Fatima Bey: 0:04

This is MindShift Power Podcast, the number one critically acclaimed podcast where we have raw, unfiltered conversations that shape tomorrow. I'm your host, fatima Bey, the MindShifter, and welcome everyone. We have today with us Lawrence C Harris. He is a youth empowerment speaker from Philadelphia, pennsylvania, here in the US, and you've heard from him before. This man is a powerhouse of knowledge and he is only 19 years old and I absolutely love it. So here today we're here to talk about something a little different. As a youth empowerment speaker, many of Lawrence's peers really genuinely talk to him, send him messages and have heart-to-heart conversations with him. So he's here representing his peers so that we as adults can hear the pulse of American youth. So, lawrence, your peers feel very comfortable talking to you. Yes, yes.

Fatima Bey: 1:14

And we're going to talk about just four things that are probably the biggest that Lawrence hears from his peers, so I will let you take it away from there, lawrence.

Lawrence C. Harris: 1:27

Thank you. I often like to tell people that well, this is actually what you say very often is that real change happens where real conversations begin, and sometimes those real conversations are hard to admit. And these are four very hard to admit truths I hear constantly. I feel like I can't talk to anyone without being judged. I don't even know what's wrong with me. I pretend everything's okay, but I know it's not. I love him too much to leave, even when he cheats. I'm going to give you all a moment to let that sink in. These are the words of young teenagers 15, 17, 18. These are the feelings of the people you go to class with. The people on your sports team, the people in your after-school club could be the person sitting next to you and you never know it, because it's very rare that people feel safe enough to open up. And there are much harder things that people experience thoughts that go through their head believing that they don't even know how to love themselves. But we can sit all day and talk about the problem. We can sit all day and talk about how painful this is, but in order to begin the healing, we need solutions. What can we do If you're a teenager?

Lawrence C. Harris: 3:06

What can you do to help yourself? If you have a friend, what can you do to help them? Or maybe it's your child. Maybe it's the person who you coach and you're their football coach. Maybe you're a summer camp counselor and you notice there's a kid who always seems a bit down. What can you do? What are some suggestions you can make to them? Firstly, encourage them to journal.

Lawrence C. Harris: 3:33

Often we, as young people, don't understand ourselves because we've never been given the freedom or the opportunity to do so. Because if you just take an honest look around opportunity to do so, because if you just take an honest look around, there are so many things that take us out of our self-understanding. Oh, I need to look good for people on social media. I need to look good to impress the people in my class. What are my family going to think of me? What if my grades are too low? What about all these things that are telling me what I should and should not be, what the news is telling me I should be, what music is telling me I should be, what the movies are telling me I should be?

Lawrence C. Harris: 4:13

But journaling allows people to sit down and have the safety and the comfort to just write on the page, because the page don't judge you. The journal doesn't judge you. It allows you the freedom to just say what you want to say. Get it out and it'll listen. It's there for you. It helps you to understand yourself, and maybe you don't know how to say it. You don't know how to tell somebody what you're feeling. You just don't know the words. But when you sit and think about it and you write it down, it helps you to find the words. It helps you to find the strength to tell somebody what's going on.

Lawrence C. Harris: 4:54

Another great one that you can do simply go outside. If you lock yourself into a room all day and there's trash everywhere and there's dirty clothes and you're stressed out and your room is dark, it's going to make it harder for you to feel safe. It's going to make it harder for you to feel like there's opportunity in the world and that life is beautiful because you haven't stepped outside and seen how beautiful the world is. Yes, there are things that go on in the world. Yes, there is issues with the safety of your city or politics. You can even make it that big. Yes, there are world tragedies. Yes, there's war, but there is also a blue sky. There is also a blue sky. There is also green grass. There is also things to be appreciative of, and I know it's hard to find the beauty when you feel like the world falling apart. I know it's hard to find a reason to get out of bed in the morning. I know it's hard to find a reason to love yourself when you feel like everyone and everything is holding you back yourself, when you feel like everyone and everything is holding you back. But you have the power to step outside that door, take a deep breath and say I'm alive. You have the power to do that.

