues that have oppressed black men are addressed as well, and I think we get-.
Speaker 1:Well, they should be, but they're not.
Speaker 2:Well, I don't think they're completely not.
Speaker 1:I think that there is When's the last time you've publicly heard anybody talking about the advancement of black men? Where was it?
Speaker 2:I have heard of it quite a bit Recently. Where was it? I? I have heard of it quite a bit recently. Where was it?
Speaker 1:harris did a whole, also a black woman has to talk about it. No, no, no, no, no, no. I'm like, but where is no where? But I think we shouldn't talk in absolutes.
Speaker 2:That's what I'm saying, because I think when we talk in absolutes, it does a disservice to us, because it creates a false reality, because I don't think all black men are hopeless. I don't think all black men are hopeless. I don't think all black men are downtrodden. I think there are black men with hope and who have vision. But I agree that there is systemic issues that are holding black men and folks in society who have been historically oppressed down.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I think that we need to not create spaces down, and, and I think that we need to not create spaces where we're saying, um, any person's oppression is more valued than others. But what I do agree with, well, I mean, I I think here's what.
Speaker 1:Here's what I think, though, and let's talk about this more valuable than others. Although we've stripped the prices of the value, there is oppression. People put that overrides other people create oppression hierarchies.
Speaker 2:They create these oppression hierarchies that's a fact that's.
Speaker 2:That is, that is a fact.
Speaker 2:But what I'm saying is we don't need to feed into that.
Speaker 2:We do not need to feed into creating these oppression hierarchies and we're creating a space right here to talk about the oppression historically that black men in particular, um, and, and you know, men and black men in particular have experienced.
Speaker 2:But I also think that we can't turn a blind eye to the fact of what patriarchy in our country has done. You know, when we talk about this rigid idea of success, this rigid idea what it means to be successful, it comes from an idea of the man is always in charge and has to carry everything on their own Right and you can't share that burden Right. And so to your original point around mourning. I think we hide the mourning because of that idea of what it means to be a man, and society reinforces that with how we're seen and the expectations around men. We're seeing and the expectations around men. And then, on top of that, when we talk about men who have been historically oppressed, like black men, you have the added burden of trying to not only take care of yourself but protect others, your family, your community from things that you see in society, and so I think for me, the big picture around a lot of this is COVID-19.
Speaker 2:picture around a lot of this is COVID-19,.
Speaker 2:it showed what society has been and it's made it even more clear of the things that we need to really have front of mind to be able to begin our healing but also empower us to heal one another, because because I think people sometimes get confused about trauma and the work of trauma and healing from trauma they think the moment that I say I've experienced trauma or I've experienced really hard life, I'm calling myself a victim and oh, for sure, and and that's a universal thought, I think too I think that's a universal thought, but I think it's it's a thought that doesn't serve us, because when you start to believe that, by you acknowledging the pain you've experienced and you saying that I want support for this pain means that you're a victim and you have committed to never being a victim, because a man isn't a victim you're shortchanging yourself from being able to really get the support that can heal you from something that you deserve to be healed from, and I think that that's what we're seeing in a lot of this mourning that we're talking about.
Speaker 2:Is that one, like you said, folks don't know that they're mourning. But two, because society has devalued, um, black men and men in, uh uh, you know, black men in, in, in the space of really being able to understand their feelings or or be able to express those feelings, it can be easy to feel like I don't deserve to have this feeling right, I don't deserve to feel like I'm mourning in this way.
Speaker 2:Right and and I think that that is part of the work is us giving each other permission to be able to say you deserve to be able to feel sad that's right, whatever you feel and you don't whatever you feel yeah whatever you feel, you don't have to just be like yep, yep, that happened and let's move on right, right, and I think that's what we're we're conditioned to do, and and so you know and not talk about it.
Speaker 1:Which is a major issue, yeah, with us in our community is the fact that we don't communicate and commune in certain ways, and even in our relationships and our friendships well, relationships, because I believe even friendships are all, they're all relationships In our relationships oftentimes we want to present ourselves, as you said earlier, as whole. We want to present ourselves, as you said earlier, as whole. I know for myself I have a very difficult time telling people when I'm having a hard time, I have a very difficult time complaining. It for me is just ingrained in me just to not. We just didn't complain in my family.
