I think the one thing about life is it's all uncertain that we never know where we’re going to end up or what's going to happen. Let me share a personal experience. I was one of five children raised by a single mother, and there was a period in our life as a youngster where we were homeless and we lived here in Newark, in a station wagon for some period of time. And at that time, without question, I had no idea what the next day was going to hold, whether we want to make it to the next day or not. But I knew that we wanted to get to a better place and the only way to do that was to survive to the next day, stick together, help each other and make it through that experience. Although I would not wish that on anybody it was certainly a life altering experience that let me know that you can almost get through anything and that humans are very resilient people. We can make it through difficult times, and hopefully you can use those experiences as a foundation to do something so much better because you know that whatever is facing you now can't possibly be as difficult as what you've gone through before and you can succeed.

I think you have to expect uncertainty. You have to understand that it is coming. No one has all the answers and there you will be thrown curve balls and you have to be okay with the potential outcomes and prepare for them. But you have to; uncertainty is very difficult for a lot of people. Certainty is one of those basic human needs that drives a lot of people. When they feel like they don't have it, that's where you can get out of control and be very anxious and you can allow yourself to succumb in a very negative way. If you don't learn how to handle the fact that uncertainty is just a part of life, I do believe you have to have a lot of faith, right? You have to have a lot of faith that, in the end, it won't always be like this. In the end, this is fixable. In the end, I can rise above the difficulties that are in front of me and sometimes you don't know how you're going to get through it, and you are very uncertain about the future. And it does make you nervous in your approach in dealing with life. But you really don't have a choice. Like you can't, you're never going to get. But so far in life, if you think you're going to be confident and certain and secure about everything going on around you - it doesn't work that way. So, I can't look to have constant certainty in my life. I can only develop, make sure I work on myself from within, so that I'm strong enough to face the uncertainty and figure out what I can do to either fix it or deal with it and adjust my own mindset about it.

As you move through life, obstacles, adversity, and challenges will arrive. The unfortunate part of where we are in the world today is we think that success is here to there. In reality, success is here to the bottom. It takes you up, it brings you back to level. And we need to become more comfortable with the level of discomfort that we will experience on this journey towards economic success, family success, academic and educational success. I don't think that success, the word alone, should be described as only positive. Without failure, there is no success. Without discomfort, there aren't happy outcomes. So by embracing it, accepting it, taking action against it, and learning from it, are the ways in which you can bring joy and happiness first and foremost to your life. And then secondly, it'll just adequately prepare you for discomfort and the constant of uncertainty that you will with certainty experience over a lifetime of living on this earth.

Well, you have to be uncomfortable sometimes because how else are you going to grow? How else are you going learn? If we only did everything that made us comfortable, then we would never go anywhere because we would never be able to step outside of that comfort zone and expand our mind and realize what we're truly made of. Because it's those uncomfortable moments that help define us and shape us and allows us to grow as individuals to be able to achieve things. I mean in life, there are going to be so many uncomfortable moments or scary moments. So that's the other thing. Comfortable, scary things that produce anxiety. You don't avoid. You're unsure about something and you have to be able to do them anyway.

Everybody has a comfort zone. Everybody has a place where they feel like, this is where I belong, this is how I feel the best. This is where I feel the most comfortable. And frankly, the question you got to ask yourself is, is that all there is? You can't get to grow as a person without sometimes being uncomfortable. So anybody who wants to grow has to feel comfortable with being uncomfortable. Eventually it gets much easier to do. The more you do it, the more you realize that the uncomfortable feeling is not a bad thing. It's a good thing. It's okay to be there and then you can push through that to actually learn and grow and become a better person. But sometimes it's very easy to just do the same things we've been doing all the time, playing this video game after school instead of challenging yourself to read this book or to learn something new or to go to this club. Nobody I know goes to that club. I'll have to meet new people. Well, that's okay. What's the club about? Is the club teaching you something new? Introducing you to some new people, some new ways of doing things that may help you in the future? All the people that I know, and I've talked to a lot of people that have been very successful, all talk about that moment where they got out of their comfort zone and got into that growth zone that helps them to become a better person.

Yeah, uncertainty is tough. One thing I learned from therapy in the first couple of sessions was you can only control what you can control. And we all need to realize that there's certain things we cannot control. If we are having a bad day and maybe we want to go for a walk, but it's raining outside, it's torrential downpour, we can't control turning the rain off so there's no use of being aggravated about it. But what we can do is we can find somewhere quiet to sit down and just realize that I am in a very stressful state of mind. Let me find some peace and do something that will make me positive and happy and something that will make me progressive. That's really what you can control. So you just try to work on yourself in ways you can. I think the best way to do that is just kind of really understand who you are. (28:32): That takes time, but when you really know who you are, you believe in yourself. Again, it goes to confidence. Even during these uncertain times, you'll prevail. You'll get yourself out of it. And I've been there and even recently I've been there. And when I think about those times, I think about times where I've been there previously and I'm like, oh, well, I remember that time where I felt this same way, but guess what? That was a year ago and I got out of that situation. I'm in a better place today. So now that I feel like I'm in another uncertain situation, I've got to remember that if I keep on being positive and proactive, I can get out of this situation and in months, days, years from now, I'll be in a better place. So it's positivity, positive reinforcement in the mindset.(29:26): So this isn't confession, but maybe it's always been, Kim kind of suggested this to me. If you could say one thing that you've made a mistake on, I'm not trying to make it say you did that you not regret, but you may have done over and then what you learned from it because life is up and down or it could be something where you were down, something happened and then you kind of recovered from it.

For me, I've learned that dealing with it directly, calling it out to people when it happens is the best way to deal with it. Like I said, a lot of times some people may not understand what they're saying or doing to you and how it's affecting you. If they're good people, they'll try to correct it. There will be those people who are mean-spirited. And it took me later on in life to realize that. Some people who you think are nice don't really have your best interests at heart. But I believe in being honest and confronting it and just saying to that person, listen, when you said that or you did that, this is how I interpreted it and this is how you’re making me feel, and I'm having this dialogue with you so we can understand each other. So, I know really what's going on. And with the people who really didn't mean it, there's usually a good outcome. The people who really meant to do something, they either shied away, stayed away from me, or tried to do things underhanded, behind your back. They reveal themselves. So, my advice is sometimes it's just about approaching the person and just saying, listen, this is the situation. This is how I feel. Let's have a discussion about it. And their true intentions will be revealed.

The way in which confidence comes about, you're oftentimes born with it, and I was not, but it gets further developed as you win and as you lose. And so, you learn a lot of lessons in both scenarios and out of those scenarios, you gain confidence to continue to take on various tasks. There's no better feeling than winning. I can attest to it having won a lot, but equally as important and equally as helpful in building a career and trying to become a better son, a better community member. It's the lessons that you learn in the losses that matter. You have to look yourself in the mirror and you say, Hey, are we going to stand up and are we going to go forward or are we not? And oftentimes if you are honest with yourself and you're willing to say, I'm willing to go forward, there is the first step in developing confidence and adversity and challenge during duress. As you're walking to school and things happen, what do you do? You have to look up and you have to look at yourself in the mirror and find a way to go forward. That is a form of confidence. Confidence shouldn't be conflated with arrogance or self-fulfillment. It's about having the will to go forward. That's how I think about confidence.