Lawrence C. Harris: 6:13

And when you do decide you want to speak to somebody maybe it's a friend, a family member, a counselor and say, hey, I'm feeling really sad and I don't know what to do, slowly but surely you open up. You don't need to go right into the deep end and tell them about the most painful things you're going through at home. You don't need to go right into the deep end and tell them that you're having thoughts of hurting yourself and hurting other people. You can start on the surface and, layer by layer, go deeper. You can say I'm feeling really stressed out today and they're going to ask well, why are you stressed out? I'm stressed out because my family member did something to me, or somebody said something to me in class, or people are bullying me online and then you go deeper and deeper and then you show them the hard things Because it's easier to dip your toes into the pool than dive head first.

Lawrence C. Harris: 7:08

You don't have to dive head first into your deepest traumas and your pain and your sorrow. You can let them in slowly because it gives you the power to decide who you let in. It gives you the power to decide who you let have that access and when you see that they're not judging you, it helps you to trust them. It helps you to trust people and know that they're not just pretending to care. They actually do. No matter how hard it feels, there are people who genuinely care about you. It's just our mind starts playing tricks on us and makes it hard for us to see it, and in that process it's not going to be easy.

Lawrence C. Harris: 7:52

You're going to have to come face to face and admit that maybe the reason why you have trouble leaving your boyfriend, who keeps cheating on you, is because growing up, that's what your dad did to your mom. That's what your uncle did to your aunt, that's what your uncle did to your aunt, that's what your friends' boyfriends do to them, and because you know it's bad for you, but it's familiar. Unfortunately, we often go to the thing that is familiar, even if we know it's bad for us. You know that man is bad for you, but it's familiar, you understand this. You know what's in front of you and it's like you start to think that, oh, it's not that bad, but you see it right in front of you. You start to make excuses. You start to make excuses for people for mistreating you, and I'm not saying that you go tell everybody that, oh, it's my way or no way.

Lawrence C. Harris: 8:45

No, you need to love yourself enough to know when somebody's bad for you and to leave, not because you're mad at them, not because they're a bad person, but because you love yourself. And the more you love yourself, the more you are willing to say no to that person who treats you bad, to say no to that job that keep disrespecting you, to say no to that person who's trying to make you do something you know you don't want to do, to say no to that party, to say no to that alcohol, to say no to that substance, to say no to that bad habit. And I know it's easier said than done but, like I tell people all the time, if it's easier said than done it's probably worth doing. It's easier said than done to have the strength to tell somebody that you're hurting. It's easier said than done to tell somebody that, hey, I'm tired of being here. To tell somebody that, hey, I don't like how you're treating me. To tell somebody that, hey, I don't like we keep going out doing this bad habit.

Lawrence C. Harris: 9:50

It's easier said than done, but if you don't do it you might end up with an addiction. If you don't do it, you're going to end up having people take advantage of you. If you don't do it, you might even end up dead because you didn't let somebody know that I'm having these thoughts of hurting myself, I'm having these thoughts of hurting somebody else. If you don't let it out, it's just going to build and build and build and inflate yourself like a balloon and then you'll just pop. You might pop and hurt yourself.

Lawrence C. Harris: 10:20

You might pop and hurt somebody who you didn't mean to. You might pop and start self-sabotaging your relationships. You might pop and hurt somebody who you didn't mean to. You might pop and start self-sabotaging your relationships. You might pop and self-sabotage that job. You might pop and self-sabotage your education, but at the end of the day you don't even know who these people are. You don't know if that person met you in class, what they're going through. So before you say something mean to somebody, before you say that somebody is emotional or they're irrational or oh, they're just being dramatic, you need to think you don't know, unless they tell you. So give everybody the love and respect and care that you want, because you don't know what they're going through.

Fatima Bey: 11:07

I'm going to say I almost forgot for a second that this is my show. I was just a member in your audience.