Speaker 1:My grandfather was the man in my life and is the man in my life who raised me and taught me how to be a man, and he just didn't complain. And so we take that as well. Because you don't complain, you're okay. And that's the the biggest problem for us in our communities that, although there are, and which is what I'm trying to for us to really dive into, is us being able to take the responsibility of our lives ourselves. And when you don't have your community, or if your girl ain't listening, or if you got a thousand kids and the situation's not perfect and you're distracted all day. If life is to you, I want to know how we help people get out of the shit that we're talking about.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:If life is happening to you, if you feel however you feel about society right now, in your history, in your past, it doesn't matter if it's right or wrong. Nothing matters to you when you are suffering in these ways. Matters to you when you are suffering in these ways. Yeah, so I just want to make sure that, as I continue my journey and my life's journey, that as I gather the tools to help myself, fix myself, so to speak, that I can share those tools with the people, um, I mean, and not just with the people that I want to, but with everybody, because I think that's humanity's way.
Speaker 2:I love that because I think so much that needs to happen to your original point is how do we restore hope? Right, how do we restore hope when hope feels lost?
Speaker 2:And for a lot of the situations and challenges that we face, they can really be demoralizing, they can make us feel like there isn't a reason to keep pushing forward and for us to really start to shift that narrative, to shift that story about who we are we have to start shifting the way that we really describe ourselves and the way that we connect with ourselves, and really recognizing the power that we have to shift and change these situations within you, because I think what happens so often is that we start to look out externally at cues around us for who we are, but that's what goes back to the church and the community communing with one another.
Speaker 1:That's that's how you learn the tools. Because there have been people. Let me tell you something Whatever you believe in, believe in it, but I believe in God and God. The way this thing is set up is just so incredible, dude. The people that have come before you. They're old for a reason because they've experienced what life is and they're supposed to teach the younger generation how to do it. And it just keeps, the whole process just repeats itself, just like a tree growing in the, you know, in a forest somewhere. It's just the cycle of life and it's that way. It's not that way for me or you, it's that way for everybody. That's what you're here for, yeah.
Speaker 2:You are here to help other people.
Speaker 1:Humanity is a community.
Speaker 2:Absolutely it's not a piece of a community it ain't mine, it's it's, it's a whole, it means humanity. We are a community. To your point, though I I think where we're at right now, especially with the younger generations, is we have to reimagine what it means to be in community, because I think that the you're right, people are old for a reason, like they've gone through things, they've learned things and they've done things, and at the same and they didn't die early.
Speaker 1:Dummies like how you gonna talk about an old person when they actually did something. You should be trying to do like they made it absolutely and make it it, it seeing that model right and on the flip side.
Speaker 2:I think part of what we really, I think can learn from each other is how do we learn from the younger ones who have a new vision of what the world can be? Because I think that sometimes, especially in our communities, we can get so focused on seniority that we forget, kind of, what are we talking about in the first place?
Speaker 2:I know I've had conversations with you know men in my family who you know. They are up there and they have so much wisdom to give. But I'm, you know, suggesting or someone who's younger than me is suggesting that hey, maybe the way that we are looking at having to go to work and feeling like we have to work, work, work until we can't work anymore, isn't the best way to live life. And that's actually driving us into the ground.
Speaker 2:And instead of that being something that we, as I think, to the ground right, and instead of that being something that we, as I think, men really say, maybe that is a different way to think about things. It can become a situation where we're like that's just not how the world works and you need to figure it out right and I think, particularly as black men, we're told that we have to take what the world is giving us.
Speaker 2:That's just the way the world works right no, that isn't just the way the world works, and that's part of what I mean about instilling that hope and power is we have to, um, as men, really think about what it means to be whole, because I think we're going after things that we think will make us whole right like the success, the money, the girls, whatever you want right things that you think will make you normal.
Speaker 2:Normal misconception yeah and and, and I I do think that by us being open to a lot of different voices the younger generation, the older generation, us coming together in these spaces and really being able to have a new way to listen, that's where the hope starts to come in, because I think so many times, especially when you're mourning and you're in grief, you're listening for what you want to hear as opposed to what you need to hear.
Speaker 1:Right, or you don't know at all. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or you don't know at all what to feel or think, or what it is Exactly.
Speaker 2:And I think, being in that space where it's OK to not know and to and to learn, it's okay to not know and to learn.
Speaker 1:That's where all of our life's experiences are for our brothers, like your friendships, your relationships with your tribe, with your crew, with whoever you have built to be your circle that you travel through life with. You're sharing information, you're giving each other knowledge, because humans operate very much like computers. We record all. There's never a time and again I love the way God created this there's never a time where you're not learning. You just aren't aware that you're learning. But your brain never sleeps. It's recording information. So everything we say in community, with one another, we're all absorbing those thoughts, feelings, expressions, emotions and experiences and taking them and building our tool chest. So when we meet that experience now, we know how to handle it. You don't have to go everywhere to figure it out if you've got friends who have but. But what I'm ultimately getting at is to how, with COVID-19, for a lot of my relationships it fractured and a lot of my friendships I spoke about, you know, family loss and things along you know earlier. But a lot of my friendships didn't survive because it weakened all of us in ways.
Speaker 1:I know for myself with the unbelievable amount of responsibility I had during COVID the responsibility of being a man, my own man, and a man that so many people in so many ways depend on. For me, I was grieving the whole damn time. I was in a state of perpetual grief, like a lot of people I would probably even say majority of men out there probably were in some form of mourning and grief during the entire time, and I no longer had the capacity to run the race that I did before. I couldn't thrive the way that I did before. I didn't have the bandwidth. I didn't thrive the way that I did before. I didn't have the bandwidth, I didn't have the energy I didn't have. You know, I couldn't call. In so many relationships in my life I've been the initiator. You know I'm the one that's calling, I'm the one that texts, and I know y'all got kids.
Speaker 2:I'm cool, you know, I'm the one that got it.
Speaker 1:We get together this time. I'm the one who like doing the group chats and you know I'm the one.
Speaker 1:I love friends like eager to hang out, want to be in your space, and. But 2019 changed my life. It literally changed my existence. It changed my ability to care for people the way that I did, and so the exact moment of grief and loss that I can pinpoint is when I realized I could never have the friendships that I had the way I had them, and the scariest part of that was wondering who would show up for me, was wondering when I stopped making these calls to people and you know, being responsible and accountable, um, would there be anybody there?
Speaker 2:for me, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And it was a catastrophic time for a lot of my relationships Um a lot of people that and I recently I heard somebody say the term lifers. You know friendships that have been with you for, like you know decades. You know they call them lifers now, and so I had seen myself lose like lifers you know what I mean.
Speaker 1:to the most sensitive, like nothings. It was almost like you spend years and all of a sudden it just like disappears in some time, in some ways. And I realized that after I went through my woe is me moment. Whoa, why the fuck y'all can't show up? I realized that I wasn't the only person that was fragile and broken. All of us were, all of us were trying to figure it out, and you, you know, they too, didn't have the bandwidth. And so now, the beauty of that is that so many relationships that I didn't consider to be At a certain place in my life had risen to the challenge of knowing that I needed something from people. I needed assistance, you know, and so that it's a place that most men can get to.
Speaker 1:The knowing that everything in your life is used for the greater good of your life, even when you can't see it in the moment, is for a reason, and the only thing in this lifetime that will ever kill it, that will ever keep you back, uh, you know, not slavery, not all the things that we've went through as as men, our families, women, all that we've endured and suffered in this country, out of everything we've gone through. The fact is, nothing can hold you back, but you Nothing. Mandela has said it a million times. There have been so many world leaders who says it, and if you need to experience it for yourself to know it, then I hope god lets you experience it. But your mind is your universe in, in the experience of your life. It doesn't matter what other people think you should think. If you can find the ability to, to salvage all of what's you and get rid of all of what's not you, it is a perfect, perfect harmony of what life is, because you are living in your purpose and every decision that you make in your life, whether it be good or bad. You're not resentful to the circumstances, you're not resentful to God, you're not resentful to the things you didn't do or the man you thought you would be. You become enlightened and empowered by knowing the truth of your life.