Lawrence C. Harris: 11:12

Thank, you Because that really came from the soul. I've seen people who had such bright, promising futures but they ended up dating the wrong person. They ended up having a kid when they was a teenager. They ended up an addict. They ended up in jail Because they just didn't talk about it.

Fatima Bey: 11:43

Yes, and you just said so so much. And I want to point out for a moment to those listening specifically to adults for this portion. You just heard a boatload of wisdom coming from a 19 year old. A 19 year old, and there are people in their fifties that still haven't gotten a clue about some of the things that he just said. It's not about age, it's about maturity, which is not equivalent to age, and he is living proof of what I talk about all the time. Just because someone is young doesn't mean that they don't have wisdom and that they don't know anything and that we should treat them like oh, you're just a little kid. What I just heard was not a little kid. What I just heard was someone that's hard to believe that he's only 19. Now, lawrence, could you tell me what those four issues were again? Let's review them. Could you just say the whole lot and let's go back to what those four were again.

Lawrence C. Harris: 12:40

Those four were. I feel like I can't talk to anyone without being judged. I don't even know what's wrong with me. I pretend everything's okay, but I know it's not. I love him too much to leave, even when he cheats on me All right, I'm going to reword some of that.

Fatima Bey: 13:00

So let's go back to I don't know what'sats on me. All right, I'm going to reword some of that. So let's go back to I don't know what's wrong with me. That one bothers me so much because I know how true it is. So many of your peers are out there thinking they're stupid, there's something wrong with them, when often there isn't. They just don't fit into the stupid little box that our society says you're supposed to fit into.

Lawrence C. Harris: 13:26

Yes, that's that's been so evident, not only for me personally, but so many people I've known. Because just think of it this way Right, I am a black man living in America, so there's an expectation that, oh, he must like basketball or football, or he must be into this certain thing, or he must smoke, or this or that. But then people meet me and it's like a shock to them. They're like hold up, you don't play basketball, you don't smoke, you like to go fishing, what? And that's been how my entire life been.

Lawrence C. Harris: 14:07

I've never fit into the box. And what you just mentioned there is that the box is like this stupid construct that is meant to limit us, because it's not that. Oh, I don't fit in. No, you're not meant to, you're not meant to trap yourself in these four walls that people go through life thinking that, oh, if I don't dress this way, no one's going to like me.

Lawrence C. Harris: 14:35

If I'm not six foot five and make a million dollars a month, women don't like me. I am five foot six". I make nowhere near a million dollars a month and I don't even have a car. Oh, if I don't wear a size 2 dress, men don't like me. There are men who like every single color, shape, size under the sun. But when we start thinking about this, bought in expectation Of what we need to be, we forget that hold up. Maybe that way your voice, randomly cracked In the middle of your sentence, would be really good for you If you were a comedian. And wait, you always loved cracking jokes as a kid, but the people around you Didn't have the same sense of humor as you. You just need to find your people and realize that the box doesn't need to trap you.

Fatima Bey: 15:32

I say this all the time, and I did an episode a few weeks ago, I think I called it breaking the jeans that we put on you. You have to go back and look. But I talked about the fact that we need to stop buying into the bullshit, stop buying into believing everything we're told, believing that our society says well, you have to fit into this way, you have to go to college this exact way, you have to do this. No, we don't, at least not in this country. We have freedom, we have choice, and we need to start questioning everything that we've been taught, because a lot of what we've been taught is absolute bullshit and it fits in for others, but it doesn't fit in for us, and part of that is finding out who we are as people. Right?

Lawrence C. Harris: 16:43

Yes, and something you just touched on that actually reminded me of the right Every news station in America is ran by the same three companies. Every news station is the same three organizations, 95% of the food is ran by the same two, and the biggest producer of beef, chicken and potatoes in the world is McDonald's. So, if I can make you, another great point is I learned this while working at McDonald's. So anyone who listened to this, you're not going to want to eat McDonald's, mcdonald's, mcdonald's has actual contracts with hospitals saying that they cannot discourage you from eating McDonald's. Now you would think to yourself well, why would they do that? Very simple, they can't control what a hospital is allowed to say, but they can control whether or not we give you money. So you can only say what we will pay you for.