Speaker 1:So that's something that, as I navigated those relationships and the losses of those relationships, it cemented my knowings of my life and that's something that my grandfather, years ago, had told me that, as a man, that's when you reach manhood is when your knowledge, when you are using the knowledge you've acquired in this lifetime and you are wise enough and smart enough to see past everybody else, that has imprinted something in your mind, something in your mind. He's one of the the wisdom warriors of my life, but, um, I hate that. That was what I had to go through to get to you know, one of my knowings in my life, and so I also you and I have shared about some of the relationships and losses man and I'm talking about like folks. I just thought it was going to be here, like you know you know, and a lot of it's over things that really aren't even important.
Speaker 1:You know, and often that's what it is Right, yeah, man.
Speaker 2:And you know. Everything you're saying right now, too, just speaks to. What lessons can we take from these things that feel so painful in the moment? But can teach us things that will be with us for eternity, I mean, and one of the things that came to mind as you were talking was purging- it was.
Speaker 2:It was a moment of purging that really allowed those people, those relationships that weren't serving you, that weren't helping you become the person who you needed to be, that cementing that knowledge that your grandfather talked about. They needed to go. And you know, I heard this great saying that rejection is protection, god's protection, and that idea of being protected. God protecting you and having people around you protecting you from things that you didn't know would ultimately be harmful to you or your life, is a gift that we don't always know, is a gift in that moment, because it feels so painful, whether we like it or not. Purge something. Um, it's given us an opportunity to really connect with the things that really align with who we are and where we're trying to go, and that power you're talking about, like the power of our minds. Part of the reason why our minds are so clouded is because we have taken on too much, too many many people, too many responsibilities. We don't even have time to think.
Speaker 2:We don't have time to get clarity on things. And on top of that, we are sometimes and this is kind of why I challenged you earlier around how we feel as men.
Speaker 2:I do think there's some horrible things that we deal with and there's some hopelessness, but we've also been conditioned to have a scarcity mindset to think that there is not enough for us to be able to do what we need to do, and I really believe that part of this moment, this purging that has happened, is also being able to shift us to an abundance mindset where we can really see, in whatever is in front of us, what is the opportunity to grow, what is the opportunity to evolve, to shift, to change to, to be better, right and and and.
Speaker 2:If we're squandering this post-pandemic opportunity, if we're not looking into that, if we're not looking into what are the lessons from this pain, instead of just trying to find a way to not feel the pain yeah, trying to numb it, yeah, and that's another thing that we're knee deep in.
Speaker 1:So many young people and people in general like medicating themselves and drinking and smoking and trying to numb, yeah, this pain.
Speaker 2:Yeah, in this moment we've heard a lot about mental health crisis with young people. We've heard a lot about depression with older folks, and you know, I'm an OG, now I'm talking about myself.
Speaker 2:Older folks, yeah, you Older people yeah you, but I think it's important for us to be aware of what we look out for. I mean, there's some things that people don't always know are signs of depression. You know, there's something called anhedonia, where you used to really enjoy doing certain things and you don't do them anymore, and so you know you might have somebody in your life, a guy in your life.
Speaker 1:What's it called Anhedonia, anhedonia, anhedonia.
Speaker 2:It's a symptom of depression and it's one of those things like maybe your boy just all of a sudden doesn't want to play video games anymore and they always love playing video games and it seems like it's a little different. But you know, they're just doing their thing.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:But what could really be happening are things that they used to enjoy don't give them that same enjoyment, and that can be a sign that they may need a more deep check-in around, like you know, what else is shifting and changing in your life, and when you start to see things like people feeling like they want to just isolate and withdraw a little bit, um, you know they may feel like at times they are um, um changes are happening in their life that they don't really care what happens to them.