Fatima Bey: 17:44

That goes round back to the same point Because I think that's a whole other conversation that I probably will do an episode on but the fact that we are believing what we're told. We're believing that there's something wrong with us because we don't say things a certain way. There's something wrong with us, like you said, because we don't like the same things that the mainstream is supposed to like, and a large part of it, especially for your generation, that wasn't as far present in my generation, is the fact that social media is a major part of your life. It's a part of your existence and has been your entire life. So we had magazines and you have social media, but magazines weren't as intense as what you have today.

Fatima Bey: 18:25

So where you differ is the influences that you have in your generation for what you're supposed to be, and a lot of it's a lie. A lot of it's a lie, and I want to encourage all of you out there and I know that Lawrence so much said so, or a little earlier. Encourage all of you out there and I know that lawrence so much said so a little earlier. You do not have to be what society says you need to be. You need to find out who you are. Yeah, and be that person, and more than likely that will break the mold of what they say you're supposed to be. So many people spend their whole lives being miserable because they're trying to fit into a mold that other people, who didn't create them, say that they're supposed to be.

Lawrence C. Harris: 19:04

Yes, and here's what here is firstly, how you can figure out who you are, because this is such a vague term that people throw around. I need to find myself. I need to figure out who I am. Here's what you actually need to do. You need to stop trying to find. You need to uncover, because you are inside of you.

Fatima Bey: 19:28

You got to repeat that about 25,000 more times. Can you say that again? You need to what?

Lawrence C. Harris: 19:34

You need to stop trying to find yourself and you need to uncover it, because you are inside of you. Think of it this way right, if I looked at you and I said, show me you, you would say, okay, look me, I'm pointing at myself. This is me. No, it's not. You're not your body. Because if I can just say, oh, I'm my body, that would mean I am everyone, I'm not everyone. Okay, well, am I my thoughts? Okay, well, show me where you are in your brain. You can't point to yourself. So that means that you are beyond the physical. Now we're getting into more of like a spiritual thing or religious thing. However you want to take this, you are not defined by how you look. You are not defined by what people say you are. You are actually defined by what you say and what you believe. You are Great example of this, when I believe it is Exodus 3.14.

Lawrence C. Harris: 20:45

Long story short for those who aren't familiar with it Moses. He goes up to this mountain and he sees God and he says well, I'm going to go back to the people. Who am I supposed to say has sent me? And God simply says say I am has sent you. Now, what you can take from this is if God himself would identify as I am. Whatever or whatever you're throwing after, I am, after that eternal present. After that, eternal I am. That's what you claim you are that what you are imprinting on yourself, and the way you figure out who you genuinely and authentically are is play a character, figure out what do I want to be? What sets my soul on fire when I think about that thing I wanted to be when I was younger? What sets me on fire? Is it being a a rock star? And you come from a neighborhood of people who their favorite genre is country, but you want to go be a rock star. If that would set your soul on fire, get that guitar and then play around. Try different fashion styles, try different clothing, different hairstyles, and you'll figure out what you genuinely connect with, not because you're trying to find it, but because you're going through the layers of uncovering.

Lawrence C. Harris: 22:12

That's not me. I don't want to be a doctor. My family would tell me, Lawrence, you'd be a doctor, you should be an engineer, you should do this, you should do that. But I don't want to do that. Right, I don't connect with it. I connect with inspiring people, motivating them, giving them something of substance and value that can change their life. This is me.

Lawrence C. Harris: 22:33

And when you are yourself in every room, you go in. That's when you are authentic, you are genuine and the world will bless you for that. But before you get the blessing, people will try to put you back into that box. It's like the real genuine. You cannot fit into the life that you were told you had to be. You were told you have to talk this way, dress this way, look this way.