Speaker 2:They start having like less care for themselves, whether it's the way they're taking care of their hygiene, whether it's the way that they're dealing with different things. It can be signs that this is some hopelessness that we want to really connect with in a different way, and yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 1:How does one we're being taught in society there feels like this pressure cooker of that's my business? Why are you in women's business? Why are you saying that? Why are you the baby? You know, why did like that, why you leave? You know there is this freedom movement from people having accountability to other people, and I understand, I wholeheartedly understand, wanting to own everything in my existence as it is. But I'm also aware, fully aware, that I didn't get here by myself. I got here by some people saying hey, brother, you know, don't, don't walk with your head down, walk with your head up. You know, hey, man, why are you? You know such and such such. No, this is what you know.
Speaker 1:X, y and Z is what you need to do to get to this place, that place, there were people in our communities. Our communities would teach each other how, and even when our parents weren't there back in the day. You know, I hate to say this, I'm like an old person, but back in the day, not too too long ago, you were able to even say something to someone else's children. But now you know you can't even God forbid you say anything or stop someone else's child from what you think is harm, and then they feel that you're not allowing them to have the freedoms or the agency over their body in the moment. So let them jump in the ditch. But society has this new wavelength of we don't have accountability and responsibilities to each other, so living in this type of ether for a lot of people. How do they manage that?
Speaker 1:yeah past those moments yeah, it's.
Speaker 2:It's a question and a statement of rebuilding trust. People don't trust others. They don't trust their intentions. They don't trust what they're going to do. They. They believe that if they insert themselves in something that I may lose my freedom or my ability or my something I'm going to lose something.
Speaker 2:We're talking about loss, right, and so if there isn't trust there and the trust is lost in a way that makes people not willing to take a risk to to connect with each other. Then everyone kind of stays in their own corner and you don't actually start to build relationships that allow you to have a say and hold other people accountable and to be willing to be held accountable yourself, and I think that that's part of the problem. The people who want to hold others accountable often don't want to keep themselves accountable.
Speaker 2:So I think we break this cycle by asking people to hold us accountable in our lives, by being able to say, hey, I may be going through something at some point and I want you to check in on me, and I may not want you to check in in that moment, but I am giving you permission to hold me accountable. When we start giving other people permission to hold us accountable in situations where otherwise they wouldn't know how they could navigate it, we start to not only create spaces where that relationship is building, but we start to build trust, because we do things that we don't know will actually help us in the long run. Right, we're very bad at predicting what will actually help us. We'll. We'll think like, yeah, I just need to be on my own and I need to deal with this on my own.
Speaker 2:The moment you're talking to somebody who cares about you and you're thinking to me like, oh, my goodness, my, I feel more inspired, I feel more hope, your body's actually changing. There's there's something called uh we've heard of the stress response fight, flight or freeze or flee. There's another stress response called tend and befriend. When you actually connect with people who care about you, your body releases a stress reducing hormone called oxytocin yeah, and it allows you to really deal with that stress while also having the resources somebody else around you.
Speaker 2:And I think we fight that so much as men because we believe that we have to get through our problems by ourselves or we have to be perfect, or we have to have all of our boxes checked before before.
Speaker 1:But that that's a two-handed coin too, because you do need to have your shit together before you talk to somebody else about their shit being bad, because, at the end of the day, humans, it doesn't matter we, we, we believe what we see we believe what we see not what you say. You have to show people by example how to live a better life. Absolutely, not just be preaching from the basement.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, but I think that's part of the problem. People want to preach when you should be wanting to be curious, like, yeah, you may not have your shit together, but if you are in a place where you are not coming in to tell people how to live their life, but you're more curious about like, what do you think this thing?
Speaker 1:but some people do need to be told. Oh, yeah, absolutely Most people need to be told what to do.
Speaker 2:I mean, I would say most people. If you want to build a genuine relationship, most people need to be understood first, and then, from that relationship, telling them what to do is the best way for them to use what you're saying. Let me give you an example for them to use what you're saying. Let me give you an example, Like if we never met each other and I was like you know, Hosea, I think you just you need to go out and I think that you know you're dealing with the things with.
Speaker 2:You know you're a producer and you're dealing with your health and all that. You need to focus on your health. Forget about this show. It's not important. It Forget about this show. It's not important. It's going to be there. And if I did that outside of a relationship, I was just some random guy, some random older black man telling you that He'd be like who's this dude telling me? He doesn't know my situation, he doesn't know I have this show and I got this opportunity in my career and I think that we sometimes are too eager to tell people how to live their lives before building relationship with them, and so if you are really focused on building the relationship first, everything else I won't say, just fall in line, but people are much more willing to be held accountable by you right?
Speaker 1:so in the event that we don't have the time to build relationships, men.
Speaker 2:You always have time to prioritize, though.
Speaker 1:That's true, but what I mean in the whole, as the whole?
Speaker 1:micro picture is Men are supposed to Allow life to. We're supposed to allow the flaws of life to come into our space and lead and guide all of those scenarios and be able to guide you to the right color, like it's our job as humans to guide one another to the right places and spaces and time, not just men, but I'm speaking specifically to men and I believe that it is our consciousness, our race consciousness, that is what's suffering as black people, specifically black and brown people. I think our race consciousness has to change and a part of that I feel responsible and accountable to is my footprint. How do I make change in my life for the people and the things that I see are suffering and not not really understanding what tools they need in life so they can transition to the next level and next phase in their life?
Speaker 2:And can you break down that race?
Speaker 1:consciousness a little bit in terms of what you think. So a race consciousness actually we're all under. If you're on social media, you're certainly under consciousness you know that right, oh yeah so it's ultimately the thought of humanity. Like right now, the race consciousness of all humans is focused on the election. So a consciousness is something that we all experience without you don't even know that it is, but we can't talk about. There's nobody any of us can talk to and say Donald Trump and Joe Biden, and they're not going to know, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah so everybody's dialed in to this frequency. They've taken the word frequency and made it some weird stuff, but the frequency that we all function on before we have shared understanding around what's happening in the world or this moment in just what's happening period.
Speaker 1:It doesn't have to be specific to anything it's consciousness it's also us having the before we had language the best way to describe it for whoever isn't aware but before we had language. Much like animals. It's funny we call animals animals but much like with animals how there's a language that they use without talking. Without talking, there's a consciousness that exists, there's a vibration that my dogs, when they're running around, they're talking and communicating with one another in a way that they understand. Okay, this means go, stop, go. So that's, in a way, a consciousness too, because it's not seen or said or even heard, but it's a vibration, a frequency that and people mean a lot of different things by it.
Speaker 2:That's why I asked you because oh, yeah, yeah audience to really understand how we, as, um you know, men and in society, create a consciousness that allows some of these rules that we talk about, these unspoken rules, to lean toward us being healthier in a in a way that, uh, historically we haven't, and we talked about a lot of the ways that that has shown up.
Speaker 2:But I think, particularly in this space that we're looking at right now in history, a big part of that is how do we break through a consciousness of isolation being the better route, the better space for us to be in.
Speaker 2:Because, that connectedness is really, I think, going to ultimately to your question earlier be the healing that will allow us to give each other permission to hold each other accountable and guide each other in these different ways. But if we keep finding ways to isolate ourselves, it's going to just put us in a box of all the things that we've seen hostility, anger and won't give us the opportunity to learn and practice compassion that we were talking about earlier that we need for others, but also that we need for ourselves.
Speaker 1:That's right, yeah, that's a really big thing is having compassion for ourselves. Yeah, and that comes from an awareness that you have to have with yourself, yes, from your relationship with you.
Speaker 2:Right, absolutely absolutely, and and I feel like when you are in this survival mode that we've been talking about, it's hard to have that awareness of yourself, because you're constantly looking at all the things that may threaten you outside and you need someone to be able to bring you back to yourself that's right and that's that's you know, the ability for us as men to check in and, even to what you were saying around accountability, be able to help us bring us back to ourselves, Like I always think about Lion King.
Speaker 1:remember who you are oh yeah, you know One of the most powerful moments in the entire film the entire film. I know I did James Earl Jones no justice, but it's funny, as I heard his voice like it's, so it's etched in my mind.