Lawrence C. Harris: 23:03

But when you start being the real you, it's like the rule test you. It says oh no, come back. It's too dangerous out there. It's too dangerous to try that career idea that no one in your family has done. It's too dangerous, start your own. It's too dangerous to start your own business. It's too dangerous to wear your hair how you want to wear your hair. It's too dangerous, come back with us. You can't go back Because if you go back you're going to realize that you were sleepwalking. But now your eyes have been opened and you see the truth and people are going to call you crazy, they're going to call you weird, but at the end of the day, when you connect with yourself and you love yourself genuinely and authentically for who and what you are. It's like eternal bliss. It frees you from yeah, you might still care a little bit about what people think of you, but you're not a prisoner to it.

Fatima Bey: 24:01

Yes, and a prisoner. We don't want anyone to be Well.

Lawrence C. Harris: 24:07

Lawrence I. It's like you. It's like a prisoner mentally, but the irony is that you have the key. You can turn the key. It's just once you unlock that door, it ain't no going back. You got a whole lot of friends in the prison cell. You got a whole lot of people who spend their whole life trapped in the box. But when you decide I'm going to leave the box, you have to wander out into the wilderness and then find people who had the same courage to be themselves in a world where most people are like I'm gonna just stay here where it's safe, even though the safety is actually an illusion, because you're safe inside of a prison cell.

Fatima Bey: 24:53

I like what you said about leave the box. I think that paints a picture of everything, most of what you're talking about. And, lawrence, I have very little words to say and that's hard for me to do, but you've said so much and you've said it so powerfully and I'm hoping that some of your peers, when they listen to this, really take to heart even just bits and pieces of what you said, because it can change a mindset and therefore change your mind and, as my tagline says, there's power in shifting your thinking. So, lawrence, thanks once again for coming on. Again, I'm expecting to you to see, I'm expecting to see you soar and go into much higher places. To see, I'm expecting to see you soar and go into much higher places. That's just going to happen. So, thank you again for coming on and I appreciate you. I appreciate you coming on and talking to our youth and allowing the adults to hear you as well.

Lawrence C. Harris: 25:50

I appreciate being here too, and if anybody wants to see more of my content, you can find my YouTube, tiktok, instagram. All of them are Lawrence C Empowers. Website is lawrencecharriscom. Books are on Amazon.

Fatima Bey: 26:09

And his information will be in the show notes or the podcast description.

Lawrence C. Harris: 26:13

Oh yeah, and you just remind me of the last thing I meant to say too. Oh yeah, and you just remind me of the last thing I meant to say too. If you happen to be a podcast host, an event coordinator, you are a school principal or you know one, which you definitely do. You know your cousin or your aunt or your niece or nephew is a school principal. Email me, lawrence, at Lawrence C Harris dot com If you're in America.

Fatima Bey: 26:42

I will come, and now for a mind shifting moment. I want you to take a moment to think about a lot of the wisdom that you heard come out of this young man who is only 19. For the adults listening, especially you, this young man is living proof that our youth are not wasted, that they're not all lost. In fact, there's a whole reservoir of wisdom in the ones we're ignoring. Just because they're young doesn't mean they're inexperienced or that they lack wisdom. Today's youth are dealing with a world you didn't. You did not grow up in. The world they're growing up in. They have a lot more experience than you think they do.

Fatima Bey: 27:26

Take the time to listen to our youth, want to solve a problem for our youth, or involving our youth. It starts with listening. You can't solve a problem you don't understand. It starts with listening. You can't solve a problem you don't understand and, trust me, you don't understand because you're not in it the way they are. Rewind this episode. Go back, listen again, because he gave you a whole cash bag of wisdom, and I don't care how old you are. So much of what he said. Many of us still haven't learned yet At 30 and 50 years old. Go back and listen to the wisdom of a 19-year-old. You've been listening to MindShift Power Podcast. For complete show notes on this episode and to join our global movement, find us at FatimaBaycom. Until next time. Always remember there's power in shifting your thinking.