Speaker 2:It's so etched. But I think these things that happen in life, like the pandemic and all these other things, they make us forget who we are and and how do we create communities around us, us people, the men around us, who will be relentless about reminding us about who we are, reminding us about the power we have, our ability for our mind to change situations around us and for us to live in the uh, a mindset of abundance and what we can potentially do in the world, because it's so easy to default to the scarcity mindset I think about how I was.
Speaker 2:I was raised and it's just little things Looking for a parking space.
Speaker 1:Thinking I'm not going to find a parking space.
Speaker 2:And that mindset you don't think about at the time is a scarcity mindset.
Speaker 1:Like there's not enough for me.
Speaker 2:I can't get it, but I actually practiced this recently, like there's a parking space enough for me. There's not enough for me. I can't get it, but I've actually practiced this recently, like there's a parking space waiting for me. And I found parking spaces quicker because your energy goes where your attention goes. That's where your energy flows.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And so the more we start to create spaces where black men can dream and be in abundance and be in that space, I think we'll see more of the things that are right in front of us and we'll be more energized to fight the systems that are also historically have oppressed us in our community. And it's that type of, I guess, duality, that energy of both abundance while also seeing the real systemic issues and being willing to fight that.
Speaker 2:That gives us the the tools to be able to kind of keep pushing forward with hope. There's a concept in this um um, it's called radical healing and yes, I've heard of it, yes, radical healing is beautiful because one of the the tenets of radical healing is having joyful resistance. You think sometimes joyful resistance.
Speaker 1:Yes, that sounds interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah sometimes you think to fight you have to be angry, you have to be hostile, but sometimes you're fighting just by having joy. You know, we talk about black boy joy.
Speaker 2:We talk about yeah when we create spaces where black men can just be joyful, where men can just be joyful, we're actually fighting that consciousness that we talked about, where you have to be the one who's on top, you have to be the one who's in charge, you have to be the one who's fighting in this angry, in this hostile, in this frustrated way to get what you need, and you're.
Speaker 2:You're creating something that allows us, as men, to experience a different kind of freedom, because I'll tell you, joy is freedom, and I think we don't always have the opportunity to experience it because of what's around us, but also because of how we think yeah, and I would dare to say that it's a hundred percent.
Speaker 1:That's actually a great place for us to to end. This, too, is because I would say it's a hundred percent what you think, because joy is all internal.
Speaker 2:It's not an external thing.
Speaker 1:And I think the best way for one one thing that I heard years ago ago I don't remember who said it, but uh, the saying goes to thine own self be true, and that couldn't be more real, that that's probably one of the most real statements of humanity is to thine own self be true, because it is absolutely true what they say.
Speaker 1:And then the singular example I can think of right away is you know, put your seatbelt on first. But the truth is, as men, you are nothing without yourself. If we don't have relationships with ourselves, if we don't have check in time with ourselves, if we don't not give up on ourselves, if we don't give up on our thoughts, our dreams, our hopes, if we don't give up on our thoughts, our dreams, our hopes. And not only giving up, we have to actually do what it takes to acquire that joy and those dreams. And the biggest thing I think we can learn as a whole, as black men, is that you are not alone. And not only are you not alone, it is not your job to save the world. And not only are you not alone, it is not your job to save the world, it is your job to save yourself, because when you save yourself. You save everybody else by example, and I think we just went through a lot of variations of proving that that statement is true.
Speaker 2:All I got to say is amen brother, amen brother.
Speaker 1:So thank you for tuning in to another episode of Goodfellas. I am your host, hosea Chanchez, and I'm here with Dr Isaiah, and this is a simple mental space for men to heal and grow. It's by black men, but it is for everybody. Let's grow y'all. I'd like to thank you guys personally for watching today's episode, and I'd also like to ask you to spread the word about our community. We're small and we're mighty, but we're healing and growing as men, and thank you in advance for helping share that. I'd also like to thank Dr Isaiah Pickens for coming through and just being a brother, being a sounding board and a friend, and everybody needs that in their life. So if you want to help us keep the conversation going or if you need to have a chat yourself, you can always reach out to us on our Facebook, our Instagram or our TikTok. Fellas, let's grow.
